Winter of the Wolf Moon am-2

by Steve Hamilton

  “Forget it,” I said. “I should have been a little more understanding.”

  He looked at the machine. “Is this thing really pumping air into you? What happens if I turn this dial up all the way?” He made a fake for it. I flinched.

  “Ow! Goddamn it. Vinnie, I’m so glad you came by.”

  “I had him, Alex,” he said. “I had him right here.” He held his hands up and looked at the space between them.

  “Who, Bruckman?”

  “I wasn’t going to let go,” he said. “But then Prudell started shooting. I was afraid he was going to hit me.”

  “He wouldn’t hit you,” I said. “Don’t forget, he’s holding a ten-thousand-dollar bond on you. I don’t know the rules exactly, but I’m pretty sure he loses the bond if he kills you.”

  “The bond,” he said, like he was sorry I brought it up.

  “When’s the trial?” I said.

  “Next week.”

  “Now that they know more about Bruckman, they’ll have to go easy on you, right?”

  “I don’t know. They still don’t like it when an Indian attacks a cop. No matter what.”

  “The tribe will represent you, right?”

  “Yes,” he said, looking at the floor again. “They will.”

  “Dorothy is still one of you, isn’t she?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s still a member of the tribe, even though she’s been gone so long?”

  “Of course she is.”

  “So what’s the tribe doing about her? Aren’t they trying to find her?”

  “I think they are, yes. I can tell you one thing. If I ever have my hands on him again, I’ll kill him. I’ll choke him to death, Alex. He’s evil. I could see it in his eyes.”

  “I know,” I said. “I saw it too.”

  “Well,” he said. He seemed to pull himself back from somewhere far away. “I got a shift at the casino. I’m glad you’re okay. I mean, all things considered.”

  “I’m glad you came by,” I said. “It means a lot to me.” The drags had me talking mushy again.

  When he was gone, I tried to read for a while, but it made my head start to throb. Trying to watch television was even worse. The drags again, or the concussion, or God knows what. I lay in the bed and thought about baseball, for some reason. I replayed a couple games in my head. How long ago was my last game? It was a triple-A game in Columbus, September 1972. I remembered my very last at-bat, a well-hit ball to left field. It settled into the outfielder’s glove, five feet away from a home run. My whole career in a nutshell. It seemed like forever ago, and yet as I looked at my hands I could still see the protrusions from playing four years behind the plate, all the fastballs and foul tips.

  And below those old scars, the new wounds on my wrists. The ropes were so tight. In my mind I was there again, sliding through the snow. My heart pounded. I was breathing hard. I could feel the balloon in my chest, this alien thing inside me.

  Easy, Alex. This is exactly what you don’t need right now. Just take it easy.

  I put my head back on the pillow, forced myself to relax, to think about nothing. I remembered what an old teammate had told me, that the secret to thinking about nothing is not trying to stop thoughts from coming into your head. Instead, you let them come and then slip right through your head. In one ear, across the slippery floor, and then right back out the other ear. But then, this was a left-handed pitcher talking, and everybody knows that lefthanders are crazy.

  The nurses made their rounds. Later a man waxed the floor in the hallway. The machine kept pumping air into me. From outside I could hear the sound of the wind.

  I slept. Finally, a good night’s sleep. In the morning the doctor came around again. We did the X rays again, and then he asked me if I wanted him to take the tube out.

  “Is that a trick question?” I said. “Pull the damned thing out already.”

  He gave me a local before he pulled the tube out. On the end of it there was a deflated balloon, covered with whatever that stuff is that coats the inside of your lung. He stitched up the incision in my side and told me to just lie there for a couple more hours until he got back before I tried standing up. When he left the room, I waited all of one minute before I swung my legs around to the floor. Very slowly, I stood up. It felt good, in a violently sick-to-my-stomach sort of way. I was ready to try it again about an hour later.

  Leon stopped in around lunchtime. “Where’s your breathing machine?” he said.

  “I’m flying solo,” I said.

  “Great, where are your clothes? Let’s get you out of here.”

  “Leon, it still takes me fifteen minutes to get up and go to the bathroom.”

  “Well, I’ve been busy, at least. Your two friends are definitely staying at the Brass Anchor Motel. They have a unit on the end with a window overlooking the main road. With you in the hospital, they haven’t had much to do, I guess. I did see them leave one day and drive around the reservation.”

  “What, you’ve been watching them the whole time?”

  “Off and on,” he said. Now that I thought about it, he did look tired. “I couldn’t think of any good way to inquire about them at the motel desk. If it got back to them, they’d know somebody’s on to them.”

  “I don’t know what else we can do,” I said. “Except call Brandow again, see if he’s gotten anywhere.”

  “Cops don’t play ball with private eyes,” he said. “It’s an unwritten rule.”

  “Leon, you should really listen to yourself sometime. ‘Cops don’t play ball with private eyes.’ For God’s sake. This is Bill Brandow we’re talking about. He’s a good guy.”

  “Not when he’s wearing the badge, Alex.”

  “Okay, fine,” I said. “Whatever you say.”

