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Luba Hardt was in the hospital with multiple contusions, a cracked rib and, the medical staff informed them, a raging case of withdrawal. So much for the Bean’s Cafe assessment of Luba’s condition. Not only was she not talking, she wasn’t focusing very well. She didn’t respond to Kate’s questions, and after a moment Kate went into the hall. “Where did you find her?” she said to Kurt.
“In the trees between Third Avenue and the railroad yards,” Kurt said. “A bunch of street people have built themselves shelters there.”
“Was anyone else there?”
He shook his head.
A big man in the one-tone black of the Anchorage Police Department approached. “Shugak,” he said.
“O’Leary,” she said.
“Long time no see,” he said, his tone indicating it hadn’t been long enough. “You know the vie?”
Kate nodded. “She’s from Niniltna.”
O’Leary eyed Kurt. “And this is?”
“Kurt Pletnikoff. He was looking for her, at my request.”
O’Leary nodded, holding Kurt’s eyes. “I see.”
“I didn’t do this,” Kurt said.
“Who said you did?” O’Leary said.
“I’ll vouch for Kurt,” Kate said. “He works for me.”
Kurt’s expression was wooden, but O’Leary knew something was off. “Oh yeah?” Sandy eyebrows didn’t quite disappear into the receding hairline that O’Leary hid with his uniform cap. Kate had never seen him without it.
“Really,” Kate said.
“I thought you worked alone.”
Kate shrugged. “You thought wrong.” She threw a little attitude into her tone, too, as if to say, Nothing new. And by the way, back off, motherfucker.
O’Leary nodded. “Got a number?” he said to Kurt.
Before Kurt could answer, Kate gave O’Leary hers. “We’ll come down to the cop shop tomorrow for statements.”
O’Leary’s turn to shrug. “I’ve got everything I need.”
Safely in the parking lot, Kurt said, “What’s with him?”
“We’ve got history,” Kate said. “Plus, I don’t think O’Leary thinks Natives are really necessary. Especially not Native women.”
“Necessary to what?”
“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” She turned to face him. “You did good, Kurt.”
He looked glum. “I wish I could have found her before she got hurt.”
“Me, too, but at least she didn’t lie out for three days and die of exposure. You found her. That’s what I hired you for. How hard was it to find her?”
He shook his head. “Not that hard. I walked all over downtown, talked to the guys who hang out on the grass in front of the visitors’ center, went into all the Fourth Avenue bars, described Luba, asked if they’d seen her. She’s been living on the streets since she got to town, I think. Eventually, I found someone, who told me a couple of places she might be. I found her the third place I went.”
Kate nodded. “How much did it cost?”
He pulled out a small wire notebook and thumbed through it. “About a hundred fifty bucks’ worth of cheap beer, and a hamburger.”
Kate nodded again. “How did you like it? The job, I mean. How did you like doing it?”
He thought about it. “It was okay,” he said in a surprised tone of voice. “All I had to do was be halfway civil, buy a few drinks here, a six-pack there, and people were ready to talk.”
“Not everyone has the ability to listen,” Kate said. It took him a minute to realize that she’d paid him a compliment. When he did, he blushed like a teenager. “How would you like another job?”
He looked at her. “Same wages?”
She nodded, hiding a smile. “First thing, though, you buy yourself some new clothes. Get a decent sports jacket, a couple of pairs of slacks, some good shoes.”
He looked appalled. “Jesus, Kate. Do I have to?”
She sighed. “Yeah. Look, go to Nordstrom. Go up to the second floor and ask for a salesperson named Alana. Tell her Kate Shugak sent you in for a businessman’s makeover. She’ll get you outfitted.” Whether you want to be or not, she thought. She gave him an assessing glance. “Tell her I said you need a haircut, too. Second thing, I want you to go to a print shop and get a business card made up.”
Still terrified by the prospect of his makeover, Kurt said weakly, “A business card? What do I put on it?”
Kate thought. “Your name, with my phone number beneath it. Wait, I’ll go with you. I know a print shop, and I know what I want the card to look like.”
“I don’t know what the hell I need a card for.”
“The people you’re going to be talking to on this job will expect a card. It’s part of the costume.”
“The costume for what?”
“I want you to find someone for me,” she said. “We’ll have to rent you a car, too, come to think of it.”
“Who do you want me to find?”
“Someone who disappeared thirty years ago.”
“America’s Mounties, that’s what they used to call us,” Morris Maxwell told Kate.
They were in the Pioneer Home, a big brick state-run old folks home on I Street. Morris Maxwell was a shrunken giant, pretty much confined to a wheelchair-“I can walk,” he told her, “I just choose not to”-shoulders stooped, hair completely gone from a wrinkled liver-spotted scalp, but there was a bright gleam in his eyes and he was quick to grin. He insisted she wheel him from his room into the common room so he could show all the other old geezers that he had a good-looking woman visiting him. Now they were sitting at a table over cups of weak coffee that no amount of sugar or creamer would improve.
“Alaska’s Mounties,” he repeated, “that was us, the territorial police. TPs, they called us. Weren’t that many of us. I remember figuring once that if you divided the square miles of Alaska by the number of state cops we had back then, each of us was responsible for eight thousand eight hundred and eighty-five square miles.” He cocked an eyebrow, and she looked suitably impressed.
“I was a pilot, so they assigned me to the Bush. I got forty-three hours in the air my first week.”
“What was it like?” Kate said.
“What was it like? What was it like? I’ll tell you what it was like.
It was eating corned beef out of a can for three days straight when you were weathered in in Tooksook Bay, and the weather ru
Kate, entranced by and a little envious of this portrait of frontier law enforcement, said, “Tell me more.”
He tossed back his head and let out a cackle of laughter, and for a moment she saw him for the vibrant man he had been, instead of the shriveled-up hulk he was now. Just so would she be in fifty years.
“Can you get around without that chair?” Kate said.
His gaze sharpened. “Why?”
She jerked her head. “If you can, let’s blow this pop stand for a while.”
She took him to Club Paris for one of their justifiably famous steaks, and there was nothing wrong with Max’s appetite, or his teeth. Under the influence of his second martini, he began to wax even more eloquent about times gone by. He had a gift for storytelling, and after awhile the bartender stopped even pretending to polish the section of the bar closest to their table. The waitress just pulled up a chair. She wasn’t the only one.
Max had severe opinions on the topic of American presidents for whom he had worked security detail. “Eisenhower was a gentleman. Johnson was an asshole.” This led to reminiscing on the subject of statehood, which came in while he was a TP. “Some of the villages we went into, we were the only representatives of any government, state or federal, those folks had ever seen. I’d fly into a village, wearing my full uniform, and give a talk at the school on the new state and pass around my cuffs and my empty revolver. Most of them had never seen a revolver before, although they all had rifles and shotguns. Then I’d do it all over again for the village council that night. I remember one time-where was that? Chuathbaluk? Tuluksak? No, farther north, maybe Point Lay or St. Mary’s-I was the first they knew Alaska had become a state.”