He didn’t look down at the bills. He didn’t get me a beer. Instead, he took exactly one step backward and then, without taking his eyes off me for a second, grabbed the phone off the wall.
“Hold on, Harry,” she said. “Before you arrest him, let’s hear what the man has to say. It might be good for a laugh.”
“Now why on earth would you arrest me?” I said to him. “I’m just sitting here trying to buy a beer.”
He didn’t say anything. I could see his knuckles whiten as he gripped the phone.
“Never mind,” I said. “I’m sure you guys would think of something.”
“We’re waiting to hear your story,” she said. She picked up her pack of cigarettes and pulled one out. “Do you have a light?”
“I don’t smoke,” I said.
Harry put the phone down and produced a lighter. As he held it to the tip of her cigarette, once again he never took his eyes off me for a second. The man was talented.
“You like having big men around to look after you, don’t you,” I said.
“You’re not exactly a lightweight yourself,” she said. “I have to admit, you’re put together better than any of those other men Charles has sent after me.”
“By Charles, I assume you mean Mr. Harwood?”
“Aren’t you the guy who’s been following me around in the white Cadillac the last couple days?”
“No, ma’am,” I said. “I drive a truck.”
“Well, who the hell are you, then?” she said. “No, wait. Let me guess.” She took a long drag on her cigarette and then blew the smoke straight upward. “I bet you I know. My brother told me a couple men came by his house last week looking for me. Mother convinced him that Charles didn’t send them, but Leo’s still not convinced.”
“I thought your brother hates being called Leo,” I said.
“Aha, so you were one of those men,” she said. “I thought he sent you on your way without telling you where I was.”
“Ms. Zambelli,” I said. “Maria.” Harry bristled when I said her name, like I had taken an indecent liberty. “Didn’t your brother tell you who we were?”
“I think he mentioned a couple names,” she said, taking a drag on her cigarette. “I don’t remember them.”
“My name is Alex McKnight,” I said. “Which shouldn’t mean anything to you. But the man I was with was Randy Wilkins.”
She looked at me without saying anything. After a long moment, she looked away.
“Do you remember him?” I said.
“He’s the man who was shot here a couple days ago,” she said. “That’s where I’ve heard that name. The chief told me.” She looked up at Harry, but he didn’t notice. He was too busy watching me.
“Yes,” I said. “Randy was looking for you. Do you remember him? From thirty years ago?”
“No,” she said. “That was a long time ago.”
I hesitated. “You don’t remember him? Your mother did. As soon as she saw him.”
“My mother has a good memory,” she said. “It’s one of her many gifts. Unfortunately, I didn’t inherit most of them.”
“My God,” I said. “I don’t believe this. You’re telling me you don’t remember him. And he didn’t find you here? I mean, before he got shot? He didn’t talk to you at all?”
“Harry,” she said. “You’ve got some customers waiting on you.” She nodded her head toward two men on the other side of the bar. They were standing over two empty glasses and looking like their patience was about used up.
Harry didn’t move. He kept watching me.
“Go ahead,” she said. “I think he’s harmless. You can go ahead and frisk him if it’ll make you feel better.”
He backed away slowly and went over to the two men. He kept watching me as he poured out a couple drafts.
Maria put her hands together in front of her face. Without looking at me, she whispered something.
“I can’t hear you,” I said.
“Shhhhh,” she said in a low voice. She kept her hands in front of her face. “Just act natural. Tell me you made a mistake and then leave. In twenty minutes, I’ll go out to my car. Just follow me.”
She brought her hands down and put out her cigarette. She jabbed it in the ashtray like she was punishing it. “I’m sorry,” she said out loud as Harry came back to us. “I don’t remember a Randy Wilkins. The name means nothing to me.”
CHAPTER 16
Twenty minutes later, I was sitting in my truck, watching the front door, wondering if my new friend Harry would be coming out to ask me why I was still on the premises. The sun had just come out, a rare event on any of Michigan’s shorelines in mid-April. Maria stepped out into the sunlight and stood there blinking for a moment. She was short and compact, like her brother, Leopold. But where Leopold had muscles, Maria had curves. She looked around the parking lot and saw me sitting there in my truck. She stared right at me for a long time, her head tilted a little to the side. Then she went over to her red Mustang and got in.
She pulled out of the parking lot. I followed her as she took a left toward the center of town. At the intersection, I saw Stu outside pumping gas, but he didn’t look up at either one of us. Maria took a left at the traffic light and went west, toward the shoreline. I lost sight of her for a few seconds; then when I saw her car again, it was stopped in front of the boat launch. I pulled in next to her.
She jumped out of her car, opened my passenger door, slid into the cab, and then closed the door behind her. “Tell me everything you know,” she said. She opened up a black leather bag and left her right hand inside it.
“You don’t waste time,” I said. “And do you mind telling me what kind of gun you have in that bag?”
“Somebody will see us,” she said. “Just tell me. Is he going to live?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “The doctor says they’re going to operate on him. A fragment went up into his brain.”
