Heat Lightning

12

IN THE TRUCK, Virgil backed in a circle, careful on the narrow road, held a palm up to the deputy, and headed back east, away from the reservation.

“Where’re we going?” Bunton asked. One hand was pulled forward and down between his legs, almost under the seat, and Bunton was humped over and down.

“ Bemidji. I’m gonna put you in a little dark room in the county jail and I’m gonna kick your ass. By the time you get out of there, you’re gonna look like a can of Campbell ’s mushroom soup.”

“Ah, bullshit,” Bunton said. “Why don’t you undo my hand? This is gonna kill my back, riding to Bemidji this way.”

Virgil looked at him, sighed, pulled the truck over. “If you so much as twitch the wrong way, I’ll break your goddamn arm,” he said, and he got out, walked around the truck, unsnapped the cuff, and snapped it back onto the safety belt. As he was walking around to get into the truck again, the deputy rolled by, dropped his passenger-side window.

“If I were you, I’d get out of rifle range,” he said.

“Think I’m okay,” Virgil said.

The deputy shook his head. “Don’t call me again,” he said. “You might be okay, but I gotta roam around here on my own.”

Virgil opened his mouth to apologize, but the deputy was rolling away. The DNR guy came up, dropped his window, and said, “You’re the writer guy, huh?”

Virgil said, “Yeah, I do some writing.”

“I read that piece on ice-fishing on Winni… Wasn’t as bad as it might have been, but, anyway, you just weren’t drinking enough.” He said it with a smile.

“Well, thank you, I guess,” Virgil said.

“We got a regional meeting up here in September, we’re looking for a speaker…”

What he meant was cheap speaker. Virgil gave him a business card, told him he was available to talk if he could get the time off.

“We’ll be in touch,” the guy said. “Hell of a run; that’s why I love this shit. But I gotta tell you, man, it’s better in a boat.”

“I hear you,” Virgil said.

WHEN HE GOT BACK in the truck, Bunton had managed to dig a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and light it. Virgil said, “This is a no-smoking truck.”

“I’ll blow the smoke out the window,” Bunton said.

“One cigarette,” Virgil said, and he touched the passenger-window button and rolled it down.

Bunton nodded. “You lost. I made it across the line. You had to cheat to get me.”

“Wasn’t a race, Ray. There are four people dead now, and you know who did it,” Virgil said.

“No, I don’t.”

“Ray, goddamnit, you know something. What I want to know is, are there more people gonna get killed? Are you gonna get killed?”

“Maybe,” Bunton said. “But I need to talk to a lawyer.”

“Fuck a bunch of lawyers. Talk to me. I’ll give you absolution right here. Your sins won’t count.”

“How about the crimes?” Bunton asked.

“Those might count,” Virgil admitted. “But you’re obligated-”

Bunton cut him off. “Here is why I can’t talk to you, okay? I’ll tell you this.”

Virgil nodded. “Okay.”

Bunton thought it over for a minute, taking another drag on the cigarette, blowing the smoke out the side window. “I once did something that, if I tell you about it, I might get put in Stillwater. Not murder or anything. Not really anything that bad-not that I did, anyway. But if I go to Stillwater, I’ll get murdered just quicker’n shit. I won’t last a month, unless they put me in solitary, and even then, something could happen.”

“Okay…”

“And if I don’t tell you…” Bunton looked out at the low, crappy landscape. “If I don’t tell you, and you don’t catch this asshole who’s killing us… then I might get killed. Shit, I probably will get killed. So I don’t know what the fuck to do, but I got to talk to a lawyer.”

“We’ll get you a lawyer as soon as you heal up,” Virgil said.

“Heal up?”

“From me puttin’ you in that room and beatin’ the crap out of you.”

Bunton half laughed. “I had you figured out way back in the garage. You’re one of those good-old-boy cops. Now, if you were John Wigge, I might tell you what I know, because if I didn’t, Wigge’d get out a pair of pliers and start pulling off my balls.”

Virgil thought about Wigge for a moment, and the cut-off fingers.

