Winter of the Wolf Moon

by Steve Hamilton

  We both stopped talking for a while. There was only the sound of the machine pumping air into me.

  “They were here,” I finally said. “At least one of them was.”

  “Who, the guys who are following you?”

  “I think so,” I said. “I can’t say for sure. I was pretty delirious.”

  “When?” he said. “Where?”

  “He was out in the hallway,” I said “I think it was last night.”

  Leon sprang out of his chair as if he could still catch up to him. “Those bastards. We’ve got to find out who they are.”

  “You know where they’re staying now,” I said. “Go check ’em out.”

  He looked at me and smiled. “You know, Alex, I’ve been thinking. Remember how I was saying that we could call ourselves McKnight-Prudell? You know, with your name first?”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, the more I think about it, I think Prudell-McKnight sounds better. What do you think?”

  “I think you’re pushing your luck, Leon.”

  He raised his hands. “Just think about it.” He picked up a brown paper bag and put it on the table. “Here, I brought you some stuff.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Some books and magazines. Private investigator stuff. You might as well make good use of your down time.”

  “Get out of here,” I said. “Go do your thing.”

  “You got it, partner,” he said. “Leon Prudell is on the case.”

  I watched him leave, a two-hundred-forty-pound whirlwind of flannel and snowboots.

  Look out, world.

  I spent the rest of the day lying in bed, drifting in and out of a codeine haze. I couldn’t get up because of the machine. I couldn’t even roll over. The nurses came in to check on me or to give me more drags or to empty my bedpan. It was not a fun day.

  I could see just enough of the window to know that it was snowing again outside, then it was dark and I tried to sleep. I kept waking up every hour as a new pain announced itself. The stitches over my eye started to hurt, then my right hip, then my right shoulder. All the while the ache in my ribs was a constant background.

  In the morning I saw the doctor again. He unhooked me from the machine just long enough to do another set of X rays, then had me wheeled back to my room. Bill Brandow was there waiting for me.

  “How ya feeling?” he said when I was back in bed.

  “Never better,” I said. “You got my note?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m working on it”

  “What have you got?” I said. “I gave you the description of the two guys who’ve been following me. I gave you the license plate number. Although now they’re driving a different vehicle, sounds like. A Jeep Grand Cherokee. I can even tell you where they’re staying now. They’re at the Brass Anchor in Paradise. Leon tailed them.”

  He sat down next to me. “Leon Prudell? That clown who used to be Uttley’s investigator?”

  “If that clown hadn’t showed up yesterday,” I said, “Bruckman would still be dragging my ass behind his snowmobile.”

  “About that,” he said. “What can you tell me? Start at the beginning.”

  “You know the beginning,” I said. “I thought he had taken Dorothy. But now, I’m not so sure. He wanted me to tell him where she was. And he wanted to know where the bag was.”

  “What bag?”

  “A white bag she had with her.”

  “You don’t know where it is?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “Bill, are you going to tell me what’s going on or not? Are you still looking for Bruckman? And what about those two other guys? Did you run the plate?”

  “Alex, I told you I’m working on it. On both of those things. I’m not going to sit here and talk about what I know and what I don’t know.”

  I looked him in the eye. “You’re starting to sound like Maven,” I said.

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “I mean it. What are you doing to me here?”

  “I want you to promise me something, Alex. I want you to promise me that you’ll let me take care of this, okay? Just relax and get better. Let me do my job, all right?”

  “Will you call me when you find out who they are?”

  “Promise me, Alex.”

  “All right, all right. I promise.”

  When he was gone, I had nothing to do but lie there and think about it. I took more drags. I used the bedpan. I can’t take much more of this, I thought. I am going to lose my fucking mind.

  Vinnie came by around dinnertime. They had just rolled in a tray with some sort of meat in some sort of sauce with some sort of vegetable and a separate compartment of green jello. “That looks almost good enough to eat,” he said.

  “You’re welcome to it,” I said.

  “No thanks,” he said. “I had a steak at the Glasgow. You know, with that brandy sauce that Jackie makes?”

  “You’re a cruel man,” I said.

  “I’m keeping the road clear,” he said. “I’ve been using your truck. And I’ve been taking care of the cabins, although a few guys left already. I don’t know if they paid you in advance or not.”

  “They never do,” I said. “But don’t worry about it. Thanks for helping me out.”

  “No problem,” he said. He stood there looking at the floor for a long moment. “I’m sorry, Alex.”

  “For what?”

  “For the way I was talking to you the other night. After we went to see Dorothy’s parents.”

  “Forget it,” I said. “I should have been a little more understanding.”

  He looked at the machine. “Is this thing really pumping air into you? What happens if I turn this dial up all the way?” He made a fake for it. I flinched.

  “Ow! Goddamn it. Vinnie, I’m so glad you came by.”

  “I had him, Alex,” he said. “I had him right here.” He held his hands up and looked at the space between them.

  “Who, Bruckman?”

  “I wasn’t going to let go,” he said. “But then Prudell started shooting. I was afraid he was going to hit me.”

