North of Nowhere (15 page)

“Vargas, there’s no reason for this.”

“Oh yes, I think there is.” He came toward me, in the same pose I had seen on the boat, his hands poised more like a magician than a boxer, his left foot poised just off the ground. It would have looked pretty damned ridiculous if I wasn’t standing there wondering just how good he really was.

It didn’t take long to find out. He faked a left and then hit me in the body with his right hand, knocking the wind out of me. Then he spun around and caught me in the side of the head with his foot. It knocked me off my feet and made my head feel like a giant bell that wouldn’t stop ringing.

I rolled away from him, got on my feet, and spent the next few seconds trying to catch my breath and avoid another one of his spinning back kicks. One more of those and I’d be laid out for good.

Meanwhile, his wife had finally found a reason to get out of her chair. She stood against the railing, watching us with a sort of rapt fascination. The dog kept barking and clawing at the inside of the glass door.

Vargas slipped a few more punches in, sending me backward against the rail. I went into my own version of Ali’s rope-a-dope, ducking as many of the heavy blows as I could, and waiting for some kind of idea to come to me.

He finally got a little lazy, figuring maybe I was dead meat at that point. I popped him a couple of times, a left to the body and then a right to the chin. He shook that off, stepped back a few feet, and then launched himself into one more spinning back kick, this one being the
coup de grace
that would knock me right over the railing. I had this one timed, though, and as his foot sailed over my head I gave him a kick of my own, a good old-fashioned boot right in the jewels. It folded him in half.

He went down and made some ugly noises as he rolled around on the deck. I stood there looking at him, ready for the unlikely event of him actually standing up again. When it didn’t happen, I checked out the damage to my face. My jaw was sore as hell, both eyes were already starting to go a little puffy, my lip was split and bleeding down my chin, and my right ear was still ringing. Aside from that I had never felt better.

Mrs. Vargas was still standing there, her arms folded around herself. She was watching her husband roll around on the deck. The look on her face was now a combination of shock and physical satisfaction so pure I felt like I should offer her a cigarette.

“I’ll let myself out,” I said.

That broke the spell. She looked at me and tried to say something. “Oh,” she finally said. “Oh. Yes. My God.”

“You’d better go fill the tub,” I said. The way he kept rolling around, holding his groin, it almost made me feel sorry for him. “When he gets up, make sure he goes and sits in it. If he complains, just grab him right in the shorts and pull.”

I was about to open the glass door, saw the dog ready to jump out of its skin at me and thought better of it. I went down the stairs instead, passing right under the broken window. There were still shards of glass on the ground, glittering in the last sunlight of the day. I went around the house to the front, got in my truck, and took a quick look at my face in the rearview mirror.

Bad idea.

I wiped the blood off my chin, thinking this was getting better by the minute. What a great day this was turning out to be.

Sometimes when you think about something too hard, you can’t really see it anymore. Then you put it in the back of your mind for a few minutes, like when someone happens to be beating the living shit out of you. When you bring it back out, you see something you didn’t see before. It all comes together.

Or in this case, it all falls apart. It falls apart like that old Indian oar he had up in that room of his—worthless to begin with, and so fragile, as soon as you touched it, it broke into a million pieces.

When Vargas asked me to explain how he did it, that was the first time I looked at it from his point of view—him or whoever it was who supposedly set this up. It didn’t work. Son of a bitch, it didn’t even
begin
to work.

Maven was right. That was the worst thing. Maven telling me that I was the one with the personal bias, that I was the one not seeing it clearly—goddamn it to hell, he was absolutely right.

My hands were still trembling as I grabbed the steering wheel. The adrenaline was still pumping through my bloodstream. I felt like killing somebody.

“Here I come,” I said. “I hope you’re ready for me.”

Everything that had happened, it all went back to one man. I pulled out of the driveway and gunned it, heading right toward him.

He was standing behind the bar when I walked in. He didn’t even look at me. He kept talking to the man in front of him, his voice low. There were a couple other men at the bar, a few more at the tables. The Tigers were playing on the big screen again.

