Winter of the Wolf Moon (21 page)

“I didn’t stop to ask him.”

“And what about these two guys, Pearl and Roman? What do they look like? Do they wear hunting caps?”

“I’ve never seen them,” he said. “I’ve only heard of them.”

“There’s been a couple guys following me around,” I said. “You think that’s them?”

“From what I hear, they’d probably just kill you instead of following you around, but who the fuck knows?”

“How would they know about me in the first place?” I said.

He rubbed his eyes. His head was probably hurting from all the thinking I was making him do. “The message,” he said. “When they trashed my place, they might have played the machine. If they did, you got a big problem.”

“Your concern is touching,” I said. I put the gun back in my coat pocket.

Bruckman sat there looking at me.

“Here’s your chance,” I said. “No gun.”

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t move.

“You’re pretty tough when you’ve got four other
guys helping you beat up somebody,” I said. “Let’s see what you can do all by yourself.”

He looked down at the floor.

“You’re just a cheap little punk,” I said. “You couldn’t make it as a hockey player, so for the rest of your life you’re gonna take it out on everybody else. Unless they stand up to you.”

“Whatever you say, old man.”

I stood there in front of him for a long moment, waiting for him to do something.

And then from the other side of the bathroom door came the distinctive sound of all hell breaking loose. Bruckman lunged at me, but he lost a good half a second pulling himself up off the toilet seat. I got my right knee up just in time. I felt a stab of pain in my ribs, but I was sure Bruckman got the worst of it. He went down hard, holding his nose with both hands.

When I opened the door, I saw a good old-fashioned bar brawl going on. “Alex, over here!” It was Leon, over by the door. Two of Bruckman’s goons were having it out with two of the men from the bar. I didn’t see the third goon. The rest of the men were all standing in the corners, trying to look like they were ready to fight without actually having to do anything. I made my way across the room, ducking a cue stick and a barstool. When I reached Leon, he opened the door just in time for the third goon to come rushing in at me along with a blast of cold air. He took a big swing at me and missed, so I kicked his leg out at the knee, just like Leon had coached me. The guy gave out a high-pitched scream on the way down to the floor.

“Let’s get out of here!” Leon said.

“I’m right behind you,” I said. We ran out through the snow and jumped into our vehicles. He spun his way out of the lot and I followed, fighting to see my way through the snow his tires were kicking up.

We made our way back west on Trunk Road, back toward the Soo Canada city limits. I kept looking behind me, waiting to see headlights. Leon slowed down when we were in the city again. I settled in behind him and tried to make my own body do the same. My heart was still racing, the adrenaline still pumping through my blood. I could feel the pain in my side now, and in my knee where I had hit Bruckman. I’m gonna pay for all this tomorrow, I thought. I’ll be lucky if I can get out of bed.

Leon pulled into a restaurant parking lot on Wellington Street. I parked next to him, got out of the truck, went to his passenger side and opened the door. “You all right?” I said.

“Yeah, I just had to catch my breath a minute.”

I got in his car and closed the door.

“I guess we need to compose ourselves before we go back across the border,” he said.

“Good idea.” I closed my eyes and took a few long breaths. “God, we must be insane.”

“I thought that was kinda fun,” he said.

I looked at him. He was actually smiling. “How the hell did you get those guys to do that?” I said.

“The guys at the bar? That was easy.”

“Oh, don’t tell me.”

“It’s those Franklins, Alex. They can do miracles.”

“You paid those guys a hundred bucks apiece to pretend to be carrying guns?”

“Benjamin J. Franklin,” he said. “A private eye’s best friend.”

“Oh for God’s sake. So that’s like what, seven hundred dollars? And how much did you spend the other night at the hockey rink? Like four hundred? Five hundred?”

“Don’t send Ulysses Grant to do a job that only Benjamin Franklin can do.”

“All right, already. I get the point. I owe you twelve hundred dollars.”

“We’ll split the cost, Alex. We’re partners.”

“I’ll give you the money tomorrow,” I said. “And you’ll take all of it.”

He shook his head. “Alex …”

“So what happened, anyway? Your, what did you call it? The illusion of overwhelming force? It all fell apart.”

“Some local clown walked in the door, wanted to know what the hell was going on. It sort of broke the spell.”

“We should both be dead right now.”

“What happened in the bathroom? Did you get the information you wanted?”

I told him everything Bruckman had told me. About Dorothy, the drugs in the bag, the men named Pearl and Roman and Molinov.

“So those two guys who’ve been following you,” he said. “That’s gotta be them.”

“I suppose it is,” I said. They didn’t cross the border. Maybe they didn’t want to risk going through customs.

“Yeah, if they’re professional shooters …”

“Shooters,” I said. “This is getting better every minute.”

“So what are we gonna do about them?”

I thought about it for a minute. “I promised Bill I’d give him until tomorrow,” I said. “Then I was going to go pay them a visit.”

“Maybe we should go over there right now,” he said. “Pay them a visit while we still have the kick-ass juices flowing.”

“The kick-ass juices. You are too much, Leon.”

“Admit it, Alex. You’re glad I’m on your side.”

I laughed. How I could laugh after what I had just been through, I don’t know. “What kind of car is this, anyway?” I said.

“A Plymouth Horizon,” he said. “It’s a piece of crap, I know.”

“How do you drive in the snow in this thing?”

“I’ve got good tires and I know how to drive in the snow,” he said. “Now are we gonna go see those guys or not?”

