by Jon Jackson
The question was, did Luck know that Mrs. Mulheisen knew? Well, how could he? She hadn’t known it herself until the day Joe had met her. And he had stupidly ignored it. Well, it didn’t concern him. He hadn’t known much if anything about Luck. Now he did. Which led to the next question: what to do about Luck? The answer seemed to lie in the same direction as he’d earlier surmised.
* * *
Roman and Helen drove back to the cabin. When they were perhaps a quarter mile from it, Helen told Roman to find a place to pull off. That wasn’t so simple, but ultimately he managed to get the hulking Cadillac off to one side. The ground was rough, but they were shielded from the road by the brush.
Helen jumped in the spacious backseat. “We could sleep back here, if we have to,” she remarked. She rummaged in her bags and got out some jeans and a sweater for herself. It had turned cool now that night was coming on. She had thrown in some clever-looking rubberized low-cut boots when she had packed that morning. They were bright blue. She couldn’t remember where she’d gotten them, but they were perfect for what she had in mind.
From another bag she took the Remington shotgun that Joe had modified for her. He’d shortened the barrel a couple of inches. She loaded it with shells while Roman looked on. He had brought his overcoat, naturally. He wore his usual businessman’s hat, with the brim turned up all the way around. He looked like a cartoon bear.
“Are you armed?” Helen said.
Roman patted his breast.
“Okay, let’s walk,” she said. They went forward along the edge of the road, cautiously. At length they came to a spot where they could just make out the dark roof of the cabin jutting up against the barely lighter sky. There were no lights. No one had returned. They could see no sign of Luck’s vehicle, so evidently he hadn’t lingered either.
Helen was tempted to go on to the cabin, but something held her back. She couldn’t have said what it was. The silence, perhaps. It was now quite dark. They had to walk on the road, which had a light, sandy base, in order to find their way. The clouds had moved in and the wind had picked up. The hardwood trees rattled their leaves, and the pines—which seemed to predominate along here—swayed and soughed gently. The inevitable owl hooted distantly. Off to their left they could hear the vague sound of the river, or so they imagined. It was there, they knew, but it wasn’t making a truly identifiable noise, except that infrequently something splashed, presumably a leaping trout.
Roman clearly had no taste for this. The woods spooked him, it seemed. He urged her quietly, “Le’s go back to the car. If Joe’s around, we’ll see him comin’.”
“You go back,” Helen suggested. Roman stayed. But in fact Helen didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to go forward, or go back, and that left her just standing on the edge of the woods. It seemed dumb. It was too damp to sit. So what did one do? Just stand next to a tree all night? And to what end?
Then Roman murmured, “There’s somebuddy.” He pointed down toward the cabin.
Helen strained her eyes. She saw nothing. But eventually a dark form detached itself from the bulk of the cabin, then merged into the general darkness again. Someone was on the deck, or had been. Helen instinctively stepped back into the edge of the woods. Roman joined her. Unfortunately, she realized, there were so many leaves down that one couldn’t walk here without creating what seemed to her like a tidal wave of rustling. She considered that the sound of the wind was high enough and the cabin distant enough that whoever was out there could not hear them . . . if they kept quiet.
And then, from behind them, well back in the woods—how far neither could estimate—there came a persistent machine noise. Not a vehicle. It came no nearer. It was an engine of some sort, though well muffled. Also a clicking, grinding sound. It came from the direction of Luck’s place. Neither of them had any idea how far or near that could be. This noise seemed hundreds of yards away, perhaps a thousand. It was muffled by the intervening trees, obviously. It may have been a quarter mile, for all they knew, or more. And then it stopped.
Now they could hear an occasional voice, although they could make out no words. Helen peered into the woods, ignoring the man at the cabin for now. She was strongly tempted to go in there, see what was going on. It sounded like more than a couple of people, talking or calling to one another.
There followed a long silence, during which both Helen and Roman turned their attention back to the cabin. Whatever was happening in the woods was over. Shortly, they were startled to realize that someone was walking through the woods not far from them. They guessed it was the man they’d spotted earlier. He passed quite near. They could hear his breathing. And then he spoke, evidently into a walkie-talkie phone.
