Die a Stranger: An Alex McKnight Novel

by Steve Hamilton

  When I did my little ill-fated stint as a private investigator, working for a local lawyer, Leon was the man whose job I took. He paid me a visit at the Glasgow one night and tried to take me apart in the parking lot. From that auspicious beginning, a strange sort of friendship grew. I hated being a private eye, even before the whole thing blew up in my face. On the other hand, being a private eye was the only thing Leon ever wanted, ever since he was a kid. He even tried to set up his own practice in a rented office on Ashmun Street. There just isn’t enough business around here, even if you double as a bail bondsman. He’d been working a string of odd jobs ever since. His latest was right here at the multiplex, serving popcorn with yellow sludge on top to teenagers.

  You look at him and you see an overweight local guy in a flannel shirt, with that wild orange hair on his head, and you might think this kind of job is the only thing he’s qualified to do. But he has a nose for investigation. He still knows how to break down a situation and look at it from every angle. That’s why I still go to him whenever I need help.

  The lobby was pretty much empty, with another sunny July day going on outside. I asked the kid at the ticket booth if Leon was going to be around today, but he seemed not to know who I was talking about. We circled around that point for a while, because how many orange-haired adult men could actually work there? Eventually, I got passed off to a manager who told me that Leon had quit about a week ago.

  Good for him, I thought as I walked out. I got back into the truck and drove out of town, just south to Rosedale. I pulled up in front of the Prudell house, with that tire swing in the front yard, hanging from the lowest branch. The car was gone, but I knocked on the door anyway. Nobody answered. As I stood on the front porch, I looked around. Something seemed out of place. That’s when I remembered the camper that was usually parked next to the driveway. One of those fold-up things you tow behind your car. It was gone now, which could mean only one thing. Leon and his entire family were on vacation.

  After I got back into the truck, I just sat there for a while, staring out the windshield at nothing. If Leon was really your friend, you’d already know he was on vacation. You would have talked about it. He would have told you where he was going and how excited his kids were. You would have wished him a great trip. Maybe you’d even be stopping by his house just to make sure the mail was stopped and the newspapers weren’t piling up at the front door.

  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?”

  “Who else would tell me?”

  “He’s got old information. I’ve been out for almost two years.”

  “And you’re here now for what reason?”

  “It’s been a while, I grant you. I never thought I’d get back to Michigan. But then I heard about Vinnie being in trouble.”

  “Heard from who?”

  “One of the old-timers. Sometimes he lets me know how my kids are doing up here. I think he just wants to rub my nose in it, you know, how well they’re doing without me. Or if they’re not doing so well, how it must be my fault. But either way, that’s how I keep up, at least.”

  “Because there’s no way you could contact them yourself, right? It’s been, what, how many years?”

  “They don’t want to hear from me,” he said. “I know that. And I sure as hell wasn’t gonna come back here. Not while their mother was alive.”

  I still had the rolling pin in my hand. I felt like hitting him just on general principle.

  “I got run out of here pretty good,” he said. “There’s no way she would have let me come back.”

  “That’s not my understanding of how it happened,” I said. “I don’t think it’s Vinnie’s, either.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not surprised. She could spin it any way she wanted if I wasn’t here to defend myself.”

  “Say one more disrespectful thing about her and I’ll put this thing right up your ass.”

  “Okay, okay, take it easy. There’s two sides to every story, right? Let’s just leave it at that. Now will you put the bakery equipment away? I wasn’t kidding, you look ridiculous.”

  I put the rolling pin back in the drawer and slammed it closed.

  “Is this really his house?” the man said, looking around. “This is my son’s kitchen? What does he do, make pastries for a living?”

  “He built it himself. You’ll have to excuse him for having a nice place to live.”

  “He really lives here. All by himself.”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “Why isn’t he on the reservation with the rest of his family? And who are you, anyway?”

  “My name is Alex. And Vinnie moved off the rez for his own reasons. You can ask him if you see him.”

  “I will,” he said, nodding his head. “You’re a friend of his?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Are you a good friend?”

  “I’d like to think so.”

  “So you know he’s in trouble.”

  I hesitated. “I don’t know much of anything. I know he’s gone. I know his cousin Buck is with him.”

