6

Offisa Pup

Here was a night so black that Mulheisen had an irrational feeling that the headlights were piercing it only with difficulty. He drove at a creeping pace through the long wooded stretch. An enormous owl swooped in front of his headlights, startling the owl into a panicky pull-up, wings as white and broad as an angel’s. Mulheisen braked, not realizing at first what it was. Luck laughed. “That’s my hoot owl,” he said. “He hangs out around here. I tried to shoot him a couple of times, but he’s too crafty.”

“Tried to shoot him? Why?”

“Well, these owls, they eat all my pheasants. There aren’t hardly any pheasants around here anymore. I tried to introduce some, had them in pens, till they got big enough to release, and you’ll never guess what happened. I’d find them in the pen with their heads missing!”

Mulheisen was startled. “What happened?”

“They’d roost on this shed I had. I’d put chicken wire over the whole business. But that shed was so high they could stick their heads out through the wire. The owl would swoop down and tear the heads right off!”

Just at that moment they arrived at the gate. Luck hopped out to open it. He held the gate as Mulheisen drove through. “Thanks for coming by, Mulheisen. It was a treat. I don’t get so many visitors, especially not ones who are willing to talk philosophy. Drive safe.”

Mulheisen waved and drove off, but slowly. Twice, between the gate and the county road, he had to stop because deer were standing directly in the track—once a couple of does or yearlings, then a young spikehorn buck that merely glanced back over its shoulder before taking a few steps and disappearing into the brush.

Perhaps it was the pace, but the drive seemed much longer than he’d remembered it. When he finally reached the graveled county road the cool night air seemed a little less densely black. The headlights traveled much farther and he picked up speed. He was no more than a mile along the paved road when he was surprised to see the rotating, oscillating blue-and-red lights of an approaching police vehicle. Mulheisen slowed, although he was going no more than forty-five. The other vehicle, which bore the markings of the county sheriff, slowed as well then immediately swung around behind him. Mulheisen drew the Checker over to the shoulder; the police car hauled up behind him.

Mulheisen could not ignore the impression that the sheriff’s patrol had been waiting for him. This was hardly a highway, but he supposed it wasn’t too unusual for the sheriff to patrol. At this hour—Mulheisen never carried a watch, but there was a clock on the dash that read 11:23—he reckoned the sheriff’s deputy was hoping to nab some yokels careening home from the Queensleap tavern. So he wasn’t surprised when the deputy, after looking over his driver’s license and registration, asked him to step out of the car. Mulheisen stuffed his cigar into the ashtray and got out.

“What’s up, Corporal Dean?” Mulheisen said, purposely citing the officer’s name as engraved on the metal plate under his badge. “I was only going forty-five.”

“Just step over here, Mr. Mulheisen,” the deputy said, indicating the white line that marked the edge of the pavement. There were no farms within view, but Mulheisen could hear a distant dog barking.

He noticed that Corporal Dean was alone. He’d also been drinking, judging by his breath, but then so had Mulheisen, although he’d been careful not to finish his drinks as Luck had. Dean didn’t appear to be drunk, but he seemed a trifle unsure of himself. He kept touching the handle of the gun in his holster. His tie was slightly askew.

Mulheisen didn’t protest. He proceeded to perform the usual field test, touching his nose with a finger, walking along the line. The deputy asked him to lean against the car, with his back to him, his legs spread and hands outstretched. Mulheisen felt a little nervous about this request but, after looking sharply at the deputy, he complied. The officer made a fumbling attempt at patting him down. It occurred to Mulheisen that he could probably get the best of this officer, who seemed a little clumsy, not quite focused.

When the pat down was finished, the deputy said he wanted Mulheisen to get into the back of the police car. He said this with his hand resting on the holstered gun.

“What for?” Mulheisen asked. “I did the field test.”

“Just get in the car,” the deputy said. His voice showed an edge of anger, or it might have been nervousness.

Mulheisen shrugged and got into the backseat of the squad car. As he’d expected, Dean went to his car and began to search it. While the man was at it, Mulheisen pulled out a piece of paper, wrote his name on it, the name of the officer, the approximate time—by now, he reckoned it at 11:35—and the notation that he’d been stopped on county road H20 (he thought that was the number) for no obvious reason, and that the officer had searched his car without permission. He stuffed the piece of paper down on the edge of the seat, where the backrest met it. He barely finished this before Dean returned.

