A Stolen Season (13 page)

“It’s like Mr. Gray said. I can’t do one fucking thing right.”

“Who is he?”

He was about to turn away from me. But that question stopped him in his tracks.

“You don’t want to know,” he said. “You don’t want to know, you don’t want to ask. And as of right now you don’t even exist to him anymore, remember? So forget you ever saw him up here.”

“He seems like a hard man to forget.”

Brucie shook his head. “You’re fucking right on that one. But do it anyway.”

Then he left. He walked to the road without looking back at me. A minute later, I heard the sound of the engine racing and then the tires spraying gravel. When that faded away there was nothing but the waves on the lake and rain falling softly on the leaves. I hadn’t even heard it start, had no awareness of the rain or the chill in the air or anything else until this very moment. Me alone with a gun lying in the dirt and my life somehow given back to me. Whatever life I had left.

I sat down on the little cliff overlooking the lake. I watched the sailboat make slow progress, going east. The rain filtered through the leaves and came down on me in a fine mist, in no hurry. I had nowhere to go and a good reason to sit tight, so I did just that.

At one point I took out my cell phone, looked at the display. There was no signal to be found here. Digital signal, analog roam signal, smoke signal. I was on my own again, story of my life. I had the gun in my right hand now. I had to resist the urge to throw both the cell phone and the gun into the water below.

I stayed there a long time, maybe longer than I had ever sat in one goddamned place before. I kept watching the sailboat until it was gone and then I watched the clouds moving by and the waves hitting the shore one after another. The rain kept up until I could feel the drops running down my face. I was getting cold, but I had felt a lot colder.

I didn’t want to move, because moving meant going back home. And going back home meant calling Natalie and telling her we were done.

I had seen
it so clearly while I was waiting to die. Things hadn’t changed one bit just because I’d managed to live. I was holding on to her, trying to convince her that we could make this thing work across all this distance. This fantasy. This make-believe game between two very lonely people. Natalie working so hard to restart her career in a new city. Me back in Michigan, cleaning out my cabins, waiting by my phone…

Real couples wake up together and eat breakfast and make plans and get in each other’s way. They might be apart for a few hours at a time, but they always find each other again, every night. Natalie and I had never had a day like that. Not once, ever, and sitting there on that cliff getting soaked to the bone I realized that we probably never would.

How did you ever, ever think for a moment, Alex, that this thing would really work?

So I sat there on the cliff getting slowly soaked to the bone, maybe hoping I could make it come out differently. Or just hoping I could avoid it a little longer if I just kept sitting there. Eventually, I had to stand up. Every ache I’d ever had in my body came back to me, along with a few new ones.

I walked slowly down the path, back to the road. When I got there, I had a new problem, because now I was wet and cold and miles away from my truck, and standing on one of the emptiest highways in the state of Michigan.

I started walking west, with the gun tucked in my waistband. I walked for twenty minutes, maybe thirty before I finally heard a car. It was coming from behind me. I turned and saw a black vehicle, and for one second I was sure it was Cap’s Escalade and I was a dead man after all. But it turned out to be a Lincoln Navigator. I stood there and waited for it to slow to a stop beside me. I didn’t even have to stick my thumb out. It was the Upper Peninsula, after all. This is what people do.

The window rolled down. “Are you okay, sir?” It was a man in his seventies. I could see his wife sitting next to him.

“I could use a lift.”

“Hop on in.”

I got in the back seat. The woman turned around and looked at my wet clothes. “What did you do, fall in the lake?”

“Something like that.”

The man asked me where I was headed. I was thinking if I was smart I’d go back up to Leon’s house, have him take me back to my truck in the middle of the night. But I didn’t feel like explaining things to him yet, and being smart wasn’t usually an issue anyway. All I wanted to do was to get my own vehicle as soon as possible and to get the hell back home. So I asked him to drop me off in Hessel.

He didn’t have any problem with that. He drove and his wife smiled at me and asked me if I needed a towel. She could unpack one from the bag in the back if I needed one. I told her no, thank you. Then I asked her how long they had been married. She said fifty-one years, with three kids and five grandkids.

The crazy thing was she looked a little like Natalie. Like Natalie would look when she was in her seventies, anyway.