“Bennett, I want to talk to you,” I said.

“Be with you in a minute,” he said, his eyes still not moving.

“It can’t wait.”

“Just a minute, Alex.”

“At least pour me a beer while I’m waiting.”

He finally looked up at me. If he even noticed the shape I was in, it didn’t register on his face. “I’m a little busy right now,” he said, his mouth tight. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

“Bennett, what’s going on?”

He looked down at the sink in front of him, his hands still on the bar. From the moment I had stepped into the place, he hadn’t moved his hands.

An ashtray on the bar. Smoke rising. That smell, sickly sweet.

The man in front of Bennett, sitting on the bar stool—I hadn’t looked at him when I came in. Now I did. His hair was so blond it was white, his skin so pale that in the summer he’d turn red as a beet as soon as he stepped outside. His eyebrows, you could barely see them.

He looked over at me, the same way he had looked at me when I was lying on Vargas’s floor.

“We’re having a conversation,” he said. “What’s all the fuss about?” The last word a very Canadian “aboot.”

“There’s no fuss,” Bennett said. “Alex is just here to have a beer.”

“It looks like Alex needs a little ice for his face, too,” the man said. “He seems to have run into a cement truck.”

He didn’t take his eyes off me. I wiped the blood off my chin with the back of my sleeve and stared right back at him. I took a step toward him. He didn’t even blink.

“Alex, don’t,” Bennett said. “Please don’t move.”

I looked away from the man, saw Bennett’s hands still on the bar. It all fell into place. The man was wearing a jacket on a day that was far too warm for it. It was zipped most of the way down, and the man’s right hand was inside. I didn’t have to guess what he was holding.

“I’m not alone,” he said. “I’d rather we didn’t have to shoot our way out of here, but we will if we have to.”

I looked behind him. Ham was sitting at one of the tables, looking like his head was about to explode. Another man sat next to him. He wasn’t quite as blond as the man at the bar, but otherwise the family resemblance was unmistakable.

“Your brother,” I said. “Was he the third man at our party?”

“You know who the third man was,” he said.

“News to me.”

“You were in this from the beginning.”

“Again,” I said, “news to me. You wanna start making some sense?”

“I told you,” Bennett spoke up. “Alex had no part in this.”

“There you go again,” the man said. “Every time you say that, I get more upset. I do wish you’d stop.”

“I’m telling you the truth,” Bennett said.

“How about you, Alex?” the man said. “Are you gonna tell me the same thing?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then why are you here? Just dropping in for a beer? And some bandages?”

“Why were you in my cabin?” I said.

“Just doing a little research,” he said. “Trying to recoup some business losses.”

“Why don’t you come by again tonight? I’ll make sure I’m home this time.”

“You know, I’m starting to feel unwelcome,” he said. “In fact, I’d say it’s gotten downright hostile in here.”

“You haven’t seen hostile yet. Believe me.”

He smiled. “If you had any idea,” he said. “My God, you people actually think you can get away with this. It’s almost funny.”

“I saw one of your partners today,” I said. “Two bullets in the back? That must have been you. Pretty gutless, wouldn’t you say?”

His smile vanished. “You’re about to end your own life, friend.”

“I’m ‘aboot’ to end my own life? How come you Canadians talk so funny, anyway?”

“Alex,” Bennett said. “For the love of God…”

“I’ll be in touch with you again,” the man said as he stood up. “Soon.” He circled around me, never turning his back. His brother stood up and went out the door first. Then my new friend slowly backed his way out the door, giving me a little wink.

As soon as the door closed, I went to the window.

“Alex, what are you doing? Get away from there!”

I ignored him. I watched the men get into a black Audi. It was not the same car from Leon’s videotape, and not the same license number, although the plate did come from Ontario.

I went back to the bar. “Give me a pen,” I said, grabbing a napkin.

“What?”

“You can take your hands off the bar. He’s gone. Give me a pen.”

