Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 135, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 823 & 824, March/April 2010

Days of Rage by Doug Allyn

In this nostalgic tale, some of Doug Allyn’s most popular series characters — Dan Shea, his right-hand man Puck, and welder Maph Rochon — find their north-country toughness tested when they’re called in to renovate a site with a history of political violence. It’s been some time since EQMM last saw an entry in this Readers Award winning series. Mr. Allyn has been busy with a series of thriller novels he’s writing for his French publisher (a series we hope will soon see print in the U.S.).

“My mama always said I’d end up in the slammer,” Puck grumbled, eyeing the rusting row of vacant cells. The dimly lit basement was divided into a dozen barred cages. Gunmetal gray paint flaking off the concrete walls gave it a scrofulous look, ugly as a leper colony. Rank, dank, and abandoned.

“Visualize the possibilities, Mr. Paquette,” Sara Jacoby said briskly. “Ignore the cells. They’ll be gone, all but one. Try to picture this room filled with smart shops and shoppers, a bustling commercial enterprise with enormous potential. And exceptional security.”

“Barred windows make for great security,” Dan Shea conceded, “but to be honest, I’m not sure I see any potential.”

The three of them were a sharp contrast. Dolph Paquette and Dan Shea, strictly blue-collar working men. Hard-eyed roughnecks in faded jeans, baseball caps, and steel-toed boots. Shea wore a dun corduroy sport coat with elbow patches over a green flannel shirt. No tie. Puck was dressed for manual labor in a hard hat and Carhartt canvas vest. Faces ruddy and weathered from the wind, Paquette and Shea could have posed for before-and-after snapshots, taken forty years apart.

Sara Jacoby, Port Martin’s city manager, was their diametric opposite, young, bright, and formidably fashionable. She wore her dark hair feathered in a short neo-pixie that accented her pert, attractive features. Dressed for success in a plum pinstripe Donna Karan suit, even her walking shoes and briefcase were color-coordinated.

“If you want to see potential, gentlemen,” she said, “follow me, please.” Stepping into an ancient freight elevator, she pulled down the wooden safety gate, then switched it on, filling the basement cellblock with an electro-mechanical din that sounded like a refrigerator falling down a flight of stairs. Puck and Shea exchanged a doubtful glance as the cage rattled upward, but neither man said anything. Couldn’t be heard anyway.

The ride up was jerky and unstable, but well worth the journey. The fourth- floor safety door opened out onto the building’s roof. Flat, coated with tar and gravel, and edged by an artfully crafted, crenellated brick barrier, it offered an absolutely stunning view.

To the northeast, the gray-green waters of Lake Huron, whitecaps riffling in the September breeze, rolling unbroken to the horizon and beyond, a hundred miles to the Canadian shore. Below them, spread out like a picnic blanket, was scenic Port Martin, Michigan, dreaming in the golden September sunlight. A resort town of lakefront cottages and summer homes, a getaway for rich and prominent families of Grand Rapids, Detroit, and Chicago.

“In real estate, location is everything, guys,” Jacoby said, “and this structure is a solid-gold site. It was built in eighteen eighty-seven and served as a combination city hall and police department well into the nineteen seventies, when it was replaced by the new civic center. It’s been standing empty since then.

“The city council has okayed my plan to transform this decrepit eyesore into a prime commercial location and tourist attraction. I envision this level as a rooftop restaurant, enclosed entirely in glass, with a three hundred and sixty degree view of the lake and the town. The lower floors will be subdivided and brought up to code, then leased as office space, shops, and boutiques.”

“What makes you think anybody will want to rent space in a jail?” Shea asked doubtfully.

“Actually, our waiting list is rapidly filling up, Mr. Shea. It’s the age of the Internet. Entrepreneurs can literally locate anywhere now, but they love funky milieus. Buildings with soul. Timberlands Mall outside of Traverse City spent a small fortune tracking down old lumber-camp relics: peaveys, bucksaws, and such. Here, the building itself has all the ambience one could ask for and the address is a perfect fit: Nineteen Sixty-Nine Main Street. Jailhouse Rock. Cellblock chic. This isn’t just a small-town lockup, it’s the Port Martin Jail.”

Shea looked at her blankly.

“The Christmas breakout, nineteen sixty-nine?” Jacoby prompted. “Woodstock? First man on the moon? Days of Rage?”

“ ’Sixty-nine was a bit before my time,” Shea said.

“And before mine too, obviously,” Sara said, annoyed, “but my profs at Michigan State would practically swoon if you mentioned flower power or Woodstock.”

“I remember them times just fine,” Puck put in. “What about ’em?”

“Do you recall the Christmas Break? Nineteen sixty-nine?”

“Christmas Break?” Puck frowned. “Yeah, sort of, it was big news at the — whoa, you mean it happened at this jail?”

“This very one. The Port Martin Jail, Nineteen Sixty-Nine Main Street. The jailbreak gave me the idea for the counterculture theme.”

“C’mon, I was two years old in ’sixty-nine,” Shea said. “What are you guys talking about?”

“I can probably show you faster than I can explain it, Mr. Shea,” Jacoby said briskly, stepping back into the elevator. “This way, please.

“The first floor was originally the sheriff’s department,” Sara explained, as they rode the rattletrap freight elevator down a floor. “The basement was the lockup, the second floor held the offices for city services, water department, county clerk, et cetera. The third floor” — she opened the safety gate as the elevator rumbled to a halt — “as you can see, was the county courtroom.”

They stepped out into an enormous open room, walnut-paneled walls and towering windows, hardwood floors glowing in the autumn light.

“The jury box was over there, the judge’s bench was backlit by that high window. Trials weren’t all that common so the furniture was all movable. It’s in storage now. City council meetings were held in this room, the city band rehearsed here on Tuesday nights....”

But Shea was only half listening. He and Puck were both drawn to the far side of the gallery, staring up at a massive display of photographs, artwork, and architectural drawings.

The wall held detailed sketches for the new jail, historic shots of Port Martin, but dominating the center of the array was an oversized blow-up of a snarling, wild-haired maniac brandishing an assault rifle.

“The nineteen sixties were violent times: war, riots, assassinations,” Jacoby recited. “Nineteen sixty-nine was the wildest year of all. The country was in complete turmoil, body bags coming home from Vietnam, student riots, bras burning, inner cities burning. Hippie kids with flowers in their hair smoking dope and cheerfully screwing each other in public, leaving their parents baffled and jealous—”

Shea nodded. “I know what the sixties were about. What’s all that got to do with your jail? And who’s the loony with the gun?”

“Red Max Novak,” Sara said, “the Weatherman. The most famous fugitive since John Dillinger.”

“Weatherman?” Shea echoed, puzzled. “A TV forecaster?”

“A revolutionary.” Puck snorted. “A Che Guevara wannabe. The Weathermen were student radicals. Power to the people, off the pigs, all that craziness. A bunch of wet-eared college punks running their mouths.”

