Putting Lipstick on a Pig

by Michael Bowen

  “As soon as I figure out how to ask without implying that you’ve been pawing through my insulated undies,” Rep said. He kept his voice jovial, leaving it up to Kuchinski whether to treat his answer as a josh or a challenge.

  “Your undies weren’t what interested me, that’s for sure,” Kuchinski said quietly but with unmistakable irritation. “When I pulled into that parking lot Saturday morning I saw you studying a piece of paper like it was a cross between a draft notice and a bar exam. It seemed to leave you with a bad case of curiosity and a hard time getting to the point while we were driving up. I was kind of wondering what was going on.”

  “You weren’t exactly chatty yourself.”

  They crunched another hundred yards or so, following no trail that Rep could see. Tracks abundantly pocked the snow, criss-crossing and overlapping. Kuchinski sent a half-accusing, half-disappointed look in Rep’s direction as he resumed the conversation, his voice even chillier than the twenty-two-degree temperature.

  “I’d feel better if you’d just come to me with any questions you had, instead of having some gumshoe go digging through records two states away.”

  “He was a young lawyer, not a gumshoe. I didn’t ask him to peep through any keyholes of yours. I sure wasn’t expecting your name to turn up on that bequest list.”

  “Fine. Just seems to me like you were playing ’em a little close to the vest—and this ain’t poker.”

  Rep surmised that he had violated some unwritten masculine code, failed some test of intuitive faith. In Kuchinski’s mind, apparently, the bequest list should have made Rep talkative instead of tongue-tied. Rep should have volunteered the information with a hey-isn’t-this-interesting attitude. He should have shrugged off any sinister interpretation, should have known without having to be told that it meant nothing, should have understood and accepted its irrelevance without thinking about it.

  But he hadn’t. So Kuchinski had convinced himself that Rep suspected him of complicity in crimes trailing in the vaporous wake of Vance Hayes’ ghost. The silence between them as they covered another fifty yards wasn’t familiar but sullen, like a summer day heavy with approaching rain. Rep knew that he wasn’t going to get another useful word out of Kuchinski about Vance Hayes or anything else unless he reversed Kuchinski’s impression.

  Rep stopped. Looking at him with sharp surprise, Kuchinski stopped as well. He opened his mouth but before he could speak Rep raised his right arm in an urgent QUIET! signal. Trying not to ham it up too much, he gazed straight in front of him, head slightly forward, eyes focusing with fierce intensity, the tip of his nose quivering slightly. Glancing at Kuchinski, he pointed at a birch with a divided trunk about eighty yards off. He raised his eyebrows questioningly. Kuchinski nodded with a puzzled expression that Rep interpreted as meaning Yeah, that’s a tree. So what?

  Rep set the rifle Kuchinski had lent him butt-first in the snow and leaned the barrel against a tree to his left. He started forward with a careful but steady pace, intended to hide the hollowness in his gut and the tremor in his calves. He didn’t look back. Just moved ahead, offering Kuchinski an unarmed, can’t-miss target. Six or seven Wisconsin hunters would be accidentally killed this deer season. It would be absolutely no trick for Kuchinski to make Rep one of them, except without the accident. Wait for Rep to get about fifty yards off, put a thirty-ought-six sized hole in his skull, remove his blaze orange coat and ditch it somewhere, and chalk it up to just another seasonal mishap. Why the HELL did he shuck that coat? Tenderfoot and all but even so. What was he thinking? Can’t figure it out.

  Rep was ten feet from the split-trunk birch when Kuchinski’s rifle-shot split the air behind him.

  ***

  Thirty miles away, Melissa didn’t hear that shot. She’d heard plenty of other rifle fire since breakfast, but the vague uneasiness she felt as she looked out the back window of the cabin came from another source altogether. She’d heard an engine roar—not a car or truck engine, but a full-throated growl that sounded like a motorcycle with muscle. The howl had come from the woods.

