Putting Lipstick on a Pig

by Michael Bowen

  “Well, you might wanna get big on it, my friend. The Brady Street Ski Club will not be alone at deer camp this year. We will be joined by Simeon David, the owner of La Crosse Metrics. LCM is hip-deep in trademark litigation, and Simeon might be in the mood for a second opinion.”

  “Hmm.” Ka-ching! ka-ching! rang in Rep’s head.

  “I was expecting something a little stronger than ‘hmm,’” Kuchinski said. “Something more along the lines of, ‘When do we start and can I borrow a rifle from someone?’”

  “That’s my first reaction, all right. But there’s another element in play here, from Levitan’s murder. A new joker has jumped out of the deck—and the first one he jumped at was Melissa.”

  “What’re you talkin’ about, boy?”

  Rep provided a quick rundown of Melissa’s encounters with the cowboy who stole phony names from the yellowing roster of the old Milwaukee Braves. Rep passed on what he could remember of the description Melissa had given him. Kuchinski shook his head.

  “You just described half the Marquette High School class of 1958. Why don’t you get your missus on the phone and have her describe Mr. No-name for me?”

  “Good idea.” Rep picked up the receiver of his desk phone but then put it back down. “Before I call Melissa, though, there’s something I wanted to ask you about. I learned while I was out of town that you were the one who arranged military honors for Hayes’ burial. I was wondering why.”

  The warmth in Kuchinski’s expression dropped about five degrees and an unmistakable wariness clouded his eyes. He waited five seconds before answering.

  “You gave the guy’s eulogy, right?” he said at last.

  “Yes.”

  “Because he’d picked you to do it, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I guess if he’d wanted you to know, he’d have made sure you did.”

  “Okay,” Rep said. “If it’s private, it’s private.”

  “It’s private.”

  “Fair enough. I’ll see if I can reach Melissa.”

  Us/Them. Rep hadn’t been through Vietnam. The black wall memorial in Washington wasn’t his the way it was Kuchinski’s. The POW/MIA banner flying at Cold Coast didn’t belong to Rep in the way it did to Kuchinski and Skupnievich and the rest of the Brady Street Ski Club. There were some places he couldn’t go. Some places marked Members Only.

  He got Melissa on the fourth ring and explained why he had called.

  “You’re on the speaker phone now, honey,” he said after pushing the right button. “Go.”

  Melissa repeated the description she’d given to Washington. As she spoke, the hale-fellow joviality habitual with Kuchinski faded even further from his face, replaced by a look of sharp interest and acute concentration that Rep suspected Milwaukee’s insurance defense bar had come to dread.

  “Moved kind of fluidly, like he’d had concentrated physical training at some point in his life?” Kuchinski asked after Melissa had finished.

  “That’s fair.”

  “Not hulking, but seemed to fill a lot of space?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Just a little flabby, like an athlete right on the verge of going to seed?”

  “Definitely.”

  “You don’t work as a trial lawyer for twenty-five years without learning to get a good look at people when they come to your office for a deposition,” Kuchinski said. “If that guy isn’t Roger Leopold, it’s his twin brother.”

  “Hmm,” Rep said, remembering his mother’s chilling assessment of Leopold. “Walt, I think this rules out any jaunt to deer camp for me this year. I can’t spend a week out of touch with Melissa with this guy running around.”

  “Actually, honey,” Melissa interjected, “I haven’t had a chance to talk with you about it yet, but Detective Washington wants to come over to meet with us tonight. I think it might put deer camp back in the picture.”

  “You go, girl!” Kuchinski said with delight. Then, pointing his finger at Rep, “Sighting in is a week from Monday at the Dan’l Morgan Shooting Range in Ozaukee County, soldier. Be there.”

  ***

  “I was reluctant to call you,” MacKenzie Stewart told the policeman who’d just spent an hour tramping over the four acres of Stewart’s estate nearest the faux Georgian mansion where he and Gael lived when they weren’t in Washington. “But it looks like we’ve had uninvited company.”

  “I’d say you’re right about that, sir,” the cop said. He said “sir” automatically, the way recruits fresh out of basic training do. “Bits of fabric snagged on bushes, fresh stems snapped at ankle level, plantings trampled—and all of it inside your wall here.”

