Red Jacket (26 page)

70

Swedetown

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1913

The four game wardens had talked to dozens of people on Saturday and Sunday, working hard to find anyone who knew or worked with Lukevich and Pinnochi, but to no avail. Nobody wanted to own up to knowing anything, and Bapcat had a feeling that showing a badge only made it worse; end of discussion, go away.

In desperation, Zakov took Bapcat to Swedetown to seek an audience with Bruno Geronissi, who greeted Bapcat like a long-lost brother, inviting him to sit on the porch and take a glass of chokecherry wine he had made.

“Long time,” the Italian said. “You want bowl of
polenta uccelli?
”

The songbird dish.

“
No grazie,
Dottore
,” Bapcat said. “Not fresh, I hope.”

Geronissi smiled. “
Faccio il solletico le palle.
I tickle your balls, okay
? Il cazzo de francese
, those fucking French guys, they got this bird they call
ortolan
, little thing,
si?
They roast him and serve whole. You take it in one bite, really hot, tastes like
nocciole
, here you call hazelnuts. Eat the whole bird, bones, everything.
Il cazzo de francese
,
si?
”

“And
polenta uccelli
is different?”

“
Va bene, si
, Italian civilized, you know, from Romans. The French . . . pooh! They come from dogs, fucking frogs. But you no come talk food,
si?
”

“I'm looking for a man named Paolo Pinnochi, worked at North Kearsarge, but he seems to have disappeared.”

“You asking a favor? What Bruno gets back, tit-tat?”

“I don't work that way, Geronissi.”

“
Si, si uomo nero-blanco
, Mr. Black-White, but me, I'm
di uomo grigio—
you know, gray,
Dottore
Game Warden.”

“Just game warden,
Dottore
.”

“You show respect, this is good thing, but
noi abbaianio avuta un problema
, we got us a problem?”

“I came to ask for your help,
Dottore.
”

“This man's name Pinnochi?”

“Yes—Paolo.”

“Okay, one favor me to you, no quid pro quo, I let you know.
Abbiamo un accordo . . .
a deal?”

Bapcat weighed what to do next. I
don't want to trade with this sonuvabitch, but I need help.
He stuck out his hand.

“North Kearsarge,
si?
I let you know. You and your Russian still up on the hill?”

“You know we are.”

“Don't hurt to ask,” Geronissi said.

•••

Zakov pulled up in the street and Bapcat got in. “He know anything?”

“He'll look into it.”

“At what cost?”

“The goodness of his heart, one-time thing.”

Zakov laughed out loud. “Geronissi's
heart?
”

71

Houghton

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1913

Louis Moilanen lumbered down the street with a stiff, awkward gait, his massive shoulders yawing like a ship in dirty weather.

Bapcat saw the man ahead of him and sensed something was wrong. He hurried to overtake him, but before he could catch up, the giant veered into Guild's Tavern. Bapcat went in behind him to find the bar's patrons all cowering against a wall and Moilanen holding a thick piano leg in each hand, a two-legged piano on its chin on the floor.

Moilanen's voice seemed to rumble deeper than ever, words exploding like thunder in the room. “You people need my help, beat Legion outen youse, God tole me, ‘Louis, go to Guild's—help them heathen unbelievers and hoors get free!' ”

Bapcat gulped and took a deep breath.
Stay calm
. “Lauri, are you sure it was God who said Guild's?”

Moilanen turned around, slowly brandishing the clubs. “Nobody calls me that name.”

“But that's your name . . . Lauri.”

“Was Lauri over Finland, not here; new country, new name. Louis, Louis Moilanen, not Big Louie, not Lauri—Louis.”

“Mr. Justice Moilanen,” Bapcat said.

“Takin' dat away,” the huge man said, and a blow from a club cracked the slate top of a billiard table, while a second demolished a Tiffany sconce, showering the room with leaded glass. Almost immediately doors opened behind Bapcat and city police poured in. Everyone began yelling as they threw themselves at Moilanen, who fought ferociously, smashing his clubs into the men, breaking arms and heads, but eventually the sheer mass of the attackers took effect and the giant sank to the floor under a pile of black uniforms and angry, bleeding men.

As the police officers unpiled, Bapcat knelt close to his friend, who vomited violently, spewing stomach contents and bile everywhere.

“My head, Lute, my head—it's gonna blow up. Lend me your gun, make it go away.”

“Calm down, Louis.” Bapcat tried to keep his voice soothing, to help his friend, but it was quickly apparent he was having no effect.

