Winter of the Wolf Moon am-2

by Steve Hamilton

  Maven hated me. I knew that. But how much more would he hate a couple hotshot DEA agents who treated him like a backwoods hick?

  “McKnight,” he said, “the judge will be here at nine o’clock. When you’re arraigned, I’m going to ask the DA to dismiss the charges.”

  That’s how much.

  “What are you doing?” Champagne said.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” Maven said. “I’m kicking him.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Sure I can. There was less than a gram in that bag, so it’s a misdemeanor. The gun was licensed. It just wasn’t reported on the way over. So that’s a misdemeanor, too. Any misdemeanor charges on that bridge belong to the city. You know that.”

  Champagne pointed a finger right in his face. Another great idea. “You are making a big mistake,” he said.

  “The next finger you point at me gets separated from your body,” Maven said.

  “This is how it works up here, huh? This is how you run a police department?”

  “Excuse me, boys,” I said. “You said I could leave, right Chief?”

  “Get out of here,” he said. “Just be in the court building at nine.”

  Champagne stood up, knocking his chair over. “This isn’t over, McKnight,” he said. He stood right in front of me, his face just a few inches from mine. “I’ll be watching you.”

  “You go right ahead,” I said. “I hope you like watching a man shovel snow, split wood and drink beer. Because that’s all you’re gonna see.”

  He stood there, probably trying to think up another tough guy line.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” I said. “I need some fresh air.” I stepped around him and went out the door, stopping just long enough to give my new buddy Chief Maven a little salute.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I had two hours to kill before my appointment in the courthouse, so I took a walk down Water Street in a winter light that made everything look gray and soft around the edges. The snow was wet and heavy. Ten minutes of walking and I was already wearing the snow around my shoulders like an old woman’s shawl.

  I stopped at a little restaurant over by the Locks Park. The locks were closed, of course, but there was just enough business from the snowmobilers and the locals to keep the place open. I sat down in a booth with the newspaper and a cup of coffee, and asked for eggs and bacon and sausage and anything else they could fit on a breakfast plate.

  While I was waiting for the food, I called Leon’s home number and left a message. Two minutes later he came banging through the door.

  “My wife paged me,” he said. He was breathing hard as he pulled his coat off. “God, you look awful.”

  “Were you at work?” I said.

  “Yeah, I can’t stay long,” he said. “I just wanted to come down and see what the hell happened.”

  I ran it all down for him, starting at the bridge.

  “They left you a nice little present,” he said.

  “A souvenir from our visit to the bar,” I said. “It was very thoughtful of them.”

  “They could have really jammed you up,” he said.

  “They should have put a full gram in the truck,” I said. “Then I would have been fucked. I guess they didn’t want to part with that much of it, though.”

  “Ha, you’re probably right.”

  “If you see two guys with hunting caps walk in here,” I said, “you better duck.”

  “Maven really let you go?”

  “The charges get withdrawn at nine o’clock,” I said. “I hope he doesn’t come to his senses by then.”

  “Those guys were feds,” he said. “I should have known.”

  “I was sure they were Molinov’s guys. Those two men Bruckman was talking about.”

  “Molinov,” he said. He worked the name around a few times while the waitress brought over my breakfast.

  “Gotta be Russian,” I said.

  “Gotta be,” he said. “I could look him up.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ve got a computer now,” he said. “There’s all sorts of places on the Internet.”

  I smiled and shook my head.

  “You can’t be a private eye in the nineties without a computer,” he said. “Or at least a partner who has one.”

  I stopped eating and looked at him. “I told those agents that you were my partner, Leon. And I meant it”

  “That’s good to hear, Alex.”

  “But this is the only case we’re going to work on,” I said. “And I think it’s about over.”

  “We make a great team, Alex. You know that.”

  “This is a small town,” I said. “If there’s any business here at all, you’re more than enough to handle it. I told you that before. Look at everything you did, the way you found Bruckman. You’re a real private investigator, Leon. I’m not. And I don’t want to be.”

  “I think we should find him again,” he said. “He’s gotten you twice now. Don’t you want to even the score? He might know more about this Molinov guy, too.”

  “I don’t think we’re gonna get anything else out of him,” I said. “We’ll probably just get ourselves killed this time.”

  “Alex, if I have to go back and sell snowmobiles every winter and outboard motors every summer for the rest of my life, I swear to God I’m gonna lose my mind. Just don’t close the door on this thing yet, okay? Wait a few days and see what happens.”

  “All right, we’ll see what happens,” I said. I didn’t feel like fighting over it.

  “Good man,” he said. “I’m going back to work. I’ll let you know if I find anything on Molinov.” He stood up, zipped his coat and left the place. He gave me a thumbs-up as he passed the window.

  I sat there and watched the snow for a while. Then I paid my bill and went back out into the snow. I walked back directly this time, shielding my face from the wind. I saw Bill Brandow walk in the door just ahead of me, but by the time I got into the lobby he had already disappeared into his office.