“Let me tell you about Wigge,” Virgil said. “We found his body, but not at the rest stop. Whoever did this…”

He told Bunton about it, Bunton’s face stolid, like it had been carved from oak. When Virgil finished, Bunton took another drag and said, “I just… shit. I gotta talk to a lawyer.”

They rode along for a minute, and then Virgil said, “I’ll have a lawyer waiting for you in Bemidji. But you gotta make up your mind quick. Things are happening.”

“I’ll tell you what, I might be fucked,” Bunton said. They crossed a patch of swamp and he snapped his cigarette into it. “My best chance would be up on the res. If I was up there, they couldn’t get at me. Even people who live up there, they can’t find you if you don’t want to be found.”

Virgil said, “You said, ‘this asshole who’s killing us.’ Can you tell me who ‘us’ is?”

Bunton shook his head. “Not until after I talk to the lawyer. ‘Us’ is part of the problem. ‘Us’ is why I want to get up in the woods.”

HE WOULDN’T TALK about it anymore; he’d talk, but not about the killings. “I had enough dealings with the law to know when to keep my mouth shut,” he said.

“Then you gotta know you’re in some fairly deep shit, Ray. When you whacked me on the head, put me in the hospital…”

“The hospital? You pussy.”

“Hey, I didn’t ask to go. They took me in an ambulance, I was out.”

“Didn’t mean to hit you that hard,” Bunton said.

“Shouldn’t have hit me at all. Whacking me earned you two years in Stillwater, my friend. Ag assault on a police officer. And if you don’t want to be in Stillwater…”

Bunton said, “It’s not Stillwater -it’s the guys who could get me killed in Stillwater. If you bust them, then Stillwater ’s okay. Sort of like having really good Social Security. I could get my teeth fixed, for one thing, and maybe even my knees.”

“So you’re saying that there are people outside, who could order you killed inside. Like dopers?” Virgil asked.

“Fuck you,” Bunton said. “You’re trying to sneak it out of me. I ain’t talking to you anymore.”

He did, but only about rock ’n’ roll. “What’s that shirt you’ve got on?” he asked. “Is that a band?”

Virgil looked down at his chest. He was wearing his KMFDM “Money” shirt: “Yeah, over on the industrial end,” he said. “You know, they’re the guys who became MDFMK? Then they went back to KMFDM. And I think a couple of them spun off and became Slick Idiot at some point.”

That was more information than Bunton needed. “The only fuckin’ slick I know is Gracie Slick,” Bunton said. “Fuckin’ ABC, DEF.”

Bunton liked the old stuff, acid and metal, narrative music, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother, middle Byrds, Black Sabbath up to AC/DC, and some of Aerosmith and even selected Tom Petty; and some outlaw country.

Virgil tuned his satellite radio to a golden-oldie station and Steppen-wolf came up with “Born to Be Wild.”

“That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” Bunton said, slapping time on the dashboard with his free hand. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about, right there,” and they got back to 72, and turned to head out on the highway, looking for Bemidji.

THEY CUT A DEAL after two hours in a small office on the second floor of the Beltrami County Jail. Bunton had the advice of a public defender, a tall, gray-haired, heavyset woman named Jasmine (Jimmy) Carter who wore a strawberry-colored dress and a scowl.

The arguments:

Bunton believed he would be killed if jailed or imprisoned, for reasons he wouldn’t divulge to anyone but the public defender. He refused to allow Carter to pass on the details, but did allow her to tell Virgil and Harry Smith, the Beltrami County chief deputy, that she thought Bunton’s fears might have some basis in reality, although she couldn’t say so for sure.

Virgil, speaking for the state, said that Bunton was guilty of assault on a police officer, resisting arrest, and numerous traffic offenses, some of which might be felonies. And he was almost certainly guilty of conspiracy to conceal a number of felonies and accessory after the fact to four murders. He would be held in jail, where he’d almost certainly be safe, maybe. Virgil suggested that some accommodation might be arranged if Bunton talked.

Carter said that any accommodation would have to be arranged by herself through the Beltrami, Chisago, Hennepin, and Ramsey County attorneys, where the alleged crimes had taken place. The deal would have to be approved by a judge.