“They take my job, those devils and hoors! No more justice, just Louis, just Louis!”

“Please relax, Louis. We're going to get you help.”

“Ones who need help is us,” a cop with a bloody mouth said. “Big fuckin' Finnlander fuck.”

A police sergeant showed up, ordered, “Lock him in the Penthouse. For his own good.”

One of the cops said, “For everybody's good. Lucky he didn't kill all of us.”

Bapcat showed his badge, which he had taken from Zakov today, and asked the sergeant, “Penthouse?” The shared badge was becoming a problem he needed to solve.

“Special cell in the county jail for lunatics.”

“He's not insane,” Bapcat insisted.

“We're gonna have six, maybe seven men off duty from fighting that big sonuvabitch. Officer Thurgood's leg is broken in five, six places. The hell he's not nuts.”

“He's sick, not insane,” Bapcat said. “I want to see him.”

“Talk to Cruse.”

Bapcat followed the procession of cops escorting the now-meek giant to the county jail. The police looked like goslings trailing their mama. At one point Moilanen stopped, looked back, and laughed maniacally. “I feel like that Gulliver fellow, Lute! Me and him both traveled the world and got stared at. I don't like being stared at, Lute.”

Who the hell is Gulliver?

Cruse was in his office and kept the game warden waiting. When Bapcat was finally allowed into the inner sanctum, Cruse made a sour face.

“Damn disgrace, a public figure like that going off the deep end. No wonder they're removing him as JP.”

“He's a sick man, Sheriff.”

“ 'Course he's sick,” Cruse said. “The freak is what, eight, nine feet tall? There's something seriously wrong with that.”

“I want to talk to him.”

“No visitors, no exceptions.”

“He won't hurt me.”

Cruse grinned. “Your funeral, Game Warden. You look at them bodies yet?”

“When I'm ready.”

“Do you want to see that damn freak or not?”

“That's how it is?”

“Way of the world, Game Warden. Get used to it.”

“How about this tit for your tat: You knew the identities of the two dead men before you got to the scene, and that's the sort of fact to make people scratch their heads and ask questions. Am I clear on this? I met both men on cases, but you? I doubt it. There could be a lot of explaining for you to do, Cruse.”

“That freak cracks your skull, it's your own damn problem,” Cruse said. “The Barber will want to look him over first, but if you want to jump the gun, so be it. Get out of my sight.”

•••

Gray bars separated the two men. Moilanen was stretched out on the floor on his side, using his arm as a pillow.

“Louis?”

The big man opened his eyes to suspicious slits. “My head, Lute. She's gonna blow up.”

“A doctor's coming to help you,” Bapcat told him.

“God told me I'm coming to see him, praise be,” Moilanen said. “Soon, Lute. The train's pulling out soon.”

Bapcat found himself at a loss for words, slid the Bible through the bars, scootched it across the floor to his friend. “I guess you'll be needing that.”

Moilanen pulled the book to his chest and wept. “They're driving out the demons, Lute.”

“Who is?”

“You know. I heard 'em talk in my saloon one night. MacNaughton and them. No more demons, they said. Get rid of 'em, whatever it takes.”

“Whatever it takes—they said that?”

“Ya, like that.”

“Who else?”

“Didn't hear no names, Lute, but MacNaughton, he called 'em Cap'n this and Cap'n that.”

“Hedyn?”

“Ya, I heard that one for sure. Don't remember no others.”

The Barber turned out to be the county's official physician, who oversaw the infirmary and medical affairs at the poor farm.

“Who're you, and what the hell are you doing here?” the man challenged Bapcat. “No visitors allowed, dammit!”

“Game warden,” Bapcat stammered.

“That don't make pickles into pancakes. I need to examine the patient first. That's how it's done. Could be dangerous—dangerous for you, for me, for the man behind bars—dangerous for all of us because you just couldn't follow the damn procedure. You hearing what I'm trying to lay out for you, son?”

“There's no patient here, just a prisoner. Look at him down on the floor there,” Bapcat said sharply, tired of the man's officious tone of voice.

This seemed to render the man temporarily silent. “Let's start over. I'm Dr. Robair Labisoniere,” the man said, holding out his hand.

“Lute Bapcat.”

The man squinted. “You the one fought beside Teddy Roosevelt down in Cuba?”

“One of them.”

Labisoniere smiled. “My granddaddy fought with the Michigan Fifth in the War between the States. He was killed in battle by the Rebels.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Bapcat said.

