The Lake, the River & the Other Lake Page 10

  But this was the old sheriff, the one who had now retired, a gruff man who never seemed very respectful to people who brought money and prosperity to his town. He didn’t appear to have a solution but was merely voicing his complaint. “Well, just . . .” he said, getting back into his cruiser, “. . . just try not to be a ninny.”

  Noah thought he’d heard wrong. No one had spoken to him like that since probably the eleventh grade. The guy had to be saying something about that river in town. Maybe that was it. Noah stepped over to the cruiser, asking him politely to repeat what he’d said.

  The sheriff cranked the window down, put the cruiser in reverse. “You know. A jackass. Try not to be one.”

  The steel was no longer a problem, but the plate glass still gave off significant glare. And with the green reflection of the surrounding treetops, the large windows were seen by birds as the real McCoy, and continually caused many to kamikaze into the glass. Sometimes he’d hear the bang, but usually it was a surprise he’d stumble upon later, small bundles of guts and fuzzy feathers left behind on his deck, his flowerbeds, the porch roofs, as if the workings of some practical joker, some ding-dong-ditch-it, burning-bag-of-poop-hurling teens. The groundskeeper, Mr. Much, said they were starlings, sparrows, chickadees, phoebes, mockingbirds, kingbirds and kinglets. They appeared on a regular basis, several per week, and he had to admit, sometimes, when he saw them, when they caught him off-guard, he did feel a little like a jackass.

  One time there were two of them, side by side, lifeless as a pair of shoes. Mr. Much came up behind him as he was staring at the dead birds and said, “Two by two. Huh. Actually, this place is more like the opposite of an ark, isn’t it?”

  Later, he wondered, as he had done again lately, if there was some sort of research lab that might pay a small price per bird. Of course it wouldn’t be much, but with the volume of dead birds produced by those windows, it might be profitable at that. Certainly, even a small income would be better than paying a groundskeeper to continually rake them away. They could be collected in one of the storage freezers in the basement and shipped all at once. There was plenty of room: knowing he’d be keeping the entertaining much simpler for a while, he’d canceled this summer’s order of buffalo brauts and Omaha steaks. He made a note in his PalmPilot to look into it. DEAD BIRDS / RESEARCH LABS? / $$?

  19

  THE WAY DEPUTY STRUSKA HEARD IT, David Letterman was secretly renting some place in the area for the summer, with the idea that he would probably buy if he had a pleasant stay. If he liked the house and, of course, the town. This was probably the best news she’d heard for a long, long while. At least since she got the news that KFC was bringing back their popcorn chicken. Lately, most news had been of the other variety.

  The thing was, even if she hadn’t heard the Letterman rumor, if Janey Struska had to pick one celebrity she’d want to come visit her town, whether you gave her, say, a copy of People magazine and let her riffle through it or just said, off the top of your head . . . Go!, the answer she’d come back with would be David Letterman. Not only because he was a scream and seemed like probably a pretty genuine guy, down-to-earth and what-not with his baseball caps and love of auto racing, and not only because she got the distinct impression, from the way he skimmed right past the so-called starlets, all glammed up and full of themselves, maybe even sniping them with a zinger or two, and then, in some dopey on-the-street thing or audience quiz game, he’d practically fall all over his boyish self getting tongue-twisted and flop-sweaty over some normal, maybe even slightly big-boned girl-next-door with a nice shy smile or freckles or real-looking curly red hair. (Okay, so she didn’t personally have the freckles or the red hair, but she was certainly big-boned and could probably also muster a shy smile, if need be.) Anyway, she admired that about the guy. Thought it showed there was a real, genuine sort of deal about him.

  Not that she’d expect him to like her like her. That would be swell, a bonus—but even if he didn’t like her that way, there still might be a great opportunity here, career-wise. She knew if she had a chance to meet him—maybe not just meet him, but sit down with him and hang out, maybe have a drink—he’d see that she was wasting her talents here in Weneshkeen. Sure, police work had been fulfilling, to an extent, but she felt like she’d hit a wall lately—really, ever since she got passed over to replace the old sheriff and they brought in that interim interloper from Saginaw, Jon Hatchert. But how long could she go on being just a deputy? In the business world, they had a name for that: the glass ceiling or something.