“Red Max Novak did more than talk,” Sara said. “In October of ’sixty-nine, during the trial of the Chicago Eight, the Weathermen, SDS, and the Black Panthers all called for mass protests: the Days of Rage. College campuses across the country erupted in violence. Six hundred demonstrators rioted in Chicago, trashing shops and fighting with the police. In Detroit, a campus radical named Max Novak blew up the office of the draft board, then called the newspapers to claim credit for striking a blow against the system.

“Unfortunately, when the police searched through the rubble, they found a body. A night watchman was killed in the blast. And suddenly the student protestor was wanted for murder.”

“What happened?” Shea asked.

“Novak went underground. There was a furious manhunt, Max Novak’s face was all over the papers and on TV for months. A week before Christmas, he was arrested here in Port Martin, brought to this very building, and locked up in a basement cell. That’s his mug shot beside the poster,” she said, pointing out a photo of a defiant Max, giving the cameraman the finger.

“What was he doing here?” Shea asked.

“Hoping to steal a boat and try to make it across the big lake to Canada. But he apparently had friends here, because on Christmas Eve, persons unknown tunneled into the basement cellblock through the storm drain and broke him out.” She pointed at the next photo, an empty jail cell with an outline of the fickle finger spray-painted on the wall. Grim lawmen standing around a jagged hole in the floor, looking baffled and frustrated.

“Did they catch him again?” Shea asked.

“Not then, not ever,” Puck said sourly. “Every lawman in the north country went nuts looking for him.”

“He surfaced in Canada a few months later,” Sara said. “Held a news conference in Toronto to protest the killings at Kent State. That’s Red Max at the microphone,” she said, indicating a photo of a masked man. “He said he was recovering from plastic surgery, wouldn’t show his face.”

“How did they know it was actually him?” Shea asked.

“The FBI identified him by voiceprint. At the news conference, Max said he was sorry about killing the watchman, but American boys were dying every day in Vietnam and pigs serving The Man were fair game. He raised his fist, shouted ‘Power to the people!’ And disappeared into history.”

“And good riddance,” Puck growled.

“Quite a story,” Shea said, shooting his partner a dark look.

“It’s not just a story,” Sara said. “It’s the single most dramatic incident in Port Martin’s history and we mean to cash in on it. Red Max’s photo and the shot of that empty cell are counterculture icons now. The tunnel’s gone, of course; it was filled in immediately after the escape, but we plan to restore that entire scene, the cell — the tunnel, fickle finger, and all. The far end of the basement will be converted into a permanent diorama, with a slide show, a gift shop selling plastic assault rifles, hippie beads, candles, incense, afros, black-light posters, the works.”

“Whoa up!” Puck was staring at her in disbelief. “You’re going to remodel this place into a shrine? To a freakin’ murderer?”

“Max Novak is a historical figure now, Mr. Paquette,” Sara countered coolly, waving him to silence before he could interrupt. “In nineteen sixteen, Pancho Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico, killed two dozen people, and burned the town. Today, his statue in Tucson draws ten thousand visitors a year. Missouri has statues of Jesse James, Texas has Billy the Kid. Red Max Novak may be a wild-haired psycho to you, but he’s the closest thing to a celebrity Port Martin ever had, as famous as Jimmy Hoffa, and for the same reason. They both vanished without a trace.”

“But Novak’s only claim to fame was blasting some poor rent-a-cop to hell! The hippies weren’t all flower children, high on peace and love. Remember the Manson Family? They were busy in nineteen sixty-nine too, murdering folks. Why not put them in your shrine?”

“I take it you disapprove of our concept, Mr. Paquette?”

“How can I put this politely?” Puck said, glancing toward the ceiling. “I guess I can’t. I think the idea of glorifying a bozo like Max Novak is dumber than a box of rocks.”

“Excellent!” Sara said, clapping her hands, delighted. “Nothing sells like controversy. Even after all this time, people have powerful feelings about those days. Two city councilmen actually came to blows over it.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“Nor was I. Still, I wouldn’t want to hire somebody whose sensibilities are offended by the job. Your outfit has an excellent reputation, Mr. Shea, but you’re not the only contractors on my list. Given your partner’s attitude, if you’d prefer to opt out, I’ll certainly understand.”

“Can you give us a minute, please?” Shea said quickly, wrapping an arm around Puck’s shoulders. “I’d like a word with my partner.”

Hauling Paquette out into the corridor, Shea whirled on him. “What the hell’s wrong with you? We need this job!”

“We need a job,” Puck said stubbornly. “Not this one.”

“Bullshit! This is a fat deal, Puck. I’m not kicking it in the head over forty- year-old politics!”

“It’s not just politics!” Puck flared. “I’ll tell you something else that happened in nineteen sixty-nine. I picked up my nephew at the airport in Saginaw. Fresh back from Vietnam, with a chest full of medals and an empty sleeve where his left arm used to be. And he had spit dripping off his uniform. Spit! Some long-haired freak called him a baby killer, and spat on him! Mike was hurtin’ so bad he barely noticed, but I won’t ever forget that. Or forgive it. Mike died of his wounds four months later.”

“Look, I’m sorry as hell about your nephew, Puck, but that was a long time back and we’ve got bills to pay. This project will keep the crew working into the winter. The structure looks sound, the remodeling should mostly be carpentry 101. It’s easy money, Puck.”

“Whorin’s easy money, too, Danny, or so they say. Buildings have character and the work a man does on ’em should be honorable. I don’t like the feel of this job. That said, I know the crew needs the work, so if you want to take this deal, go ahead on. Don’t worry about me, I’ll carry my weight.”

“All right, then.” Shea nodded slowly. “I’m going to take this gig. We’ll bring it in on time, under budget, and be home and dry for Christmas.”

“I expect that’s what the rent-a-cop was thinking,” Puck said. “Just before the bomb went off.”

Two days later, a ragtag caravan of work vans and pickup trucks rolled into Port Martin. A gypsy construction gang in flannel shirts and work boots, six hard-hats plus Puck and Shea. North-country boys from the tip of the mitten near Valhalla. Wild, woolly, and rough around the edges. Skilled workers who knew their trades.

They ripped into the Port Martin Jail building like a wrecking crew. Reshaping the old city offices was a dirty job, but not a difficult one. The outer brick walls of the ancient building were far stronger than modern code requirements, built to bear the weight of massive rooftop water tanks that no longer existed.

The inner walls were only partitions, panels and doors artfully crafted from native oak trees that were ancient at the end of the last century, perhaps even the one before that.

The work progressed quickly, but without the crew’s usual barking and good-natured curses. Puck was right, the old building had a dour, brooding atmosphere. Dark corners and shadows. Odd creaks and groans as it resettled itself, like an aching patient undergoing major surgery without anesthetic.

