Starvation lake sl-1

by Bryan Gruley

  “Last I heard, the IGA in Sandy Cove. Or maybe Kalkaska.”

  “Wow. Just like that.” I scooped more potatoes onto my plate. “You dated Coach for a bit, Mom. What did you think?”

  “No, I wouldn’t call it dating. We went to a show once or twice, dinner a couple of times. No big deal, really. Now, your friend Tillie, she actually dated dated him.”

  I remembered seeing Tillie at a few of our games. She still had most of her beauty then. “Weren’t they just drinking buddies?” I said.

  “Well, maybe so. Tillie is everyone’s drinking buddy, isn’t she?” Mom stood. “Would you like ice cream on your pie?”

  “Sure.”

  She went into the kitchen. I heard the microwave start, the freezer door open and shut, a fork clink. My mother was never this quiet. She came back and set the pie and a cup of coffee in front of me. “Thanks, Mom,” I said. I nodded at the chair across the table. “Remember when Coach used to come to dinner?”

  “Of course. The man was a garbage disposal.”

  “Do you remember how he always used to talk about coaching in Canada, how great the kids were up there?”

  “Vaguely, dear. I never paid much attention to all that hockey stuff.”

  Yes, she did, I thought. She was always asking whether the parents in Canada were as obnoxious as the ones in Michigan. “You don’t remember him saying anything about taking a year off from coaching, do you?”

  “I remember him talking about all those championships he almost won.” Four fantastic years, I thought. “Your mother’s an old lady, Gussy. It’s all a blur now.”

  I set my fork down. “Mom. I know we’ve never really talked about this.”

  “About what?”

  “About the night Coach died.”

  I’d asked her only once before. It was the evening of Coach’s funeral. We were sitting in the back of the American Legion hall. Drunken former River Rats and their dads were toasting Coach at a microphone. At first Mom pretended she hadn’t heard my question. I asked again. She patted my knee. “Let’s listen, dear.” I persisted. “Didn’t you hear me?” she said. I thought she was going to cry. I let it go.

  Now she said, “That was so long ago. Who cares?”

  “It’s my job. His snowmobile washed up on the wrong lake.”

  “I’m sure it’s all a misunderstanding and Dingus will clear it up.”

  “No, it’s not a misunderstanding. Help me out here.”

  She sipped her coffee. “It was bingo night. Or maybe bowling night-sweet Lord, my memory’s gone-I just remember I was sleeping like a baby, so I must’ve been out late. Leo must’ve been banging a while before I woke up.”

  “He was at the slider?”

  “No.” She waved toward the kitchen. “He came in the back door. I couldn’t make him out at first, because there was something bright shining in my eyes-the headlights on his snowmobile-and I was half asleep. Scared the devil out of me.”

  If Leo really had come to the back door, then he would have come from the road behind the house. But why wouldn’t he have come directly from the scene of the accident and crossed the lake and come up the hill to the sliding door facing the lake?

  “And he came in the house?”

  “Yes. I remember he had liquor on his breath because it turned my stomach. And he was loud, which wasn’t like Leo. He said we had to call the police, call nine one one, Jack drowned in the lake. He kept saying-forgive my language, Lord-‘Goddamn Jack, Goddamn Jack,’ over and over, and he seemed so angry.” She looked at me uncertainly. “It makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “That he was angry.”

  Why would she wonder about that now?

  “Sure,” I said.

  She pointed at the living room. “He came in here. I tried to make him sit down, but he just stood at the window like this”-she wrapped her arms around herself-“staring out at the lake until the police came. Dingus was with them. They went out to the lake.”

  “Was he wet?”

  “Who?”

  “Leo. Was he wet? At least his shoulders and his head? Were there icicles in his hair?”

  “Icicles? Why?”

  “Because he just tried to pull Coach out of the lake.”

  “Well then, I guess he must have. I don’t remember.”

  “Did you give him a towel?”

  “Are you interviewing me, son?”

  “Mom. You were here. I just want to know.”

  “What good is it going to do, Gussy?”

  I finished the last of my pie. “God, that’s good,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome, dear.”