  The thing is, she could probably write jokes for him.

  Letterman, that is. Not Hatchert. Hatchert wouldn’t know a joke from a eulogy.

  She was known for her sense of humor. In fact, a few months back, before the thaw, when they had the big farewell banquet for Don Sloff, she was the one who was asked to host the sort of “roast.” And everyone loved it. They laughed their asses off (and, since it was mostly law enforcement types, with their wide frames and seat-straining girth, between them there was a great deal of ass there to be laughed off). She did some puns on his name, turning it into “sloth,” working the retirement angle, like he was going to laze around all day, and then she did “The Top Ten Reasons Sheriff Sloff Is Retiring”:

  Number Ten . . . Wants to give doughnuts the full attention they deserve.

  Number Nine . . . Law & Order rejected his spec script, “ripped from today’s headlines,” due to “lack of anything actually happening” in it.

  Number Eight . . . Had his colors done. Found out he’s a “winter.” Winters just can’t pull off brown and khaki.

  Number Seven . . . He was getting so’s he’d hear radio calls in his sleep (though only while napping in his cruiser).

  Number Six . . . Realized how much dough he could rake in on speed traps if he doesn’t have to share any of it with the village.

  Number Five . . . Wants to get in on those sweet private bodyguard gigs, for someone like “that hot Eli Whitney chick.”

  Number Four . . . He’s taking the fall for the terrible riot during Weneshkeen’s last Puerto Rican Day Parade.

  Number Three . . . Gentrification of much of the village’s mobile home zoning, upgrading to R1 residential, will seriously hamper his chances of ever getting on Cops.

  Number Two . . . Like The Naked City, there are also eight million stories in Weneshkeen. Unlike The Naked City, they all begin with, “So my brother-in-law comes over with a six-pack, right . . . ?”

  And the Number One reason Don Sloff is retiring . . .

  . . . Now he will know once and for all: is it his hot bod and continental charm that gets him so much tail or is it just the sexy uniform?

  They hooted and clapped and clinked their glasses with their steak knives, and afterward everyone told her how great it was. More than one said she should do it for a living. Totally unsolicited, they said that. She didn’t take it seriously, though, because she couldn’t imagine any way of making that happen. Not given her age, where she lived . . .

  But now, with the news of this unexpected summer guest in town, maybe she could. Maybe this was exactly the opportunity that would shift her life onto a whole new shiny avenue.

  Janey spent most of her waking hours alone, in the cruiser, and it gave her a lot of time to think. Maybe too much time. She decided it wouldn’t be a question of his spotting her potential. She felt pretty good about being able to make him laugh. She could really see them hanging, maybe getting a beer at the Potlicker, maybe walking their dogs together. It was just a question of exposure. Being in the right place at the right moment. Or several right moments, over time. Which should prove easy. This was a small town. With patience, she’d have plenty of chances to meet him. Even the more private residents eventually got to know everyone in the sheriff’s department. Of course, this is assuming he’d fall in love with the place and stick around long enough, actually buy a place of his own. But that seemed like a done deal—as much as she loved the idea of m
oving on and getting a fancy job writing comedy in New York, it was hard to imagine anyone not loving Weneshkeen.

  The only thing that could maybe ball it up would be if people acted like jerkoffs around him. If they pestered the guy, wouldn’t leave him alone. She’d have to be diligent, run interference, make sure the man had his privacy. It was times like this she wished the old sheriff, Don Sloff, was still her boss. Don would make no bones about trolling the streets in the cruiser, using the PA, warning the people of Weneshkeen not to be jerkoffs. “Try,” he would tell them, “just try . . .”

