Brucie drove the car. The black Escalade. I didn’t have much chance to enjoy the luxury. Cap was next to me in the backseat, holding Leon’s gun. I had no idea where we were going.
Neither did Brucie, even though he was at the wheel. “Where are we going?” he said. He spoke quietly, with a perfect calm that sounded almost resigned.
“I know the place,” Cap said. With his free hand he rubbed his jaw.
“You gonna tell me where?”
“Just drive. I’ll tell you.”
“We need a place by the water,” Brucie said. “With nobody around for miles.”
“I think that’s the whole goddamned Upper Peninsula.”
Brucie didn’t react to that one. He kept driving.
I tried to study Cap without making it obvious. Gun in right hand. Maybe thirty inches away from me, a lot of room back here in this big vehicle. If he was distracted for a second, could I get the gun away from him?
Hell, what other shot did I have? I needed to wait for the right moment, maybe when he was talking to Brucie, maybe looking out at where we were going. Anything.
But no, he kept watching me closely. No expression on his face at all. Brucie kept driving. The speed limit on this road was fifty-five. He was going fifty-four.
It was so obvious to me now. I was a cop once. I saw plenty of criminals. I saw enough regular-issue bad guys to last a lifetime. But only once in a great while did I see men like this.
They were professionals. If either one of them had ever had a moral compass, it had been carefully dismantled until nothing was left. Now they were driving me to a safe place, far away from anyone else so they could kill me with my own borrowed gun and leave my body to rot in the water. They were driving like it was a trip to the hardware store. How did I not see this in them from the very beginning?
We were going east now on M-134. It was a lonely highway, just trees and occasional views of Lake Huron. The sky was getting cloudier, like it would rain again soon. We came to Port Dolomite, passing the big limestone quarry, the high walls of white stone. This will be the place, I thought. It makes perfect sense, find some abandoned corner of the quarry, shoot your man, and leave his body there.
Leave his body there.
I started to feel dizzy. I couldn’t breathe.
Think, Alex. Think. There has to be a way out of this.
We passed one entrance to the quarry, then another. There were security gates everywhere. Brucie kept driving until it was just the trees and the water and the sound of the car again.
“That one stretch of road,” Brucie said. “The other day, when we were out driving around.”
“What I’m thinking,” Cap said.
I kept waiting for him to take his eyes off of me. Just for one moment. I could go for the gun, try to twist that bad hand, take the gun, and shoot him quickly. Then either make Brucie stop or shoot him in the head and take my chances.
At the same time, while I watched and waited, the seconds ticking by, there was another part of my mind thinking about Natalie, playing back everything we had ever done together. From the moment I had first laid eyes on her. On that lake in northern Ontario, seeing her jump off that plane onto the dock. The way she moved. The way she looked in that old farmhouse, when I drove all the way up there to find her and to share a bottle of champagne on a lonely New Year’s Eve.
She wasn’t here with me now. From the sadness of it, the loneliness, to a strange calm I felt when I realized what a good thing that was. She wasn’t here to take this last ride with me, wouldn’t be standing next to me when the bullets started to fly. She was five hundred miles away, and now for the first time that distance was a comfort to me.
She’ll be okay, I thought. She’ll feel bad when she hears what happened to me. Then she’ll get over it and she’ll go on with her life. This thing we were trying to hold on to, this impossible, unworkable thing-it will be nothing but a memory.
We were heading into the heart of the DeTour State Forest Campground, the darkness under the trees making everything look colder. What little sun there was, all but gone.
“Hey, Cap,” Brucie said.
“What is it?” He didn’t take his eyes off of me. The barrel of the gun still thirty inches away, his hand rock solid. If I went for it, I’d have no chance. My options were running out.
“I want him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m saying, I want to do him.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s always you doing this part,” Brucie said. “Me waiting with the car. I want to switch it around this time.”
“This is my gig. You’ve never done it. Not one goddamned time.”
“That’s what I’m saying. It’s about time. You remember in the bar?”
“What about it?”
