the way I would have expected. He was aggressive in his betting, and he hated to fold. He wanted to be in every single hand. When he wasn’t raising, he was fussing over the table itself, making sure we kept our drinks off the green felt and in the little coaster compartments. I had never known how much I hated fancy poker tables until that night.
Vargas also liked to talk. It was just a matter of time until he wandered back to his business. “When I got out of the Air Force,” he said, shuffling the cards, “I decided to take over the hardware business from my father. He had a little store down in Petoskey. Now you’re probably thinking, how does a little hardware store survive these days when you’ve got your Lowes’s and your Home Depots all over the place? The answer is, you have to see the train coming before it runs you over. Those big hardware places? The best thing that ever happened to me. You know why? They destroyed my competition. All of them. They all got run over by the train, and I jumped off the track. I moved to a different market. A better market. If you want to buy a sink nowadays, or a toilet, or a tub, or a dishwasher, or a refrigerator, or kitchen cabinets, where do you go?”
Nobody said anything. We just waited for him to finish and deal the damned cards.
“Where do you go? Hmm? Where do you go?”
“Lowes,” Jackie finally said.
“Home Depot,” Bennett said.
“Exactly,” Vargas said. “Now suppose you want a solid marble sink that’s made in Italy? Or a Viking gas range like the professional chefs use? Where do you go for that? Not Lowes. Not Home Depot. They don’t carry that stuff. There’s no volume in it for them. You’ve got to go to a specialty store.”
“Like yours,” Bennett said.
“Like mine.”
“Deal the cards,” Bennett said.
He started dealing, but that didn’t stop his spiel. “Me and Kenny, we make a great team. We go to somebody’s house, and we split the couple up. Divide and conquer, right? Kenny takes the wife into the kitchen, really fags it up with her, does the whole interior decorator thing.” Kenny didn’t even blink. He just sat there with a serene smile on his face, like a man who is paid very well to play along. “While he does his thing, I’m hanging out with the husband. I’m saying, ‘It’s all over now, chief. Your wife wants the best, and you’re gonna come through, or deal with the consequences. But don’t worry, I’ll give you a great deal.’ If I don’t get ’em when they build the house first thing, I’ll get ’em a couple of years later. As soon as that wife goes to have coffee with the neighbor and sees her kitchen, she’ll go to her husband and then he’ll come to me. I always get ’em in the end.”
“Queen bets,” Bennett said. “That’s you, Kenny.” He let that one hang for a few seconds before realizing what he had said. “I mean, you’ve got the queen, Kenny. Your bet.”
Kenny gave him a look that was nothing but cool, and then slid a buck into the pot. “The queen bets one dollar.”
“I’m doing this house over in Canada,” Vargas said. “On St. Joseph Island. You wouldn’t believe what I’m putting in that kitchen. The floor alone, these tiles from Mexico. Problem is, they got these guys at Customs. Big old dumb Canucks sitting on that bridge, they’re basically paying them to be in a bad mood all the time. See me bringing a refrigerator over, they take it personally. Like I’m taking jobs away from Canadians by bringing in an American refrigerator.”
“Duty on durable goods,” Bennett said. “Is that what they call it?”
“That’s what they call it,” Vargas said. “They should call it bend over and grab your ankles.”
“I thought it ain’t so bad anymore. You know, with this NAFTA thing.”
“They don’t worry so much about the small stuff now,” Vargas said. “Up to a hundred dollars, something like that. But the big ticket items, hell, they still stick it to ya.”
“The customer’s gotta pay for this, right?”
“Yeah, I think it’s safe to say that, Bennett. It sure isn’t me.”
“Who are these people?” I said. “Who’s got this kind of money to spend on their kitchens?” I shouldn’t have asked. I should have just shut up and played cards and drank the man’s whiskey. That’s what I should have done.
“There are a lot of people building houses in Canada,” he said. “You’d be surprised. Of course, that’s not where my bread and butter is…”
“Where would that be?” I said.
“Bay Harbor,” he said.
The words went right down my spine. Bay Harbor. He might as well have said Sodom and Gomorrah.
“I made most of my nut right there,” he said. “In Bay Harbor. Of course, that place is gonna be full one of these days.” He looked at the cards he was holding close to his chest. He called Kenny’s dollar and raised ten more. “Ain’t that right, Kenny?”
Kenny folded his hand. “Too rich for me.”
“The big question is, who’s gonna build the next Bay Harbor?” Vargas said. “And where’s it gonna be?”
Chapter Three
If you drive south, over the Mackinac Bridge, and then down M-31 along the Lake Michigan coast, the first town you’ll hit is Petoskey. It used to be a sleepy little fishing village, now it’s yuppie heaven. Keep going toward Charlevoix, another sleepy little fishing village turned yuppie heaven-about halfway there you’ll hit Bay Harbor. Or rather, Bay Harbor will hit you. First thing you’ll see is the Bay Harbor Yacht Club. There’s a white building next to the road, all done up like a lighthouse. A guard sits at the gate, ready to check you over to make sure you’re on his list. Further down there’s the Bay Harbor Golf Club. Another white building right next to the road, another guard sitting at the gate. Across the street, on a hill that’s as high as any hill in this part of Michigan, sits the Bay Harbor Equestrian Center. Anywhere else in the state, it’s a horse farm. Here it’s the Equestrian Center. Needless to say, there’s another gate with another guard.
The houses are all on the lake side of the road, of course. You have to go through yet another gatehouse to get to them. There are condominiums, too, and a big hotel. There’s even a little Main Street where you can try on some diamonds, maybe buy a painting, and then have a cappuccino. If you don’t have a lot of money to spend, don’t even bother slowing down. Just take a quick look at Bay Harbor, friend-be impressed, be envious, be sorry that you can’t live here yourself. And then keep driving.
“The thing is,” Vargas said, “the market has to level off eventually. You can only build so many top-of-the- line houses in one place. That’s why I know there’s gonna be another big boom somewhere else. There has to be. With Bay Harbor, I got a little lucky, because with the store in Petoskey it all happened right in my backyard. This time, I’ve got to be ahead of the curve, you know what I mean? It’s all a guessing game. Which is what got me thinking…”
Vargas paused to roll the single malt around in his glass. If he was hoping for a spellbound audience, he wasn’t getting it. Jackie called Vargas’s raise, and then Bennett raised him ten more. Vargas slid his chips in without even looking at them.
“I’m thinking, why try to guess where the next boom is going to be, when I can help make it happen myself? Branch out of the custom kitchen business, you know, actually get in on the building itself, from the beginning, once we find the right place. That’s one of the reasons I built this house here.”
That one hit me like an ice pick. Jackie, Bennett, Gill, they didn’t even flinch. They must have heard this one before. Kenny just had a little smile on his face. He’d heard it before, too, and probably liked the sound of it.
“Of course, it’s not all my own money,” he said. “I don’t have that kind of capital yet. I’m just the point man, you realize. We have investors in place, who prefer to stay in the background…”
“You’re talking about shady money?” Bennett said. “You’re talking about real kingpins here?”
“I can’t discuss that,” Vargas said.
“You already are,” Bennett said. “You’re discussing it. You’d better be careful, you’re gonna end up sleeping with the fishes.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Vargas said. “I’m a big boy.”
I had to wonder. For every man who was really connected, there had to be another twenty who liked to