“I’m comin’,” he said. “No. Not a sign.” He swished on.
Obviously, with the noise he was making, they could follow unheard. Helen murmured to Roman, “You stay. Wait for Joe. I’ll be back.” She set off after the man.
Roman was set to go after her, but the woods deterred him. He was from the old country. There, the woods were not a place a sensible man went at night. He had childhood memories of tales of witches, ogres, wolves, and bears. They were just tales but not so easily effaced from the psychic memory. Besides, he told himself, someone had to stay in case Joe returned.
The man in the woods was walking a path that he knew, Helen discerned. She stayed back. He soon must have determined that it was safe to make a light, because now she could see a powerful beam racing ahead of the man, flicking back and forth, sometimes directed at the ground, as if he were picking his way. In the beam she noticed that there were small reflectors mounted on the larger trees, rather high up, above eye height, say ten feet. They marked a definite route. One would scarcely notice them during the day, unless one were a bird-watcher, perhaps. Even so, they were tiny red lights. At night, a stranger in the forest might take them for the eyes of arboreal beasts. Perhaps even owls.
Eventually the man came to a road, and Helen shortly thereafter. Now both could make quicker passage. She stopped when she was perhaps a half mile from the river. The man she was following had not stopped. She could easily see him striding on toward a remarkable, well-lighted area. Huge floodlights bathed a large clearing. What she saw astonished her.
She appeared to be looking directly into a large hill that had opened up. Inside, or rather just outside the hill, a black helicopter sat on a ramp that had projected out from the interior. Several men were walking about, talking. The man she’d followed approached and engaged a couple of the others in conversation.
Luck strode out from the interior, dressed in a dark jumpsuit. He carried a pilot’s helmet. He spoke to the men. The one who had returned trotted off while Luck climbed into the helicopter. The man returned quickly, carrying an odd-shaped weapon, some kind of rifle with an assortment of attachments. The man was also wearing a helmet now, and he lugged a satchel bulging with what Helen supposed was equipment. He tossed that into the chopper and climbed in beside Luck.
A few minutes later there was a whirring, whining noise and the rotors began to slowly revolve. The engine coughed and roared, then settled down to a steady drone. The rotors whirled faster, and abruptly the chopper rose off its ramp, straight up into the sky, then banked and sped off to the south.
Helen slipped back into the woods. The last view she had of the scene was the ramp retreating into the interior of the hill and two vast doors rumbling and grinding, the sound they’d heard from the river. The doors closed, the lights were gone, and all that one could make out as they pinched together was the impression of a hill re-forming itself.
When Helen got back to the river she found Roman, pretty much where she’d left him. “What the hell was that?” he said. “A chopper? Out here?”
She told him what she’d seen while they walked back to where they’d left the car.
“I wonder where he’s off to in such a hurry?” Roman wondered.
Helen had a bad feeling, but she didn’t voice it.
20
Wag a Dog
It was perfect driving weather, cloudy but with occasional sunniness. Mulheisen decided to stay off the interstate and make his way home leisurely on the smaller highways that carried him across state over toward Lake Huron. He enjoyed driving through the small towns with names like Sugar Rapids, crossing rivers named Titabawassee. He’d angle home from Bay City, through the base of the thumb.
This was thoroughly domesticated agricultural land, but still with considerable forests. He tried to imagine the country as it had been in Pontiac’s time, heavily forested, with established trails for the tribes to move back and forth to their various seasonal villages. And he found himself thinking about the Colonel.
On their way to Cadillac, the Colonel had been silent at first, recovering from the heavy drinking of the night before. Mulheisen was familiar with that state, although he had not experienced it for a while now. Eventually Tucker had begun to feel more lively and talk. He’d talked about the “spy biz,” as he called it.
“I came to it late,” he said, “after the air force. But, heck, it’s been over twenty years now, and I’ve learned that it’s something other than I’d expected. You think of agencies like the CIA and all kinds of images occur, mostly what you get from novels and movies, television. It’s not like that, Mul.”
