North of Nowhere: An Alex McKnight Novel

by Steve Hamilton

  We drove in silence for a while. “You really missed me, didn’t you,” I finally said.

  “If you want to live like a hermit, that’s your business,” he said.

  “Admit it. You missed me.”

  “Get over yourself, Alex.” If Jackie had stayed in Scotland, he might have ended up one of those old caddies who carry bags all day and then head to the local pub. Instead he came here to the Upper Peninsula and eventually opened up his own pub, complete with the overstuffed chairs and the fireplace. He had been here over fifty years, and yet you could still hear the hint of a Scottish burr in his voice. On the rare occasions when he talked about his childhood in Glasgow, that old burr seemed to grow even stronger.

  “Reason I asked you,” he said, “was because we needed another player. Swanson couldn’t make it, which would have left us with five. You know how much I hate poker with five players.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You can’t play high-low or all those other horseshit games you like to call.”

  He just shook his head at that one.

  “Swanson,” I said. “Do I know him?”

  “You’ve seen him around,” he said. “He’s a lawyer in the Soo.”

  “A lawyer,” I said. “My favorite.”

  “He’s not so bad,” Jackie said. “Just because he’s a lawyer…”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know.”

  “There are good lawyers in the world.”

  “Yeah, three of them at last count.”

  The road was deserted, as always. We wouldn’t see a single car until we got to Brimley. There was nothing but pine trees all around us. And the lake. There’s always a wind of some sort coming off the lake, but tonight it was almost calm.

  “Where are we playing again?”

  “Win Vargas’s,” he said. “I don’t think you’ve met him. You’d remember if you had.”

  “Uh-oh. This doesn’t sound promising.”

  “He’s good for a few laughs,” he said. “Among other things.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’ll see,” he said. “I just hope you don’t mind expensive whiskey and cigars. I may have mentioned your little obsession with Canadian beer, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a case waiting for you. If he does, remember to make a big deal about it. He likes to impress people.”

  “Beautiful.”

  He kept driving. The sun went down. We finally came to an intersection, and there in the shadows of the pine trees sat an abandoned railroad car from the Soo Line. It was an old passenger car, half the windows covered with wood, the other windows dark with grime. A sign taped to the door read “No Trespassing!”

  We passed the lighthouse at Iroquois Point, and then we hit the northern edge of the Bay Mills Reservation. We drove by the community college, then the little Kings Club, the casino that started it all, and then the much bigger Bay Mills Casino. Just past that was the new golf course. It looked almost finished now. From the road we could see a half-dozen bulldozers and excavators, sitting motionless in the dying light, their work done for the day.

  “They’re really tearing up the pea patch here,” Jackie said. “It seems like they just started this thing last week.”

  “What are they calling this thing again?”

  “Wild Bluff,” he said. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “You’d think they’d come up with an Ojibwa name at least.”

  We crossed the bridge over the Waishkey River. We were on Six Mile Road now, heading due east toward Sault Ste. Marie. But just as we passed the entrance to the Brimley State Park, Jackie hung a left onto an unmarked dirt road.

  “Where are we going?” I said. “I thought we’re going to the Soo.”

  “Sunset,” he said. He didn’t have to say anything else.

  The road went north through the pine forest. The trees were close on either side, close enough to hear the pine needles hitting the windows. A mile and a half in, the road ended. There was an old boat launch there, with a wooden dock left to rot in the cold water. Jackie stopped the car six feet from the shoreline.

  We got out of the car. We both stood there on the edge of the water, looking west toward the setting sun. The clouds were painted a hundred different shades of red and orange, the sky itself a color of teal blue I have never seen anywhere else.

  You have to be outside to appreciate it. You have to feel the wind on your face, smell the freshwater scent in the air.

