He fed Cat and Newf and let them out. Cat stayed out to hunt. Newf came running in and raced upstairs to the bed so she could claim it. He didn’t bother pushing her off and slept fitfully.
29
Up before the sun, Service skipped the free weights and rode the stationary bicycle; his routines were always timed for maximum benefit, but today he just got on the device and pedaled, his mind still locked on the death of Outi Ranta. Sometimes sleep facilitated solutions to problems, but not last night, and not this morning. After an hour on the bike he showered and boiled water for instant oatmeal. He dumped a handful of dried Traverse City cherries on the powdered mix, poured on boiling water, sat down to eat, and found after two spoonfuls he had no appetite. He set the bowl on the floor for Newf to finish and grabbed the telephone.
Simon del Olmo answered, “Wha?” He sounded confused and still asleep.
“Where’s Kitella?”
“Grady?”
“Is he still in jail?”
“I don’t know.”
“Find out, okay?”
Treebone called at seven, just as Service was getting ready to put Newf in her pen.
“Got my ass kicked,” Tree began. “The commanding officer for Major Crimes landed on me like a five-hundred-pound wet turd, told me I got ‘epizootics of the blowhole,’ woompty woompty. Said the Feebs ripped him a new asshole because of me and that as far as he was concerned I should make like D. B. Cooper and disa-fucking-ppear.”
“What the hell did you do?”
“I don’t know, man. I was just trying to help you. I called my man at the Feeb house but he suddenly had lockjaw. You know Feebs, they always spooked by something, worse since nine-eleven.”
“They’ve always been political.”
“Never seen ’em quite like this. They got a new top dawg and he’s changin’ it all around.”
“Change makes everybody edgy.”
“Whatever. Couldn’t get in that door, so I called Shamekia.”
Typical Treebone—once on a mission, he would not be put off. Shamekia was an attorney in the prestigious Detroit firm of Fogner, Qualls, Grismer and Pillis. She had once been an FBI agent who filed charges against the Bureau for discrimination and had won a huge settlement. Officially she was persona non grata in the bureau, but she had enough contacts to get inside whenever she needed to. Last year she had helped him solve a case that had gotten convoluted and polluted by conflicted police agency agendas. She was a striking-looking woman, intelligent and straight-talking, and had been a childhood friend of Tree’s.
“Shamekia says she hit walls too, but she’s got more juju with the black suits. She says she found out that the people most interested in Siquin Soong are out of Justice OCRS.”
“OCRS?”
“Organized Crime and Racketeering Section.”
“Mafia hounds.”
“Not just. They track the old Cosa Nostra, what’s left of them, Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakuza, and the Russians. They coordinate with DEA, FBI, others. OCRS squeezes all potential federal prosecutions through the prism of RICO.”
RICO was the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a broad statutory umbrella. It had only recently been used to apply to Fish and Game law, though the division’s attorneys in Lansing predicted a lot more.
“Shamekia says the Detroit U.S. Attorney’s Organized Crime Strike Force has a visitor from the Washington Litigation Unit. Apparently this is a signal that the strike force is getting ready to drop a bomb.”
“On Soong?”
“That’s her read. She says Justice doesn’t send in the LU until it’s time to pull the trigger. They like to make sure the target is directly in sight.”
“Meaning they don’t want anybody to disrupt their gig.”
“There it is,” Treebone said. “You and Nantz coming down?”
“Next Saturday.”
“Kalina will be a happy woman.”
“We’re in Jackson Friday night. We’ll call you Saturday morning, drive over that afternoon.”
“Check it out,” Tree said enthusiastically. “We’re gonna hit Shinto for chow, then down to BoMac’s for some late night tunes.”
The BoMac Lounge was on Gratiot next to Harmonie Park, a downtown neighborhood that had undergone gentrification in recent years and now housed lofts, restaurants, clubs, and art galleries. BoMac’s was famous for Detroit R&B and had been around for ten or fifteen years. It had once been the hangout of the Funk Brothers, whose music Tree was addicted to. The Funk Brothers were the studio musicians who helped make Barry Gordie’s Motown frontliners famous—on call every day of the week, paid ten dollars a song no matter how many takes. The Funk Brothers were Motown’s unseen backbone. He had first heard about them when he and Tree were in Vietnam, and they remained one of his friend’s favorite subjects.