Red Jacket (35 page)

95

Red Jacket

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1913

Bapcat had talked to Assistant Prosecutor Echo twice the day before, and once again that morning, Echo revealing Lucas's interest. Like O'Brien, Lucas was from a miner's family that had struggled their whole lives. Bapcat wanted a sit-down with MacNaughton.

“He sent his family away and sleeps in different places every night. Moving target,” Echo added. “Never without his bodyguards.”

“It's hard to hide a group,” Bapcat said.

Echo was quiet momentarily. “I'll talk to Lucas and get back to you.”

Bapcat gave him Vairo's telephone number and made a note to tell Harju they needed a telephone installed on the hill. It seemed it was getting so you could do little without a telephone.
You come into the job expecting to be outside in the woods, and you spend more time inside four walls.
Telephones speeded things up and let you do multiple things at once, and not waste time on travel. Echo and Lucas were working the request, but Bapcat had Vairo get in touch with Bruno Geronissi and ask him to come for a meeting.

•••

“
Dottore
,” Bapcat greeted him when Geronissi came swirling in with a cape draped over his shoulders.

“
Signore
Vairo told me you wanted to see me.”

“You know what goes on around here. You have your finger on the pulse.” Geronissi made a dismissive hand gesture and Bapcat continued. “MacNaughton: I want to sit down with him, talk across a table, eye to eye.”

“He has his own army and moves around alla time,” Geronissi said.

“I've heard that.”

“What's your interest in MacNaught?”

“Time he and I met.”

“MacNaught, he don't like make no talk with regular people.”

MacNaught—not even his full name, just the blunt front—a slight. No wonder Big Jim's ducking.
“I don't want him to kiss me, just talk.”

Geronissi chuckled. “And you think Bruno, he know where MacNaught go?”

“I think
Dottore
Geronissi knows how to find out.”

“Another favor; you sure?”

“Yes, and there's no time to waste.”

“You think some storms, they comin' close?”

“Don't you?”

Geronissi said, sniffing, “
Si,
like poison in air.”

“You know the operators are poisoning streams and ponds, flooding dens, slaughtering deer, cutting timber so there's no nearby firewood?”

“Bruno knows they also cut down the fruit trees, so no fruit for people, poison some wells if somebody too tough in strike, maybe set house fires.”

“I don't know, but I want to look him in the eye and hear what he has to say.”

“Can't make such meeting,” Geronissi said.

“Just help me find him and I'll figure out things from there.”

Geronissi gave him a lingering look of appraisal. “You do all that shit for
animali?
I'm glad you game warden, not
la
polizia
.”

Strange comment. Hard to have to ask for help from the likes of Bruno, but he could think of no other way. It was reduced to priorities.

“
Grazie, Dottore.
”

“
Ciao.
We talk soon,” Geronissi said, got up, and swept away.

A six-foot-tall raven wobbled into the bar and stood across from Vairo. A white face emerged from under a large, black-cloth beak. “
Sambuca,
Dominick,
si non ti dispiaci
.”

“What you supposed to be today, Carlo?” Vairo asked the costumed man, who shrugged and said, “Bird of hope.”

“Wearing all black?”

The man held up the drink. “This damn strike, he got everyt'ing down-side up, eh?” Carlo's vulpine mouth opened, showing badly yellowed teeth as he chugged the shot in one gulp.

Bapcat looked to Vairo for an explanation of the costume. “ 'Alloween, for Italians. All Souls, eh?”

96

Kearsarge

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1913

Zakov had gone north into the woods to search for Canady yew and deer, while Bapcat unhappily remained townside, waiting for word from Echo or Geronissi.

The assistant prosecutor finally called and said he was sorry, but he couldn't figure out a way to get to MacNaughton. Geronissi sent a messenger telling Bapcat to meet a man named Marinello that morning, in Kearsarge. The building stank of creosote and old smoke. Marinello, editor of
Il Minatore Italiano
in Red Jacket, stood with a pair of men who looked like miners.

“I get word you want to meet MacNaught,” the mustachioed editor said.

That shortened name again.
“True. Can it be done?”

Marinello looked him over. “MacNaught, he been having secret meetings with miners, tries convince come back work, bring others.”

“I'm not a miner.”

“This morning he meet three men near here. He never meet them before.”

“What's your role?”