“When they came after us. You got the Indian, remember?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So this guy took my bad arm and tried to twist it right off. I can still feel it. Not to mention a fucking beer bottle on the back of my head. You know what I’m saying? I’ve got some personal motivation here.”
“Number one, I seem to recall getting sucker punched today,” Cap said. “You don’t think I have some personal motivation, too? And number two…”
“What?”
“As soon as you start talking about personal motivation, I know you’re not ready. This isn’t junior high school, Brucie.”
Brucie thought about it for a few seconds. He started to slow the car down. There was a turnoff ahead.
“I want him,” he finally said. “It’s your turn to wait in the car for once. That’s the way it’s gonna be. You got a problem?”
“There’s no reason to talk like that. If you want him so bad, go ahead. Knock yourself out, man.”
Brucie made a right turn. It was a narrow road, leading down toward the water.
“Leave the gun with him after you’re done,” Cap said. “It’s his, so it can’t come back to us.”
“Yeah, no kidding.”
“Wipe off your prints, though.”
“Gee, I never would have thought of that.”
Cap shook his head and smiled at me. “The man’s always been too sensitive,” he said. Like I should be in on the joke.
“I’ll go down here as far as I can,” Brucie said. The road was overgrown. I could hear the branches scratching at the sides of the vehicle.
“This is far enough,” Cap said. He glanced behind us, then forward, checking out the empty access road. I had a fraction of a second, but it was gone before I could move.
Cap tightened his grip on the gun, as if reading my mind. “You should feel honored,” he said to me. “Brucie’s gonna break his cherry on you.”
Natalie and me in the guest bedroom. The first time.
Natalie and me having dinner at the Ojibway Hotel.
Natalie and me on the island. When I almost lost her.
The road got even tighter. A large branch slapped at the windshield.
“You can stop now,” Cap said, “before you destroy the car.”
“I’m getting off the road, genius.”
“Nobody can see you now.”
“Like hell.”
“The car’s black. Nobody can see you.”
Brucie jammed on the brakes. If he had been going any faster, Cap would have been thrown into the front seat and things would have gotten interesting.
“The fuck’s the matter with you?” Cap said.
“Time to swap,” Brucie said. “You can be the chauffeur now.”
“Yeah, time to swap, so I can back this thing all the way out of here.”
Brucie opened his door and came around to our side.
“Come on,” Cap said to me. “Slide out my way. Nice and easy.”
He opened up his door and got out. He kept it open and waited for me, passing the gun to Brucie.
When I was standing level with him, Cap looked me in the eye. “Sweet dreams,” he said. I wanted to hit him again. Or better yet, I wanted to grab my keys and rake them right across his neck.
“Hurry it up,” Brucie said. He backed away into the brush so I wouldn’t be too close to him as we all maneuvered ourselves around. Cap went to the driver’s side. Brucie waved me away from the vehicle and closed the door.
“Walk,” he said. “That way.” He pointed down toward the water.
I walked. He stayed behind me. The way I was figuring it now, I had one last chance to improvise something. Create some sort of distraction, turn around and go for the gun. Either take it from him or knock it away long enough to make a break for it.
At least there was only one man to worry about now. My odds were that much better.
Yeah, right. I was fooling myself. I knew that. These were the last steps of my life. This air the last I would breathe.
I tripped and almost went down. With the sudden movement, I was sure I’d get it right then, square in the back. But it didn’t happen. I regained my footing and kept walking. I could see the edge of the water now. Lake Huron, sister to Lake Superior. I never would have dreamed this would be the last lake I’d ever see.
Natalie on the phone with me. The sound of her voice, so far away. To hear it one more time…
No, Alex. Don’t give in to this. This is not the way to go out.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Brucie said.
“If you’re expecting me to beg,” I said, “it’s not going to happen.” I didn’t turn to face him. I kept walking.
“You’re taking it like a man. I’ll give you that much.”
I wondered how this was going to happen. How many seconds I had left. It was dark here in the trees.
“You shouldn’t have come to the house,” he said.
“No kidding.”
“You did this for your Indian friend?”
“Yes.”