Virgil said that all the bureaucratic maneuvers would take a lot of time, in which time more people might be murdered, adding to the list of charges that Bunton already faced, and that in the meantime he’d be held in a jail, where he’d probably be safe, depending.

Bunton said he needed a cigarette really bad, and Smith said that the Beltrami County Jail was a smoke-free facility, and Bunton said, “You gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me.”

Virgil wondered aloud what would happen if a police officer, acting on his own, made a deal with a prisoner, that he wouldn’t use any incriminating information divulged by the prisoner against him, but instead would consider it information from a confidential informant.

Carter said it might be too late for that, that arrests had already taken place. Bunton said, “Wait a minute, I could go for that.” Carter said, “You probably could, but it’s probably illegal.” Virgil said, “He’s already up to his ass in alligators. He’s gonna get bit-this would at least give you an argument. Fact is, I don’t give a shit about Ray Bunton if I can stop the killing.”

Carter said, “Let me think about it for a minute.”

She took Bunton to an interview room, where they talked for fifteen minutes, and then emerged and said, “This is the deal. It’s all oral, no paper. You go for a walk with Ray, and talk. When you’re done, Ray is released to the custody of the Red Lake police force, and he agrees to testify for you in court in return for dropping charges.”

“That’s a deal,” Virgil said.

She shook her head: “We’re all going to hell for this.”

THEY GAVE Bunton his cigarettes and lighter, but kept his wallet and all of his money and ID, and when they got out the door, Virgil said, “I’ll tell you what, dickweed. You best not try to run.”

“I’m not gonna run,” Bunton said. He lit a cigarette and blew smoke and said, “This fuckin’ state. Whoever heard of smoke-free jail? Christ, you can only jack off so much. Then what’re you going to do?”

“Keep that in mind,” Virgil said. “Which way?”

Bunton tipped his head. “Let’s go down toward the lake.”

They walked over to the lake, south and east, along a leafy street, a cool wind coming off the water, Bunton smoking, Virgil letting it go, and finally Bunton said, “You know who Carl Knox is?”

Virgil did. “What does Carl Knox have to do with this?”

“I don’t know, and I’m afraid to ask.”

“Tell me.”

“It started with a bunch of bulldozers in Vietnam…”

CARL KNOX, and more lately, his eldest daughter, Shirley, were the Twin Cities’ answer to the Mafia-a kinder, gentler organized crime, providing financing for loan sharks and retail drug dealers. They neither sharked nor dealt, but simply financed, and earned a simple two hundred percent on capital.

Knox, now in his middle sixties, also ran the largest used-heavy-equipment dealership in the area, buying, selling, and trading mostly Caterpillar machines. He also-law-enforcement people knew about it only through rumor-bought and sold large amounts of stolen Caterpillar equipment, and moved it in Canada north of the Fifty-fifth Parallel.

“Half the stuff up in the oil fields came through Knox, one way or another,” Bunton said. “I was right there at the beginning.” His voice trailed off. “Jesus Christ, this is awful.”

“Is he the guy you’re afraid of?” Virgil asked.

“Damn right I am. He’s the fuckin’ Mafia, man,” Bunton said. “He needs to get rid of us. He’s got some shooters from fuckin’ Chicago on our ass.”

“You know this for sure?”

“Well-no. But who the fuck else is it gonna be?” Bunton asked. “Who else has the shooters?”

“Tell me about it,” Virgil said.

“I DON’T KNOW all of it,” Bunton said. “Back at the end of March 1975… I’d been in Vietnam in ’69 and ’70, I’d been out for five years. Anyway, this guy calls me. John Wigge. Wasn’t on the cops yet-he’s just out of the service, Vietnam. I got no job, he’s got no job-but he says he’s got a guy who’ll pay us twenty grand in cash for two weeks’ work back in Vietnam. Two weeks at the most, but it might be a little hairy. Shit, we were young guys, we didn’t give a fuck about hairy.

