“It sounds like she’s making her own bed, Vinnie. She sees an opportunity and she’s taking it.”
He took his foot off the gas. He pulled over to the side of the road, stopping slowly. A big difference between him and me right there: if it was me driving, I would have slammed on the brakes and bounced his head off the dashboard.
“I can turn around and take you back to your truck,” he said, “and I can go talk to her alone. Or you can come with me. Your call.”
“Does this woman know what you’re trying to do for her?”
“I guess she’ll find out.”
“She’s lucky,” I said. “I’ll tell her that myself.”
The house was on Seymour Street. From the dull streaks on the aluminum siding to the peeling paint on the wood trim, it was a testament to what Northern Michigan weather will do to your house if you don’t take care of it. Vinnie knocked on the front door. Nobody answered.
“Eddie’s truck’s here,” he said. It was there in the driveway, and it made mine look like it just came off the showroom floor.
Vinnie knocked again. From deep inside the house we heard somebody yelling.
“Sounds like he said, ‘Come in,’ doesn’t it?”
“Sure, why not?”
He opened the door and stepped in. As I followed him, I picked up the smell of cigarettes and beer, as well as something that had burned in the oven. There wasn’t much to the living room. An old couch, a coffee table that should have been taken apart and put in the wood stove, two folding chairs. The television was on, but nobody was there to watch it.
“Hello?” Vinnie said.
“Who’s there?” It was a man’s voice, from the kitchen.
Vinnie went around the corner without answering. The man was sitting at the kitchen table, an open beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other. A cloud of smoke hung just below the ceiling.
“What are you doing here?” he said. He was wearing an old blue bathrobe, his bare legs just visible below the table. I didn’t know if he was white, or Indian, or some of both. He looked thirty years old going on fifty.
“I’m looking for Caroline,” Vinnie said. It was obvious he knew this man, but I didn’t get the feeling he was going to introduce me to him.
“She’s at work.”
“No, she’s not. This is her night off, remember?”
“I guess you’d know better than I would.” The man stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray.
“You don’t know where she is?”
“If she ain’t at work, and she’s not with you…”
“Why would she be with me, Eddie?”
He didn’t answer. Instead he took a long pull off the beer. “You want one?”
“You know I don’t drink.”
“Pardon me. It slipped my mind.”
Vinnie stood there. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t move a muscle. The man sat at the table and wouldn’t look him in the eye.
“Eddie,” Vinnie finally said, “are you working?”
“In this weather?”
“There are other jobs.”
“Get out.”
“Are you even looking for something else?”
“I said get out.”
Vinnie kept looking at him. I knew all about Vinnie’s long fuse. I figured it was already lit, since maybe late last night when he threw those guys out of the casino. I was wondering how much longer it would burn. Finally, he turned away and went to the door. I followed him outside.
When we were back in his truck, he started it and put it in gear.
“I take it you and Eddie have a history,” I said.
“Not really.”
“What about you and Caroline? This whole thing is starting to make a little more sense now.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“You got her the job at Bay Mills, didn’t you?”
“She’s a good friend of mine, Alex. She always will be. I was just trying to help her out.”
“So what now?”
“I want to check one place.” He was heading to the water, to the locks and the heart of town.
“You think you know where she is?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure. There was a time you could always find her at the Palace.”
There are at least a dozen bars in Sault Ste. Marie. There are eight of them on Portage Avenue alone. The Palace is just a couple of doors down from the Ojibway Hotel. Vinnie parked the car on the street.
Right behind a black Cadillac Escalade.
It wasn’t a surprise. Not at all. I already had a gut feeling we’d be running into these guys again. If we had jumped in an airplane and flown to Anchorage, they would have been parked outside the first bar we walked into.
“Before we go in,” I said, “just tell me one thing.”
“What is it?”
“Who are these guys? I’ve never seen them before. Have you?”
“No.”
“So what are they doing here? You don’t have to come all the way up to the U.P. just to buy some pills.”
“I don’t know why they’re here, Alex. I don’t care.”
We got out of the truck. Behind the bar, a great freighter was moving slowly through the locks. I didn’t have time to look twice at it, because Vinnie was already opening the door. When we were inside the place, it didn’t take long to find them. There was a table for six in the back corner, between the jukebox and the pool table. There were three men at the table-the two we already knew so well, and now a third, his head wrapped up in so many bandages it looked like he was wearing a white turban. It had to be the driver of the boat. Alive and well, or alive at least. And out of the hospital.
There were three women at the table. They all looked enough alike they could have been sisters. But only one of them even noticed us as we stood there. She started to smile, probably reflex. Then all the color drained out of her face.
“Vinnie,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
Vinnie said two words to her. Slowly.
“Leave. Now.”
She took the two other women with her. Most of the other drinkers left as well. That was a very good idea, it turned out. Because Vinnie’s long fuse had just burned to its end.
Chapter Six
I can make a long list of all the bad things that have happened in my life. My mother dying when I was a kid, a partner dead, a bullet next to my heart, a failed marriage. Those would be the items on the top of the list. Somewhere below those would be never getting an at-bat in the major leagues, never telling my father I loved him, and, oh yeah, getting talked into becoming a private investigator. I’m not sure exactly where spending a night in jail would rank, but it would probably make the top twenty.
There are three holding cells in the basement of the City-County Building. When Vinnie and I were brought
