They. He said they were coming to get him. When Bruckman had told me that, I thought it was just something this guy would say because he was coming down off a high, with no more speed to take him back up. But maybe there was more to it. Maybe this guy knew where this stuff came from, and who was looking for it.
Gobi. His name is Gobi. Like the desert.
What the hell, I thought. I pulled into the parking lot. It looked like the Big Bear was having a busy league night. I went into the arena, stood against the glass and watched the game for a while. It was another “slow puck” league game, but this one seemed to have a real referee. Then I went back into the locker room. A dozen players were getting dressed for the next game. They were making a racket, so I had to shout. “Hey! Anybody here know a guy named Gobi?” The shouting made my ribs hurt.
The players stopped what they were doing and looked at me. There was one man who was sitting on the bench, lacing up his skates. “Don’t tell me Gobi did that to you,” he said.
“Did what?” I said.
“Destroyed your face. Gobi’s that little shit who plays with Bruckman, ain’t he?”
“He didn’t do this to me,” I said. If there’s one good thing about having bruises on your face and a bandage above your eye, it’s that you have no trouble passing for a hockey player. “I’m just looking for him.”
“I haven’t seen him since last week,” he said. “I think Bruckman’s team is out of the league.”
“Ain’t that a shame,” somebody else said.
“Do you know where he lives?” I said.
“Nah, no idea,” he said.
“Anybody else?” I said. Nobody did.
I went back out to the rink and sat in the stands, waiting for the game to end. When it did, the Zamboni came out and cleared the ice, then the teams I had just talked to came skating out. About ten minutes later, I figured more players would be in the locker room, suiting up for the next game. I was right. There were a dozen new faces in the room when I walked in.
“Anybody here know a player named Gobi?” I shouted again. I was already getting tired of this game. I couldn’t imagine how Leon had done this for hours on end.
“Who wants to know?” said one player.
“I do,” I said. “Why do you think I’m asking?”
“I might know him,” he said.
“Either you do or you don’t,” I said. “When you make up your mind, let me know. Anybody else know him?”
He stepped up to me. He was young, not more than twenty years old. There was a shine in his eyes like maybe he wasn’t always on the same planet as the rest of us. “I might know him,” he said, “if the price is right.”
“I just need to find Gobi,” I said. “It’s important. Can you help me or not?”
“For a hundred bucks I can.”
“What? Are you crazy?”
“There was a guy in here a few nights ago looking for somebody. He paid me a hundred bucks for the information.”.
“I’ll give you twenty,” I said.
“No way, man. The way I see it, this guy sort of set the market value at a hundred, you know what I mean?”
“Fifty bucks,” I said.
“He had hundred-dollar bills, man. He was flashing them around like they were nothing. It was my pleasure to help the man.”
“Thanks, Leon,” I said as I reached into my coat pocket. I took a hundred-dollar bill out of the envelope the renters had left me and handed it to him. “Where does he live?” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But Eddie does. Hey Eddie!”
A teammate came hopping over, one foot in a skate.
“Eddie’s gonna need a hundred, too, man. He’s the one actually knows where Gobi lives.”
“Then why am I paying you?” I said.
“Finder’s fee,” he said.
“Finder’s fee,” I said. “This is great. How about the two of you just share that hundred?”
“I guess you don’t want to find Gobi too bad,” he said.
I pulled out another hundred and gave it to Eddie. “All right, that’s it. Now where does he live?”
“Whoa, who’s this dude?” Eddie said, peering at the bill.
“That’s Benjamin Franklin,” the first player said. “Don’t you know your presidents?”
“Where does he live?” I said.
“He lives in a little cabin,” Eddie said. “Just south of town. He had a party one time, invited like fifty people. You couldn’t get more than twenty people in that place. We were all outside standing around in the cold.”
“Where was I?” the first player said. “I didn’t get invited.”
“You were there, man,” Eddie said. “You were just too stoned to remember. That was the night Mike pissed on you.”
“Give me the address,” I said.
“Mike pissed on me? I’m gonna kill him. I’m gonna fucking kill him.”
“The address,” I said.
“Shit, I wasn’t supposed to tell you that,” Eddie said.
“Eddie,” I said, trying very hard to control myself. “Will you please give me the address now?”
He gave me an address on Mackinac County Road.
“Thank you,” I said. “Have a nice game, boys.”
“Do you know what it’s like to wake up and have human urine all over you?”
I didn’t stick around to find out. I went back out to the truck, fired it up and took the business loop through the south end of town. The bank sign flashed the time, 9:28, and the temperature, an even zero. When I looked again in the rearview mirror it had gone down to one below.
I got off the loop near the state police barracks and went south down Mackinac Trail. I passed a small subdivision of houses and then it was just pine trees and the occasional driveway leading off into darkness. I watched the numbers on the mailboxes, counting them down until I found the one I was looking for. When I pulled into the driveway, I hit snow. There had to be at least two feet of it. I could see the driveway snaking through the trees, beyond the reach of my headlights. There were no tracks, no footprints. No sign of life.
I sat there and thought about it. The wind came and rocked the trees, sending down a fine white mist from the branches. He might use a snowmobile in the wintertime, I thought, instead of trying to keep this driveway clear. I knew of a few people who did the same thing in Paradise.
I backed up onto the road for a running start and then put the plow down. What the hell, I thought. I’ll do him a favor. I gunned it down the driveway and started pushing the snow off. It was heavy work on a narrow track. I had to be careful to keep the truck away from the trees. More than once I had to back my way up all the way to the road and take another run at it. A good fifteen minutes later, I broke through into the clearing and saw his house. It was dark.
I pushed the snow all the way up to the back of his car. I got out, leaving the truck running with the headlights on. As I walked past his car I saw that it was buried in snow so deep you could barely tell what color it was. I made my way through the snow to his cabin and knocked on the front door. As I stood there waiting for an answer, I gave the cabin a close look. Even in this light I could see that it was a cheap job. It would have made my old man sick to his stomach to see all the chinking somebody had packed in between the logs to keep the wind out.
I knocked again. No answer.
I stepped back and looked around the place. There were two windows on either side of the door, but they were small and set high off the ground. I walked all the way around the cabin, working hard to get through the snow. It was a simple rectangle, with two more high windows in the back and a big skylight.
“Now what?” I said to myself. “How bad do you want to know what’s inside this place?” I knew the answer