  “He wouldn’t hit you,” I said. “Don’t forget, he’s holding a ten-thousand-dollar bond on you. I don’t know the rules exactly, but I’m pretty sure he loses the bond if he kills you.”

  “The bond,” he said, like he was sorry I brought it up.

  “When’s the trial?” I said.

  “Next week.”

  “Now that they know more about Bruckman, they’ll have to go easy on you, right?”

  “I don’t know. They still don’t like it when an Indian attacks a cop. No matter what.”

  “The tribe will represent you, right?”

  “Yes,” he said, looking at the floor again. “They will.”

  “Dorothy is still one of you, isn’t she?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s still a member of the tribe, even though she’s been gone so long?”

  “Of course she is.”

  “So what’s the tribe doing about her? Aren’t they trying to find her?”

  “I think they are, yes. I can tell you one thing. If I ever have my hands on him again, I’ll kill him. I’ll choke him to death, Alex. He’s evil. I could see it in his eyes.”

  “I know,” I said. “I saw it too.”

  “Well,” he said. He seemed to pull himself back from somewhere far away. “I got a shift at the casino. I’m glad you’re okay. I mean, all things considered.”

  “I’m glad you came by,” I said. “It means a lot to me.” The drags had me talking mushy again.

  When he was gone, I tried to read for a while, but it made my head start to throb. Trying to watch television was even worse. The drags again, or the concussion, or God knows what. I lay in the bed and thought about baseball, for some reason. I replayed a couple games in my head. How long ago was my last game? It was a triple-A game in Columbus, September 1972. I remembered my very last at-bat, a well-hit ball to left field. It se
ttled into the outfielder’s glove, five feet away from a home run. My whole career in a nutshell. It seemed like forever ago, and yet as I looked at my hands I could still see the protrusions from playing four years behind the plate, all the fastballs and foul tips.

  And below those old scars, the new wounds on my wrists. The ropes were so tight. In my mind I was there again, sliding through the snow. My heart pounded. I was breathing hard. I could feel the balloon in my chest, this alien thing inside me.

  Easy, Alex. This is exactly what you don’t need right now. Just take it easy.

  I put my head back on the pillow, forced myself to relax, to think about nothing. I remembered what an old teammate had told me, that the secret to thinking about nothing is not trying to stop thoughts from coming into your head. Instead, you let them come and then slip right through your head. In one ear, across the slippery floor, and then right back out the other ear. But then, this was a left-handed pitcher talking, and everybody knows that lefthanders are crazy.

  The nurses made their rounds. Later a man waxed the floor in the hallway. The machine kept pumping air into me. From outside I could hear the sound of the wind.

  I slept. Finally, a good night’s sleep. In the morning the doctor came around again. We did the X rays again, and then he asked me if I wanted him to take the tube out.

  “Is that a trick question?” I said. “Pull the damned thing out already.”

  He gave me a local before he pulled the tube out. On the end of it there was a deflated balloon, covered with whatever that stuff is that coats the inside of your lung. He stitched up the incision in my side and told me to just lie there for a couple more hours until he got back before I tried standing up. When he left the room, I waited all of one minute before I swung my legs around to the floor. Very slowly, I stood up. It felt good, in a violently sick-to-my-stomach sort of way. I was ready to try it again about an hour later.

  Leon stopped in around lunchtime. “Where’s your breathing machine?” he said.

  “I’m flying solo,” I said.

  “Great, where are your clothes? Let’s get you out of here.”

  “Leon, it still takes me fifteen minutes to get up and go to the bathroom.”

  “Well, I’ve been busy, at least. Your two friends are definitely staying at the Brass Anchor Motel. They have a unit on the end with a window overlooking the main road. With you in the hospital, they haven’t had much to do, I guess. I did see them leave one day and drive around the reservation.”

  “What, you’ve been watching them the whole time?”

  “Off and on,” he said. Now that I thought about it, he did look tired. “I couldn’t think of any good way to inquire about them at the motel desk. If it got back to them, they’d know somebody’s on to them.”

  “I don’t know what else we can do,” I said. “Except call Brandow again, see if he’s gotten anywhere.”

  “Cops don’t play ball with private eyes,” he said. “It’s an unwritten rule.”

  “Leon, you should really listen to yourself sometime. ‘Cops don’t play ball with private eyes.’ For God’s sake. This is Bill Brandow we’re talking about. He’s a good guy.”

  “Not when he’s wearing the badge, Alex.”

  “Okay, fine,” I said. “Whatever you say.”

  “Now, about the Bruckman situation …”

  “What Bruckman situation? He didn’t take Dorothy.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “The more I think about it,” I said. “Nothing else makes sense if he did.”

  “Then who took her?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe the two guys who are following me?”

  “But if they have her, why are they following you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe they have Dorothy but they don’t have the white bag.” I gave him the quick rundown on the white canvas bag that Bruckman wanted so badly.

  “No matter who those guys are, or what they want,” he said, “we still have to find Bruckman. He’s our only source of information, number one. Number two, don’t we sort of owe him something now? After what he did to you?”

  “Give me a couple days before I have to think about that, okay? It’s all I can do to get up and take a piss.”