“You ever play ball?” the man asked me.

“Baseball?”

“Yeah, you played, didn’t you.”

“How did you know that?”

“I can always tell. I was a catcher myself. Way back when.”

“So was I.”

“Well, I’ll be,” he said. “Ain’t that a kicker.”

If the couple had suddenly turned into space aliens, I don’t think it would have fazed me at that point. It was a day when anything could happen.

Anything at all.

When we got to Hessel, I asked him to drop me off where the road down to Mr. Gray’s house began. The man insisted on taking me all the way to my destination, out of his way or not. More true northern Michigan behavior. So I let him drive all the way down to where I had hidden my truck that morning. I kept watching for Cap’s Escalade, but I never saw it.

“You have a house down here?” the man said.

“No, just visiting.” I indicated the driveway when we got to it. He pulled in and was headed all the way down to the house when I told him to stop. My truck was still there, pulled off in the bushes. If they thought it was odd to leave me there, they didn’t show it. I thanked them both a couple of times each. I told them to look me up in Paradise if they ever got up that way. Just stop at the Glasgow Inn.

The man backed his way out. I was alone again, this time not far away from the house where everything had turned to shit that day. I still had the gun in my waistband. I had the sudden urge to go back there and start all over again, but I knew Mr. Gray was gone now. And I figured I should keep my promise to Brucie, at least for one day.

I got in the truck and started it up, scraped my way through the heavy brush as I did a three-point turn and headed back out to the road. I checked my cell phone again. Even if I could get a signal here it was a moot point because now the phone was dead.

I drove home. I was shivering even with the heat on. I couldn’t stop it.

I wondered if I’d have a message from Natalie when I got there, what I would say to her when I called her. What words would come to me, if any came at all.

I drove fast, taking the road through Rudyard and Trout Lake, through Eckerman Corner, up to Whitefish Bay, where I knew it would feel even colder. Where I’d be alone for the rest of the night. Then again tomorrow.

Alone. I would always be alone.

The sun was going down now. The whole day gone by. One more road, then the sign as you enter Paradise. “Welcome to Paradise—we’re glad you made it.”

Yeah, I’m glad I made it, all right. I’ll check on Vinnie, see if both his eyes are open yet. Then I’ll go bother Jackie until he makes me dinner.

I turned on my headlights when I hit the old logging road and the sudden darkness from the trees. I drove past Vinnie’s place, saw that his truck was still there. To my cabin first for dry clothes.

My headlights swept across the Jeep parked in front of my cabin. I saw the Canadian plates. It took me a few seconds to believe what I was seeing.

I got out, went to my door. I opened it and saw her inside, waiting for me. She was wearing one of my sweatshirts.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

“What does it look like?” Natalie said, her arms wrapped around herself. “I’m freezing my ass off.”

Everything I had been thinking about, this whole idea of how hopeless this thing with Natalie was, how breaking it off now would be the best thing for everybody…That was gone in about two seconds. Seeing her here in my cabin, waiting for me, that pretty much took care of everything right there.

“Natalie,” I said. I still couldn’t quite believe it. “I don’t understand—”

“Are you going to say hello to me or not?”

She stood up and came over to me. My sweatshirt was three sizes too big for her. She looked tired. I put my hands on her shoulders, held her there in front of me.

“Hello, God damn it,” I said. Then I pulled her close to me. I kissed her and stroked her hair and remembered that this was the way she felt and the way she smelled.

“Why are you here?” I finally said.

She put her finger to my lips and led me to my bed without another word. She hesitated as we were starting to take our clothes off. I was shivering.

“Why are you all wet?” she said, feeling my shirt.

“It was raining.”

“Let me guess, you were working on the cabin.”

“Uh, no. Actually—”

“Never mind. Tell me later.” She fell back on my bed and took me with her.

“Sorry this place is such a mess.”

“Will you shut up already?” She kissed me again and that was it for the talking. At least for a while.

I may have come home cold and miserable, but she changed all that in a hurry.

“So tell me,” I said later. My arms were around her and she was facing away from me. Her hair was in my face, her skin was touching mine, back to chest.

“Tell you what?”

