North of Nowhere: An Alex McKnight Novel

by Steve Hamilton

  “Like I said, I knew you were a straight shooter. I respect that. I happen to think you’ve got it all wrong. I don’t think you understand me at all. But that’s all right. That’s not why I brought you out here.”

  “Are you gonna finally tell me why you did?”

  “It’s simple,” he said. “I wanted to ask your opinion.”

  “On what?”

  “On what happened the other night. And who might be responsible.”

  “I don’t see why you’re asking me,” I said. “And to go to all this trouble…Hell, I know it wasn’t fun getting robbed, Vargas, but if you only had five thousand dollars in the safe…”

  “That’s the figure I gave the police.”

  “Okay, so it was more. A lot more?”

  He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me.

  “Why would you want to keep a lot of money in your safe?” I said. “A guy like you, I figure you’d invest it in something. This way, you don’t even get any interest…”

  “Yeah, no interest,” he said. “I also don’t have to give a big chunk of it to the IRS. Or to my first wife, for that matter. But let’s not talk about why I had money in my safe, or how much, or how it got there. I just want it back. I thought you might be able to help me.”

  “You already have a man working for you.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Your ex-partner, it turns out. Wasn’t that an interesting development.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “But you’re the one with the experience,” he said. “You’re the one who wore a badge, down in Detroit. You’re the one with the bullet in your chest.” He looked down my chest, like everybody does when they happen to be talking about it. Someday I’ll get used to it.

  “Look, Vargas…”

  “Let me lay it out for you, Alex. Then you tell me what you think. That’s all I want. Then we’ll go back, I promise.”

  “Lay it out.”

  “Besides myself,” he said, “there were only five people in this world who knew about that safe. Not even my wife knew about it.”

  “Come on, how could she not know?”

  “I had the builder put that in. She hardly saw the place until it was done. Anyway, I’m at a poker game a couple of months ago. At O’Dell’s place, in the back room. Bennett was there, Jackie, Gill, Kenny, and Swanson. That was before I had any idea about Swanson and my wife, mind you. That was back when I still thought I was happily married. I had a few drinks that night. Too many, I suppose. I was losing a lot of money, and I said something stupid like maybe I had to go into my safe, to get some more cash.”

  “That was it? That’s all you said?”

  “All right, I may have said a little more. You know, I may have bragged about it a little. All the cash I had in my wall safe, and how my wife didn’t know about it. How she’d spend it all. Or something. Hell, I don’t even remember half of what I said.”

  “So based on that…”

  “Based on that, my first reaction to the other night is that it had to be Swanson. He knew it was poker night. He knew I’d be there to open the safe. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Isn’t that what you’d be thinking?”

  “I only met Swanson once,” I said. “At Jackie’s place. We didn’t say more than ten words to each other. So I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “But just based on the list of suspects, Alex, isn’t Swanson the name you’d come up with?”

  “I know you can rule out Jackie,” I said. “And Bennett and Gill. I don’t know Kenny…”

  “Assume it’s not Kenny,” he said. “Kenny’s got no reason to do this. No reason at all.”

  “Okay, then that leaves Swanson. Assuming that nobody else knows about the safe.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  “That’s it? That’s the opinion you wanted from me? Just to agree with you on that?”

  “That’s what I was thinking at first,” he said, “but now…Let’s say that certain things have caused me to see it another way.”

  “Certain things. Like what?”

  “Let’s talk about you for a minute,” he said.

  “Why do you want to talk about me?”

  “Leon had some interesting things to say about you. So did Roy.”

  “By Roy, I take it you mean Chief Maven? What are you, best buddies or something?”

  “Not at all. He’s just a good police chief trying to solve a crime. Naturally we talked about the other men who were at my house that night. He seemed quite…agitated when your name came up.”