“I can’t believe this is happening.” Her right hand stayed in the bag. I imagined a little revolver with a pearl handle. At least it wasn’t a shotgun.
“I’m supposed to call the hospital later,” I said. “The doctor may have a better idea then.”
“How do you know Randy?” she said. “You’re a friend of his?”
“I was an old teammate of his. He came to me last week and asked me to help him find you. He told me all about how he met you in Detroit, back in 1971.”
“You were his teammate then? In Detroit? I’m sorry, I’m trying to remember you…”
“No, we played ball together in Toledo. He got called up in September, but I didn’t. So I wasn’t around when he met you.”
“Why did he say he was trying to find me?”
“Maria, I don’t blame you for being careful, but I’ve had too many guns pointed at me this week. It’s starting to get to me.”
“It’s not pointed at you,” she said. “I’m just holding it.”
“Either you trust me or you don’t,” I said. “If you don’t, then get out of the truck and I’ll be on my way.”
She pulled her right hand out of the bag. For one frozen instant, I saw a flash of something white in her hand.
It was a hairbrush.
I took a breath. “Remind me to never play poker with you,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “After all I’ve been through… Well, never mind. Just tell me what he said. Why was Randy trying to find me?”
“He said some pretty crazy things. About running out on you back then, and still thinking about you all these years later. And then suddenly deciding that he had to find you again.”
“My God,” she said.
“Of course, now I know he was probably trying to scam you.”
She looked at me. She didn’t say anything.
“We ended up at your brother’s house,” I said. “You know about that. I thought it was all over. I thought he went back to California. Then I found out he came here and got himself shot.”
; She looked out the window. The sun went behind a cloud, turning the lake a different shade of green.
“Maria,” I said. “I swear, I had no idea he was a criminal. Not until the chief told me.”
“You hadn’t seen him at all in what, thirty years?” she said. “You had no contact with him?”
“No,” I said.
“And then he just comes back and asks you to help him? Why did he do that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Because I live in Michigan. Because I know Detroit.”
“And why did you help him?”
“I don’t know that, either,” I said. “Because he asked me to. Because I thought he was looking for you for a good reason. Or at least a harmless reason. I had no idea he was trying to scam you. Although I suppose it makes sense now. His racket is real estate, and I assume this has something to do with Zambelli-Harwood…”
She looked me in the eyes. “How do you know about that?”
“My partner,” I said. “He found an old news article. He just told me about it. The Zambelli in the name, is that you, or…”
“My husband,” she said. “My late husband. Har-wood killed him.”
I didn’t say anything. The words hung in the air.
A car drove by on the road behind us. Maria slid down in her seat.
“When we were in the bar,” I said, “why didn’t you want Harry to know you recognized Randy’s name?”
“It’s a long story,” she said. “Can you come to my house?”
“I can do that,” I said. “Are you sure you want me to? Your friends in the bar wouldn’t like it if they found out.”
“I showed you my gun, didn’t I?” She put the hairbrush back in her bag. “I’m not as good as my mother, but I think I have some sense of what’s inside a person, as soon as I meet them. I think you’re telling the truth.”
“I’ll follow you,” I said. “Lead the way.”
She got out of the truck and went to her own car, got in and pulled back out onto the road. I followed her for a half mile, until she turned left into a gravel driveway that was heavily rutted. There was an old wooden fence running along the front of the property, so I couldn’t see the house from the road. As soon as I did see it, I knew it was the biggest house in town.
The driveway snaked around to the front door, but she didn’t stop there. She kept going until the driveway stopped at the side of the house. I pulled in behind her, next to a small boat on a trailer. The plastic tarp that covered it was tied down with enough rope to withstand a hurricane.
She took me in the side door. There was a low concrete porch, and then a path that led down to a small boathouse. A late-morning wind was coming in off the lake.
“Nice house,” I said as I stepped inside. There was little room to take your coat off in, and then a large living room done up in white pine, with big roughhewn beams running across the ceiling. I saw a few nautical maps framed on the walls, and a mariner’s barometer set inside a gold wheel. Somehow, I knew she hadn’t decorated the place herself.
“I’m renting it,” she said. “You’ll never guess who from.”
“Captain Nemo,” I said.
“Chief Rudiger,” she said.
“That’s wonderful,” I said. “He’ll be so happy if he finds out I was here.”
“For what he’s charging me, I should be able to entertain anybody I want. Can I get you a drink?”
“A beer?” I said. “I didn’t get much service at Rocky’s.”
When she left, I looked out the big picture window at Lake Michigan. It was calm now, but I knew that could change without much warning. A pair of binoculars sat on the windowsill-one of those Leica models that cost at least five hundred dollars. I picked them up and looked out at the lake, spotted a freighter in the distance. It was heading north, probably from Chicago. It would go under the Mackinac Bridge, sneak around Drummond Island, and then head through the Soo locks. If I go home right now, I thought, I’ll be able to see it again, coming through Whitefish Bay.
