Winter of the Wolf Moon (20 page)

“He will if I stick a gun in his face,” I said.

“That’s not going to work,” he said. “You really think you can walk into that bar and pull a gun on him? They’re gonna start breaking cue sticks over your head. Look at this place. I’m sure it wouldn’t be the first time. I told you, I’ve already got it all set up.”

“Got
what
set up? Leon, what are you talking about?”

“Alex, we cannot create an overwhelming force here, so we need to need to create the
illusion
of overwhelming force. It’s the only thing these guys will respond to.”

“The illusion of what? For God’s sake, Leon, where do you get this stuff?”

“It’s all set,” he said. “I just have to go in and give the signal.”

“Leon,” I said, grabbing the steering wheel. “Please. Let me just go in and bring him out here.”

“You want a confined area,” he said. “Like the bathroom. You separate him from the others, take him to the area.”

“Take him to the bathroom.”

“To the confined area. Could be a bathroom. Could be another room. It should be small enough that you’re in close contact with him, but not so small that he’s within three feet of you.”

“Leon …”

“I’ll be at the bar, creating the illusion of overwhelming force. Just stay here for three minutes before you come in.”

“Wait,” I said. “Just wait.”

“If the plan breaks down and we have to fight our way out of there, go for the knees.”

“Hold on, back up to that illusion thing.”

“Don’t start swinging, Alex. I know you. You’re gonna try to start a boxing match with these guys. All you’ll end up doing is busting up your hands. Just keep your head down and go for the inside of the knee. Kick outwards and they’ll fold up like a cheap suit.”

“Leon …”

“A cheap umbrella, I mean.”

“Leon …”

“And don’t pull your gun unless they draw first. The last thing we want is a shoot-out. Okay, you ready?”

“No, I’m not. Just wait a minute.”

“C’mon, Alex. They’re not gonna be in there all night Let’s go do this. Remember, give me three
minutes to get things started.” He opened the door. “Three minutes!”

“Leon, wait!”

“I gotta go now,” he said. “While I’m psyched up.”

I tried to grab him, but he closed the door on me and ran through the snow to the bar.

This is a bad dream, I told myself. All of this. I’m gonna wake up and go out and plow the road, and then I’ll go wake up Dorothy in her cabin and help her find a good, safe place to go to. Nobody will have taken her or trashed my place or be following me around or dragging my ass behind a snowmobile. And I won’t be sitting here in front of a dive bar in Soo Canada, waiting three minutes so Leon can go in and create an illusion of overwhelming force. Whatever the hell that is.

I looked at the clock on the dashboard: 1:13. I can’t believe I’m doing this. Two more minutes. I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths.

When I opened my eyes, the clock read 1:14. One more minute. A gust of wind rocked the truck.

I counted down the last minute, then I gave him one more. Then I got out of the truck. The cold air assaulted me, but it was a short walk to the door, so I was only half numb when I stepped into the place. Like all small buildings, it looked bigger once you were inside. The bar was on the right, a television set high in the corner with a hockey game on. There were Christmas lights still strung around the ceiling. They blinked on and off in the smoky haze. To the left was a pool table and a jukebox. Bruckman was standing there with a cue stick in his hand, watching one of his teammates attempt a shot. His other two teammates
stood in front of the jukebox, looking down at the playlist. They had cue sticks, too. Four hockey players with heavy sticks in their hands, at least one of them half out of his mind.

I hesitated. This may not be such a great idea.

Then I saw Leon at the bar. He gave me a little nod. Then he put his glass down and turned around to face the pool table. I counted seven other men at the bar, including the bartender. As soon as Leon turned around, they all fell silent and turned around, as well. Somebody found the remote for the television and turned it off. Then the bartender flipped his magic switch behind the bar to turn off the jukebox. The only sounds left in the room were the impact of the balls on the pool table and Bruckman’s rough laughter at a missed shot. As the balls all rolled to a stop, Bruckman stopped laughing.

“What the fuck,” he said. He looked up to see eight men staring at him. He scanned the faces left to right. The last face he saw was mine.

“I got next game,” I said. I walked to the pool table. It was quiet enough to hear the floor squeak under my feet.

“The fuck you doing here?” he said.

“You know, Bruckman,” I said. “Just once I want to hear you say one sentence without the word ‘fuck’ in it.”

Bruckman looked at me and then at his teammates.

“There are eight men in this room,” I said. I wish Leon had explained his plan a little better, I said to myself. I hope this is what he had in mind … “Every single one of them has a gun. I’d love to see you try something stupid right now.”

He looked at his teammates again, and then at the men at the bar. I could practically hear the wheels spinning in his head. “So like … what?” he finally said.

“So like I want to ask you a few questions,” I said. “That’s all. If you play along, I won’t shoot you.”

“Like you really would,” he said.

“In the bathroom,” I said. “Unless you want me to kill you right here.”

“What?” His eyes were shining with fear, or chemicals, or maybe both.

“You heard me,” I said. “Go into the bathroom. While we’re in there, all three of your friends are going to just stand here and look stupid. Is that clear?”

He swallowed hard.

“Move,” I said.

He looked around the room again, like he was waiting for somebody else to do something. It didn’t happen, so he finally leaned the cue stick against the table and moved toward the bathroom. I followed. As we passed the biggest of his teammates, I looked up just long enough to give him a little smile. “Good to see you again,” I said.