Mostly, the strange shadows were caused by the obsolete lighting fixtures that dated from the Second World War. But there were other shadows and sounds which had no connection with reality. The spirit-echoes of men who’d stood before the bench, hearing their lives sworn away. Then rode the rickety freight elevator down to their dank basement cages. A living hell for roughnecks used to ranging the forest for lumber or furs, or sailing free on the Great Lakes.

The cellar cellblock seemed to be the dark soul of the structure, with rusty iron rings set in the walls, the width of a man’s wrists, the endless whisper of wastewater trickling beneath the floors. You could almost smell the despair.

North-country boys aren’t easily spooked, don’t fear much, living or dead. Still, Shea found himself walking soft in the dim corridors, half expecting to meet a ghost around the next corner. So when he stepped into the courtroom and saw a cop staring up at the photo display, for a crazy moment he wondered if...

But the cop was definitely real.

A big man, half a head taller than Shea, wearing a summer blue uniform, short sleeves that showed muscular biceps and a Semper Fi tattoo. Horse-faced, underslung jaw, oversized stallion’s teeth. His smile was probably scarier than his glare, but he wasn’t smiling now. He was glowering up at the poster shot of Red Max Novak holding the AK over his head, silently screaming his defiance.

“Can I help you?” Dan asked.

“I’m Sheriff Martin Doyle. Marty to my friends. You can call me Sheriff Doyle.”

“I didn’t call you at all,” Shea said mildly, “and this work site is closed to the public. So is there something I can do for you? Sheriff Doyle?”

“Yeah. You can bag this whole cockamamie project and head back where you came from. Valhalla, right? You boys are a long way from home.”

“Work’s not so easy to find up north.”

“You should have tried harder. This project’s a lousy idea.”

“I agree with you a hundred percent,” Puck said, joining them from the hall. “But I’ve got my own reasons. What’s your beef, sport?”

“You see the lawman in that photograph, the one with silver hair, standing by that damned tunnel? That’s old Tom Kowalski. Sheriff Kowalski, in those days. He went out of his way to welcome me when I took his job, twenty years ago. Brought me up to speed, helped me all he could, though he owed me nothin’. A good man, a good cop. The jailbreak destroyed his career. Made him a joke in his own hometown.”

“Must have been tough,” Shea said.

“Not as tough as having the city council vote to raise a damned shrine to the murderer who wrecked Tom’s life. There’s nothing heroic about Red Max Novak. He was just another radical commie psycho. Colleges campuses bred ’em like rats in those days.”

“We’re not politicians, Sheriff Doyle,” Dan said, “we’re in the construction business. Just hired help doing a job.”

“Doing the wrong job,” Doyle said. “Just so we’re clear, guys, there’s no statute of limitations on murder or breaking jail and abetting either one is a felony. It seems to me that’s damned close to what you people are doing. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. We have a lot of veterans in this town, and a lot of working men who thought the hippies were scum and still do. So you boys better keep your eyes peeled for vandals and lock up your tools every night. Because if you have any problems on this particular job, our response time might run a little slow.”

“No big surprise,” Puck snorted, “considering your department lost the most famous prisoner you ever had. We’ll keep an eye on our gear. Feel free to get back to the hunt.”

“What hunt?”

“For Red Max,” Puck said innocently. “Bein’ there’s no statute of limitations and all, shouldn’t you be out looking for him, Sheriff?”

Sheriff Doyle wasn’t the only one unhappy about the job. Four days into the project, Maph Rochon, a bull-necked, bullheaded Ojibwa ironworker, stormed into Shea’s temporary office, demanding to be paid off.

“You gotta be kiddin’, Maph,” Dan said. “You haven’t worked a full week yet.”

“Ain’t gonna work one, neither,” Rochon said. “I don’t like this place.”

“Fine, you want to quit, go ahead. But you can whistle for gas money, I’m not—” He broke off as Puck grabbed his bicep.

“Whoa up, what are you doing? You can’t cut Maph loose.”

“Watch me! He’s a drunk and a hothead, more trouble than he’s worth.”

“He’s also a freakin’ artist with an acetylene torch and we’re gonna need him bad when we start reconfiguring those cells. You’re the boss, Danny, act like one. Cool your jets and solve the damn problem.”

Shea opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again. Because Puck was right. As usual.

“What seems to be the trouble, Maph?” Shea grated, forcing a smile.

“This freakin’ place bums me out,” Rochon said stubbornly. “If I’d known what the job was gonna be, I wouldn’t have signed on.”

“You gripe about every job, Maph, but you’ve never quit on me before. What’s your problem? You don’t like Novak’s politics?”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about politics, but I’ve been stuck in a few jails. Never had no fun in one and I don’t like workin’ in this one, neither. I got three days’ wages and a hundred and fifty bucks gas money comin’, Danny. You either get it up or I’ll kick your ass for you.”

Rochon was dead serious. His shaggy hair was hanging in his bloodshot eyes. He was hung over, hurtin’, and ready to take it out on somebody. The last time Shea’d tangled with him, the police had to break it up and Shea was sore for a month. Which is why he couldn’t believe it when Puck took a nine-pound sledgehammer from the tool rack and tossed it to Rochon.

“You’re dead right, Maph. I got no use for jails, either. So why don’t we bust this one up?”

“Bust it up?” Rochon echoed, hefting the sledge suspiciously, still glowering at Shea.

“See that photograph next to Red Max? The one with those cops standing around that hole, looking stupid? They had a famous jailbreak here. Red Max’s buddies tunneled in and broke him out. Afterward, the cops poured a new concrete floor in the basement to cover it up. How about you bust that sucker open all over again? Let some air into this dump. Sound like fun, big fella?”

“Yeah, maybe it does at that.” Rochon nodded slowly. “Last time they locked me up, I coulda used a hammer like this. Okay, Puck. I’ll bust open that tunnel for you. I’ll bust Danny up some other day.” Saluting Shea with the sledge, he turned and stalked out.

“What the hell was that?” Shea demanded, turning on Puck. “He was primed to stomp me into dog meat and you toss him a nine-pound hammer?”

“C’mon, Danny, Maph’s a surly sumbitch, but he’s not crazy enough to use a sledge on you. Besides, he can whip you any day of the week. He doesn’t need a hammer to do it.”

“Then why give him one?”

“Because your best chance against a hardhead like Maph is to clock him before he knows he’s in a fight. While he’s deciding whether to use that sledge or not, you sucker punch him two, three times. Put his lights out.”

“Assuming I was smart enough to figure that out,” Shea sighed.

“Also assuming you could hit Maph hard enough to put him down.”

“You’re an evil old man, Puck.”

“Thank you, sir. But I didn’t get this old bein’ stupid, Danny. You’d best keep a weather eye on Rochon. Maph’s a mean drunk and meaner sober. Draws trouble like flies to a roadkill.”

And Puck was right again. As usual.

That afternoon, Shea walked into his office to find Maph Rochon sitting in his chair, his work boots up on the drafting table. “What are you doing in here?”