  She still carried with her, after eleven years on the job, Sheriff Sloff’s basic belief about police work, what was sometimes referred to as Don’s Rule on Rules, which was, “People don’t have to know the exact laws, per se. Every rule and regulation. You’re the average guy walking down the street, you probably don’t know half of that. But if you just try not to be a jackass, you’re probably not breaking any laws. Chances are good.”

  Old Don was a great fucking guy. A guy who knew how to be exactly the kind of sheriff a weird little bump in the river like Weneshkeen needed him to be. It was a shame, really, that the insurance doc was so jittery. The thing was, the coverage for all civil employees under the township’s policy was at risk of being canceled if they didn’t step in and retire Don early. It was either that or get a new carrier and hope they could raise the millage to cover the higher premiums. Their current carrier was a real bottom-basement discount house and there was no way they’d find a substitute for the same low group premium with an outfit that wasn’t so picky about the fact that their sheriff, at age sixty-two, was a three-hundred-pounder. Riding around in the cruiser all day was part of it, of course, but also, he’d been operating, on the side, out of his home, a little cherry sausage industry. (He’d perfected his SloffBrauts, through much experimenting and, no doubt, personal taste-testing, to the point where they now would completely sell out in local freezer cases the same week he’d deliver them.) When the doctor at the last mandatory checkup, a new guy the insurance company was using—they all had to drive out to see him, way out in Cadillac—learned of Don’s main love, the sausage business in his garage, and the fact that both Don’s father and grandfather never made it to sixty, it really rattled the doctor. He told Don that he was too old a man to carry that extra weight. Supposedly, Don told him to try not to be a “nervous Nellie,” but the guy filed his report with the insurance company anyway.

  Everyone hated to see Don retire, but honestly, Don himself seemed a little relieved. “Life is short, Janey,” he said, when he finally decided what his move would be, taking her down along the riverwalk to tell her himself. “That quack was right about one thing—I could go any day. We all could. And do I really want to be lying there on the floor, clutching my heart, wondering if I’d really done enough, tried enough different things, produced enough links in my life? Hell, I’ve got ideas for a venison, pecan, wild rice and cherries press I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface on! You know? And if I go now”—he tapped his temple with one big meaty finger—“it all dies with me. You know?”

  She agreed that would be a waste. They hugged and she made him consent to the big retirement blowout.

  And now that he was gone, everything felt different. She still loved her hometown, but it wasn’t quite the same and she really had to wonder if this wasn’t a sign that she, too, should move on; if maybe 2001 could be the year—given a little help from her, a poke and shove in the right direction, taking the bull by the horns if a celebrity talk show host just happened to be hiding out somewhere on her beat—in which things might just change for her forever.

  20

  WHAT BURNED JANEY UP about the appointment of Hatchert was he didn’t have anywhere near the qualifications she had. He wasn’t even from Weneshkeen. The village council interviewed him over the phone, and the first day he set foot in town was the day before he was to officially take over. Janey couldn’t believe it. She’d been a deputy for ten years, grew up in the town, knew the people. He’d had two years as a deputy in Saginaw and attended some lame-ass “leadership in crisis” workshop down in Lansing that was supposed to shape him into something that angry, distraught or chemically addled people would shut up and listen to—an outcome she highly doubted for the kind of events she anyway really didn’t see happening in Weneshkeen.

  She hated like hell to come off as one of those types she saw as a whiny feminist who just couldn’t take the competition. She could take the competition—hell, she could probably take him in arm wrestling—but this was so clearly a matter of penis vs. no penis that it was almost a hoot.

  During the final day of interviews, she walked into the village offices and asked if she could have her application back a second. Bear Eckenrod was the chair of the hiring committee. He stared at her, curious, as she added, to the row of people who would give recommendations, the name “Dick.”

  “Who’s Dick?” he asked.

  “No one.” She dropped the pencil on his desk. “But I thought maybe that would help even things,” she explained, “since clearly it was his dick put him over the edge.”

