North of Nowhere: An Alex McKnight Novel

by Steve Hamilton

  “He’s the one who put this thing together, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” Bennett said, looking a little sick. “He was. The thing is…”

  “What?”

  “The thing is, I’ve been trying to get hold of him. He hasn’t been answering his phone.”

  “You think somebody got to him?”

  “I hope not,” he said. “I mean, I don’t think so. After a couple of days, I called some of his friends down there. I didn’t like what they were telling me.”

  “What did they say?”

  “He had money, Alex. All of a sudden, Sean’s walking around like he’s loaded. Sounds like he paid off some debts, celebrated a little. And then left.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Nobody knows. He quit his job, moved out of his apartment. He just disappeared.”

  “So what are you telling me?”

  “That maybe there was more money in that safe. That maybe he did hold out on his partners.”

  “Oh, this is beautiful,” I said. “This is just great.”

  “Either way, it doesn’t change anything. We’re in the same spot.”

  “Only this way, it’s your son’s fault,” I said.

  “He’s gone, Alex. Okay? He’s gone. There’s nothing I can do.”

  Jonathan stood up like he was about to go over the table at him.

  “Jonathan, take it easy,” I said. “Let’s take care of Jackie first. You can take this up with him later.” Jonathan may have been twenty years younger, but he was giving up six inches and fifty pounds, so I hoped he never did.

  “I’ve got one good son,” Bennett said, putting his hand on Ham’s shoulder, “just like Jackie does. I should have stopped there, okay? I’m sorry for what Sean did. What else can I say? I’m sorry.”

  “All right,” I said. “Just keep thinking.”

  We sat there some more. We were getting nowhere fast. I got up and made the one phone call I had to make.

  A half hour later, the door opened. It was bad enough I woke up Leon Prudell and asked him to come over here in the middle of the night—the reception when he arrived was downright hostile.

  “What’s he doing here?” Bennett said. “Alex, you didn’t really call him, did you?”

  “Good evening, everybody,” Leon said.

  “Leon always has ideas,” I said. “I figured we could use some about now.”

  “Come on, Alex,” Bennett said. “What can he do for us?”

  “He got you guys arrested, didn’t he? He’s a man of many talents.”

  “He works for Vargas,” Bennett said. “He can’t help us.”

  “I got fired,” Leon said. “I’m a free agent.”

  “Why’d you get fired?” Bennett said.

  “He wanted Alex’s head on a platter. I refused to help him.”

  That shut Bennett up, but he still didn’t look happy. Leon pulled up a chair, had a cup of coffee, and listened to me as I went over it one more time.

  “This Blondie is a pro?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “He’d kill Jackie if he had to? And anybody else?”

  “In a second.”

  “Doing this on the open water. That’s a total sucker bet, you realize. He can dump anybody he wants to, right in the lake.”

  “Yeah, I sort of figured that was his plan.”

  “He’s holding all the cards here,” Leon said. “Somehow, we have to outmaneuver him.” He sounded like the Leon of old, and for once, on a night that was too cold for July, with Jackie tied up somewhere on the other side of the bridge, his voice was exactly what I needed to hear.

  “So how do we do that?” I said.

  “Do you have some paper? We’ve got to draw some diagrams.”

  Ham got him some paper and a pen. Bennett still didn’t look happy, but he watched carefully as Leon started drawing.

  “Okay, we know there’s two of them, right?” He drew two circles at the top of the page. “Any chance there’s more?”

  “Could be,” I said. “But I’d bet on just the two.”

  “Okay, so they have Jackie.” He drew a square under the two circles. “And there’s how many of us?” He counted out the five men in the room, giving Margaret a little smile as he skipped over her.

  “I’m a part of this,” she said.

  “You’re the home base,” he said.

  “Like hell.”

  “He’s right,” I said. “We’ll need somebody here.”

  “If anything happens to that man…”

  “We’re gonna get him back,” I said. “I promise.”

  “Okay, five men,” Leon said. He drew five squares in the middle of the page. “And me.” He drew another square below the five. “And Margaret.” He drew another square below that. “We’ve got them outnumbered, seven to two.”

  “They’re not gonna let all of us come out to give them the money,” I said. “I’m sure they’ll only want one or two of us.”

  “The rest of us can hide in the boat,” Ham said. “We can surprise them.”

  “That puts Jackie at risk,” Leon said. “You know they’ll have a gun to his head.”

  Margaret covered her face with her hands. Bennett tried to touch her shoulder, but she shrugged him away.

  “We need another way to bring our number advantage into play,” Leon said. “We need a second boat.”

  “We’ll be on open water,” I said. “They’ll start shooting as soon as they see it.”

  “That’s the problem. There’s no place to hide it.”

  “What if we don’t even try?” I said.

  “How do you mean?”

  “What if we don’t try to hide the second boat?” Something was coming to me. On a normal night I wouldn’t have even said it. But this was not a normal night. “What was that thing you tried once? Where you made those hockey goons think they were surrounded?”

  “The illusion of overwhelming force.”

  “Yeah, that was it.”

  “The illusion of what?” Bennett said.

  “Overwhelming force,” Leon said.

