Chapter Five
When the Bay Mills Indian Community opened up the King’s Club in 1984, the first Indian-owned casino in all of North America, it was a complete bust. The casino closed within two months. They regrouped and tried again, and now there are twenty Indian-owned casinos in Michigan alone, and for that matter hundreds more around the country.
The Bay Mills tribe parlayed the success of the King’s Club into the Bay Mills Casino and Resort, complete with a hotel, theater, spa, golf course, the works. Not long after that, the Sault tribe, a newly formed Ojibwa community down the road, announced plans to build their own casino. That’s how the Kewadin came to be. It’s a lot bigger than the Bay Mills casino. It has a lot more lights out front, and it’s as close to a real Vegas-style facility as you’re ever going to see around here. It’s also the source of an unofficial rivalry between the two tribes.
Even the name is a problem. “Kewadin” is the Ojibwa word for “north”-although in their language, it’s more than just a point on the compass. It’s everything you associate with the north. The winter, the cold, the very spirit of northerliness. I heard Vinnie’s cousin Buck complaining about this once. When you give something a real Ojibwa name, it’s like you’re calling forth the power behind that name. To him, and to a lot of other Bay Mills members, giving a casino a real Ojibwa name was almost unthinkable.
I had no idea why Vinnie would even be there, let alone why he’d want me to meet him there. But that’s where I was headed.
The rain had stopped. I could see the glow of the place a long time before I finally got there. It was down on the southern end of the Soo, with a lot of trees and a few smaller buildings surrounding it. The casino itself had a tall roofline shaped into several triangles that looked like tepees. The design always struck me as a little self-mocking, but what the hell. If it didn’t bother them, who was I to complain?
Normally, the place would be packed on a summer night, but the parking lot wasn’t even half full. I’d seen more cars here at midnight, in the middle of February. I pulled in not far from the front door, killed the engine, and got out. I had no idea where I was supposed to meet Vinnie and the mystery woman, so I just walked in.
There were two separate gaming rooms on either side of the center hallway. The slot machines were ringing with those hollow notes that don’t sound like anything else in the world, followed by the occasional crashing of coins against a metal tray. I poked my head into the original room, didn’t see Vinnie anywhere. I crossed the hall and went into the newer Paradise Room. More of the same, and no Vinnie.
I was tempted to go sit at the bar and wait for him, but the bar there in the Paradise Room is as long as a runway, with birds and palm trees and whatever the hell else all lit up in neon, and of course it’s surrounded by slot machines. Everything Jackie’s bar isn’t. So instead I walked back out into the hallway and through to the hotel. It’s a long walk, but when I finally got there, I saw Vinnie sitting in the lobby. A woman was sitting across from him, with her hands folded in her lap. She was in her thirties maybe, with dark hair, dark eyes, the cheekbones…It was obvious she was a tribal member.
“Alex,” he said. “How far out of town were you?”
“Sorry, I was looking for you. It’s a big building.”
“This is Theresa LaFleur.”
She was slow getting up, and even as she shook my hand I got the feeling she was less than thrilled to meet me. Or maybe I was just imagining it.
“Why did you want me to come, Vinnie? What’s going on?”
“We need to talk somewhere,” he said. “But not here. Terry, how about the restaurant? Would that work?”
“Yes, fine,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Vinnie led us to the hotel restaurant. The walls were all covered in logs and there was a huge bear head over the fireplace. The hostess tried to seat us up front, but Vinnie asked for a booth as far away from the door as possible. I was starting to wonder just what the hell was going on, and why he was making us all act like spies.
Vinnie sat next to Theresa. I sat across from them. We waited until the drinks were ordered. Then I finally got the story.
“Terry has something to tell you,” Vinnie said. “So that you’ll understand what’s going on.”
“Okay.”
“Mr. McKnight,” she said, “before I start, I want you to understand something. We are not specifically talking about anybody. This is all hypothetical.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Terry works at the clinic across the street,” Vinnie said. “It doesn’t matter what she does there. She just has something to say to us about something that might theoretically be happening there. But the medical information laws are very strict on this sort of thing.”
“Okay,” I said. “I get it. We’re not talking about anybody in particular. Go ahead.”
“All right, let’s just use you as an example, if you don’t mind. Let’s say that you’re a member of the Sault tribe. You live here in town, and you come to the clinic for your medical care. One day, you come in and you say, ‘Doctor, I really messed up my back. I was lifting something and I felt the muscles tighten up. I’m in total agony now.’ The doctor might take an X-ray, but maybe he doesn’t see any problem there. No slipped disk or anything. But still, you can pull those muscles pretty easily, and if you do it bad enough, it can really be painful. Have you ever done that?”
“Not that bad,” I said. “But enough I can imagine if I did.”
“Did you take painkillers for it?”
“Just aspirin.”
“Okay, well let’s say you really hurt those muscles. You can’t even move. So the doctor gives you something stronger. Tylenol 3…maybe even Vicodin…Are you with me so far?”