He finally unfroze himself, pushed himself away from the bar, and found me a pen. I wrote down the plate number on a cocktail napkin. Bennett leaned over the sink as though he was about to throw up.

When Margaret came out, carrying a plate of food, she stopped dead in her tracks. “What’s going on?” she said. “What’s wrong? Alex, what happened to your face?”

Bennett shook his head. Ham kept sitting at the table, staring at the door.

“You can pour me that beer now,” I said. “And then you can start talking.”

He picked up a mug, pulled the tap, then set the mug down in front of me with a bang. The foam ran all over the bar.

When Ham finally got up and came to the bar, Bennett told him to take over.

“Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?” Margaret said.

“I’ll tell you later,” Bennett said. “I need some air.”

I was behind him so fast the door didn’t even get a chance to shut. “Who was that man?” I said. “What’s his name?”

“I don’t know his name,” he said.

“The hell you don’t. He was one of the three men you got to take down Vargas.”

He stopped in the middle of the parking lot. He turned to me. He was standing so close, and being a good five inches taller, he had to look down at me. He didn’t say a word.

“Start explaining,” I said.

He shook his head.

“I already look like hell, Bennett. I’ve got nothing else to lose. Start talking now or we go right here.”

He let out a long, tired breath. “Come with me,” he said.

I followed him around the lot, and back to the river. I saw the dock where I had left Vargas after our little lunch date. There was a picnic table back there. Bennett sat down, and then I did the same, directly across from him. A couple of boats passed by. The sun was setting. It was another goddamned beautiful sunset and this was how I was spending it.

“How’d you figure it out?” he said.

“I didn’t. Not at first. That was the problem. I would have saved myself a lot of trouble if I had just thought about it for a while.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I was thinking it was all a setup,” I said. “I was thinking it
had
to be a setup. Using your car, planting that stuff at Gill’s house, and then at Jackie’s house…”

“How do you know about that?”

“I saw the videotape, Bennett. Leon showed it to me.”

“Yeah, the police certainly liked that tape,” he said. “I assume Vargas gave it to them. Of all the luck in the world, to have that son of a bitch tape the damned thing…”

“That’s just it,” I said. “Of all the luck. Who would have figured?”

“What do you mean?”

“You couldn’t have guessed that would happen. Nobody could have.”

“I still don’t get it.”

“The setup,” I said. “It just doesn’t work. If somebody was setting up all three of you, why use your car and then return it here? That doesn’t set
you
up at all. Without that videotape, there’s nothing to tie you into it. Only Jackie and Gill.”

He thought about that one for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, I see what you mean.”

“What were you going to do? Call in an anonymous tip? Tell them Jackie and Gill had some of the stolen property on their premises?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You get the money,” I said. “And Jackie and Gill take the fall.”

“Alex, you got it all wrong. That’s not why we did this.”

“Who’s ‘we,’ Bennett? Who was involved in this? Start by telling me who the third gunman was. It wasn’t that other man in the bar?”

“No,” he said. “It was my son.”

“Your son is six foot fucking six,” I said. “He wasn’t there that night.”

“I have more than one son, Alex.”

That stopped me for a second. “I didn’t know that. I’ve never seen him.”

“My oldest, Sean, he lives down in Cleveland. He came up here to do it.”

“And this other guy, the one who turned up dead. Danny Cox is his name?”

“Yeah, that’s him. He was one of Sean’s old friends from high school. They used to run around together. Danny was a real hood back then, used to get into trouble all the time, and Sean would sometimes be right there with him. He ended up spending the night in jail once, when Danny and him got loaded and went out joyriding. The cop clocked them doing a hundred and ten down I-75. They stopped to piss in the middle of the road. Otherwise, the cop might not have even caught up with them. Anyway, Sean looked up Danny and asked him if he’d be interested in a little something…”

“A little something.”

“Yeah.”

“When that guy had the gun pressed to my head,” I said. “That was a little something.”

“Well, Danny knew about this other guy, over in Canada, who could get some guns, and who apparently had a little experience with these types of things. I was a little apprehensive, but Danny told me it would all go down a lot better if they had a pro involved.”