  “You mean like in Desert Storm?”

  “No,” Leon said. “That wasn’t an illusion.”

  “How does it work?”

  “You have a boat, right?” Leon said.

  “A friend down the road has a good boat,” Bennett said. “I’m sure he’ll let me use it.”

  “Okay, so now we need one more. It has to be big and it has to be fast.”

  “Where are we gonna get a boat like that?” Bennett said.

  “I know the perfect boat,” I said. “What do you think, Leon?”

  “What’s he gonna do?” Leon said. “He can’t fire me twice.”

  Bennett went off to wake up his neighbor, to ask him if he could use his boat. Leon and I drove across town to the Kemp Marina. At four in the morning, the streets were deserted.

  “You think the marina’s open?” he said.

  “It’s gotta be. Some people live on their boats, right? You can’t just lock ’em in.”

  “There has to be some sort of security.”

  “We’ll think of something, right? You’ve got your lock picks with you?”

  He patted his jacket pocket. “Don’t leave home without ’em.”

  “You think you’ll be able to get his boat started?”

  “We’ll find out.”

  “Good enough.”

  A minute passed, then he cleared his throat. “You think everybody’s up for this?” he said.

  “I don’t know. They’re all a little trigger-happy. I got to see that firsthand.”

  “There’s only a couple of ways this is going to end up, Alex. Whether it’s us or them, somebody won’t make it out alive.”

  “You’ve got little kids, Leon. You helped us with the idea. You don’t need to be there on the water when it happens.”

  “You need me to be there,” he said. “Jackie needs me. I’m the only man those guys wouldn’
t recognize, right?”

  I thought about it. “Yeah, you’re right. Blondie saw all four of us at Vargas’s house, and he saw Ham when he came to O’Dell’s bar.”

  “Besides, I’m your partner.”

  “Not anymore,” I said. “I’m the one who walked away from that.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t.”

  I looked over at him. My partner, Leon, sitting there in the dim light of the dashboard. “You’re really showing me something,” I said. “Once again.”

  “Let’s do this,” he said. “Here’s the marina.”

  We turned into the parking lot. There were maybe a dozen cars. We pulled up next to the fence. The whole place was well lit, which made sense when you consider how much money was floating here.

  “I don’t see anybody at the front gate,” he said.

  “Let’s hope it’s open.”

  We got out and approached the gate. When I pushed it, it swung right open.

  “Piece of cake,” Leon said.

  Then a voice behind us. “Gentlemen.” A man came out of the little dockmaster’s shack and caught up to us. “Can I help you?”

  “We’re meeting Win Vargas at his boat,” I said. “We’re going fishing with him.”

  “Any unaccompanied visitor between the hours of nine P.M. and seven A.M. needs to be on the list,” he said. “I don’t see anybody for Vargas.”

  “Oh, he did it again,” I said. “Win is such an idiot. Can you believe that?”

  “He’s such an idiot,” Leon said.

  The man wasn’t buying it. He had a tight-ass ex-military air about him, the kind of man who did things by the book. “You are not on the list,” he said. “You’re gonna have to wait here until Mr. Vargas arrives to meet you. What time did he say he’d be here?”

  I remembered something. When I was here before, to meet Vargas on his boat, I had spoken to a woman, who had some colorful things to say about her computer, and about the man who wouldn’t pay to have it fixed. I hoped this was that man.

  “Oh, any minute now,” I said. “Hey, by the way, I spoke to your wife a few days ago. She mentioned you were having some trouble with your computer.”

  “Yes? What about it?”

  “My friend and I would be more than happy to take a look at it. You know how expensive repairs can be.” I wasn’t sure what we’d actually do with his computer—maybe Leon could monkey around with it. It was the only way I could think of to make some points with him.

  “Too late, already had it fixed,” he said. “I appreciate it, though.”

  “Next time,” I said. “You just give us a call.”

  “I’ll do that,” he said. “Here, you can come wait inside until Vargas gets here.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “We’ll wait in the truck. Give us a chance to get our gear together.”

  “I got some coffee in there, help wake you up. You especially, sir,” he said, eyeing my face, “you look like you could use a little something.”

  “No, thanks anyway,” I said. “We’ll wait out here.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “Don’t blame me if you fall right asleep.”

  We went back out to the truck and got in.

  “Now what?” I said.

  “There’s razor wire on top of this fence,” he said. “We’re not climbing it.”

  “We could grease him,” I said. “What did you used to call it? Slipping him a Franklin?”

  “I don’t think he’ll take it. He’s too straight.”

  “We need that boat, Leon. What are we gonna do?”

  “Let’s go try the Franklin,” he said. “If that doesn’t work, we’ll have to find a canoe or something. Come in from the river.”

  We got out, went back to the front gate. “You got a hundred dollar bill, don’t you?” I said.

  “No, I assumed you had one.”

  “Ah, hell.” I took my wallet out and started counting twenties.

  “Alex…”

  “Sixty, eighty. I only have eighty.”

  “Alex…”

  “What?”

  “Be quiet,” he whispered.

  I looked up to see him standing next to the shack. He gestured to the small window. When I took a peek inside, I saw our man with his head down on the table.

