North of Nowhere: An Alex McKnight Novel

by Steve Hamilton

  I gave Jackie a look. He gave me an innocent smile.

  “I played some ball when I was in the college,” Vargas said. “And then in the Air Force, when I was stationed in Korea.”

  “Let me guess, first base,” I said.

  “First and a little third. How did you know?”

  “You can always spot a first baseman,” I said.

  He laughed at that, brought my drink over and sat down. “Are we gonna play some cards here or what?”

  So we did. Jackie was on my left, then Bennett, Vargas, Kenny, and finally Gill on my right. Vargas played the way I would have expected. He was aggressive in his betting, and he hated to fold. He wanted to be in every single hand. When he wasn’t raising, he was fussing over the table itself, making sure we kept our drinks off the green felt and in the little coaster compartments. I had never known how much I hated fancy poker tables until that night.

  Vargas also liked to talk. It was just a matter of time until he wandered back to his business. “When I got out of the Air Force,” he said, shuffling the cards, “I decided to take over the hardware business from my father. He had a little store down in Petoskey. Now you’re probably thinking, how does a little hardware store survive these days when you’ve got your Lowes’s and your Home Depots all over the place? The answer is, you have to see the train coming before it runs you over. Those big hardware places? The best thing that ever happened to me. You know why? They destroyed my competition. All of them. They all got run over by the train, and I jumped off the track. I moved to a different market. A better market. If you want to buy a sink nowadays, or a toilet, or a tub, or a dishwasher, or a refrigerator, or kitchen cabinets, where do you go?”

  Nobody said anything. We just waited for him to finish and deal the damned cards.

  “Where do you go? Hmm? Where do you go?”

  “Lowes,” Jackie finally said.

  “Home Depot,” Bennett said.

  “Exactly,” Vargas said. “Now suppose you want a solid marble sink that’s made in Italy? Or a Viking gas range like the professional chefs use? Where do you go for that? Not Lowes. Not Home Depot. They don’t carry that stuff. There’s no volume in it for them. You’ve got to go to a specialty store.”

  “Like yours,” Bennett said.

  “Like mine.”

  “Deal the cards,” Bennett said.

  He started dealing, but that didn’t stop his spiel. “Me and Kenny, we make a great team. We go to somebody’s house, and we split the couple up. Divide and conquer, right? Kenny takes the wife into the kitchen, really fags it up with her, does the whole interior decorator thing.” Kenny didn’t even blink. He just sat there with a serene smile on his face, like a man who is paid very well to play along. “While he does his thing, I’m hanging out with the husband. I’m saying, ‘It’s all over now, chief. Your wife wants the best, and you’re gonna come through, or deal with the consequences. But don’t worry, I’ll give you a great deal.’ If I don’t get ’em when they build the house first thing, I’ll get ’em a couple of years later. As soon as that wife goes to have coffee with the neighbor and sees her kitchen, she’ll go to her husband and then he’ll come to me. I always get ’em in the end.”

  “Queen bets,” Bennett said. “That’s you, Kenny.” He let that one hang for a few seconds before realizing what he had said. “I mean, you’ve got the queen, Kenny. Your bet.”

  Kenny gave him a look that was nothing but cool, and then slid a buck into the pot. “The queen bets one dollar.”

  “I’m doing this house over in Canada,” Vargas said. “On St. Joseph Island. You wouldn’t believe what I’m putting in that kitchen. The floor alone, these tiles from Mexico. Problem is, they got these guys at Customs. Big old dumb Canucks sitting on that bridge, they’re basically paying them to be in a bad mood all the time. See me bringing a refrigerator over, they take it personally. Like I’m taking jobs away from Canadians by bringing in an American refrigerator.”

  “Duty on durable goods,” Bennett said. “Is that what they call it?”

  “That’s what they call it,” Vargas said. “They should call it bend over and grab your ankles.”

  “I thought it ain’t so bad anymore. You know, with this NAFTA thing.”

  “They don’t worry so much about the small stuff now,” Vargas said. “Up to a hundred dollars, something like that. But the big ticket items, hell, they still stick it to ya.”