  “You know, I went back and reread the Pilot stories from back then. I didn’t see your name in there. How did you keep the reporters away?”

  “I didn’t, dear. Henry Bridgman called and called and I think he even stopped by one night. But the police asked me to keep quiet because they were investigating. I did what I was told.”

  “Dingus said to keep quiet?”

  “Not Dingus. He was just a deputy. Sheriff Spardell.”

  “And what about the towel?”

  She looked into her coffee cup. “Gus, that was so long ago. Why would I be worrying about-”

  A flurry of loud knocks came at the kitchen door. Mom turned. “Who could that be?”

  Through the kitchen window I saw Joanie’s red Honda Civic parked on the road shoulder. “I’ll get it,” I said.

  Joanie stood on the back porch in a hooded sweatshirt, her hands stuffed inside the belly pocket. I stepped outside. “Where’s your coat?” I said. “It’s freezing.”

  “I knew it.”

  “You knew what?”

  “There’s a bullet hole.”

  “What?”

  “There’s a bullet hole in the snowmobile. That’s what the forensics were about. A bullet hole. Somebody shot Blackburn.”

  I glanced to make sure Mom wasn’t standing behind me. “Keep it down,” I said. “How do you know?”

  She hesitated just long enough to make me resent her for not trusting me. “A department source,” she said.

  D’Alessio, I thought. Always working it. “OK. Good. Go back and start writing. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “This is huge.”

  “Yep. Good work.”

  I knew how she felt, knowing she had a juicy story. But I just felt empty and stupid, like I’d never known anything at all.

  Inside, Mom was at the sink, scraping the roasting pan. “Sorry, Mom, duty calls,” I said. “Dinner was fantastic.”

  She turned to hug me. She held the squeeze a little longer than usual. “I wish you could stay. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  As I started my truck, I thought, She remembered Leo’s liquor breath but not a towel because she didn’t give him a towel, because she didn’t need to.

  I parked in front of the Pilot and crossed Main Street to Enright’s. Inside, Loob was washing mugs behind the bar while music videos played silently on the TV overhead.

  “Dude,” Loob said. “Brewski?”

  “Loob. No, listen-were you here all last night?”

  “Came in around six-thirty.” He jammed the mugs one by one onto a soapy brush sticking up out of the sink, then rinsed them in milky water.

  “Did you see my reporter in here? Joanie?”

  “You mean pretty-not-skinny?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Yeah, she was here for a bit. Two Diet Cokes. Left me a quarter.”

  “You talk to her?”

  Loob held a glass up to a bar lamp, decided it was clean, and set it in the drainer. “I suppose.”

  “Francis said she was asking questions.”

  “She didn’t ask me no questions.” He dried his hands with a towel. “But she did give me a message.”

  “For who?”

  “Teddy.”

  “Boynton?”

  “No, Teddy Roosevelt
. Man, goalies.”

  “What was the message?”

  He grinned. “Heard you took a little holiday on the ice last night, Gus. Ain’t you cured of that by now?”

  “There is no cure. What was the message?”

  “She wrote it on a napkin. But it’s none of my business, Gus.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  As the main bartender at Enright’s, Loob probably knew more secrets than anyone in town, except Audrey at the diner. The difference was, Audrey could keep them. Loob picked up the TV remote and changed the channel. The president appeared on the screen. He looked angry, wagging his finger. Loob shut it off. “Fugging joke,” he said.

  “Yep. Can you tell me what Joanie wrote?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, maybe an address and phone number.”

  “ Her address and phone number?”

  “How the hell would I know, Gus? Look, I got work to do.”

  “Francis here?”

  Loob cocked his head and pointed past the photograph of jubilant Soupy on the back wall. “In his office.”

  As I started back, Loob called out, “Hey, Teddy banging her?”

  “Not literally.”

  “Augustus! To what do I owe the honor?”

  Francis Dufresne looked up from the cluttered desk where he sat counting money and punching a calculator. Thick stacks of ones, fives, tens, twenties, and fifties were piled neatly alongside a metal lockbox.

  “Just checking to make sure you’re in business.”

  “Ho,” he said. “So long as Alden Campbell keeps drinking, I’ll be in business. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Sit down.”