  “Now, about the Bruckman situation…”

  “What Bruckman situation? He didn’t take Dorothy.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “The more I think about it,” I said. “Nothing else makes sense if he did.”

  “Then who took her?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe the two guys who are following me?”

  “But if they have her, why are they following you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe they have Dorothy but they don’t have the white bag.” I gave him the quick rundown on the white canvas bag that Bruckman wanted so badly.

  “No matter who those guys are, or what they want,” he said, “we still have to find Bruckman. He’s our only source of information, number one. Number two, don’t we sort of owe him something now? After what he did to you?”

  “Give me a couple days before I have to think about that, okay? It’s all I can do to get up and take a piss.”

  “Where do you think he is?” he said. “Right now.”

  “Who knows, Leon? He could be anywhere.”

  “Think, Alex. What did he say?”

  I ran the night through my head, trying to remember what he said. Or what his teammates said.

  “One of his guys called him Captain Fuckhead,” I said. “That’s pretty good.”

  “Okay, so he has some dissension there,” Leon said. “What else can you think of?”

  I kept thinking. “Well, let’s see. They beat the hell out of me. He wanted to know where Dorothy was. He wanted to know where the bag was. Then they carried me outside, beat the hell out of me again. Then they dragged me behind their snowmobiles for a while. Then they stopped…”

  “Yes?”

  “They argued,” I said. “The guy who called him Captain Fuckhead, he asked him if they were going to drag me all way back over the river.”

  “The river,” he said. “The St. Marys. They’re in Canada.”

  “Yes,” I said. “They must be.”

  “They’re hiding out over there. Something must have happened.”

  “And the only reason they came back over,” I said, “was to find that bag.”

  “What do you think is in it?
” he said. “Drugs?”

  “I don’t know what else it could be,” I said. “Although if that’s true…” I didn’t want to complete the thought.

  But I couldn’t escape it. Even when Leon was gone and I spent my last night in the hospital, I couldn’t stop asking myself the same question over and over.

  I knew Dorothy was in trouble. She was mixed up with some bad people, and she came to me because she didn’t know what to do next. She had obviously made some mistakes, but beyond that I thought she was just an innocent victim. That’s the part that got to me that night. It’s what made me feel so bad when she was taken from my cabin. It’s what drove me to go out looking for her. But if that bag she was carrying around was full of speed or coke or God knows what, then what did that say about her?

  And after all I had been through in the last few days, what did that say about me?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I left the hospital on a Thursday morning, after three nights on the machine and one more night just to make sure my ribs were going to stay put. The doctor took one more X ray, gave me strict orders to do nothing more strenuous than drive home and go to bed for a couple more days, and then I was a free man.

  The wind was waiting for me as I stepped out the front door of the hospital. It hit me across the face with a blast of air so cold it made my eyes water. Vinnie was sitting in my truck.

  “Welcome back,” he said as I eased myself in. “How d’ya feel?”

  “Cold,” I said. Even with the heater going, the car seat felt like a slab of ice.

  “The wind chill is minus forty today,” he said as he put it in gear. “I say we point this truck south and keep driving until we run out of gas money.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until I eat breakfast,” I said. “I mean real food.”

  “Jackie’s waiting for you,” he said. “Soon as you drop me off at the casino. My car wouldn’t start this morning.”

  “Some day I’ll get this window fixed,” I said. It felt strange to be sitting on the wrong side of my own truck, especially with the cold air whistling through the plastic.

  “I saw your man Leon this morning,” he said. “He looked like he hadn’t slept in three days. He came into Jackie’s for a cup of coffee. When he saw me he took me outside and told me he was checking on a couple guys at one of the motels. I’m supposed to tell you that he’s already working on the other, what did he say, the other individuals at large in Canada.”

  “He’s something else,” I said.

  “Alex, don’t you think he’s a little weird?”

  “Just drive,” I said. “I’m too hungry to talk.”

  As the snow blew across the road, it swirled in an ever-changing pattern, hypnotizing me as I watched it. I wrapped my coat tight around my body and leaned back in the seat. Somehow I dozed off, even with the cold wind in my ear. When I opened my eyes again, we were just coming to the Bay Mills Reservation. Even on a freezing cold Thursday morning in the middle of January, the casino parking lot was mostly full.

  “Thanks for picking me up,” I said as he opened the door.

  “Watch out for snowmobiles,” he said.

  I slid over and took the wheel. My head started to hurt again as I concentrated on the road, but I thought about Jackie’s omelets and that kept me going. On the main road into Paradise, I looked for the Brass Anchor Motel on the left. There it was, just after the welcome sign. It was a simple string of doors, maybe eight units in all. A dark green Jeep was parked at the end closest to the road.

  Alex is back in town, boys.

  The Glasgow Inn was mostly empty. It was late in the morning, so the snowmobilers were already out on the trails. Although how the hell they could ride around out there all day in this weather was beyond me. It hurt just to think about it.

  “Good God Almighty,” Jackie said when he saw me. “If you aren’t the ugliest thing that ever walked in here.”

  “Nice to see you too,” I said. “I need an omelet with the works.”

  “Too late for breakfast,” he said. “Kitchen’s closed.”

