Die a Stranger (8 page)

“Agent Long. What.” The voice of a woman who had been in a deep sleep just a few seconds ago.

“Hi,” I said. “It’s me, Alex. I woke you up, didn’t I?”

“Alex? What time is it?”

“It’s about midnight, I think. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I have to be up in five more hours anyway.”

She laughed, and something came all the way through the phone line, over all those miles, and went right through me. Agent Janet Long of the FBI, stationed in Detroit. We’d spent all of two weeks together, when she had come up here to help track down a killer. When she had left, I had promised to call her sometime. I never did, until now.

You are a goddamned fool, I told myself. All this time you could have reached out, and you pick now, in the middle of the night. Just because you can’t think of anyone else.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have called. I mean, I
should
have called. But not like this. I should have—”

“It’s okay, Alex. What’s the problem? I can tell you’re upset.”

“I just need to talk to somebody. I’m going to go crazy if I don’t.”

“So talk.”

“You remember Vinnie LeBlanc,” I said.

“Your friend, yes. I met him at that bar.”

“He’s gone. He and his cousin. They’re in some sort of trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“I just broke a promise, by the way. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. But I figure you don’t count.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“No, I mean, being on the job and all. Which, by the way…”

“Yeah?”

“Tell me everything you know about this thing that happened up here. At the Newberry airport.”

“Whoa,” she said. “Time out. Are you serious?”

“I’m not saying they’re involved. I’m just asking you to tell me what you know, beyond what was in the paper. I know five men were killed, but—”

“Alex, if they’re not involved, why are you asking me this?”

“I can’t see Vinnie having any connection to this, but as far as his cousin goes…”

“Do you think he was there? At the airport?”

“I can’t rule it out. I mean, I didn’t think it was possible, but I guess I don’t know him that well. If he was actually there, well, let’s just say it would explain some things if he was.”

“You need to talk to somebody up there,” she said. “Right away. If you have any information that could—”

“I already have, okay? There’s a new police chief on the rez up here. He was just sitting right here at this table. He knows everything I do, and in fact, hell, he’s the one who received the message from Vinnie.”

“What kind of message?”

“Just that they’re both okay. As if they were, I don’t know, hiding out and figuring out what to do next? I’m not really sure, but that’s the only scenario I can imagine.”

“So you’ve had no contact with Vinnie yourself?”

“No,” I said, tapping my fingers on the table.

“And that bothers you,” she said. “You want to go get yourself right in the middle of it, don’t you?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time. We seem to do that for each other.”

She laughed again.

“This is so weird,” she said. “I was just thinking about this case when I went to bed, and then you wake me up to talk about it. I’m not dreaming, right?”

“So you do know about it.”

“Of course I do. Marijuana flying in from Canada in the middle of the night? People shooting each other?”

“So it did come from Canada. I was reading about that last month. This isn’t the first time, right?”

“No, I should say not. It’s almost impossible to stop them, unless we want to station somebody at every tiny little airport in Michigan, every single night.”

“They fly in, drop it off, fly right back.”

“They’re on the ground for five minutes,” she said. “Ten minutes tops. It’s kind of ingenious.”

“Wait, didn’t they actually handcuff some people to the fence last time?”

“They did, yes. We found them a few hours later. Good thing it was summertime or they would have frozen to death. Not that things ended up any better for them.”

“What, are you saying—”

“I didn’t just tell you that,” she said. “But yeah, we ended up letting them go. They weren’t in possession of anything, after all. The drugs and the money were long gone by the time we got there. As well as the airplane and the hijackers. All we had were two men handcuffed to a fence. We figured they’d be good leads to follow, anyway. So that’s what we’d been doing. Up until this week.”

“They didn’t get the message, you’re saying. So this time around they ended up in a shootout.”

“Just like the good old days,” she said. “Only replace the booze with marijuana.”

“So who were the other guys? You must have them ID’d by now.”