“Go back to your car,” the deputy said.

“Am I free to go? No ticket?”

“Just go back to your car,” Dean said. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

Mulheisen went to his car and immediately began to search it himself, leaning into the backseat, as he’d seen the deputy do, and then look in the trunk.

“Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Dean yelled, coming toward him. “Get in that car!”

Mulheisen looked at him calmly and finished looking through his bags in the trunk, lifting the rubber mat, and then, satisfied, slammed the lid shut. He walked around the car with the deputy following and opened the other side of the backseat, again as he’d noticed the deputy had done.

The deputy grabbed Mulheisen’s shoulder and wrenched him away from the door, against the side of the car. Mulheisen offered no resistance. He looked down at the gun that the deputy had drawn. “You sure you want to do that, Dean?” he asked.

“What the hell do you think you’re up to?” Dean demanded.

“Just checking,” Mulheisen said.

“Checking?” Dean sounded stupid.

“Just making sure everything is there that should be there . . . and nothing more.”

“Get in the car and sit still,” Dean said. His voice was hoarse.

Mulheisen got in the car and immediately opened the glove compartment. He took out the cell phone.

“Give me that,” Dean said, reaching through the window.

Mulheisen did not resist. But he continued to look through the papers in the glove compartment and feel about in the interstices of the seat cushion beside him. He kept a sidelong view of Dean, who watched him for a minute then stalked away toward his vehicle.

Mulheisen sat patiently, then slipped a Coleman Hawkins CD into the player. He fished out a fresh cigar and lit it up. He puffed it, calmly.

The deputy took a little longer than Mulheisen expected. Eventually, he returned with a packet in his hand, which Mulheisen recognized as an alcohol testing device, the balloon test. When the deputy asked him to inflate the balloon, Mulheisen, who knew how erratic these devices were, declined.

Corporal Dean almost smiled. “You refuse?” the deputy asked.

“I’d prefer a blood test,” Mulheisen said. He figured that he’d had half a glass of wine and about an ounce and a half of George Dickel in the past four hours. That wouldn’t register as intoxication in a blood test, but he wasn’t confident of what the balloon test might show. “I’ll pay for it, of course,” Mulheisen said. “You can drive me, or follow me to the nearest hospital or clinic.” That would surely be another half hour, further diminishing the alcohol in his system.

“Just inflate the balloon,” the deputy insisted.

“I’ll tell you what,” Mulheisen suggested. “I’ll take it if you also take it. We’ll turn them both in for analysis.”

Dean flushed. “I’m the officer here!” he snapped. “You just do what I say!”

“I’d rather not, Corporal Dean. I’m happy to take the blood test, though.”

The deputy stared down at him for a long moment, then he said, “You wait here.” He returned to his car. A few moments later he came back and tossed Mulheisen’s phone and his license and registration onto his lap without a word, then returned to the car, flicked off the overhead lights, and departed.

Mulheisen watched him go, then drove after him. The sheriff’s vehicle sped away. Mulheisen followed until the speed began to creep over sixty-five, then dropped back. The car was soon lost to sight, down a hill and over another one. Mulheisen didn’t see him again.

In the town, he was relieved to see that the Queensleap Inn Motel had not turned off its VACANCY light. He stopped and checked in. The room was clean and pleasant enough. He drank a glass of water and watched NHL Tonight on cable. The Red Wings had won, he was glad to see, and he regretted not having been there in time to catch the game. Zetterberg had scored two goals against Montreal. Mulheisen switched off the television and went outside to light up a cigar. He could see that the Queensleap tavern was still open. It was just a short walk.

Hardly anyone was there, just four sodden men sitting at the bar, regulars he supposed. The only one of them who bothered to look up when he entered was the old guy from the Sinclair station. Charlie, now in a gray uniform shirt that also had his name embroidered on the breast pocket flap, greeted him. “Hi, Mul. You find ol’ Imp all right?”