“Waitin’ for you, boss man. What do you want me to do next?”

“You can’t be finished with that tunnel already.”

“Not exactly, no.”

“Then why aren’t you on it?”

“Ain’t no tunnel to be on, Danny,” Maph said blandly. “Never was, neither.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I busted through the concrete floor like Puck told me, found the original hole into the storm drain. It’s a thirty-incher, plenty big enough to shinny through for the first ten feet or so, then it opens out into a crawl space in the subbasement. And that’s the problem.”

“What problem?”

“This old building’s sitting on forty-foot walnut timbers, Danny, twenty inches thick at mid-bole. They rest on the bedrock. Solid granite. The drain’s cut wide to pass under them beams, but it’s only six inches deep and there’s a grille across it to keep the rats out. It’s original, Danny. Made of the same bars they used to build the cells, set in stone, rusted nearly solid. You’d need an acetylene torch to cut it and even then the hole’s too small to pass a man through. Nothing much bigger than a mouse ever went in or out of that tunnel. I double-checked the pictures to make sure there was no mistake. There ain’t. The hole they dug in that cell floor was a shuck, a tunnel to nowhere. That up-yours finger spray-painted on the wall wasn’t a joke on those cops. It was their joke on the rest of us.”

“Show me,” Shea said.

Sara Jacoby emerged from the tunnel shaken and pale as a ghost, her Karan suit covered with grime. “There has to be some mistake. Could Novak have gotten out some other way?”

“I’ve gone over the blueprints, Miss Jacoby,” Shea said. “They show exactly what Maph found. This old barn was built in eighteen eighty-seven, overbuilt actually, to support two water tanks on the roof, a thousand gallons each. There was no running water in those days, so every municipal building had their own supply. You see these lines on the drawing? They’re walnut logs, two and a half tons apiece, braced on bedrock. No way under them, no way around. The tunnel in this photograph never went anywhere. It couldn’t. It was a photo op, nothing more.”

“But there are pictures of a policeman crawling out of the far end... My God,” she said softly, as the full weight of understanding settled in. “They were all in on it, weren’t they? They had to be. But how could they cover a thing like this up?”

“With shovels,” Puck said. “Same way they faked the tunnel. Dug it out, took a few pictures, then filled it in again. Topped it off with concrete.”

“But why?” Sara demanded. “Max Novak was the most famous prisoner they’d ever had. Why would they stage a phony escape?”

“I can think of one reason, but you won’t like it,” Puck said. “Back in the Days of Rage, protesters weren’t the only ones who ran off the rails. Guardsmen killed four kids at Kent State and forty civilians during the Detroit riots. Five years earlier, Mississippi cops handed three civil-rights workers over to the KKK. They ended up dead in a swamp. Could be there’s a real ugly reason nobody’s seen Red Max Novak lately.”

“But what are we going to do? If we tell Sheriff Doyle about this, he’ll declare it a crime scene, tape it off, and shut down the project. Which is what he wants to do anyway.”

Shea shrugged. “It’s your project, your call. Do you want us to cover it up again?”

“Damn it,” Sara said softly, shaking her head. “Damn it, damn it, damn it.”

“I knew no good would come of this,” Sheriff Martin Doyle said sourly. “Frickin’ yuppie city council and their New Age ideas.” They were in Doyle’s office in the new Port Martin Civic Center, a flashy modern construct of glass and concrete that held the sheriff’s department, fire department, and city offices, and had no soul at all.

“The city council didn’t lose that prisoner,” Puck pointed out. “Your old pal Sheriff Kowalski did. Or did he?”

“What are you saying? You think old Tom Kowalski whacked Max Novak, then staged the escape to cover it up?”

“We have no idea what happened,” Sara said quickly. “That’s why we’re here. We do know that Novak definitely didn’t crawl out through that tunnel, though. So the question is, why would the police fake his escape? If it wasn’t to cover up Novak’s murder, then what did happen?”

“I... don’t know anything I could swear to, you understand,” Doyle said, “but I did hear a story once. Last year, after the council voted to build the memorial, I ran into old Sheriff Kowalski at the Town Pub. It was only a few weeks before he died and he was half in the bag that night. And bitter. He told me he’d kicked Novak loose for the sake of the town, and later, the same punks he’d saved turned on him like a pack of rats. And now they were going to put up a damn shrine to the murderer who wrecked his life.”

“What did he mean, for the sake of the town?” Shea asked.

“After Novak killed that guard during the Days of Rage, he didn’t run to Port Martin by accident. Some of the kids in his little commie cell at Michigan State were from here. He figured they’d be home for the holidays, and would help him get out of the country. But when he got picked up, the first thing Max did was offer to rat out his friends to the FBI to buy himself a better deal.”

“A real sweetheart,” Puck observed.

“Novak was a piece of shit,” Sheriff Doyle spat. “But the others... Hell, they were just college kids dabbling in radical politics. And they were from some of the finest families in this town. They had nothing to do with that bombing and didn’t deserve to have their lives destroyed by that psycho. So the sheriff talked to their parents and arranged for a... ransom.”

“Took a bribe, you mean,” Puck snorted.

“Old Tom needed the money to keep his deputies quiet. He knew they’d probably lose their jobs over it and he was right. So they faked the tunnel long enough to take pictures, then filled it in again. Everybody assumed Max’s pals in the SDS or the Weathermen broke him out. A decade or so later, those same kids had businesses and families of their own, and became the new pillars of the community. And it wasn’t long before they fired Tom Kowalski, the guy who’d saved their collective young asses.”

“Or so Sheriff Kowalski told you,” Sara said carefully. “How do you know that it’s true?”

“I don’t,” Doyle admitted. “But I do know that Tom Kowalski wouldn’t murder a kid. He was too good a man for that. Too good a cop.”

“He wasn’t so hot at guarding prisoners,” Shea said, “and he had good reason to lie. You said it yourself, there’s no statute of limitations on murder, including Novak’s, if he was killed back then.”

“But he wasn’t! Novak spoke at a press conference in Toronto later that spring. That was months after the escape.”

“And he was wearing a ski mask,” Sara pointed out. “It could have been anyone.”

“The FBI identified his voice.”

“Or claimed they did,” Puck said. “It was still J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI back then. Given what we’ve already uncovered, are you willing to take their word for it?”

“Maybe not,” Doyle conceded. “The problem is, you haven’t turned up any actual evidence of anything, except that the famous Christmas Break didn’t happen the way people said it did.”

“What do you intend to do about this?” Sara demanded.

“I don’t know, Sara. This thing’s been lying there all these years, like a hot power line downed by a storm. It destroyed Tom Kowalski and maybe Novak, too. I’m not going to blow my career over a forty-year-old jailbreak.”

“You can’t just ignore this,” Sara said.

“No, but I can pass the buck.” Taking a pad from his desk drawer, Doyle jotted a few quick notes, then slid the pad across his desk to Sara.