  His office was a converted closet that smelled of whiskey and disinfectant. I sat on some vodka cases stacked against the wall. Tacked behind his head was a dog-eared certificate that read, “Francis J. Dufresne, 1980 Northern Michigan Bartender of the Year.” Next to it hung a bulletin board checkered with receipts and invoices and old River Rats schedules. At the top was a calendar from First Fisherman’s Bank of Charlevoix, November 1986. A rendering on the calendar showed a woman in her Sunday best sitting with a grinning banker. Someone had penned crude quote bubbles over their heads. “I’ll bet you’d like to screw me,” the woman said, and the banker replied, “Sure would! No need to undress, though!”

  Francis noticed me looking at it and smiled. “Some downstaters bought that old bank and then, guess what? No more free calendars.”

  I pointed at the nameplate. “What’s the J for?”

  “Not a thing, actually. Mother just fancied the sound of it. As if I was going to be somebody, ha!”

  We talked about the weather and about the Rats losing again to the Pipefitters. Francis was kind enough not to bring up my distant past. Finally, he said, “What can I do you for?”

  “Any chance you’re going to be at the zoning board meeting tomorrow?”

  He grunted. “How is your mom?”

  “She’s fine.”

  He set one stack of bills down, punched a few numbers into the calculator, and picked up another stack. “I’ve been thinking about her. And you, Augustus. This must be a difficult time for the both of you. I know you and Jack had a bit of a falling-out.”

  “He had his reasons.”

  “We all got our reasons-or our rationalizations. Sometimes Jack just took it too far. He did with you, in my humble opinion, and I told him so. But he was a stubborn cuss. For Pete’s sake, it’s just a lousy hockey game. You were a damned fine goalie.”

  “Thanks.” It sounded a little strange coming from the guy who made Coach his star pitchman, who used the town’s love of hockey to open its collective wallet. But it felt good anyway.

  “You know,” he said, “it’s too bad your dad’s not around. Now there was a fine fellow, Rudy. I wish…well, you know. Can’t do anything about the past. He was a friend, you know. You were just a little guy. We used to go fishing now and then.”

  My stomach rose and dipped. I had one sharp-as-a-knife memory of Dad’s fishing. I was four or five years old, standing on my toes, peering across the big round picnic table behind my grandfather’s house along the Hungry River. The table was covered with damp newspapers. Dad and Grandpa and Grandpa’s brothers were cleaning the perch and bluegill they’d caught while I was still sleeping. There were a pile of fish filets, another pile of fish guts and scales, a bunch of longneck bottles of Buckhorn beer, and a transistor radio tuned to Ernie Harwell broadcasting the Tiger game.

  “Really?” I said.

  “Yeah. Bowled with him, too, up to Mancelona. He had one beautiful hook, he did. And whenever he got a strike, he’d spin around on one foot and take his beer and hold it out in front of him like a toast and say, ‘How sweet it is,’ just like old Jackie Gleason on TV. ‘How sweet it is.’”

  We both laughed.

  “And then there was Jack,” Francis said. “Hell of a coach, no denying that. But like I say, sometimes he just took it too far. All that stuff about how losing is good for winning.” He stopped shuffling the bills and grinned. “I finally had to tell him, not in my business, Jack. Losing ain’t ever good in business.”

  “So does that mean you’re going to the zoning board?”

  “Ho-ho, OK, you got some questions. Tell you the truth, I haven’t really thought about it.” Sure he hadn’t. “I’m supposed to be up in Gaylord about the same time.”

  “So Teddy’ll handle it?”

  Francis resumed stacking the bills. “First let me ask you, are you going to be quoting me? You’re a friend, so I’d like to be candid, but it’s hard to be candid if you’re going to be quoting me in the paper.” He smiled. “Got too many dear friends to make into enemies, if you know what I mean.”

  I was reluctant, but I knew where I could find him. “All right.”

  “It’s not like I have a flock of secrets to set loose,” he said. “You’ve probably heard old Theodore and I aren’t, well, we aren’t working elbow to elbow as much anymore. I think the young fellow’s sort of feeling his oats. He doesn’t think he needs the old guy holding him back.”