  She sipped coffee and shrugged. The article she should be working on right this minute nagged at her conscience. She didn’t see how she could accomplish much by standing here gazing at woods where someone might or might not be lurking. She turned away from the window with every intention of getting back to work. As she crossed the room to get to her laptop, however, she noticed the photocopies of Soldier for Hire peeking out of the canvas carry bag where she’d stashed them. She’d gone to the trouble of hauling the things up here so that she’d have them available over the Thanksgiving break, on the off-chance that reviewing them might generate some insight beyond Detective Washington’s coded-blackmail-message theory.

  Dropping onto the couch, she pulled out the first issue and began paging through it. Forty minutes later she’d made it through a dozen of the things, for she came across nothing in them that required close reading. The articles, columns, and letters focused with grinding monotony on the short list of recurring subjects she had identified in her discussion with Washington.

  The only topic that struck Melissa as something that would interest sensible people was MIAs. The insistent theme was that the United States government was systematically and deliberately suppressing evidence of Americans being held by communists in Vietnam. And not just the articles and columns. In every single issue, the first ad at the beginning of the classified section and the last ad at the end offered the services of WE’RE GOING HOME, INC., which apparently had one specialty: Finding loved ones who had been reported missing in action in South Vietnam.

  Melissa put the twelve issues she’d reviewed back in her carry-all and reached for the most recent couple included in the package her colleague had sent her. Maybe a comparison of recent issues with those produced at the beginning of the magazine’s history would tell her something. And if it didn’t, maybe she’d just give up and get to work on her article after all.

  The contrast with the earlier issues seemed more cosmetic than substantive. The type struck her as a little cleaner, the pictures a little sharper. References to MIAs had disappeared, but the copy otherwise covered the same gamut she had seen in the first issues she looked at. The only other change she noticed was that the magazine had acquired a professional-looking masthead, running one column wide down the second page inside the cover. She saw with mild interest that it identified a company called WE’RE GOING HOME, INC. as the publisher. In the beginning, in other words, Soldier for Hire’s parent company had also apparently been one of its key advertisers.

  Wait a minute. Was that the point? Did the real money at the beginning come from getting people to pay WE’RE GOING HOME to try to find sons or husbands or buddies who’d never made it back from Vietnam? Had the magazine started out as just an elaborate tool for getting a line on people who’d fall for that kind of pitch? Had WE’RE GOING HOME always been the publisher?

  A re-check of the first few issues confirmed her recollection that they included no masthead. The early issues went right from the table of contents to the first article, on page five.

  She blinked. Huh? Page FIVE? She thumbed again through the first year’s issues. One two-sided page—three on the recto and four on the verso, or the other way around, she couldn’t remember—was missing from each copy. She couldn’t imagine how that had happened.

  Well, it would be easy enough to check once she got back to Milwaukee. Telling herself that Washington would probably have Leopold under lock and key and the case wrapped up by then, she tucked the carry-all away and strode with grim determination toward her laptop.

  ***

  Just about the time Melissa managed to boot the computer up, Roger Leopold looked at Nguyen’s prone body, the blood from a gash on the top of his head congealing rapidly in the cold air. Leopold hesitated. His ribs ached, his lip was split, and his teeth throbbed. Even taking Nguyen by surprise and having forty pounds and four inches on him, Leopold had abso
rbed a beating while he overwhelmed the smaller man. He desperately wanted to kill the little slope, but he couldn’t take that chance. Cops around here had to know more about hunting accidents than he did. He couldn’t count on faking one convincingly.

  Then he smiled as inspiration came flooding in. Straddling Nguyen’s body, he removed the deer tag encased in plastic on the back. If Nguyen started wandering around the woods again with his rifle after he woke up, he’d be begging to get arrested. Just to be safe, Leopold removed the clip from Nguyen’s M-14 as well. Then, with his own handgun, he put a bullet through the front tire on Nguyen’s Harley.

  Chapter 28

  Sound travels around seven hundred fifty miles per hour. The muzzle velocity of a thirty-ought-six has to be more than fifteen hundred feet per second. I heard the shot. Therefore I’m probably still alive.

