Running Dark

by Joseph Heywood

  Gar Murray, Delta County’s prosecuting attorney, was standing with the defense lawyer. Last year Murray had written a controversial letter to Lansing, declaring that the Garden situation was on the verge of being out of control, and if Director Curry didn’t improve support for DNR officers charged with patrolling the peninsula, Murray would publicly disclaim any responsibility for the death or injury to an officer on patrol in the Garden. Further, he would ask the state attorney general to release him from the obligation of enforcing commercial fish laws in any prosecution stemming from a death or injury to DNR personnel. Murray’s letter had created a minor furor in Lansing, with lesser lights calling it an act of cowardice; but Len Stone told Service that Murray had written the letter as a friend and supporter of law enforcement. Murray had been trying to force Lansing to do a better job of supporting the same people they were putting at risk. Good goal, lousy tactic.

  Service had never met either man.

  Murray had hair the color of a female cardinal and eyes that made him look like a predator on a constant lookout for food. Service introduced himself to both men, but Tavolacci immediately turned away and went inside. Service noticed he walked with mincing steps, like something was jammed up his behind.

  “Gar Murray,” the red-haired man said, shaking Service’s hand. “Don’t mind Sandy. He’s just an asshole.”

  “By birth or training?” Service shot back.

  Murray laughed. “That’s pretty good. You feel that way about all lawyers?”

  “Only the ones not on my side.”

  “A true professional,” Murray said, clapping him on the back and holding the door open for him. “Shall we?”

  Tavolacci was already in the interview room with Moe Lapalme. Both of them looked agitated. “What da deuce is goin’ on, eh?” The lawyer asked when Service and Murray walked into the room.

  Murray put his briefcase on the table. “Save the Finnglish today, Sandy.”

  “Let’s expedite. I’ve got other meetings on my docket,” the defense attorney said, no trace of Yooperese in his language or pronunciation.

  Detective Kobera was twenty minutes late. Lapalme and Tavolacci carried on an extended hushed conversation while they waited, and Service and Murray stepped outside the room.

  Kobera arrived, breathing hard, and handed a large envelope to Murray. “Sorry I’m late,” he said.

  Service looked at the detective. “We get a match?”

  “Damn straight,” Kobera said. “You want to do the honors?”

  “I’m just a game warden.”

  Murray looked like his mind was elsewhere, but he said, “Sandy’s gonna scream for the evidence. Fuck him,” Murray added. “I’ll mail it to him.”

  “I’m gonna read Lapalme the charges and his rights,” Kobera said.

  “We’ll arraign in two hours,” Murray said. “I’ve already talked to the judge.”

  The three men filed into the room. Lapalme looked cocky. Tavolacci looked wary.

  Kobera charged Lapalme with attempted murder, grand theft, breaking and entering, conspiracy to commit theft, and fifty-eight other counts involving stolen goods.

  Tavolacci said nothing.

  Formalities done, the three men got up and walked to the door, where Service stopped and made eye contact with Lapalme. “Nice seein’ you, Cap’n.”

  Lapalme tried to come up out of his chair, but Tavolacci held him down.

  “You’re dead when I get out,” Lapalme said with a low growl.

  Kobera looked at Murray. “Threatening an officer of the law?”

  “I’ll add it,” the prosecuting attorney said.

  Service said to Lapalme, “I’ll be waiting for you.”

  46

  GARDEN PENINSULA, FEBRUARY 14, 1977

  “When you least expect it, when you think you’re safe, I’ll be there.”

  The parking lot of Bay de Noc High School was jammed with vehicles. Service waited to arrive until fifteen minutes after the scheduled start of the memorial ceremony, and double-parked as near to the entrance as he could get.

  A couple of teenage boys saw him get out of his truck and began to follow him.

  He walked into the gymnasium and stopped. The casket was at the end of an aisle created by two banks of metal folding chairs. There was a portable lectern in front of the casket where a priest was reading. When the man looked up and saw Service, he stopped and stared.

  Grady Service wore his class-A green uniform, his wheel hat tucked under his left arm. He marched forward, looking neither right nor left. He could smell wet wool and ripe bodies packed too close together, but there was no sound and the air felt heavy.

  The priest moved aside as Service stepped to the lectern.

  Pete Peletier was sitting near the front, on the right side of the aisle. Service locked his eyes on to Peletier’s and began. “My name is Grady Service and I am here to say good-bye to my friend, Cecilia Lasurm.”

  He felt sweat under his arms and began to question his judgment, but continued. “Cecilia was everybody’s friend, and the teacher of many of you. That’s why you’re here—to honor her memory and the contributions she made to all of our lives. Cecilia believed that the actions of a few selfish people should not be allowed to destroy the reputations of all the good people who surround them.” He paused to let his words settle in. There was still no sound.