“Why you’re here. Did you make the bust?”

“Actually, no.”

“You didn’t?”

“Not yet.”

“Not yet? So why aren’t you still undercover.”

“Who says I’m not?”

“I don’t get it.”

“We called a time-out,” she said. “We had to back out for a couple of days.”

“Why? What happened?”

She took a long breath. “God, Alex. You wouldn’t believe it. After all the prep work with Rhapsody, all those meetings in the coffee shop every morning…We finally got the big meet set up. Antoine Laraque in a hotel room, ready to buy guns. Or so we thought.”

“So you thought?”

“We never got him to say it. We never got to the punch line. He and Rhapsody came to the room…Don and I were there…”

“Don Resnik, your partner.”

“Right. My supposed bodyguard. He had this suit on, black sunglasses, the whole deal. I’m this woman with a connection in Michigan, somebody who wants to move guns across the border. A lot of guns. We’ve got it all set up, and then finally, they’re both coming up to the room. Rhapsody comes in first. She’s wearing this wild zebra suit. Zebra shoes, the works. And then Laraque comes in. The man himself…”

“Yeah?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Was he wearing a zebra suit, too?”

“No,” she said. “Laraque was not wearing a zebra suit.”

“So tell me about him.”

“I don’t know how to say it. It’s going to sound ridiculous.”

“Go ahead.”

“He wasn’t that big, first of all. Don’s like six foot five, remember. Laraque couldn’t have been six feet tall. Maybe five ten, tops. He wasn’t really built, either. I mean, he didn’t look that strong. I’m sure Don could have thrown him through the window with no problem.”

“Okay…”

“He had short hair. A very high forehead. He was wearing glasses. Hell, I’m making him sound like an accountant.”

“So far.”

“That’s just it, Alex. I can’t describe what he was really like. You’d have to see him in person. You’d have to see him move around a room and shake your hand. And then sit down across from you and look at you…I mean, remember, I had cops in the room behind me, cops in the room in front of me. I had a cop out in the hall. I had a cop built like a football player
in the room with me
. All of them had guns. Even Don, standing right at my side. I was the safest woman in Toronto…And yet, I have never felt more terrified in my entire life.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Because he was there. This man. He just had this…this power about him. I can’t explain it. But I could feel it.”

I thought about it. “Okay, so what happened to the bust?”

I still couldn’t see her face. It was just her voice, and the tension in her body.

“I tried to get him around to the punch line. I even had some samples with me. Some handguns, a couple of small machine guns. I put them out on the table, told him I had a supplier in Michigan, asked him if he’d be interested in doing business. He said he’d like to know how I came to consider him for such an enterprise. That’s what he called it. An enterprise. So I told him about running into Rhapsody, hearing all about her in prison. The whole story. Rhapsody was right there, but she didn’t say a word. She just leaned back in her chair and took out a cigarette. I was getting a little rattled, so I actually told her it was a nonsmoking room, just to see if I could get back on top of things.”

“What did she say to that?”

“Nothing. She took out her lighter and lit up.”

“And then blew the smoke in your face?”

“Women don’t do that. She blew it straight up in the air. With a little smile.”

“Very smooth.”

“No,” she said. “Not really. I think she was just as terrified as I was.”

“What, being in the room with you guys?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure, exactly. But remember, this woman didn’t just do hard time at Kingston, it sounds like she practically ran the place. This was the worst prison in Canada, before they shut it down.”

“Then how could she be so scared?”

“Well, at first I thought it was Laraque who was making her so nervous. But I’ll tell you, all he had to do was touch her, just once, and she was fine. The same old Rhapsody I’d meet every day in the coffee shop. Totally cool. On top of the world. It was like he was recharging her, you know? Giving her energy. Or hell, like they were having really good sex, except it was just him reaching over and putting his hand on her arm. Two of his fingers on the back of her wrist. That was it.”

“Yeah?”

“I know it sounds crazy, but I saw it with my own eyes. I asked Don about it later, but he had no idea what I was talking about.”

“It wasn’t obvious?”

“I guess not,” she said. “Or maybe a woman would be more likely to pick up on it.”

“A woman who knows all about good sex, you mean.”

“Whatever you say, Alex.”