When we were in the bathroom, I shut the door behind us. There was one stall, one urinal, and one sink. Whoever’s job it was to keep the room clean was clearly not an overachiever. I opened the stall door. “Have a seat,” I said. I pulled the service revolver out of my coat.

“I’m keeping my pants on,” he said.

“Good for you,” I said. “Just sit down.”

He flipped down the lid and sat on it. In the cheap light he looked tired and thin and used up.

“You don’t look so hot,” I said.

He didn’t say anything. He just sat there staring into some sort of middle distance only he could see.

“Let’s see,” I said. “If the bullet goes in this way, it should come out like so.” I looked past his head at the wall. “Unless it stays in the skull.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s gonna make a hell of a racket in here,” I said. I reached down and gave the toilet paper roll a quick spin. I tore off a couple feet, wadded it into a ball, and stuck it in my left ear. Then I made another ball and stuck it in my right ear.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“I’m getting ready to shoot you,” I said. “It’s gonna surprise the hell out of everybody, I know. Nobody out there really thinks I’m gonna do it. But I am.” I looked over at the sink and the window above it. “I should probably go out that window. What do you think?”

“What …”

I made a show of checking the gun and then I held it in both hands. “You ever see a bullet go through somebody’s head?” I said. I closed my left eye and looked down the barrel with my right. “It’s quite a sight. God, this place is going to be a mess.”

“You can’t shoot me,” he said.

“Sure I can,” I said.

“What do you want from me?” he said. He started to rock on the seat.

“I want you to stay still,” I said. “So I can get a clean shot.”

“You’re crazy,” he said. “You’re fucking crazy.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” I said. “I guess you should
have killed me when you had the chance.”

“No,” he said. “I wasn’t going to …”

“Stop talking,” I said. “You’re ruining my concentration.”

“What do I have to do?” he said. “Just tell me.”

I opened up both my eyes and looked at him over the gun. “I suppose you could entertain me,” I said. “That might buy you a couple minutes, at least.”

“What?” he said. “How?”

“Start talking to me,” I said. “What’s in that bag?”

“What bag?”

I raised the gun again. “You’re not very good at this,” I said. “The bag you were looking for when you jumped me in my cabin.”

“Drugs,” he said.

“What kind?”

“I’m not exactly sure. Some kind of speed. Real intense shit, like it had to be mixed with something. Probably some crack. Maybe something else.”

“Where did you get it?”

He hesitated until I closed my left eye again. “A guy in New Jersey,” he said. “We stole it off him a couple weeks ago.”

“How does Dorothy figure into this?”

“She was with me,” he said. “Not when we stole it, I mean. Just that … she was with me. We came here together.”

“Why did you come here?”

“To sell the stuff,” he said. “What else?”

“Why here?”

“We had to get away. Someplace out in the middle of nowhere. Dorothy knows this place because she grew up here.”

“It doesn’t hurt that Canada is right next door, right? You don’t even have to go through customs, just drive your snowmobiles across the river.”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“And what else, Bruckman?”

“What else what?”

“What else makes this such a great place to sell those drugs?”

He didn’t say anything.

“The Indians,” I said. “Right?”

“They got the money now,” he said. “With those casinos.”

“You know about the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, don’t you? All the problems they’re having with drugs. You figured you could make a big score up here.”

“It’s not my problem they got no will power.”

“Yeah, not like you,” I said. “You never touch the stuff.”

He looked away from me.

“You were dipping into that bag, weren’t you?”

“Little bit,” he said.

“What did Dorothy think of your plan to sell that stuff up here?”

“She didn’t know about it,” he said.

“Ah, now this is starting to make sense,” I said. “Let me guess. When she did find out, she took that bag and ran.”

“Yeah, maybe,” he said.

“How did you know she came to me?” I said.

“Gobi, one of the guys on the team, he was back at that bar with all the deer heads and shit on the walls. There was this waitress there he was working
on. He saw her come in and ask about you. She had the bag with her, he thought. He wasn’t sure. Nobody else had ever seen it. I had it hidden. I didn’t trust anybody. So instead of stopping her and asking her what she’s doing, this fucking moron just calls me and leaves me a message on my machine, tells me she was asking about you and I should check it out. You know, on account of he didn’t want to leave the bar because he thought he was finally getting somewhere with this waitress. That’s the kind of guy Gobi is. Can’t play hockey for shit, either.”

“You didn’t take her from my cabin?” I said.

“No, I didn’t even know she was there until a couple of days later. When I went home that night, there was a police car there, so I got the hell out of there, came over here to Canada. I figured I was fucked. Like maybe she turned me in or something. So I’m waiting here and then finally I call Gobi, and I go, Hey, what the fuck is going on over there? Are they looking for me or what? And he goes, No man, didn’t you get my message? And I go, What message? And he tells me what happened. Turns out somebody trashed the place that night and Mrs. Hudson called the cops. That’s why the police car was there.”

“You didn’t trash the place?”

“Nah, fuck no,” he said. “Why would I do that?”

“And you didn’t trash my place?”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t fucking trash anything.”

“So who did?” I said.

He gave me a little smirk. It was almost enough to make me go ahead and shoot him. “You don’t know, do you?” he said.

“No, but I’m hoping you’re gonna tell me,” I said.

“I don’t know for sure,” he said. “But I’m guessing it was a couple guys named Pearl and Roman.”

“Who are they?”

“Just a couple guys who work for Molinov.”

“Who’s Molinov?”

“He’s the guy we stole the drugs off of,” he said. “Believe me, you don’t want to know about Molinov.”

“Is he Russian?” I said.