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.
“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