“Oh, yeah,” Mulheisen said. “He was real friendly, even gave me dinner. Pretty tasty, too. But I got stopped by that deputy, Dean, on my way back.”

“Frog?” Charlie said. “What the hell’s he out and about for? Frog’d be drunk by now. By damn, I bet ol’ Imp sicced him onta you.”

“You think?”

“Be just like him,” Charlie said. “Bet he was pouring that George Dickel, wa’n’t he? Tha’s our Imp. Pour the Dickel’n call the law.” He laughed, a low, damp chortle. Charlie was far from sober himself.

Mulheisen bought them both a shot of Dickel with beer chasers. “Luck told me some interesting stories,” he said. “He ever tell you about the silver martins, the ones he saw nesting in the ground?”

“Why that sumbitch,” Charlie said. “He wouldn’t know a silver martin from a hoot owl.”

“He told me a story about a hoot owl, too,” Mulheisen said.

Charlie snorted. “I tol’ him ‘bout silver martins, only they wasn’t nesting in the ground. Say, thanks for the drink.” He hoisted the shot glass, in a toast, then downed it. “It was a lard bucket they was nestin’ in. Only, the lard bucket had been knocked down. Them martins was swoopin’ around the pole where I useta had the lard bucket up—one a them ol’ Farmer Peet’s buckets? I been away and when I come home one a the neighbor boys, I guess, had blasted that bucket with a shotgun—blew it right off’n the pole. I just let it lay. But when the martins came back, in the spring? Why they just circled roun’ and roun’ that pole, like they knew there was s’posed to be a bucket there, like before. Damnedest thing I ever saw. I tol’ Imp that story. Now he’s fucked it up.”

“Maybe he was just trying to improve it,” Mulheisen said. “But you know, he’s a pretty good cook. Wonder where he learned that. Was his wife a good cook?”

“Connie? Oh, she was a great cook,” Charlie said. “Great loss, Connie.”

“What did she die of? Some kind of stroke or something?”

“Where’d you hear that? I never heard that. We didn’t see much of her there, for a while. And then she was just gone.” Charlie sighed and shook his head. He sipped at his beer.

Mulheisen looked at him, waiting for some further explication, but when none came he said, “She was ‘just gone’?”

Charlie merely nodded his head, over and over, staring at his beer. Mulheisen couldn’t tell if he was drunk or thinking. After a moment, he said, again, “’Just gone’?”

Charlie looked up. “Yeah. One day you’re here”—he held his hand out, palm upward—“next thing you know . . . you’re gone.” He turned his palm down abruptly, then performed the hand gesture again for effect.

Mulheisen smiled slightly, baring his teeth just a bit. “Is that right? Well, somebody must know how she died. People die, and if the doctor isn’t present, the coroner has to come in.”

Charlie looked at him. “Is that right? I didn’t know that.”

“It’s the law,” Mulheisen said. “When was it?”

“Two, maybe two and a half years ago. In the spring.”

“Big funeral?” Mulheisen said. “It sounds like she was well liked.”

“Connie? Naw. She wa’n’t from ‘round here. Oh, I knew her. I all’s liked Connie. Good-lookin’ woman. Hell of a cook.”

“Really?” Mulheisen said. He signaled for another drink for himself and Charlie. “What did she cook that you liked so much?”

“Sweetbreads,” Charlie said.

“Sweetbreads?” Mulheisen was surprised. It seemed a bit up-scale for a country cook. His mother used to make sweetbreads, perhaps once a year. It was a favorite dish.

“When did you have sweetbreads at Luck’s?” Mulheisen asked.

“I was out there working on Imp’s tractor. To tell the truth, me and Imp don’t get along all that good, but he ditten’t have much choice—timin’ belt went out. Imp must of been feeling grateful, he invited me to stay for dinner. Man, she could cook.”

“I love sweetbreads,” Mulheisen said. “How did she prepare them?”

“Some kinda cream sauce. I ain’t had a lotta sweetbreads in my life, but now if I go to a restrunt in Traverse and they got sweetbreads on the board, I order ‘em. I never had any better’n Connie’s.”

“So when was this?”