  “Why am I not surprised…”

  “Leon paints a very positive picture of you,” he said. “Maven, maybe not so positive. But I put both pictures together and I see something very intriguing. A failed baseball player, a failed cop. A failure as a private investigator even, although naturally Leon didn’t come out and say that. He did say that he hasn’t spoken to you in a while, and that you seem to have changed. I’m thinking, with everything you’ve been through, all the hard knocks you’ve taken, what do you have to show for it? You’ve always done the right thing, stayed on the straight path, for what?”

  “I don’t have a few million dollars like you do,” I said. “Is that what you’re getting at? Would it occur to you that I don’t care about that?”

  “You’ve never committed a crime in your entire life,” he said, “but now maybe you’re in a state of mind where you’d be…a little more receptive to the idea of trying something.”

  “I can’t believe this. You really think I did it.”

  “No,” he said. “Not at all. I know you didn’t set this whole thing up. But maybe, just maybe, if some person…or persons…were to approach you with this idea of playing a key role in a takedown.”

  “A takedown,” I said. “My God, you are completely insane.”

  “You were the inside man, weren’t you? You’ve been around criminals, and around guns. You knew how something like this works, what bases had to be covered. You knew how to make sure it went smoothly. With you right there on the scene, how could it not? If anything unexpected happened, you’d be there to deal with it.”

  “This is quite a yarn you’re spinning,” I said. “It’s downright entertaining.”

  “At first, I’m thinking, why do it with all those other people there? Why not just catch me alone? Or just me and my wife? Then it hits me. This way is better. This way is actually a lot safer. If I was by myself, I might have tried something stupid. Figure what the hell, it’s just me here, I’m gonna try to disarm this guy, shoot it out. And if it was me and my wife…Somebody putting a gun to my wife’s head? Again, assuming that I didn’t know she was screwing Swanson behind my back and I still gave a fuck what happened to her? I’d be a madman. I could do anything. Try to take them all on at once.”

  “I seem to recall you just about wetting your pants the other night,” I said. “But go ahead. I don’t want to ruin your fantasy.”

  “With five guests in the house, five men who I feel some responsibility for, but not so much that I’m crazy about it, you knew I’d play along. No problem at all.”

  “Okay, so if I was brought in as the inside man,” I said, “then who asked me? Whose idea was this, Vargas?”

  “You know who we’re talking about.”

  “Who? If it’s not Swanson and it’s not Kenny, who are we talking about? Jackie? Gill? Bennett? Hell, didn’t Bennett take a nice shot to the ribs trying to protect you?”

  “That was just for effect,” he said. “He was acting. I know he wouldn’t have done it if it was for real.”

  “Do these men know that you’ve foiled their grand plan?”

  “No,” he said. “I thought I’d bring it to you first. If you can round up all the money and give it back to me, maybe I’d be willing to drop the whole thing.”

  “That’s big of you.”

  “Stop playing games with me,” he said. His face was red now. Hell, his whole head was red.
“It’s bottom-line time. I could just as easily go back to shore with one less person on board. A tragic accident, and you on the bottom of the lake.” He stood up from his chair. The dog stood below him, right between his legs. Two against one.

  “I assume you’ve got a gun,” I said.

  “I don’t need a gun,” he said. “You know why?”

  “Because you’re a total fucking moron?”

  “You ever hear of Moo Duk Kwan?”

  “Sure, with rice and an eggroll…. It’s delicious.”

  “It’s a Korean martial art,” he said. “I picked it up when I was stationed there.”

  “Does it work on boats?”

  “You’re about to find out,” he said. “Stand up.” He went into his pose, left hand down, right hand in a fist. He lifted his left leg slightly off the ground, no doubt ready to kick the living shit out of me. The dog stayed on all fours.

  I didn’t get up. I figured that’s the last thing I wanted to do, get on my feet, put my dukes up, then get cut in half. If I keep sitting here, I thought, he’s not going to do anything yet. I didn’t think they taught him how to attack someone sitting in a deck chair.

  “Stand up,” he said. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “I’m trying very hard not to laugh,” I said. Stay calm. Act like it’s all a big joke. Keep him off balance. I picked up my bottle of beer, took a hit off it. As I put it back in the little bottle holder on the gunwale, I glanced down at the little shelf that ran along the deck. Life jackets. A seat cushion. A fire extinguisher.

