Two hours in his acquaintance, and he was already treating me like a long lost friend. Or a kindred spirit, perhaps. Somebody who seemed to think we had a lot in common, despite our outward appearances. Hell, maybe we did. God knows I could have used another friend. Jackie, Vinnie, and finally Leon. That was the whole deal right there.
Leon-I had met him at the Glasgow one night. Leon with the wild orange hair and the flannel shirt, the big local goofball that nobody had ever taken seriously, not for one second. He had come up to Paradise to fight me in the parking lot, all because he had lost his dream job as a private investigator. The lawyer who was paying him had somehow convinced me to take his place, but the job turned out to be anything but a dream. Not long after that, I found out that Leon actually knew what he was doing. And that I most definitely did not.
We were partners for a while. I still have some of the business cards he had made up. Prudell-McKnight Investigations, his name first because it sounded better that way. Or so he said. With the two guns on either side of the card, pointing at each other.
Of course, I had no desire to be a PI. With Leon as my partner or not. But that didn’t stop the trouble from finding me. I can’t even count the number of times Leon helped me. With the computer stuff, or hell, just the fact that he had a gun for me after I threw mine in the lake. I owed him my life.
I started feeling bad about it, the way I’d only go see him if I needed his help with something. I promised myself I’d make a point of taking him out to lunch every so often. Or stopping by his house, even though the sight of me still made his wife nervous.
Or watching him play. That’s right. Leon and his band. Just when I thought he was done surprising me, he called me up and told me he was getting his old band together to record a demo.
“What band?” I had said. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s a rock-and-roll band. We used to play together in college.”
“At Lake State? You were in a band?”
“Yeah, we played in all the bars. Didn’t I ever tell you about that?”
“What was your band’s name, pray tell?”
“We were Leon and the Leopards back then.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“But if we really get back together, I’m sure we’ll get a new name.”
“Leon,” I had said. “You are something else.”
“Hey, if I can’t do the one thing I love the most…”
He didn’t have to finish the thought. I knew exactly where he was going. He even tried to do it on his own once. Rented the office, put his name on the door. The whole thing. It didn’t work out. He’d been working down at the custom motor shop ever since, selling snowmobiles.
“Well, music might be a distant second,” he had said. “Put it that way.”
He was the drummer, which made sense, I guess. If Leon Prudell was going to be in a rock band, it would have to be behind the drums. Just like I had to be a catcher back in my ballplaying days. It just seemed to fit my personality.
“Tell me the truth,” I said to Tyler. “Are these guys any good?”
“They’re a little rough. But they’ve got…something.”
“Uh-huh.”
“They do. It’s something.”
“You’re a master of diplomacy.”
“You gonna come back inside?”
“I was just getting some air,” I said. Truth was, I had already sat in the studio listening to them for an hour, until my head started to hurt. Between the bright lights, the noise, and for God’s sake the cigarette smoke. Either Tyler had people smoking in there in shifts, twenty-four hours a day, or else he was using the place to cure tobacco leaves. I’ve heard that they’ve all but banned indoor smoking in some states now, but the idea sure as hell hasn’t gotten to Michigan yet.
“It’s getting worse,” he said, stepping closer to his dock. “You can’t even see the Point now.”
“The Point? Where’s that?”
“It’s about a mile out. There was a lumber mill out there, long time ago. You can still see where the bridge was.”
“A bridge?”
“Look down this line. You can see the old pilings.” He gave the air a slow karate chop, and as I followed the line I started to see the dark shapes in the water. There seemed to be two separate lines of them, about five feet apart, running parallel out to where the island must have been.
“What was it, a railroad bridge?”
“Exactly. It was quicker just to go right through the bay, instead of going around. The line ran right through my backyard.”
“When did they close the mill?”
“It burned down one day, around the turn of the century. I’ve got an old newspaper picture hanging in the house.”
“And they just left those things in the water, all the way out there?”
“They go about halfway. If it wasn’t so foggy, you could see where they end. You have to watch out for them when you’re out in the boat.”
“I imagine.”
I kept looking at the old wooden pilings in the water. It looked like the backs of two long sea monsters, swimming side by side into the fog. Then I heard another voice behind me.
“Did the fireworks start yet?” It was Leon. He had a baseball cap on now, with the script D of the Detroit Tigers.
“Doesn’t matter much,” Tyler said. “We won’t be able to see them. Did you guys decide on a track yet?”
He looked back at the studio. There was a big picture window overlooking the lake, and the light was casting a faint glow on the backyard, all the way down to the water’s edge.
“I don’t know if we’re going to be able to record anything tonight,” he said. “I’m sorry to waste your time like this.”
“You’re not,” Tyler said. “What else would I be doing on a night like this?”
“It feels like November,” Leon said, rubbing his arms. “Whatever happened to global warming?”
We heard a faint boom just then, from somewhere around the other side of Waishkey Bay.
“They’re trying to do the fireworks,” Tyler said. “I can’t believe it.”
There was another boom. We could see a few red streamers in the air. Just barely. Michigan is already pretty loose with its fireworks laws, and on the reservation it gets even looser. You can fire off just about anything short of an intercontinental missile, but on this night it was a total waste of gunpowder. Whoever it was over there, he fired off five or six more before finally giving up.
“Well, that’s it for this year,” Tyler said. “I think summer is officially canceled.”
“Wait, what’s that sound now?” Leon said.
From inside the studio behind us, somebody ran through a few guitar chords.
“That’s your man Eugene,” Tyler said. “Pretending he’s Jimi Hendrix. Does he know how to tune that thing?”
“No, I mean out there,” Leon said.
The guitar stopped. The three of us stood there in the near silence, listening. There was a low droning noise, somewhere out on the bay. It was getting louder.
“It’s a boat,” Tyler said.
“Is it safe to be out there?”
“As long as you know where you’re going.”
“You can’t even see where you’re going.”
“You have to have the right equipment.”
The noise was getting louder.
“Whoever it is,” Leon said, “he’s going fast.”
“If he’s been here before, he can follow one of his old GPS courses…But yeah, you’re right. Even if you’re on a safe line, I don’t think you want to be going that fast. You don’t know what might get in your way.”
It got louder. It was coming closer to us.
“Wait a minute,” Tyler said. “It sounds like-”
“He’s coming this way,” Leon said.
“He can’t. Not this close. He’ll run right into the pilings.”
Louder and louder. The unmistakable roar of a powerful boat, and now that it was getting closer, the slapping of the hull against the water.
We saw it. A dark shape, moving fast. Like it was coming right at us. Like it would leap onto the shore and run us over.
“Stop!” Tyler yelled. He ran down onto his dock. “Cut your motor!”