Free KS00 - Nooses Give by Dana Stabenow Page B

stern. “I’ve got a problem,” he said.
    “So?”
    “So I’m hoping you’ll make it your problem too.” He drank more coffee, preparing for a tough sell. “You know about the DampAct?” She shook her head. “In November the village voted to go dry. You can bring in booze for your own consumption but not in amounts to sell.” He added, “I’m okay because the Roadhouse is outside tribal boundaries.” She didn’t look as if she’d been worrying about him or his business. “Well, Kate, it ain’t working out too good.”
    There was a brief pause. “Bootlegger,” she said.
    “Yeah.”
    She doubled her verbal output. “Tell me.” He told her. It must have been hard to hear. She was shirttail cousin to all three of the teenagers. Hell, there weren’t very many people in the village of Niniltna or the entire Park for that matter she couldn’t call cousin, including himself, through his wife. It was the reason he was here. One of them.
    “You know who?” she said.
    He snorted into his coffee and put the mug down with a thump. “Of course I know who. Everybody knows who. He’s been flying booze into remote villages, wet or dry, for thirty years. Wherever there isn’t a bar—shit, wherever there is a bar and somebody’d rather buy their bottle out of the back of a plane anyway—there’s Pete with his hand out. God knows it’s better than working for a living.”
    Her face didn’t change, but he had the sudden feeling that he had all her attention, and remembered Billy Mike’s comment about history. “Pete Liverakos,” she said. He gave a gloomy nod. “Stop him. The local option law says the state can seize any equipment used to make, transport, sell, or store liquor. Start confiscating.”
    This time a gloomy shake. “We don’t know where to start.”
    A corner of the wide mouth turned down. “Gee, maybe you could try his plane. You can pack a lot of cases of booze into the back of a 180, especially if you pull all the seats except the pilot’s.”
    “He’s not using it,” Bernie said. “Since the DampAct passed, the tribal council has been searching every plane that lands at gunpoint. Pete’s been in and out in his Cessna all winter, Billy Mike says clean as a whistle every time.”
    “How often?”
    “Once a week, sometimes twice.” He added, “He’s not even bringing in anything for personal use, which all by itself makes me suspicious, because Pete and Laura Anne are a couple what likes a little caribou with their cabernet.”
    “Get the trooper.”
    “Kate, you know and I know the trooper’s based in Tok, and his jurisdiction is spread pretty thin even before he gets within flying distance of Niniltna. Besides, he’s already in pursuit of some yo-yo who shot up a bank in Valdez and took off up Thompson Pass, on foot, no less. So much for state law. The DampAct—” He shrugged. “The DampAct is a local ordinance. Even if they catch him at it, all the council can do is fine him a thousand bucks. Like a speeding ticket. In any given year Pete spends more than that on olives for martinis.”
    “He got somebody flying it in from Anchorage?”
    Bernie gave a bark of laughter. “Sure. MarkAir.” At her look, he said, “Shit, Kate, MarkAir runs specials with the Brown Jug in town. Guy endorses his permanent dividend fund check over at the local MarkAir office, MarkAir carries it to Anchorage and expedites it to the Brown Jug warehouse, Brown Jug fills the order, MarkAir picks it up and takes it out to the airport and flies it to the village.”
    “Competition for you,” she said.
    He met her eyes levelly. “That isn’t what this is about, and you know it. I serve drinks, not drunks, and I don’t sell bottles.”
    She looked away. “Sorry.”
    He gave a curt nod.
    There was a brief silence. She broke it. “What do you want me to do?”
    He drained his mug and set it on the table with a decisive snap. “I got a state championship coming up. I need sober players who