Die a Stranger: An Alex McKnight Novel

by Steve Hamilton

  “Okay,” Lou said, nodding slowly. “Whatever you say. Sorry to disturb you, friend. Please have a nice night.”

  The man took a step backward and closed the door in Lou’s face.

  “Charming gentleman,” Lou said as we walked back to the truck. “It’s a shame we didn’t have more time to talk.”

  “Why were you trying to buy off him?”

  “I was testing him. I wanted to see if he’d sweat. Hell, maybe he does sell. Maybe his next-door neighbor is his partner.”

  “Or maybe he just gets paid by the ounce,” I said, “for being so good about taking messages.”

  “He’d make a great receptionist, wouldn’t he?”

  When we were back in the truck, we sat there for a while longer, looking at the two houses. Lou leaned his head back against the seat. It was obvious he was running out of gas.

  “You’ve had a pretty long day,” I said. “Let’s get some sleep. Tomorrow morning, we’ll figure out what to do next.”

  He banged his fist against the dashboard, but he didn’t argue with me.

  I pulled out onto the street. He looked at the two houses one more time as we drove by. He didn’t say a word as we drove through Sault Ste. Marie, the streetlights flickering across his face. He stared straight ahead and stayed silent as we left town and found that empty road back to Paradise, running across the hayfields and through the trees, then rounding the bay with the water stretching out into the darkness.

  I took us back on the northern route, through the reservation.

  “Let’s stop at the casino,” he said. “The one where Vinnie works at.”

  “I’ve already been there. Nobody could help me.”

  “Even so. I wouldn’t mind seeing where my son works. Get a feel for the place. Hell, maybe something new will occur to us.”

  It sounded like another lap around a track I’d already been on. But I had no better ideas at the moment, so I slowed down as we came around the bend and pulled into the parking lot. The Bay Mills Casino was lit up and shining in the darkness. Not Vegas level, of course, but as bright as anything else you’ll ever see up here. The lot was mostly full at the end of a beautiful summer day. Plenty of visitors to the Upper Peninsula who find out there’s not a whole hell of a lot to do after dark aside from drinking. I parked and we went inside. Instead of going right into the gaming area, Lou wandered around the lobby for a minute, looking up at the giant moose head mounted over the fireplace, then going down the line of pictures in the hallway. There were portraits of the Bay Mills Executive Council going back a few years, and Lou studied each quintet carefully.

  “I went to school with a couple of these guys,” he said, more to himself than to me. “Looks like they’re doing just fine.”

  I sensed some movement to our left, turned and saw two old-timers watching us. I elbowed Lou, but as soon as he turned to see what I was looking at, the two old-timers did a quick 180 and disappeared.

  “Old friends of yours?”

  “I kinda doubt it. But whatever. What exactly does Vinnie do here?”

  “He’s been a blackjack dealer here for years. He’ll move over to pit boss if they need him, but he still likes dealing. He’s probably the best they’ve got here.”

  “Taking money from white tourists. That’s quite a gig.”

  “Nobody’s making them play. Sometimes they even win.”

  He looked at me. “Yeah, sometimes. Look at this place and tell me just how often you think that happens. Hell, come to Vegas sometime.”

  “Do you want to see where he deals, or not?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  I led him around the corner, past the slot machines, to the table games. There was a circle of people around the roulette table, another playing craps. Then we hit the line of blackjack tables. Most of them were full. Lou found two empty seats at a two-dollar table and he sat down.

  “Couple of hands,” he said to me. “Just to clear our heads.”

  I took the spot next to him. Lou took out a hundred-dollar bill and put it on the table. I went for my wallet and he stopped me.

  “I’ve got you covered,” he said. “We won’t be here long.”

  The dealer was a woman in her thirties, a tribal member of course, although like most people up here you could see the European influence on her features. A little German here, a little Finnish there, the intermarriages going back through the generations. Her name card said “Jennie.” She gave us an all-business smile and made change for Lou’s hundred. He slid half the chips over to me without looking at them.

  She was close to the end of her decks, so we got only two hands in before she had to shuffle. That was Lou’s chance for a little small talk.

  “Nice place you got here, Jennie.”

  “Where are you from?” She handled the cards like she’d done this a few thousand times before.

  “Vegas.”

  “You must play a lot out there.”

  “I try not to. I know it’s a losing proposition.”

  She smiled and shrugged that off, offering Lou the yellow cut card. Lou placed it in the deck and she completed the cut.

  “You know Vinnie?”

  She paused at that. There was a subtle change in her body language, then she was right back to all-business again. “Vinnie LeBlanc?”

  “Yeah, Vinnie LeBlanc.”

  “He’s a dealer here, too. I haven’t seen him in a while. His mother died.”

  “You must be a cousin,” Lou said.

  “Everybody’s a cousin up here. But maybe you want to talk to Phil, sir.”

  She tilted her head and called his name without taking her eyes off the cards. A dealer never takes his or her eyes off the cards when they’re in play, after all. We finished up the hand and then Lou thanked her by sliding her the rest of his chips. I did the same. As we stood up, the pit boss came out with his head cocked, waiting for our story. I knew him well enough to say hello to, and in fact he was the exact same pit boss I had taken aside just a few days ago.

  “You’re Alex,” he said to me, looking right past Lou. “Vinnie’s friend, right? We already had this conversation, remember? I have no idea where he could be.”