“Delivery boy. In September, I write strike not so good for Italians. MacNaught, he drop by one day, tell me I seem like reasonable man, he like reasonable men, and
grazie-prego,
can I introduce him to other reasonable men, Italian miners.”

“You get to pick the men?”

“
Si
, I pick, he talks, tells them to tell others quit strike and go back work.”

“I'm not Italian,” Bapcat said.

“What you are?”

“One hundred percent nobody knows.”
Or cares
.

“
Bene,
you come.”

“Why?”

“Favors—you
capisce?
”

Bapcat understood.
Marinello owes Geronissi, same as me.

•••

It was 10 a.m. Kids were in school, non-striking miners were underground, most other people working, and the streets seemed relatively empty as the editor led the three men to a house with a man in a black suit on the porch. The man carried a sawed-off shotgun, and wore a black fedora. He nodded to Marinello and opened the door.

Just inside were five more men in black suits—bodyguards—and MacNaughton, lean, well over six feet tall, broad-shouldered, straight hair combed neatly back, tiny rimless eyeglasses, slate-gray eyes, pink face from a fresh shave, pressed white shirt, black tie, jacket off, red braces over his shirt, holding out his hands in welcome: Jesus welcoming the multitudes.

Bapcat took the chair on MacNaughton's right, closest to him, and watched Marinello leave. The two miners who had accompanied him also sat down, a bit farther away and said nothing. Bapcat could tell they were nervous.

“Thank you for coming, gentlemen. My good friend, Mr. Marinello, tells me you are reasonable fellas, pressured to strike by socialists and the other radicals from out west. I'm not going to ask you to come back to work in the mines. But I'm going to make you an offer that will benefit all of us.”

MacNaughton made no eye contact, stared off in the distance, reciting something scripted in his mind. “Interested?” the C & H boss man asked.

Bapcat's companions said nothing. He said, “We'll listen.”

“For every man you talk into coming back to work, I will give you the equivalent of his first day's wages as a reward.”

The two miners blinked.

MacNaughton rolled his eyes and complained. “Marinello keeps sending us deaf and dumb mutes.”

“You want to pay us to recruit for you?” Bapcat asked.

MacNaughton was surprised at what was being said to him. “It's a simple proposition.”

Bapcat said, “Rather than recruiting men, why don't we talk about your deer bounties instead?”

MacNaughton began to blink at a sheet of paper in front of him. “
Which
one are you?”

Bapcat turned his lapel to show his badge. “Bapcat, Deputy State Game, Fish and Forestry Warden.”

MacNaughton's scowl faded to a blank. “Your name is not one put forth by Marinelli. Where is he?”

“Gone,” the nearest guard said. “You want we should go fetch him?”

“No,” MacNaughton said, and the bodyguards began to step toward Bapcat and the miners with their revolvers out.

Bapcat said, “These are simple questions, Mr. MacNaughton. Who is paying men to kill deer and leave them to rot? Who is poisoning the streams and ponds and wells? Who is cutting timber so there's no firewood? Who is setting fire to private homes, and who is cutting down fruit trees so there can be no harvest next spring? Who is doing these things, sir?”

Bapcat saw his two companions squirming.

“Get Marinelli,” MacNaughton said to the nearest guard.

“Are you going to answer me, sir?” Bapcat asked. “Why are you asking these men to recruit their friends back to work when you're trying to starve them and their families?”

“Joshua,” the mine boss said.

A bodyguard started to step toward the table, but just then, the front door flew open and the exterior guard came stumbling in backward with Zakov pushing him, holding a black Colt .45 to the man's head. “Let us now each and all exercise keen and pragmatic judgment in these delicate circumstances,” the Russian exhorted.

MacNaughton rose to his feet. “I have no idea what you are talking about, sir, and I resent this intrusion. We are leaving now. Joshua.”

With that, the leader of the Keweenaw's copper industry ran out of the house and got into a vehicle, which raced away.

“This is true, what you say—the mine operators, they do these bad things?” one of the men asked.

“
Somebody's
doing them,” Bapcat answered.

“You got balls, talking to MacNaught that way,” one of the men said.

“
Or un sacco di stupidita
,” the other one whispered.

The two miners departed on shaky legs, and Zakov and Bapcat walked back to where the Russian had parked the truck.

“I don't think MacNaughton knows what I was asking about,” Bapcat told his partner.

“Which suggests perhaps the impetus comes from
below
him,” the Russian said.

