Which wasn’t what he was going to get a lot of if he succeeded in his pursuit of Kate Shugak, if in fact that was what he was doing. It was a puzzle what was going on there. “Kate ain’t easy,” one old fart opined.
“If she was easy, everybody^ be doing her,” someone else offered. There was a lot of snickering and Old Sam changed tables again.
In between, Jim was being run ragged, what with the notorious breakup blues winding down to a grand finale of wife beatings, child abuse, drunk driving, illegal hunting, theft, burglary, armed robbery, assault, rape, and now, for crissake, a murder, and if rumor were true, the attempted murder of Kate Shugak herself, resulting in the loss of her ancestral cabin. Jim would find out who did it; they had perfect faith in him. They just weren’t sure Jim would get to the perpetrator first, and if he didn’t, well, wasn’t going to be much left to do except clean up the mess. “Whoever done it ought to just cut his own throat right now and be done with it,” somebody said, and there was pretty much universal agreement at the sentiment. This time, Old Sam stayed where he was.
No, Jim wasn’t lazy, and he didn’t have a lazy man’s job. It was a mystery why Dandy Mike would want to work for him, when it would surely to god have him out of bed far oftener than he would like.
In truth, Dandy Mike was in the unenviable position of being spoiled rotten from birth. Annie loved children, and the only reason she had stopped having them was that her obstetrician had spoken to her husband to such purpose that Billy had gotten a vasectomy the following day. It was the one time Annie had come anywhere near leaving him, and it didn’t matter that the doctor had told Billy that her chances of carrying another child to full term were slim to none and the odds were in favor of it killing them both. “He said that last time and it was my easiest delivery ever!” she flashed. It a took a year of living on tiptoe for Billy to be forgiven, and another eighteen years, after the last child was grown and out of the house, for the full price to come due, which was the adoption of a baby from Korea, the product of a Korean mother and an American soldier, unwanted by either parent. Well, hell, Billy liked kids, too, and the house didn’t feel right not smelling of dirty diapers and baby formula, and the little girl, whom Annie had named Mary for her mother, was the cutest thing he’d ever seen.
Between a new daughter in the house and his duties as tribal chief and president and chief operating officer of the Niniltna Native Association, which was negotiating some big-time contracts with a lumber company and a minerals exploration outfit for activities to take place on Association lands, Billy Mike didn’t have a lot of time for any of his older children, most of whom had gone on to college and were now living in Anchorage, where they had indoor plumbing and cable. He had still less time for Dandy, his problem child, who seemed perfectly happy to spend as much of the rest of his life horizontal as he could.
It vexed Billy, but he did his best for Dandy, putting the screws to Jim Chopin to hire his son once the new trooper post was built. Jim wasn’t notorious for bowing to pressure, and it wasn’t like Billy was going to make life tough for someone who was opening a full-time, fully-staffed trooper office in Niniltna, either. There were less than three hundred troopers in the entire state of Alaska, and when most villages the size of Niniltna had trouble, they had to wait days and sometimes weeks for the law to respond. Oh no, while Billy Mike wasn’t averse to exerting a little paternal coercion, no way was he going to screw up the stationing of a law enforcement professional in beautiful downtown Niniltna. Especially when he hadn’t even had to lobby for it; this had all been Jim’s idea.
Plus the Department of Public Safety had hired the contractor through the Niniltna Native Association, and was already sending out feelers for a cleaning staff. Plus Jim was going to need a place to stay, and so would any prisoners he apprehended in the course of his duty, and Billy was already preparing a bid to submit to the State Department of Corrections to house and feed the accused Jim brought in.
So the upshot was that Billy didn’t know why Dandy wanted the job so badly, either, but in the best of all parental worlds his problem child would have realized the error of his ways, turned over a new leaf, and settled down to become a useful member of society. He might even take an interest in tribal affairs, Billy thought, allowing himself to dream.
In truth?
Dandy wanted the job because he wanted to wear a uniform.
He wanted to wear a uniform because his only competition for the ladies’ favors had been a man in uniform named Jim Chopin, he of the blue and gold, with the Mountie hat and the shiny gold badge, and the big black nine-millimeter strapped to his side. If Dandy had heard one indrawn breath from whatever cozy bundle he had tucked into his arm whenever Jim walked in the Roadhouse door in full regalia, he’d heard a thousand.
Plus, he’d always liked John Wayne.
Plus, how hard could it be? He envisioned a comfortable chair behind a desk, where he would mostly answer the phone and send Jim out on calls.
Plus, there was that very nice state salary, and that even nicer package of state benefits, including retirement, which would add up even faster because they were so far out in the Bush. He could kick back and start drawing a paycheck for doing nothing by the time he was fifty.
Plus, who died and made Kate Shugak god? There was no rule of which Dandy was aware that just because Kate had once investigated sex crimes for the district attorney in Anchorage that she automatically got whatever extra job came with the new trooper post in Niniltna.
So it was with an impure and righteous sense of purpose that Dandy Mike was doing more or less the same thing that Kate Shugak was, albeit with little finesse and still less ability. His progress took him from ex to ex, interviewing girlfriends past and distant past, asking them if Len Dreyer had dropped by to fix anything lately. The amazing thing was, he wound up with a list that wasn’t dissimilar to Kate’s, though neither of them knew it at the time.
Len Dreyer had logged almost as many miles in pursuit of jobs as Dandy had of women.
He also wasn’t quite the monk Kate had been led to believe. Really all that meant was that Dreyer had had nowhere near the action Dandy had, but that he had gotten laid occasionally. “It was kind of weird,” Betsy Kvasnikof said. “He was kind of there, you know? And I was hurting from Dad going off right after I graduated, you know? Mom was mooning around like a lost soul and I was taking care of Rob and Sandy full-time. I guess I was looking for a little comfort, you know?”
“Did you get it?” was Dandy’s tactful reply.
Betsy looked annoyed, at either Dandy or Dreyer or both. She was a slender, dark-haired woman in her mid-twenties with big, innocent brown eyes that made her look like she was still in her mid-teens. “No,” she said shortly.
Dandy, usually so smooth at getting what he wanted out of women, backed up a little, but not all the way. “Did you, er-”
“Did I sleep with him? Yes. Did I have a good time? It was okay, I guess.” She smiled at Dandy with a sweetness he remembered. “Not as good as some who came after.”
Dandy grinned. “Naturally not.”
She laughed. “Oh, you.” She looked over her shoulder. “I think I hear my husband’s truck. Best you leave now.”
“I heard that.” He kissed her good-bye, and then he kissed her again. The back door was closing on him at the same time the front door was opening on her husband, but it wasn’t anything he wasn’t used to. He trod noiselessly around the house and went to his truck, parked discreetly on the shady side of a turnoff down the road.