  “Jackie, even with two broken ribs, I will kill you with my bare hands if you don’t get your ass in that kitchen.”

  “Go sit by the fire,” he said. “I suppose you want the paper and a Bloody Mary, too.”

  “You’re a good man, Jackie. God will reward you some day.”

  He shot me a funny look on his way through the kitchen door. I pulled a chair close to the fireplace and threw another log on. When I was settled in, I promised myself that I wouldn’t move from that spot for the next week.

  When Jackie came back with the food, he stood over me for a long time, looking down at me.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “Seriously, are you gonna be all right? You look like shit”

  “That’s how I feel,” I said. “But yes, I’m gonna be all right.”

  “I got a case of Molson waiting for you,” he said. “Just let me know.”

  “Bless you,” I said.

  He gave me another funny look and left me to myself. I sat there in the chair and watched the fire. The wind kept blowing outside. An hour later, I finally got off my lazy ass long enough to use the bathroom. While I was up I went over to the window and pulled the curtains open, looked out at some snowmobiles buzzing by and then down the road toward the Brass Anchor Motel. I could just see the corner of the sign through the trees.

  This is insane, Alex. There are two men holed up in that motel, waiting for you to do something. And you’re holed up here in the bar doing absolutely nothing, waiting for somebody else to find out who they are and why they’re watching you.

  I went to the bar and grabbed the phone. When I reached the sheriff’s office, I asked for Bill. He wasn’t in. I left a message for him to call me at the Glasgow Inn. I went back to my chair by the fire for all of two minutes and then I got back up and picked up the phone again.

  What was that number? I couldn’t remember it. It might have changed by now, anyway. It’s been over fourteen years. I called Information in Detroit, asked for the number for my old precinct. When I had the receptionist on the line, I went through every name I could think of-my old sergeant, a couple detectives, every officer I could think of. None of them were in the precinct anymore. I asked to talk to the desk sergeant on duty. When she switched me over, I tried to explain to him that I was a former officer, and that I needed to run a license plate. He wasn’t buying it. I couldn’t blame him.

  I walked around the room a couple times, went back to the window and looked down the road again. Then I remembered a couple more names of old police officers I had worked with. I went back to the phone and tried them out on the receptionist. Nothing. Everybody I had worked with, they were all gone. I wondered if most of them were even cops anymore.

  My old partner, I didn’t have to wonder about.

  Leon came in a little while later, letting in a cold blast of air as he opened the door. You wouldn’t confuse the man with a GQ model to begin with, but now he looked horrible. His unruly red hair was even more of a mess than usual, and the rings under his eyes made me wonder if he had slept at all in the last three days. He looked even worse than I did.

  “What the hell happened to you?” I said.

  “I’ve been working, Alex. I’ve been looking for Bruckman. I just wanted to swing by, check on our friends at the motel, see how you’re doing.” He came over to the bar and sat on a stool.

  “Have you slept, for God’s sake?”

  “Here and there,” he said. “In the car. I’ve been trying to hit the stores and restaurants during the day, and then again during the evening, along with the bars.”

  “What, are you crazy? Where have you been-”

  “In Canada,” he said. “Remember? We know he’s probably in Canada somewhere.”

  “You’ve been going to every store and restaurant and bar in Canada?”

  “No, think about it, Alex. They rode their snowmobiles here, right? How
far across the river can they be?”

  “Anywhere in Soo Canada,” I said. “Which is only four times bigger than Soo Michigan.”

  “It’s not that hard,” he said. “You just hit one place and then the next. You get into a rhythm. He’s gotta be somewhere over there, Alex. He has to eat. And you said he was high, right?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “How many cokeheads you know just sit inside all day?”

  “I don’t know, Leon.”

  “Potheads are another story. But when you’re on coke, you need action. You need to be out all night, making the scene. You know, lights, music.”

  Jackie put a Canadian in front of me, looked at Leon and then rolled his eyes. “I need coffee,” Leon said. “As strong as you can make it.”

  “Don’t say that,” I said. “His coffee is bad enough already.”

  “So I’ve been hitting all the nightspots extra hard, Alex. Because I know he’s out there somewhere. And there aren’t that many places to go at night. I mean, compared to all the places you can go during the day.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” I said. “Have you tried the hockey rinks?”

  “Hockey rinks,” he said.

  “Yeah, you said it yourself. He needs action. He’s a hockey player.”

  “Of course,” he said. “Goddamn it. Of course.”

  “If he’s anything like the baseball players I’ve known,” I said. “Or the basketball players. Or whatever.”

  “Even if he’s hiding out over there, he’s gonna have to get out on that ice eventually. Hurry up with that coffee, Jackie. I gotta get back out there.”

  “Leon, will you just relax for a minute? You’re gonna kill yourself. Eat some lunch at least.”

  “Okay,” he said. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I have to pace myself.”

  “I’ve been sitting here thinking about what to do with our guys in the motel,” I said. “I tried calling Brandow, but he’s not in. I even tried to call some of my old cop friends in Detroit, see if I could get somebody to run the plate.”

  “I already ran their plate, Alex.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “I called the Secretary of State and gave them the number on my P.I. license. Didn’t you know you could do that?”