Nik Kane Alaska Mystery - 01 - Lost Angel

by Mike Doogan

  He awoke the next morning spread-eagled on his bed, fully clothed. His tongue, as someone had once written, felt like the entire Russian army had marched across it in their stocking feet. He heaved himself up and stumbled to the bathroom, where he drank water until he sloshed. He stripped off his clothes and stood under the shower again.

  At least I’ll be goddamn clean on the outside, he thought.

  He had no sequential memory of where he’d been or what he’d done the night before. He remembered riding in cabs and shoving bills down the cleavages of waitresses. He remembered arguing with a big woman dressed all in black about whether Bob Dylan was a better poet than Dylan Thomas. He couldn’t remember which side he’d been on. He remembered telling a couple of barflies how his wife had left him to become a hooker and how they’d clucked their tongues and suggested he buy everybody another round.

  He got out of the shower and went through the motions of getting ready to face the world. He brushed his teeth and shaved and combed his hair, ate aspirin, put on clean clothes, packed his duffel, went down a flight of stairs, checked out, started his truck, and drove to the library. He spent fifteen minutes checking on something, then got back into his truck and pointed it back down the highway.

  He felt, all things considered, like something that had fallen out of a tall cow’s ass.

  Not bad, he thought. Two literary allusions for one hangover. Wasn’t he an educated s.o.b.

  His head pounded, and it felt like there was an archery contest going on in his bowels. But his mind had that perfect clarity that often comes after a bender. And he no longer felt sorry for himself.

  “Today,” he said aloud, “I feel like the avenging angel. I’m the angel of death. And I’ve got a hangover. That’s got to be bad for somebody.”

  He slid a Rolling Stones CD into the player, cranked up the volume, and stepped on the gas.

  26

  Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps.

  PSALMS 88:6

  DORA JORDAN ANSWERED NIK KANE’S KNOCK, WEARING designer sweats and big pink bunny slippers. She had her long, dark hair pulled back from her face in a ponytail and wore no makeup. She had a trace of flour on her chin and a wary look in her eye.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  The Jordans lived in a small frame house in a row of small frame houses built in the 1980s by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Kane had pried the location out of a surly Slade and driven there through the gathering darkness of the winter afternoon.

  She’s really very pretty, Kane thought as Dora Jordan swept a stray lock of hair out of her eyes with a hand covered by an oven mitt.

  “I’m Nik Kane,” he said, “the fellow who bought your grandfather soup the other day.”

  The woman was silent for a beat longer than Kane expected, then nodded.

  “I remember,” she said. “What do you want?”

  “No beating around the bush,” Kane said, giving her his best smile. “I was hoping to speak with Abraham for a moment.”

  She stood there looking at him for what seemed to Kane like a long time. Then she nodded.

  “Sure,” she said. “Leave your boots and coat in the entryway.” She spun on her heel and left him standing there.

  Kane removed his outdoor clothes and stepped into the house. He was standing in what he took to be the living room. The room was warm and softly lit. Abraham Jordan sat in a big La-Z-Boy watching television. Kane walked over and sat in a chair near him. The TV showed footage of explosions and bodies from Iraq.

  “That damn war,” the old man said. “I don’t like my boy being at that damn war.”

  Dora came in carrying a plate of cookies. The old man took one, then Kane.

  “He gets confused about what year it is sometimes,” she said. “He thinks the war in Iraq is Vietnam.”

  “Him and all the Democrats in the country,” Kane said, winning a brief smile from the woman.

  He bit into the cookie. It was hot and moist and loaded with chocolate chips.

  “These are wonderful,” he said.

  “They’re his favorites,” she said. “Would you like some coffee to wash it down?”

  She brought coffee and sat on the sofa. The television set was pitching some new wonder drug for erectile dysfunction. Abraham Jordan was asleep, breathing noisily through parted lips.

  “He does that sometimes, just drops off,” his granddaughter said. “More often as time goes on.”