  “Holding him back from what?”

  “Ha! Lots of questions bottled up in that one, Augustus.”

  “Like?”

  “Like”-he arched a bushy eyebrow-“does Mr. Boynton really want a new marina?”

  “Why else would he be going to all this trouble?”

  Francis chortled. “Well, I probably shouldn’t be saying these things, Augustus. But I trust you. So let me just give you one little thought. It’s something you probably wouldn’t know unless you’re in my business.”

  “Please.”

  “Well,” he said. “Do I really want to say this?” He sat thinking for a minute. Then he said, “OK. We are off the record. And I mean no disrespect. Theodore is a capable young man. To his credit, he’s built a few things. But mostly, he’s not a builder. No, he’s a bleeder. He bleeds things. Bleeds them dry.”

  “Like what?”

  “Remember that little strip mall he bought out by Estes Corner?”

  “I thought you both worked on that.”

  “I had a couple of dollars in it, but I was strictly silent. Theodore was the one who wanted to buy the thing. He said it had all sorts of potential, being at a crossroads, to scoop up traffic between Starvation and Sandy Cove. And at first he made like he was actually going to make some improvements and run the thing. But then he just bled it. Borrowed up to the keister, took the cash, put some in his pocket, and funneled the rest into his next victim, that duplex out on Morrissey. Then he bled that one, too.”

  “The strip mall’s all boarded up.”

  “Yes, sir, ’tis. And you know where the cash for that originally came from? The old Avalon cinema. And where’s that now? Boarded up. You see, son, Mr. Boynton is pretty good at the back-and-forth, at the negotiations. It’s all a game to him, and he likes games, especially ones he can win. But he’s not so keen on the actual running of things like stores and restaurants and movie t
heaters. Once he makes his deal, he wants to collect up his winnings and go home.”

  “But he doesn’t have any winnings until he runs the things.”

  “You and I agree on that, Augustus. But that’s not how Theodore sees it. That’s why he and I aren’t working so closely these days. He thinks I’m an old man with old-fashioned ideas, like owing everybody and their brother money is a bad idea, not a good one. Like keeping your money with the folks who made you what you are.”

  “What do you mean, Francis? You’ve been in on the projects in Sandy Cove and other places, haven’t you?”

  He leaned forward and wagged his finger in my face. “No, Augustus, see, this is where your paper hasn’t gotten the facts quite right. Not that I can really blame you, because how were you to know? But I’ll let you in on a little secret: Theodore and I have had some knockdown, drag-outs over these Sandy Cove projects, including that movie house we’re supposed to be fixing up. I think our money should stay right here”-he pointed downward for emphasis-“and not be going hither and yon just because there’s a few more dollars to be made, like we’re a couple of damn carpetbaggers.”

  “Why don’t you just walk away then?”

  “Well, it isn’t that simple when you’ve got all sorts of money tied up in the business, but I’m almost there. And that’ll be a good day for Starvation Lake.”

  “What about the marina?”

  Francis turned and began fitting the stacks of bills into the lockbox. “What about it? After the zoning board does Theodore’s will-and they will, trust me, if not tomorrow then soon enough, because they’re all so deathly afraid that Theodore and his lamebrained little lawyer might sue them-then I would be shocked, son, absolutely shocked, if a single piece of structural steel ever went up out there. Mark my words. Theodore has no desire to run a marina. That’s a big, big operation. Alden is not much better than Angus was at running his show, but at least it’s there.”

  “What’s Teddy going to do if not build a marina?”

  Francis snapped the lockbox shut. “Have you not listened to a word I said, son? He’ll bleed it, bleed it for all it’s worth. The minute he gets the zoning, his lender will release his first draw. Five million dollars, son. He’s going to run that down the street to First Financial here and pay off some of what he owes on his other properties. The condos on the north shore, that strip mall. He’s leveraged up to his neck. Why do you think he’s borrowing the marina money from a bank down in Saginaw? Because nobody here’ll touch him. Behind all the smiles and the handshakes, believe me, Mr. Boynton these days is a desperate man. One little thing goes wrong and all his debtors are going to come down on him like a shithouse of bricks.”