A Cold Blooded Business

by Dana Stabenow

  They played tag all the way back to Earthquake Park, where Kate cried uncle, and the rest of the journey home was accomplished at a walk more befitting two grown women of their age and maturity, although once Mutt did try to trip her, and once Kate bumped Mutt into a drift of wet snow. They emerged from the tunnel flushed and out of breath, and much refreshed.

  Jack came home for a late lunch and Kate drove him back to work and kept the Blazer. Instead of returning directly to Jack’s and her mound of paperwork, she drove to Bean’s Cafe and parked. Inside, a tattered, tired group of men sprinkled with a few women were eating lunch, their exhaustion lightening a little as the hot foot hit their bellies. Some were unkempt, some were downright dirty, most of them smelled. None of them was her old man. She described him to a woman administering a tuberculosis test to anyone who would sit still for it, but the woman, although sympathetic, had other concerns on her mind and wasn’t much help. From Bean’s Kate went to the Brother Francis Mission, a large building that looked exactly like what it was, a former municipal warehouse converted to a shelter for street people. Upon inquiry she was directed to a tall man with a shock of untidy gray hair and an official mien who stood listening with a patient expression to another man who looked merely officious. As Kate came up behind them she heard the officious man protest, “You’re not helping here, Brother Bob, you’re merely enabling these people to stay drunk.”

  Brother Bob murmured, “We’re enabling people to stay alive,” but the officious man wasn’t listening, and after holding forth for another five minutes without once pausing to draw breath he marched out. As he marched Kate noticed he looked neither to the left nor to the right, probably for fear that if he saw someone warm and dry, who otherwise might be dying of exposure out on the street, that it might change his ideas, and above all else, a change of ideas was the thing most to be feared.

  Kate described the old man and Brother Bob said, “Could be any one of a dozen men we see here every night,” echoing the words of the woman at Bean’s. “Although when it starts getting warmer, they start moving outside.” He looked at her. “Is it important?”

  Kate thought of the box of carvings riding around in the back seat of the Blazer, of the old man’s bewildered, exhausted face when he had said, I just want to go home. “Yes,” she said. “It’s important.”

  He looked at her curiously. “He a relative?”

  She hesitated and almost said yes, before she remembered she didn’t even know the old man’s name. “No,” she said finally. “Not a relative. But I want to help, if I can.”

  “You’ll have to find him first,” he said, not unkindly.

  “You have any idea where I should start looking?”

  He looked her over, this time with a critical eye, lingering on Mutt, who met his gaze with an inquiring yellow stare. What he saw apparently satisfied him. He named half a dozen bars, and said, “If you don’t find him in any of those, check the hillside above the railroad yards. A lot of our people build Visqueen tents down in the alders come spring.”

  Kate drove uptown and checked the bars, one after the other. It was not an uplifting experience. She dodged three fights in the first two, and they all smelled of beer and vomit and stale cigarette smoke.

  The last one, the Borealis Bar on Fourth Avenue, was almost exactly like the previous five: dark and smoky, Randy Travis on the jukebox telling the world why he cheated. A bar ran down one side of the room, tables that hadn’t been wiped in memory of man crowded together across a filthy floor. One couple, eyes closed, bodies pressed tightly together, swayed between two tables without moving their feet.

  A group of four men sat around another table, fresh glasses newly arrived from the bar. The three older ones were cheering the fourth one, barely a boy. All were Native Alaskans, all were conspicuously drunk, and as Kate watched the cheers took an ugly edge. “You too proud to drink with us?” one of them demanded.

  “No,” the boy mumbled, trying with ineffective gestures to shove away the glass held under his nose. “Doanwannanymore.”

  “I think he thinks he’s too good to drink with us,” one of the others said.

  “Come on, Phil,” the third man said. “We’ll teach him to show respect for his elders.” Two of them pinned the boy’s arms and tilted his head back and the third pinched his nose and poured the drink down his throat so that he had either to drink or suffocate.