“I’ve been against this memorial from the start, Sara. If I open a new investigation, the council will think it’s political no matter what I say. Old Tom told me the names of the kids who were involved at the time. Take a look at it.” Sara picked up the notepad, glanced at it, and paled.

“My God, Marty, this is a who’s who of Port Martin. Half the country-club set.”

“Now you see my problem. If I start questioning these people about a wild story I heard from a drunk, they’ll get my ass fired in a New York minute. They might talk to you, though, off the record. Tell ’em you’re doing research for the restoration.”

“But most of them are my friends, Marty. You can’t expect me to question them, then report back to you.”

“What you decide to tell me is completely up to you. To be honest, if I never hear another word about Red Max and the Days of Rage, it’ll be too soon. But if you uncover evidence of a crime, or any indication of where Novak might be now, it’s your civic duty to tell me about it. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” Puck said. “You’re asking us to do your job for you.”

“Maybe I am,” Doyle admitted. “But if I were you, I’d walk extra soft, Pops. Because if Red Max really was murdered back then, you may be talking to the people who took him out.”

“He’s right,” Shea said, as they rode down in the elevator. “Maybe you should just step away from this.”

“And do what?” Sara demanded. “Shut down the project? Or worse, build a monument to a damned lie? Not a chance, guys. Nineteen Sixty-Nine Main Street is my concept and I’ve put two years of my life into it. One way or another, I want the truth now.”

“Then you ain’t looking for it alone,” Puck said positively. “They didn’t call ’em the Days of Rage for nothin’. We dug this mess up for you, we’ll help you put it to rest. Who’s first on the list the sheriff gave you?”

Glancing at the slip of paper, Sara smiled in spite of herself. “Dawn Stanton, the town librarian. Trust me, guys, she’s not dangerous.”

Perhaps not, but Red Max Novak was still a touchy subject. When Sara told Mrs. Stanton why they’d come, she ushered them into her private office, a glassed-in, second-story cubicle with an overview of the book stacks below and the big lake glistening in the distance.

“How much do you already know?” the librarian asked absently, staring out over the lake, whitecaps breaking in the afternoon sun. She was a handsome woman, crowding sixty but well preserved, a matronly blond earth-mother in a flowered granny dress and Birkenstocks.

“We only know that you were... involved somehow,” Sara said carefully. “Anything you tell us will be off the record, Dawn. The memorial is going to attract a lot of attention, I just want to avoid surprises.”

“Then you picked the wrong subject,” Dawn said drily. “Max Novak was full of surprises. Not all of them pleasant. He cut quite a romantic figure on campus back then, the romantic revolutionary, and we... hooked up, as kids say today.”

“You were lovers?” Shea asked.

“Love’s too strong a term to describe what we had. Hot pants would be more accurate. Max was a beautiful boy with a terrific body, but he was also a complete egomaniac. A charming, irrepressible ham. When he was arrested, he told the police he knew he had the right to remain silent, but he didn’t have the ability.” She shook her head, smiling, remembering. “Those were wild times and he was one wild boy.”

“Have you ever heard from him?” Puck asked.

“Never. But that’s not surprising, I wasn’t all that important to him.”

“You were his girlfriend,” Sara noted.

“Things were different back then,” Mrs. Stanton said. “The hippie movement was in full flower-power. Girls would bang any boy with long hair five minutes after meeting them. That’s what revolution meant to most of us — sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. We thought we could change the world, bring on the Age of Aquarius. And we did, eventually.

“Most of the things we were fighting for — ending the war, ending the draft, women’s rights, gay rights, ecology — are all part of the mainstream now. Thankfully, without the bloody revolt Red Max was preaching. But the world changed us, too. We got older, had kids of our own, and presto, we turned into our parents. Straight citizens with families and jobs and mortgages. And if Red Max Novak walked through that door this instant, I might not know him.”

“So you have no idea what happened to him afterward?”

Dawn hesitated, clearly deciding how much to tell them. “I know that his escape was a setup, if that’s what you’re asking, Sara. My father and some of his friends put up the money, but afterward, he and my brother Joel had a terrible fight about it.”

“About the jailbreak?”

“Partly that, I think. After my father arranged to pay off Sheriff Kowalski, he came to Joel for help. But something went wrong.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, but it must have been serious. A year later, my father had a coronary. He was hospitalized for weeks before he passed on. But Joel never visited him. After that argument over Red Max, they never spoke to each other again. Ever.”

Joel Kennedy, of Stanfield, Kennedy, and Bauer, attorneys-at-law, had a third- floor corner office with his name on the door in a century-old Main Street office complex, a block from the harbor yacht club.

If he was surprised by Sara’s visit, in the company of two construction roughnecks, he hid it well. He seemed more curious than concerned.

Tall and slender, with crisp, dark hair and a sunlamp tan, Kennedy wore a three-piece pinstripe that probably cost more than Shea’s truck.

“My sister called ahead to warn me you were coming,” Kennedy said, waving them to maroon leather seats facing his ornately carved desk. “She needn’t have bothered. With all the talk about the memorial, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about those days, lately. Maybe it’s time to clear the air, get it off my chest. What do you want to know?”

“What can you tell us about the jailbreak?” Sara asked.

“Which one?” Kennedy smiled, bridging his narrow fingertips. “At the time, with the police blaming SDS and the Weathermen for breaking Max out, most of my friends thought the break was a freaking miracle, proof of revolutionary solidarity, the brotherhood of the working class.” He shook his head ruefully.

“It was all nonsense, of course. Max Novak talked a good show, but one night in that jail and he was threatening to drag us all down with him if somebody didn’t get him out. The sheriff contacted my father, Dad called a few friends, and they arranged for the famous Christmas breakout. But not by revolutionary action. They did it the old-fashioned American way. They bought it.”

“And you knew about it at the time? How?”

“They asked me to help. After the escape, Max was too hot to hide. His face was all over the news, he had to get out of the country right away. Our little anti-war cell had been running an underground railroad, smuggling draft evaders into Canada. We thought it was a big secret, but somehow my father knew about it, and so did his friends. When he asked for my help, it was the most disillusioning experience of my young life.”

“How so?” Shea asked.

“Because I realized the whole thing was bogus. We were preaching power to the people, but all Max managed to do was blow up some poor working stiff. Revolution was just a game we’d been playing. And our parents weren’t really the enemy, they’d just been humoring us. Like the kids we were back then.”

“Dawn told us you and your father had a terrible row. Is that what it was about?”

“No,” Joel said flatly. “She shouldn’t have told you about that.”

“But she did,” Sara said simply. “It’s time for the truth now, Joel. You said they asked for your help. Did you help them?”

Kennedy sighed. “I didn’t have much choice. I knew a Métis who was smuggling dope down from Canada. We’d been paying him to take draft evaders along on the return trip—”

“Métis?” Sara asked.