  “The customer’s gotta pay for this, right?”

  “Yeah, I think it’s safe to say that, Bennett. It sure isn’t me.”

  “Who are these people?” I said. “Who’s got this kind of money to spend on their kitchens?” I shouldn’t have asked. I should have just shut up and played cards and drank the man’s whiskey. That’s what I should have done.

  “There are a lot of people building houses in Canada,” he said. “You’d be surprised. Of course, that’s not where my bread and butter is…”

  “Where would that be?” I said.

  “Bay Harbor,” he said.

  The words went right down my spine. Bay Harbor. He might as well have said Sodom and Gomorrah.

  “I made most of my nut right there,” he said. “In Bay Harbor. Of course, that place is gonna be full one of these days.” He looked at the cards he was holding close to his chest. He called Kenny’s dollar and raised ten more. “Ain’t that right, Kenny?”

  Kenny folded his hand. “Too rich for me.”

  “The big question is, who’s gonna build the next Bay Harbor?” Vargas said. “And where’s it gonna be?”

  Chapter Three

  If you drive south, over the Mackinac Bridge, and then down M-31 along the Lake Michigan coast, the first town you’ll hit is Petoskey. It used to be a sleepy little fishing village, now it’s yuppie heaven. Keep going toward Charlevoix, another sleepy little fishing village turned yuppie heaven—about halfway there you’ll hit Bay Harbor. Or rather, Bay Harbor will hit you. First thing you’ll see is the Bay Harbor Yacht Club. There’s a white building next to the road, all done up like a lighthouse. A guard sits at the gate, ready to check you over to make sure you’re on his list. Further down there’s the Bay Harbor Golf Club. Another white building right next to the road, another guard sitting at the gate. Across the street, on a hill that’s as high as any hill in this part of Michigan, sits the Bay Harbor Equestrian Center. Anywhere else in the state, it’s a horse farm. Here it’s the Equestrian Center. Needless to say, there’s another gate with another guard.

  The houses are all on the lake side of the road, of course. You have to go through yet another gatehouse to get to them. There are condominiums, too, and a big hotel. There’s even a little Main Street where you can try on some diamonds, maybe buy a painting, and then have a cappuccino. If you don’t have a lot of money to spend, don’t even bother slowing down. Just take a quick look at Bay Harbor, friend—be impressed, be envious, be sorry that you can’t live here yourself. And then keep driving.

  “The thing is,” Vargas said, “the market has to level off eventually. You can only build so many top-of-the-line houses in one place. That’s why I know there’s gonna be another big boom somewhere else. There has to be. With Bay Harbor, I got a little lucky, because with the store in Petoskey it all happened right in my backyard. This time, I’ve got to be ahead of the curve, you know what I mean? It’s all a guessing game. Which is what got me thinking…”

  Vargas paused to roll the single malt around in his glass. If he was hoping for a spellbound audience, he wasn’t getting it. Jackie called Vargas’s raise, and then Bennett raised him ten more. Vargas slid his chips in without even looking at them.

  “I’m thinking, why try to guess where the next boom is going to be, when I can help make it happen myself? Branch out of the custom kitchen business, you know, actually get in on the building itself, from the beginning, once we find the right place. That’s one of the reasons I built this house here.”

  That one hit me like an ice pick. Jackie
, Bennett, Gill, they didn’t even flinch. They must have heard this one before. Kenny just had a little smile on his face. He’d heard it before, too, and probably liked the sound of it.

  “Of course, it’s not all my own money,” he said. “I don’t have that kind of capital yet. I’m just the point man, you realize. We have investors in place, who prefer to stay in the background…”

  “You’re talking about shady money?” Bennett said. “You’re talking about real kingpins here?”

  “I can’t discuss that,” Vargas said.

  “You already are,” Bennett said. “You’re discussing it. You’d better be careful, you’re gonna end up sleeping with the fishes.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Vargas said. “I’m a big boy.”