  Kate leapt forward instinctively. “Stop!” She slapped the glass away and heard it crash somewhere behind her. “Stop it!” She pulled the boy free and put his head between his knees. His thin shoulders heaved beneath her hands as he choked and gasped for breath. Kate was so upset she forgot herself and began to lecture. “What the hell is the matter with you? Is this the way they taught you in the village? To make someone do something they don’t want to, that’s bad for them? Shame on you!”

  She would have been surprised and probably incredulous if she’d known how much she sounded, and looked, like her grandmother in that moment.

  The other three men were so far out of it they could only stand, weaving, and curse. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” “S’not nanny your business.” “Yeah, fuck off.” “Yeah, fuck off.”

  “Leave my brother ‘lone,” one said. He managed to focus long enough to step forward and paw at her.

  Mutt growled once, low down in her throat. When they didn’t hear her she upped the volume. They heard her that time, looked down, dropped their hands and started backing up in a body.

  Kate squatted next to the boy. His face was streaked with tears and he swiped ineffectually at the mucus running from his nose. “You okay?”

  He didn’t look at her. “Yes.”

  “You need a ride somewhere?”

  “You got any money?”

  She did. A lot of it, in cash, wadded in her pocket. She looked up and saw the three men standing at a distance, eyeing a Mutt who was eyeing them right back. “No,” she said. “I don’t have any money. Or not much. You hungry? I could buy you a burger.”

  He shook his head. After a moment she rose to her feet, and looked mean in the direction of the three men. Mutt looked mean, too, and they backed up another step. They were still backing up when Kate walked out the front door and back into the relatively clean air outside.

  There was a McDonald’s across the street and she went inside and ordered the biggest Coke they had and drank it down in one long swallow. She lowered the cup, the smell of deep-fried fat hit her nostrils and she barely made it to the bathroom in time. She retched and gagged until there wasn’t an ounce of fluid left in her entire body. When she came out of the stall there was a young woman in a McDonald’s uniform waiting with a mop and bucket. She gave Kate a look of disgust and disdain. “Jesus, you people.”

  Kate started to say, “Wait a minute, I wasn’t drinking,” but the other woman shouldered her aside roughly and began applying the mop to the floor with jerky, angry movements.

  Sometimes there is just no cure for a situation. Kate stifled her anger, washed her face and hands in the teeth of the other woman’s repugnance and left.

  She and Mutt walked down E Street and up Second to the beginning of the Coastal Trail. The gutters ran free with melt-off but the sidewalks were still covered with a combination of slush and ice. Walking was tricky. It got trickier when she pushed through the alders and began slipping and sliding down the hillside. In places the snow was up to her behind, and her tennis shoes and jeans were soon wet through. She had built up enough speed to scare herself when a limb caught her cheek with a sharp sting. She yelled out a protest and grabbed instinctively for her face. Her feet still churning, she crashed into some kind of stretchy barrier that held for a second and then gave.

  She tumbled forward and would have hit hard if the tangle of tree limbs and enveloping material hadn’t cushioned her fall. When she got her breath back, she fought her way to her feet and the first thing she saw was Mutt, staring down at her from the lip of the little h
ollow with an expression of incredulous delight. “Oh, ha ha, very funny,” Kate said sourly, and looked around.

  She had somersaulted into a tiny clearing, sheltered from wind and, judging from the thickness of the overgrowth, pretty efficiently from rain as well, although not as well as it had been before Kate’s arrival. In the clearing there was an old tin pot, battered and rusted. There were the ashes of a fire, lukewarm to the touch. There were two bottles of Thunderbird, both empty. There was a woman, curled in a fetal position on another square of plastic with a third bottle cradled in her arms. She was dressed in ragged jeans and a thin nylon jacket, long dark hair matted around her face and neck. She was a sound sleeper, considering Kate had just crashed through her roof. She kept sleeping as Kate re-stretched the square of plastic tarp and refastened it to the trees, and she was still sleeping when Kate left.

