“Who is it?”
She mentioned a local TV anchorwoman. “Word’s out that Flattop Franky Murphy at the paper has weaseled out a juicy angle on the Maston shooting. To wit: not the first time Harry Griffin has saved a friend’s life with some snickersnack rifle work. Prepare for a trip down memory lane.”
“Nam?” asked Harry.
“My God,” said Randall. “It’s going to be a circus.”
“Shit,” said Harry. “How’d Murphy get onto that. It’s ancient history.”
Dorothy shrugged. “Well they dug it up somewhere. Slow news day, Harry. People must of glommed on. Just a few paragraphs to brighten up the story. Personalize it a little. Hip hip hooray for the new flash journalism,” said Dorothy with a sour smile. She taught the old-style journalism part time at the U of M.
“Fucking scribblers,” muttered Randall. “Tecumseh Sherman was right. Shoot the bastards.”
“So now what?” asked Harry.
“I called Bud over at Ramsey,” said Dorothy. “If none of us play into it, they don’t have a sexy sidebar. Just the basic story. So we’ll just tough it out. Lucky you. You get your fifteen minutes in the footlights,” said Dorothy.
“Bud.” Harry remembered. “He was in town talking to Murphy…”
The phone rang. Randall answered. “Fuck you.” He paused. “No comment.” He listened for a moment, looked at Harry. “Not here.”
Another pause. “No idea.” Randall hung up.
“Who?” Harry asked.
118 / CHUCK LOGAN
“Murphy.”
“I’m gonna set the fucker straight,” Harry said.
19
Harry insisted that Randall drive him home.
Chris Deucette’s death, but not his name, made headlines in St.
Paul. PHILANTHROPIST MASTON SHOT—stripped in six-column Bodoni Bold type across the top of the early outstate edition. Harry slapped quarters in the street sales box next to the elevators in his building and took out a paper.
If he’d been shot, the headline would say, HUNTER SHOT. NOBODY
SHOT. A photo of a slimmer Bud Maston accompanied the story.
Back when he was a prince, before he turned into a frog.
Going up in the elevator, he saw the sidebar below the fold. DÉJÀ
VU HAUNTS HUNTING TRAGEDY. His face made page one. An old library file photo. His hair was longer, teeth crooked. A picture of Tim Randall from one of his book promotions ran alongside.
It wasn’t the first time Harry Griffin saved a friend’s life with a fast rifle shot, a reliable source told this newspaper. In January 1968, Harold S. Griffin, then a PFC in the U.S. Army serving in Vietnam, rescued another friend in a dramatic, almost identical situation. “Harry [Griffin] hasn’t touched a gun since the war,” added the source.
Which was not true. “Bud, you dumb shit,” he muttered. He skipped the war story part and continued to read: The other recipient of Griffin’s shooting acumen is St. Paul author and former army man Timothy Randall. Randall, who was Griffin’s commanding officer, retired from the army under a cloud in 1968. His Pulitzer
HUNTER’S MOON / 119
Prize-winning book on the Vietnam War, The Bitter Coming of Age, was published in 1972.
The story quoted an old review of Randall’s book, written by some creep from the Nixon administration.
Jack Kennedy once described Randall as “a killer who wrote books.” Randall had a reputation for being a lone wolf warrior-scholar with a flair for “black operations.” Black operations is a term from the Vietnam era used to describe covert activities that included kidnapping and assassination.
The main story was off the wire from the Duluth paper and bore Sherry Rawlins’s byline. It tersely described the incident, quoting from an “exclusive” interview with Mike Hakala—“tragic result of drugs making an inroad in rural Minnesota…a patent case of justifiable homicide…friend coming to the aid of a friend”—and Bud’s recent “quiet” marriage and doomed political campaign. Jesse was not mentioned by name, her picture did not appear, and she wasn’t quoted. Hakala had kept the lid down tight.
Chris was sketched fast as a troubled kid who possessed drugs and stole guns. A blurry high-school picture. No mention of the teacher Chris had allegedly threatened at gunpoint.
Harry crumpled the paper and threw it across the room. The phone rang. It was Linda Margoles.
“Jesus, Harry. Bud called me from Ramsey. He wants to file for divorce. Then I saw you on the six o’clock news and talked to Dorothy Houston, she said you were back home. You need a lawyer?”
“Not me. Bud sure does.”
“He said you think his wife…tried to kill him?”
“I was him I wouldn’t stick around to find out.”
“Christ, he just got married.”
“Linda, just get the papers ready.” He imagined the intricate gears of her mind shifting through his rushed words.
120 / CHUCK LOGAN
“Okay, okay, calm down,” she said in a steady voice. She was humoring him. Everybody was being nice. Floating with the shock waves. In a more intimate voice she said, “How are you doing with this?”
“Not so hot,” said Harry.
“Dorothy said you haven’t eaten. I could pick up some Chinese.
Come over.”
Harry exhaled. “Linda, we’ve been through all this.”
“You shouldn’t be alone tonight.”
Harry thought about it. “Yes, I should.”
“At least have something to eat.” Her voice hovered.
“Okay. Jesus. Give me an hour.” He hung up. Dialed Randall’s.
“You see the paper?” he asked when Dorothy answered.
“It’s on the ten o’clock news, too. I told you it could get weird,”
said Dorothy.
Randall came on. “Is this Murphy a friend of yours?” he asked.
“Just a guy I work with. A hotshot,” said Harry.
“Well, he’s good, I’ll give him that. I just got a call from D.C.
Remember Hollywood from special ops?”
“Yeah,” said Harry. Hollywood. A blond gorilla with dry ice for eyes. Navy SEAL he’d worked for after Randall split the war.
“Well, Hollywood is a United States Attorney now working for the Justice Department. He said the phones are buzzing among the old gang. Murphy looked through all my old book reviews and called the hostile ones.”
“Shit, Tim, I’m sorry you got dragged into this.”
“Hey, I’m used to being notorious. It’s you we’re worried about.
If you read between the lines, they’re setting you up as the psycho vet from central casting. Dorothy thinks you should
