When he was done, he got back into the truck and we rode down to the bottom of the hill, then off the reservation. To Paradise.
He was already reaching for his bag as I drove up toward Vinnie’s cabin.
“I’ve got an empty cabin just down the road,” I said. “I think you should stay there.”
Either he agreed with me or he was too tired to fight about it. He sat back as I drove him around the bend to the first of the five rental cabins. I went inside with him and showed him where everything was. He put his bag down and sat in one of the chairs. Then he took out little plastic baggie from his coat pocket.
“Is it cool if I smoke in here?”
“A joint, you mean? You’re gonna smoke a joint now?”
“I just need one,” he said. “It’s been a hell of a day.”
“This is none of my business, but you started out as ‘clean and sober,’ and then that got downgraded to just clean, right? So now you’re what? Neither?”
“I’m still clean, Alex. Clean inside and out. It’s just marijuana.”
“Yeah, just marijuana,” I said. “Tell that to those dead men on the runway.”
He just looked at me. I knew we were about two seconds away from more of the ex-cop versus ex-con routine, so I decided to bail out and let us both get some sleep.
I drove back down to my cabin. Before going inside, I stood there for a while and let the darkness and the silence close in around me. There were clouds moving quickly across a tilting half-moon. The air was still almost warm. Then the wind picked up and as it hit my face it brought along an unmistakable message. It may be July, and it may feel like summer just got here, but the end is already on its way. The cold, the snow, the ice, the natural basic state of this place, it is right around the corner.
I took a quick walk back to Vinnie’s cabin. Nothing had changed. I walked back to my own place, hoping this much exercise would help me get to sleep. I was expecting a losing battle on that front, but I must have been exhausted because I dropped right off. I had all the bad dreams I would have bet money on having, but somewhere in the night a brilliant idea came to me. Brilliant for me, at least, and thank God it was still with me when I woke up.
As I opened my eyes to the sunlight, I still had no idea where Vinnie was. But I knew exactly where Lou and I needed to go.
CHAPTER NINE
It was almost eight o’clock in the morning when I got into the truck and drove down to the next cabin. I knocked on the door, but there was no answer. I knocked again, then pushed the door open and peeked inside. I could see Lou’s bag still on the table, and it looked like he had been making coffee in the kitchen. There was still a strong scent of marijuana in the air, just what I needed for the next rental guest.
“Lou, are you in here?”
I gave the place a quick once-over, including the bathroom. He wasn’t in the cabin. I opened all the windows on my way out.
I was just about to go down to Vinnie’s cabin to see if the rental car was still there, but then I saw Lou walking down the road toward me. He was coming from the dead-end direction. The other cabins were up that way and then the road just gave up and the forest took over.
“Good morning,” he said. “Are all those cabins yours?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know you had renters. There were some nice old ladies in the next cabin up, but I believe I probably scared them to death.”
The bird-watchers, I thought. They were here to observe the piping plovers or some such thing, and Lou was probably right about scaring them.
“I’ll go tell them you’re harmless later,” I said. “But never mind that. I’ve got a question for you.”
“Shoot.”
“When we were talking to that guy last night, Mr. Dukes’ next-door neighbor, did his whole speech sound a little… rehearsed to you?”
“Like he had it in a can, ready to go? Yeah, of course it did. I thought that was obvious.”
“He didn’t even ask us why the hell we were ringing his doorbell at two in the morning. Did you notice that? He was too busy giving us the party line. But why did he even do that? Why tell us that Dukes drove to Texas? What’s the point?”
“Probably because Dukes wanted to cover his tracks. He skipped town and he wanted his neighbor to feed people a false story.”
“You mean, he’s not really in Texas.”
“I would bet he’s not, no.”
“Okay, so we agree on that. Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?”
“To go talk to Mr. Dukes,” I said. “But I think we should take your rental car.”
I had Lou drive through the McDonald’s in Sault Ste. Marie to get us some breakfast to go. I looked at my watch and wondered when your average pot dealer would get out of bed.
“So tell me why we’re back here,” Lou said to me as he went through the bags of food. “I’m not quite seeing it yet.”
“Put yourself in his shoes,” I said. “A couple of people in your supply chain get murdered. If you’re scared enough by that, and if you’re smart enough, what do you do?”
“I get the hell out of town.”
“Do you really pack up everything in your car and drive a thousand miles to, say, Florida? Leave a fake story behind to make people think you’re in Texas?”
“Maybe. Although hell, I probably wouldn’t even try to bother with that last part. I’d just go.”
“All right, so what if you’re not quite scared enough? Or not quite smart enough? Or both?”
“I’m still not following you.”
“Look, you live here. You’ve got a good business going. You know something bad happened, but what if you’re not absolutely sure it’s going to find its way to you.”
He mulled it over for a while. Then it came to him.
“You don’t go anywhere,” he said. “You just make it look that way. You get your neighbor to act as your beard for a few days, and you see what happens.”
“Maybe you even keep the sales going,” I said. “No need to shut down the cash flow, right?”
“Okay, so your neighbor’s selling for you, you’re saying. As long as the customers are people he can trust. If it’s a stranger who shows up, then he just sends the bastard packing, tells him you’re long gone and you’re not coming back.”
“That’s how you’d play it halfway,” I said. “You stay in business, but you keep your eyes open for trouble.”
“So while your neighbor’s keeping the business going, where does that leave you? Where are you hiding?”
“Where else?”
He thought about it, and this time it took him only a second.
“Dukes is in the neighbor’s house,” he said. “He was there last night when we knocked on the door.”
“That part I’m just guessing. But how else are you gonna keep the customers straight? He was probably watching us from a window.”
“God damn,” he said. “You just might be right.”
A few minutes later, we were on the other side of town. We drove down that same street, the modest rows of houses looking all the more threadbare in the light of day. We stopped a few houses short, pulled over, and made sure we had a good sight line. This was why we had the rental car that day, in case the neighbor had noticed my truck well enough to remember it. I wouldn’t have put money on him being half that sharp, but there was no reason to take any chances.
Dukes’ house still looked abandoned, and the neighbor’s house looked just as quiet. But then it wasn’t even nine o’clock yet.