  Mutt, discovering what was wanted, nosed out another three shelters in that stand of alders, all of them as luxuriously furnished and none with the residents at home. They checked out another section of hillside close to the Alaska Native Service Hospital with the same result. At five o’clock Kate gave it up, climbed laboriously back up the hillside, found the Blazer and drove home to take a very long, very hot shower.

  Jack didn’t say “I told you so,” but he was so sympathetic and understanding the entire evening that Kate wanted to kill him anyway.

  The next morning Kate invaded Costco, emerging $398.76 later, secure in the knowledge that the outhouse on her homestead was not going to run out of toilet paper until the next century, and grateful that Jack had a large garage.

  That evening Axenia surprised Kate by arriving exactly on time and playing the part of the perfect guest. She complimented Jack on the dinner (which Kate had cooked), played Tetris with Johnny on his new Game Boy and generally stayed as far away from Kate as she could and still be in the same house. Kate let her. Axenia didn’t mention Ekaterina’s whereabouts or why she had been in Anchorage in the first place, and Kate didn’t ask.

  Sunday morning was spent fighting over the Sunday paper with Jack and Johnny, after which father and son went skiing at Alyeska. They invited Kate along but she could tell their hearts weren’t in the invitation, and she shooed them off on their own, glad to see the backs of both of them. She was beginning to feel crowded. Johnny had the television on from the time he woke up till the time he went to bed. It was wearing. She consoled herself with the thought that it was also temporary, and curled up again with Backlash, trying to ignore the sound of jet engines on short finals to Elmendorf Air Force Base, the yells of children playing in the park across the street and the cars driving by with rap music booming loud enough to be heard in the fillings in her teeth.

  *

  At five p.m. Monday the Bobbsey Twins presented themselves on Jack’s front doorstep, wearing identical scowls. “You got the files?” Childress said, a belligerent thrust to his jaw.

  “No,” Kate said, “I sold them to Sheila Toomey. She says there’s enough in them to keep the Anchorage Daily News going for the next year.” She stood back, holding the door open. John King stamped inside. Childress, his face brick-red, followed with a damning glare. They seated themselves in the living room. Kate perched on the arm of a chair and didn’t give them a chance to start in. “Last Tuesday’s charter was delayed.”

  John King folded his arms across his chest and eyed her over the toes of his boots. “So? It happens.”

  “So it came in a day late, twenty-four hours overdue.”

  “And?”

  “And that night I personally witnessed three separate cases of drug-related behavior in widely dispersed areas across the field.”

  Childress muttered beneath his breath. John King said, “Keep talking.”

  Kate gave a slight shrug. “Could mean nothing. Could be a coincidence.” She met King’s bespectacled glare without flinching. “Could mean the dealer changes out on a Tuesday, and his or her customers went a little overboard when they finally got their supply.”

  “You got any evidence?” Childress demanded.

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “The same thing has happened twice before.”

  “What a load of crap!” he exploded. “John, let me—”

  “Shit,” John King said, his scowl deepening. “You sure about this, Shugak?”

  “No. All I’m telling you is there is a pattern. Three times during the last twelve calendar months there have been a rash of drug-related incidents to which your North Slope medical staff have responded. Prior to each time the incidents occurred, the charter was delayed either one or two days.”

  Childress started to speak and Kate held up a hand. “There’s something else. Toni Hartzler, Public Relations. Gideon Trocchiano, Catering.” She took a breath, held it. “Jerry McIsaac, physician’s assistant.”

  The room was still for a moment. King had flushed red up to the roots of his hair, and he growled, “What about them?”

  “They all change out on Tuesday.”

  “So does half of Production and most of CPS,” Childress snapped. “John, don’t listen to this shit! There’s no motive here! All three of these people are making over seventy grand a year, what possible motive could they have for selling dope?”

  John King said sharply, “Hartzler’s making seventy?”