  Rep complimented himself on this elegant syllogism. Then he figured that someone lying face down in the snow with an armed man approaching him should move on to something more useful than self-congratulation very soon. Unfortunately, he couldn’t think of anything in that category.

  “Geez, Rep,” he heard Kuchinski say then, “did I startle you?”

  “Not at all. I’ve just always wondered what snow looked like really close up.”

  “Sorry.” Kuchinski helped him up. “I didn’t have time to warn you.”

  “Something come up all of a sudden, did it?”

  “Something with a white tail and an impressive rack—and I don’t mean my favorite bunny at the Lake Geneva Playboy Club.”

  “Are you saying there was actually a deer out there?”

  “Rep,” Kuchinski said reverently, “that was the best shot I’ve ever made in my life. Moving target, two hundred yards off with more timber than Paul Bunyan ever cut in between me and him—and I dropped him with one bullet.”

  “So I get credit for flushing a prize buck?”

  “You weren’t out there flushing any deer,” Kuchinski said as he handed Rep the rifle Rep had left behind and began leading Rep forward. “That little piece of business about showing me your back and waltzing out there unarmed was you doing the Captain Titleman number, am I right?”

  “I was just trying to show you I trusted you.”

  “Well, it was a hot dog stunt, but you made your point.”

  “Glad to hear it. I’m not sure my firm’s group plan covers hypothermia, and I’d hate to die uninsured without accomplishing anything.”

  They hiked in silence for a couple of minutes before Kuchinski came to a respectful halt and pointed straight ahead of them. Twenty yards farther on Rep saw a vivid splotch of blood staining the snow. Smaller spots at irregular intervals led his eyes to a light brown bulge lying at the next tree line.

  They closed eagerly on the slain deer. Neither spoke—Kuchinski because he was absorbing the moment, and Rep because he knew when to keep his mouth shut. Over the next fifteen minutes the only words exchanged between them were, “Thirteen points,” and “Yep.”

  What happened during those fifteen minutes involved the judicious use of hunting knives, the removal and disposition of entrails, the manifestation of certain biological consequences of sudden death in mammals, and the attachment of Kuchinski’s deer tag to one of the thirteen prongs on the dead buck’s antlers. Then they trussed the buck’s legs with a coil of manilla hemp and began retracing their steps, dragging the animal laboriously behind them.

  “How long do you think it’ll take us to get him back to camp?” Rep panted after ten minutes of slogging had taken them about a quarter of a mile.

  “I don’t figure on pulling him all the way back to camp,” Kuchinski said. “We’re a little over half a mile from a trail wide enough for the Escalade. I’m thinking we drag him that far, then hike to camp and four-wheel back.”

  “Sounds good,” Rep managed. He now felt bathed in sweat, despite the frigid weather. “It’s a good thing you didn’t drive up here in the Riviera.”

  “That was subtle.”

  “I’m locally famous for subtle segues.”

  “Okay,” Kuchinski sighed. “Even Splinters was ragging on me about the Escalade, so I guess I can’t blame you for wondering about it. It is an oh-five, but it’s more than slightly used. Contraband of the flourishing trade in crack cocaine, forfeited to Uncle Sam as an instrumentality of crime. I have some buddies at Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, so I knew about the auction in time to sell my Durango and make a decent bid.”

  “You mean you had an SUV even before this one?”

  “For at least ten years,” Kuchinski said.

  “You just hang onto the Riviera as kind of a nostalgia thing?”

  “Oh my word, son, you have a lot to learn about life as a trial lawyer in Milwaukee. You do not let any potential juror see you driving to court in a car that looks like it cost more than his first house. The Escalade and this new rifle are the fruits of a long career promoting the cause of law and justice and judicious friendships with ATF personnel—not a windfall from helping Vance Hayes launch his bark on the dark seas of eternity. That hundred thousand bucks came as a complete surprise—and not a particularly pleasant one.”

  “Sounds like a problem I’d like to have,” Rep said.