“Half-breeds, sort of,” Puck explained, “Métis are part French Canuck, part Cree or Odawa, claim to be descendants of the original French voyageurs. Great woodsmen, most of ’em.

“My father offered the Métis, Bobby Roanhorse, five thousand dollars to smuggle Max across the lake into Canada. But there was a problem.”

“It was already late December,” Puck said. “And Lake Huron froze over early that year.”

“Roanhorse said going by boat was impossible, they’d need a snowmobile. So my father arranged for one, a brand new Polaris 340 from Hal Jensen’s dealership.”

Sara nodded. “Another name on Kowalski’s list. Do you know if they made it to Canada?”

“They must have,” Joel said carefully. “Max held a press conference to condemn the killings at Kent State. It was televised.”

“And a million people saw a man in a ski mask,” Sara said. “But that’s not what I asked, exactly. Do you know if they made it across?”

Joel looked away, taking a long ragged breath, and let it out slowly.

“No, I don’t know. But to be honest, I very much doubt it. As we were putting together the final arrangements, my father confessed that he’d promised Roanhorse an extra ten thousand to be sure Max never made it off that ice.”

“Dear God,” Sara said softly.

“He did it to protect us,” Joel pleaded, “I realize that now. Max had already tried to sell us out, he’d do it again in a heartbeat the next time he got jammed up. We were just kids, but we could have gone to prison for years, for believing in an unpopular cause and Red Max Novak. My father recognized the danger to us, so he... did what he had to. To save us.”

“What did you do about it?”

“I warned Max. I whispered to him, just before they set off.”

“How did he react?” Puck asked.

“He said it didn’t matter. That he had to get to Canada and the Métis was his only chance to make it.”

“Are you sure he understood you?” Sara asked.

“He understood, all right. Because I did more than just warn him. I...” Kennedy swallowed. “I slipped him a gun.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Puck said softly.

“I had to,” Joel said. “They meant to kill him, forgodsake.”

“And did they?” Puck pressed. “Do you know what actually happened?”

“I truly don’t. Max supposedly appeared at that press conference, but I have serious doubts it was actually him. The Weathermen could have staged that show for their own reasons, and who knows what the FBI was up to in those days? All I know for sure is, a year later Bobby Roanhorse came back to Port Martin. And my father paid him his blood money. Ten thousand dollars. And nobody’s seen Red Max Novak since the spring of nineteen seventy.”

“Maybe you’d better sit this one out, miss,” Puck suggested. “I’ve worked with a lot of Métis over the years, and most of ’em are fine people. But if this dope dealer did Novak in back then and we show up asking questions...” He broke off when Sara glanced at him curiously, as if wondering what language he was speaking. And he realized he might as well be talking to the wall.

Shea kept his eyes focused on the road. They were a dozen miles out of Port Martin, following Joel Kennedy’s directions. The gravel track skirted the shore of Burt Lake, a spot infamous to Native Americans. A nearby Ojibwa town was burned to the ground by local authorities during the Great Depression. Families turned out into the snow in the dead of winter. To forage, or starve.

Even now, with the afternoon light fading into the forest, the land had a somber edge, still brooding over ancient injustices.

The Roanhorse Tree Farm backed up to the edge of a section of National Forest. Thousands of acres of rough country, uninhabited and untouched for a hundred years.

The tree farm wasn’t much better. Rows of ragged spruce and jack pine, poorly shaped and trimmed, fit only for replanting along roadways, or to shield landfills.

The house looked abandoned. A ramshackle, two-story saltbox a century old and showing every day of it. Flaking, chalky whitewash, eyeless windows with shades pulled down. The only signs of habitation were cords of firewood neatly stacked on the sagging front porch. And animal pelts drying on stretch racks against the railings, filling the air with the redolence of wildness and putrefaction. Nature in the raw.

Sara knocked on the door. No answer. “Mr. Roanhorse?” she called.

“Out back.”

They followed the echo around the side of the house.

Bobby Roanhorse was splitting wood, his double-bitted ax ringing as he put his back into every swing. He was working stripped to the waist, wearing leather gloves, army fatigue pants tucked into high-top logging boots, a shaggy mane of raven hair, shot with gray, loose around his shoulders. He looked wild and surly and hard, his dark eyes unreadable behind thick brows.

“I only sell trees wholesale,” he said. “I don’t do no business with the public.”

“We didn’t come to buy trees, Mr. Roanhorse. I’m Sara Jacoby, the city manager at Port Martin. We’re here to talk about Max Novak.”

Roanhorse paused in mid swing, then straightened slowly, looking them over. Coldly. Like a cougar eyeing game that had strayed onto his hunting grounds.

“Who are your friends, lady? Some kind of cops?”

“We’re working men, like you,” Puck said. “I’m Paquette, he’s Shea. Our crew is handling the construction at Nineteen Sixty-Nine Main Street.”

“The freakin’ hippie memorial?” Roanhorse spat, resting the ax head on the log. “I seen about it on the TV. So? What do you want with me?”

“We know you were involved in the Christmas break,” Sara said. “We’d like to know what happened.”

“You’d like to know?” he mimicked her sarcastically. “Why? What’s it matter after all this time?”

“We’re building a monument to those years, Mr. Roanhorse, and you were a part of them. The monument will be here long after we’re gone. We’d like it to be true.”

“Truth?” Roanhorse snorted. “I seen a movie once, lady, some punk asks Jack Nicholson for the truth. Know what Nicholson says?”

“He says, ‘You can’t handle the truth,’ ” Shea said. “But he tells it anyway.”

“That’s right.” Roanhorse nodded, looking away, over his wasted acres. “He does tell it, doesn’t he? It’s almost funny. For years after it happened, I expected the law to come for me. I laid low out here, waitin’ on ’em, always watchful. And after a while, waitin’ and hidin’ were all I knew. When I heard about the nineteen sixty-nine museum, I thought somebody might come around. Or the cops would, finally. Seems like I’ve been waiting for you people most of my life.”

“We’re not the police, Mr. Roanhorse, and we already know much of the story. We know the breakout was rigged, and you were hired to guide Max Novak across the ice to Canada. All we want to know is what happened.”

“Fair enough,” he said, smiling faintly, “here’s the truth. See if you can handle it. You gotta understand how it was in them days. Back then, being Métis was almost the same as being black. People treated me like dirt. Except for the hippies. Freaks didn’t mind hangin’ with me, sharin’ their dope, their women. It proved how emancipated they were.”

“And you resented it?”

“Hell no, I grew up in foster care, lady, no family. Drifted down here, livin’ hand to mouth, peddling weed and speed to stay afloat. I’d take any friends I could get. Even punk-ass college kids who wanted a half-breed mascot.”

“So you weren’t political?”

“Dead wrong. All Native Americans were political back then. American Indian Movement. Alcatraz, Wounded Knee. There was serious shit in the wind, those days. Revolution. I was Métis but I could spout the rhetoric with the rest, power to the people, all that nonsense. But when the trouble with Red Max Novak came up, I found out real quick where my place was.”