“Why, it was a couple of weeks before Christmas, the winter before she died. Imp’d been using that tractor to push snow.” He went on to explain at length the cold, the amount of snow, the long driveway to be plowed.

“Connie Luck was all right then, I guess,” Mulheisen said. “Not ill?”

“Oh, yeah. She was fine. But come to think of it, that was the last time I seen her.”

“She wasn’t from around here,” Mulheisen said. “Where was she from?”

“Down below, I heard. Seems like they must of took the body down there, I guess, for the funeral.”

“You know,” Mulheisen said, “I never saw any sign of her out at the house. No pictures, no sign that a woman had ever lived there. Kind of a bachelor existence Luck lives.”

Charlie contemplated his beer. “A woman like that, a man’d have to be made of stone not to be just killed by the loss. She was a good bit younger’n ol’ Imp. Damn fine-lookin’ woman. He prob’ly decided it was best to just clear all her gear away, try to put it behind him. Be a hard thing. Not like my old lady,” he added, almost under his breath.

Mulheisen was intrigued. “A woman like that, I imagine she had a lot of friends.”

“I don’t think so,” Charlie said. “She wa’n’t around all that long, just a couple of years. And they kind of kept to themselves, out there. Came and went, just like that.” He tried to snap his fingers but he didn’t succeed. Charlie had put down a couple more shots while they were talking.

“I wonder how they met?” Mulheisen said.

“Don’ know,” Charlie said. “It was like Imp to find a woman like that, from away. He was all’s a kind of outsider kind of guy, though you wouldn’t expect it. Some folks admire him. Him and me are the same age, went to school here in the same room, first grade through senior. He was the smartest kid in school, best athlete, All-State in basketball, you know. But he never really fit in.”

“You don’t say,” Mulheisen said. “I wonder why?”

“It was his Ma, I think. She was an outsider. His Pa married her ‘gainst the old man’s wishes. Oh, they had a big foofaraw about it, seems like. Imp’s Pa never spoke to Old Man Luckenbach again. They was cut off. Eb, Imp’s Pa, even changed his name, cut it to Luck. I don’t know what that was all about. It was before my time. Nowadays, a course, Imp has quite a following ‘round here. New folks, mostly. But some of the old backwoods trash, too,” Charlie conceded.

“What kind of following?”

“Oh, it’s that patriotic bullshit,” Charlie said. “Militia, and all that bull. Buncha Nazis, if you ask me. Say, how about another shot?”

Mulheisen said, “Charlie, you’re going to have a little trouble driving home. You want me to drive you?”

But Charlie wasn’t driving. He had a little apartment behind the garage. He was staying there tonight. He muttered some rough comments about “. . . my War Department. She wou’n’t open the door if I came home now.”

Mulheisen decided that was about it for Charlie. He got up and said good night and walked back to the motel.

It was too late to reach his mother. She’d be in bed by now. But he felt obliged to call. The night nurse would be on duty. She was. His mother had gone to bed at eight, according to the nurse she’d relieved. Mrs. Mulheisen was fine, sleeping peacefully.

“Well, tell her I called,” Mulheisen said. “I’ll call in the morning. Tell her I heard an interesting story about silver martins.”

Mulheisen went to bed. The motel was next to the highway, but there was no traffic. He slept like a baby. In the morning, he went out for coffee and a copy of the Traverse City Record-Eagle at a restaurant next door called the Queen’s Table. He was tempted by the massive “Hunter’s Special” breakfast on the menu—a steak, eggs, hash browns with gravy, biscuits. He decided that he could never get half of it down. He settled for pancakes with local maple syrup, then smoked a cigar as he walked back to the motel. He called his mother.

Cora Mulheisen was quite perky. He told her about the apples he’d bought. She asked about the silver martins. The story made her chuckle.

“There are no such things as ‘silver martins,’” she assured him. “It must be some local name for a swallow, or maybe that’s what they call swifts up there. The only martins we have in these parts are purple martins, and they are dark birds. The story about the lard bucket sounds authentic. Very likely, if they’d been used to nesting at that site they’d return there. That’s all there is to that. They’re very social birds, nest in large houses that people used to put up. We had a martin house, don’t you remember? I can’t remember what happened to it. Probably something like what happened to your friend Charlie’s martin house. Oh, I remember. Your father took it down. It was so ramshackle. He was going to build a new one, but . . . just another of those things that didn’t get done. Martins are purple. Actually, dark blue, with that kind of iridescence that makes them seem to change tones in certain kinds of light. They’re a kind of swallow, you know.”