  I had to wonder. For every man who was really connected, there had to be another twenty who liked to sound like it, who liked to run their mouths off just like Vargas was doing.

  “You have to admit,” Vargas said, “as nice as Lake Michigan is, Lake Superior is the far better lake.”

  “It’s the superior lake,” Jackie said.

  “Hell yes,” Vargas said. “Hence the name.”

  “It’s so far away though,” Jackie said. “Even Bay Harbor was a stretch. It’s four hours from Detroit.”

  “Who needs Detroit?” Vargas said. “Bay Harbor has the airport in Traverse City. We’ve got one right here in the Soo.”

  “I guess you could call it an airport,” Bennett said. “Not many flights in and out.”

  “Least of our worries,” Vargas said. “Hell, a lot of these guys have private jets.”

  “Still,” Bennett said. “It’s a lot different up here. The weather. The way people are. Everything.”

  “That’s part of its charm,” Vargas said. “You’ve still got the feeling of wilderness up here. Not to mention the best casino, thanks to Gill here.”

  Gill nodded. “Glad to help,” he said. “That’s why I built it single-handedly.”

  “You know what I mean,” Vargas said. “You and your people. Those lousy little casinos down by Traverse City, they can’t even compare to the Kewadin. You can really take care of the high rollers up here. And then there’s the international thing. You’ve got something foreign and exotic right across the bridge there.”

  “Bennett,” Jackie said, “did they move Hong Kong over there without telling me? Because last time I went over that bridge, I was in Canada.”

  “That’s foreign,” Bennett said.

  “And exotic,” Gill said.

  “You know what I’m talking about,” Vargas said. “It’s different over there. They’ve got clubs over there, for one thing.”

  “Oh, so when you say exotic,” Jackie said, “you mean exotic dancing. Why didn’t you say so?”

  “Let me ask you something, Alex,” Vargas said. “You live out in Paradise, right? What’s that, about a half-hour drive?”

  “Something like that,” I said.

  Jackie cleared his throat. “On a good day. When there’s no snow.”

  Vargas didn’t even hear him. “You go right through Brimley, right? Where they’re building that new golf course?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s land going for out your way? On the coast, say out by Whitefish Point?”

  “Well…” I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to say anything at all. I wanted to hit him over the head with something.

  “Because I’m thinking,” he said, “maybe we should be looking out that way instead. Here we were thinking it’s nice to already have some infrastructure in place. Some good roads and services and all, not to mention the golf course, which needs a little work, I admit. But maybe we’re thinking too small. If we got something going out on your side of the bay, we’d have a lot more land to work with. Plus we’d actually be on the lake itself. Here we’re on the river.”

  Kill him now, I was thinking. Kill him now, cut up his body into little pieces and throw them to the fish.

  “You don’t want to be on the lake,” Bennett said. He said this calmly, like he didn’t want to kill the man at all. “The lake will wreck everything eventually. Here you’ve got some protection at least.”

  “Yeah, the weather,” Jackie said. “It’s even worse over there, believe me. I can’t imagine trying to build anything over there.”

  “How are your black flies out there?” Gill said. “They can get pretty bad here in town. I’m imagining out there in the woods…”

  “Oh God,” Jackie said. “The black flies. Every June. Tell him about the black flies, Alex.”

  “Horrible,” I said, which was a lie. The black fly season hadn’t been that bad this year. Not bad at all. Especially when you got close to the water and the breeze helped keep them down. “People talk about mosquitoes eating you alive, they don’t know about black flies.”

  “Mosquitoes are like surgeons,” Bennett said. “They got those little needles, in and out. But black flies, those goddamned things just gnaw on your flesh like blood-thirsty little zombies.”

  Vargas shook his head as he got up to refill his glass. “It’s something to think about, I guess.” He was probably imagining a giant airplane dropping insecticide all over Whitefish Point.

  Kenny looked us all over one by one, shaking his head. He knew what we were doing. This was what Jackie meant when he told me there was another reason why they played cards with Vargas, this whole idea of helping him rethink his development plans. But that look on Kenny’s face seemed to say, “You can fight it all you want. But it’s coming. If not this year, then next year. Bay Harbor is coming.”

