Die a Stranger (13 page)

“This is between two old friends,” he said to me. “Just stay out of it.”

At that point, I would have been happy to do so. Hell, I would have just driven home and left the two of them there to have it out. But we were starting to draw a small crowd of people coming in and out of the casino. I couldn’t just let him kill this guy, anyway. Which is exactly what would have happened if they’d started swinging at each other.

“We don’t have time for this,” I said. “We’ve got more important things to do.”

Lou finally let the man go and tapped him lightly on the cheek.

“It still must hurt,” Lou said. “What is it, forty years now? The love of your life and she dropped you like a hot rock.”

“You’ve got five minutes to get off the rez.”

“Yeah, I know,” Lou said, walking away. “And then you’ll call the whole gang to come beat me up. I heard you the first time.”

“You got a lot of nerve, too,” he said. “Talking about Vinnie and Buck, like we’re not doing everything we can to find them. This from a man who abandoned his whole family.”

Lou stopped. Mr. Carrick finally found some degree of sense and went around to the other side of the car, putting two and a half tons of metal between himself and a prison-hardened man who probably could have taken him apart with his bare hands.

“You’ve been warned,” the man said. He got into his car and drove away. The people who had gathered around us continued on, into or away from the casino.

“You did mention the welcome wagon,” I said as we walked back to my truck. “I guess that was it.”

“I’m obviously not welcome here,” he said. “But can we make one more quick stop?”

“Where’s that?”

“I just want to say hello to her. And goodbye. One more time.”

I stopped there in the middle of the lot and looked at him. This was exactly what Vinnie had asked to do.

“Come on,” I said. “Get in.”

*   *   *

A few minutes later, we were up on top of Mission Hill. It was just as dark and empty as that night I had brought Vinnie up here. Once again, I stayed by the truck and watched a lonely LaBlanc man make his way through the graveyard to find the stone next to the freshly turned earth. Once again, it was a clear summer night and I could see all the way across to the blinking lights on top of the wind turbines in Canada.

When he was done, he got back into the truck and we rode down to the bottom of the hill, then off the reservation. To Paradise.

He was already reaching for his bag as I drove up toward Vinnie’s cabin.

“I’ve got an empty cabin just down the road,” I said. “I think you should stay there.”

Either he agreed with me or he was too tired to fight about it. He sat back as I drove him around the bend to the first of the five rental cabins. I went inside with him and showed him where everything was. He put his bag down and sat in one of the chairs. Then he took out little plastic baggie from his coat pocket.

“Is it cool if I smoke in here?”

“A joint, you mean? You’re gonna smoke a joint now?”

“I just need one,” he said. “It’s been a hell of a day.”

“This is none of my business, but you started out as ‘clean and sober,’ and then that got downgraded to just clean, right? So now you’re what? Neither?”

“I’m still clean, Alex. Clean inside and out. It’s just marijuana.”

“Yeah, just marijuana,” I said. “Tell that to those dead men on the runway.”

He just looked at me. I knew we were about two seconds away from more of the ex-cop versus ex-con routine, so I decided to bail out and let us both get some sleep.

I drove back down to my cabin. Before going inside, I stood there for a while and let the darkness and the silence close in around me. There were clouds moving quickly across a tilting half-moon. The air was still almost warm. Then the wind picked up and as it hit my face it brought along an unmistakable message. It may be July, and it may feel like summer just got here, but the end is already on its way. The cold, the snow, the ice, the natural basic state of this place, it is right around the corner.

I took a quick walk back to Vinnie’s cabin. Nothing had changed. I walked back to my own place, hoping this much exercise would help me get to sleep. I was expecting a losing battle on that front, but I must have been exhausted because I dropped right off. I had all the bad dreams I would have bet money on having, but somewhere in the night a brilliant idea came to me. Brilliant for me, at least, and thank God it was still with me when I woke up.

As I opened my eyes to the sunlight, I still had no idea where Vinnie was. But I knew exactly where Lou and I needed to go.