  It is the largest lake in the world. It is terrifying, and deadly. There is no silt at the bottom, no soft bed to sleep in, no weeds to hide in. It is a lake lined in pure granite, a great rock crater carved into the ground by glaciers, filled with pure, sweet, cold water and not much else. A few whitefish. The splinters of broken wooden hulls. The silent steel walls of the Algoma, the Sunbeam, the Edmund Fitzgerald. The bones of the dead. The ghosts.

  It is beautiful. God help me, on a summer night when the sun is going down, it is the most beautiful place on earth. This is why I’m here. This is why Jackie is here.

  This is why we live through the long winters, the brutal cold, the blizzards that dump three feet of snow overnight, the incessant whining of the snow-mobiles. The long slow melt in the spring, the black flies in June, the mosquitoes in July and August. It is over so quickly, and then the air is cold again and the lake turns back into a monster.

  For some of us, it is enough. We stay, year after year. Nowhere else would feel right to us. Nowhere else would be home.

  In that summer of secrets, this was the biggest secret of all. Those of us who live here all kept the secret. We guarded it closely, and shared it with those few people who could not live here for whatever reason, but still chose to come back here whenever they could.

  I couldn’t have guessed that even this secret would be in jeopardy that summer. I couldn’t have imagined it. How could one man ever threaten such a thing? One man.

  We got back in Jackie’s car and drove to our poker game. I was about to meet that man.

  Chapter Two

  The house was on the east side of Sault Ste. Marie, on the banks of the St. Marys River, right next to the old golf course. It was a big house, one of those contemporary things, all windows and angles. Every light in the house seemed to be on, including a huge chandelier that you could see through the window over the front door.

  “Why are we here again?” I said.

  “To play poker,” Jackie said. “And to drink his whiskey, eat his food. Like I told you. And smoke his cigars.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “There’s another reason, as well. It’s a little thing we do. When we get to it, just play along.”

  “Get to what? What are you talking about?”

  “You’ll see,” he said.

  As we stood at the doorway, an evening breeze came in off the lake. We could have gone to the Locks Park instead, taken a walk along the edge of the water and then gone to the Ojibway Hotel, had steaks in their dining room. Instead we were here. When Jackie pressed the doorbell button, it didn’t just go ding-dong. It went through eight long notes, like church bells ringing the hour.

  “Do we get to see the changing of the guards now?” I asked.

  “Don’t get started,” Jackie said. “Give the night a chance at least.”

  “Okay,” I said. “You’re right.” I liked playing poker, after all. Tonight, maybe it would get me out of my own head for a couple of hours. It might be just what I needed.

  We heard a dog barking on the other side of the door. Then it opened. The man who opened it was bald. That was the first thing I noticed. He had that bone hardness that some bald men have, that extra tough bad-ass mystique. It makes you think of a bald biker who sits patiently at the end of the bar, waiting for the right time to stand up and hit you in the face with a pool cue.

  “Miata, stay down,” he said. Which wasn’t asking much, because the dog was only about eight inches tall to begin with. I would have guessed C
hihuahua, with the short hair and the bug eyes, but in the back of my mind I remembered the old urban legend about the couple who went to Mexico and brought back a dog, only to find out it was a rat. This might have been that animal.

  “I forgot to warn you about the dog,” Jackie said.

  “You must be Alex,” the man said. He shook my hand with a firm grip just this side of painful. “I’m Winston Vargas. Win for short, because that’s what I do. Right, Jackie?” He gave Jackie a wink.

  Jackie rolled his eyes and stepped past him. The dog kept dancing around us and barking, its little legs moving at hummingbird speed.

  “Don’t mind him,” Vargas said. “He thinks he’s a Doberman. Hell, maybe he was in his last life.”

  “What did you say his name was? Miata?” I bent down to offer my hand. The dog showed me its teeth. Okay, bad idea.

  “My wife named him after her car,” he said. “Of course she’s not here so I get to look after him all night. Again.”

  “Well, thanks for having me over,” I said. I was giving the night a chance, like Jackie said. I really was.