“I think so.” I looked at Vinnie. He said nothing.
“Are you aware that tribal members get their prescriptions for free, Mr. McKnight?”
“I didn’t know that, no.”
“Well, they do. So even though your back is messed up and you can’t even stand up straight, at least you’re getting some pretty strong drugs without having to pay for them. If the drugs help you get better, then great. But if you develop a problem with them…”
“Yeah?”
“Then getting a lot of them for free is not necessarily going to be a good thing.”
“No, I imagine not.” I looked at Vinnie. I couldn’t believe he’d tell her about my own history, my own little issue with the “Vike” when I was recovering from the shooting. But at this point I couldn’t rule it out.
“So imagine you keep coming back,” she said. “You keep telling the doctor that your back isn’t better yet. The doctor has no way of knowing how bad your back really feels…”
“So he keeps giving me the drugs,” I said. “But eventually he’ll start to suspect something.”
“Eventually, yes. Of course. So maybe he finds some reason to give you a blood test. If you’ve got an abnormally high level of the drug in your system, he’ll know that you’re abusing them.”
“I understand what you’re saying. Believe me. I don’t know who we’re talking about, and I guess I’m not supposed to even ask. But what does this have to do with me? Or Vinnie?”
She looked around the room. Then she lowered her voice a little bit and delivered the punch line. “What if the drug test was perfectly clean?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Clean test. No drugs at all. Not a trace.”
I thought about it for a moment. “So I’m not taking the drugs at all…Even though I keep asking for them…I’m either giving them to someone else or-”
“Stop right there,” she said. “You don’t even have to say it.”
“Okay. So, look…If this is happening, you need to tell somebody about it. Not me. Not Vinnie. You tell whoever’s in charge of the clinic, and you tell the police.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
She shot Vinnie a
quick glance. “I told this to Vinnie because I thought he could help. It was his choice to involve you. If he wants to tell you anything else, that’s up to him. But I’m done here.”
She started to get up from the booth, stopped herself, and sat down again.
“One thing you have to understand,” she said. “These are serious drugs, and if you become dependent on them, you’ll do anything to keep getting them. Do you understand what I’m saying? You’ll do anything.”
“Terry, I understand. I’m just trying to-”
“If it was the patient who had the problem, then we’d be able to do something directly. The pressure would be on us to fix it, because we’re the ones supplying the drugs. You follow me? But if it’s somebody else out there, somebody we don’t even know…Then it’s out of our control. And the pressure gets put on the person who’s passing along the pills. They’re stuck right in the middle.”
This time she got up for good.
“Right in the middle,” she said. “And God help them.”
Then she was out the door.
A few minutes later, we were out the door, too. Vinnie’s truck is a lot newer and a lot cleaner than mine, but the real reason he was driving was because he was the only one who knew where we were going next. Once again, I was just along for the ride.
It was late in the day now. Dark gray instead of light gray, and a few degrees colder. It looked like it was going to start raining again any second.
“At some point,” I said, “you’re going to tell me where we’re going next, right?”
“You can probably figure it out.” He was taking us due north, to the heart of the Soo.
“We’re gonna meet the middleman. Or is it the middlewoman? Will you tell me that much, at least?”
“Her name is Caroline.”
“Okay. How do you know her?”
“She works at Bay Mills. She wants to deal blackjack someday.”
“Why does she live here in town?”
“She’s not a Bay Mills member. She’s Sault.”
“Wait, if she’s a Sault member-”
“She was working at the Kewadin,” he said, “but she ran into some trouble there. So she came over to Bay Mills.”
“Ran into some trouble?”
“She had a drinking problem. Now she’s clean. But she sort of wore out her welcome there, so we took her on at our place. It actually happens quite a bit. Both ways. I know a few Bay Mills people who work at the Kewadin now.”
“Despite the rivalry?”
“We’re all part of the same family. We take care of each other, no matter what.”
That much I didn’t doubt. I’d seen it in action enough times to know. Apparently I was about to see it yet again.
“So we’re going to go see this Caroline,” I said. “So tell me, why exactly am I part of this? Aside from being an all-around good guy to ride along with you…”
“Because I promised you,” he said. He kept his eyes straight ahead as we drove down the quiet, dark streets.
“Promised me what?”
“That I wouldn’t do anything stupid without you.”
“This is good. I’m glad you take everything I say so literally.”
“There’s another reason.”
“What’s that?”
“You know about this stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“Painkillers. Vicodin.”
I looked over at him. “Are you serious?”
“Let me ask you this… Would you recognize if somebody was high on Vicodin?”
This is great, I thought. All of a sudden I’m the consultant from the Betty Ford Clinic.
“First of all,” I said, “you don’t really get high on it. It’s more like you get…I don’t know…you get ‘warm’ on it.”
“Warm?”
“That’s the best word I can think of. It just makes everything feel…good. Like you’re wrapped up in a security blanket.”
