The house was on the east side of Sault Ste. Marie, on the banks of the St. Marys River, right next to the old golf course. It was a big house, one of those contemporary things, all windows and angles. Every light in the house seemed to be on, including a huge chandelier that you could see through the window over the front door.
“Why are we here again?” I said.
“To play poker,” Jackie said. “And to drink his whiskey, eat his food. Like I told you. And smoke his cigars.”
“Whatever you say.”
“There’s another reason, as well. It’s a little thing we do. When we get to it, just play along.”
“Get to what? What are you talking about?”
“You’ll see,” he said.
As we stood at the doorway, an evening breeze came in off the lake. We could have gone to the Locks Park instead, taken a walk along the edge of the water and then gone to the Ojibway Hotel, had steaks in their dining room. Instead we were here. When Jackie pressed the doorbell button, it didn’t just go ding-dong. It went through eight long notes, like church bells ringing the hour.
“Do we get to see the changing of the guards now?” I asked.
“Don’t get started,” Jackie said. “Give the night a chance at least.”
“Okay,” I said. “You’re right.” I liked playing poker, after all. Tonight, maybe it would get me out of my own head for a couple of hours. It might be just what I needed.
We heard a dog barking on the other side of the door. Then it opened. The man who opened it was bald. That was the first thing I noticed. He had that bone hardness that some bald men have, that extra tough bad-ass mystique. It makes you think of a bald biker who sits patiently at the end of the bar, waiting for the right time to stand up and hit you in the face with a pool cue.
“Miata, stay down,” he said. Which wasn’t asking much, because the dog was only about eight inches tall to begin with. I would have guessed Chihuahua, with the short hair and the bug eyes, but in the back of my mind I remembered the old urban legend about the couple who went to Mexico and brought back a dog, only to find out it was a rat. This might have been that animal.
“I forgot to warn you about the dog,” Jackie said.
“You must be Alex,” the man said. He shook my hand with a firm grip just this side of painful. “I’m Winston Vargas. Win for short, because that’s what I do. Right, Jackie?” He gave Jackie a wink.
Jackie rolled his eyes and stepped past him. The dog kept dancing around us and barking, its little legs moving at hummingbird speed.
“Don’t mind him,” Vargas said. “He thinks he’s a Doberman. Hell, maybe he was in his last life.”
“What did you say his name was? Miata?” I bent down to offer my hand. The dog showed me its teeth. Okay, bad idea.
“My wife named him after her car,” he said. “Of course she’s not here so I get to look after him all night. Again.”
“Well, thanks for having me over,” I said. I was giving the night a chance, like Jackie said. I really was.
“I’m glad you could make it,” he said. “Let me show you to the table.”
He led me through the house to the poker room. I guess it would have been called the entertainment room most of the time. There was a home theater set up along one wall, with a screen that had to be seven feet across. A wet bar dominated the opposite wall, with enough bottles on the shelves to restock Jackie’s place. The back wall was all windows, looking out over the river. In the center of the room, beneath a great Tiffany lamp, was one of those six-sided poker tables with the green felt in the middle and the little compartments on each side.
“What do you think?” he said. “I just got it.”
I was thinking he’d need the green visor and the red garter on his sleeve to go with it. “Quite a setup,” I said.
There were a couple of men already sitting at the table. I recognized Bennett O’Dell, an old friend of Jackie’s who’d stop by at the Glasgow every now and then. He was another tough old bird like Jackie, although a hell of a lot taller, and at least seventy pounds heavier. He was in the bar business, too, with a place called O’Dell’s over on the west side of town. Bennett’s father had opened it up back in the thirties, and it had been run by the family ever since. I remembered a story Jackie once told me about running around with Bennett when they were in high school, practically living in that bar, doing their homework at one of the tables every night. When Jackie was ready to open up his own place, he didn’t want to take any business away from the O’Dell family, which is why he bought a place out in Paradise.
“Alex,” Bennett said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I see you know Bennett,” Vargas said. “This here is Kenny, one of my business associates. I guess you could say he’s my right hand man.” Kenny had long straight hair tied back in a ponytail. I shook his hand. Kenny looked like he was pushing forty, which meant that he had a tough choice coming soon. Unless you’re a hairdresser, you can’t have a ponytail and call yourself Kenny when you’re forty. Not in Michigan, anyway.
“We’re still waiting on Gill,” Vargas said. “You know how it is. Indians don’t operate on white man’s time.”
“Take it easy, Win,” Bennett said, giving me a quick wink. “You don’t want him to scalp you, do you?”
“Nothing here to scalp, my friend.” Vargas ran his hand over his bald head and laughed. The night was already looking longer. “Alex, I’ll show you the house,” Vargas said. “While we’re waiting.”
“Good idea,” Jackie said as he sat down next to Bennett. “Go take the tour.”
Vargas spent the next twenty minutes showing me around his house. We started in the kitchen. It had the professional-quality gas range, the island in the middle with the second sink. The butler’s pantry. “This is what I specialize in,” he said. “Top of the line appliances. Viking ranges, custom cabinets, you name it. Your wife wants a dream kitchen, I’m your man. Are you married?”
