“Do you remember what times?”
“I think the last one went out at like three or something. Maybe two thirty, I don’t know. I remember thinking you better like being on Beaver Island because it sure sounds easy to get stuck there.”
“That’s a ferry you’d really have to hurry to get to,” Lou said.
He didn’t have to say anything else.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
We took Lou’s rental car again. The ultimate act of optimism, taking the vehicle with room for four people, in the hope that we’d need that many seats on our way home. Lou pulled out his cell phone and called ahead while I drove. He reached somebody at the ferry office and there was indeed a two-thirty ferry, so that’s the one we were shooting for. Because it was Friday, there was actually a later ferry, at five thirty, but we wanted to get out to the island as soon as possible.
He called Information next and asked for any listing under Kaiser on Beaver Island. He came up empty, but then that would have been asking way too much out of the day.
He put his cell phone away and picked up mine from the front-seat console between us. “I thought mine was old,” he said. “I’m surprised you don’t have to wind this one up.”
I kept driving. He tapped his fingers on his lap like a drummer keeping time. Then he’d stop for a while. Then he’d start tapping again.
“Do you think they know?” he finally said.
“Know what?”
“How much trouble they’re in. How serious this Corvo guy who’s supposedly looking for them is.”
“I don’t know who’s worse at this point,” I said, shaking my head. “Corvo or the Kaisers. I mean, Corvo’s obviously a psychotic killer. We saw that ourselves.”
“So how could the Kaisers be worse?”
“At least you know that the psychotic killer is bad. The Kaisers you might actually mistake for friends. People on the same side as you, anyway.”
“Do you think they’re telling Corvo the same lie they told Perry?”
“If they have any kind of communication,” I said. “No doubt about it. I haven’t even met them yet, but I’m sure they’d sell out Vinnie and Buck in two seconds.”
We made good time through Petoskey, which is always a crapshoot in the summer, when half the remaining rich people in Detroit are in town. Little Traverse Bay was on our right, sparkling in the sunlight, and it was hard to blame all of those people for being there. Hard but not impossible. As much as Lou had on his mind, he couldn’t help but look out his window with obvious wonder as we passed through Bay Harbor, with the golf courses and the yacht club and the equestrian club high on the hill.
“I know it’s been a long time since I’ve been here,” he said, “but damn.”
“They call it Michigan’s Gold Coast now.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I am not kidding.”
We kept following the shoreline until we got to Charlevoix. That’s where you can find the other half of the rich people from Detroit during the summertime. There’s a drawbridge that separates Lake Michigan from the little Round Lake, which leads into Lake Charlevoix, one of the biggest inland lakes in the state. On a day like this you could sit on the shore and watch so many powerboats and sailboats and jet skis you’d probably lose count. The ferry to Beaver Island comes in and out of Round Lake when the drawbridge is raised. I’d never been on the boat before, but I knew it was big enough for a good three hundred people and a couple dozen vehicles in the hold.
“It’s gonna take you forever to park,” Lou said. “Just let me out here and I’ll get the tickets.”
I let him out when I stopped at the light, then I kept crawling along with the other traffic. There’s one main street running through town, and it gets backed up all to hell even when the drawbridge isn’t up. If you live in the UP, like I do, all you have to do is drive a couple of hours down to Petoskey and Charlevoix and you’ll feel like you’re in the middle of Times Square.
There’s a little ticket booth on the promenade overlooking Round Lake. A bandstand, a few dozen little boutiques up and down the street, a good hundred boats parked down in the marina. The sun beating down on everything, never too hot with the breeze coming off Lake Michigan. It’s one version of perfect, I grant you that. An overcrowded version, though, and definitely not for me.
I circled the block and came back to find Lou waiting at the same traffic light. He got into the car and told me to keep going.
“Wait,” I said, “aren’t we parking?”
“No, we’re going to the airport.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know how long the ferry ride is?”
“It’s like an hour, right?”
“Try two hours,” he said. “If we go to the airport, we can catch a little plane and be over there in twenty minutes. The next flight leaves at two. We’ll just make it.”
He didn’t have to do any more convincing. A two-o’clock flight would get us to the island before the ferry was even pushing off from the dock, and right now a two-hour head start sounded like twenty-four-karat gold.
Assuming that they were actually out there on that island. I kept coming back to our plan and telling myself it was the craziest long shot of all time. But at this point we didn’t have anything else.
The Charlevoix airport was on the south side of town, just past all of the midday summer madness. I parked in the lot and we went inside. The whole airport was a one-room affair, with separate check-in desks for the two airlines that flew to Beaver Island. We went to the desk that had the two-o’clock flight, and that’s when Lou stopped dead.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“Metal detector,” he said, pointing to the door that led outside to the airstrip. “I wasn’t thinking they’d have one here.”
I put my hand on the small of his back and felt the gun. How the hell he’d gotten it out of the glove compartment, I had no idea. No doubt it was loaded.
“Go put it back,” I said. “Hurry up.”
He hesitated. “What if we need it?”
“Then we use a big stick instead. I’m pretty sure they have big sticks on the island.”
“I’m serious. This is no time to be unarmed.”
“You don’t have a choice, so just go back and-”
“You get on the plane,” he said. “I’ll take the ferry.”
“What?”
“You go and check things out. I’ll take the ferry and meet up with you. That way, we’ll have some heat and we’ll have wheels, too.”
The woman behind the desk told us we’d have to get on the plane if we were going. In the end, it was the car business that tipped the scales for me. It was a big enough island, after all, and it wasn’t like Mackinac. You could actually take your car over and drive there. You didn’t have to rely on horses or bikes.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll go start looking around. Or asking around. Or whatever the hell it is we’re gonna do there. You bring the car over and I’ll meet you at the ferry dock. If I’m not there, give me a call on my cell phone. Do you have my number?”
We took another minute to get that straightened out. Then I bought my ticket and hurried through the metal detector and the door and then I was outside, back in the bright sunlight, looking at a little six-seat Piper Aztec with a prop on each wing. I couldn’t help thinking it was just like the plane I’d seen at the Newberry airport, back when this whole thing started. Only this plane wouldn’t be stuffed to the rafters with marijuana, and when I got on the ground I could only hope there wouldn’t be men with guns drawn, waiting for me.
It was a quick flight. I was one of three passengers. I sat directly behind the pilot, and as the little plane rattled down the runway I couldn’t help remembering how much I disliked flying in these things. You feel like every gust of wind is going to turn you right over. It was still a crystal-clear day so at least I got a good look at the lake and then at Beaver Island as we got closer to it. It was the largest island in Lake Michigan by a long shot, that much I remembered. It was flat and sandy, sort of oval-shaped, and it kind of looked a little out of place, like it should have been out in the ocean instead. There were trees as you got in close to the middle of the island, and there were even two fairly substantial interior lakes. Lakes within an island within a lake.