CHAPTER NINE

It was almost eight o’clock in the morning when I got into the truck and drove down to the next cabin. I knocked on the door, but there was no answer. I knocked again, then pushed the door open and peeked inside. I could see Lou’s bag still on the table, and it looked like he had been making coffee in the kitchen. There was still a strong scent of marijuana in the air, just what I needed for the next rental guest.

“Lou, are you in here?”

I gave the place a quick once-over, including the bathroom. He wasn’t in the cabin. I opened all the windows on my way out.

I was just about to go down to Vinnie’s cabin to see if the rental car was still there, but then I saw Lou walking down the road toward me. He was coming from the dead-end direction. The other cabins were up that way and then the road just gave up and the forest took over.

“Good morning,” he said. “Are all those cabins yours?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t know you had renters. There were some nice old ladies in the next cabin up, but I believe I probably scared them to death.”

The bird-watchers, I thought. They were here to observe the piping plovers or some such thing, and Lou was probably right about scaring them.

“I’ll go tell them you’re harmless later,” I said. “But never mind that. I’ve got a question for you.”

“Shoot.”

“When we were talking to that guy last night, Mr. Dukes’ next-door neighbor, did his whole speech sound a little … rehearsed to you?”

“Like he had it in a can, ready to go? Yeah, of course it did. I thought that was obvious.”

“He didn’t even ask us why the hell we were ringing his doorbell at two in the morning. Did you notice that? He was too busy giving us the party line. But why did he even do that? Why tell us that Dukes drove to Texas? What’s the point?”

“Probably because Dukes wanted to cover his tracks. He skipped town and he wanted his neighbor to feed people a false story.”

“You mean, he’s not really in Texas.”

“I would bet he’s not, no.”

“Okay, so we agree on that. Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“To go talk to Mr. Dukes,” I said. “But I think we should take your rental car.”

*   *   *

I had Lou drive through the McDonald’s in Sault Ste. Marie to get us some breakfast to go. I looked at my watch and wondered when your average pot dealer would get out of bed.

“So tell me why we’re back here,” Lou said to me as he went through the bags of food. “I’m not quite seeing it yet.”

“Put yourself in his shoes,” I said. “A couple of people in your supply chain get murdered. If you’re scared enough by that, and if you’re smart enough, what do you do?”

“I get the hell out of town.”

“Do you really pack up everything in your car and drive a thousand miles to, say, Florida? Leave a fake story behind to make people think you’re in Texas?”

“Maybe. Although hell, I probably wouldn’t even try to bother with that last part. I’d just go.”

“All right, so what if you’re not quite scared enough? Or not quite smart enough? Or both?”

“I’m still not following you.”

“Look, you
live
here. You’ve got a good business going. You know something bad happened, but what if you’re not absolutely sure it’s going to find its way to you.”

He mulled it over for a while. Then it came to him.

“You don’t go anywhere,” he said. “You just make it look that way. You get your neighbor to act as your beard for a few days, and you see what happens.”

“Maybe you even keep the sales going,” I said. “No need to shut down the cash flow, right?”

“Okay, so your neighbor’s selling for you, you’re saying. As long as the customers are people he can trust. If it’s a stranger who shows up, then he just sends the bastard packing, tells him you’re long gone and you’re not coming back.”

“That’s how you’d play it halfway,” I said. “You stay in business, but you keep your eyes open for trouble.”

“So while your neighbor’s keeping the business going, where does that leave you? Where are you hiding?”

“Where else?”

He thought about it, and this time it took him only a second.

“Dukes is in the neighbor’s house,” he said. “He was there last night when we knocked on the door.”

“That part I’m just guessing. But how else are you gonna keep the customers straight? He was probably watching us from a window.”

“God damn,” he said. “You just might be right.”

A few minutes later, we were on the other side of town. We drove down that same street, the modest rows of houses looking all the more threadbare in the light of day. We stopped a few houses short, pulled over, and made sure we had a good sight line. This was why we had the rental car that day, in case the neighbor had noticed my truck well enough to remember it. I wouldn’t have put money on him being half that sharp, but there was no reason to take any chances.