“No,” I said.
“You were married. Once?”
“Yeah,” I said. “A long time ago.”
“I got married again a few years ago,” he said, “after being on my own for a long, long time. Nothing like getting it right the second time around.” He ran his hand along the countertop. “It’s too bad you won’t get a chance to meet her tonight. Next time, huh?”
“Sure.”
From the kitchen we went out onto the back deck. The edge of the water was just below us, not thirty feet away. There was a freighter heading south down the river, moving slowly, away from the locks.
“Where’s that from?” he said. “What’s that flag? That’s Brazil, isn’t it?”
There was a light on its flagpole. You could just make out the blue globe on the yellow diamond on the field of green. “I think so,” I said.
“Those boys are a long way from home.” He waved to the ship. We could see a couple of crew members standing on deck, but they didn’t wave back.
“I’ve got a little dock down there,” he said. “Not big enough for my boat, but I do have a couple of jet skis. You ever been on a jet ski?”
“Never been,” I said. “I imagine I’d like it about as much as a snowmobile.”
“Yeah, I’ve got one of those, too. I don’t know how much time I’ll be spending up here in the winter. We’ve got a place in Boca. But you never know.”
We went back inside. The light hurt my eyes, made me want to go back out to the darkness. “I’ll show you upstairs, Alex. There’s one room you’ve really got to see.”
I followed him up the staircase. The house had a beautiful staircase, I had to say that much. The treads themselves were all hardwood, with a matching rail and thin wooden posts. My old man the self-taught carpenter would have been impressed as hell.
“These are guest rooms down here,” he said, “and this is the master suite.” There was a king-size bed, all made up in white with lavender trim. “It probably goes without saying, but my wife did the decorating. Here’s the bathroom in here. What do you think?”
I looked in and saw a raised whirlpool tub, a separate shower, two vanity mirrors, two sinks. The fixtures gleamed like pirate treasure. “This is something else,” I said. I had already been thinking to myself that the bedroom was bigger than my cabin. Now I was wondering if the bathroom was bigger, too.
“We carry these tubs now,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe how expensive they are. Go ahead, take a guess.”
“I wouldn’t even know,” I said.
“Ah, never mind,” he said. “That’s tacky. Here, I want to show you the best room of all now.”
He led me to the end of the hall and opened the door. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust-this was the only room in the house that wasn’t as bright as an operating room. He turned up a dimmer switch so I could see where I was going. There were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on two walls, some nautical maps on another wall. By the window there was a telescope on a tripod. “I call this my ‘lake room,’” he said. “Here, come look.”
He turned the dimmer back down as I looked through the telescope. It was pointed to the northwest. As I moved it, I could make out the Soo Locks and the International Bridge. During the day I was sure you’d be able to see into the lake itself.
“God, I love this lake,” he said. “Don’t you, Alex?”
I looked at him. With the light still down, I couldn’t make out his face, but his bald head seemed to glow.
“What’s in here?” I said. There were glass cases running along the wall, beneath the maps.
He turned the light back up. “Some artifacts,” he said. “I’m a collector.”
There were some shipwreck artifacts in one glass case-a small brass bell, a metal comb, a mug made of pewter. In another case were what seemed to be Indian artifacts-an arrowhead, a wooden paddle that had practically disintegrated, a small metal bowl that was probably some sort of smudge pot. Everything had that particular reddish gray tint around the edges, the kind of wear you see when something’s been left in fresh water for a very long time.
“How’d you get all this stuff?” I said. “I thought the salvage laws were pretty strict.”
“On the Michigan side they are. Not so much on the Canadian side. What can I say, divers pick things up, sell them to people, who sell them to other people. If I end up buying something, it comes right up here to this room and stays here. My wife thinks it’s kinda hinky, but I tell her, hey, when I die, every single one of these things goes to the museum. Either the Shipwreck Museum out on Whitefish Point, or the Indian museum at the community college.”
It still didn’t sound quite right to me, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. I just nodded my head at him and hoped the poker game would be starting soon. If he was going to start offering me expensive whiskey like Jackie said, it was about time.
When we finally made it back down to the poker table, Gill LaMarche was sitting in his spot, calmly counting out chips. “Look who showed up,” Vargas said. “You missed the tour.”
“Been there, done that,” he said. “Bought the T-shirt.” Gill was a member of the Sault tribe, and lived here in town, right next to the Kewadin Casino. Like most Ojibwa in Michigan, especially the Sault members who had less restrictive blood lines than the other tribes, you didn’t think “Indian” the first time you saw him. If you knew what to look for-a little fullness around the cheekbones, a slow and careful way about the eyes-you could just make it out.
“Let’s get everybody set up first,” Vargas said. Then came the trays of food from the kitchen, the drinks from the bar, the cigars. “What kind of whiskey do you drink?” he asked me. “I’ve got some Macallan twelve-year here…”
“Is that Jack Daniels I see over there?” I said.
“It is,” he said. “If that’s your preference.”
“That’ll do me fine. Save the single malt for somebody special.”
