I held the boat steady as we made our way around that last bend and into the main harbor. There were half-a-dozen places I could have gone, but I chose the marina right next to the ferry dock. I figured that was closest to the main street and probably whatever medical facilities they had around here. I pulled into a slip and bumped the dock a little bit too hard. Some guy in white shorts and deck shoes came running down the dock, waving at us. He had sunglasses tucked into the neck of his alligator shirt. He took one look at the blood on my face and turned from an annoyance into an actual helpful human being, tying up the boat and helping Buck onto the deck.
“You need a doctor,” he said to me.
“My friend needs one first,” I said. Lou and I helped Vinnie out of the cabin. He tried to stand on rubber legs and he kept blinking in the light. The three of us half pulled, half lifted him onto the dock. Then the man helped us down to the street and walked with us right to the door of the medical center. I thanked the man, thinking this was the Michigan version of a yuppie boat snob. They dress the part but they just can’t manage the attitude.
There was a physician’s assistant on duty. She was just about to close for the day, but one look at us and she was on the phone to the two resident doctors. A few minutes later, Vinnie was in one room, getting the vision test and mental-acuity test and whatever the hell else they do to you when it’s obvious you have some grade of concussion. I was having my own fun in the next room over, receiving a tetanus shot and seventeen stitches in my face.
The doctor asked me what had happened to us. I told him it was a boating accident. I knew we’d be talking to the police eventually, but I thought we’d probably rather go home first and talk to the officers who knew us personally, for better or worse.
They weren’t about to let Vinnie go anywhere for a while. He ended up going home with one of the doctors, so he could be woken up every couple of hours for observation. That’s still the protocol for concussion. Lots of rest but not too much sleep at one time. I walked out of there with fresh white bandages taped all over my face. The PA took Lou over to the Kaisers’ rental house to pick up his car. She even found us a two-bedroom suite at a little place called the Emerald Isle Hotel.
It was turning into a five-star vacation. Aside from being taken down to the swamp to be killed, then riding a hard ten miles out onto the lake to rescue our friends, followed by a sit-down with a psychotic Chicago gangster and a knife wound to the face. After all that, the place was finally being redeemed by some grade-A island residents.
We ate a late dinner at one of the restaurants on the main street. Just me, Lou, and Buck, sitting there at the window table as the sun set. It felt wrong not to have Vinnie with us, but we knew he was being taken good care of at the doctor’s house.
Lou didn’t say much. He kept looking at me and then out at the water a block away from us. Buck ate like he hadn’t seen food in a couple of days. Which maybe he hadn’t.
When he was done, he slumped back in his chair. There were still red rings around his wrists. I wondered if he have them forever. Maybe he should, I thought, as a constant reminder of the choices he’d made that week.
“Everybody started shooting each other,” he said. “I panicked and ran away. When I was down the road, I called Vinnie. I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t even realize I’d been shot until I got in his truck and he noticed the blood on my shirt.”
“There was somebody still alive,” I said. “He was calling out to you. You left him there.”
“How do you know that?”
“Let’s just say I have it on good authority. Whether it’s justified or not, there are certain people who aren’t going to let you off the hook on this.”
“That’s why we were left out in the boat?”
“Well, the Kaisers were trying to blame you for everything. The new drop route, and probably the Kennedy assassinations, too. The man who was going to pick you up was more interested in the simple fact that you were the only man who lived through what happened at the airport. You would have done everybody a big favor by just getting shot there and dying with everybody else.”
He looked back and forth between Lou and me, waiting for one of us to let him off the hook. But all he saw were two weary faces. It was the wrong day to expect me to pull any punches.
“I did all of this,” he said. “I know that. When I talked to Harry and Jo, I mean, I thought they were going to help us. I thought everything would be okay. But it just got worse.”
“Everybody’s worried about you,” Lou said. “Both of you. They’ve got every Ojibwa in the state keeping an eye out for you.”
“Are you really Vinnie’s father? Did I hear that right?”
“You heard right.”
“I thought you were dead.”
“Apparently I’m not.”
“I’ll start thanking both of you right now,” he said, “and I’ll keep doing it. I’m not sure what else I can do.”
“Just do me one favor,” Lou said. “The next time you get yourself in a jam like this, don’t call Vinnie, okay?”
“Okay,” Buck said, giving that one a little smile. “I promise. I’ll call Alex instead.”
I just looked at him.
“It was a joke,” he said.
“Yeah, I know. You should call your family now. Tell them you’re all right. Vinnie’s family, too.”
“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’d like to do that tomorrow morning. As soon as word gets around, all hell is gonna break loose.”
“You’re probably right about that,” I said. “You’re gonna be a very popular guy once you get back home. I think Chief Benally gets the first dance.”
As tired as I was, I couldn’t sleep. My face was throbbing now. I took some aspirin and sat out on the couch. Buck was snoring away in one bedroom. Lou was in the other. I sat there and looked out the window at the darkened library behind the hotel. After a while, Lou came out and sat down in the chair across from me.
“Tell me what happened,” he said. “I want to know what that man said to you. Every word.”
“I didn’t want to bring it up yet. I figured those guys should both recover a little bit first.”
“I understand. But it’s just you and me here.”
My face was killing me. It hurt to talk. But I thought back carefully over every word Corvo had said to me. I told Lou everything I could remember. After everything we had been through that day, I owed him the full story.
I ran through everything, including the last instructions Corvo had given me. Bring the two Indians down to Chicago. You have exactly forty-eight hours.
“And if you don’t do that?” Lou said.
“Then it’s pretty clear what will happen. Corvo will come looking for us. Me included. If I call the cops, it gets even worse.”
“So what do we do?”
“It’s too bad he didn’t want just Buck. I would have turned him over on the spot.”
“Seriously, Alex.”
“Seriously, I don’t know. But we’ve got about a day and a half left to figure it out.”
We picked up Vinnie from the doctor’s house the next morning. He was looking more like himself, but we got some pretty detailed instructions on taking him to a doctor back home, and watching for symptoms of post-concussion syndrome. Severe headaches, dizziness, sudden changes in mood. Basically anything out of the ordinary. While I was there, the doctor took the opportunity to change the bandages on my face. It still hurt.
We settled the bill and the insurance and everything else. Then we thanked him a few times, because he had obviously gone out of his way for us. There was room for only one more car on the ferry, so we took it. We got onboard and we stood on the deck, watching the boat push off from the dock. I saw the fishing boat from the day before, still sitting in its slip. I figured someone would take care of it eventually, take it back to wherever it belonged.