But no, you come see him only when you want something from him. When you need his help, you know he’ll be only too willing to oblige. Then you forget about him until the next time.
Hell, you did the same thing to Janet last night. You called her up in the middle of the night because you wanted information. Did you spend more than two seconds asking her how she was doing?
That leaves two other people in your life. Jackie and Vinnie. Are those your only true friends? The only two people you can really talk to?
If so, then it’s no wonder you go so crazy when one of them is missing. One friend means half your goddamned world right there.
I started to think about other people who had meant the world to me, once upon a time. The father who raised me on his own. My ex-wife. My dead partner. A certain Ontario Provincial Policewoman. All of them gone now. Is that why I didn’t want anyone else to get too close to me?
Okay, I thought, enough with the psychoanalysis. Just find Vinnie. Or hell, maybe Chief Benally is right. Maybe you just have to wait for him to show up on his own. That’s when you can tell him you don’t have enough friends left to be losing one.
I put the truck in gear and took off.
I was sitting at the bar. Jackie put a cold Canadian in front of me.
“Thank you,” I said.
He hesitated for a moment, looked at me before walking away.
“How are you doing?” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“I asked you how you’re doing.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to know.”
He came back to my end of the bar. “What’s going on? Since when do you need to know how I’m doing?”
“I didn’t say I need to know. I’m just… Look, forget it.”
He walked away again, shaking his head. I sat there and slowly emptied the bottle while the sun went down. There was a Tigers game on, above the bar. I watched it for a while without paying attention to it at all.
When Jackie came back to take my empty bottle away, I asked him if he had a map of Michigan. He went to the kitchen and came back with the standard road map, with the blowup of metropolitan Detroit on the back. I spread it out on the bar, squinting in the fading light.
“I’m wondering where the rest of the reservations are,” I said. “Can you make them out?”
He came around and squinted next to me.
“You think Vinnie’s there,” he said. A statement, not a question. “Vinnie and his cousin. One of the other reservations.”
“It would make sense. That’s the best place to go if you’re in trouble.”
He stood there and looked at the map with me for another few moments.
“You can’t find him,” he said. “Not in a million years.”
I kept looking. Then I folded up the map.
“You’re right.” I gave him back his map and left.
Outside, the air had cooled, but the sky was clear. An amazing night in the Upper Peninsula, but I couldn’t let myself enjoy it. I got into the truck and drove up the road. Took my left and knew I’d see Vinnie’s dark cabin again. Came around that bend and stopped dead.
There was a car parked outside his cabin. There was a light on inside.
I slowly backed up the truck until it was out of sight, then I swung it crosswise so it was blocking the road. I grabbed a flashlight and made my way back toward Vinnie’s cabin, moving as quietly as I could. The car parked in front of the cabin was a white Camry with a Michigan plate. I snapped on the flashlight and took a quick look inside. There was one suitcase in the backseat, a rental agreement on the front seat, next to a road map just like the one I’d been looking over at the Glasgow. I saw the Thrifty sticker in the corner of the windshield and started putting some things together. Thrifty and Avis were the only two rental companies at the airport in Sault Ste. Marie. Somebody flew in, rented this car, and drove here. He came up this road and found Vinnie’s cabin, and from here he might not even have suspected that there were more cabins beyond it. He wouldn’t know that I’d be heading up this road and that I’d see his rental car parked out front.
Don’t let me stop you, I thought. Just keep doing whatever it is you’re doing.
I crept up to the door and listened. Then I moved to the nearest window and stood with my back against the rough wood of the cabin. Then I turned and moved slowly, until I could finally see through the edge of the glass.
A figure. One male. Standing at Vinnie’s counter, holding Vinnie’s phone. His back was to me, which gave me the chance to give him a good look from top to bottom. He had black hair streaked with gray, just long enough to tie into a tight ponytail. He was wearing a beat-up old leather jacket. Jeans and black cowboy boots with metal tips.
He turned around just then, quickly, as if startled by something. Even though I had not made the slightest sound. I held my breath and kept my back to the wall. I heard him moving inside.
A gun would be nice right about now, I thought. Or at least something big to hit this guy with.
The door opened and a wedge of light hit the ground, inches from my feet. I saw his face, his eyes widening as he recognized what was about to happen. I had to act fast to keep any advantage, so I went right at him. I put the heel of my hand to his chin and drove him backward. He stumbled back into the cabin but did not fall. I grabbed his right wrist and spun him around, twisting the arm behind him. He bent over and I thought I had him dead, until he tripped me and turned himself free. Perfectly using my own momentum against me. Clearly this wasn’t his first tango.
He tried to kick me in the ribs and just grazed me. I rolled over and grabbed something to throw at him, anything, a book from the coffee table, flying open like a great wounded bird as it hit him in the face. I drove my shoulder into his chest, taking him all the way into the kitchen until his back hit the edge of the counter. I could tell that hurt him bad. He sagged like he was about to go down, but I was ready for the bluff this time. He came right back with a big swing. I ducked it and put one right in his gut.
He reached back to the counter, grabbing for a knife or anything else he could use to defend himself. I slid open one of Vinnie’s kitchen drawers and grabbed the heaviest thing I could find. A good old-fashioned rolling pin, something right out of the movies, but what the hell. It was as good as a bat and I knew I could knock his teeth out if I had to.
“Who are you?” I said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Peace,” he said, putting his hands up. “Please, friend. Peace.”
I was breathing hard. So was he. Now that we had stopped moving, I got a better look at him from the front. To say that he was tanned would be an understatement. He was more like a walking public-service announcement for sunscreen, so absolutely ruined by the sun that it was hard to tell how old he was. I was betting a little older than me, anyway. He was breathing just as hard as I was, so that was another clue that his best fighting years were behind him.
“I asked you a question,” I said, still ready with the rolling pin. “Now start talking.”
He looked me straight in the eye for the first time. That’s when I saw the resemblance. The years had not been kind to him. All those hard years in prison, much of it obviously spent outside in the sun, maybe on a road crew. Or God knows what. But I could see the answer to my question even as he answered it.
“My name is Lou LeBlanc,” he said. “I’m Vinnie’s father.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Put down the rolling pin,” he said. “You look like a housewife getting ready to brain her husband for coming home late. Like in that old comic strip. What was that guy called, Andy Capp?”
“You’re supposed to be in prison,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“Vinnie told you that? That I was still in the joint?”