“It’s a bullet,” I said.
“No, that’s not what I mean. Although I can see the scars.” She ran her fingers down the seams on my chest. “I mean in your heart. You are a good man. Maybe too good.”
She kissed me. “You’re too good, Alex,” she said. “You’re too good.”
“Kiss me again,” I said. “We’ll see how good I am.
She did. She kissed me and started moving on top of me, with her hair falling down in my face and the smell of her filling me up until I couldn’t help myself. I slid my hands down along her body, along every inch of her skin as she kept kissing me and punishing me, until her legs were spread open wide and I was about to enter her.
She stopped.
“Alex,” she said.
“What is it?”
“Tell me.”
“Tell you what, Maria?”
“Tell me he won’t kill me.”
“He won’t,” I said. She slid down over me. I was inside her.
“Tell me again,” she said.
“He won’t,” I said. “I won’t let him.”
She moved again.
“How are you going to stop him?”
“Maria…”
‘Tell me, Alex.”
“I won’t let him kill you, I promise.”
She slid down on me, and then again, and then again.
“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me that you’ll kill him.”
“Maria…”
She stopped. “Say it,” she said.
I looked into her eyes.
“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me you’ll find him and you’ll kill him.”
I kept looking at her. I didn’t say anything.
She slid off me and sat on the edge of the bed. I watched her for a long time, waiting for her to say something.
She didn’t.
I finally got up and put my clothes back on. I looked at her as I left the room. She hadn’t moved. She sat there naked and silent, looking at the floor.
I went downstairs and picked up the towel. The ice was mostly gone, melted into a puddle on the table. I got some more ice from the freezer and wrapped up my hand. I went to the big window and looked out at the lake for a while. Then I went to the back door and opened it. The cold air hit me in the face, but it was just what I wanted right then.
I stepped outside and walked down to the shoreline. Lake Michigan was calm on this April night. Lake Superior would have looked different. It would have looked wilder, more violent. It would have sounded different. But this was another kind of night, on another shore, a long way from home.
I stood there by the water for a while, until I started to shiver. I went back to the house, opened the door into the kitchen.
Maria was there. She had put on a long black robe. She stood with her back to me. I could see cigarette smoke curling around her head.
“How does it feel?” she said. But she wasn’t talking to me. She had Whitley’s cell phone pressed to her ear. “You tried to kill him, and you failed. Again. Like always. And then he came right back down here to me, and you wanna know what I did to him, Charles? You wanna hear what I did? I took my clothes off in front of him and then I climbed onto his body, his whole, perfect, hard body, Charles, and I fucked him so hard, he won’t be able to walk straight for two days. Oh, pardon me, Charles. How insensitive of me, seeing as how you never get to walk anymore. You wanna hear how good it feels to be fucked by a real man who isn’t propped up in a wheelchair like some pathetic little worm? God, my nipples are so sore right now. And my legs are still trembling. I came so hard, Charles. Even when you were a whole person, Charles, even on the very best day of your life, you could have never fucked me half as good as Alex just did. How does that make you feel? How does it feel to know that you will never even touch a woman again, Charles? For the rest of your miserable little life, you’ll just be a broken little gimp stuck in a wheelchair and you will never, ever, ever feel a woman touching your body, because even if she did, Charles, even if she did, you wouldn’t even be able to feel it. I don’t know why you don’t just kill yourself. You’ve got nothing to live for. Nothing at all. Unless you think getting back at me is gonna somehow make you feel better. You’re welcome to try, Charles. Maybe I’ll send Alex back up there so you can try killing him again. And then when he makes you look like a pathetic little dog, I’ll fuck him all over again. Would you like that, Charles? Would you like that?
… Yeah, that’s right, go ahead and tell me what you’re gonna do to me, I’m really scared. Just keep talking, Charles. You know where to find me. Why don’t you come here yourself next time? Are you afraid to face me in person?… Yeah, that’s right. You’re all talk. You’ve got nothing. I’m gonna hang up now, you little worm. Have a nice night. Try not to dream about me.”
She hung up. She took another drag on her cigarette. Then she turned around.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“Just talking to an old friend.”
I looked at her. If there was a single word I could have thought of saying, I would have said it.
“Who are you?” she finally said.
“You know who I am.”
“No, really,” she said. “Why did you come here? You were gonna help Wilkins put the touch on me, right? You were in on his little scam.”
“I thought he was looking for you,” I said. “For other reasons.”
“You wanna know something?” she said. “Randy Wilkins? I barely even remember him. You know how many men we were setting up back then?”
“What do you mean, setting up?”
“God, how dumb are you, Alex? I mean, really? That was our scam back then. My whole family. Wilkins was the pitcher, right? Came from a rich family?”
I stood there for a while, going over the whole thing from beginning to end. I watched her standing there, and she watched me back.
“Everything you told me,” I finally said, “since the moment I met you, was a lie.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” she said. “I was playing you. I wanted to see what your angle was.”
“I didn’t have an angle, Maria.”
“Everybody has an angle,” she said. “And if you really don’t, well”-she took a drag on her cigarette, blew smoke to the ceiling-”then I was right. You are too good.”
