A Stolen Season (16 page)

To St. Clair Shores and the man they call Mr. Gray.

From where I was starting, it was over three hundred miles to Detroit. I crossed the Mackinac Bridge, hit the Lower Peninsula. I stopped for gas in Gaylord. An hour south and it already felt twenty degrees warmer. I got back in the truck and pointed it straight down I-75, the lifeline of the state but just another lonely road up here, going through little towns like Grayling, West Branch, Pinconning. Around Bay City the traffic started getting heavier. I kept driving. No music, no radio. Hardly a thought in my head, beyond I’m here and I need to get there. Not even thinking yet about what I’d do when I arrived. Everything turned off but the driving muscles.

Except for the pain. I couldn’t turn that off. I didn’t see how I ever could.

The thing was still there. Not owning me yet. Somehow I was still keeping it just outside. As long as I kept moving…

Another hour and I was in Flint. The sun was out. I drove through Auburn Hills. I was getting close to Detroit now. My old hometown, the ring of suburbs on three sides, inching out farther and farther into the farmlands. All these sleepy little crossroads turned into boomtowns now, with all the new houses, the strip malls. I saw the places without recognizing them. Not that I was really looking. I kept my eyes on the road and ate up the miles.

When I was on the edge of the city, I took I-696 due east cutting through some of the older middle class suburbs, Warren, Center Line, Roseville. The highway ended: I got on 11 Mile Road, headed straight for the water, where the original old-money suburbs were strung along Lake St. Clair like pearls. Grosse Pointe, Grosse Pointe Park, Grosse Pointe Farms, Grosse Pointe Shores, where the automotive families had their big houses. As a Detroit cop, long ago, I knew exactly where Detroit ended and the Grosse Pointes began. I knew it to the inch, and so did the people who lived on either side of that line. Needless to say, the Grosse Pointe cops were better paid and better equipped. Their motivations were slightly different than ours. As long as the trouble stayed on our side, they were happy.

On the northern end of the Grosse Pointes was St. Clair Shores, always trying to keep up. Hell, maybe it had caught up by now. I had been away from the place for more years than I cared to count.

I hit Jefferson Street, the main thoroughfare, turned right, and went south into the heart of town. There were nice houses, nice little shops. At every block a cross street ran east to the water. There were so many peninsulas, so many boat channels. In a way, it was sort of like Hessel, but here there was so much more of everything. More houses, more people, more money. The traffic was heavy. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had rolled my truck down a busy suburban street. I felt like a madman from the great white north, descended upon the big city.

I kept driving down Jefferson, looking at the street signs. Lakeland, Manor, Madison. All the old money names. Statler, Benjamin, Revere. I was starting to wonder if I’d missed it. I figured a few more blocks and I’d be in Grosse Pointe Shores.

Then I saw it. Trombley Street.

On the water, Cap had said. I took the left, drove down the peninsula. The houses got bigger. Lots of Tudors, the occasional Victorian. Seriously upscale houses. I wasn’t surprised Mr. Gray lived here. I wondered if his neighbors knew he was a stone-cold killer.

At the end of the street, there was a big iron gate. An intricate script G was centered on either side. I had just been wondering how I’d find his house, how I’d have to pull up to some woman walking a poodle, roll down my window so she could see my unshaved face, ask her where the Gray house was. Like that would go over well.

But no, here it was. I was sure of it.

The gate was wide open.

I drove through. The driveway led up to a big white Mediterranean house. Columns, statues, the works. There was a yard big enough for a football game, with immaculately cut grass. A huge white tent was set up, like they were going to have a wedding here. Or just had one. Through the poles of the tent I could see down to the shoreline. A double-decker yacht sat next to the dock.

I couldn’t see anybody anywhere.

I parked the truck near the tent and got out. This time I knew enough to put the gun in my waistband right away, save me from having to come back for it. They were actually having summer weather down here, so it was too warm for my jacket. But I left it on to cover the butt of the gun.

So now what? Do I just walk around to the back of the house?

Yes, Alex. That’s exactly what you do. Walk right around the house like you belong here.

