Chasing a Blond Moon (10 page)

5

The Sons of Italy Club in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, sat on a narrow street in view of a small gray stone Catholic church. The row houses on the street were well maintained, but it was clear that more effort was needed every year to keep up with decay and age. Service stood outside in the warm sun and had a cigarette, inhaling slowly. Why Scaffidi had sent him here without explanation was strange at best, but he had made arrangements to meet Griff Stinson on the way home, so the day wouldn't be a total write-off. There were only a half-dozen vehicles in the club's newly paved parking lot.

Service went inside. It was dark, the lights low. He walked into the bar, which was long with dark paneling. The table layout was haphazard. The bar itself was a two-fister's standup with no stools. The bartender was a woman with peroxided hair. She wore a red, white, and green vest stretched tight over a swollen bosom, and had a matching ribbon in her hair. She was stacking highball glasses and paid no attention to him. A couple of men sat at one of the tables arguing about Soo Greyhound hockey. One man sat alone in the corner, nursing a glass of wine and smoking a thin black cigar.

Service approached the man, who looked from his watch to the detective. “Service?” the man said. “I'm Shatun.”

“Sorry, sir, wrong person.”

“Sit,” the man said. “You're looking for Vaughn Sager, right?

Service nodded. “Take a seat,” the man said.

“You're Canadian?” Service asked.

“I lived in Chicago until I graduated high school. You know Chicago?”

“Not really.” Service noted that the man had no fingers on his left hand.

“Hog butcher for the world, the fog comes on little cat feet,” the man said, deadpan.

Service had no idea what he was talking about.

“I bore you with Sandburg,” the man said apologetically. “People say I'm a flake. I just like to keep them off balance, know what I'm sayin'?”

Service nodded. The man had one eye that stared off to the side and made it difficult to look at him. “You in the parts business?”

“You can say I got retired early. You want to hear about the paw?” he held up the fingerless stump.

“Not if you don't want to talk about it.”

“Hey, people like this shit, especially women. Kunashir is an island in the Kurile Islands, north of Japland. It's a dink of an island, maybe a hundred miles long, a place full of mountains and no more'n three hundred people and even more bears. The subspecies there is
Ursus arctos yesoensis,
the same animal that inhabits the Japanese far north of Hokkaido. This is one kooky bear, not like others, get me? It has a long, narrow head and a reddish collar. It hunts and kills people for sport, though this is popular bullshit and not science. Are you scientifically trained?”

“No. What's this got to do with your hand?”

The man smiled. “Some people call me
Shatun,
do you know this word?”

“No.”

“It's Russkie. In some parts of Siberia bears depend on certain mast crops—ya know, nuts and shit. If it's a lousy harvest, the animals begin killing people. They move around until they kill and eat enough to get fat and only then do they hibernate. I think this is a real life illustration of Maslow's theories.
Shatun
means wanderer, and these fuckin' bears won't stop until they've gotten what they want.”

Maslow? Service thought. “You're a
shatun?”

“Fucking-eh, right. I been around, see,” the man said. “It's not exactly a complimentary handle, but we don't get to pick what others call us.”

Service felt a lecture coming, and wondered what the hell the man could contribute.

Shatun/Sager signaled the bartender and held up two fingers on his right hand. She soon came with two glasses and a bottle of clear liquid, a plate of Italian bread, a bowl with olive oil to dip the bread, and a bowl of black olives. Her skirt was too short and Service saw that she had a nasty bruise by her left knee. Sager pushed a glass to Service and lifted his own. “Stoli,” he said. “The primo shit.” They touched glasses and drank. The man's hit was much more substantial than Service's.

Service wondered how much high-test vodka it would take to be over the legal point-one blood alcohol level. “What did your father do in Chicago?”

“I never knew my old man. I grew up on the street with a bunch of Croatians. I was born a wanderer and I ain't bitchin'.”

Service tore off a piece of bread and dipped it in the olive oil.

“I had a consignment for one of the Kunashir animals, but the fuckin' Russkies got tipped and they play the game rough. By the time all the fingers were gone I figured I'd better make a deal, so I bought my way out. I like the Russians: They got black fucking hearts, but peel the black back and it's pure green. Which reminds me, information ain't cheap.”

“Mr. Scaffidi said to remind you that you're not supposed to shake me down.”

Shatun/Sager laughed. “You're right, Service. Mr. Scaffidi says it's on the house, it's on the house.” He shrugged to let Service know it wasn't a problem.

“Why are we here?” Service asked, wondering once again what sort of clout Ralph Scaffidi had.

The man held up his hands. “Hey, crossing the border ain't no picnic these days.”

“You can't come? Or you choose not to?”

“We're here, let's leave it at that.”

Service nodded.

“It's been said that maybe you're finding some . . . weird shit among your bear population, am I right?”

“What exactly can you do for me?”

“Who knows? God, maybe. I'm just a retired stiff on a fixed income, but maybe I can give you a name.”

“Telephone books are filled with names.”

“Let's not joust, Service. I went to Kunashir for a chink named Mao Chan Dung. He's a major parts dealer on the Siberian–Mongol border. He sent me to the island, said it was a sweet deal, and then the cocksucker set me up.” He held up his hand. “I keep score, know what I mean? You don't keep score, people take more than some fuckin' fingers.”

Shatun/Sager took another swig of vodka and popped an olive in his mouth. “I give you a name, maybe you take somebody down, and I get a little payback.”