CHAPTER 21
My father never said much to me about women. He had opinions about baseball, and hockey, and every other sport he had ever seen. He had opinions about how to take care of an automobile, about how to fix a piece of furniture. God knows, he had opinions about how to build a log cabin. He had opinions about all these things because he believed that there are many wrong ways to do something, and only one right way. With women, there is no right way. At least that’s what he told me. “Just try to find the one woman who’ll always tell you the truth,” he once said, maybe the only time in his life he tried to give me some advice about the opposite sex. “It’s hard enough to figure out a woman, even if they’re straight with you. If they start lying, you don’t have a prayer.”
It seemed like some pretty outdated advice the first time I heard it. Now I’m not so sure.
Maria had lied to me about recognizing Randy, about remembering him after all these years. She had lied to me about her past, and about her family. It all made sense now. Her mother did “cold readings,” as they call them in the business. It’s not so hard. You create the right atmosphere, you suspend belief as much as you can, and then you start looking for weaknesses. Everybody has them. Your parents don’t understand you. You have big dreams, but something is holding you back. You’re afraid of something. If you don’t get a nibble, you quickly move on to something else. When you finally get a hit, it’s as obvious as a neon sign over the sucker’s head. Yes! That’s it! That’s my problem! How did you know?
And then you reel them in. If it’s a young man on the hook and you need to use your daughter to pull them into the net, so be it. That’s how the game works.
> The Harwood business was still a little confusing. I didn’t know how much of that was a lie. Clearly, they hated each other. But now I didn’t know who the victim was, or even if there was a victim. Suddenly, it didn’t seem to matter anymore. Not to me.
As I thought about it I was pretty sure I knew when the hook had been set, the exact moment when she must have decided I could be very useful to her. When I walked into that bar and sat down next to her, and spoke to her for the first time. Hello, I’m the guy who was with Randy Wilkins. Yeah, the con artist. Although I didn’t know it at the time. He asked me to help him find you just because he wanted to see you again after all these years. And I believed him.
She must have had me marked for the ultimate sucker right then. Was she right? Maybe she was. Although she didn’t get what she wanted, not in the end. Harwood was still alive. And I was backing my truck down her driveway.
When my truck was aimed in the right direction, I punched it. If I could have squealed my tires, I would have. All I did was kick up a little gravel. Good night, Maria. And good luck.
A half mile down the road, my night got even worse. Chief Rudiger’s squad car was parked at the boat launch, and the man himself was standing next to Whitley’s white Cadillac, looking in through what used to be the window on the passenger’s side. When he saw my truck coming, he stepped out into the middle of the road. Running him over would have felt pretty good right about then. I resisted the temptation. He stood motionless until I stopped in front of him, and then he came around to my window. I rolled it down.
“Evening, Mr. McKnight,” he said.
“What can I do for you, Chief?”
“Do you know anything about this car?” he said.
“Looks like he needs a new window,” I said.
“Do you happen to know where the owner is right now?”
“No,” I said. Technically, it was the truth.
“I think we need to discuss this matter,” he said.
“Chief,” I said. “Please. I have to tell you, I’m no longer working for Ms. Zambelli. I no longer have any interest in anything that ever happened in this town. Or anything that ever will happen. In fact, I’m on my way out of here right now. As soon as you let me go, I’m going to leave and never come back. Ever. I should think that would make your night.”
“I can’t let you leave here,” he said. He put both his hands on the top of my truck. “Not without buying you a drink.”
“Excuse me?”
“Follow me to Rocky’s,” he said. “I’m buying.”
“Chief, if you don’t mind, it’s been a long night…”
“You got two choices,” he said. “Either we go to my office and talk about what happened to that car over there or we go to Rocky’s and I buy you a drink. What’s it gonna be, McKnight?”
“Lead the way,” I said.
He got into his car and drove back to the main road, then down a block to Rocky’s place. It was just after 2:00 A.M., but the place was still doing a good business. I parked the truck and met Rudiger at the door.
“I never thought I’d be welcome here,” I said.
“After you,” he said, holding the door open.
I walked in, ready for anything. Surely this was a trap. Rocky and Harry would be waiting to jump me. They’d beat the living hell out of me, and if I was lucky, they’d dump me at the city limits instead of killing me.
Nobody jumped me. Nobody hit me over the head with anything. There were maybe thirty people in the place, mostly men, the late-night crew. The television was off now, the place transformed from a family restaurant to a bar for serious drinkers. Rudiger led me to a place at the horseshoe bar, on Maria’s side-in fact, just a few stools down from where she had been sitting when I first saw her. Rocky looked at me, then at Rudiger. If he was surprised to see us there together, he did a good job of hiding it.
“What’ll you have, McKnight?” Rudiger said.
“Beer will do,” I said.
“Two beers, Rock,” he said. “Put a shot next to mine.”
Rocky set us up without saying a word, then went back to his business.
“I didn’t think you could serve alcohol in this state after two o’clock,” I said.
“I think you’re right,” he said. “Let’s call the police.”
“Never mind,” I said.