“The story was this guy, Utecht, the one that got killed-his father was this crazy guy who operated all over the Pacific, selling heavy equipment. He sold a lot of shit to the South Vietnamese. Anyway, this guy is in Vietnam, and the place is falling apart. The North Vietnamese were coming down, everybody was trying to get out.”

“I’ve seen the embassy pictures, the evacuation,” Virgil offered.

“Yeah, that was like a month later. Anyway, Utecht, the old man, is in Vietnam, and he finds this whole field of heavy equipment, mostly Caterpillars, D6s up to D9s, is gonna be abandoned there. Good stuff. Some of it is almost new. And everybody’s bailing out.

“So he cuts some kind of crooked deal with the South Viets, and brings in a ship, and calls up his kid, and tells him to get some heavy-equipment guys together and get his ass over there. We’re gonna take this shit out of the country.”

“Steal it?”

“Well-save it from the North Vietnamese. The enemy.” Bunton grinned at Virgil, showing the nicotine teeth.

“All right,” Virgil said.

“So Utecht knows Wigge, and Wigge knows everybody else, and he starts calling people,” Bunton said. “I could drive a truck, I could figure out a Cat if I had to. Twenty grand. That was a shitload of money at the time. Two years’ pay. So six of us, young guys, Sanderson was one… we all flew out to Hong Kong and then right into Da Nang. Not all together, whenever we could get on a plane, but all within a couple of days.”

“I’ve heard of Da Nang, but I don’t know about it,” Virgil said.

“ Da Nang? Big base in Vietnam. Port city. So we flew in, and Utecht, the old man, picked me up at the airport, and what I did was, I drove a lowboy. There were thirty fuckin’ D9 Cats sitting there and all kinds of other shit… You know what a D9 is?”

“No.”

“Biggest fuckin’ Cat there was, at the time,” Bunton said. He dropped his cigarette on the street, stepped on it, shook another out of the pack. “Maybe still are. They used them to clear out forest. Go through a bunch of fuckin’ trees like grease through a goose. Anyway, there was thirty of them at Da Nang, and they were just sitting there, waiting for the NVA. So here we are, with this lowboy and a bunch of heavy equipment guys to get the tractors going and to run them-that was the other guys. I’d haul them out to the harbor, and they’d lift them onto the ship with this big fuckin’ crane. One of the guys told me that they were headed for Indonesia, they had some oil fields going there… I mean, some of these dozers were like fuckin’ new.”

“All the guys who’ve been killed were on this trip?” Virgil asked.

“Yeah. Anyway, what happened was, I dropped off the last load at the port, wasn’t just these Cats, it was all kinds of shit. Everything they could get moving. After I brought in the last load, they even picked up the fuckin’ lowboy and took that on board. Then Chester -”

“Utecht. Chester Utecht, the old guy.”

“Yeah, that one,” Bunton said.

“Okay…”

“He’s dead now. Died about a year ago, in Hong Kong, is what Wigge told me,” Bunton said. He had to think a minute, to get back to the thread of the story. “Anyway, Chester pulls up in this old fucked-up Microbus, and as soon as the lowboy was off the ground, going on the ship, we took off to get the other guys. This was about forty-five minutes each way, from the port to the equipment yard. Chester had airline tickets to get us out of there, spread over a couple of days, and two of the guys were going with the ship.

“So we got back to the yard, and what do we find? I’ll tell you-these dumb fucks were all about nine-tenths loaded and they’d set this house on fire… And they were fuckin’ arguing with each other… I mean like, they were freakin’ out about this house, and screaming at each other, and they had these M16s. Chester said, ‘Fuck it, we’re going,’ and we went. Me and another guy, who I think was Utecht, the younger one, the kid, but this is so fuckin’ long ago…”

“Okay…”

“Me ’n’ Utecht, we flew out of there, to Hong Kong, and then back to Minneapolis, through Alaska. Wigge went with the ship, I think, because I didn’t see him again, and somebody else went with him. Sanderson, I saw a year or so later. I asked him what happened with the house, and he said some chick got killed-that somebody started yelling at them from the house, I don’t why, and one of the guys got pissed. He was already drunk, and somebody started shooting, and one of these guys went into the house with an M16 and shot the place all up and maybe some chick got shot and I guess some old man got shot. Maybe some other people.”

