He opened the door. As he was about to step out, he turned back to me.
“You know what was in that lockbox, right?”
“If I had to guess…Money.”
“To buy what?”
“More drugs. Big-time drugs.”
“From where?”
“Not the reservation…”
“Of course not. This thing with the woman…It can’t be more than a bottle or two at a time, right? I bet they’re just taking those pills themselves.”
“You’re probably right,” I said. “Anything more than that, it would never get past the doctors on the reservation. So hell, how much money could even be involved here?”
“Small time stuff,” Leon said. “But if you had some real money and you were in the market for a big score, where would you go?”
I shook my head.
“Assuming it was that same kind of stuff…prescription painkillers…Vicodin…Hell, just about anything these days.”
“Canada,” I said.
“Exactly. They’ve got a ton of it over there. And American dollars will buy a lot more of it.”
It was starting to make more sense to me. It was an open border, with a thousand different places to slip through unnoticed. Natalie was dealing with her own version of the story, but in a completely different way. Different merchandise, going in the opposite direction, but the same basic idea. Hell, even her own grandfather had been part of it, back when the liquor was coming across from Ontario during Prohibition.
“That’s why they were in the boat,” I said. The irony of it, that those old wooden Chris-Crafts were once the rumrunner’s choice, all those years ago when they were the fastest thing on the water.
“On a foggy night. Maybe they couldn’t get across the water yet, so they were waiting…Killing time at the casino, rounding up a few pills, just for themselves.”
“But now if their box of money is at the bottom of the lake…”
“They’re in a tough spot. They probably don’t know what to do. They might be afraid to go back empty- handed.”
“So maybe I can give them a little nudge.”
“Exactly,” Leon said. He got out of the truck. “Make them feel a little homesick.”
“Thank you again.”
“One more thing…I probably shouldn’t even have to say this, but make sure you load the gun.”
“They won’t know if it’s not loaded.”
“Yeah, but you’ll know. It’ll make a big difference, believe me.”
He was right again. He almost always was. I took the gun and I left him standing there in his driveway. As I looked back in the rearview mirror, I could see him watching me until I was out of sight.
Chapter Nine
I left the gun in the box all the way down there. Hessel is about fifty miles due south, so it didn’t take long. Once I got there, though, I had to pull out Caroline’s map to find the house. The Les Cheneaux Islands are scattered all along the Lake Huron shoreline-I’d once heard somebody say there are thirty-six main islands, with almost as many little peninsulas jutting out from the mainland. Overall, there were hundreds of channels running through the whole area, some of them wide and inviting, some rocky and shallow. It was a beautiful part of the state, but easy to get hopelessly lost in.
I left the main road in Hessel, past the big marina where they had the Antique Wooden Boat Show every August. We were still a month away, but I had to wonder what they’d do this year if the weather didn’t improve. If summer never really came.
It was past noon now. I knew I was close to the house. The secondary road ran down one of the thin peninsulas, with lots of trees on both sides of the road, driveways, signs with cute names on them. Gaston’s Getaway. Ratlinburg’s Retreat. These were all summer places, and from the looks of them they were summer places for people who had a lot of money. I knew this place was booming, but I had never been down all the way to water, had never seen the money firsthand.
I watched the numbers on the mailboxes until I figured I was about a quarter mile away from the house I was looking for. I didn’t want to risk driving by it, so I pulled down a driveway and left my truck in the high weeds so the owner of the place could get by me if he had to. If it came to that I’d give him some story about breaking down on the road and pulling off.
Of course, if this was really a summerhouse, the owner probably wasn’t here anyway. It’s one thing to escape the heat of the Detroit suburbs. It’s another to exchange it for what feels like a chilly day in March.
I took the gun out of the shoebox. Leon’s Ruger P95 semiautomatic. I picked up a cartridge, felt its weight in my hand. I heard Leon’s words in my head. There was no point in carrying it if I couldn’t depend on it when I needed it.
That’s when it all caught up to me. I am sitting here in my truck with a gun in my hand.
“You’re actually going to do this,” I said to myself. I pictured Vinnie’s bloody face.
“Damned right I am.” I slid the cartridge into the gun and got out of the truck.
I had a light jacket on, partly so I could hide the gun when I tucked it into my waistband. I walked back to the main road, hung a right, and kept walking down toward the house. I listened carefully for the sound of a vehicle. If I had to, I could make it into the brush before anybody on the road saw me. But there was no traffic that morning. The whole place seemed to be deserted. Again, not a huge surprise, given the way the day felt.
The house was a little farther down than I thought it would be. I had to be even more careful now as I made my way along the driveway. I was about halfway to the end when I saw the house. It was a big post-and- beam-style cabin, maybe a little over the top with all the windows and the complicated roof. But it had definitely set someone back a few bucks.
When I got a little closer, I could see three vehicles-a red Viper, a silver Mercedes, and the black Escalade I already knew so well. I stopped and waited to see any signs of life in the house. There were a few lights on inside, but what the hell. Wasting electricity was probably pretty low on their list of sins. I made myself wait a few more minutes, then I approached the house. Peeking in the first window I came to, I saw a big open living room, lots of empty bottles on the table, plenty of trash all over the place. I kept working my way around the perimeter, looking in each window. More lights on, more mess. No people.
In back of the place, there was a deck and a scruffy yard with a horseshoe pit, a few dozen empty beer bottles scattered at both ends. Then, beyond that, a dock on the channel. I was sure the wooden boat had been kept there. The dock was empty now. I could see the tops of two more houses on the other side of the channel, but I was pretty sure nobody could see me standing here, or anything that I was about to do.
So far so good.
I went onto the back deck, past the gas grill that was in serious need of cleaning, and tried the back door. It was unlocked.
I opened it slowly. I took the gun out of my waistband. This was definitely feeling like something serious now. I made my way through the living room to the big spiral staircase by the fireplace. Whoever built this place had spared no expense, but somehow it all didn’t seem to work together. The staircase was too big, too overdone, and not in the right place. It was too far from the natural flow of traffic. And the bricks they chose for the fireplace…
Enough, I thought. This is not why you’re here.
I went up the stairs, poked my head in each of the three bedrooms. Three empty beds, all in total disarray. There were lots more bottles, some questionable reading material, and in one room the distinct lingering odor of marijuana. The good news, I said to myself, was that these guys had never tried to rent a cabin from me.
Once I knew that the place was empty, I went back downstairs and looked everything over more carefully.
