“Good for you,” I said. “Just sit down.”
He flipped down the lid and sat on it. In the cheap light he looked tired and thin and used up.
“You don’t look so hot,” I said.
He didn’t say anything. He just sat there staring into some sort of middle distance only he could see.
“Let’s see,” I said. “If the bullet goes in this way, it should come out like so.” I looked past his head at the wall. “Unless it stays in the skull.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s gonna make a hell of a racket in here,” I said. I reached down and gave the toilet paper roll a quick spin. I tore off a couple feet, wadded it into a ball, and stuck it in my left ear. Then I made another ball and stuck it in my right ear.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“I’m getting ready to shoot you,” I said. “It’s gonna surprise the hell out of everybody, I know. Nobody out there really thinks I’m gonna do it. But I am.” I looked over at the sink and the window above it. “I should probably go out that window. What do you think?”
“What…”
I made a show of checking the gun and then I held it in both hands. “You ever see a bullet go through somebody’s head?” I said. I closed my left eye and looked down the barrel with my right. “It’s quite a sight. God, this place is going to be a mess.”
“You can’t shoot me,” he said.
“Sure I can,” I said.
“What do you want from me?” he said. He started to rock on the seat.
“I want you to stay still,” I said. “So I can get a clean shot.”
“You’re crazy,” he said. “You’re fucking crazy.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” I said. “I guess you should have killed me when you had the chance.”
“No,” he said. “I wasn’t going to…”
“Stop talking,” I said. “You’re ruining my concentration.”
“What do I have to do?” he said. “Just tell me.”
I opened up both my eyes and looked at him over the gun. “I suppose you could entertain me,” I said. “That might buy you a couple minutes, at least.”
“What?” he said. “How?”
“Start talking to me,” I said. “What’s in that bag?”
“What bag?”
I raised the gun again. “You’re not very good at this,” I said. “The bag you were looking for when you jumped me in my cabin.”
“Drugs,” he said.
“What kind?”
“I’m not exactly sure. Some kind of speed. Real intense shit, like it had to be mixed with something. Probably some crack. Maybe something else.”
“Where did you get it?”
He hesitated until I closed my left eye again. “A guy in New Jersey,” he said. “We stole it off him a couple weeks ago.”
“How does Dorothy figure into this?”
“She was with me,” he said. “Not when we stole it, I mean. Just that… she was with me. We came here together.”
“Why did you come here?”
“To sell the stuff,” he said. “What else?”
“Why here?”
“We had to get away. Someplace out in the middle of nowhere. Dorothy knows this place because she grew up here.”
“It doesn’t hurt that Canada is right next door, right? You don’t even have to go through customs, just drive your snowmobiles across the river.”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“And what else, Bruckman?”
“What else what?”
“What else makes this such a great place to sell those drugs?”
He didn’t say anything.
“The Indians,” I said. “Right?”
“They got the money now,” he said. “With those casinos.”
“You know about the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, don’t you? All the problems they’re having with drugs. You figured you could make a big score up here.”
“It’s not my problem they got no will power.”
“Yeah, not like you,” I said. “You never touch the stuff.”
He looked away from me.
“You were dipping into that bag, weren’t you?”
“Little bit,” he said.
“What did Dorothy think of your plan to sell that stuff up here?”
“She didn’t know about it,” he said.
“Ah, now this is starting to make sense,” I said. “Let me guess. When she did find out, she took that bag and ran.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he said.
“How did you know she came to me?” I said.
“Gobi, one of the guys on the team, he was back at that bar with all the deer heads and shit on the walls. There was this waitress there he was working on. He saw her come in and ask about you. She had the bag with her, he thought. He wasn’t sure. Nobody else had ever seen it. I had it hidden. I didn’t trust anybody. So instead of stopping her and asking her what she’s doing, this fucking moron just calls me and leaves me a message on my machine, tells me she was asking about you and I should check it out. You know, on account of he didn’t want to leave the bar because he thought he was finally getting somewhere with this waitress. That’s the kind of guy Gobi is. Can’t play hockey for shit, either.”
“You didn’t take her from my cabin?” I said.
“No, I didn’t even know she was there until a couple of days later. When I went home that night, there was a police car there, so I got the hell out of there, came over here to Canada. I figured I was fucked. Like maybe she turned me in or something. So I’m waiting here and then finally I call Gobi, and I go, Hey, what the fuck is going on over there? Are they looking for me or what? And he goes, No man, didn’t you get my message? And I go, What message? And he tells me what happened. Turns out somebody trashed the place that night and Mrs. Hudson called the cops. That’s why the police car was there.”
“You didn’t trash the place?”
“Nah, fuck no,” he said. “Why would I do that?”
“And you didn’t trash my place?”
“No,” he said. “I didn’t fucking trash anything.”
“So who did?” I said.
He gave me a little smirk. It was almost enough to make me go ahead and shoot him. “You don’t know, do you?” he said.