  “I’m glad you could make it,” he said. “Let me show you to the table.”

  He led me through the house to the poker room. I guess it would have been called the entertainment room most of the time. There was a home theater set up along one wall, with a screen that had to be seven feet across. A wet bar dominated the opposite wall, with enough bottles on the shelves to restock Jackie’s place. The back wall was all windows, looking out over the river. In the center of the room, beneath a great Tiffany lamp, was one of those six-sided poker tables with the green felt in the middle and the little compartments on each side.

  “What do you think?” he said. “I just got it.”

  I was thinking he’d need the green visor and the red garter on his sleeve to go with it. “Quite a setup,” I said.

  There were a couple of men already sitting at the table. I recognized Bennett O’Dell, an old friend of Jackie’s who’d stop by at the Glasgow every now and then. He was another tough old bird like Jackie, although a hell of a lot taller, and at least seventy pounds heavier. He was in the bar business, too, with a place called O’Dell’s over on the west side of town. Bennett’s father had opened it up back in the thirties, and it had been run by the family ever since. I remembered a story Jackie once told me about running around with Bennett when they were in high school, practically living in that bar, doing their homework at one of the tables every night. When Jackie was ready to open up his own place, he didn’t want to take any business away from the O’Dell family, which is why he bought a place out in Paradise.

  “Alex,” Bennett said. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I see you know Bennett,” Vargas said. “This here is Kenny, one of my business associates. I guess you could say he’s my right hand man.” Kenny had long straight hair tied back in a ponytail. I shook his hand. Kenny looked like he was pushing forty, which meant that he had a tough choice coming soon. Unless you’re a hairdresser, you can’t have a ponytail and call yourself Kenny when you’re forty. Not in Michigan, anyway.

  “We’re still waiting on Gill,” Vargas said. “You know how it is. Indians don’t operate on white man’s time.”

  “Take it easy, Win,” Bennett said, giving me a quick wink. “You don’t want him to scalp you, do you?”

  “Nothing here to scalp, my friend.” Vargas ran his hand over his bald head and laughed. The night was already looking longer. “Alex, I’ll show you the house,” Vargas said. “While we’re waiting.”

  “Good idea,” Jackie said as he sat down next to Bennett. “Go take the tour.”

  Vargas spent the next twenty minutes showing me around his house. We started in the kitchen. It had the professional-quality gas range, the island in the middle with the second sink. The butler’s pantry. “This is what I specialize in,” he said. “Top of the line appliances. Viking ranges, custom cabinets, you name it. Your wife wants a dream kitchen, I’m your man. Are you married?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You were married. Once?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “A long time ago.”

  “I got married again a few years ago,” he said, “after being on my own for a long, long time. Nothing like getting it right the second time around.” He ran his hand along the countertop. “It’s too bad you won’t get a chance to meet her tonight. Next time, huh?”

  “Sure.”

  From the kitchen we went out onto the back deck. The edge of the water was just below us, not thirty feet away. There was a freighter heading south down the river, moving slowly, away from the locks.

  “Where’s that from?” he said. “What’s that flag? That’s Brazil, isn’t it?”

  There was a light on its flagpole. You could just make out the blue globe on the yellow diamond on the field of green. “I think so,” I said.

  “Those boys are a long way from home.” He waved to the ship. We could see a couple of crew members standing on deck, but they didn’t wave back.

  “I’ve got a little dock down there,” he said. “Not big enough for my boat, but I do have a couple of jet skis. You ever been on a jet ski?”

  “Never been,” I said. “I imagine I’d like it about as much as a snowmobile.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got one of those, too. I don’t know how much time I’ll be spending up here in the winter. We’ve got a place in Boca. But you never know.”

  We went back inside. The light hurt my eyes, made me want to go back out to the darkness. “I’ll show you upstairs, Alex. There’s one room you’ve really got to see.”

