Die a Stranger: An Alex McKnight Novel Page 24
Vinnie shook his head and opened his eyes. His father would be the first person he’d see, and I couldn’t even imagine how disorienting that would be. Waking up and seeing a face you hadn’t seen in thirty years.
“Lou, come here,” I said.
He looked up at me.
“Just take the wheel,” I said. “For one minute.”
He looked back down at his son, then he stood and came to the captain’s chair. I got up and he took my place. Buck had his eyes down. He was rubbing at the red marks on his wrists, and I’d never seen him look so small.
I found a half-full plastic bottle of water in one of the rear compartments, God knows how old and normally the last thing in the world you’d want to drink. But I opened it and I gave it to Vinnie as I bent down next to him.
“What the hell happened?” he said.
“You got knocked out. Do you remember?”
“Not really, no. I was at the house with Buck. Then we were about to go outside and…”
He shook his head like his eyes were going out of focus.
“Sit still a minute,” I said. “Let me see your eyes.”
I held his chin and looked at each pupil. They were dilated, but they weren’t unequal. One of the more serious concussion signs I’d been trained to look for, long ago.
“What happened to your face?” he said.
“A little disagreement. Nothing to worry about right now.”
“I’m still not seeing right,” he said, blinking his eyes. “It’s like tunnel vision.”
“It’s okay. We’re gonna take you somewhere. Right now.”
“Where’s Buck?”
“He’s right there. In the chair. He’s okay.”
“Who’s that man driving the boat?”
I looked back up at Lou. I met his eyes and he nodded.
“That’s your father,” I said. “That’s Louis LeBlanc.”
He squinted and tried to focus. “That’s impossible.”
“It’s him, Vinnie. It’s your father. He came out here to help find you.”
Vinnie blew out a breath and started to sway a little bit.
“This light is killing me,” he said, holding up a hand to shield his eyes.
“Get in here,” I said, helping him to back up a few more feet, until he was fully inside the cabin. He half lay down on the cushion, still shaking his head and blinking.
“How did you find us?” he said.
“We got lucky. I’ll tell you about it later.”
“Alex, I want to know. Tell me how you found us. Those people brought us to the island. Those people who Buck thought were going to help us. They put us on the boat and they … They took us. I should have called you when I had the chance. God, my head hurts.”
“Stop talking,” I said. “Just shut up and close your eyes.”
Lou called to me. I left Vinnie lying there and went up to the wheel.
“We’re getting close,” he said. “I don’t see any docks anywhere.”
“Take us north. We should probably go right to the main dock. If there’s a medical center on the island, I’m sure it’s close to that.”
“They’re going to ask questions,” Buck said.
“Sorry, I didn’t hear what you said,” I said low into Buck’s ear. “Would you like to repeat it?”
“No. Never mind.”
I stared him down for a few seconds. Then I took the wheel again while Lou went down to watch Vinnie.
I circled the island on the north end. The shoreline stayed rough and rocky all the way around. The sun was finally starting to go down on this, officially one of the longest days of my life. I felt my own vision start to waver a little bit, just a product of sheer exhaustion. That and the aftereffects of the adrenaline, now that that hard part was over. We just had to get Vinnie to a doctor. Then I could collapse completely.
I held the boat steady as we made our way around that last bend and into the main harbor. There were half-a-dozen places I could have gone, but I chose the marina right next to the ferry dock. I figured that was closest to the main street and probably whatever medical facilities they had around here. I pulled into a slip and bumped the dock a little bit too hard. Some guy in white shorts and deck shoes came running down the dock, waving at us. He had sunglasses tucked into the neck of his alligator shirt. He took one look at the blood on my face and turned from an annoyance into an actual helpful human being, tying up the boat and helping Buck onto the deck.
“You need a doctor,” he said to me.
“My friend needs one first,” I said. Lou and I helped Vinnie out of the cabin. He tried to stand on rubber legs and he kept blinking in the light. The three of us half pulled, half lifted him onto the dock. Then the man helped us down to the street and walked with us right to the door of the medical center. I thanked the man, thinking this was the Michigan version of a yuppie boat snob. They dress the part but they just can’t manage the attitude.
There was a physician’s assistant on duty. She was just about to close for the day, but one look at us and she was on the phone to the two resident doctors. A few minutes later, Vinnie was in one room, getting the vision test and mental-acuity test and whatever the hell else they do to you when it’s obvious you have some grade of concussion. I was having my own fun in the next room over, receiving a tetanus shot and seventeen stitches in my face.
The doctor asked me what had happened to us. I told him it was a boating accident. I knew we’d be talking to the police eventually, but I thought we’d probably rather go home first and talk to the officers who knew us personally, for better or worse.
They weren’t about to let Vinnie go anywhere for a while. He ended up going home with one of the doctors, so he could be woken up every couple of hours for observation. That’s still the protocol for concussion. Lots of rest but not too much sleep at one time. I walked out of there with fresh white bandages taped all over my face. The PA took Lou over to the Kaisers’ rental house to pick up his car. She even found us a two-bedroom suite at a little place called the Emerald Isle Hotel.