“Water over the dam. I hardly give it a thought.”

“Who's the Barber?”

“Goddamn that Cruse!” the doctor yelped. “I graduated from high school and worked three years barbering to raise money for college. Sold my shop to my brother, moved down to Ann Arbor, and cut hair while I went to medical school. After graduation I interned at C and H Hospital in Calumet and barbered to make extra money, and that damn Cruse still calls me the Barber.

“You know this Moilanen?” the doctor asked.

Bapcat explained what he had witnessed, along with the big man's spell in May on the Montreal River.

“You say he was naked?”

“As the day he was born.”

The doctor rubbed his jaw. “Man that tall's likely to have plenty wrong inside him.”

“You know him?” Bapcat asked.

“No, no, just heard of him. Seen him at a distance a couple of times. Hard to miss him. Heard there's some sort of move afoot to remove him as JP. He been violent before?”

“Not that I've seen.”

“Well, a man doesn't just turn insane like turning on a newfangled electric light. There had to be signs. It happens over time.”

“He's real quiet and very clumsy. He seems to fall a lot for no good reason.”

“Huh. Bad air up by his brain? That's a joke, Bapcat. You one of the county's orphaned bastard babies?”

“Yessir.”

“Listen to me, son. Your service with Teddy—that's the only damn credential of legitimacy you'll ever need. Don't you ever forget it. You hear me?”

“Yessir.”

“Good. Now I'm going to examine Mr. Moilanen, and if he needs it, which I'm sure he will, I'll transfer him to St. Joe's in Hancock. The nuns there can tame a raging bear.”

The abrupt and voluble Labisoniere was an odd duck.

“We get him settled in over there, come visit. Man falls over the edge like this and crawls back, he needs all the friends he can get. And if you hear Cruse call me the Barber again, tell him I said he should go have carnal knowledge of himself, so to speak.” The doctor held up a forefinger. “Truth is, I don't give that barber business a second thought, Bapcat.”

Oddest duck ever,
Bapcat thought.
But there's something about him I trust.

72

Hancock

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1913

Jaquelle Frei had showed up on the hill late the night before. “Word's going 'round that Big Louie's in the hospital,” she said.

“He had some kind of fit in Houghton and a bloody fight with police. They put him in the county jail. I was there.”

“No doubt the Penthouse,” she said, demonstrating knowledge he'd not had until two days ago. “You think he's insane?”

“No. Dr. Labisoniere is moving him to St. Joe's.”

“I heard that too. You met the Barber?”

“I did, and he doesn't care for that name.”

She laughed. “He tell you his grandfather was killed by Rebels in the War between the States?”

“Water over the dam,” Bapcat said. “He hardly gives it a thought.”

Frei smiled. “His grandfather was a bank robber in Quebec City, and the Barber forgets nothing, which makes him a fine doctor and a misanthropic human being. Insult him once and it burns forever in an unholy place in his brain.”

“Got a place like that in your mind?” Bapcat asked, jabbing at her.

“We all do,” she said. “I have to go to Hancock on business. You want a ride?”

Bapcat looked at Zakov. “I'll be back; don't know when.” He picked up his rifle and his pack, and Zakov winked.

They spent the night in the Hilltop Hotel, overlooking the Portage ship canal, and in the morning Frei's hired driver took them to St. Joseph's Hospital, on Water Street, not seventy-five yards above the canal.

The hospital, known locally as the “poor little hospital on Hancock Street,” had a portico and entrance on one end and another portico in front, a ground floor. The building was less than a decade old.

The receptionist was an unsmiling nun, built like a trammer.

“Mr. Moilanen,” Jaquelle said.

“He's in isolation, the poor brute. Family only.”

“We are family,” Widow Frei said. “And don't you dare call him a brute.”

The nun bristled. “I certainly didn't mean it that way.”

“Well, I took it that way, you poor brute, so let's get moving. He needs company from people who care, not someone who thinks he's an animal.”

“I am not accustomed to being bullied,” the nun said officiously.

Jaquelle Frei said, “You took the habit to dish it out, so you could use God as your damn shield. I spent years in a convent school, Sister, and I know your kind.”

“You are a rude, crude woman,” the nun said.

“And you are not a woman at all,” Frei fired back. “Now show us the way before I stop being civil.”

“I don't give guided tours,” the nun countered.

“With your attitude, I'm not surprised,” Frei said without missing a beat.