  I followed him up the staircase. The house had a beautiful staircase, I had to say that much. The treads themselves were all hardwood, with a matching rail and thin wooden posts. My old man the self-taught carpenter would have been impressed as hell.

  “These are guest rooms down here,” he said, “and this is the master suite.” There was a king-size bed, all made up in white with lavender trim. “It probably goes without saying, but my wife did the decorating. Here’s the bathroom in here. What do you think?”

  I looked in and saw a raised whirlpool tub, a separate shower, two vanity mirrors, two sinks. The fixtures gleamed like pirate treasure. “This is something else,” I said. I had already been thinking to myself that the bedroom was bigger than my cabin. Now I was wondering if the bathroom was bigger, too.

  “We carry these tubs now,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe how expensive they are. Go ahead, take a guess.”

  “I wouldn’t even know,” I said.

  “Ah, never mind,” he said. “That’s tacky. Here, I want to show you the best room of all now.”

  He led me to the end of the hall and opened the door. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust—this was the only room in the house that wasn’t as bright as an operating room. He turned up a dimmer switch so I could see where I was going. There were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on two walls, some nautical maps on another wall. By the window there was a telescope on a tripod. “I call this my ‘lake room,’” he said. “Here, come look.”

  He turned the dimmer back down as I looked through the telescope. It was pointed to the northwest. As I moved it, I could make out the Soo Locks and the International Bridge. During the day I was sure you’d be able to see into the lake itself.

  “God, I love this lake,” he said. “Don’t you, Alex?”

  I looked at him. With the light still down, I couldn’t make out his face, but his bald head seemed to glow.

  “What’s in here?” I said. There were glass cases running along the wall, beneath the maps.

  He turned the light back up. “Some artifacts,” he said. “I’m a collector.”

  There were some shipwreck artifacts in one glass case—a small brass bell, a metal comb, a mug made of pewter. In another case were what seemed to be Indian artifacts—an arrowhead, a wooden paddle that had practically disintegrated, a small metal bowl that was probably some sort
of smudge pot. Everything had that particular reddish gray tint around the edges, the kind of wear you see when something’s been left in fresh water for a very long time.

  “How’d you get all this stuff?” I said. “I thought the salvage laws were pretty strict.”

  “On the Michigan side they are. Not so much on the Canadian side. What can I say, divers pick things up, sell them to people, who sell them to other people. If I end up buying something, it comes right up here to this room and stays here. My wife thinks it’s kinda hinky, but I tell her, hey, when I die, every single one of these things goes to the museum. Either the Shipwreck Museum out on Whitefish Point, or the Indian museum at the community college.”

  It still didn’t sound quite right to me, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. I just nodded my head at him and hoped the poker game would be starting soon. If he was going to start offering me expensive whiskey like Jackie said, it was about time.

  When we finally made it back down to the poker table, Gill LaMarche was sitting in his spot, calmly counting out chips. “Look who showed up,” Vargas said. “You missed the tour.”

  “Been there, done that,” he said. “Bought the T-shirt.” Gill was a member of the Sault tribe, and lived here in town, right next to the Kewadin Casino. Like most Ojibwa in Michigan, especially the Sault members who had less restrictive blood lines than the other tribes, you didn’t think “Indian” the first time you saw him. If you knew what to look for—a little fullness around the cheekbones, a slow and careful way about the eyes—you could just make it out.

  “Let’s get everybody set up first,” Vargas said. Then came the trays of food from the kitchen, the drinks from the bar, the cigars. “What kind of whiskey do you drink?” he asked me. “I’ve got some Macallan twelve-year here…”

  “Is that Jack Daniels I see over there?” I said.

  “It is,” he said. “If that’s your preference.”

  “That’ll do me fine. Save the single malt for somebody special.”

  “Jackie tells me you were a catcher,” he said. “I should have known a catcher would take Jack Daniels over a Macallan. You can always spot a catcher.”