  “I can’t blame him,” Kane said. “It’s warm and homey in here, a perfect place to nap.”

  In fact, he was having trouble keeping his own eyes open. Too old to go carousing and then just carry on like nothing happened, he thought.

  The woman looked at him, smiled, and stood up.

  “Trade me places,” she said. “You can stretch out on the couch and nap yourself.”

  “I couldn’t,” Kane said. But he got to his feet and walked past the woman. She smelled like soap and cookies. He sat down on the couch.

  “I know you saved my grandfather some unpleasantness,” Dora Jordan said. “Please, accept our hospitality.”

  Kane was too worn out to resist. He put his feet up, his head on a pillow, and was asleep in an instant.

  He dreamed he was arriving at Wildwood Prison in Kenai again, with a fresh scar and a lot of worries. He’d been in the system less than a year and this was his third facility; transferred from Spring Creek, the maximum-security prison, when the warden got word the White Brotherhood was going to kill him, then attacked in the mess hall at Palmer Correctional by a drug dealer named Kelso he’d sent up three times. Three strikes and Kelso was out, and he’d tried to take Kane out with a sharpened toothbrush, maybe on his own, maybe on commission from the Brotherhood. Being a con who used to be a cop was no cakewalk. After he’d healed up, and the prison authorities decided they couldn’t tack on any more time because he’d killed Kelso in self-defense, they’d sent him to Wildwood.

  The first con he’d seen in the yard had been Amos Titus, a Native guy he’d grown up with.

  “Holy shit!” Titus had said. “Nik Kane! They got the whole West High senior class of ’sixty-seven in here now.”

  “That can’t be right, Amos,” he’d replied. “There were more than five hundred of us.”

  Titus had grinned and nodded.

  “That’s right,” he said, “I guess they just got the cool ones.”

  They’d talked for a while, catching up. Titus had followed Kane’s case in the papers, and his time inside on the grapevine.

  “You done something to piss the white guys off plenty,” Titus said. “And the blacks don’t like you much, either. But this here’s a Native prison. So why don’t we go talk to the elders, see what they think.”

  The elders were a half dozen guys sitting in the best place for sun. Titus had introduced Kane.

  “What you in for?” one of them had asked.

  “I killed somebody,” Kane said. Then, after a pause, “I was drunk.”

  There were nods when he said this. Alaska Natives knew all about the damage alcohol did.

  “You arrested me once,” another elder said.

  Oh, shit, Kane thought.

  “But you weren’t an asshole about it,” he continued after a moment. “I was drunk.”

  There were more nods, and that was it. From then on Kane was safe, as safe as you could get in prison. He never really knew why he’d been accepted. He’d just been grateful and secure, and that security washed through his dream, just as it had through the rest of his time in prison.

  When he awoke, the house was full of cooking odors. Abraham Jordan was watching Survivor on television.

  “You white people don’t know nothing,” he said, giggling as the contestants did something particularly stupid.

  Dora Jordan came into the room.

  “You’re awake,” she said. “You’ll be staying for dinner.”

  It was a statement, not a question. Kane washed up a
nd joined them at the table. Over stew and fry bread he and Dora talked about the wider world, about her education at the university in Fairbanks and his on the streets of Anchorage. Over bowls of ice cream, she asked, “What was it you wanted with grandfather?”

  “I was hoping he . . .” Kane stopped himself and turned to the old man. “I’m sorry, uncle,” he said. “I hoped you might show me where you saw the angel.”

  “Angel?” the old man said.

  “It’s better you ask him in the morning,” Dora said. “His mind is sharper in the mornings.” She paused, looking from Kane to the old man and back. “You are welcome to our sofa for the night if you like.”

  So Kane nestled down in some blankets she brought and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. When he awoke, Abraham Jordan was sitting in his La-Z-Boy fully dressed, staring at him.

  “You sleep all day you’ll never see the angel,” he said.

  Dora Jordan came in from the outside stamping snow off her boots.

