“To tell you the truth,” I said, “they don’t think about you at all. Or if they do, they don’t say anything. I don’t think I’ve heard Vinnie mention you more than two or three times, up until a week ago, when his mother died.”
“Ouch,” Lou said, nodding slowly. “That’s even worse.”
Now that I was sitting next to him, I could see all the scar tissue around his eyes and ears, and the long scar running along the left side of his jawline. With all of the sun damage on top of that, he looked a little unreal. Like he had spent a couple of hours in a Hollywood makeup chair, getting ready to play an old, ravaged warrior.
“I think maybe we should put these away,” I said, collecting the two beers. “How about a Coke or something?”
“It’s fine,” Lou said, taking one of the bottles from me. He had quick hands. “It’s just one beer.”
I was about to say something else, but he cracked it open and took a hit.
“What brings you back here?” Jackie said. He was eyeing the man like he still wasn’t quite sure what to make of him. Which made two of us.
“Damn, what is this?” Lou said, looking at the label. “Molson doesn’t taste like this back home.”
“He says he’s good at finding people,” I said to Jackie. “He thinks he can find Vinnie.”
“I said I wanted to try,” Lou said. “I know it’s a little late to be doing something for one of my kids.”
“Twenty-five years late,” Jackie said. “No, wait, almost thirty?”
Lou put the bottle down and raised his hands. “I’m not defending myself,” he said. “If you want me to get up and walk out of here, I’ll do it right now.”
“Let’s hear your angle first,” I said.
“My angle, huh? Okay, fair enough.”
He took another long draw from the bottle and appreciated it for a long moment, maybe flashing back to a lot of thirsty days in a hot prison cell.
“Let me start this way,” he said. “Put yourself in Vinnie’s place. Why did you go to the airport?”
“Because my cousin called me and asked me to come get him.”
He looked at me while he thought about it.
“You seem pretty sure about that part. There’s no way Vinnie could have been there himself? I mean, when everybody started shooting each other?”
“I can’t see that.”
“No,” Jackie said. “No way.”
“Okay, let’s say I’m with you on that one. We’re saying it was just Buck who was there when it all goes down. What kind of player is he? Is he a shooter?”
I had to smile at that one.
“I don’t know Buck nearly as well as I know Vinnie, but I can’t see him playing the heavy in any of this. Maybe it was just a case of wrong place, wrong time?”
“What, you mean he just happened to stumble onto the airport runway in the middle of the night? Like he took a wrong turn or something?”
“Look, I don’t know. I’m just saying, he always seemed pretty harmless to me.”
“Yeah, I did time with some guys who seemed pretty harmless. But either way, the bullets start flying, and he’s the one guy who walks away. So he calls Vinnie, right?”
“Right.”
“Vinnie’s the kind of guy who would go get him? In the middle of the night?”
“He’s that kind of guy, yes.”
“You both are,” Jackie said. “There’s not a lick of sense in either one of you.”
I shot Jackie a look, not that it would have slowed him down one bit.
“Okay, so he’s an easy touch,” Lou said. “He goes out and picks up Buck. Then what? Where does he take him?”
“Maybe to another reservation,” I said. “We’ve already been over this. How many are there?”
“There’s a few. Some of them are pretty big. Hell, the Saginaw rez is like two hundred square miles. But why did they run in the first place?”
“Because they’re freaking out,” Jackie said. “Why else?”
“Alex, is Vinnie the kind of person who would freak out like that?”
“No,” I said, “but I don’t know about Buck.”
“Maybe he got shot,” Jackie said. “Maybe Vinnie’s trying to take care of him.”
“I think you have to take him to the hospital right away,” Lou said. “Don’t you? Unless you’re a complete idiot.”
“Yeah, he would know better,” I said. “Vinnie probably just took him away to calm him down. To figure out what to do next.”
“Everybody’s dead now,” Jackie said. “What’s he afraid of?”
“If they find out he was there and that he walked away alive,” I said, “then he must think they’ll be coming after him.”
“Who’s they?”
“Anybody,” Lou said. “On either side of it.”
“There’s three sides,” I said. “The delivery side, the receiving side, and the hijacking side. I don’t imagine any of them are real happy right now.”
“Damn,” Jackie said. “Poor Buck, he might be right in the middle of all these guys.”
“That’s exactly right,” Lou said. “So now if you’re Vinnie and you’re looking after him, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying you have to turn yourself in,” I said. “It’s the only thing you can do.”
Lou was already taking another swallow and he just about spit it right up. “Are you serious?”
“It’s the only safe play. Turn yourself in. Explain why you were there.”
“You sound like a cop or something.”
“I was,” I said. “For eight years.”
He took a long look at me, like he was seeing me for the first time.
“This is getting better and better.”
“How do you mean?”
He put the bottle down and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “You really think he’d be safest if he turned himself in? If he ended up sitting in a holding cell somewhere? Where everybody in the world would know exactly where he was?”
“Okay, I understand, just because he’s in a cell…”
“You really think that’s what Vinnie’s telling him? Like right now, wherever they are? ‘Hey, Buck, let’s go turn your ass in to the authorities? And oh by the way, me too? Because I was an accessory to helping you run away?’”
“Look…”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Alex. But if you’re gonna approach this like an ex-cop, then maybe we should part ways right now. No use having us get in each other’s way if we’ve got completely different ideas.”
“So what’s your idea?” I said. “If you find them, I mean. What would you suggest they do?”
He picked up his bottle again. “That,” he said, “is something we’d just have to play by ear.”
“So let’s start by finding him,” I said. “Let’s not even worry about what happens next.”
“Fair enough.” He looked at me. “You were really a cop?”
“Yes.”
“I should have known. You fight like a cop. Totally clean. No cheap shots.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
He smiled. “Whatever you say.”
Jackie looked at me and I just shook my head. I was already past having second thoughts and was well into the third thoughts. But I decided to let him keep talking.
“Tell me more about Buck,” he said. “Start with where he buys his weed.”
“What good is that going to do us?”
“Follow the weed,” he said. “Right back to the seller. Right up the supply chain, from the seller to somebody else, to maybe somebody who might know something.”
“Okay,” I said. “I guess that makes sense.”
“So you know where to take us?”
“I think so.”
“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go.”
It was close to midnight now. We were both in my truck, on the way down to Brimley. As we passed through the reservation, he sat up straight and stared out the window.
“This is seriously one place I never thought I’d see again.”