“How do you mean?”

“I was strictly the hired help. They offered me five thousand bucks to sneak that dirtbag egomaniac across the big ice into Canada. Five grand was a lot of bread in those days, but they had no idea what they were asking. Even with a snowmobile, it’s more than a hundred miles across territory rougher than the back of the moon, and just as empty.”

“But it can be done,” Puck offered.

“Sure it can. My people have been crossing that lake for ten thousand years. For five grand I would’ve carried Max Novak across on my back whistlin’ Dixie all the way.”

“Yeah?” Shea said. “And what would you do for an extra ten grand?”

“Ah, so you heard about that part.” Roanhorse nodded. “The blood money.”

“We know Joel Kennedy’s father offered you money to kill Max Novak,” Puck said bluntly. “Is that what happened?”

“Not exactly. Joel comes to me, begs me to help his friend, like we’re all buddies, revolutionary brothers, you know? Then his old man tops Joel’s offer with another ten. He asks me to do murder. For money. Like I was some kind of animal.”

“And did you?” Puck asked.

“Jesus, Pops, you just spit it out, don’t you?” Roanhorse grinned wolfishly. “Hell no, I didn’t do it. I’m not a damn savage. I’m Métis, Cree Nation. The first Americans. Besides that, Max Novak was one desperate sonofabitch, paranoid as hell. He was packing a gun and I wasn’t. I figured earning the five for getting him to Canada would be money enough.”

“What happened?” Sara asked.

“The big ice is treacherous that early. Floes shift, ice bridges collapse. One wrong step can drop you into a hundred feet of water so cold you sink like a rock. And we had to travel by night, no lights. With a snowmobile, I figured we could make it in two, three days. But the trip was even rougher than I expected.”

“Let me guess,” Puck said. “Poor Max had an accident?”

“You’ve got it exactly backwards, Pops. I’m the one who took the fall. Dropped a runner through an air pocket, dumped the damn snow machine. We went flyin’ across the ice, which was lucky because the snowmobile broke through the ice, disappeared in half a second, leavin’ us stranded about halfway across.”

“How far out?” Puck asked.

“Maybe fifty miles, give or take. No way to be sure. And I was in rough shape. That damn machine rolled on my leg, broke it. Tough luck, Max says. But since the revolution was more important than either of us and I obviously couldn’t keep up, he’d have to leave me. Which he damn well did. Pulled his gun on me, took my compass, took the water and food from my backpack, then headed north on his own.”

“Do you know what happened to him?” Sara asked.

“Lady, I had other things to worry about, like dragging my ass across fifty miles of ice on one leg with no water and no compass. The only break I got, other than my leg, was a clear sky so I could navigate by night. From the stars, I knew I was closer to the Upper Peninsula than Canada, so I turned west. Crawled four days, maybe more, I lost track. A trapper found me. An Odawa. I stayed with his family a few months. Healed up.”

“And Novak?” Sara asked.

“Yeah, that’s really the bottom line for you people, isn’t it? What happened to the great Red Max? Truth is, I’m not sure. I know they claim that was him at the press conference later that spring, but...”

“But?” Shea prompted.

“Even with food and water, it was a damned long hike across that ice.”

“You made it.” Puck pointed out.

“I’m Métis.” Roanhorse shrugged. “Max Novak was a city boy, didn’t know squat about surviving on that ice. He should have thought of that before he left me to die. My guess is, he likely drowned or froze to death the same night he ditched me. But the God’s truth is, I don’t know what happened to him. And don’t much care. Screw Max Novak. And the rest of you, too.”

“Interesting story,” Puck said, “but you left out the part where you came back. And collected Kennedy’s blood money.”

“You’re right, I did. But not for killing Max Novak,” Roanhorse said grimly, peeling off his gloves. To reveal blunt paws with stumps in place of fingers. Sara gasped.

“Frostbite,” Puck said softly.

“I can barely hold a salt shaker, mister, or work a cell phone. That sonofabitch destroyed my hands, my whole life, really. As for Kennedy’s blood money, I earned every cent of it. I’ve said my piece, told you the flat-ass truth. Now I’m done with it, and with you.” Roanhorse shifted his ax to port arms, hefting it in his maimed paws. “Unless you people want to buy some trees, you’d best get steppin’. I’ve got work to do.”

They made the long drive back to Port Martin in silence, each of them lost in thought. Sorting out the bits and pieces of the puzzle, trying to reshape it into a new reality.

“Do you believe him?” Sara said at last.

“Yeah, I do,” Puck said. “What he said lines up with the rest of it. Besides, he’s Métis. I wouldn’t question his word lightly. What did you make of him?”

“The same,” Sara nodded. “I think Max Novak almost certainly died on that ice through his own selfish stupidity. You were right about him all along, Mr. Paquette. I was wrong, and I apologize. My God, what am I going to tell the council?”

“How about nothing?” Shea offered. “We’ve heard some interesting stories, but we don’t actually know anything.”

“We know Red Max escaped by bribery, not daring.”

“But the important thing is, he did escape,” Puck said. “His vanishing act made him as famous as Jimmy Hoffa or Judge Crater. And this monument isn’t about the real Max, anyway, only his legend and those times. Nineteen sixty-nine. The Days of Rage. To remind folks that if things get too far out of whack, wild-eyed psychos like Red Max start coming out of the woodwork.”

“But the tunnel—”

“Leave the tunnel to us,” Shea said. “The place is so overbuilt it’s practically a fortress. We can brace the beams and take a short section out. Tourists will be able to crawl through it without ducking their heads.”

“But Novak didn’t really go out that way.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure,” Puck said drily. “Maybe he skinnied right under them beams. From what we’ve heard, he’d have no trouble getting low enough.”

They dropped Sara off at the city hall, watched her disappear through the double doors. But even after she’d gone, Shea left the truck in neutral, idling, drumming his fingers on the wheel.

“What?” Puck asked.

“That was a nice speech,” Dan said, shifting in his seat to face his partner. “Thanks for saving our job. Too bad it was total horse hockey.”

“How do you mean?”

“Max Novak died on that ice, but it was no accident. Old Kennedy sent him out there with a Métis dope dealer, and promised that dealer a lot of money to get rid of him. Max dies, the Métis collects the blood money. Do the math. You don’t need Ellery Queen to figure out what happened.”

“You think Roanhorse murdered Max out there?”

“Don’t you?”

“I... did, at first. Except for one thing. Back when I was loggin’, I saw guys lose fingers and toes to frostbite. Knew a fella once who passed out drunk in an alley. Froze both ears and half his nose off. Had to wear a phony rubber nose after, made him look like Bozo the Clown. Pitiful damn sight.”

“What’s your point?”

“Frostbite’s an ugly injury, like being chewed up by a Rottweiler. A guy losing all ten fingertips? Each one lopped at the first joint, neat and even? That’s something I’ve never seen. Have you?”