“What about the hibernation thing?” Mulheisen asked. “That didn’t sound quite right.”

An old folk tale, she assured him. Birds didn’t hibernate. “But you know,” she said, “thinking about it, I would guess that the story arose from the fact that a related species, like the bank swallow, excavates tunnels in cliffs and sandbanks next to water. The swallows make hundreds of these holes for nests. And then, of course, one day they’re gone. If the local people don’t notice, I suppose someone might jump to the conclusion that they’ve gone into hibernation. Then one day, they’re back, en masse. People don’t often see them return, but suddenly they’re here, flying in and out of their holes in the sandbank. Yes, I would imagine that’s it.”

Mulheisen was pleased that she sounded so normal. He told her he’d be back soon, possibly that evening. Otherwise, the next day for sure.

“You know,” she said suddenly, obviously having been thinking about the hibernation problem, “it occurs to me that I have read, somewhere, that a few birds do sometimes become rather torpid, if there has been a sudden change of temperature. They’re able to reduce their metabolism, it seems. Then it might seem that they’re in a state similar to hibernation. You can see how beneficial that might be, since in a cold snap the number of airborne insects they live on would obviously diminish as well. I think swifts might be one of the species. They’re sort of like swallows. Laymen might confuse them with swallows. Then, you see, country folks are used to the idea of hibernation, from bears, and so on. They might naturally extrapolate from that to include birds.”

When they finally said good-bye, Mulheisen turned his attention to other information he’d picked up. He called his old friend Jimmy Marshall at the Ninth Precinct in Detroit.

“I need a favor,” he said. “What can you find out for me about M. P. Luck? Military service, criminal record, that kind of thing?”

“Mul, Mul, Mul,” Jimmy said. “I thought you retired.”

“I did retire,” Mulheisen said. “I just need a little information.”

“You know what you are?” Jimmy said. “I was thinking about it the other night. I was wondering how you were getting on with this retirement. Since I didn’t hear anything from you, I decided retirement must agree with you. But I guess I was wrong. You sound like you got that old fever.”

“What fever is that?” Mulheisen asked.

“You want to know things. Something catches your interest, so you want to know. But I was saying, it occurred to me that retirement might be right for you, even if you’re too young for that. You’re one of those outcats.”

“What’s an outcat?”

“You know, like the Hawk.”

“The Hawk? You mean, Coleman Hawkins?”

“What other Hawk is there?” Jimmy said. “I know you were always partial to the Hawk. Great player, but he was one of those people, you know. He played in lots of bands, but he was always special. He was someone separate. Seems like he kept himself apart, somehow. I mean, he was in the scene, sure, but he was the cat who walked by himself, you know? That’s you. The department wasn’t really your gig.”

Mulheisen couldn’t help but feel gratified by this comparison. Coleman Hawkins! But “outcat"? He wasn’t so sure if this was wholly complimentary. “I’ve never been a cat person,” he remarked.

“Well, maybe you’re an odd duck, then,” Jimmy said. “That better?”

“Oh, there’s another thing,” Mulheisen said, letting this discussion slide. “Luck was supposedly married, but his wife died. Can you find out something about that? Oh, and maybe you could check out these license plates for me.”

Marshall sighed. “You’re still in it, outcat or odd duck.” He put him on hold and told him when he returned that the plates belonged to a Dodge pickup, owned by an Earl Huley, of Beckley, a town Mulheisen recognized as being not far from Queensleap. The rest of the information he’d requested would take a little while to gather. Mulheisen thanked him and said he’d check back later.