It was turning into a five-star vacation. Aside from being taken down to the swamp to be killed, then riding a hard ten miles out onto the lake to rescue our friends, followed by a sit-down with a psychotic Chicago gangster and a knife wound to the face. After all that, the place was finally being redeemed by some grade-A island residents.
We ate a late dinner at one of the restaurants on the main street. Just me, Lou, and Buck, sitting there at the window table as the sun set. It felt wrong not to have Vinnie with us, but we knew he was being taken good care of at the doctor’s house.
Lou didn’t say much. He kept looking at me and then out at the water a block away from us. Buck ate like he hadn’t seen food in a couple of days. Which maybe he hadn’t.
When he was done, he slumped back in his chair. There were still red rings around his wrists. I wondered if he have them forever. Maybe he should, I thought, as a constant reminder of the choices he’d made that week.
“Everybody started shooting each other,” he said. “I panicked and ran away. When I was down the road, I called Vinnie. I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t even realize I’d been shot until I got in his truck and he noticed the blood on my shirt.”
“There was somebody still alive,” I said. “He was calling out to you. You left him there.”
“How do you know that?”
“Let’s just say I have it on good authority. Whether it’s justified or not, there are certain people who aren’t going to let you off the hook on this.”
“That’s why we were left out in the boat?”
“Well, the Kaisers were trying to blame you for everything. The new drop route, and probably the Kennedy assassinations, too. The man who was going to pick you up was more interested in the simple fact that you were the only man who lived through what happened at the airport. You would have done everybody a big favor by just getting shot there and dying with everybody else.”
“I did all of this,” he said. “I know that. When I talked to Harry and Jo, I mean, I thought they were going to help us. I thought everything would be okay. But it just got worse.”
“Everybody’s worried about you,” Lou said. “Both of you. They’ve got every Ojibwa in the state keeping an eye out for you.”
“Are you really Vinnie’s father? Did I hear that right?”
“You heard right.”
“I thought you were dead.”
“Apparently I’m not.”
“I’ll start thanking both of you right now,” he said, “and I’ll keep doing it. I’m not sure what else I can do.”
“Just do me one favor,” Lou said. “The next time you get yourself in a jam like this, don’t call Vinnie, okay?”
“Okay,” Buck said, giving that one a little smile. “I promise. I’ll call Alex instead.”
I just looked at him.
“It was a joke,” he said.
“Yeah, I know. You should call your family now. Tell them you’re all right. Vinnie’s family, too.”
“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’d like to do that tomorrow morning. As soon as word gets around, all hell is gonna break loose.”
“You’re probably right about that,” I said. “You’re gonna be a very popular guy once you get back home. I think Chief Benally gets the first dance.”
*
As tired as I was, I couldn’t sleep. My face was throbbing now. I took some aspirin and sat out on the couch. Buck was snoring away in one bedroom. Lou was in the other. I sat there and looked out the window at the darkened library behind the hotel. After a while, Lou came out and sat down in the chair across from me.
“Tell me what happened,” he said. “I want to know what that man said to you. Every word.”
“I didn’t want to bring it up yet. I figured those guys should both recover a little bit first.”
“I understand. But it’s just you and me here.”
My face was killing me. It hurt to talk. But I thought back carefully over every word Corvo had said to me. I told Lou everything I could remember. After everything we had been through that day, I owed him the full story.
I ran through everything, including the last instructions Corvo had given me. Bring the two Indians down to Chicago. You have exactly forty-eight hours.
“And if you don’t do that?” Lou said.
“Then it’s pretty clear what will happen. Corvo will come looking for us. Me included. If I call the cops, it gets even worse.”
“So what do we do?”
“It’s too bad he didn’t want just Buck. I would have turned him over on the spot.”
“Seriously, Alex.”
“Seriously, I don’t know. But we’ve got about a day and a half left to figure it out.”
*
We picked up Vinnie from the doctor’s house the next morning. He was looking more like himself, but we got some pretty detailed instructions on taking him to a doctor back home, and watching for symptoms of post-concussion syndrome. Severe headaches, dizziness, sudden changes in mood. Basically anything out of the ordinary. While I was there, the doctor took the opportunity to change the bandages on my face. It still hurt.
We settled the bill and the insurance and everything else. Then we thanked him a few times, because he had obviously gone out of his way for us. There was room for only one more car on the ferry, so we took it. We got onboard and we stood on the deck, watching the boat push off from the dock. I saw the fishing boat from the day before, still sitting in its slip. I figured someone would take care of it eventually, take it back to wherever it belonged.
The ferry was slow. Two hours to go thirty-two miles. We had plenty of time to sit there in the indoor lounge, feeling the gentle rhythm of the boat, seeing the water just outside the window as it moved past, inch by inch.
Buck hadn’t said a word yet that whole morning. Neither had Vinnie, but for Buck it was out of character. I figured he must have been thinking about the day ahead, and how it would be one of the longest of his life.