Another nun led them to a ward and a curtained-off area. Moilanen, who was too tall for regular beds, was stretched out on two mattresses lined end to end on the polished floor. He smiled when Bapcat pulled back the curtain. “Beat up on any cops lately?” he asked his friend.

Moilanen sucked in a breath and hung his head. “Jeepers, Lute. Dey told me, but I don't remember not'ing about it, honest I don't.”

“I was there. It happened, but it wasn't you—it was your sickness.”

“God keeps whispering t'ings ta me, Lute.”

“You still going to meet Him?”

Moilanen tapped his Bible. “We all meet God,” he said sincerely. “It's all in da Good Book. But I'm going to meet him sooner den you, or my ma, I t'ink.”

“I never could read that book, Louis.”

“You're a good man, Lute, always a good man. You don't need no book like da rest of us sinners. Hear dey make you da game warden. Dey give you dat badge, Lute. Dat says you're a good man.”

Bapcat wondered if his friend thought this of everyone who wore a badge, because there were plenty he knew that didn't deserve such a pedestal.

“God made da animals and you ta save dem, Lute. Game warden—dat's a calling, same as a minister or somet'ing.” Moilanen looked past Bapcat to Frei. “Who's da lady, Lute?”

“Louis, meet Jaquelle Frei.”

“She your girl, Lute?”

Frei whispered behind him, “Answer the man, Trapper.”

“I guess she is, Louis.”

Moilanen smiled. “Dat's real good, Lute. A man ought ta have him a wife. God says so.” Moilanen picked up his Bible and began to read silently.

When it became apparent the big man had mentally departed their company, Bapcat said, “Get some rest, Louis; we'll be back to see you.”

Moilanen looked up from his book. “You're my friend, Lute. You never once stared at me.”

Out in the corridor Frei said, “You love the man.”

“I do,” he admitted.

“And I'm your girl,” she said, taking his arm and squeezing affectionately.

“I suppose.”

“You going to argue with God, Trapper?”

He said, “If God thinks everyone ought to have a wife, how come
He
doesn't have one?”

She poked him in the ribs. “Blasphemer.”

“No, it's a kink in the story. This isn't the time to talk about us, Jaquelle.”

She pressed against him. “I suppose.”

“He's going to die,” Bapcat said.

“You have to believe he will be in better hands, dearest.”

“At least God won't stare at him. I feel helpless,” he confessed.

•••

While Frei dropped him off and went about her business in Houghton, Bapcat telephoned the Barber. “I just left St. Joe's. Thanks for taking care of my friend.”

“It's my job; I hardly give it a thought. You headed north?”

“Tonight, probably. You got time to talk?”

“My office is in the Masonic Building on Shelden. Drop by and we'll get some lunch at Spingo's.”

“When?”

“Make it noon,” the doctor said, and hung up.

•••

The Barber was waiting in the Masonic Building entrance, which was emblazoned with Freemason symbols. The building was four massive stories of pink sandstone. Spingo's was a tavern also on Shelden, and filled with miners and some of the rougher denizens of the city.

Each man ordered a beer and a pickled egg, and the doctor asked for some fried hen's eggs, over easy, “not runny like snot.” Bapcat ordered beef, well done.

“How's your friend resting?”

“Says God is talking to him—that he's soon going to meet Him.”

“I'm guessing he knows better than us.”

“What's wrong with him?”

“My guess? Advanced tuberculous meningitis. All his symptoms fit, but we won't know until we do an autopsy.”

Bapcat felt a chill, talking about his friend like he was already dead. “You and Cruse don't much care for each other.”

“I hardly give that bloated pig a second thought.”

“There some history?”

“Not that it's any of your business, but when the county board appointed me physician, Cruse went to bat for another man—said he was more sophisticated than a mere barber.”

That would do it.

“Not that I dwell on it,” the doctor said. “I gathered from Cruse he doesn't much care for you, either, which automatically makes us friends, the enemy of my enemy being my friend, if you follow the logic. What did you do to step on the Fat Man's foreskin?”

Bapcat told him about the altercation with Hedyn and subsequent arrest by Cruse, who was forced to release him due to the Roosevelt connection.

“Yessir, Cruse doesn't like a man with more backroom clout than him.” Labisoniere added, “Take care. The Fat Man doesn't do dirty work himself, but he'll hire it out to get done what he wants.”

Bapcat nodded and they ate in silence. Eventually the doctor said, “It won't be long for your friend, a week at the most. Nature's in control now.”

Bapcat felt heavyhearted and listless when he met up with Frei and they began the drive back to the hill.