Dukes’ house still looked abandoned, and the neighbor’s house looked just as quiet. But then it wasn’t even nine o’clock yet.

“That car in front,” Lou said, pointing to an old gray beater. “That’s gotta be the neighbor’s, right? Dukes’ car is probably in the neighbor’s garage.”

“If we knew what kind of car he had, we could check.”

“Yeah, we just have to wait to see what happens.”

“That’s the part I’m gonna hate,” I said. “I never did like stakeouts.”

“Well, if prison teaches you one thing, it’s how to wait. Unless you have another idea.”

“We could go break the door down and start counting heads. One, I’m wrong. Two, I’m right.”

“I’m pretty sure that could get us arrested,” he said. “Unless they’ve changed the laws around here.”

“Arrested or killed. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re armed.”

“Oh, I’m sure of it.”

“I’ve already been shot twice,” I said. “I think that’s probably enough.”

*   *   *

We sat there for a long time. I don’t know exactly how long, because I was doing everything I could to turn off the clock in my brain. I leaned back in the passenger seat, my eyes just high enough to see over the dashboard. For all of his talk about learning how to wait in prison, Lou seemed even more anxious than I was. In the end, we agreed to take turns watching the houses while the other closed his eyes for a while and recharged his batteries. It made it a lot easier, but it still wasn’t going to rank as one of my favorite ways to spend a summer morning.

“Did it really happen twice?” he said, finally breaking the silence.

“What’s that?”

“You said you got shot twice.”

“I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“Fair enough. Whatever.”

More silence.

“The first time was on the job,” I said after a few more minutes. “I let my guard down. We both did, my partner and I. He didn’t survive it.”

“But you did. And you blame yourself.”

I looked over at him.

“Which is only natural,” he said. “Even though I’m sure it’s wrong.”

I didn’t try to argue. It was a thousand sleepless nights’ worth of old ground for me, and I had no desire to go over it again.

“That was the first time,” he said. “What about the second?”

“That was pretty recent. In fact, I’m not sure my doctor would love me doing this right now.”

A car came by. It was going slow, but it didn’t stop. A few minutes later, it came by again, obviously having taken one lap around the block. We both kept our heads down as the car pulled over a few spots ahead of us. The driver got out. He was young and white and he had a ratty blond ponytail down his back. He wasn’t actually wearing a ratty denim jacket with a big embroidered cannabis plant on the back, but something told me he had one at home.

“And here we go,” I said. “If anybody’s sleeping late in there, they’re about to be woken up.”

He went to Dukes’ door and knocked. When nobody answered, he started looking around the place like his dealer might be around the side of the house, washing his car or something. That’s when the door to the neighbor’s house opened. Our big friend stood in the doorway. He was still wearing the same outfit, undershirt and black pants. Hell, he’d probably slept in it. Maybe right there in front of the television set, after Lou and I had left. He called over and the customer just about jumped out of his skin. A few words were exchanged. Then the customer went over to the other house and went inside. The neighbor took a careful look up and down the street. Then he closed the door.

“Good call swapping the vehicles,” Lou said. “This guy probably would have made us in the truck.”

As we watched the house, I tried to imagine each step of the transaction. You make your buy. Then you get the hell out, right? You don’t stick around and chat afterward.

“So far your theory is holding up,” Lou said. “Now as soon as this guy leaves, we go knock on the door again, right? Have you figured out what you’re going to say yet?”

“Something friendly yet persuasive,” I said. “My specialty.”

Before another word was spoken, we saw a man moving between the two houses. It wasn’t the neighbor. It wasn’t the customer. It was a third man, taller and thinner than the other two. He moved quickly, glancing out at the street as he disappeared behind the other house.

“That’s gotta be Dukes,” I said. “What do you say we call an audible?”

“I’m right behind you.”

We both got out of the car and walked down the street, trying to be quick and smooth and unassuming all at the same time. He’s going into his house to get some of his product, I thought. Then he’ll come right back out and retrace his steps to the neighbor’s house. That’ll be our chance to stop him, and once we do that, we have to convince him as quickly as possible that we’re just here to talk.