  “He was the one telling me I needed coffee,” I said.

  “Shh, come on. Show me where the boat is.”

  We tiptoed away from the shack, then made our way down to Vargas’s row. “Next to last on the end,” I said.

  When we got to it, Leon stood there for a moment, admiring the boat. “This looks faster than hell,” he said. “It’s perfect.”

  “Come on, let’s see if you can start it.”

  We climbed aboard. I figured we should both keep low, so I sat on the deck while he did his work. First he pulled out a small flashlight. “Here,” he said. “Hold this.” I held it in place while he put the tension bar into the ignition with one hand, and then started working the pick with his other hand.

  Five minutes passed. He changed to another pick.

  Five more minutes. He stopped for a moment, shook his hands out.

  “I don’t want to rush you,” I said. “But Sleeping Beauty’s gonna wake up and wonder why we never came back with Vargas.”

  “I know. Let me try again.”

  He worked the lock for another five minutes. “Damn it,” he said. “Damn it all to hell.”

  “What about the cabin door? Maybe Vargas keeps a spare key in there.”

  “All right, let me try that,” he said, shaking his head. “Damn it.”

  He moved to the double doors on the cabin and did his thing in the lock. Tension bar, pick, one rake. The handle turned. “Sure, this one I can do,” he said.

  We pushed one of the doors in and stepped down. The first room was a little galley, with lots of shelves and compartments. “You look in here,” I said. “I’ll see what’s in this other room.”

  There was another set of double doors. When I opened them, I expected to see the sleeping quarters through the next door. That’s not what I found. All I saw were boxes. From floor to ceiling, nothing but cardboard boxes.

  “Leon, come here,” I said.

  “Hold on, I’m just getting started here.”

  “Come here,” I said.

  He stopped what he was doing and poked his head into the room. “What is all this stuff?”

  “Appliances,” I said. “Stereos, microwaves. Those big boxes underneath are either refrigerators or stoves.”

  “What’s he doing? Running them to Canada, you think?”

  “He gave me this big speech at the poker game,” I said, “about how his Canadian customers get killed with the duty crossing the border. I’m guessing that for a certain amount of cash consideration, Vargas will do a little backdoor delivery service with their very expensive American appliances. Blondie said he knew who Vargas was, and what his scam was. I think we just walked right in on it.”

  “Of course,” Leon said. “If he went into a Canadian port, he’d have to put up the yellow quarantine flag, let the customs guys come out and check out what he’s bringing in. But it’s a hell of a big lake. He could dock this thing just about anywhere.”

  “That explains the double doors. He probably had them custom-made, just so he could haul this stuff in here.”

  “He must drive the boat down to Petoskey, load up down there. But why would he leave all this sitting here overnight? Seems risky.”

  “The weather,” I said. “Remember yesterday morning? It looked like a storm was coming in. I bet he had to cancel his run.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense.”

  “Let’s go get the keys. We’re running out of time.”

  “What, you mean—”

  “We’ve got some leverage now,” I said. “Let’s go wake up your former client.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  We rolled into Vargas’s driveway around 5 A.M. The sky was just starting to brighten
on the eastern horizon. With no sleep, with the sight of the cabin still burning in my head, and the sound of Jackie’s voice on the phone, I was running on pure adrenaline. There’d be plenty of time to deal with it after this was done. If I lived through it.

  I knocked on Vargas’s front door. As we stood there waiting, I remembered the night Jackie and I had stood on this very spot, waiting for Vargas to let us in to play poker. Somewhere inside, we heard the familiar barking of the world’s toughest Chihuahua.

  Mrs. Vargas answered the door wearing a bathrobe, sticking her head out and blocking the dog with her leg. “Alex,” she said, “what’s going on?”

  “We need your husband.”

  “Nice face you got going there, Alex. And this must be Mr. Prudell. Didn’t he fire you yesterday?”

  “Where is he?”

  “I’m right here,” Vargas said, appearing behind her. He was wearing purple silk pajamas. He had the dog in one arm. “What the hell’s going on? Why are you here?”

  I pushed the door open. “We came to ask you a little favor.”

  “What are you doing? You can’t come in here.”

  “Call the police,” I said. “Tell them we’ll all meet down at your boat. Have them bring somebody from Customs, too.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We don’t have time for games, Vargas. We need to use your boat.”

  “Ha, that’s good.”

  “Leon, you got your cell phone handy? Call the police, tell them to go to the marina.”

  “All right, just hold on,” Vargas said. “Let’s talk about this. Why do you need my boat?”

  “I’ll give you the quick version,” I said. “One of the men who broke into your house has Jackie. He wants us to meet him out in the middle of the lake. We’ve got one boat, and we need one more. Something fast. You let us use your boat, we bring it back today, we forget everything we know about your little side business, you never see us again. That’s the deal. Now give us the keys.”

  “You’re telling me one of the men who broke into this house and put a gun to my head is gonna meet you out on the lake?”

  “He wasn’t the guy who took you upstairs,” I said. “He was one of the men who stayed down here with the rest of us.”

  “Good enough,” he said. “Give me five minutes to get dressed.”