Virgil said, “Ray-you’re telling me some people got murdered?”

“Yeah… maybe,” Bunton said. He shrugged. “Who knows? The fuckin’ place was going up in smoke. Thousands of people got killed. Maybe… hell, maybe it was self-defense.”

“So why is this gonna get you killed?” Virgil asked. “What does Carl Knox have to do with it?”

“One of the guys was Carl Knox,” Bunton said. “When Utecht got killed, Sanderson called me up. He was freakin’ out. He said Utecht had got Jesus, and called him a couple of times, after Chester died, and said Utecht was talking about confessing the whole thing.”

“Ah, man,” Virgil said.

“So I’m thinking, Carl Knox-he’s not exactly the Mafia, but he knows some leg-breakers for sure. If he was the one who killed the chick, and he heard about Utecht, and if he needed a hit man, I bet he could find one. Get one out of Chicago. If he needed to kill someone in prison, he could get that done, too. If he did the shooting. I mean, if there was a bunch of guys who said he did murder… You see what I’m saying? He kills Utecht to shut him up, but then he starts thinking, these other guys will know why…”

“There’s this thing-the victims have lemons in their mouths,” Virgil said. “Even Wigge… but not his bodyguard.”

“Don’t know about that,” Bunton said. “But I believe it goes back to ’ Nam.”

“I’ve been told that when they executed guys in Vietnam, sometimes they’d stuff lemons in their mouths to keep them quiet,” Virgil said.

“Don’t know about that, either.” Bunton crushed his second cigarette and lit a third. “All I know is, I want to stay out of sight until I know where this is coming from. If it’s Knox. I want to stay out of jail, stay out of sight.”

Virgil counted them off on his fingers. “There was you, and Utecht, and Sanderson, and Wigge, and this old Utecht, Chester Utecht, and Knox… that’s it?”

“There was one more guy,” Bunton said. “Damned if I know his name.”

“When they tortured Wigge, maybe that’s what they were looking for,” Virgil suggested. “The last names. Your name and the other guy’s name.”

“So that’s good for you, huh?” Bunton asked. “Can’t be more than two more murders.”

BY THE TIME they got back to the jail, it was almost dark. Smith, the chief deputy, and Carter, the attorney, were playing gin rummy, and Carter had a stack of pennies by her hand. She looked up when they came in and asked, “What happened?”

“We need to call the Red Lake guys,” Virgil said. His cell phone rang, and he looked at it: Davenport. “I gotta take this,” he said. “You guys call Red Lake. I’m gonna run Ray out there.”

DAVENPORT SAID, “I’m on the ground in St. Paul. I’m told you’re chasing Bunton.”

“Got him,” Virgil said. “But I’m letting him go. This is the deal…”

He told Davenport the story, and when he was done, Davenport said, “I don’t know if we can hold up our end of the bargain.”

“Neither do I,” Virgil said. “But hell with it-let the lawyers work it out. That’s what they’re for. What’s happening down there?”

“Wall-to-wall screaming,” Davenport said. “Crazy accusations and finger-pointing. Complaints about competence, threats about budgets. Questions from the Secret Service.”

“So-the usual,” Virgil said.

Davenport laughed. “Yeah. Tell you the truth, I think everybody likes it-gives them something to do, and they can go on TV. But it’d be best if we could catch the guy like… tomorrow.”

“Well, if we can get to Knox,” Virgil said. “Bunton thinks Knox has a finger in it.”

“He’s wrong,” Davenport said. “I know Knox. Knox would never do anything like this. Not in a million years. I don’t doubt that he could make people go away, but if he’d done it, there wouldn’t have been a ripple. No lemons, no monuments-just gone.”

“Still gotta find him,” Virgil said.

“Get your ass back here. I’ll have Jenkins and Shrake chase him down, but I want you here to talk to him. What about this last guy?”

“Don’t know-maybe Knox will know.”

THE RES WAS DARK, clusters of houses scattered along narrow roads radiating out from the town of Red Lake. Ray steered Virgil to his mother’s house-“Her name is Reese now, so that won’t give me away.”

