Winter of the Wolf Moon (34 page)

“Whoa,” I said. “Back up. My Website?”

“Yeah, I did a search on Alex McKnight and it came up.”

“Randy, I don’t have a Website. I don’t even have a computer.”

“I’m talking about your business Website, Alex. Prudell-McKnight Investigations.”

I just looked at him for a long moment. And then it came to me. “Oh my God,” I said. “What did he do now?”

“Your partner, Leon?”

I closed my eyes. “Yeah, my partner, Leon.”

“Well, it looks like he’s put a nice little Website out there advertising your services. There’s this drawing with two pistols on it, pointing at each other. It kinda looks like they’re shooting at each other.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said. “He used the same thing on our business cards.”

“I gave Leon a call,” he said. “Real nice guy. He told me you’d be here. I made him promise not to tell you I was coming. I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“Well, you certainly did surprise me. But why—”

“There’s something on there about you having a bullet in your chest, too. Is that true?”

“I’m going to kill him,” I said. “He is absolutely dead.”

“So you do have a bullet in there?” He snuck a look down at my torso, the same way everybody does when they first hear about it

“Yes,” I said. “It’s a long story.”

“All right, save that one, then. Are you married? You got any kids?”

“No and no,” I said. “Married once, divorced. No kids. How about you?”

He looked at the ceiling for a moment. “I’m divorced, too. Three kids. Jonathon just passed the bar. He’s a lawyer in San Francisco. His wife’s expecting a baby soon. Can you believe that, I’m gonna be a grandfather! Annie’s a chef, just got a new job at a really nice restaurant down in San Diego. And Terry just went off to school at UC-Santa Barbara. Hey, guess what.” He reached over and punched me in the leg.

“Ouch. What?”

“Terry’s a ballplayer. He’s on the freshman team. Guess what position he plays.”

“Oh great,” I said. “Another pitcher. I bet he’s a crazy lefthander.”

“He’s a catcher,” he said. “Can you beat that?”

“That’s even worse,” I said. “He has to
catch
crazy lefthanders.”

“He’s a switch-hitter,” he said. “God, he can drive the ball, Alex. Just like you used to.”

“I see your memory went along with your hair.”

“Oh man, you haven’t changed, Alex.” He took another pull of the bottle. “Canadian beer. I can’t believe I’m in Michigan drinking Canadian beer. And why is it so cold here, anyway? Haven’t you guys heard of spring?”

“Sure,” I said. “Just wait until June.”

“Hey, Jackie!” he yelled. “Get your butt over here so I can tell you some stories about your boy Alex here. Stuff I bet you never heard before. And bring some more beer while you’re at it.”

Anybody else who came into the place for the first time and talked to Jackie that way, he’d be back out in the parking lot in ten seconds, wiping the gravel off his ass. But Randy had always had this knack for making you feel like you’ve known him your whole life, even if you just met him. I saw it all the time when we were playing together, and even more when we became roommates. Randy had already gone through a couple roommates by the time he got to me. Something about the way he’d keep talking all night,
even if you had to get up early the next morning and ride on a bus all day to the next game.

But you couldn’t hate the guy for it. As much as you wanted to kill him sometimes, he’d always say something funny and disarming, or even worse, he’d put his arm around you and sing in your ear. “You know you love me, Alex,” he used to say. “You’ve got the hots for me. You dream about me all night long. That’s why I drive you crazy.”

A whole busload of guys in their twenties, most of them from farms or little towns around the midwest, all of them dirt tough or at least trying to act like it. And I get Randy Wilkins for a roommate.

So now almost thirty years has passed, and out of nowhere he’s sitting in the Glasgow Inn on a late Tuesday night in April. It’s taken him exactly twenty minutes to feel comfortable. Hell, in twenty minutes he owns the place. Even a crusty old goat like Jackie is treating him like royalty. I kept waiting for him to tell me why he had come so far to see me, after all these years, but he kept talking about baseball, the games we had played in, old teammates I had all but forgotten.

“So tell me, Randy,” Jackie said at one point. “Did you ever make it up to the big leagues?”

There it was. I knew it would come up eventually. I certainly wasn’t going to mention it myself.

“Why, yes,” Randy said. “As a matter of fact I did make it up to the big leagues. I pitched in one game.” By this time, Jackie had pulled a couple of the tables over by the fireplace, and at least twelve men were
sitting there listening to him. “You want to tell this story, Alex?”

“I wasn’t there,” I said. And that’s all I said, because I didn’t want to touch it. I had never even heard him tell it before, because after that September call-up, I never saw him again. Until tonight.