“What happens if it wears off? And you don’t have any more pills?”
“Well, you understand, I never got to the point where it was a huge issue. I had a little thing with it, way back when. After I got shot and it felt like my whole life was falling apart.”
“Okay, but you can imagine-”
“I can imagine that it would be hell. If you were really hooked on it, it would be like somebody taking away your oxygen.”
“The guys from the boat,” he said. “Do you think there’s a chance at least one of them is taking this stuff?”
“I was wondering when we’d get around to them.”
“They were with Caroline last night. Right before I threw them out.”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“I’m telling you now. That’s what I was checking out today. I knew Terry’s been working at the clinic, so she was the first person I went to see. I think she was waiting to tell somebody.”
I shook my head at that one. I didn’t say what I was thinking. I didn’t have to.
“You heard her,” Vinnie said. “Caroline could be caught right in the middle here. Those guys could really hurt her. I know it. Did you look in their eyes today?”
“All the more reason-”
“To send her to prison for selling drugs?”
“If what you’re saying is true, then these guys are using her. She’ll get off easy.”
“If they don’t kill her, and if the judge doesn’t look at her prior record.”
“You said she had a drinking problem.”
“That was one of her problems,” he said. “She’s had others.”
“It sounds like she’s making her own bed, Vinnie. She sees an opportunity and she’s taking it.”
He took his foot off the gas. He pulled over to the side of the road, stopping slowly. A big difference between him and me right there: if it was me driving, I would have slammed on the brakes and bounced his head off the dashboard.
“I can turn around and take you back to your truck,” he said, “and I can go talk to her alone. Or you can come with me. Your call.”
“Does this woman know what you’re trying to do for her?”
“I guess she’ll find out.”
“She’s lucky,” I said. “I’ll tell her that myself.”
The house was on Seymour Street. From the dull streaks on the aluminum siding to the peeling paint on the wood trim, it was a testament to what Northern Michigan weather will do to your house if you don’t take care of it. Vinnie knocked on the front door. Nobody answered.
“Eddie’s truck’s here,” he said. It was there in the driveway, and it made mine look like it just came off the showroom floor.
Vinnie knocked again. From deep inside the house we heard somebody yelling.
“Sounds like he said, ‘Come in,’ doesn’t it?”
“Sure, why not?”
He opened the door and stepped in. As I followed him, I picked up the smell of cigarettes and beer, as well as something that had burned in the oven. There wasn’t much to the living room. An old couch, a coffee table that should have been taken apart and put in the wood stove, two folding chairs. The television was on, but nobody was there to watch it.
“Hello?” Vinnie said.
“Who’s there?” It was a man’s voice, from the kitchen.
Vinnie went around the corner without answering. The man was sitting at the kitchen table, an open beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other. A cloud of smoke hung just below the ceiling.
“What are you doing here?” he said. He was wearing an old blue bathrobe, his bare legs just visible below the table. I didn’t know if he was white, or Indian, or some of both. He looked thirty years old going on fifty.
“I’m looking for Caroline,” Vinnie said. It was obvious he knew this man, but I didn’t get the feeling he was going to introduce me to him.
“She’s at work.”
“No, she’s not. This is her night off, remember?”
“I guess you’d know better
than I would.” The man stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray.
“You don’t know where she is?”
“If she ain’t at work, and she’s not with you…”
“Why would she be with me, Eddie?”
He didn’t answer. Instead he took a long pull off the beer. “You want one?”
“You know I don’t drink.”
“Pardon me. It slipped my mind.”
Vinnie stood there. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t move a muscle. The man sat at the table and wouldn’t look him in the eye.
“Eddie,” Vinnie finally said, “are you working?”
“In this weather?”
“There are other jobs.”
“Get out.”
“Are you even looking for something else?”
“I said get out.”
Vinnie kept looking at him. I knew all about Vinnie’s long fuse. I figured it was already lit, since maybe late last night when he threw those guys out of the casino. I was wondering how much longer it would burn. Finally, he turned away and went to the door. I followed him outside.
When we were back in his truck, he started it and put it in gear.
“I take it you and Eddie have a history,” I said.
“Not really.”
“What about you and Caroline? This whole thing is starting to make a little more sense now.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“You got her the job at Bay Mills, didn’t you?”
“She’s a good friend of mine, Alex. She always will be. I was just trying to help her out.”
“So what now?”
“I want to check one place.” He was heading to the water, to the locks and the heart of town.
“You think you know where she is?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure. There was a time you could always find her at the Palace.”
There are at least a dozen bars in Sault Ste. Marie. There are eight of them on Portage Avenue alone. The Palace is just a couple of doors down from the Ojibway Hotel. Vinnie parked the car on the street.
Right behind a black Cadillac Escalade.
It wasn’t a surprise. Not at all. I already had a gut feeling we’d be running into these guys again. If we had jumped in an airplane and flown to Anchorage, they would have been parked outside the first bar we walked into.
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