“Where’s here?”
“Go to the marina, the south end of the parking lot. Mr. Benning will be waiting for you. He’ll bring you to me.”
“I’m not coming alone.”
“The old man, the one called Meloux? You’ll bring him?”
“Yes. And a colleague.”
“Walter Schanno?”
Wellington was informed.
“Yes. Schanno.”
“All right. Leave immediately. It’s a long trip.”
He hung up without the cordiality of a good-bye.
The others looked at me.
“The great and powerful Oz will see us,” I said.
FORTY-FOUR
We took Trinky Pollard to the marina and let her off near the dock, where her boat was moored and where, she’d told us, her car was still parked.
She stood in the sunlight, blinking at us, clearly disappointed. “Sure you won’t let me go?” The whole way she’d argued for the wisdom of taking her along to see Wellington.
I leaned out my window. “He only agreed to Henry and Wally. I don’t want to blow this chance.”
“He also tried to have Henry killed. He doesn’t strike me as the most gracious host. You might need all the backup you can get.”
“We’ll be fine, Trinky,” I said.
She came around to Schanno’s side. “You’ll be careful?”
“Always have been,” he said.
She kissed him on the cheek. “When you get back, give me a call, promise?”
“Promise.”
She stepped away. We headed toward the south end of the marina. In the rearview mirror, I watched her watching us. Then she turned toward her boat.
Benning was standing beside a black Ford Explorer, leaning against the driver’s-side front door. The Explorer looked new and reflected sunlight shot from the polished finish in long bright arrows. Benning wore a T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up over impressive biceps. He had on a ball cap that shaded his face and sunglasses that hid his eyes. As we drove up, he looked our way. When I stopped, he pushed from his vehicle and walked to my side of the Bronco.
“I have instructions to take you to Mr. Wellington.” He kept his shades on when he spoke to me.
“Lead the way.”
“How’s your gas?” he asked.
“I filled up on the way here.”
He nodded and turned back to the Explorer.
“What if we get separated?” I said.
“We won’t.”
We followed him northwest out of Thunder Bay, keeping to Highway 17, part of the Trans-Canada Highway system. The sun had just passed its zenith when we finally put civilization behind us. For a long time after that, the highway cut through flat country with a lot of timber and not many towns.
A little over two hours later, we came to Ignace and turned north. We stopped at a gas station with a small restaurant. Benning pulled up to a pump and signaled us to do the same.
“Last chance for gas for quite a while,” he said.
Meloux used the men’s room while I filled the tank. Schanno went inside to get us some bottled water. He came back with three microwaved burritos as well. Within ten minutes, we were off again, following a hundred yards behind the Explorer. The burritos were hard beans and tasteless sauce wrapped in tortillas the texture of white leather, but we were all hungry and gobbled them down.
In a while, Meloux was napping in the backseat. Schanno and I talked.
“You and Trinky seemed to hit it off,” I said.
Schanno thought about that and then nodded. “She’s a good, sensible woman. Easy to talk to.” He studied the pine trees that walled the highway. “It’s been lonely.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Know what I miss most, Cork? Arietta used to sing around the house. It didn’t matter what she was doing, she was always singing. I could tell from the nature of the tune just how she was feeling. A snappy song and she was happy. Something blue and she was down. But always her voice there, filling the house. Place seems so damned empty now, I almost hate being there.”
“I can imagine,” I said.
“It’s been hard saying good-bye.”
I didn’t think that needed a response, so I studied my side-view mirror.
“Trinky’s thinking of sailing up the Saint Lawrence to the Atlantic in a few weeks, then heading south along the East Coast to the Caribbean. Needs a good deckhand, she says.”
“You told me. You interested in the job?”
“It’d be something to do.”
“And you like the company.”
He swung his gaze my way. “Is it too soon, you think?”
“Wally, I don’t know that there’s any blueprint for the affairs of the human heart. You try to do your best to listen to what it tells you, and do your best, when possible, to follow. That’s how it seems to me.”
He nodded. “Funny, you know, that I’ve got a dog named Trixie. Almost like Trinky. I called her Trixie last night.”
“She hit you?”
“When I explained, she thought it was cute. Say, what’s so interesting in that mirror of yours?”
“We’re being followed.”
He craned his neck to look back. It took a minute before the vehicle behind us came into view as it rounded a curve.
“How do you know it’s following us? This is probably the only good road in a hundred miles.”
“In the absence of evidence to the contrary, it’s safest to assume the worst.”
“The worst being?”
“Benning’s ahead of us. If Wellington wanted to put us in a pinch, he’d have someone behind us as well.”
Schanno unbuckled his seat belt and crawled into the back. Meloux was so deeply asleep he didn’t notice the jostling. Schanno dug in his bag, then came back up front. He was holding a handgun and a box of cartridges.
“What the hell is that?” I said.
“A Colt Python.”
“Jesus, you brought that over the border? We could have been arrested.”
“You’re forgetting Henry’s luck.”
“If you think he’s so lucky, what do you need that for?”
“My dad always told me to hedge my bets.” He began feeding cartridges into the Colt. “You think Rupert Wellington is involved in any of this?”
“I don’t think a man in charge of a corporation like Northern Mining is as ignorant of what’s going on as he’d like us to believe. What exactly his part is, I can’t say.”
The vehicle trailing us-a dark green SUV-kept its distance.
“If Benning slows down and that SUV behind us speeds up, I’ll probably be glad you have that Colt,” I