He downed his shot and then put the glass down. He didn’t slam it. He placed it so gently, you couldn’t even hear it touch the bar.
“Are you gonna tell me why I’m here?” I said.
“Why do you think you’re here?”
“I can’t even imagine,” I said. “I was under the impression you didn’t care for me too much. I would have put the odds against you buying me a drink around ten thousand to one.”
“That’s quite a long shot,” he said. “What about the odds against me apologizing to you?”
“That would be off the board,” I said.
“You were a cop once yourself. You never heard a police chief apologize to somebody?”
“Not that I can recall.”
He raised a finger to Rocky. The shot glass got refilled.
“Can I ask you a question, McKnight?”
“Go ahead.”
“You ever been in love with somebody?”
I drank my beer. “Chief, why are you asking me that?”
“Just answer it.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I have.”
“You ever do anything stupid because you were in love with somebody?”
I thought about that one. Not so much about the answer but about why the hell he would ask me that. “I’ll say yes to that.”
“How stupid was it?” he said. “What’s the worst thing you ever did just because you were in love with somebody?”
“I’d have to think about that one.”
He nodded and then drained his second shot.
“I knew that that private eye was watching her,” he said. “I could have stopped him anytime.”
“You had no proof he broke into her house,” I said. “You couldn’t have arrested him for anything.”
“I could have made his life a little miserable.”
“Like you did to me.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Did I actually apologize for that yet, or did I just talk about apologizing? I forget.” He raised his finger again. Another shot.
“We’ll say you did,” I said. “So why did you leave Whitley alone? Is that the stupid thing you did because you’re in love?”
He laughed. “Hell, that doesn’t even make the top twenty.”
“How long have you been in love with her?” I said.
He drank his third shot. This one went down even faster than the first two. He put the shot glass down again, as gently as possible. He kept looking at it.
“A long time,” he said finally. “I met her when I was a state trooper. God, when was it? Nineteen seventy-two? I stopped this big convertible on the expressway, guy was doing eighty-five miles an hour. She was in the car with him. Turns out this man was named Harwood, the same son of a bitch that’s been after her all these years. But this was back then, before she married this other guy, Zambelli.”
He raised his finger again. I was hoping Rocky would start acting like a friend and cut him off, but he didn’t. Rudiger drained his fourth shot and continued.
“I ran his driver’s license,” he said. “And then I ran Maria’s, too. Her name was Valenescu back then. I got a hit on her name. She was wanted for questioning, some case down in Detroit. I found out later there were accusations her whole family was involved in a some kind of ongoing con game. Her mother would read fortunes, find out if the customer had any money. If they did, they’d find some way to get their hooks into them. If it was a woman and if she’d fall for it, they’d tell her her children would suffer bad fortune unless she paid for guidance. Or spells to ward off evil spirits. People believe that shit. If it was a man…”
He stopped. He was stari
ng at the empty glass.
“Then they’d find some other way,” he said. “There’s always a way, especially when you have a beautiful daughter. I didn’t know all this at the time, though. I just had this little red flag on Maria Valenescu, to bring her in for questioning. The guy tried to stop me. This Harwood guy. I ended up writing him every ticket I could think of. Then I put Maria in the back of my car and took her in. On the way, she started crying, told me that her family had made her do all this, said she was trying to get away from them. She wanted me to stop so she could explain it all to me. She was afraid of what would happen if I took her to the station.”
He stopped again.
“You never took her in,” I said.
“I was a married man,” he said. “I had three kids. I never thought something like that could happen to me. She was just too…”
He didn’t finish the thought. He just shook his head.
“I kept seeing her,” he said. “Even after she got married. This Zambelli guy, he had to be the most oblivious man who ever lived. Or else he knew and didn’t do anything about it. I suppose that’s possible. Every once in awhile, she’d call me, tell me her family was in a jam, needed some help. A couple times I went and got her brother, Leopold, out of jail, convinced whoever it was that put him there to drop the charges, just forget it ever happened. The one time it was another state trooper, that one was easy. The other time, it was a deputy in Oakland County. Right after Zambelli died, Leopold went after Harwood, threw him down some stairs, I think. That one, I had to be real persuasive with. I can be a persuasive man, McKnight.”
I let him have that one. I finished my beer.
“She disappeared right after that. Before the baby was born. I was back to being a regular married man with three kids. Two of them were out of the house by then, the other one getting ready to go to college. I used to look at my wife and say to myself, This is what you’ve got for the rest of your life. I forgot all about Maria. Didn’t think I’d ever hear from her again. I retired from the state police and took this job. My wife died. I was all by myself here in this town, the town I grew up in. Figured I’d just spend my last twenty years here and that would be it. Then she showed up. Out of nowhere. ‘Hello Howard,’ she says. ‘Remember me?’ I just about died right there on the spot. She was older, of course, but my God, McKnight. I mean, you’ve seen her. It’s not like she doesn’t look like she’s forty-seven years old, you know what I mean? It’s like she’s forty-seven years old and this is what it’s supposed to look like. It’s even better than twenty, better than thirty. Hell, I bet she’ll look even better when she’s sixty. Is that crazy?”
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