There were tables set up under the tent. Some of them had vases with cut flowers in them. From the looks of the flowers, the event had already happened, maybe a couple of days ago. I grabbed the biggest bouquet I could find, took out a few of the wilted flowers, and carried it toward the house.

I saw a pathway leading around to the back, flat circles of stone set in the grass. As I turned the corner, I saw the gate to the pool, between a statue of a man drawing a bow and arrow and a statue of a woman holding a big urn. The statues were blindingly white, like everything else around the place. It said something about the man who lived there, but I wasn’t sure what. At this point, I didn’t care.

I opened the gate and walked through. The area around the pool was all white marble. There were more white statues. White pool furniture. A high white fence all around the place. I was wondering when I’d see something that wasn’t white when somebody hit me hard in the back of the neck.

I went down on the marble. The vase came out of my hands, shattering when it hit the floor. There were shards of glass everywhere, water, flowers. I was lying in the middle of it. Before I could get up, I felt somebody’s foot on my back. I was pushed down hard on the marble. I could feel the glass cutting into my chest. Then something exactly like the barrel of a gun pressed against my back.

“Don’t move,” a voice said. I didn’t. He gave me a quick one-handed pat-down, taking the gun from my waistband.

“Up,” he said.

I stood up slowly, brushing off the glass, pulling a few shards out of my jacket and pants.

“This way.”

He was a big man, bigger than Brucie. He probably had the biggest hands I’d ever seen on anyone in my life, so big the automatic in his right hand looked like a water pistol. This had to be the man Cap had mentioned, the man who could take me apart without breaking a sweat. He was wearing a white track suit.

I walked ahead of him, as he gestured to the door leading into the house. He stopped me with one huge hand, opened the door, and ushered me inside. After all the white, this room was done up in dark wood. It was like stepping out of the sunlight into a cave.

There was a plasma screen television on one wall. Mr. Gray sat in one of several leather chairs, watching a soccer game. An immense field of green. For some reason that surprised me. From the one time I had seen the man, he didn’t seem like someone who would watch television, or do anything a normal human being would do.

“Sit down,” he said to me. He glanced at me for all of one second, then turned his attention back to the game.

I sat down in one of the leather chairs. The man in the white track suit stood behind me. Nobody said anything for a while. Gray kept watching the game. I never cared much about soccer, and I was in no mood to pay attention to it today. The players on one team were passing the ball back and forth, looking for an opportunity to shoot. That much I could tell. This was the last result I could have predicted for myself that day, sitting in Gray’s house while he watched soccer.

Somebody finally took a shot. It went a good thirty feet over the goal and into the crowd.

“When it doesn’t bend,” Gray said, “you just look foolish.” He hit the pause button on the television, freezing the goalie in the middle of his goal kick. Then he turned to face me. He was wearing a gray golf shirt. Gray pants.

He studied me for a few seconds. “You were at the summerhouse. You were the man with the gun.”

I didn’t answer him.

“Your name again?”

“Alex McKnight.”

“Apparently, Bruce couldn’t close the deal with you,” he said, shaking his head. “Yet another disappointment. What a team those two make.”

“I have another name for you.”

“Another name?”

“Natalie Reynaud.”

“Who would that be?”

“That’s the woman who was killed in my cabin last night.”

“I don’t understand what that has to do with me.”

“I have good reason to think you were responsible.”

“Why would you think I had something to do with that?”

“You wanted me dead,” I said. “If you found out I was still alive…”

“You think that would concern me? I didn’t want you dead per se, Mr. McKnight. I just wanted you gone. There was nothing personal involved.”

“You’re a killer. You’re a criminal who gets rid of people without a second thought.”

Gray looked up at the man standing behind me. I was expecting to feel his hands around my neck, or the gun pressed to the back of my head. It didn’t happen.

“A man can be many things,” Gray said. “A soccer fan. A father…”

“A gangster. A drug lord.”

He gave me a little smile. Not a warm one. “Is that what you think I do? You think I sell crack to kids in Detroit?”

“You’re not out on the corner yourself, no.”