Mul had muttered something like, “I suppose not.”
“No, it’s not a single agency,” the Colonel went on. “It’s all these little groups and subgroups.” He reiterated some of what he’d told Joe, but in a different vein. “Joe doesn’t quite get it,” he said. “You’re a professional. I’m sure it was similar in the force.”
Mulheisen didn’t recall now what he’d replied, but thinking of it, he realized why the scene in Cadillac had left him out of sorts. He’d been in Homicide for a while, but left to go back to the precinct for approximately the reason that Tucker’s actions had disgruntled him. You could rarely follow a case through to a conclusion, working in a large bureau, working downtown. At least in the precinct you were left alone to follow up your cases. You didn’t always “solve” them, but you tended to find out pretty much what had happened. That was gratifying, to a degree.
He passed along next to yet another small, unidentified lake, noticing the masses of ducks sitting near some reed beds. His mind wandered to Constance Malachi. He knew almost nothing about her, hadn’t even seen a picture, but he recalled that Charlie McVey had been impressed with her beauty, her cooking. She’d been a lawyer, obviously a bright, ambitious woman. Then she’d fallen for Luck. He was a fairly dashing man, handsome, presumably a man of property and substance. A bit of a con man. Mulheisen had seen lawyers, bright women, fall for their clients. It was often hard to account for. Even harder were the rare cases he’d heard of where a prosecutor had fallen for someone she’d been after. Which was Malachi? It might be interesting to find out, but it wasn’t going to happen now, he thought. The crucial issue was whether Malachi had been murdered. Did anyone really care? Would it all be revealed?
Tucker, in his conversation this morning, had mentioned an agency. Mulheisen thought he had called it the Office of Special Projects, or something like that. “Did you ever hear of it?” Tucker had asked him. Mulheisen hadn’t. Tucker said it was more powerful than the CIA. “It isn’t secret,” Tucker said. “It’s been written about in the New York Times. It’s mentioned on Sunday talk shows. ‘Everybody’ knows about it, but the public doesn’t pay attention. It’s very powerful. It wags the dog. And then there are the groups that people don’t know about, not even in the agencies themselves. I know about a lot of them. They’re very important. They work for, and against, the administration, depending on who’s in them. Quite often, what gets done is because of these informal groups . . . and what doesn’t get done.”
Mulheisen wondered if a group like that would determine whether Malachi had been murdered or not. And if that would determine whether or not Imp Luck was brought to justice, assuming he had been responsible for the death of Malachi. Mulheisen hated that kind of thing. What kind of country were they living in where the rule of law had been so . . . so what? Corrupted? Subverted? Or was it how things had always been, and he hadn’t noticed?
He recalled how, after Pontiac’s conspiracy and war, evidence had come out concerning the Ottawa leader’s role in the casual murder of little girl, a captive whose parents had been murdered. Pontiac had never had to answer for that bit of brutality. Indeed, because of his usefulness to the British, it had been decided by “higher powers” to allow him to go free. That is, until another cabal had plotted and successfully murdered him in Illinois. Of course, those were lawless times, but were times less lawless now? Presumably. That’s what the U.S. Constitution was all about.
The question now was what he would do about Luck. He didn’t know. Probably nothing. It was out of his hands.
Joe got up and stashed his gear away. It would soon be dark. He drove out to the highway, then doubled back toward Luck’s. He decided that an approach from Charlie’s cabin was not the best idea. He would go in the way he’d come out. In the event, he got into the Luck property approximately where Mulheisen and he had come out. It was quite dark by this time. There was some kind of activity going on over near the mound, or the hill, whatever that site was. He counted at least four vehicles, including Luck’s pickup. Joe skirted the area and made for the house. What he needed was to confront Luck, but alone. He could wait for him to return to the house. If things went well, he could promote the Echeverria meeting.