  I went over to the receptionist’s desk and asked her if the sheriff was free. She picked up the phone and talked to him for a few seconds, then looked up at me. “And you would be…?” she said.

  “I’m the drug kingpin everybody’s looking for,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said, not missing a beat. She gave Brandow my title and watched me as she listened to whatever Brandow was saying on the other end. “The sheriff will see you,” she finally said.

  “Thank you,” I said. I went through his door and found him sitting at his desk with the newspaper.

  “Every time you come in here,” he said, “you track in enough snow to make a snowman. You look terrible, by the way.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me those guys were DEA agents?” I said.

  He put the paper down. “They asked me to stall you,” he said. “I wasn’t happy about it, believe me.”

  “They have no leverage over you,” I said. “You’re an elected sheriff.”

  “They asked me for one week, Alex. I told them they were wasting their time following you. But come on, they’re agents from the federal government. I was just trying to do the right thing. You were a cop once. You know how it works. I really didn’t have a choice.”

  “Of course not,” I said. “That’s why you sent your deputies out to search my cabins this morning, too.”

  “I could have let them call in their people, Alex. They would tear your cabins apart. I figured at least this way we could be a little more careful about it.”

  “I appreciate the gesture,” I said. “Remind me to pick up the tab the next time we drink together.”

  “We did that once,” he said. “And only once. It’s not like we’re best friends.”

  “No,” I said. “We’re not. And we never will be. Because I’m not from around here, am I? I wasn’t born here. I didn’t grow up here. No matter how long I live up here, I’ll always be a downstater to you. I’ll always be from ‘below the bridge.’
” It was a term I had heard used many times in bars all over the county. The bridge, in this case, being the Mackinac Bridge that separated the two peninsulas. Back in the sixties and seventies, when I was down being a cop in Detroit as it burned all around me, a lot of guys up here were actually talking about blowing up that bridge. They were scared to death that we’d all come up there and ruin the Upper Peninsula.

  “One more day,” he said. “I would have made them come to you directly. If you don’t like that, then I don’t know what else to say.”

  “This has been some morning,” I said. “I always thought you were the good guy and Maven was the bad guy. But you’re the one who rolls over for these clowns, and he’s the one who tells them to go fuck themselves.”

  He folded his hands together and looked at me. “Are you about done?” he said.

  “I’m done,” I said. “I’ll see you around.”

  I left his office, went out to the lobby and walked around for a few minutes, trying to make some sense out of everything that had happened that morning. It didn’t happen. At nine o’clock I went over to the courthouse and watched my charges get dropped. It would have been better if Champagne and Urbanic had been there to see it, but maybe that’s asking too much out of life. When I was free to go, I went looking for my truck and finally found it in the parking lot behind the City-County Building. I went inside and asked for the keys. After a few minutes of poking around, an officer finally found them and gave them to me. When I opened the door to the truck, the interior door panel fell out into the snow. Everything that could be taken apart had been taken apart, just in case I had any more drugs stashed away. They hadn’t bothered putting anything back together.

  I threw the door panel onto the other side of the seat and started her up. I’ll put this all back together later, I thought. Just get the hell out of here.

  The sun was actually trying to shine a little bit as I left Sault Ste. Marie, but it was a losing battle. By the time I made it to Paradise, the snowclouds had returned. The agents’ car wasn’t in the motel lot as I drove by. Too bad. I wondered what they were going to do to amuse themselves now that they couldn’t follow me anymore?

  Or could they? It wouldn’t have surprised me, although I knew they weren’t behind me on my way back home that morning. Maybe they’ll take the day off and start again tomorrow, I thought.

  I put the plow down when I hit my access road, pushing off the few inches of snow from the night before. Vinnie’s car was parked in front of his cabin. There was maybe one inch of snow on his windshield, meaning that he had worked a late shift at the casino and driven home around dawn. Brilliant detective work on my part. I pushed the snow from his driveway all the way up to where his car was parked, and then I laid on the horn for a few seconds to make sure he was awake. If I was tired and sore and miserable, I didn’t want to be alone.

  When I got to my cabin and opened the door, I stood there in the doorway for a full minute before I could bring myself to go inside. This is too much, I thought. A man shouldn’t have to have his cabin trashed twice in one week. Every drawer was open, every single item taken out and left out. At least they didn’t intentionally break everything and slash the furniture, I thought, like when Bruckman was here. Or no, I, guess it wasn’t Bruckman, was it? It was whoever the hell those other guys were, the guys who work for Molinov. Whoever the hell he is. God, listen to me. I have no idea who I’m talking about.

  I got a fire going in the woodstove, and then I cleaned up the place just enough to make it livable again. I didn’t feel like seeing what the other cabins looked like, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to relax until I did. So I put my coat back on, went back out to the truck, and drove the quarter mile to the second cabin.