  “Do you think it might be teenagers looking for a little privacy?”

  The cop shook his head.

  “If they can get out to this neighborhood they have a car, and in Indianapolis in November a car is a lot warmer place for nookie. You’ve had someone giving your house a real careful look recently. I’ll make a report.”

  ***

  “I’m not one of the Jones Boys,” Washington said to Rep and Melissa across their kitchen table a little after seven-thirty that evening.

  “I don’t know what that means,” Melissa said.

  “Arthur Jones was the first African-American police chief Milwaukee ever had,” Washington explained. “A while back a federal jury found that he had discriminated against white officers in promoting detectives from lieutenant to captain. Well, that jury was wrong. Arthur Jones didn’t discriminate on the basis of skin color. He discriminated on the basis of how good a job you did of kissing his butt.”

  “And you’re still a lieutenant,” Rep said. “So you apparently didn’t see anal osculation on your job description.”

  “Right. I mention that because I’m about to step way outside the box, and I need you to trust me.”

  “Okay,” Melissa said.

  “Here’s the way I see things. Dreyfus obviously thought there was valuable information in that transcript of Roger Leopold’s deposition. Someone else apparently thinks Dreyfus was on to something, and it looks like that someone else is probably Leopold himself.”

  “Which would explain his coming after me and Sue Key,” Melissa said. “Especially if he was the one who tried to follow me after I left Dreyfus’ studio. But Leopold obviously knows what he said in the deposition.”

  “Exactly,” Washington said. “So he must think Dreyfus had some other data that becomes valuable when you put it together with the transcript.”

  “And he thinks there’s a chance Melissa has that data now, because she was in Dreyfus’ studio shortly before he decamped.”

  “Right again,” Washington said. “And sooner or later, we have to expect him to come for it. So let’s invite him in. Leave your apartment and go somewhere Thanksgiving week. Over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house, or deer hunting, or somewhere else—just go. We’ll have your apartment under close surveillance. If Leopold takes the bait, we’ll grab him—and whether the murderer is Nguyen or Leopold or someone else, I’ll bet we’ll have him after Leopold spends four hours in the squeal room.”

  “I love this plan,” Rep said. “But can you get away, honey?”

  “I can double up on one class and have people cover for me on the others,” Melissa said. “The trick will be figuring out where I go, because I don’t plan on spending a week reeking of cosmolene and cheap cigars in the middle of people trying to kill Bambi’s mom.”

  “We’ll work that part out,” Rep said. “Lieutenant, we have a deal. As of eight a.m. on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, Melissa and I are out of here.”

  “Okay,” Washington said as he rose. “You’re doing your part. Now we have to do ours.”

  ***

  Exactly what Melissa would do with herself during the Thanksgiving week sabbatical remained a puzzle until the following Monday afternoon—the first Monday in November, w
ith the air just a bit “fresher,” as Milwaukeeans say (or “colder,” as the rest of the human race would put it). The answer came when Rep answered his phone, assuming that Melissa was calling him.

  “Hello, beloved,” he said.

  “Well, well,” Ken Stewart said. “This is a side of you we haven’t seen before, Rep.”

  “Sorry, I’m a bit distracted. Things have gotten a little hairy here in the last couple of weeks.”

  “Down here as well,” Stewart said. “We’ve had an intruder.”

  “Did you tell the police?”

  “Sure, but there’s a limit to what they can do. At the risk of seeming melodramatic, I called Wackenhut this morning. That’s one of the top private investigation firms in the country. I asked them to see what they could find out about Roger Leopold. It took them only two hours and six phone calls to ascertain that he’s no longer in Hong Kong.”

  “We think he’s in Milwaukee, at least when he’s not trespassing on your estate in Indianapolis,” Rep said. “The police here have a plan. The problem is that it involves an unplanned vacation for Melissa and me during Thanksgiving week. I’ll be hunting a client while pretending to hunt deer. We haven’t figured out what Melissa will be doing.”