  “I guess we’re just stopping by again,” I said, “on the off chance you might have heard something new.”

  “No, not a word,” he said, looking back and forth between us. His eyes narrowed as he focused on Lou. “Have we met before?”

  “Maybe a long time ago. Last time I was here, this place wasn’t even built yet.”

  “You’re Bay Mills?”

  He took a few seconds to answer that one. The pit boss and I both waited while everyone else around us kept doing their casino business.

  “No,” Lou finally said. “I’m not. I thought I still might be, but no.”

  The man gave him a strange look.

  “I appreciate your time,” Lou said. “I’ll let you go back to making money. That’s a nice golf course you’ve got across the street, too.”

  The pit boss kept waiting for the punch line, or for Lou to start making some kind of sense maybe, but Lou just turned and walked away.

  “Don’t mind him,” I said to the man. “He’s had a long day.”

  When I caught up to him I grabbed his arm.

  “What the hell?” I said. “Was all of that really necessary?”

  “Did you notice?” he said, shaking his arm free. “As soon as I said his name, it was like a big red flag went up. Like I’m under suspicion all of a sudden, just for asking about my own son.”

  “Nobody in there knows he’s your son. They’re just looking out for him.”

  “I wanted to find him,” he said. “Today. I wanted to get off the plane and find Vinnie.”

  There were a dozen comebacks I could have made to that one, but I let it go. Whatever the circumstances, however belated the effort, he was here to help Vinnie, and that was the one thing we could agree on.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “Figure
out what to do next.”

  We went outside. We weren’t ten steps from the door when a car pulled up. A black four-door sedan that looked sort of like an unmarked police car, and I was already getting our story ready. But when the car stopped, the driver’s-side door opened, and I recognized the man who stepped out. He had long gray hair tied behind his head, like a lot of the old-timers around here. I’d see him over at Vinnie’s mother’s house every time I went there. He would nod to me once in a while, but I don’t think he ever said one word to my face.

  “Lou LeBlanc,” the man said, coming around the front of the car. “It is you. I thought those guys must be losing their minds.”

  “Henry,” Lou said. “It’s good to see you.”

  “Yeah, like hell. What are you doing here?”

  “Alex, this is Henry Carrick,” he said to me. “One of Buck’s uncles, I believe.”

  “I’ll ask you again,” the man said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m looking for my son,” Lou said. “Excuse me, I’m looking for my son and your nephew.”

  “I’m amazed you’d even show your face around here,” the man finally said. “I mean, hell, I’m amazed you’re still walking around with all your teeth. If some of the other guys see you here—”

  “Yeah, go give them a call,” Lou said. “Round up every last one of them. In the meantime, I see you’re all talk. Just like always.”

  “You’re banned from the reservation, LeBlanc. You know that. Hell, you’re banned from the whole state. I thought that was made clear when you got run out of here.”

  “I didn’t get run out of here,” Lou said, stepping closer to him.

  “Okay, you ran away with your tail between your legs,” the man said. “Like a beaten animal. However you want to put it, the result was the same. You were supposed to leave and never come back.”

  “I stayed away for as long as Nika was alive. I kept my promise.”

  “Don’t you even dare say her name. Not anywhere on this reservation. Do you understand me?”

  “She was my wife, Carrick. She chose me. Not you.”

  “And look how well that turned out.”

  Lou grabbed him by the collar. I took a step forward and Lou put out his other hand to stop me.

  “This is between two old friends,” he said to me. “Just stay out of it.”

  At that point, I would have been happy to do so. Hell, I would have just driven home and left the two of them there to have it out. But we were starting to draw a small crowd of people coming in and out of the casino. I couldn’t just let him kill this guy, anyway. Which is exactly what would have happened if they’d started swinging at each other.

  “We don’t have time for this,” I said. “We’ve got more important things to do.”

  Lou finally let the man go and tapped him lightly on the cheek.

  “It still must hurt,” Lou said. “What is it, forty years now? The love of your life and she dropped you like a hot rock.”

  “You’ve got five minutes to get off the rez.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Lou said, walking away. “And then you’ll call the whole gang to come beat me up. I heard you the first time.”

  “You got a lot of nerve, too,” he said. “Talking about Vinnie and Buck, like we’re not doing everything we can to find them. This from a man who abandoned his whole family.”

  Lou stopped. Mr. Carrick finally found some degree of sense and went around to the other side of the car, putting two and a half tons of metal between himself and a prison-hardened man who probably could have taken him apart with his bare hands.

  “You’ve been warned,” the man said. He got into his car and drove away. The people who had gathered around us continued on, into or away from the casino.

  “You did mention the welcome wagon,” I said as we walked back to my truck. “I guess that was it.”

  “I’m obviously not welcome here,” he said. “But can we make one more quick stop?”

  “Where’s that?”

  “I just want to say hello to her. And goodbye. One more time.”

  I stopped there in the middle of the lot and looked at him. This was exactly what Vinnie had asked to do.

  “Come on,” I said. “Get in.”

  *

  A few minutes later, we were up on top of Mission Hill. It was just as dark and empty as that night I had brought Vinnie up here. Once again, I stayed by the truck and watched a lonely LaBlanc man make his way through the graveyard to find the stone next to the freshly turned earth. Once again, it was a clear summer night and I could see all the way across to the blinking lights on top of the wind turbines in Canada.

  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?”