The two Indian cops were waiting in Reese’s yard, sitting on a concrete bench, drinking from cartons of orange juice. Virgil hadn’t been introduced when they were all down in the roadside ditch, and when they got out of the truck, Bunton pointed to the older one and said, “Louis Jarlait, who used to bang the brains out of my little sister, and Rudy Bunch, who’s going to kick your ass someday.”

“Fuck him if he can’t take a joke,” Virgil said. Then to Jarlait: “Thanks for doing this.”

“What are we supposed to do with him?” Bunch asked.

“Keep an eye on him,” Virgil said. “Keep an eye out for strangers who might be looking for him. He says he’ll be safe here… hell, ask him. Once you get him talking, he won’t shut up.”

Jarlait looked at Bunton. “You okay with this?”

“Only goddamned way I’m gonna stay alive,” Bunton said. “Even if you guys kissed me off this afternoon.”

“We don’t have to keep him or nothing?” Jarlait asked Virgil. “He takes care of himself, I mean, moneywise?”

“He stays with his mom, maybe you could have a guy hang with him. We can talk about compensation for your time, maybe later?”

“What about him puttin’ you in the hospital?” Bunch asked.

“We’ve decided to let that go,” Virgil said.

The two cops looked at Ray, who nodded, so Jarlait shrugged and said, “Okay by me, I guess, if it’s okay with Ray.”

“So we’re good,” Virgil said. “And we’re all good friends.”

Bunch grinned, a tight grin. “If I were you, I wouldn’t park my car in Red Lake.”

“Rudy, Rudy…”

BUNTON TOOK VIRGIL inside to meet his mother, who seemed nice enough, and they sat down to chat, and Virgil fell asleep. A gunfight woke him up, but it was on television. “You passed out,” Reese said. She was a heavyset woman, wearing a fleece, though the room was warm.

“Tired,” Virgil said. “Listen, thanks for lettin’ me sleep.” He looked at his watch. He’d been out for two hours.

Bunton came in from the kitchen, crunching on a carrot. “You outa here?”

“I am,” Virgil said. “You take it easy, Ray. This thing’s gonna wear itself out pretty quick now. If you keep your head down for a week, you’ll be okay.”

LATE, RUNNING FOR HOME, probably wouldn’t make it back until 2 A.M. Looking at the stars, listening to the radio, singing along with a country hit by the Rolling Stones, “Far Away Eyes”…

Two calls on the way back. The first from Mai: “I had a pretty good time last night.”

“Slammed the door on my ass,” Virgil said.

“If I hadn’t, you would have been climbing on me like ivy,” she said.

“Might possibly be true,” Virgil admitted. “That was quite the neck rub.”

She giggled, sounding girlish, and asked, “So why don’t you come over? We can walk out and get a Coke.”

“ ’Cause I’m two hundred miles away,” Virgil said. “Had to run out of town. Looking for that guy.”

“Find him?” she asked.

“That’s an official police secret,” Virgil said.

“Pooh,” she said. “So… when do you return?”

Virgil thought about it for a minute, then said, “I’m on my way right now. I’ll get back really late. Need to get some sleep. How about tomorrow night?”

“Call me.”

He thought about what she’d asked him. When do you return?

DAVENPORT, VERY LATE, lights of the Twin Cities on the far horizon. “Can’t find Knox. He’s crawled into a hole. Shrake talked to his daughter, and she says he’s traveling. Says he’s taken up art photography as a hobby, and nobody knows where he is. Says he never takes a cell phone, so people can’t bother him and he can concentrate on his art.”

“You believe her?” Virgil asked.

“No. He’s hiding out,” Davenport said. “We need to know why. Are you on the way back?”

“Coming up to Wyoming.”

“Okay… Tell me about this Vietnamese chick.”

So they talked about it, Davenport sitting in a leather chair with a Leinie’s, Virgil rolling along under the stars, big fat yellow-gutted bugs whacking the windshield like popcorn.

A wonderful summer night, Virgil thought. Or, as Ray would have said, a wonderful fuckin’ night.