  “You’ve just given me a fantastic idea,” Stewart said. “I talked this morning with a client who has a cabin in central Wisconsin, an hour or so from Stevens Point. Right in the heart of deer country, and he’s not a hunter. I’ve been thinking that until we get our arms wrapped around this intruder business, it wouldn’t be a terrible idea for Gael to hang out up there, out of harm’s way. I can’t go, and she’s naturally reluctant to go up there by herself. But if Melissa would stay there with her, they’d both be safer and you could go out blithely hustling clients.”

  “You’re right, that is a fantastic idea.”

  “Splendid. I’ll wait to hear from you.”

  ***

  And so it was with a clear conscience that Rep one week later rolled with Kuchinski and Splinters in Kuchinski’s Riviera onto the rutted gravel parking lot of the Dan’l Morgan Shooting Range. As they were unloading the trunk, Kuchinski hefted a large, black pistol that looked like a mutated Luger.

  “Tell me what you think of this,” he said.

  He pointed the pistol at a newsmagazine cover shot of Saddam Hussein, which was taped to a bundle of newsprint at least two feet thick. He squeezed the trigger, producing the kind of small, soft pop! that well-raised guests at a dinner party would ignore. A bright red splotch appeared on Hussein’s cheek.

  “Paintball gun,” Splinters said with disgust. “What I think is that real men use live ammunition.”

  “Not on squirrels on the east side of Milwaukee they don’t. But that’s just an excuse. I saw that thing at the sporting goods store when I was having my Weatherby tapped for its scope, and I told myself, ‘Walt, you must own this. You must own it tonight. It is God’s will.’”

  Kuchinski put the paintball gun back in the trunk and the three of them lifted gun cases, a spotting scope, and the bundle of newsprint out. They walked with measured steps toward the range, for Sighting In is a solemn exercise. They waited with serene patience while the round of firing already under way proceeded. Let their ears get used once again to the sharp cracks of rifle fire in crisp autumn air. Watched the puffs of blue smoke float toward the sky. Greedily inhaled the rich aroma of vaporized cordite.

  The firing let up. Five seconds of silence intervened before someone yelled, “Target check!” Everyone waited another five seconds, for live fire encourages discretion. Then the line of shooters trod warily toward piles of sandbags exactly one hundred yards away. Some went empty-handed, to pick up targets. Others carried paper bull’s-eye and deer-face targets of various sizes. A couple of jokers had six-foot-tall plastic sheets with human figures outlined in black. Kuchinski was the only one who set a bundle of newsprint on the ground as his target.

  The shooters retreated to their original positions. They waited until, as etiquette required, voices called, “Ready on the left!” “Ready on the right!” “Ready on the firing line!” Very shortly after that the fusillade began anew.

  Rep played along while Kuchinski and Splinters proceeded as deliberately as they could. They clearly didn’t want it to end anytime soon. Even so, lining up shots as if they were million-dollar putts on the eighteenth green at Augusta and adjusting their sights by micrometers, it took less than fifteen minutes for them to shred Saddam Hussein’s face with three-shot groups that a silver dollar could have covered.

  “Is that a Leupold scope on the brand-new Wetherby, Mr. Kuchinski?” Splinters asked. “My poor little Remington with its paltry Weaver scope feels humbled to be in their presence. You must be having a prosperous year.”

  “Life is good.” Kuchinski’s tone didn’t encourage follow-up.

  They packed up while the firing around them again slowly tapered off. When the next target check came, Kuchinski trudged to the sandbags to retrieve his bundled newsprint. Rep expected him to chuck the awkward burden in a fifty-five gallon oil drum at the right of the firing line, but Kuchinski carried it all the way back to his car.

  “What’re you gonna do with that thing?” Rep asked.

  “Dig the lead out of it,” Kuchinski said. “I always take the sighting-in bullets along for good luck when I go deer hunting.”

  Chapter 25

  On the Thursday before Thanksgiving it snowed. Relatively well-mannered as upper Midwestern weather systems go, the snowstorm didn’t start until after the evening rush hour. Snow fell steadily for hours, tapering off around two a.m.—just in time for the snowplows to get it cleared before morning drive-time. Milwaukeeans hadn’t seen serious snow in mid-November for years, and few adults rejoiced at seeing it now. School administrators worried about burning a snow-day this early in the year, homeowners who hadn’t prepped their snowblowers cursed their procrastination, and working parents wondered what they were going to do if the snow closed schools but not the factories or offices where they labored.