  “Careful what you ask for. The hundred grand had enough strings attached to moor a Lake Superior ore boat. I’m basically an uncompensated trustee. I’m supposed to use that money to help a peppy young court reporter named Sue Key.”

  “Hello.”

  “You got that right, buddy.”

  “Why didn’t he just leave the money to her?”

  “He figured Nguyen would get his hands on it and run through it,” Kuchinski said. “And he didn’t want to fuss with a formal trust, ’cause then she’d know about it. He left the money to me, without telling her, so that I can help her out when she’s ready to set up her own shop.”

  “He did that in memory of his dead brother’s relationship with Key’s mother, right?”

  “You’re not wrong,” Kuchinski said, “but it’s a little more complicated than that.”

  “Would the complicated part have something to do with the military honors you arranged for his burial?”

  “Yep.”

  “You gonna tell me about it?”

  “I guess that snow-dive you just took in homage to one of my war stories has earned you that much.” Kuchinski took a deep breath and swiveled his head as if to take in the austere surroundings. Then he went on. “There were a dozen ways to avoid the draft in the sixties. Vance chose one of the simplest. He just stayed in school and piled one student deferment on top of another. By the time Congress closed that loophole, Vance was past twenty-six and off the hook. He was probably the only guy in Indianapolis practicing law full time while studying for a master’s degree in American history.”

  “Sounds like that could put a pretty big dent in the family college fund.”

  “There wasn’t much left for Tim, that’s for sure. He could have scraped his way through a state school, but he got admitted to Notre Dame. The only way he could swing that was ROTC. He got his sheepskin and his gold bars on the same day, shipped out for ’Nam, and came home in a body bag.”

  “And Vance spent the rest of his life guilt-tripping himself over Tim dying in his place,” Rep mused as the backs of his thighs began to throb. “That explains some things. But get to the part about the flag-draped coffin.”

  “For decades after the war there was a cottage industry over American MIAs not accounted for. Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris built half their careers around it. The rumors were over-the-top. Underground slave-labor camps, Nazi-style human experiments, et cetera.”

  “Actually,” Rep said, “some of that stuff sounds more interesting than the average Chuck Norris movie.”

  “MIA families naturally held onto some hope that their kids were really alive and might come home some day. Hustlers preyed on these families. They’d place ads
in gun magazines and survivalist magazines promising help finding MIAs. Sweat a few hundred bucks out of grandparents in Appalachia and grieving widows in Texas. Do a public records search, make some stuff up. Put together a report that held out some hope and promised more progress for a few more bucks. Bleed it as long as they could.”

  “Where did Vance Hayes come in?”

  “He went after these creeps like a pit bull with a toothache. He’d represent families for free, threaten to sue these outfits for fraud, breach of contract, unjust enrichment, bad breath, anything he could think of. If he couldn’t get anywhere with a civil action, he’d put together an evidence package for local prosecutors, with the documents all indexed and the witness statements tabbed and highlighted. All for practically no money.”

  Rep nodded. The order of proof he’d found made sense if it were a prepackaged case for some prosecutor.

  “Wouldn’t he get a percentage of any recovery?”

  “There’d almost never be a net recovery. These were fly-by-night, hole-in-the-wall operations. They’d string things out as long as they could, then close up shop and leave town owing rent.”

  “And you helped him?”

  “Just a little local talent and professional courtesy from time to time, when he had something going in Wisconsin. Carried his briefcase once in a while. He was the hero, not me.”

  “Heroic enough to rate a flag-draped coffin.”

  “That was my opinion,” Kuchinski said. “Colonel Englehardt saw it the same way after I explained it to him. I don’t know if Hayes went to heaven or hell, but whether he was looking at his burial from above or below I wanted him to see that, as far as I was concerned, he’d made up for Tim taking the bullet he thought was meant for him.”

  Rep plodded in silence, tugging his half of the awkward burden for another hundred yards or so, as he thought things over. His thighs were no longer throbbing. Now they were burning.