  “Where do you think he is?” he said. “Right now.”

  “Who knows, Leon? He could be anywhere.”

  “Think, Alex. What did he say?”

  I ran the night through my head, trying to remember what he said. Or what his teammates said.

  “One of his guys called him Captain Fuckhead,” I said. “That’s pretty good.”

  “Okay, so he has some dissension there,” Leon said. “What else can you think of?”

  I kept thinking. “Well, let’s see. They beat the hell out of me. He wanted to know where Dorothy was. He wanted to know where the bag was. Then they carried me outside, beat the hell out of me again. Then they dragged me behind their snowmobiles for a while. Then they stopped …”

  “Yes?”

  “They argued,” I said. “The guy who called him Captain Fuckhead, he asked him if they were going to drag me all way back over the river.”

  “The river,” he said. “The St. Marys. They’re in Canada.”

  “Yes,” I said. “They must be.”

  “They’re hiding out over there. Something must have happened.”

  “And the only reason they came back over,” I said, “was to find that bag.”

  “What do you think is in it?” he said. “Drugs?”

  “I don’t know what else it could be,” I said. “Although if that’s true …” I didn’t want to complete the thought.

  But I couldn’t escape it. Even when Leon was gone and I spent my last night in the hospital, I couldn’t stop asking myself the same question over and over.

  I knew Dorothy was in trouble. She was mixed up with some bad people, and she came to me because she didn’t know what to do next. She had obviously made some mistakes, but beyond that I thought she was just an innocent victim. That’s the part that got to me that night. It’s what made me feel so bad when she was taken from my cabin. It’s what drove me to go out looking for her. But if that bag she was carrying around was full of speed or coke or God knows what, then what did that say about her?

  And after all I had been through in the last few days, what did that say about me?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I left the hospital on a Thursday morning, after three nights on the machine and one more night just to make sure my ribs were going to stay put. The doctor took one more X ray, gave me strict orders to do nothing more strenuous than drive home and go to bed for a couple more days, and then I was a free man.

  The wind was waiting for me as I stepped out the front door of the hospital. It hit me across the face with a blast of air so cold it made my eyes water. Vinnie was sitting in my truck.

  “Welcome back,” he said as I eased myself in. “How d’ya feel?”

  “Cold,” I said. Even with the heater going, the car seat felt like a slab of ice.

  “The wind chill is minus forty today,” he said as he put it in gear. “I say we point this truck south and keep driving until we run out of gas money.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until I eat breakfast,” I said. “I mean real food.”

  “Jackie’s waiting for you,” he said. “Soon as you drop me off at the casino. My car wouldn’t start this morning.”

  “Some day I’ll get this window fixed,” I said. It felt strange to be sitting on the wrong side of my own truck, especially with the cold air whistling through the plastic.

  “I saw your man Leon this morning,” he said. “He looked like he hadn’t slept in three days. He came into Jackie’s for a cup of coffee. When he saw me he took me outside and told me he was checking on a couple guys at one of the motels. I’m supposed to tell you that he’s already working on the other, what did he say, the other individuals at large in Canada.”

  “He’s some
thing else,” I said.

  “Alex, don’t you think he’s a little weird?”

  “Just drive,” I said. “I’m too hungry to talk.”

  As the snow blew across the road, it swirled in an ever-changing pattern, hypnotizing me as I watched it. I wrapped my coat tight around my body and leaned back in the seat. Somehow I dozed off, even with the cold wind in my ear. When I opened my eyes again, we were just coming to the Bay Mills Reservation. Even on a freezing cold Thursday morning in the middle of January, the casino parking lot was mostly full.

  “Thanks for picking me up,” I said as he opened the door.

  “Watch out for snowmobiles,” he said.

  I slid over and took the wheel. My head started to hurt again as I concentrated on the road, but I thought about Jackie’s omelets and that kept me going. On the main road into Paradise, I looked for the Brass Anchor Motel on the left. There it was, just after the welcome sign. It was a simple string of doors, maybe eight units in all. A dark green Jeep was parked at the end closest to the road.

  Alex is back in town, boys.

  The Glasgow Inn was mostly empty. It was late in the morning, so the snowmobilers were already out on the trails. Although how the hell they could ride around out there all day in this weather was beyond me. It hurt just to think about it.

  “Good God Almighty,” Jackie said when he saw me. “If you aren’t the ugliest thing that ever walked in here.”

  “Nice to see you too,” I said. “I need an omelet with the works.”

  “Too late for breakfast,” he said. “Kitchen’s closed.”

  “Jackie, even with two broken ribs, I will kill you with my bare hands if you don’t get your ass in that kitchen.”

  “Go sit by the fire,” he said. “I suppose you want the paper and a Bloody Mary, too.”

  “You’re a good man, Jackie. God will reward you some day.”

  He shot me a funny look on his way through the kitchen door. I pulled a chair close to the fireplace and threw another log on. When I was settled in, I promised myself that I wouldn’t move from that spot for the next week.

  When Jackie came back with the food, he stood over me for a long time, looking down at me.

  “What is it?” I said.