  Kate interrupted both of them without apology. “I’m not looking for a motive, I’m looking for opportunity.” They were silenced. “I’ll find out how, you can work on why after the fact. There’s more. All three of these people have their own transportation, not something that comes easy on the Slope unless it’s assigned to the job. And all three of them have jobs that keep them out in the field, all over the field or, as in Trocchiano’s case, a job that brings the field to them. Each time the incidents occurred, Toni Hartzler, Gideon Trocchiano and Jerry McIsaac were scheduled to fly up and were late getting in due to the charter delay. And each time, the incidents occurred after they were on the ground.”

  “Goddammit,” King muttered.

  “One other thing. The odds are big against all three of them being on the same plane on the same day at the same time. Trocchiano is a contract employee in catering, whose staff works two-and-one. McIsaac is in and out on medevacs. Hartzler is up and down on tours; from what I can tell from the manifests, half the time she flies commercial, accompanying her tour group from gate to gate.”

  “But all three of them were all on these flights.”

  “Yes, except for McIsaac, who flew up on the second charter last Wednesday.”

  “Then why include him?”

  “Because he was on the other two flights, and he did make it up on Wednesday, just not on the same plane. He has to be included.”

  “John,” Childress said, unable to contain himself a moment longer, “this is crap. Let me sniff around UCo, put out some feelers, I can find out where it’s coming from and then—”

  “It’s coming directly into the Base Camp,” Kate said.

  That silenced him, but not for long. “How do you know?”

  “Because I was offered toots from wholesale amounts of it in half a dozen rooms in the Base Camp on Saturday night.”

  John King surged to his feet. “What! Why the hell didn’t you tell me when I called you Wednesday?”

  “You hired me to find the dealer. I haven’t yet. Besides, King, it’s not UCo and you know it.”

  “And just how the hell do you know that?” Childress demanded.

  Still looking at John King, Kate replied, “UCo contracts out to both sides of the field. It’s a given that if a UCo employee was doing the dealing the problems would be occurring on both sides of the field at once. They aren’t, are they?”

  Silence. A long one.

  John King stirred. He removed his cowboy hat, smoothed back his hair and reseated the hat with the air of a trail driver ready to ship the herd out to Abilene in the teeth of rustlers, tornadoes and hostile Indians. He looked across at Kate,
yet another hostile Indian. “You find the fucker for me, Shugak. That’s all I care about. I don’t give a damn if my mama’s the one doing the dealing, just find her.”

  She nodded. He left.

  Childress snapped his eelskin briefcase shut and paused, looking at her, his upper lip lifting as if he smelled something bad. “I don’t need your help, I didn’t ask for it and I don’t want it.” He stepped forward so she’d have to tilt her head to meet his eyes. “I’ll be watching, Shugak. You fuck up one time, I’ll be there and I’ll have your ass off the Slope so fast you won’t have time to kick your heels together three times.”

  Kate remembered Toni’s invocation of that same spell and gave an involuntary laugh. It infuriated Childress and he stamped out the door.

  “So much for the drugs being brought up the haul road by contractors,” Jack observed from the doorway.

  “You hear all that?”

  “Uh-huh.” He tossed a thick manila envelope in her lap. “Present for you.” She opened it up and found a report on Lou Childress inside. “He doth protest too much,” Jack said when Kate looked up. “Makes me nervous.”

  She shook her head. “Dicks R Us, We Suspect Everybody.”

  “You know my methods, Watson,” he replied with a modest inclination of his head.

  “You read it?”

  He shook his head. “Just got it today. Investigator told me Childress is maxed out on all his credit cards, though, and he just refinanced his house.”

  “Lot of people did that when the interest rates went down,” Kate observed. “It’s hard to think the head of RPetCo Security, who has to be pulling down a hundred grand a year minimum, could be dumb enough to deal drugs.”

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  “What drugs?” Johnny wanted to know. He came all the way into the room and stood next to his father. Both of them were sunburned.