  “McKnight, if you’re a man you’ll stand the hell up.” The dog picked up on the hostility in his master’s voice, started dancing around again and barking.

  “You know what your problem is, Vargas?” I said. “Your problem is…Look out for the dog!”

  He looked down. It was all I needed. I came out of the chair at him, and as he lashed out at me with a side kick, I dropped to the deck and swept his back ankle. Before he could get up, I grabbed the fire extinguisher and hit him in the head with it. I stood over him, ready to hit him again if I had to. The dog went absolutely rabid on me, jumping at me with fire in its little bug eyes, trying to tear my kneecaps off.

  “You’re gonna be bait in about two seconds, dog. Get the hell out of my way.”

  I grabbed some rope and tied Vargas’s hands behind his back. There was a big welt already rising on his forehead. For a sick moment I wondered if I had hit him too hard, but then he started to come to. I sat him up against the door to the cabin and took the captain’s chair, threw the throttle forward and nearly flipped the whole damned boat over. That got the dog going again. I had to kick him away a few times while I throttled it back to a reasonable speed and headed back to shore.

  “What the fuck…” Vargas said, shaking his head. That welt was going to look terrible, I could tell. Not a good thing on a bald man.

  “Hold on, Vargas,” I said. “We’re going home.”

  “Goddamn it, I should have known you’d be a cheap-shot artist.”

  “Vargas, you’re the one who brought me out here and threatened to leave me on the bottom of the lake. I figure that gives me the right to fight dirty.”

  “You’re going to be very sorry about this,” he said.

  I gave the steering wheel a quick turn, sending Vargas ass over tea-kettle.

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “I’ve never driven a boat like this. Maybe you better just keep your mouth shut so you don’t distract me anymore.”

  He worked himself back up and just sat there the rest of the way, staring at me like he was memorizing every detail. When I got back to the mouth of the St. Marys River, it occurred to me that I had no desire to take the boat all the way back to the marina, figuring out how to get into the locks, sitting there for ten minutes while all the people on the deck watched us, no doubt wondering why one of the men in the boat was tied up. As we rounded the bend, I saw the Shallows, and O’Dell’s place. It was a welcome sight.

  There were a couple of docks right on the river. I picked the one closest to O’Dell’s and killed the engine, letting the boat drift into range. I threw one of the ropes over the post, and climbed out of the boat. The dog took one more shot at me, hanging on my shoelaces for a few seconds before I shook him free.

  “You can’t just leave me here,” Vargas said.

  “I didn’t tie your hands very tight,” I said. “You’ll work your way free. If you don’t, have your dog chew the ropes off, just like in the movies.”

  “I gave you a chance, Alex. Just remember that. We could have settled this the right way. Everything that happens is on your head now.”

  “Vargas, I don’t know where you came up with this idea, but—”

  “I’ve got you nailed,” he said. He rocked himself forward, onto his knees. “All of you. And you, my friend, are about to find out what’s going to happen. In a big way.”

  “So long, Vargas.” I left him there to work on his ropes. As I walked over to O’Dell’s place, his words rung in my head. He’s got us nailed, he says. What the hell could he be talking about?

  Something started to come together in my head. A connection. I waved it off. I couldn’t imagine he really had something.

  In my wildest dreams, I couldn’t imagine.

  Chapter Eight

  It was dark and cool in O’Dell’s bar. It felt good just to walk into the place. Bennett was sitting at one of the tables, having a late lunch. His son was mixing drinks for two men sitting at the end of the bar. His wife was washing glasses.

  “Alex!” Bennett said. “You’re becoming a regular customer! What’s the matter, Jackie kick you out of his place?”

  “You’re not going to believe this,” I said. “I need a ride over to the marina. My truck is there.”

  “What’d you do? Swim over?”

  “It’s kind of a long story,” I said. Which meant I had to tell it. With Bennett getting up from his lunch and getting me a beer, of course I had to tell him the whole thing.