A little while later he drove to Traverse City, the county seat. He looked up the plat maps. The property owned by Luck consisted of some three hundred acres. It bordered an immense swamp on one side, and extended almost, but not quite, to the Manistee River. The land had been registered to one Constance Malachi, subsequently transferred to one Martin Parvis Luckenbach. For some reason, the two parcels of land that blocked the access to the river were registered to Ms. Malachi and a Thomas Adams, respectively. They were just strips of riverfront property, extending back approximately a few hundred feet from the river and running for several acres. The Adams property had devolved to a Charles McVey, upon the decease of Adams. There was no similar disposition of the Malachi property. Mulheisen presumed it had been inherited by Luck.

When he looked in the civil records, there was no record of a marriage certificate for Martin Parvis Luckenbach, or for Constance Malachi. No death certificate, either. Idly, he looked up a birth certificate for Luck. Nothing. And nothing for M. P. Luckenbach.

He went by the sheriff’s office. He identified himself as a retired police officer from Detroit. He chatted up the sergeant at the desk, a young woman named Candace, very pretty and quite intelligent and voluble. Things didn’t seem too busy at the office that morning. Candace was mildly flirtatious with this older, retired cop. He suggested that he was possibly interested in relocating up that way. What were land prices like? Candace said they were, or had been, pretty low for land that was marginally useful for agriculture, but in recent years they’d been creeping up.

“Why is that?” Mulheisen wanted to know.

“Inflation, I guess,” Candace said. “But there’s been quite a few people moving up from down below. Retirees, some of them. Building big houses. Queensleap’s a good area for them. And folks moving out from town. Lot of building. Or was, until the slowdown.”

Mulheisen agreed he’d seen the houses they were building. Way too big for a bachelor like him. He supposed the sheriff’s department had a little more work, break-ins, and so forth. Probably a lot of these folks are just summer folks, he opined. Candace agreed.

“That reminds me,” Mulheisen said. “I was stopped last night, by a Corporal Dean, out west of Queensleap. About eleven-thirty or so. I couldn’t figure out what for. Did he give any indication in his report? He didn’t issue a ticket or anything.”

Candace looked it up in the log. There wasn’t any report from Dean. He wasn’t on duty last night. Was he sure it was Dean? Mulheisen wasn’t absolutely sure. He thought that was the name, but he could be wrong. But no, there wasn’t any report.

Mulheisen thanked her and left. He called Jimmy Marshall on the cell phone. As he’d feared, there was no information on M. P. Luck, militarily. Mulheisen suggested he try the name Luckenbach, and also to check on Constance Malachi. He gave the number of the cell phone and drove back to Queensleap. He’d decided to take the motel unit for another night, so he called home to let his mother know. There was no answer. He assumed she had gone out for a walk, accompanied by the nurse. He left a message on the answering machine. As Jimmy had not called back, Mulheisen called him.

“I called you,” Jimmy said, “but evidently you had the phone turned off.”

“Well, of course I had it turned off,” Mulheisen said. “This thing runs down if you leave it on.”

“Well, you can’t get calls if it’s off,” Jimmy pointed out. “Sure, it runs down, but you just charge it up again. Don’t you have one of those gewgaws that you plug it in with?”

“Oh, yeah. It’s in the box. I think I left it at home.”

“Well, it’ll help a lot there,” Jimmy said. “Anyway, Luckenbach worked a little better, except that there’s a hold on his military record. The Homeland Security people have it. You’d have to contact them. I’d guess it means that either he’s on their list or maybe he works for them.”

Mulheisen was intrigued. Evidently, the hold also applied to any other public record of Luckenbach, including legal affairs. That apparently included Constance Malachi. Thinking about the plat map, he recalled that it had simply showed a name crossed off and another name, a successor, added. Whoever had been blocking files hadn’t thought of that. But still, it seemed remarkable to Mulheisen that an agency could remove files at all.

“Can they do that?” Mulheisen asked.

“Well, there’s something called the Patriot Act,” Jimmy said. “I’m not sure this kind of secrecy would stand up to an official request, but they’re saying that. You know, if it was something official . . .”

“Ah, well, thanks, Jimmy. I appreciate your help. Maybe we can get together one of these days and play some Ellington or something.”

“That would be nice. Come on by, Mul. So,” Jimmy spoke casually, “what are you gonna do?”

“I think I’ll hang around up here for a couple of days,” Mulheisen said. “Nice weather.”

“Enjoy your retirement, Mul,” Jimmy said.