Service had to concentrate hard to understand. St. Andrew had said something like, “I walk about, into the wind, slowly and fast, in circles and straight ahead, feeling my way.”
“You walk a lot,” Mecosta said.
Santinaw laughed. “Enough Ind’in talk. My memory is better with tobacco.”
Service opened the outside pocket of his pack, took out two cartons of Marlboro Light 100s in boxes.
Santinaw opened the first pack delicately, tapped a cigarette out of the pack, put a piece of dry spaghetti in the woodstove, used the pasta to light his cigarette.
“You want me to talk nish-naw-be?” St. Andrew asked Service.
“You’ve taxed my vocabulary already.”
“The Iroquois, the na-do-we, used to go up above the lake and eat their enemies. Long ago some of my people met the Iroquois down near the lake and killed them. We never saw na-do-we again. This isn’t in many white history books. My people avoided the above-the-lake because they wanted to let the manitos there have their peace. They had seen too much. But there was a time when the whites had a camp up there, a big cave.” He made a shape with his hands.
“A grotto?” Service said.
“Yes, grotto. It goes deep into the side of the canyon and it is dry. Some white trappers lived there for many years and then a sickness came and they were gone.”
“I think we’re looking for something a little more recent than a grotto,” Service said.
“I will leave in the morning, walk around, see what is to be seen.”
“I’d like to stay and go with you,” Jake Mecosta said.
“A man is free to choose,” St. Andrew said.
Following his own route, Service was back in his truck in just over one hour.
How the old man had lived so long in such punishing territory was impossible to comprehend.
Service was almost home when the cell phone buzzed. It was Teddy Gates.
“I’ve been calling all day, but I didn’t want to leave this message. Toogood withdrew all his funds from that bank up there.”
Ontonagon. “When?”
“The day after I talked to you.”
“Did he go there himself?”
“No, he was up there earlier this fall and asked for a cashier’s check to be picked up by a friend. He even gave them a photograph of the guy.”
Service sighed. Had Trapper Jet been to Ontonagon before Betty Very stumbled on to him? Was this why Toogood had been up there? If so, what was he doing wandering around the Firesteel River?
“Toogood’s dead,” he told his old commander. “The body was found yesterday.”
The general cursed. “The check was for just under a half a million smackers.”
Service hung his head, did not think, listened to the rain thumping the cab, mocking him: “You dumb fuck, you dumb fuck.”
He called Betty Very and asked her to make a run to the bank in Ontonagon.
38
Jackson was eight hours south of Gladstone, thirty degrees warmer, and as different as a Traverse City cherry and a durian. Service sat in his truck outside the general aviation building and talked to Treebone on the cell phone. Eight shiny corporate jets were parked on the apron, and a sign on the fence said, GOD IS BUSY. ATTENTION PILOTS: EYES UP FOR DEER ON TAXIWAYS.
“You understand what I want?” Service said.
“Got the what, not the why,” Luticious Treebone said.
“Need to know, man.”
“How it is, dawg.”
“Your best man, right?”
“Sterling’s our own Motown strike dog. Can follow a fart off a motorcycle seat with a five-day head start.”
“He’s so good, how I’m getting him?”
“The man is in the drawer, you know, Idi Amin shit. He shows you his stuff, maybe you can bring him over.”
Idi Amin was Treebonese for IA or Internal Affairs. “Must be some most serious shit.”
“No, man. He breathed some on the wrong brother, lipped his script.”
“English, asshole.”
“He’s a hunter, Grady, got his ass in somebody else’s patch, changed his story couple of times when he was talked at. His time here could be short. You like what you see, you might want to put a gray shirt on him.”
“He’s a brother?”
“Yo, he’s a flyboy brat, grew up near the Soo.”
“So you’re asking me to audition a man when I need your best.”
“He is the best. He does the job and then we talk.’”
“Your Grand Rapids P.I. hasn’t delivered,” Service said. “Is your man carrying a cell?”
“That’s not like Eugenie,” Tree said. “I’d better check on her. My man carries two cells.” Treebone gave him the numbers.