  “The snow-go is hitched to your truck,” she said. “It’s full of gas. Watch it, though. It floods easy.”

  She stopped and looked at him.

  “You can drive a snow-go, can’t you?” she asked.

  Kane smiled at Abraham Jordan.

  “I don’t know, uncle,” he said. “Us white people don’t know nothing.”

  “Don’t worry,” the old man said, “I’ll show you how.”

  After breakfast, Dora handed him a big brown bag.

  “Here’s lunch just in case,” she said. “You take care of my grandfather.”

  Kane reached for his wallet.

  “I’d like to give you some money for all this,” he said.

  She shook her head. “But you could bring the snow-go back full,” she said.

  The old man was dressed in a fur parka, moose-hide leggings, and the beautiful moccasins tied high up on his legs.

  He looks better than I do, Kane thought, and he’ll probably be warmer, too.

  He helped the old man into the pickup, drove to the Pitchfork mine, and stopped at the gate.

  “Is Tony Figone running security now?” he asked the guard.

  The guard nodded.

  “Tell him Nik Kane’s here to see him,” Kane said.

  After a couple of minutes, the guard swung the gate open and waved him through. He left the pickup running and the old man in it and went into the office trailer to see Tony Figone.

  “I’ve got an old man and a snow machine outside,” Kane said after they’d shaken hands. “I need to go up into the hills behind here for a while. And I need a map of the old mining sites.”

  “Mine manager’s going to have to approve all that,” Figone said. “They guard the maps and all the other mining information like it was nuclear secrets.”

  Richardson was polite but emphatic.

  “Can’t allow it,” he said. “And it’d cost me my job to give you a map.”

  “Tony,” Kane said to the security chief, “why don’t you give us a moment.”

  Figone left the room, closing the door behind him.

  “Now, then, Mr. Richardson, here’s the deal,” Kane said. “I need to go back in there, and I need a map that shows the locations of the old shafts. I’m sure you’ve had the whole area surveyed. I’m not interested in the least in where the gold might be or anything else having to do with your operation. And it turns out I have something to trade.”

  “What’s that?” Richardson asked.

  Kane took a videotape out of his coat pocket and set it on the mine manager’s desk.

  “I took that tape out of Big John’s collection,” Kane said. “Seems he was taping his girls and their clients. This one’s got your name on it, and I watched it just to make sure. I hope you don’t mind me saying that you’re a naughty guy. Or that you don’t want your wife to see what you were up to with a teenage girl.”

  Richardson reached over and tried to grab the tape, but Kane pulled it back out of his reach.

  “This is blackmail,” Richardson said.

  “Absolutely,” Kane said cheerfully.

  The mine manager thought for a bit.

  “I could have Figone take that tape from you,” he said at last.

  “No, you couldn’t,” Kane said. “The only way you get this tape is if I get the map.”

  The mine manager thought some more. Then he got up, walked to a filing cabinet, unlocked it, extracted a map, and spread it out on his desk.

  “This shows all the mine sites we know about,” he said. “They’ve all been GPS-located. Have you got a unit?”

  Kane shook his head.

  “I’ll loan you one,” the mine manager said. “Wouldn’t want you getting lost out there.”

  He folded up the map and handed it to Kane. Kane handed him the tape.

  “If you’re thinking about trying anything tricky,” the detective said, “you should ask yourself how sure you are that’s the only copy.”

  “There’s no need for threats,” Richardson said. “I’m certain my best course is to cooperate.”

  Kane followed Figone’s SUV around the face of the mine pit and onto a narrow road that ran up the hill. A crew was working even though it was Sunday. The two vehicles pulled off into a small, cleared turnaround, and Figone helped Kane take the snow machine off its trailer.

  “You sure you want to be doing this?” Figone asked. “It’s colder than a witch’s tit, and you won’t have much light.”