She didn’t say anything. There was nothing but a distant hum on the line.

“You know I can’t go there,” she said. “But I can tell you this. The pilot was Canadian. The receivers were just your average local dealers. Maybe a little bit above average, because it was a pretty big quantity we’re talking about. And maybe a little bit crazy, because after what happened last time—”

“Local as in where?” I said. “Were they from up here?”

“No, from downstate. That’s one of the mysteries, why they’d go so far north to do this. It’s the first time they’ve connected in the Upper Peninsula, as far as we know.”

“Okay, so what about the hijackers?”

“That’s where I have to stop you,” she said. “I can’t talk about them at all.”

“You’re saying, what? It’s not just some other group of pot dealers who found out about the party and decided to crash it?”

“No, this isn’t just another bunch of pot dealers. Look, Alex, you know how bad it’s been getting down on the Mexican border. This is a long way from there, but the idea is still the same, right? Even if those cartels are not directly involved in this, you have to know that they’re setting a standard for how you run a drug trade. Other groups see how well it works and then use the same approach. One warning, then absolutely no mercy after that. Just flat-out appalling violence. That’s how you move in and take over.”

“So these new people, they’re from where again?”

“I didn’t say, and I’m not going to. I’m dead serious.”

“Okay. I understand. You can’t talk about it.”

I heard her let out a long breath. “Just be careful. That’s the one thing I can say. If your friends really are mixed up in this…”

“Is it that bad?”

“Yes,” she said. “As bad as it gets.”

We both let that thought hang in the silence for a while.

“It’s good talking to you,” I said. “I’m sorry I called so late.”

“It’s okay, Alex. It’s good talking to you, too. No matter what time it is.”

I wished her a good night. She wished me one right back but I think we both knew that was impossible at this point. I certainly wasn’t going to sleep through any of it.

*   *   *

I may have dozed off for an hour. Maybe two. But I snapped awake around eight in the morning with a sudden thought. I took a shower and got into the truck. As I drove by Vinnie’s, I took a quick look, knowing exactly what I’d see but hoping against hope anyway. I shouldn’t have bothered.

When I got to the reservation, I drove right to the Waishkey Building. I had been running through my conversation with the chief, over and over again. I kept feeling like I had missed something important. Maybe something we had
both
missed. But I couldn’t put my finger on it. I figured if I talked to him again, it would come to me.

I parked by the police department entrance and went inside. The officer on duty told me Chief Benally was unavailable. That got my mind racing again. He’s with Vinnie right now, I thought. Vinnie contacted him again and the chief has raced off to go help him.

“Just tell him to call me,” I said to the officer. “As soon as he gets back.”

I left my cell phone number. I thanked the man. The whole transaction was perfectly polite and reasonable, but as I walked out, there were two other officers coming in. They held the door open for me. I know I was just imagining it, but it felt like they were giving me a little extra space. Like right this way, sir. Have a good day and don’t hurry back.

*   *   *

I am my own worst enemy. I realize that. I get something in my head and I can’t let go of it and I drive myself and everyone else around me absolutely crazy. Even when I know I’m doing it, I just can’t stop. That’s what led me to drive into the Soo and to stop in at the multiplex. I wasn’t there to see a movie, God knows. I was there to see Leon Prudell.

When I did my little ill-fated stint as a private investigator, working for a local lawyer, Leon was the man whose job I took. He paid me a visit at the Glasgow one night and tried to take me apart in the parking lot. From that auspicious beginning, a strange sort of friendship grew. I hated being a private eye, even before the whole thing blew up in my face. On the other hand, being a private eye was the only thing Leon ever wanted, ever since he was a kid. He even tried to set up his own practice in a rented office on Ashmun Street. There just isn’t enough business around here, even if you double as a bail bondsman. He’d been working a string of odd jobs ever since. His latest was right here at the multiplex, serving popcorn with yellow sludge on top to teenagers.