“You brought in a pro,” I said. “This is getting better by the minute.”

“This guy, as far as I know, they just call him ‘Blondie.’ Obviously, he’s even more of a heavy hitter than Danny was aware of.”

“You may have something there,” I said, “what with Danny lying there in the morgue with two bullet holes in him.”

Bennett looked behind him, out at the river. The sun kept going down and painting everything bright orange.

“Alex, this whole thing wasn’t supposed to happen this way.”

“You know, I just remembered something Vargas said. He said that kick in the ribs you took was all for show. He was right, wasn’t he? That was all part of the script.”

“It was supposed to be,” he said, rubbing his side. “Danny got a little carried away with it.”

“So Danny and Blondie were the downstairs men. Your son Sean was the guy who emptied the safe?”

“That’s right.”

“And it was Sean who delivered the stuff to Gill and Jackie—by himself, after he dropped the other two guys off.”

“Yes.”

“So tell me, how much did you get? Everybody seems to have a different number in mind.”

He looked me in the eye. “Nothing, Alex. Sean got nothing.”

“Did they take the money out of the safe or not?”

He held up his hands. “All right, look. I’m telling you what happened. Sean came up and did this thing with Danny and this other guy. Naturally, there has to be some money involved. You gotta pay off Danny, and of course you gotta pay off this Blondie character. The thing is, when they came back here and split up the money in the car, there was thirty thousand dollars in the bag. Fucking Vargas, I should have known. All his big talk about being connected and having all this cash in his safe. Thirty fucking thousand, that’s only ten per man.”

“Not exactly the score of a lifetime.”

“No, and I’m sure this Blondie wasn’t too happy about it. I guess what Sean did was, he told them each to take half of his share, because he knew it wasn’t what they were expecting. So now they’ve each got fifteen. Still not a hell of a lot. But what are you gonna do?”

“Bennett…”

“This Blondie guy has been thinking about this for three, four days now, Alex. He’s feeling like he made a big mistake working with amateurs, and he’ll never do it again, right? Then he picks up the newspaper and sees me and Jackie and Gill getting hauled into jail, and he thinks, holy fuck, did I get played for a sucker. Because if all three of us were involved in this, which is certainly how it looks, I gotta admit, then it stands to reason that we were all in on the money.”

“Bennett, wait…”

“And you, too,” he said.

“Me.”

“You heard what he said. He thinks you must have been the ringleader.”

“Based on what?”

“Based on the fact that he’s a pro, Alex. Based on the fact that he had a list of everybody who was supposed to be there that night, and you weren’t on the list. He figures if you were the last minute wild card, you must have been added for a reason. So he checks up on you, finds out some things. That you were a cop, and then a private eye. And some other things, it sounds like. He didn’t say exactly what. But it sounds like you’re a known commodity.”

“You did act surprised that night,” I said, “when you saw me come in with Jackie.”

“Yeah, I was. But at that point, it was too late.”

“So now the pro from Canada thinks everybody has a big chunk of the money, and he’s getting ripped off. And of course I’m the mastermind.”

“He must have figured Sean was hiding most of it. Remember they were wearing those big plastic bags. You could hide a lot of money in there. I mean, that must be what he was thinking. So now he wants the rest of the money. All of it. Or what he
thinks
is all of it. I don’t know what I’m going to do, Alex.”

“Go to the police. Tell them everything that happened.”

“Then what happens to my son?”

“You should have thought about that before.”

“So he goes to jail. And I go to jail. And Blondie still thinks we stiffed him. What’s going to happen then, Alex? What’s going to happen to my wife?”

“Fuck, Bennett.” All the adrenaline I was riding on suddenly ran out. I was tired and sore, and I needed very much to eat some dinner and drink some beer and then go to sleep. When I woke up, maybe this would all have been a bad dream.

“You gotta help me, Alex.” He was looking down at the table.

“You think so?”

“You gotta.”

“You got your son to rip him off,” I said. “And you used your best friends for cover. Why should I help you now?”