  “He thinks I was involved in the robbery,” I said, getting to the punch line. “He thinks you were involved, too.”

  “What is he, nuts?”

  “You know that shot to the ribs you took for him? He thinks it was staged.”

  “Yeah, it was staged all right,” he said, rubbing his left side. “That’s why it’s been keeping me up all night. All I gotta do is roll over the wrong way and ka-pow! It’s like somebody sticking me with a cattle prod.”

  “You need to go to the hospital,” Margaret said from the sink. “It might be broken!”

  “Go on,” Bennett said, waving his hand at her. “What are they gonna do? They don’t even tape up broken ribs anymore. They just give you pain killers and send you home.”

  “So you get pain killers,” she said. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “I don’t need pain killers,” he said, giving me a little wink. “I’ve been married for forty years. I’ve built up a natural immunity to pain.”

  “I’ll show you pain,” she said. Which got them started again. But it was all good-natured, and I just sat there with my cold beer watching them. It was a hell of a lot better than being out on that damned boat.

  A couple of beers later, Bennett finally took me across town to the marina. “What is this, a Ford Explorer?” I said, looking around the inside of it. “It’s nice.”

  “Yeah, it’s got four-wheel-drive,” he said. “Runs like a tank in the winter. You still got that old truck, I see.”

  “Why not?” I said. “It still runs.”

  “Yeah, just like me,” he said. “Hey listen, take care of yourself, eh? I’m sorry you got involved with this in the first place. Hell, it’s all because Jackie hates playing poker with only five guys.”

  “It’s all right, Bennett.”

  “What do you figure Vargas is gonna do now? It sounds like you made an enemy today.”

  “He’s all noise,” I said. “Don’t worry about me.” I th
anked him and let him go. I took a quick look over the fence at the last dock. I couldn’t see Vargas’s slip with all the yachts in the way, but I didn’t think his boat was back yet.

  I got in my truck and headed west, back to Paradise. I felt a little tired and sore. “God, what a horse’s ass,” I said out loud. “Moo Duk Kwan, I’m gonna have to look that one up.”

  When I got home, I checked on the other five cabins. Everybody was out somewhere, enjoying the day. I went back to my own cabin, cleaned up a little bit, sat down, and tried to read something. But I couldn’t concentrate. I kept seeing Vargas’s foot coming at me, missing me by maybe an inch. And the great red welt I had put on his bald head. And the teeth on that dog.

  You’re gonna have nightmares about that dog, I said to myself. You’re gonna have nightmares about a three-pound Chihuahua.

  A few hours later, I made my way down to the Glasgow Inn. Jackie was there behind the bar. He still looked a little tired, and every few minutes he’d stare off into nowhere, like he was watching something going on a million miles away. I figured he still wasn’t over it yet.

  I didn’t tell him about my little lunch date with Vargas. That one I’d save for another day.

  As I had dinner there, I caught up with the local paper, the Soo Evening News, “serving the Eastern U.P. daily since 1903.” I always start with the police beat on the second page. The man who writes up the crimes is a real character, and he always puts his own unique spin on everything he reports. My all-time favorite was still the item titled “Unlicensed Operator.” Somebody had gone into a store and left a dog in the car, who proceeded to knock the stick into first gear. The car rolled into the street, causing damage that was estimated at over five thousand dollars. The police beat reporter summed up the entry with a simple statement: “The dog was not cited.”

  The crimes on the blotter are usually just drunk driving and the occasional vandalism, the petty thefts and the possession of drugs in small quantities—the “forbidden weed,” as the reporter once called it. It’s not often that he gets to take the lead story on page one, and write about something big, like what happened at Vargas’s house. The day before, he only had time for the bare details—break-in at local residence, armed intruders, nobody harmed, Soo police pursuing the case. In today’s paper, with more time to develop the story, the good readers of the Soo Evening News got the full treatment, complete with a trio of “costumed assailants,” who methodically ransacked one room of the house while five guests lay facedown on the floor. Mercifully, they didn’t list the names of the guests.