  “It’s just a little recreational snow-machining, Tony,” Kane said, giving the machine a little gas and thumbing the starter. It fired right up. Kane stowed the lunch and a thermos of coffee under the backseat. He helped the old man onto the seat, slipped a balaclava over his face, wrapped a scarf around his mouth and nose, dropped goggles over his eyes, mounted, and started off, careful to not flood the engine. The old man wrapped his arms around Kane’s waist and they were off.

  They rode for about twenty minutes, heading due south and mostly uphill before the old man pounded on Kane’s shoulder and waved him to the left. Kane made a long, sloping turn. He followed the old man’s thumps and waves for another twenty minutes or so. The sky was as bright as it was going to get when the old man signaled him to stop. He pulled up in the lee of a small stand of spruce and shut off the engine. The silence seemed loud after its constant whine. The old man walked a few steps away and fumbled at his zippers. Steam rose from where he wet the snow.

  “God damn,” he said as he returned to the snow machine. “An old man’s bladder is no fun.”

  Kane handed him a plastic cup full of coffee. He stood, looking around, sipping. Kane looked, too. To him, the landscape looked much the same as it had since they’d left the mine behind them.

  “I trapped this country for forty years,” the old man said. “Had me some luck, too. Caught a big lynx in a set right here in these trees. Froze stiff by the time I got here. And a wolf let me shoot him right down in that gully. These are his hairs on this parka hood.”

  The old man was silent then, as if recovering from what was, for him, such a long speech.

  “I like the silence best,” he said at last. “In the summer there’s birds and animals all over, living their lives, making noise. But in the winter, sometimes the dogs would be asleep and it was so quiet. It was like if you listened hard enough, you could hear the mountains breathing.”

  The old man slurped coffee.

  “I was hoping to get back here before I died. Guess I should thank you for it,” he said. “Now, if my son would just come back, I could die happy.”

  Kane let the silence settle.

  “It’s been a long time, uncle,” he said. “Do you really think he’s coming back?”

  The old man was silent for so long Kane wondered if he’d heard him.

  “A man’s gotta have faith,” Abraham Jordan said. “If you don’t have faith, what do you have?”

  The two of them sat there on the snow machine, drinking their coffee and thinking their tho
ughts. The old man threw the last of his onto the snow and dropped the cup into the compartment under the seat.

  “It’s just around there that I seen the angel,” he said, pointing. “We better get going.”

  Kane started the snow machine and took them through the gully and around a shoulder of snow-covered hill. There was a frozen, snow-covered creek down below them a ways, and they rode along the side of the hill slowly. Kane had driven snow machines before, but not recently, and he didn’t want to tempt fate. They rounded another shoulder of hill, and the old man pounded him on the back. He found a level spot and coasted to a stop.

  “This is it right here,” the old man called over the rumble of the idling engine. “This is where I seen the angel. He was headed that way.” He pointed to the ridge that led down to the creek.

  Kane pulled the map from an inside pocket and unfolded it. He checked his GPS unit, then examined the map.

  “There’s some mine workings right down there,” he said, pointing.

  “Sure there is,” the old man said. “Everybody knows that.” Then he gave Kane a big grin.

  “It’s a lot shorter if you just follow the creek,” he said. “You can drive up a dirt road off the highway, unload your snow-go, and be here in ten, fifteen minutes. Don’t have to go through the mine at all.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that, uncle?” Kane said.

  The old man grinned again.

  “I like to ride the snow-go,” he said.

  Kane put his things away and took them slowly down the ridgeline, then followed the creek. The old man pounded him on the back and he stopped.

  “You got city eyes,” the old man said. “There’s the trail. There’s a drift tunnel up the hill a ways.”

  Kane untied a couple of pairs of aluminum bear-claw snowshoes from the back of the machine. He and the old man put them on.

  “You sure you can make this climb, uncle?” Kane asked.

  The old man gave him a pitying look and started off. Kane followed. The snow cover wasn’t deep, and they probably didn’t need the snowshoes, but the old man kept moving so there wasn’t a chance to take them off. A few minutes’ slogging brought them to the entrance to the drift tunnel. It was somewhat overgrown by bushes.