  “Cecilia learned a year ago that she was dying,” he said. “When she got the diagnosis, she evaluated her situation and decided she would die on her own terms. She refused pain medication, and she kept doing her job: teaching the children of this school, and coming to your homes to help those children who couldn’t get here.” Another pause. “Cecilia believed that no matter the obstacle, you should keep doing what you think is right. She hated the conflict between people like me and some of you. Her only dream was that we would settle it so that children here could grow up without cringing every time they saw a police car. I came today to say good-bye to my friend, and to tell you that I know many of you share her dream. Will it happen? I don’t know. It’s in your hands, not mine. And not theirs.”

  Service looked at Peletier and said, “Pete.” All the heads in the gym turned to look at Peletier. “Pete, thank you for the courtesy of inviting me here today. As you and I have discussed many times, we have more in common than we have differences.”

  The crowd began to murmur as Service did a crisp about-face, walked to the head of the open casket, leaned down, and kissed Cecilia Lasurm on the lips. He straightened up, put on his hat, saluted her, turned sharply, and marched out of the gymnasium in silence.

  Peletier caught him by the elbow halfway to his truck and tried to spin him around.

  The rat leader’s face was flushed. “You cocksucker—I never invited you. It was you,” Peletier stammered. “You tried to turn ’em against me. You think getting Moe will change anything? We’ll never change, do you understand? Never.”

  Service looked at the man. “I understand, Pete. I’m counting on that—and that’s why I’ll be back. When you least expect it, when you think you’re safe, I’ll be there. You and I aren’t done.”

  Service got into his Plymouth and started to pull away as a dozen young men came running toward him, their arms cocked to throw things, but Peletier held up his hands and they immediately dropped their missiles. The last thing he saw was a red-faced Peletier extending his middle finger.

  That night he heard that Cecilia Lasurm’s house had been torched and destroyed.

  PART V

  COLD VENGEANCE

  47

  MARQUETTE-GLADSTONE, APRIL 22, 2004

  “Red rats.”

  Service hated shopping, especially in sprawling chain stores, but Nantz wanted to stop at Kmart in Marquette. She was trying to secure a shopping cart by shoul
dering her way through shoppers mingling just inside the entrance, when a huge man lumbered out of the crowd, wrapped Grady Service in a bear hug, and lifted his feet off the ground, swinging him around. “Grady, Grady!”

  “Put me down, Gumby!”

  “Eugene,” the man said calmly. “Eugene.” He gently lowered Service, opened one side of his blue vest, said, “Badge,” and beamed proudly before trundling off to greet another customer.

  As usual, Nantz shopped with the focus of a programmed android.

  En route to Gladstone she said, “Are you going to tell me what was up with that back there?”

  “That what?”

  “Don’t play thick, Service. The man who lifted you like you were made of Styrofoam.”

  Service grinned. “Eugene Chomsky.”

  When no more was said, Nantz said, “Dinner on the twenty-fifth with Vince and Rose, Lorelei and Whit.” Vince Vilardo, the doctor who had treated him after his near-death experience in Big Bay de Noc; they had been friends ever since.

  Lorelei Timms was the state’s new governor, and Whit was her longtime husband. Through a series of serendipitous events, Lorelei Timms had taken a shine to Service, and now the governor and Maridly were fast friends.

  “Walter and Karylanne will be there,” Nantz added.

  This brightened him. Walter was his son, a son he’d known nothing about until last summer. His ex-wife, Bathsheba, had been pregnant when they’d separated and never bothered to tell him. She had died in an aircraft in Pennsylvania during the 9/11 disaster and only afterward did Service learn he was a father, a role he was still trying to adapt to. He and Walter had been through some rough early going as they tested each other, but things were settling down and he liked the boy and enjoyed his company. Karylanne was his Canadian girlfriend, and Nantz was convinced she was “the one.” Walter was not yet seventeen and in his third semester at Michigan Tech University in Houghton and was taking spring and summer classes so he could lighten the load for next fall and winter, when he would have a full athletic scholarship and officially join the varsity hockey team he now skated with on an unofficial basis.

  “That’s good,” he said. He was looking forward to watching his son play college hockey.

  “You’ll be nice to Lorelei,” she said in a tone that wasn’t a request.

  “I’m always nice to the governor.”

  “Just don’t be so damn blunt. Remember, she actually listens to you.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “When there’s something worth hearing.”

  He put away the groceries while Nantz poured oil into the deep fryer. Yesterday Simon del Olmo, the young CO in Crystal Falls, had dropped by with a box of fresh smelt he had bought from the retail fish house in Stephenson.

  “Be fun to go smelting,” Nantz said as she began to roll the tiny fish in flour.

  “They don’t much run up the rivers anymore,” he said.

  She rolled her eyes. “They gotta have sex somewhere, Service. We all do.” She held up one of the six-inch-long silvery fish by the tail. “Sex makes more of these.”

  “They spawn on reefs off creek mouths now,” he said.

  “You’re making that up,” she said skeptically.

  “One of the fish biologists told me. It’s supposed to be a secret.”

  Nantz rolled her eyes. “Be good to see Walter,” Nantz said. “He hasn’t been home in weeks.”

  “I’m going back to the Garden tomorrow,” he said. “Fish runs are starting.” Because of personnel shortages, he was doubling his duties as a detective with routine game warden patrols.

