“Alex,” Bennett said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I see you know Bennett,” Vargas said. “This here is Kenny, one of my business associates. I guess you could say he’s my right hand man.” Kenny had long straight hair tied back in a ponytail. I shook his hand. Kenny looked like he was pushing forty, which meant that he had a tough choice coming soon. Unless you’re a hairdresser, you can’t have a ponytail and call yourself Kenny when you’re forty. Not in Michigan, anyway.
“We’re still waiting on Gill,” Vargas said. “You know how it is. Indians don’t operate on white man’s time.”
“Take it easy, Win,” Bennett said, giving me a quick wink. “You don’t want him to scalp you, do you?”
“Nothing here to scalp, my friend.” Vargas ran his hand over his bald head and laughed. The night was already looking longer. “Alex, I’ll show you the house,” Vargas said. “While we’re waiting.”
“Good idea,” Jackie said as he sat down next to Bennett. “Go take the tour.”
Vargas spent the next twenty minutes showing me around his house. We started in the kitchen. It had the professional-quality gas range, the island in the middle with the second sink. The butler’s pantry. “This is what I specialize in,” he said. “Top of the line appliances. Viking ranges, custom cabinets, you name it. Your wife wants a dream kitchen, I’m your man. Are you married?”
“No,” I said.
“You were married. Once?”
“Yeah,” I said. “A long time ago.”
“I got married again a few years ago,” he said, “after being on my own for a long, long time. Nothing like getting it right the second time around.” He ran his hand along the countertop. “It’s too bad you won’t get a chance to meet her tonight. Next time, huh?”
“Sure.”
From the kitchen we went out onto the back deck. The edge of the water was just below us, not thirty feet away. There was a freighter heading south down the river, moving slowly, away from the locks.
“Where’s that from?” he said. “What’s that flag? That’s Brazil, isn’t it?”
There was a light on its flagpole. You could just make out the blue globe on the yellow diamond on the field of green. “I think so,” I said.
“Those boys are a long way from home.” He waved to the ship. We could see a couple of crew members standing on deck, but they didn’t wave back.
“I’ve got a little dock down there,” he said. “Not big enough for my boat, but I do have a couple of jet skis. You ever been on a jet ski?”
“Never been,” I said. “I imagine I’d like it about as much as a snowmobile.”
“Yeah, I’ve got one of those, too. I don’t know how much time I’ll be spending up here in the winter. We’ve got a place in Boca. But you never know.”
We went back inside. The light hurt my eyes, made me want to go back out to the darkness. “I’ll show you upstairs, Alex. There’s one room you’ve really got to see.”
I followed him up the staircase. The house had a beautiful staircase, I had to say that much. The treads themselves were all hardwood, with a matching rail and thin wooden posts. My old man the self-taught carpenter would have been impressed as hell.
“These are guest rooms down here,” he said, “and this is the master suite.” There was a king-size bed, all made up in white with lavender trim. “It probably goes without saying, but my wife did the decorating. Here’s the bathroom in here. What do you think?”
I looked in and saw a raised whirlpool tub, a separate shower, two vanity mirrors, two sinks. The fixtures gleamed like pirate treasure. “This is something else,” I said. I had already been thinking to myself that the bedroom was bigger than my cabin. Now I was wondering if the bathroom was bigger, too.
“We carry these tubs now,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe how expensive they are. Go ahead, take a guess.”
“I wouldn’t even know,” I said.
“Ah, never mind,” he said. “That’s tacky. Here, I want to show you the best room of all now.”
He led me to the end of the hall and opened the door. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust-this was the only room in the house that wasn’t as bright as an operating room. He turned up a dimmer switch so I could see where I was going. There were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on two walls, some nautical maps on another wall. By the window there was a telescope on a tripod. “I call this my ‘lake room,’” he said. “Here, come look.”
He turned the dimmer back down as I looked through the telescope. It was pointed to the northwest. As I moved it, I could make out the Soo Locks and the International Bridge. During the day I was sure you’d be able to see into the lake itself.
“God, I love this lake,” he said. “Don’t you, Alex?”
I looked at him. With the light still down, I couldn’t make out his face, but his bald head seemed to glow.
“What’s in here?” I said. There were glass cases running along the wall, beneath the maps.
He turned the light back up. “Some artifacts,” he said. “I’m a collector.”
There were some shipwreck artifacts in one glass case-a small brass bell, a metal comb, a mug made of pewter. In another case were what seemed to be Indian artifacts-an arrowhead, a wooden paddle that had practically disintegrated, a small metal bowl that was probably some sort of smudge pot. Everything had that particular reddish gray tint around the edges, the kind of wear you see when something’s been left in fresh water for a very long time.
“How’d you get all this stuff?” I said. “I thought the salvage laws were pretty strict.”
“On the Michigan side they are. Not so much on the Canadian side. What can I say, divers pick things up, sell them to people, who sell them to other people. If I end up buying something, it comes right up here to this room and stays here. My wife thinks it’s kinda hinky, but I tell her, hey, when I die, every single one of these things goes to the museum. Either the Shipwreck Museum out on Whitefish Point, or the Indian museum at the community college.”
It still didn’t sound quite right to me, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. I just nodded my head at him and hoped the poker game would be starting soon. If he was going to start offering me expensive whiskey like Jackie said, it was about time.
When we finally made it back down to the poker table, Gill LaMarche was sitting in his spot, calmly counting out chips. “Look who showed up,” Vargas said. “You missed the tour.”
“Been there, done that,” he said. “Bought the T-shirt.” Gill was a member of the Sault tribe, and lived here in town, right next to the Kewadin Casino. Like most Ojibwa in Michigan, especially the Sault members who had less restrictive blood lines than the other tribes, you didn’t think “Indian” the first time you saw him. If you knew what to look for-a little fullness around the cheekbones, a slow and careful way about the eyes-you could just make it out.
“Let’s get everybody set up first,” Vargas said. Then came the trays of food from the kitchen, the drinks from the bar, the cigars. “What kind of whiskey do you drink?” he asked me. “I’ve got some Macallan twelve-year here…”
“Is that Jack Daniels I see over there?” I said.
“It is,” he said. “If that’s your preference.”
“That’ll do me fine. Save the single malt for somebody special.”
“Jackie tells me you were a catcher,” he said. “I should have known a catcher would take Jack Daniels over a Macallan. You can always spot a catcher.”
I gave Jackie a look. He gave me an innocent smile.
“I played some ball when I was in the college,” Vargas said. “And then in the Air Force, when I was stationed in Korea.”
“Let me guess, first base,” I said.
“First and a little third. How did you know?”
“You can always spot a first baseman,” I said.
He laughed at that, brought my drink over and sat down. “Are we gonna play some cards here or what?”
So we did. Jackie was on my left, then Bennett, Vargas, Kenny, and finally Gill on my right. Vargas played