“No, but I’m hoping you’re gonna tell me,” I said.
“I don’t know for sure,” he said. “But I’m guessing it was a couple guys named Pearl and Roman.”
“Who are they?”
“Just a couple guys who work for Molinov.”
“Who’s Molinov?”
“He’s the guy we stole the drugs off of,” he said. “Believe me, you don’t want to know about Molinov.”
“Is he Russian?” I said.
“I didn’t stop to ask him.”
“And what about these two guys, Pearl and Roman? What do they look like? Do they wear hunting caps?”
“I’ve never seen them,” he said. “I’ve only heard of them.”
“There’s been a couple guys following me around,” I said. “You think that’s them?”
“From what I hear, they’d probably just kill you instead of following you around, but who the fuck knows?”
“How would they know about me in the first place?” I said.
He rubbed his eyes. His head was probably hurting from all the thinking I was making him do. “The message,” he said. “When they trashed my place, they might have played the machine. If they did, you got a big problem.”
“Your concern is touching,” I said. I put the gun back in my coat pocket.
Bruckman sat there looking at me.
“Here’s your chance,” I said. “No gun.”
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t move.
“You’re pretty tough when you’ve got four other guys helping you beat up somebody,” I said. “Let’s see what you can do all by yourself.”
He looked down at the floor.
“You’re just a cheap
little punk,” I said. “You couldn’t make it as a hockey player, so for the rest of your life you’re gonna take it out on everybody else. Unless they stand up to you.”
“Whatever you say, old man.”
I stood there in front of him for a long moment, waiting for him to do something.
And then from the other side of the bathroom door came the distinctive sound of all hell breaking loose. Bruckman lunged at me, but he lost a good half a second pulling himself up off the toilet seat. I got my right knee up just in time. I felt a stab of pain in my ribs, but I was sure Bruckman got the worst of it. He went down hard, holding his nose with both hands.
When I opened the door, I saw a good old-fashioned bar brawl going on. “Alex, over here!” It was Leon, over by the door. Two of Bruckman’s goons were having it out with two of the men from the bar. I didn’t see the third goon. The rest of the men were all standing in the corners, trying to look like they were ready to fight without actually having to do anything. I made my way across the room, ducking a cue stick and a barstool. When I reached Leon, he opened the door just in time for the third goon to come rushing in at me along with a blast of cold air. He took a big swing at me and missed, so I kicked his leg out at the knee, just like Leon had coached me. The guy gave out a high-pitched scream on the way down to the floor.
“Let’s get out of here!” Leon said.
“I’m right behind you,” I said. We ran out through the snow and jumped into our vehicles. He spun his way out of the lot and I followed, fighting to see my way through the snow his tires were kicking up.
We made our way back west on Trunk Road, back toward the Soo Canada city limits. I kept looking behind me, waiting to see headlights. Leon slowed down when we were in the city again. I settled in behind him and tried to make my own body do the same. My heart was still racing, the adrenaline still pumping through my blood. I could feel the pain in my side now, and in my knee where I had hit Bruckman. I’m gonna pay for all this tomorrow, I thought. I’ll be lucky if I can get out of bed.
Leon pulled into a restaurant parking lot on Wellington Street. I parked next to him, got out of the truck, went to his passenger side and opened the door. “You all right?” I said.
“Yeah, I just had to catch my breath a minute.”
I got in his car and closed the door.
“I guess we need to compose ourselves before we go back across the border,” he said.
“Good idea.” I closed my eyes and took a few long breaths. “God, we must be insane.”
“I thought that was kinda fun,” he said.
I looked at him. He was actually smiling. “How the hell did you get those guys to do that?” I said.
“The guys at the bar? That was easy.”
“Oh, don’t tell me.”
“It’s those Franklins, Alex. They can do miracles.”
“You paid those guys a hundred bucks apiece to pretend to be carrying guns?”
“Benjamin J. Franklin,” he said. “A private eye’s best friend.”
“Oh for God’s sake. So that’s like what, seven hundred dollars? And how much did you spend the other night at the hockey rink? Like four hundred? Five hundred?”
“Don’t send Ulysses Grant to do a job that only Benjamin Franklin can do.”
“All right, already. I get the point. I owe you twelve hundred dollars.”
“We’ll split the cost, Alex. We’re partners.”
“I’ll give you the money tomorrow,” I said. “And you’ll take all of it.”
He shook his head. “Alex…”
“So what happened, anyway? Your, what did you call it? The illusion of overwhelming force? It all fell apart.”
“Some local clown walked in the door, wanted to know what the hell was going on. It sort of broke the spell.”
“We should both be dead right now.”
“What happened in the bathroom? Did you get the information you wanted?”
I told him everything Bruckman had told me. About Dorothy, the drugs in the bag, the men named Pearl and Roman and Molinov.
“So those two guys who’ve been following you,” he said. “That’s gotta be them.”
“I suppose it is,” I said. They didn’t cross the border. Maybe they didn’t want to risk going through customs.