“I make my living in imports and exports, Mr. McKnight. Imports and exports. I’m a businessman.”

“Uh-huh. What kind of ‘import’ are your men up north working on?”

“They’re not my men anymore. I can assure you of that. But let me ask you, do you know the difference between an illegal drug and a prescribed medicine?”

I thought about it, what the right answer would be. “A doctor, for one thing.”

“Yes. A doctor tells you to take the prescribed medicine. He gives you permission to take it.”

“Meaning what?”

“Have you ever seen somebody die a slow, painful death?”

I didn’t have to go far for that one. The darkest year of my childhood, watching my mother die. “Yes,” I said. “I have.”

“Have you seen someone lose their very sanity because of the pain they’re in?”

“Let me guess. That’s where you come in. You sell pills to people who need them. I bet you don’t even make a profit.”

Gray looked up at the man behind me again. “What do you make of our Mr. McKnight?”

The man didn’t say anything. If he made some kind of gesture, like a shrug of his huge shoulders, I couldn’t see it.

“When we last met,” he said, “how come you didn’t tell me I owed you a great debt?”

“I wasn’t aware you did.”

“You saved my son’s life.”

“I helped get him off the boat. That’s all.”

“You’re being modest. Harold was knocked out cold. He would have drowned.”

“I did what I could at the time. I wasn’t the only one.”

“You’re not making this very easy,” he said. He leaned forward in his chair and put his hands together in front of him. “It’s generally not in my nature to be forgiving. Aside from which, it’s usually bad for business.”

“Did you send somebody to my cabin or not?”

“If I did?”

“Then I kill you,” I said. “Or I die trying.”

He tapped his fingertips together. “First of all, and please understand this…If I had indeed sent someone to your cabin, I would have sent him to kill you, not this woman you speak of, who I’m sure I’ve never even laid eyes on. And second, if I sent someone, you wouldn’t be here right now talking to me. You would be in the ground. Are we clear on those two points?”

“We’re clear.”

“This woman,” he said. “She was close to you?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “If Cap did this on his own…”

“He didn’t.”

“You’re sure about that.”

“I don’t believe he knew I was alive.”

“You think you’d know if he was lying.”

“I don’t think you can fake an immediate reaction like that. He was surprised that I was alive.”

“Okay, so you trust your gut on that one. I’m with you so far. But what did he say after that?”

“I don’t remember every word. The bottom line was that if you found out I was still alive, you’d send somebody else. And if that person found Natalie instead of me in my cabin…”

“You believed that?”

“I had no reason not to.”

“At some point, did he actually suggest that you come down here and kill me?”

“He didn’t have to,” I said. Although I was beginning to see the point. Shoot him in the head, he had told me. Don’t wait for him to say a word. Just shoot him in the head.

“Look at it from his point of view. What’s his biggest problem in the world right now?”

“That would probably be you.”

“I assure you, you can eliminate the word ‘probably.’”

“He told me which door to come in.”

“There you go. You wanted to believe it was me. So you did. Cap played you like a harp, Mr. McKnight.”

“Or else you’re the one playing me right now.”

“I think it’s time for you to use your gut again,” he said. “Now that you’re sitting here, who do you believe?”

I looked him in the eye. We both sat there for a long time. The television cast a an eerie green glow over everything in the room.

“If you did it,” I said, “then you wouldn’t be having this conversation with me. You’d just have your man here kill me and be done with it.”

“Actually, Mr. Stone doesn’t do that kind of housekeeping for me. But yes, aside from that, you’re exactly right. So what should we do now?”

“I don’t know.”

“My daughter got married two days ago. We had three hundred people here.”

If I was supposed to congratulate him, I missed the opportunity. I kept quiet.

“It was a beautiful day. Two days ago. You’re telling me that the very next day, yesterday…someone took this woman from you.”

“Yes.”

“You loved her.”

“Yes.”

“Enough to do this, to come here. The very day after she died.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. McKnight. That’s all I can say. I know it’s not much.”

It was a strange thing to hear from him, this man who would next have to decide if I’d get a bullet in the head.