  IN THE SPARTAN PARKING LOT, she pulled up alongside the new sheriff, end to end in the patrol cars, so they could check in with each other. Hatchert rolled down his window and said, “What do you know about some Indian scaring kids over on . . . you know . . . the little lake over there?”

  “Meenigeesis.” Guy hadn’t even learned the names of the lakes yet. Useless.

  “Some Indian named Firewater or—”

  “Drinkwater. That’s not ‘some Indian.’ That’s the Coach.”

  “You’re saying he’s not an Indian?”

  For a second, she tried to recall how the Coach referred to himself, if he bothered with the more PC terms or what, and it struck her that maybe she didn’t really know him all that well. Still, she didn’t care for Hatchert’s tone. She said, “I haven’t memorized the man’s family tree, okay? What exactly—”

  “Guy’s an Indian and can afford a house over on that fancy lake? How’s that work?”

  “It’s an older place,” she explained. “Just a little cottage. He’s been there forever. Before it got real pricey.”

  “Hm. Bet he gets casino money.”

  As a matter of fact, she happened to know he did, but she wasn’t about to give her smug new boss that. He’d act like he’d won something, some big debate, when really, Coach Drinkwater, who’d been living out on that lake long before those tax-hiking log mansions, was a working-class guy with about eighty different sources of hard-earned income. Plus, he was a legitimate member of the Ojaanimiziibii band—what was wrong with that? If they were going to hand out casino checks, and he qualified, what was he supposed to do? Send it back with a note that said, No thanks—it’s been a super year for the jerky business so I’ll pass?

  “If you think he’s a problem, Hatchert, maybe I can see if he’d be willing to walk to Oklahoma for you. Or maybe you’d rather go with the whole infected blankets route? Your call, Chief.”

  “Yeah . . .” he said. “I have zero idea what that means . . .” She could see from the way he was distracted by his own mustache—wiping it straight and flat, checking himself in his rearview—that he really didn’t know what it meant. And he wasn’t saying it like he wanted to know what it meant, he said it like, I don’t want to know what that means. I have a mustache to attend to. Go away.

  So she did. And soon, maybe she really would.

  21

  THE DOWNSIDE to being just a deputy in such a small town was that she always seemed to get the bullshit jobs. Her rank made her an all-encompassing trash can for all manner of village business, including animal control and serving legal documents.

  Which is why it was Janey Struska who was saddled with the task of serving a complaint on Kurt Lasco. Some nonsense about cutting down his neighbor’s trees. Not that he didn’t do it. She knew Kurt pretty well. Nice enough guy, but the whole thing sounde
d about par. She remembered when she was still a ninth-grader and Kurt was a senior, he was rumored to be one of the bunch who filled Don Sloff’s old Crown Vic with about a ton of cherry pits from the old cannery south of town.

  And it wasn’t just because she knew him that this sort of duty was a pain. It was always a pain because they always wanted her to hear their side of the story. They never got that when she served a complaint she was essentially one notch above a carrier pigeon.

  And sure enough, Kurt started in with the guff. Before she could even turn and walk back to the cruiser, he was gawking and gasping, saying, “Listen, I don’t know if this thing says anything about what really happened, but listen—”

  She held up her hand. “This isn’t The People’s Court, Kurt, and I’m not Judge Wapner. Telling me does nothing. You’ve got twenty days to respond—officially. There’s a letter attached that explains.”

  “Well, I want to complain, too, then!”

  This was the part they never got. Filing a legal complaint wasn’t the same as simply bitching, which was all most folks were really interested in. “I’d hire a lawyer, then. At least to walk you through the counterclaims part.” He gave her a sour look, as if disappointed that she’d failed to flip out her notepad and jot down his gripes. “It’s not small claims, Kurt. I’m sorry. It’s not that simple. This is a civil complaint.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  What it meant was he was probably going to have to hire a lawyer regardless, counterclaims or no, but she didn’t say that. She just repeated, “It’s all in there, Kurt. What to do, each count in the complaint that requires an answer, and . . . everything.”