  The phone rang while Vargas was pouring himself another shot of Macallan. He picked it up and said, “Vargas here.” Then he excused himself, told us to deal him out a couple of hands.

  We played without him. It wasn’t quite the same. Too quiet, for one thing.

  “Tell me, Kenny,” Bennett finally said. “What’s it like working for him?”

  “Why do you want to know?” Kenny said.

  “Just making conversation,” Bennett said.

  “I’ve got a house there myself,” Kenny said. “In Bay Harbor. That’s how it is to work for him.”

  “Fair enough,” Bennett said. And that was the end of that.

  When Vargas got back to the table, something had changed. He left his Macallan sitting untouched on the bar, took out a real glass and filled it with three fingers of Jack Daniels. “You had it right, Alex,” he said. “This does feel like a J.D. night.”

  “Everything okay?” Gill said. “You seem a little tense all of a sudden.”

  “I’m an old first baseman,” he said as he sat down. “I’m always tense. Right, Alex?”

  “My deal,” I said. “You know the game.”

  “Five card stud,” Vargas said. “And speaking of studs, where’s Mr. Swanson tonight, anyway?”

  “Don’t know,” Bennett said. “He said he couldn’t play tonight.”

  “He couldn’t play last time either,” Vargas said.

  “He’s a busy guy,” Bennett said.

  “Yeah, he’s busy,” Vargas said. His voice was getting colder by the second. “Fortunately, we’ve got Alex here to take his spot. I guess you’re not as busy as Swanson is, eh Alex?”

  “I asked him to play,” Jackie said. “So we’d have six guys. Is there something wrong with that all of a sudden?”

  “No, not at all,” Vargas said. He emptied his glass, then got up for a refill. He brought the bottle back with him this time.

  “It’s a shame you didn’t get a chance to meet my wife, Alex. Her dog you got to meet.” He looked around the room. “Where’d that dog run off to, anyway?”

  “He’s under the table,” Gill said.

  “What’s he doing down there?”

  “He’s licking himself.”

  “Okay then,” Vargas said. “Now that we’ve established that…” He poured himself another triple, spilling some on his precious table. He didn’t bothe
r to clean it up.

  “Maybe you should ease up on that,” Jackie said.

  “Always the bartender,” Vargas said. “Don’t worry, I’m not driving tonight. My wife took my car, anyway. She left me the little Miata, which she knows I hate. The car, I mean, not the dog. It’s like driving a little tin cigar box.”

  “King high,” I said. “It’s your bet.”

  “Five bucks,” he said. “On the king. You wanna know something funny, guys? You wanna know who that was on the phone just now?”

  Apparently, nobody did. He told us anyway.

  “That was a private investigator,” he said. “Did you know that there’s only one private investigator in the whole county?”

  Oh no, I said to myself. Please, God, no. This will not be good.

  “He struck me as kind of a goofball at first, quite honestly. But I gotta hand it to him. He’s got some energy. Just give the guy a little money, point him in the right direction, and he’s all over it.”

  Jackie was trying very hard not to laugh. I wanted to smack him.

  “Do you want to know what this private investigator is doing for me tonight?”

  Again, no takers.

  “I’ll tell you,” he said. He took another hit off his glass of J.D. “He’s watching my wife. He’s been following her, in fact, for two weeks straight.”

  “Why are you telling us this?” Bennett said. “If there’s something going on between you and your wife…”

  “No, no,” Vargas said. “Not between me and my wife. Between my wife and somebody else.”

  “Well okay,” Bennett said. “But come on, you don’t have to—”

  “Oh, but I do,” he said. “I most certainly do. I’ll tell you why. I would like somebody at this table…” He gave Kenny a quick glance. “Kenny, you are excused from this question. I would like somebody else at this table aside from Kenny who has no fucking involvement in this matter whatsoever to tell me why our friend Mr. Swanson is not playing cards with us tonight.”

  “He said he couldn’t play,” Bennett said.