  One group of grown-ups, however, watched the white stuff accumulate with unalloyed delight. Eight inches of snow blanketing Wisconsin answered longings that had long gone unrequited. This contingent consisted of deer hunters. The normal deer-hunting protocol is stationary: you set up your tree-stand, try to climb into it without blowing off your foot or some even more important part of your body, and wait there, bored and shivering, in the hope that a legal whitetail will wander into range.

  The snow changed all that. A deep snow would drive deer to more aggressive foraging. And even more important, it didn’t take a Native American guide or a charter subscriber to Field and Stream to follow deer tracks through snow. The opportune snowfall made this Good Tracking Weather—a phrase uttered by deer hunters with even more reverence than Sighting In.

  The Friday before Thanksgiving Rep received a copy of the Probate Court report on disposition of Vance Hayes’ estate. Rep had asked for this nearly six weeks before, but it hadn’t seemed urgent and he hadn’t pressed the associate involved. It didn’t seem urgent now, either. Rep stuffed the document into the backpack he was preparing for his trip to deer camp.

  Late Friday afternoon, Don Nguyen zippered his M-14 and thirty boxed cartridges into a leather scabbard. He strapped the scabbard to the back of his Harley, checked to make sure he had his deer tag and Buck skinning knife, and peeled away from his flat. Twenty minutes later he was headed north over freshly plowed highways, four car-lengths behind a maroon Mazda.

  ***

  “At this rate,” Melissa said to Rep Saturday morning as he pointed the Sable north on Highway 45, “you’re going to be at Teal Peaks Camping and Sporting Goods an hour before you’re supposed to meet Walt there. I thought you didn’t have to buy a rifle.”

  “I don’t. Walt’s lending me his old one. But if I’m going to be in deer camp for a whole week I might need a second pair of socks or something.”

&
nbsp; “Yeeccch,” Melissa said then under her breath.

  Rep didn’t have to ask where her sudden disgust came from, for he saw the southbound Chevy Blazer at the same time she did. A glassy-eyed, stiff-legged, broken-necked, gutted buck’s carcass was lashed to the cargo rack on top. They both knew the hunters’ defenses, which have the virtue of being true: steers in the slaughterhouse look a lot worse, so no one who eats steak has any business being squeamish; and if a thirty-ought-six hadn’t snapped that Buck’s spine and shattered his heart, he’d probably have starved to death or been hit by a semi or died a slow and agonizing death in the claws of a predator. But none of that made the carcass any less repulsive to Melissa.

  “You’re not actually going to shoot a deer, are you?”

  “Ever hear the one about the doctor, the lawyer, and the economist who went deer hunting? They spot a deer. The lawyer fires first and misses five feet to the right. The doctor fires second and misses five feet to the left. The economist claps his hands and shouts, ‘We got ’im, we got ’im!”

  “That means no?” Melissa asked with a don’t-feed-me-any-crap smile.

  “That means not a chance.”

  Thirty minutes later Melissa noticed Rep intently studying a handgun in a glass case near the cash register at Teal Peaks. She didn’t imagine he was thinking about buying it but she decided to intervene, just in case.

  “Don’t you have enough impedimenta for one trip, honey? I don’t think anyone has outfitted himself quite this thoroughly since William Boot in Black Mischief.”

  Standing as he was in the midst of La Crosse Footwear insulated leather hunting boots (one pair), Wigwam bulk-knit, knee-length socks (two pairs), Weaver hunting gloves lined with Thinsulate (one pair), mustard brown heavy twill hunting pants (one pair), Pendleton flannel shirts in Black Watch tartan (two), UnderArmor insulated underwear (two sets), blaze orange Trooper-brand cap with pull-down ear-flaps (one), waterproof, screw-top metal cylinder for keeping matches dry (one), Maglite four-cell, heavy duty flashlight (one), Thomas quart-sized thermos with stainless steel liner (one), and a Timberline down-filled sleeping bag with ground cloth and tuck sack (one), Rep couldn’t challenge her assessment. He imagined that he did look a lot like Evelyn Waugh’s rural naïf blundering off to Ethiopia loaded down with enough gear for an infantry platoon. But that didn’t mean he had to take it lying down.