  It had gotten the same treatment. Everything opened up, turned over, taken out and left out. It took about thirty minutes to clean the place up. There wasn’t as much to put away, at least. Nobody actually lived there. This is where you keep your guests, I said to myself, when you want them to be kidnapped. You leave them alone in this cabin and then you go to bed. In the morning, they’ll be gone.

  I stood there and looked at the bed where she had slept. The pipes are probably still frozen, I thought. And the leg on that table needs to be glued back on. Hell with it, I’ll deal with it later. I can’t stand being here.

  The third cabin was another quarter mile down the road. My father had built this one in 1970, on enough of a hill to make it higher than the others. It was bigger than the first two, and it had a porch on it so you could see Lake Superior through the trees. He had learned a little more about plumbing, so the pipes didn’t freeze as long as the temperature stayed above minus twenty. I put that place back together and then kept working my way down the line. My father had gotten tired of drilling new wells for each cabin, so the fourth and fifth cabins were close to each other and shared the same well. The two cabins together would sleep twenty people, maybe twenty-four if they liked it cozy.

  When I got to the sixth and last cabin, I saw the same kind of mess, and the same kind of emptiness. Every single renter had left. I didn’t imagine any of them would be sending me money, either. Not that I blamed them. If federal agents woke me up to search the place I was renting, I’d stiff the landlord, too.

  The only consolation, I thought, was that I wouldn’t have to hear as many snowmobiles for a while.

  But wait. There was an envelope on the table. I opened it up and found three hundred-dollar bills. Benjamin Franklin, Leon’s best friend. I couldn’t help smiling.

  When I had cleaned up the place, I stood in the center of the room and looked at it. It was the last cabin he had built. The biggest and the best. There was a real kitchen, separated from the rest of the cabin, with its own woodstove. There was even a second floor in this cabin, with a balcony overlooking the living room. My father had built the fireplace with all the stones he had moved or dug up while making the other cabins. Standing there in that cabin, I actually started to feel human again, so I figured I’d stay a while. I brought some wood in and made a fire. I even found a can of good coffee in the kitchen. After I had made a cup and sat there looking out at the snow, I couldn’t stop myself from leaning back on the couch. The warmth from the fire felt too good. In less than a minute, I started to fall asleep. In a half-dream, I was behind Bruckman’s snowmobile again, sliding over the snow.

  The tree coming up fast. I can’t avoid it. I’m going to slam into it.

  Impact. A loud bang like a gunshot.

  I sat up straight, instantly awake. The front door opened and Vinnie walked into the cabin.

  “Oh, it’s you,” I said. “You woke me up.”

  “Who was laying on the horn in my driveway a couple hours ago?” he said.

  “I thought you said Indians only need three hours of sleep every night”

  “I never said that,” he said.

  “Must have been somebody else.”

  “You been cleaning up after the deputies?” he said. He looked around the room.

  “Yeah, did you see them this morning?”

  “They were just finishing up when I got home,” he said. “They stopped at my place and asked me some questions.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I told them you had a major drug ring going for years. About time they busted you.”

  “That’s it,” I said. “No more freebies for you.”

  “I brought you some beer,” he said. The bottles clanked in his hands. “Sorry, they’re American.” He gave me a bottle, opened one up for himself and pulled a chair over from the kitchen table.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I figured you’d be having a tough day,” he said. “God, you look terrible.”

  “Thanks again. Wait a minute, are you drinking beer?”

  “It’s non-alcoholic,” he said, holding up the bottle. “I tried one a couple years ago, figured it was time to try again. See if they got any better at making it.”

  “So how is i
t?”

  “I think they need a couple more years.” He tried to screw the cap back on the bottle but couldn’t quite get it to work. “So, now what?” he said. “You’re not still looking for her, are you?”

  “Not really,” I said. “There’s no place to look anymore. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m just wondering why you’ve gone to this much trouble. You only just met her that one night.”

  “Vinnie, she got kidnapped and it was my fault” My head started hurting again, just having to say the words. “She came to me for help and I fucked up. What do you want me to do, just forget it?”

  “She was in trouble long before she got to you.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “She chose her own path. Step by step. All that shit again.”

  “All right,” he said. “All right. Let’s not go through this again.”

  “You brought it up,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just…”

  “What?”

  “You’re killing yourself over this. And it’s not your fault. No matter what you think. That’s all.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said.

  A long silence reigned. We watched the last of the fire go out in the fireplace.

  “Alex, this has got to be the best fucking cabin I have ever seen in my life,” he said. “Your father was a genius.”

  “He got pretty good at it,” I said.

  “You’ll sell it to me one day, won’t you?”

  “When you’ve got a million dollars, come talk to me.”

  “After all I’ve done for you,” he said.

  “Make it two million.”

  I finished my beer and then he helped me clean up the place a little more. I could never leave that cabin without making it look perfect. One more reason to never live there myself. When we went back outside, the sun was making another rally, fighting its way through the snowclouds. A single brilliant beam swept slowly over the snow-covered trees like a searchlight.

  “What are you gonna do now?” he said.