Maria came back into the room with two beers and two glasses. She was one of those women who always surprise you with how good they look, even if they’ve only been away for thirty seconds. The beers in her hands didn’t hurt the effect.
“He’s got good taste in binoculars,” I said. “Why’s he renting this place, anyway? Where does he live now?”
“He’s got a little place in town,” she said, putting the bottles down on a coffee table. “He says he doesn’t need this big place now that his wife is dead and his kids are moved out. So he rented it to me. Not that I need this big a place, either. It’s just temporary.”
“Until what?” I said.
She looked at me. “Until I move someplace for real,” she said. “Now sit down here and tell me more about Randy.”
I obeyed her. I sat down and poured myself a beer. She sat down on the couch next to me.
“So, you do remember him,” I said, “from 1971?”
“Yes,” she said. “Of course I remember him.”
“It was almost thirty years ago.”
“It could be eighty years,” she said. “I’d still remember.”
“He certainly is one of a kind, but-”
“Alex, I know I already asked you this,” she said, “but why did he come here, really? Do you really think he was-what did you say? Trying to scam me?”
I looked at her. “I told you before. At first, I thought it was because he wanted to find you again. Because he thought you were the one who got away.”
“You believed him.”
“Yes,” I said. “If I had seen you in person, it would have been easy to believe.”
“I appreciate the flattery,” she said. “But even so, Alex, most people wouldn’t have come all the way down here to help him.”
“I’m a complete idiot,” I said. “I think I’ve established that pretty well.”
“No,” she said. “You believed him because that’s the kind of man you are.”
“The idiot kind.”
She smiled. “What do you believe now? Do you really think he came here to steal money from me?”
“It seems to be his calling,” I said. “I think his record speaks for itself.”
She looked out the big window at the lake. “I do have money to steal,” she said. “My husband’s business was very successful, before
… before he died.”
“You said Harwood killed him.”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me about it?”
She took a deep breath. “Alex, when I met Randy, I was very young. But he was the first, if you know what I mean. When he left without saying a word, it hit me very hard. I didn’t think I would love another man ever again. But then a man came to see my mother. A man named Harwood. Charles Harwood. He kept coming back, and he always paid her a hundred dollars for each reading. That was a great deal of money in those days. He drove a big convertible, too. My father was very interested in this man. And this man, this Charles Harwood, he was obviously very interested in me. He asked me many times to go driving with him in his big convertible, but I always turned him down. My father was angry with me. Eventually, he persuaded me to go with Harwood. ‘Just a little trip around town,’ my father said. ‘What is the harm, a short trip in the car? With this man who pays your mother a hundred dollars every time he sees her.’ So I went with this man, and he drove around Detroit with the top down. He asked me all these questions, but I didn’t feel like talking to him. So he finally shut up and just drove me back home. I thought that would be the end of it, but the next week he was back, asking me to go driving with him again. I went with him, and this time I did not say one single word the entire time. But he kept coming back, and he kept giving my mother a hundred dollars every time, and he kept asking me to ride in his car. And I would go and not say a word. Until finally one day he drove right out of the city and through all the suburbs and right out into the countryside. I was scared. But I didn’t say an
ything. I didn’t want him to know how scared I was. He drove all the way out to a farm in Oakland County, right down this little dirt road in the middle of nowhere, and when he finally stopped, I was sure he would do something terrible to me. But he didn’t. He just sat there and looked out at the farm, and then he told me that he and his partner had just bought the place and that they were going to build a golf course. And then they’d find more land and build another one, and then another one. And they would both become very rich. He asked me if I had ever thought what it would be like to have lots of money, but before I could answer him, his partner showed up. He drove right up behind us in his beat-up little car, and he came up to see who this young girl was sitting in Harwood’s convertible. His name was Arthur Zambelli.”
She paused to take a long drink; then she looked out the window at the lake again and continued.
“Arthur Zambelli was everything that Harwood wasn’t. He was kind and gentle. And he didn’t care about money, even though he would end up having a lot of it. He just didn’t think about it. All he wanted to do was build things. And eat. And drink good wine. And champagne. The man loved champagne. He told me that every single day of your life should be special enough to celebrate with champagne. Which sounds kind of corny, but he made you believe it. We were married for ten years, Alex. Almost ten years. Our ten-year anniversary would have been…”
She stopped again, a small smile coming across her face, then disappearing.
“Harwood was not happy when I chose Arthur over him. He tried not to show it. He would have left the partnership in a second, but he wasn’t about to walk away from the golf course deal. And then after that, there was another deal, and then another deal. There was always another property to buy. Another hotel or golf course or resort to build. They were very successful. I married Arthur, and eventually Harwood married another woman. We spent a lot of time together, all four of us. We had to. But the way Harwood looked at me, and the way he talked to me whenever we were alone, I knew he hadn’t forgotten.
“Harwood’s marriage didn’t last. I wasn’t surprised. The more I got to know him-I mean, with all the time we had to spend with him
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