As expected, Luck was not in the house. Joe looked around. In the rear of the house there was a computer room. Nothing as extensive as Brooker Moos’s layout but still quite up to date. Unfortunately, Joe had almost no computer skills. He supposed that on that computer, currently running a screen saver that was like an electronic Persian rug being woven and rewoven, he would have been able to find addresses, phone numbers, documents, who knew what all? In a way, he was just as happy; he didn’t like sitting and looking at screens. For one thing, you never knew who was sneaking up behind you.
Instead he looked for other stuff: address books, letters, lists. But that kind of thing didn’t exist. What did exist, however, was a telephone. Having been reminded of Brooker Moos, he called him.
“Hello?” Brooker said tentatively. When he learned it was Joe, he exclaimed, “Jeeziss! You’re calling me from M. P. Luck’s phone!”
“How’d you know that?” Joe asked. He was walking about, checking the approaches to the house.
“For some reason he hasn’t blocked his number, and it’s registering on my caller ID,” Moos said.
“Ah. Well, he’s not here at the moment,” Joe said. “I may have to hang up suddenly, in fact. So let’s talk fast. He’s got all this computer gear here. How do I get into it?”
“If he’s got any sense, you can’t,” Moos said.
“It’s running a screen saver,” Joe said.
“You’re kidding. Okay, he’s got a mouse there. What is it, a standard type with two oval discs on either side, or does it have a wheel?”
Joe found what Moos was talking about. “It has two oval things and a ball.”
“Roll that ball. That controls the cursor on the screen, but it also activates the screen. The screen saver will disappear.”
Joe did as told and got a simple screen, apparently some kind of home location, with lots of information about news, temperature, time, and so on. “Now what?” he said.
Moos explained that the screen saver was an automatic thing that came on when the screen hadn’t been used for a while. Luck, he said, would know if he came in that someone had been on the screen if the screen saver wasn’t activated.
Joe took a little tour of the windows. No sign of Luck. “How do I activate the screen saver?”
Moos led him through the process, but he warned that it would take precious seconds if Luck suddenly appeared. Joe managed it in about ten seconds.
“Just
hit preview and don’t touch the mouse afterward,” Moos said. “The next time he touches it, it’ll just disappear, as usual. So what is it you’re looking for?”
Joe explained. Moos pondered for a moment, then said, “Go back to the screen and look in that row at the bottom for an icon that looks like a letter.” He led Joe through the process, explaining that there should be a row of functions running across the top of the mail server, one of which would be the address book. Alternatively, there might be a list running down the side of names. If he left-clicked on one of them he would, possibly, find messages Luck had received from that person, if he’d saved it to a folder. It didn’t seem likely, but . . .
Under “Contacts,” Joe found the abbreviation “Etch.” He clicked on it and lo! There were messages from Echeverria.
Moos was surprised. “This guy has no security at all. Well, there you are. Read anything interesting?”
Joe said, “I’ll say. Echeverria is flying into Traverse City this evening. It looks like he’s expecting Luck to pick him up. How do I find out when and where? He doesn’t mention it.”
Moos told him how to find “Sent,” where there might be a message from Luck to Echeverria.
Joe got to that quickly. And there was the message. “He’s meeting him with a helicopter! Now, where’s he going to get a chopper? Oops, I’m out of here.”
Luck’s, or somebody’s, footfalls were heard from the porch. Joe clicked off the phone. He desperately fiddled with the mouse, trying to activate the screen saver, but he got screwed up. He abandoned the effort in a panic and slipped into a closet. Under his breath, he cursed all computers. The screen blandly displayed the last message Luck had sent, to Echeverria.
He waited tensely, Llama in hand, while he could hear Luck moving about in the house. He seemed to be in a room immediately adjacent, probably a bedroom. He was opening what sounded like a folding closet door, similar to the one Joe was standing behind. Then he went into the bathroom. Water ran. Joe was still holding the telephone. He darted out and replaced it on the hook in the kitchen, then ducked back into the closet. The toilet flushed. Luck went into the kitchen. Various noises, cupboards opening and closing. Back to the bedroom. A sound that Joe felt must be the changing of clothes. Then out the front door.