A few seconds passed.
“I had a friend like that once,” he said.
“If that’s true, you probably didn’t deserve him.”
A short laugh from behind me. “Tough to the end, eh?”
“I’d like to see how tough you’d be without the gun,” I said. It was a reach at this point, but what the hell. It was worth a shot.
He laughed again. “Yeah, I bet you would.”
Pine needles under my feet. The smell of fresh water. The cold air in my lungs. I was starting to feel dizzy.
“Stop here,” Brucie said.
I stopped. We were overlooking the water now, on a little bluff about twenty feet above the shoreline. The waves were two feet high, maybe three. It was a tame lake compared to Superior. Smaller waves, warmer water. I could see a sailboat in the distance. The sail bright yellow against a gray sky.
Clouds. No sun.
I would never see the sun again.
“It’s not much of a cliff,” Brucie said, “but it’s as good as we’re gonna find up here, eh?”
“If you’re gonna do it, do it,” I said. I turned to face him.
“Don’t you want to know why I told Cap I was gonna do this?”
“You gave him your reason.”
“There’s more to it.”
“Like what?”
“I knew what he would have done to you if it was him. The thing you gotta remember about Cap…Fuck, man…”
He shook his head, looked away like he was trying to banish a memory. If it was a distraction, I was too far away from him to try anything now. I had officially passed beyond all hope.
“He would have made it slow,” he said. “Emptied the whole damned gun, even though that’s the stupidest fucking thing you can do. Make you get down on your knees, all that bullshit. Believe me, I’ve seen it. More than once. And each time it gets worse.”
Natalie’s face. One more time. I had to see it. I closed my eyes and willed her to appear in my mind.
God damn it all, one more time. Please.
“You probably saved Harry’s life. Hell, for all I know you saved my life, too. Despite everything else…”
Her eyes. Her hair. The scar on her chin.
“I mean, I figured you should get it clean. That much you deserve.”
He raised the gun and leveled it at my chest. I waited for the blast. I wondered how it would feel. Or if I’d feel anything at all. I didn’t know how long I’d last, how many seconds my eyes would be open before it all went black. If I’d fall back down this little cliff, feeling the rocks on the way down or the cold water at the end.
He took dead aim at my heart. I could see the gun wavering in his hand. I stopped breathing.
“Fuck!” he said. He pulled the gun up until it was cocked next to his ear, stood there looking up at the trees. “Son of a whore! Look at me!”
He turned around, looked behind him, then up at the trees again, then back at me.
“Cap enjoys this shit,” he said. “He really does. What kind of a man enjoys this?”
He wheeled around one more time. He moved the gun slowly, down from his ear, back to the firing position.
“Maybe you don’t want to do this,” I said.
“Shut up.”
“I’m pretty sure you don’t.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“You’re not like Cap.”
Another breath. Seconds passing. The man with one eye shut now, holding the gun steady.
“Fuck’s sake,” he finally said. “Cover your ears.”
“What?”
“I said cover your ears!”
I covered them. He took a quick look behind him, then he pointed the gun straight up and fired it two times.
He shook his head like someone had just nailed him right on the chin. “God, that’s a loud one.”
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“I can’t do this. I don’t know how I thought I could.”
“So what happens now?”
“What happens now is that you die. As far as Cap knows, as far as Mr. Gray knows, you’re dead and gone. You understand me? You go back home, you stay the fuck away from all of us. You keep your friend away, too.”
“If I do that, you’ve gotta stay away from the reservations.”
He shook his head. He almost smiled at me. “You’re talking like someone who’s in a position to bargain.”
“It has to work both ways.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll be gone soon. I, for one, will never set foot in the Yoo fucking Pee again. You know summer’s supposed to be a little warmer than this, right?”
He looked down at the gun. He wiped it down with his shirttail, looking past me, out at the water. When he was done, he dropped it on the ground.
“Give us a while,” he said. “I don’t know if Cap’s gonna keep driving for a while, or turn around right here. Obviously, if he sees you on the road we both have a big problem.”
“I got it.”
“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.”