wake up together. They scare away bad guys with shotguns together. God damn.
What am I even thinking here? That me and Natalie will be like that someday? It’s almost impossible to imagine.
That’s what was going through my head as I drove back to Paradise. I’d stop in at the Glasgow, where I belonged. Me and Jackie, the two lonely bachelors.
That’s when my cell phone rang.
I fumbled around for it, tried to answer it, dropped it, picked it up again, finally got the damned thing on and next to my ear. I didn’t even check the caller ID.
“Hello?”
“Alex? It’s Vinnie.”
“What happened?” I said. In one instant I had visions of him in jail, of me trying to find a bail bondsman again. The last time around, it had been Leon, but he didn’t do that anymore.
“Where are you?” he said. “Can you come to the Soo?”
“I’m just leaving. I was going back to Paradise.”
“Well, turn around. I’ve got somebody here I want you to meet.”
“Who is it? What are you talking about?”
“Just meet us at the Kewadin. I think you should hear what this woman has to say.”
Chapter Five
When the Bay Mills Indian Community opened up the King’s Club in 1984, the first Indian-owned casino in all of North America, it was a complete bust. The casino closed within two months. They regrouped and tried again, and now there are twenty Indian-owned casinos in Michigan alone, and for that matter hundreds more around the country.
The Bay Mills tribe parlayed the success of the King’s Club into the Bay Mills Casino and Resort, complete with a hotel, theater, spa, golf course, the works. Not long after that, the Sault tribe, a newly formed Ojibwa community down the road, announced plans to build their own casino. That’s how the Kewadin came to be. It’s a lot bigger than the Bay Mills casino. It has a lot more lights out front, and it’s as close to a real Vegas-style facility as you’re ever going to see around here. It’s also the source of an unofficial rivalry between the two tribes.
Even the name is a problem. “Kewadin” is the Ojibwa word for “north”-although in their language, it’s more than just a point on the compass. It’s everything you associate with the north. The winter, the cold, the very spirit of northerliness. I heard Vinnie’s cousin Buck complaining about this once. When you give something a real Ojibwa name, it’s like you’re calling forth the power behind that name. To him, and to a lot of other Bay Mills members, giving a casino a real Ojibwa name was almost unthinkable.
I had no idea why Vinnie would even be there, let alone why he’d want me to meet him there. But that’s where I was headed.
The rain had stopped. I could see the glow of the place a long time before I finally got there. It was down on the southern end of the Soo, with a lot of trees and a few smaller buildings surrounding it. The casino itself had a tall roofline shaped into several triangles that looked like tepees. The design always struck me as a little self- mocking, but what the hell. If it didn’t bother them, who was I to complain?
Normally, the place would be packed on a summer night, but the parking lot wasn’t even half full. I’d seen more cars here at midnight, in the middle of February. I pulled in not far from the front door, killed the engine, and got out. I had no idea where I was supposed to meet Vinnie and the mystery woman, so I just walked in.
There were two separate gaming rooms on either side of the center hallway. The slot machines were ringing with those hollow notes that don’t sound like anything else in the world, followed by the occasional crashing of coins against a metal tray. I poked my head into the original room, didn’t see Vinnie anywhere. I crossed the hall and went into the newer Paradise Room. More of the same, and no Vinnie.
I was tempted to go sit at the bar and wait for him, but the bar there in the Paradise Room is as long as a runway, with birds and palm trees and whatever the hell else all lit up in neon, and of course it’s surrounded by slot machines. Everything Jackie’s bar isn’t. So instead I walked back out into the hallway and through to the hotel. It’s a long walk, but when I finally got there, I saw Vinnie sitting in the lobby. A woman was sitting across from him, with her hands folded in her lap. She was in her thirties maybe, with dark hair, dark eyes, the cheekbones…It was obvious she was a tribal member.
“Alex,” he said. “How far out of town were you?”
“Sorry, I was looking for you. It’s a big building.”
“This is Theresa LaFleur.”
She was slow getting up, and even as she shook my hand I got the feeling she was less than thrilled to meet me. Or maybe I was just imagining it.
“Why did you want me to come, Vinnie? What’s going on?”
“We need to talk somewhere,” he said. “But not here. Terry, how about the restaurant? Would that work?”
“Yes, fine,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Vinnie led us to the hotel restaurant. The walls were all covered in logs and there was a huge bear head over the fireplace. The hostess tried to seat us up front, but Vinnie asked for a booth as far away from the door as possible. I was starting to wonder just what the hell was going on, and why he was making us all act like spies.
Vinnie sat next to Theresa. I sat across from them. We waited until the drinks were ordered. Then I finally got the story.
“Terry has something to tell you,” Vinnie said. “So that you’ll understand what’s going on.”
“Okay.”
“Mr. McKnight,” she said, “before I start, I want you to understand something. We are not specifically talking about anybody. This is all hypothetical.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Terry works at the clinic across the street,” Vinnie said. “It doesn’t matter what she does there. She just has something to say to us about something that might theoretically be happening there. But the medical information laws are very strict on this sort of thing.”
“Okay,” I said. “I get it. We’re not talking about anybody in particular. Go ahead.”
“All right, let’s just use you as an example, if you don’t mind. Let’s say that you’re a member of the Sault tribe. You live here in town, and you come to the clinic for your medical care. One day, you come in and you say, ‘Doctor, I really messed up my back. I was lifting something and I felt the muscles tighten up. I’m in total agony now.’ The doctor might take an X-ray, but maybe he doesn’t see any problem there. No slipped disk or anything. But still, you can pull those muscles pretty easily, and if you do it bad enough, it can really be painful. Have you ever done that?”
“Not that bad,” I said. “But enough I can imagine if I did.”
“Did you take painkillers for it?”
“Just aspirin.”
“Okay, well let’s say you really hurt those muscles. You can’t even move. So the doctor gives you something stronger. Tylenol 3…maybe even Vicodin…Are you with me so far?”
“I think so.” I looked at Vinnie. He said nothing.
“Are you aware that tribal members get their prescriptions for free, Mr. McKnight?”
“I didn’t know that, no.”
“Well, they do. So even though your back is messed up and you can’t even stand up straight, at least you’re getting some pretty strong drugs without having to pay for them. If the drugs help you get better, then great. But if you develop a problem with them…”
“Yeah?”
“Then getting a lot of them for free is not necessarily going to be a good thing.”
“No, I imagine not.” I looked at Vinnie. I couldn’t believe he’d tell her about my own history, my own little