“Yeah, we’d better,” I said. “Tomorrow I’m not going to be able to move.”

“You sure you’re up for this?”

“Quarterbacks play with broken ribs all the time,” I said. “They just put some pads on and hope they don’t get hit too hard.”

“Yeah, quarterbacks,” he said.
“Young
quarterbacks. No offense, Alex …”

“Let’s go,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the motel.”

I got back in my truck and followed him over the bridge. The clock on my dashboard read 2:40. There was only one customs lane open at this time of night. I watched Leon stop at the window to answer all of
the usual questions. Then it was my turn.

When I pulled up, the man looked at me, then down at the truck, then back at me again. I didn’t recognize him. “Good evening, sir,” he finally said.

“Good evening,” I said. I waited for the questions.

They never came.

“I’m gonna ask you to pull over into the holding area, sir,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Right over there, sir. Just pull in right there.”

The rest of it was like something from a bad dream. It played itself out in slow motion, under a bank of naked fluorescent bulbs that gave the whole scene a surreal glow.

The customs agents looking through my truck. A small bag pulled from under the front seat. White powder in the bag, held up for all to see. My hands against the wall, my legs spread. The gun taken from my coat pocket.

The bite of steel around my left wrist, then my right.

Then a voice from behind me. “You have the right to remain silent …”

It was the same cell. Saturday afternoon I visited Vinnie in this cell. This was, what, Friday morning? Six days. But now it was me on the wrong side of the bars.

There weren’t as many men in the cells this time. Two in the first, one in the second, two in the third. I had the fourth all to myself. The same fluorescent bulbs hummed and flickered above us.

It was after three in the morning. Whatever strength I had had that day was long gone. I had used it all up dragging myself out of bed, making myself go out into the night, bitterly cold and dark beyond hope. I had ridden a wave of adrenaline and anger all the way across the river to where Leon had found Bruckman. Now I was sitting on a hard wooden bench in the fourth downstairs holding cell in the Chippewa County Jail. I leaned back against the cement wall, feeling the ache in my ribs and in my head. There was no way to get comfortable. I just sat there listening to the lights humming and trying not to throw up.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, the door opened and Chief Maven walked in.

He came down the line of holding cells, casting a quick eye in every cell until he came to mine. He
stood there looking at me through the bars. “Evening, McKnight,” he finally said.

“Chief,” I said.

“You’ve been read your rights?”

“Yes.”

“That’s good,” he said. “That’s good.” He pulled a chair over from the far wall. It might have been the same chair I sat in myself when I came here to see Vinnie. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a silver lighter. “Cigarette?”

“No, thanks,” I said.

He lit the cigarette in his mouth, snapped the lighter shut and blew a thin stream of smoke through the bars. “It’s starting to snow again,” he said.

I looked down at the floor.

“Just thought you might want to know,” he said.

I didn’t look at him. “Thanks for the weather report,” I said.

“If I ask you a question,” he said, “you know you don’t have to answer it.”

I didn’t say anything. Maven’s smoke hung in the air.

“I was in bed, you know that? When they called me and told me you got stopped on the bridge, I got up and got dressed and came all the way down here in the cold to ask you one question. Are you ready for it?”

I kept looking at the floor.

“Here’s my question, McKnight. Do you believe in reincarnation?”

I finally looked up at him.

“Like if you do something bad in a past life,” he said. “You might pay for it in this life? Or on the
other hand, if you do something good in a past life … You know what I mean?”

I kept looking at him. I didn’t say a word.

“You may not have thought about it too much,” he said. “I admit, I never thought about it either.” He took a long drag on his cigarette. “Until tonight.”

He blew the smoke out. The lights kept humming.

“You see,” he said, “I think I’ve led a pretty good life. Helped out some people along the way. I’ve been a good father and a good husband. I’m sure I have some points stored up. But damn it, McKnight, to be sitting here looking at you in this cell. It’s just too much, I swear.”

He took another drag from his cigarette and squinted at me through the smoke.

“What do you think, McKnight? I’m thinking maybe in my last life, I saved a schoolbus full of children from going over a cliff. Something like that.”

I kept looking at him.

“Maybe in the war,” he said. “Maybe I saved a whole town from the Germans. It’s gotta be something big like that, I think. This is just too good.”

I didn’t even blink.

“My cup runneth over, McKnight. I can barely contain myself.”

“Are you done?” I said.

“Seriously,” he said. “I gotta ask you a real question. Because I thought I had you pegged. You were a failure as a baseball player. You were a failure as a cop. You’re a broken-down, lonely, miserable man. So you compensate for that by acting like a bigshot and shooting your mouth off at everybody. That much I got. But this business with the drugs. I don’t get
that. I mean, I knew you weren’t even half as smart as you think you are. But I never dreamed that you were
this fucking stupid
.”

“The drugs are not mine,” I said.

“Of course not,” he said. “Neither is the gun.”

“The gun is mine,” I said.

“The gun you admit to,” he said. “Of course you don’t have a hell of a lot of choice there. It’s got a registration number on it. The drugs, on the other hand …”

“Are not mine.”

“Right. We covered that.”

“What will the charge be?” I said. “And when do I get out of here?”

The chair scraped against the floor as he leaned back in it. “What do you think the charge will be?” he said. “The only question is whether it’s a felony. They’re measuring it right now, I’m sure. Although to tell the truth, it didn’t look like there was a full gram in that bag. Maybe I didn’t save a whole town after all, eh? Maybe it was just three people and a dog.”