You look at him and you see an overweight local guy in a flannel shirt, with that wild orange hair on his head, and you might think this kind of job is the only thing he’s qualified to do. But he has a nose for investigation. He still knows how to break down a situation and look at it from every angle. That’s why I still go to him whenever I need help.

The lobby was pretty much empty, with another sunny July day going on outside. I asked the kid at the ticket booth if Leon was going to be around today, but he seemed not to know who I was talking about. We circled around that point for a while, because how many orange-haired adult men could actually work there? Eventually, I got passed off to a manager who told me that Leon had quit about a week ago.

Good for him, I thought as I walked out. I got back into the truck and drove out of town, just south to Rosedale. I pulled up in front of the Prudell house, with that tire swing in the front yard, hanging from the lowest branch. The car was gone, but I knocked on the door anyway. Nobody answered. As I stood on the front porch, I looked around. Something seemed out of place. That’s when I remembered the camper that was usually parked next to the driveway. One of those fold-up things you tow behind your car. It was gone now, which could mean only one thing. Leon and his entire family were on vacation.

After I got back into the truck, I just sat there for a while, staring out the windshield at nothing. If Leon was really your friend, you’d already know he was on vacation. You would have talked about it. He would have told you where he was going and how excited his kids were. You would have wished him a great trip. Maybe you’d even be stopping by his house just to make sure the mail was stopped and the newspapers weren’t piling up at the front door.

But no, you come see him only when you want something from him. When you need his help, you know he’ll be only too willing to oblige. Then you forget about him until the next time.

Hell, you did the same thing to Janet last night. You called her up in the middle of the night because you wanted information. Did you spend more than two seconds asking her how she was doing?

That leaves two other people in your life. Jackie and Vinnie. Are those your only true friends? The only two people you can really talk to?

If so, then it’s no wonder you go so crazy when one of them is missing. One friend means half your goddamned world right there.

I started to think about other people who had meant the world to me, once upon a time. The father who raised me on his own. My ex-wife. My dead partner. A certain Ontario Provincial Policewoman. All of them gone now. Is that why I didn’t want anyone else to get too close to me?

Okay, I thought, enough with the psychoanalysis. Just find Vinnie. Or hell, maybe Chief Benally is right. Maybe you just have to wait for him to show up on his own. That’s when you can tell him you don’t have enough friends left to be losing one.

I put the truck in gear and took off.

*   *   *

I was sitting at the bar. Jackie put a cold Canadian in front of me.

“Thank you,” I said.

He hesitated for a moment, looked at me before walking away.

“How are you doing?” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“I asked you how you’re doing.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to know.”

He came back to my end of the bar. “What’s going on? Since when do you need to know how I’m doing?”

“I didn’t say I
need
to know. I’m just … Look, forget it.”

He walked away again, shaking his head. I sat there and slowly emptied the bottle while the sun went down. There was a Tigers game on, above the bar. I watched it for a while without paying attention to it at all.

When Jackie came back to take my empty bottle away, I asked him if he had a map of Michigan. He went to the kitchen and came back with the standard road map, with the blowup of metropolitan Detroit on the back. I spread it out on the bar, squinting in the fading light.

“I’m wondering where the rest of the reservations are,” I said. “Can you make them out?”

He came around and squinted next to me.

“You think Vinnie’s there,” he said. A statement, not a question. “Vinnie and his cousin. One of the other reservations.”

“It would make sense. That’s the best place to go if you’re in trouble.”

He stood there and looked at the map with me for another few moments.

“You can’t find him,” he said. “Not in a million years.”

I kept looking. Then I folded up the map.

“You’re right.” I gave him back his map and left.

Outside, the air had cooled, but the sky was clear. An amazing night in the Upper Peninsula, but I couldn’t let myself enjoy it. I got into the truck and drove up the road. Took my left and knew I’d see Vinnie’s dark cabin again. Came around that bend and stopped dead.