  As a conservation officer for more than twenty years he had spent most of his time policing the Mosquito Wilderness area, where he was like a neighborhood beat cop. Since his promotion to detective his job had changed and instead of patrolling, he took tips directly from both informants and other officers and plunged into cases, covering most of the Upper Peninsula. But the state was short on money and DNR law enforcement was short on people and since January, sergeants and detectives had been doing double duty—their own work, plus covering regular patrols. Part of him was glad to again be doing the job he had done for so long.

  “How long has it been?” she asked.

  “My last time there was in seventy-six.” He omitted Cecilia Lasurm’s memorial service the following year.

  “You’ve never said much about the Garden. And who is Eugene Chomsky?”

  He opened an inexpensive bottle of Malbec, and started taking the smelt out of the oil with tongs while Nantz put new ones in.

  “I swear,” she said. “Getting you to open up is like pulling teeth. Eugene Chomsky? He treated you like a long-lost brother.”

  Service kissed her and stepped back. “This is a really long story.”

  “You know what the Chinese say,” she said.

  “A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step?”

  “I was thinking a good fuck starts with a single stroke.”

  “Are you always horny?”

  “Right now I’m curious. Talk, Service. No talk, no sex—capisce?”

  Grady Service talked all night and Maridly Nantz listened, seldom interrupting.

  It was after midnight before he finished. He got up from the table to stretch and make more coffee.

  “When COs talk about the Garden, they always cringe,” she said. “They didn’t tell us any of this down at the academy.”

  “Because it’s mostly ancient history,” he said. Nantz had been in the DNR academy the year before. She was scheduled to enter the academy again this year—if it was held, which right now seemed iffy because of the state budgetary crisis brought on by the policies of former governor Samuel “Clearcut” Bozian.

  “How much longer did it go on after you were out of it?” she asked.

  “In May of eighty-three some of our guys got shot at off Ansels Point, and in December of that year, two of our guys tried to bring some illegal nets ashore at Fairport and got jumped by a mob of forty to fifty people, most of them wearing ski masks. It was about two in the afternoon. They were driving up the pressure ridge on shore when the mob came out of nowhere. Rocks got thrown, punches exchanged. Our guys had to pull their weapons to back off the crowd.

  “They immediately called the Manistique Troop post for reinforcements, and they sent down three squads with six guys. The mob turned on them, destroyed one of their radios, slashed a tire. They also wrecked one of our snowmobiles and stole the other one, the one with the sled loaded with nets. We never saw the machine, the sled, or the nets again. The Troops took our guys in and tried to retreat, but the rats had cut trees down to block them, and they had to run out through the snow to get around and out. It was a classic ambush. The rats waited until our guys were nearly ashore before they attacked, and after the Troops arrived, they tried to cut them off. Two arrests were made a couple of days later.”

  “That was seven years after you were involved,” she said.

  “Hegstrom told them he could buy them ten years, and he pretty much did. The state began buyouts in seventy-nine. Stone and Attalienti had a good plan, but marginal support and no understanding of the realities on the ground from Lansing. We were pretty much on our own, and everybody knew it—especially the rats.”

  “The conflict went on,” she said.

  “It did. State money eventually went to those few commercial fishermen who managed to meet the requirements of Order Seventeen. Some of them got almost sixty grand to hand over their nets and give up fishing. Most got a lot less.”

  “Sixty grand was a lot of money back then.”

  “The Garden was always about money,” he said with a nod, “not a way of life or resisting authority on principle. About six weeks after the so-called Garden Riot, the director decided to attend a pub
lic meeting with Garden people. He went up there with an NRC commissioner. The director wasn’t a bad guy, but he had less than six months on the job, and went without telling anyone in the U.P. what he was doing. A crowd of two hundred verbally ripped him a new asshole and put him on the defensive, and he told the people that his officers had been overzealous and maybe too hard-nosed, and that some personnel changes might have to be made. He claimed later that all he wanted to do was defuse the situation. Apparently he was thoroughly briefed and backgrounded by the chief, but being told about it and seeing it are two different things. The meeting was news all over the state: ‘DNR Director Criticizes Game Wardens,’ that sort of headline. Our guys went apeshit, and we damn near had a revolt. The director grudgingly drove back up to Escanaba and spent an entire day with law enforcement and fisheries personnel. Naturally, he limited it to the district, not understanding that our people from all over the state had done time up here.”

  “You were at the meeting?” she asked.

  “I asked him to give us one specific example of when we had been too hard-nosed, and he had to admit he couldn’t. I think he thought he was doing the right thing, meeting with people in the Garden, but it was a major faux pas. The meeting was like Vietnam all over again, the troops getting trashed for the failings of civilian leadership. The director tried to make nice, but nobody wanted to listen.”

  “Did he take action?”

  Service shook his head. “He didn’t dare. He had promised the Garden people a plan, but he never delivered it. Our guys knew what had to be done and they kept doing it. Our big mistake was not being hard-nosed enough,” he added. “Without the discipline and training of our guys, people could have gotten killed.”

  Then he told her what he had done, omitting nothing, including his intimacy with Cecilia Lasurm.