“No, seriously. So what happened next?”

“Well, that’s when it got even crazier, because no matter what I said, Laraque refused to play along with us. He’d almost say something, like yes, he was interested in imports from the States. But that he had, what did he say, he said he had other offers to consider, different combinations of merchandise, different terms…He started talking about it like it was just another investment opportunity, and how there were cold markets and warm markets and hot markets, and how much he respected men down in the States who knew how to make money. He even quoted Warren Buffett, something like, how did it go…‘Be afraid when others are greedy, and greedy when others are afraid.’ You ever hear that one?”

“No, I haven’t. But it makes sense.”

“Yeah, it does. But the whole time he was going through all this…I mean, I didn’t think he was even carrying, but it was like I kept expecting him to stop, and to reach over…and touch me. Except instead of making me feel better, like he was doing for Rhapsody, he would kill me. Just like that. One touch and I’m dead. It was like he had me hypnotized.”

It was hard to hear, but I wanted the whole story. Every detail. “But you’re saying he never made a real offer,” I said. “He didn’t give you something you could nail him on?”

“I swear, Alex. It was like he knew exactly what we were doing. The whole thing, the setup, the cops in the other rooms, recording him, listening to every word. He knew I was a fake, Don was a fake, everything was fake. And that one wrong word from him would bring it all crashing in on his head. But he didn’t say it. The whole time, he was just toying with us. And when he got tired of doing that, he stood up and he walked out.”

“Do you really think he knows you’re a cop?”

“I don’t see how he could. But deep down in my gut that’s exactly what I was feeling when we were in that room. This guy can see right through me.”

“So what happens next?”

“He told us he wanted to meet again. He wanted me to go back to my contact and to have him send samples of other merchandise…Notice how he didn’t say guns. The whole time, he never once said the word ‘gun.’ And when he said ‘other merchandise,’ if you took him literally, he could have been asking me to bring back samples of fabric. So he could make some nice suits or something. He also said he’d like us to come to his office next time, let him be the one extending the hospitality, because it was his city, after all.”

“You’re not really going to his office next time…”

“I don’t know, Alex. I have no idea what’s going to happen next. They told me to disappear for two days, to make like I was really leaving town to confer with my connection. That makes you a gun dealer now, by the way.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Anyway, I need to call them tomorrow, to see what they’re thinking. The leader of the task force wants to keep pursuing it, but my CO wants to pull me.”

“I’m with him. You can’t go to his home turf. What are you gonna do, walk in there wearing a wire?”

She turned on to her back and looked at me. “It’s not up to me,” she said. “I’ll see what they say.”

“You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. You know that.”

She closed her eyes. “You’re not helping.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You’re supposed to tell me I need to go back and finish the job. Get the bad guy and help shut down his operation.”

“I’m not thinking about that part,” I said. “I admit it, I’m only thinking about you and keeping you safe.”

She pulled me closer to her. She held on tight.

“When I think about being in a room with Laraque again,” she said, “all I can think about is how much I want to be with you. I’ve never felt this way before, Alex. About anybody. It really scares me. It’s like I have a life now. You know what I mean? It sounds kind of corny, I know, but it’s like I have something to live for.”

It killed me. What she was saying, it absolutely killed me. I knew I’d have to tell her my own story, about what had happened that very day, being led to the edge of the water and believing that my life was over, and how I thought about her and was glad that she would keep on living without me. That she would be better off in the long run.

It was always me pushing this, me trying to keep us together, when she had her own problems and it felt like she was never letting me get too close to her. But now, on a day when we both faced our own deaths in different ways, it was Natalie who wanted to hold on to us. It was Natalie who wanted to keep on living so we could be together.

“So what do we do now?” I said. Suddenly, anything was possible.

“I don’t know. But I do know two things for sure.”

“Yeah?”

“One is that I want to go to sleep right now.”

“And the other?”

She settled in next to me. It was cold outside. It was dark and colder than any summer night should ever be.

“I can’t even say it…”

“What?”

“I’ve never walked away from anything in my life,” she said. “Not because I was scared.”

“You don’t want to go back?”

“Don’t let me.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes,” she said. “Whatever you do, don’t let me go back there.”