“So what’s our story?” he finally said.
Vinnie just raised an eyebrow at him.
“I mean, what are we going to tell everybody when we get back? We should get on the same page here.”
“Why don’t you just tell the truth?” I said.
“Well, think about it. Everybody who was at the airport is dead now. There’s nobody who can even put me there.”
“I picked you up,” Vinnie said. “I can put you there.”
“But if you didn’t pick me up there? That’s what I’m saying.”
“If I didn’t pick you up there, how would you explain the gunshot wound?”
“What gunshot wound?” Buck said, raising both arms and waving them around. “I sure don’t see any gunshot wounds, do you?”
“Your cousin treated you,” Vinnie said. “We drove you all the way down to Mount Pleasant to have him patch you up.”
“We did go down there, yeah,” Buck said, frowning. “We can’t ask him to lie about that. That’s why I’m saying we should work this out now.”
“Just tell the truth,” I said again. “You never have to be on the same page if you do that. Makes life kinda simple.”
“Okay, okay, I get it,” he said. “I was at the airport. Vinnie picked me up. Ron fixed me. Everybody’s got the same story there. But as far as me being at the airport in the first place … That’s just my story, right? You see what I’m saying? Nobody else needs to corroborate it. Is that the right word? Corroborate?”
“Cut to the chase,” Lou said. “What are you going to tell them?”
“I don’t know exactly. I’m just saying. If those guys came to my house to pick me up, and up until then it was just an abstract idea … Then here they are and all of a sudden I’m having second thoughts.… I mean, I’m actually being honest about that. I did have some second thoughts. But they didn’t seem too interested in giving me a choice at that point, you know what I’m saying? In hindsight, it kinda feels like I was being forced to go along with them.”
Lou was nodding at every word. A fresh reminder that this was a man who had spent some long years in prison. It was only natural he’d be looking for the angle here. It was practically hardwired into his brain now.
“You were on the scene when five men were murdered,” he said to Buck. “But if you were there against your will…”
“Just tell the truth,” I said one more time, even though I might as well have opened the window and told it to the squawking seagulls.
“Come on,” Lou said to me. “Give the man a break. He’s just trying to be prepared for what’s coming today. You never give these guys the rope if you don’t have to. That’s what any good lawyer would tell you.”
“Okay, so you were kidnapped,” I said. “You were taken to the airport and everybody got killed. Now you’re free. You should have called the police right then.”
“I panicked,” he said. “It was a natural reaction.”
“So you had Vinnie drive you all the way down to Mount Pleasant. Then, the next day, you willingly went to the Kaisers’ house. These same people who were supposedly behind your ‘abduction’ the day before. Hell, you even came out to the island with them. I assume that was voluntary, too. Unless they put you in the trunk.”
“They totally fooled me,” Buck said. “Vinnie, too. They’re like the world’s best con men, and you have to admit, once they got us out here, everything got turned upside down pretty quick. You think we wanted to be tied up in that boat and left out there?”
“No,” I said, raising both hands. “I’m sure you didn’t. See how convincing you sound? Because you’re telling the truth now. Just do that from the beginning.”
“I’m getting a headache,” Vinnie said. “There
’s too much noise out here.”
He tried to stand up, but then he had to hold on tight to the back of the chair. Lou and I got up to help him and he waved us away. When he got his bearings, he left us and went down the hallway to the “quiet room,” where people could read or just close their eyes for a while. Lou followed him. I wasn’t sure if that was such a great idea, but what the hell. He and Vinnie hadn’t talked to each other yet. At some point, they’d have to get into the father-son business, no matter how strange that would be.
“Vinnie’s truck is still at the Kaisers’ house,” Buck said. “We should go get it while we’re down here.”
“Actually, it’s at an auto-glass shop in Cadillac,” I said. “But it’s still an hour and a half out of our way.”
“We’d have to come down again and get it anyway. That’s three hours down, three hours back. This way we take care of it today.”
“You’re stalling, Buck. You don’t want to face this stuff. I get it. I wouldn’t, either.”
He stopped talking and looked out the window. I got up and was just about to walk down the hall to see how Lou and Vinnie were doing. Then I thought, no, better to just go up and get some air on the deck. Let them work out whatever it was they had to work out. It was something only the two of them could do.
*
We ended up going to Cadillac after all. Vinnie wanted his truck, although there was no way we were going to let him drive it. Not until we knew he was a hundred percent better. We got the rental car off the ferry and we all piled in and drove down to Cadillac. I was driving. Buck was in the front seat with me. Lou and Vinnie sat in the back. Neither of them said anything. I had no idea what they may have said to each other back in that quiet room on the ferry. Maybe they hadn’t said anything at all. It was the quiet room, after all.
The ride seemed longer because of the silence, but an hour and a half later, we were close to Cadillac and I realized that we were about to drive right by the Kaisers’ house. I knew that Corvo would have had plenty of time by now to get the boat back to Chicago and then drive up here. Or hell, even just take the boat right to Charlevoix. He could have practically met them as they were getting off the ferry.