  “Yeah, Buck Carrick. I hear they disappeared together. Nobody knows where they are.”

  “How’d you hear that?”

  “I told you, I’m still plugged into things. I may live out West now, but I’m still a member of the tribe, whether they want me to be or not.”

  “When did you hear about it?”

  “Yesterday. I hopped on the first plane to the Soo.”

  They all know, I thought. Every single person on that reservation, and even people who’ve been gone for years. They all got word of this before I did.

  “The chief led me to believe this was some kind of secret,” I said. “I guess it’s not.”

  “A secret? Are you kidding? On a reservation?”

  “Okay, whatever,” I said. “You still haven’t answered my question. Why did you come all the way out here?”

  “He’s still my son,” he said. “He’s in trouble. Isn’t that enough reason?”

  “They haven’t heard a thing from you in how many years? Hell, you didn’t seem to care that much when your other son was in trouble. I don’t recall seeing you at his funeral, either.”

  I could see that got to him. He flexed both of his fists and for a second I wished I were still holding that rolling pin. He was probably ten or fifteen years older than me, but he looked like he’d spent at least a few of those years in the prison weight room.

  “I was doing my time at Ironwood,” he said, “so it’s not like I had any choice. Besides, like I told you, I don’t think I would have been welcome up here.”

  “But now is different.”

  “Now is different, yes. Now Nika is gone and I can come here without breaking my promise to her, to never step foot in this state while she’s alive. Now maybe I can actually do something good for Vinnie, who I understand probably wants nothing to do with me. But if he’s in trouble, I can probably find him and help him. I’m pretty good at finding people. That’s why I was here when you walked in and jumped me. I was trying to find out who might have called him on this phone.”

  He picked up the phone and hit a few buttons.

  “Look,” he said. “In the caller-ID record. This call three nights ago. Just after two A.M. Do you know this number?”

  “It’s probably Buck’s cell phone,” I said. “But we can double-check.”

  “Okay, good. You see, now we’re working together. We might even make a good team.”

  “Who says we’re a team all of a sudden?”

  “Do you want to find him or not? Or are you not that good a friend?”

  “I helped him find your other son, okay? Did you hear about that one on your grapevine? When Tom disappeared in Canada? I helped Vinnie bring him back and bury him. So lay off with the friend business.”

  He turned away from me and rubbed his forehead. “Okay, I apologize,” he said. “God, I can’t even believe I’m back here.”

  “I know you came a long way,” I said, “but I don’t know how you expect to help find him. You don’t even know him anymore.”

  “Where do you think he is?” he said, turning back to me. “Right this second?”

  “If I knew, I’d
be on my way there.”

  “In general, I mean. What kind of place?”

  I thought back to that map I’d looked at on the bar. “On one of the other reservations,” I said. “That’s probably how he got word up here to the chief.”

  “Okay,” he said, nodding. “So let me ask you one question. If he’s on another reservation, who do you think they’re gonna talk to first, you or me?”

  He had me on that one.

  “While I’m at it, let me ask you something else. I know I’ve been gone a long time, but everybody on the plane was saying you guys have been having a big heat wave up here. People passing out on the street, having to go to the hospital … Is that true?”

  “It almost hit ninety a couple of days ago. So yes.”

  “When I left Vegas, it was a hundred and fifteen. You realize you’re all pussies up here, right?”

  “Come back when there’s six feet of snow on the ground,” I said. “We’ll see who’s a pussy.”

  He laughed at that one.

  “Ah yes,” he said. “That part I don’t miss. But if I can ask you one more question. Last one, I promise.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Is there anyplace we can get a drink around here?”

  *

  That’s how I ended up back at the Glasgow. I surprised Jackie, who’d already written me off as an early departure that night. I surprised him even more when he got up close to me and looked at my face.

  “What the hell happened to you?” he said. “And who’s your friend?”

  I wiped at the scrape I seemed to have received over my left eye. “Meet Lou LeBlanc.”

  “You look even worse,” he said as he gave Lou the once-over. “What were you guys doing?”

  “What do you think?” I said.

  “LeBlanc, did you say? Any relation to Vinnie?”

  “I guess you could say he’s related. He’s Vinnie’s father.”