“Jackie tells me you were a catcher,” he said. “I should have known a catcher would take Jack Daniels over a Macallan. You can always spot a catcher.”
I gave Jackie a look. He gave me an innocent smile.
“I played some ball when I was in the college,” Vargas said. “And then in the Air Force, when I was stationed in Korea.”
“Let me guess, first base,” I said.
“First and a little third. How did you know?”
“You can always spot a first baseman,” I said.
He laughed at that, brought my drink over and sat down. “Are we gonna play some cards here or what?”
So we did. Jackie was on my left, then Bennett, Vargas, Kenny, and finally Gill on my right. Vargas played the way I would have expected. He was aggressive in his betting, and he hated to fold. He wanted to be in every single hand. When he wasn’t raising, he was fussing over the table itself, making sure we kept our drinks off the green felt and in the little coaster compartments. I had never known how much I hated fancy poker tables until that night.
Vargas also liked to talk. It was just a matter of time until he wandered back to his business. “When I got out of the Air Force,” he said, shuffling the cards, “I decided to take over the hardware business from my father. He had a little store down in Petoskey. Now you’re probably thinking, how does a little hardware store survive these days when you’ve got your Lowes’s and your Home Depots all over the place? The answer is, you have to see the train coming before it runs you over. Those big hardware places? The best thing that ever happened to me. You know why? They destroyed my competition. All of them. They all got run over by the train, and I jumped off the track. I moved to a different market. A better market. If you want to buy a sink nowadays, or a toilet, or a tub, or a dishwasher, or a refrigerator, or kitchen cabinets, where do you go?”
Nobody said anything. We just waited for him to finish and deal the damned cards.
“Where do you go? Hmm? Where do you go?”
“Lowes,” Jackie finally said.
“Home Depot,” Bennett said.
“Exactly,” Vargas said. “Now suppose you want a solid marble sink that’s made in Italy? Or a Viking gas range like the professional chefs use? Where do you go for that? Not Lowes. Not Home Depot. They don’t carry that stuff. There’s no volume in it for them. You’ve got to go to a specialty store.”
“Like yours,” Bennett said.
“Like mine.”
“Deal the cards,” Bennett said.
He started dealing, but that didn’t stop his spiel. “Me and Kenny, we make a great team. We go to somebody’s house, and we split the couple up. Divide and conquer, right? Kenny takes the wife into the kitchen, really fags it up with her, does the whole interior decorator thing.” Kenny didn’t even blink. He just sat there with a serene smile on his face, like a man who is paid very well to play along. “While he does his thing, I’m hanging out with the husband. I’m saying, ‘It’s all over now, chief. Your wife wants the best, and you’re gonna come through, or deal with the consequences. But don’t worry, I’ll give you a great deal.’ If I don’t get ’em when they build the house first thing, I’ll get ’em a couple of years later. As soon as that wife goes to have coffee with the neighbor and sees her kitchen, she’ll go to her husband and then he’ll come to me. I always get ’em in the end.”
“Queen bets,” Bennett said. “That’s you, Kenny.” He let that one hang for a few seconds before realizing what he had said. “I mean, you’ve got the queen, Kenny. Your bet.”
Kenny gave him a look that was nothing but cool, and then slid a buck into the pot. “The queen bets one dollar.”
“I’m doing this house over in Canada,” Vargas said. “On St. Joseph Island. You wouldn’t believe what I’m putting in that kitchen. The floor alone, these tiles from Mexico. Problem is, they got these guys at Customs. Big old dumb Canucks sitting on that bridge, they’re basically paying them to be in a bad mood all the time. See me bringing a refrigerator over, they take it personally. Like I’m taking jobs away from Canadians by bringing in an American refrigerator.”
“Duty on durable goods,” Bennett said. “Is that what they call it?”
“That’s what they call it,” Vargas said. “They should call it bend over and grab your ankles.”
“I thought it ain’t so bad anymore. You know, with this NAFTA thing.”
“They don’t worry so much about the small stuff now,” Vargas said. “Up to a hundred dollars, something like that. But the big ticket items, hell, they still stick it to ya.”
“The customer’s gotta pay for this, right?”
“Yeah, I think it’s safe to say that, Bennett. It sure isn’t me.”
“Who are these people?” I said. “Who’s got this kind of money to spend on their kitchens?” I shouldn’t have asked. I should have just shut up and played cards and drank the man’s whiskey. That’s what I should have done.
“There are a lot of people building houses in Canada,” he said. “You’d be surprised. Of course, that’s not where my bread and butter is…”
“Where would that be?” I said.
“Bay Harbor,” he said.
The words went right down my spine. Bay Harbor. He might as well have said Sodom and Gomorrah.
“I made most of my nut right there,” he said. “In Bay Harbor. Of course, that place is gonna be full one of these days.” He looked at the cards he was holding close to his chest. He called Kenny’s dollar and raised ten more. “Ain’t that right, Kenny?”
Kenny folded his hand. “Too rich for me.”
“The big question is, who’s gonna build the next Bay Harbor?” Vargas said. “And where’s it gonna be?”