“We scratch each other's backs.”

The man held up his glass of vodka. “You tell me what shit's been going down and we'll see where a little talk leads us.”

The man was an enigma and Service was having a hard time getting a feel for whether he was real or full of shit. “Last year one of our bear guides found an animal shot, its gall removed. The rest was left to rot.”

“They take a paw?”

“No.”

“When these people take a gall, they usually take a paw with it—to prove freshness. This sells well in Asia,” the man said. “What else you got?”

“We've had at least one bear released from a barrel trap and there seem to be rising tensions among some of our less-than-kosher guides who run hounds.” He made a mental note to call the Ketchums on his way to visit with Griff Stinson.

“You got more?”

“A professor from one of our universities was found poisoned by cyanide. The poison was in figs, but we also found two galls in the fig container. The professor was Korean.”

“Born here or an immigrant?”

“Immigrant.”

“Name?”

“Pung Juju Kang.”

“Okay,” he said, pouring more vodka into Service's glass. “You believe all this stuff is connected?”

“I don't have any evidence; it's just a possibility.”

“Right, and the common denominator is bear. Usually you don't hear shit about bears. They keep to themselves and suddenly people who got interest in bears start some funny business.”

Service nodded.

The man drained his glass in one long swallow and wiped his lips with his napkin. “A man's gotta honor his hunches. If the money mavens understood just how much stiffs like you and me operated on intuition and hunches, they'd ignore us and hire witches and warlocks.”

“I wasn't really at the stage where I was looking for help,” Service said. “I have these things, but no evidence.”

“Are you a musician?” the man asked.

“I like music, but I can't read it.”

“When I was young I loved jazz. I was a
tapyor.
That's Russian for tickler.” The man arched his good hand and tapped on the table as if it were a piano. “Hey, I had no talent to play even when I had all my fingers, but jazz took my soul, ya know? You dig jazz?”

“Some of it,” Service said. What the fuck was he talking about and why all this Russian shit? “I thought you were from Chicago.”

The man sighed. “I'm from Chicago, sure. Other places, too. They got music in Chicago, right? To understand jazz is to understand investigation—the ability to see and feel what's underneath the obvious. People who don't appreciate jazz tend to hear the melody, but they never feel the underlying chords and discordant notes that drive the music, see? When you study jazz you begin to appreciate levels.”

Service understood, but had no interest in discussing the philosophies of investigation.

“You sound like an investigator,” Service said.

“Hey, you're in a business, what separates the big boys from the jerk-offs? Competitive business intelligence, marketing research and such. We do the same shit, right? Do you know the word
maskirovka?”
the man asked.

“I think it's Russian for camouflage,” Service said. He had learned this in the marines.

The man smiled benignly and shook his head slowly. “That's a definition that equates to listening to the melody. Camouflage comes from the French
camoufler,
meaning to blind or to veil.
Maskirovka
is more encompassing. It means deception and entails concealing activities by means of deception, including camouflage, but also including misdirection and misinformation.
Maskirovka
was at the heart of Soviet defense during the Cold War—hiding from America not so much what they had, but that which they didn't have. Follow?”

One minute the man sounded like a professor and the next like a chump. “Meaning that you have to listen to what you're not hearing with as much interest as what you are hearing,” Service said.

Shatun Sager snapped the fingers of his right hand. “Bull's-eye! You're a smart guy—just like Mister S says. The people you're looking for aren't easy to see. The barest of clues is often all you got to go on—that and the feeling that claws at your guts and makes your balls burn. This is an ancient trade, well organized. You can't know until you investigate further, but it's not unusual for the organization to create turmoil as it moves into a new territory—to deflect the attention of competitors and the authorities from its activities. As for its own operations, these are usually quiet and efficient—damn near invisible. These people operate around the world and they've learned by trial and error what works and what doesn't work.”

“Are you telling me there's a Russian poaching operation here?”

“Russian, Chinese, Korean, fucking Martian—it don't matter who, get it? They all use the same methods cause they
work!
Why reinvent the fucking wheel? All I am sayin' is based on your wimpy evidence, you could have an operation in the early phases here, and it's now you have the optimal opportunity to intercede. Wait too long and you lose.”

The man refilled his glass and swigged his vodka and pointed a crooked finger at Service. “You, my friend, gotta look at what you're not seeing and hearing.”

“Feel the chords, not listen to the notes.”

The man held up his glass. “You understand.”

“You have a name for me?”

“There's this asshole down in Grand Rapids. His name is Irvin Wan. He took the name of the great jigaboo roundball player and he's known now as Magic Wan. He owns several clubs, is involved in drugs, numbers, skin, all that shit. Makes his dough off human weakness.”

“That's not much.”

“Wan owns a lodge in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and he's an avid hunter.”

Service's logic told him this was unlikely to take him anywhere, but he had no evidence and no other options. “Where's his camp?”

“Don't know, but I can ask around if you're interested.” The man suddenly held up his hands—“on the house for Mr. S, just so we're clear on that, right?”

“Magic Wan.”

“That's him. Sleazy little prick.”

“What're the names of his clubs?”

“The main one is called the Nude Inn. It's in a burg called Kalamazoo; can you fuckin' believe that's a
real
place and not just a fuckin' song title from the brown shoe army days?”

“He lives in Grand Rapids, but has a club in Kalamazoo?”