“Yeah, if they’re professional shooters…”
“Shooters,” I said. “This is getting better every minute.”
“So what are we gonna do about them?”
I thought about it for a minute. “I promised Bill I’d give him until tomorrow,” I said. “Then I was going to go pay them a visit.”
“Maybe we should go over there right now,” he said. “Pay them a visit while we still have the kick-ass juices flowing.”
“The kick-ass juices. You are too much, Leon.”
“Admit it, Alex. You’re glad I’m on your side.”
I laughed. How I could laugh after what I had just been through, I don’t know. “What kind of car is this, anyway?” I said.
“A Plymouth Horizon,” he said. “It’s a piece of crap, I know.”
“How do you drive in the snow in this thing?”
“I’ve got good tires and I know how to drive in the snow,” he said. “Now are we gonna go see those guys or not?”
“Yeah, we’d better,” I said. “Tomorrow I’m not going to be able to move.”
“You sure you’re up for this?”
“Quarterbacks play with broken ribs all the time,” I said. “They just put some pads on and hope they don’t get hit too hard.”
“Yeah, quarterbacks,” he said. “Young quarterbacks. No offense, Alex…”
“Let’s go,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the motel.”
I got back in my truck and followed him over the bridge. The clock on my dashboard read 2:40. There was only one customs lane open at this time of night. I watched Leon stop at the window to answer all of the usual questions. Then it was my turn.
When I pulled up, the man looked at me, then down at the truck, then back at me again. I didn’t recognize him. “Good evening, sir,” he finally said.
“Good evening,” I said. I waited for the questions.
They never came.
“I’m gonna ask you to pull over into the holding area, sir,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“Right over there, sir. Just pull in right there.”
The rest of it was like something from a bad dream. It played itself out in slow motion, under a bank of naked fluorescent bulbs that gave the whole scene a surreal glow.
The customs agents looking through my truck. A small bag pulled from under the front seat. White powder in the bag, held up for all to see. My hands against the wall, my legs spread. The gun taken from my coat pocket.
The bite of steel around my left wrist, then my right.
Then a voice from behind me. “You have the right to remain silent
…”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was the same cell. Saturday afternoon I visited Vinnie in this cell. This was, what, Friday morning? Six days. But now it was me on the wrong side of the bars.
There weren’t as many men in the cells this time. Two in the first, one in the second, two in the third. I had the fourth all to myself. The same fluorescent bulbs hummed and flickered above us.
It was after three in the morning. Whatever strength I had had that day was long gone. I had used it all up dragging myself out of bed, making myself go out into the night, bitterly cold and dark beyond hope. I had ridden a wave of adrenaline and anger all the way across the river to where Leon had found Bruckman. Now I was sitting on a hard wooden bench in the fourth downstairs holding cell in the Chippewa County Jail. I leaned back against the cement wall, feeling the ache in my ribs and in my head. There was no way to get comfortable. I just sat there listening to the lights humming and trying not to throw up.
Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, the door opened and Chief Maven walked in.<
br />
He came down the line of holding cells, casting a quick eye in every cell until he came to mine. He stood there looking at me through the bars. “Evening, McKnight,” he finally said.
“Chief,” I said.
“You’ve been read your rights?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good,” he said. “That’s good.” He pulled a chair over from the far wall. It might have been the same chair I sat in myself when I came here to see Vinnie. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a silver lighter. “Cigarette?”
“No, thanks,” I said.
He lit the cigarette in his mouth, snapped the lighter shut and blew a thin stream of smoke through the bars. “It’s starting to snow again,” he said.
I looked down at the floor.
“Just thought you might want to know,” he said.
I didn’t look at him. “Thanks for the weather report,” I said.
“If I ask you a question,” he said, “you know you don’t have to answer it.”
I didn’t say anything. Maven’s smoke hung in the air.
“I was in bed, you know that? When they called me and told me you got stopped on the bridge, I got up and got dressed and came all the way down here in the cold to ask you one question. Are you ready for it?”
I kept looking at the floor.
“Here’s my question, McKnight. Do you believe in reincarnation?”
I finally looked up at him.
“Like if you do something bad in a past life,” he said. “You might pay for it in this life? Or on the other hand, if you do something good in a past life… You know what I mean?”
I kept looking at him. I didn’t say a word.
“You may not have thought about it too much,” he said. “I admit, I never thought about it either.” He took a long drag on his cigarette. “Until tonight.”
He blew the smoke out. The lights kept humming.
“You see,” he said, “I think I’ve led a pretty good life. Helped out some people along the way. I’ve been a good father and a good husband. I’m sure I have some points stored up. But damn it, McKnight, to be sitting here looking at you in this cell. It’s just too much, I swear.”
He took another drag from his cigarette and squinted at me through the smoke.
“What do you think, McKnight? I’m thinking maybe in my last life, I saved a schoolbus full of children from going over a cliff. Something like that.”
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