“Maybe, but the fact that MacNaughton is still trying to use miners to recruit miners tells me the strike is hurting him and his operations more than he wants to let on.”
It says there's desperation in the air, on all sides.

“How the heck did you find me?” Bapcat asked the Russian.

“Game wardens,” Zakov said. “We are adept in the black arts, the magic of detection.”

“Cut the crap.”

“I was driving through Kearsarge, saw you, followed and waited, just in case.”

“How did you know when to come in?”

“I didn't. I got bored. Pure luck I came through the door when I did.”

97

Bumbletown Hill

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1913

The witch had roared to life two days before, on the sixth of November. Lake Superior's surface water had remained strangely warm all fall, and Bapcat knew that when sudden winds swept down from Canada, there would be a snowstorm of epic proportions. He'd been in one in 1905, and had been trapped in the woods for a month. These winds, like those of eight years before, had come up fast from the northeast, the temperature fell just as quickly, and rain began and turned to sleet, coating everything with two inches of ice before it turned to snow, turning the world white and making all men blind.

The night before, Bapcat had tried to call Harju to request a telephone for the house, but the clerk at Petermann's told him the lines were down, and he had no idea how long the outage would last. It was the same with electric power in nearby towns. Bapcat had trudged back up to the cabin through deep snow.

“Canady yew?” Bapcat asked his partner, who had been north in the woods and only returned an hour ago, yet had not even mentioned the storm.

“As reported, mostly in dark canyon bottoms, and judging by the specimens I saw, they appear to be untouched since last winter. Yard browse, I conclude, to be eaten only when it is nearly the last choice, like borscht for me.”

“Deer?”

“A few, and some sign, but no rotting carcasses.”

“Too far from settlements to bother with,” Bapcat said. “Maybe. Did you look for bats?”

“In
this
weather?”

Bapcat grinned. “I was beginning to think you didn't notice there is a storm.” Then, “I think we should try to estimate the extent of the siege activities, you up here, me south of Houghton. Or vicey versey. Your choice.”

“Here suits me,” Zakov said. “It will be some days before we can move. Trees are down everywhere, drifts are up to my head, and it is looking like Siberia. Where will you start?”

“I'm thinking Painesdale, which in my mind seems to be the southwest fringe. We know there is activity east toward Chassell.”

Zakov said, “The strike seems more violent and vehement south and north, softer in the center. Why would this be?”

“If I were smarter, I might manage an equally smart guess,” Bapcat said.

“You are plenty smart, wife.”

Meant to say more schooled, not smarter.

“Impressions of MacNaughton?” Zakov asked.

“He doesn't look people in the eye, but I think I saw fear.”

“Not many people are direct,” the Russian said. “In some cultures direct eye contact is taken as an insult, or worse—a call for combat to the death.”

“Where did you come up with the Colt?” The semiautomatic pistol had only been issued to the US military a couple of years ago.

“Harju left one for each of us, but when he saw how attached you are to your beloved Krag, he gave both to me.”

The Russian went and fetched a second weapon, a box of cartridges, and two spare magazines, and set them in front of Bapcat. “It is a hand cannon,” Zakov said. “A man-stopper.”

“I hope it never comes to that,” Bapcat said.

“Greed sometimes situates violence within whispering distance,” the Russian said.

“Thanksgiving, I intend to go to Jaquelle's, spend some time with the boy and her. You want to come with me?”

“One of us should remain here,” the Russian said. “How is the boy doing?”

“Adjusting,” Bapcat said with a chuckle. “Grudgingly.”

“You should be a good papa and explain to this boy the sheer folly of resisting the Widow Frei.”

“I'm not his father,” Bapcat said, jarred by the concept.

“Yet,” the Russian whispered. “Wife.”

“There are moments,” Bapcat said, pointing the empty Colt at a wall.

“These are, of course, mutually frustrating moments,” the Russian said officiously, “and here I must posit a question stimulated by our readings in
Tiffany's
. That is, if I shot you, my wife, would I be compelled by law to testify against myself?”

“Let me know when you get that worked out. We should be patrolling. Deer will not be moving much, so they'll be easy targets,” Bapcat said. “I'll go south, and you can take care of this area.”

“To enforce what?” Zakov asked. “You unilaterally suspended the law, at least for these surrounds.”

“Just make sure hunters have licenses.”

Zakov said sarcastically, “Yes, of course; the state treasury must have its pound of flesh.”