Shea started to answer, then closed his mouth again. Getting it.

“Sweet Jesus,” he said softly. “Novak wore a mask in Toronto to conceal his plastic surgery. But maybe they remodeled more than his face. What the hell happened out there?”

“Probably what Roanhorse told us, or something close to it. The snowmobile cracked up, the Métis got bad hurt, and Max left him to die. Or maybe the Métis tried to earn his money and came out second best. Either way, I think Novak was the one who made it off the ice, minus some fingertips. And realized they were his ticket home. As Red Max Novak, he’d be running the rest of his life. But with plastic surgery, he could cash in the rest of his fingertips and come back as Bobby Roanhorse, a drifter with no family. He waited for things to cool down, came back to collect his blood money, and stayed on in the last place they’d look for him. Hiding in plain sight.”

“You think that Métis might really be Red Max?”

“I honestly don’t know. Don’t even know how you could prove it now. Certainly not by fingerprints. And after all this time, I’m not sure it matters which one of those boys came off the ice. One was a murderer, the other meant to be, and the survivor’s serving a life sentence, hiding out in that backwoods shack. And he can’t pick up a salt shaker or manage a cell phone. If that ain’t justice, sonny, it comes damn close.”

“Either way, he’s a murderer, and like the man said, there’s no statute of limitations on that.”

“You’re right. And back in the day, it would have been an easy call. I hated hippies and radicals like Red Max for what they did to my country, and to my nephew. But nobody involved in the breakout really got away with anything. It destroyed some, and still haunts the others after all these years. Even if we knew for certain what happened, and we don’t, I don’t see the point in tearing those old wounds open again. The truth is, a jail’s a perfect monument to those times. Because some people will never be free of them. So let’s do what they hired us to do, Danny. Build their damned memorial.”

“To Red Max?”

“Hell no,” Puck said flatly. “To Nineteen Sixty-Nine Main Street. To the Flower Children and my nephew. And the Days of Rage.”

Work on the rejuvenated civic building raced on through the fall, taking on a small-town rhythm of its own. The crew began attending local football games on Friday nights and hosting walk-throughs for grade-school kids. For many, it was the first time they’d seen manual laborers up close, men wielding hammers, rivet guns, and power saws with skill and great gusto.

The job was still a lightning rod for controversy, though. While remodeling the basement cells, Maph Rochon had a flash of inspiration. Using the photo of Red Max as a template, he reshaped scrap bars of cast iron to form a larger than life outline of an AK-47 assault rifle, raised in the air.

Sara loved the elegant simplicity of the symbol, but when she suggested adopting it as the 1969 Main Street logo, it set off another ferocious debate at a city council meeting, complete with shouted threats and curses. And reams of free publicity.

In the end, the outrageous symbol was adopted by a single vote, and the mayor stormed out of the hall in a huff.

By late October, the lease list was at full occupancy, with tenants clamoring to move in, desperate to cash in on the Christmas rush.

Off the record, Sara met with the council’s planning committee and told them about the tunnel, and what had come to light about it. They thanked her politely for her efforts, then voted to continue on with the historical facts in evidence. Verities like photographs, police reports, and news stories far outweighed the ramblings of a disgraced alcoholic.

When a legend plays better than the truth, go with the legend every time.

Swamped with the bull-work of a major reconstruction job, neither Shea nor Puck ever discussed that day at the tree farm. Or what it meant.

But as the project moved into its final phases, Puck felt a leaden weight gradually lifting from his spirit. He’d expected to hate every minute of this job, but seeing it through, seeing the bogus cell display and the posters of a ranting Red Max Novak every single day seemed to slowly drain away his resentment. Sometimes, familiarity only breeds... familiarity.

The final days of the project swept down on them like an avalanche. Shea, Puck, and the crew were putting in twenty-hour days, desperately wrapping up the last details: wiring and Internet hookups, smoke alarms and emergency lighting; custom-building shop displays and shelving that were being stocked with merchandise even as they worked.

They finished the job on Thanksgiving Day, three weeks ahead of schedule, and well under budget. With luck they’d be home and dry for Christmas.

The grand opening of the 1969 Main Street Mall was almost as wild as the original ’69, minus the bombings, of course. The heated press coverage had generated national interest. The building wasn’t just a commercial development anymore, it had become a genuine Happening.

Eager shoppers began gathering at the entrance a full four hours early. Many were decked out in period garb — headbands, beads, and bell-bottoms. With flowers in their hair.

There were protestors, too, but they weren’t wild-haired student radicals. Instead, they were throwbacks from Puck’s side of the culture war, army veterans and their blue-collar sympathizers, wearing faded camouflage jackets or combat boots. Some carried homemade signs that read BAN THE BOMBERS or MIAs, NEVER FORGET.

They’d been America’s mainstream once, her muscle and spine. Now they were relegated to the far side of the street, a ragged line of graying soldiers shambling along under the watchful eyes of the police. Totally irrelevant now. The librarian was right. The revolution was over, the insurgents had won the battle for hearts and minds, without firing a single shot.

Up in the old courtroom, which was now a stylish atrium ringed with smart shops, Sara Jacoby spoke at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for 1969 Main Street. She thanked the mayor and city council for their support, and the firm of Shea and Paquette for a job well done. Danny made a brief speech, too, but as he wrapped up his remarks, Puck ducked out of the room. Afraid he might be called on next.

He rode the new escalator down to the street, marveling at the festive crowds in period costumes, savoring the sweet aroma of déja vu that hung in the air, thick as incense.

Suddenly, he felt a chill. An icy premonition. A reflex left over from Korea kicked in. He knew someone’s eyes were on him. He felt it strongly as a physical touch.

Easing into the shadow of the doorway, he looked out over the crush of shoppers, carefully scanning each face. And spotted the Métis, watching him from across the street. Looking ordinary and unremarkable, in grungy work clothes and his unkempt mane of shaggy hair.

Roanhorse was standing near the line of protesting vets, but clearly didn’t belong with them. Even surrounded by that crowd, he seemed more alone than any man Puck had ever known.

His eyes were unreadable at that distance, but there was no mistaking that face anymore. Puck knew every essential line of it. He’d been seeing it every day for months on posters and in photos.

And the Métis recognized Puck as well. Because he slowly closed his crippled hand into a fist, then raised it in a long-forgotten salute. Power to the People. One lone fist held high above that crowd.

Only for a moment. Then it was gone. Or maybe Puck just lost sight of it. His eyes misted, blurring the scene. But he raised his own fist anyway, returning the salute, one warrior to another, across a milling sea of shoppers. And forty years.

He held his fist aloft for a long time, but there was no reply. And as he slowly lowered his arm, he realized Sara Jacoby had moved up beside him, eying him curiously.

“Who was that?” she asked, scanning the crowd.

“Nobody,” Puck said. “Not anymore.”