She hung up before I could answer. I just sat there with the phone in my hand. And then I had Jackie bring me another beer.
A couple hours later, I was back at my cabin. It was dark. I walked around the outside of the cabin a couple times. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that nobody was watching me anymore, that nobody was waiting to kill me.
My gun. I didn’t have my gun anymore. It was still at the police station. But that was okay. I didn’t need it anymore, right?
I went inside and found the phone book. I tried to look up Raymond Julius. He had no listing.
Five or six months ago. What happened five or six months ago?
You’re not going to figure this out tonight, Alex. Just go to bed. You need to cut some wood tomorrow, clean up the place. Get some food in the house, for God’s sake. Become a human being again.
I slept. Two hours, maybe three. And then I sat up in my bed and turned on the light. It was just past midnight.
Five or six months ago.
The phone book was still on the kitchen table. I paged through it until I found Leon Prudell. The address was in Kinross, a little town south of the Soo, down by the airport. I threw some clothes on and got in the truck. With the cold air whipping through the open window I raced toward Kinross. It was late, but Leon and I had something to talk about.
It didn’t take long to find his house. Kinross is almost as small as Paradise, one main road and a few side streets. It was a little clapboard house, not much bigger than my cabin. There was a faint smell of dead fish in the air. A tire swing hung from a tree in the front yard.
I knocked on the door, waited, knocked again. Finally the porch light came on and a woman looked around the door at me. “Who is it?” she said.
“I need to speak to your husband,” I said.
“He’s not here. Who are you?”
I thought for a second. “I want to hire him,” I said. “I understand he’s a private investigator.”
“He was doing investigations,” she said, “but he don’t do that no more.”
“I hear he’s good,” I said. “Are you sure he won’t take a case? I’ll pay five hundred dollars a day.”
That got her to open the door all the way. I saw a lot of woman and a lot of red bathrobe. The way she was built, I was glad that Leon had come after me in the bar that night and not her. “He’s working up at the truck stop on I-75 tonight,” she said. “In the restaurant.”
“The one by the Route 28 exit?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“I appreciate it, ma’am.”
“He works nights,” she said. “Ever since he lost the investigating job.”
“I see.”
“Do you know a guy named Alex McKnight?”
“Can’t say that I do,” I said.
“That’s the man who got him fired. You see him, you tell him he’s an asshole, okay?”
“I’ll do that, ma’am. I’m sorry I had to disturb you at this hour.”
“For five hundred dollars a day, you can disturb me anytime you want.”
“Thank you, ma’am. Good night.”
I got out of there and made my way back to the highway. The truck stop was a few miles north on 1-75, one of those places you see from the road, lit up all night long, a hundred trucks gassing up or just sitting there while the drivers have their apple pie and coffee.
I found Prudell clearing off a table, a big white apron hanging over his gut. As soon as he saw me, he set his pile of plates down with a clatter.
“Well, look who it is,” he said. “Don’t tell me, you came to take this job away from me too, right?”
“Sit down, Prudell.”
“Here, let me take my apron off for you. You’ll be needing this.” There were a couple truckers at the counter, a waitress serving them, another one just sitting in a booth. They all looked over at us.
“Just sit down,” I said.
“All you got to do is keep these tables clear,” he said. “And once an hour you gotta go clean up the bathrooms. I’m sure you’ll be able to handle it.”
“Prudell,” I said. I was trying to control myself. I was really trying. “If you don’t shut up and sit down, I’m going to hurt you. Do you understand me? I’m going to beat the hell out of you right here in the restaurant.”
“McKnight, if you don’t get out of here right now-”
I grabbed his left hand and bent it back against his wrist. It had always been a great way to convince someone to get into the back of a squad car. Not as dramatic as an arm behind the back, but just as effective. Prudell gave out a little yelp and then he sat down in the booth. The whole place was watching us now, but I didn’t care.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he said. “You trying to break my wrist?”
I sat down next to him. It was a tight fit. “Listen to me very carefully,” I said. “Do you remember that night in the bar, the first night you came after me? I know you were drunk, but try to remember what you said to me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You said I took your job and now you were going to go broke and you had a family to take care of, remember? You gave me the whole sob story about your kids not going to Disney World and your wife not getting a new car and all that shit. And then you said something else, something about a man who was helping you out. You said he was down on his luck and the only thing keeping him together was running errands for you and feeling like he was doing something important. Do you remember that?”
“I remember,” he said. “It was all true. You really fucked over a lot of people. Not just me.”
It had been five months and change since I took Prudell’s job. He had nursed his grudge for a few months until he had finally worked up the nerve to face me.
“Okay, fine,” I said. “Whatever you say. I ruined all your lives. Now just tell me his name.” “The guy who was working for me?” “Yes,” I said. “Tell me his name.” “His name is Julius,” he said. “Raymond Julius.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A long silence passed while it sank in. Prudell slipped me a quick elbow in the ribs, but it didn’t get him out of the booth. It just made me even madder. “Do that again and I’ll take your head off,” I said.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve, McKnight. Just let me out of here.”
“Where does he live?” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“The hell you don’t. The guy worked for you.”
“I only saw his house once,” he said. “That was a long time ago, before you-”
“Yeah yeah, before I fucked you both over. We’ve been through that already. You were at his house, but you don’t know where it is? What, were you blindfolded?”
“It’s in the Soo,” he said. “On the west side of town somewhere. I don’t remember exactly where, all right?”
“Have you talked to him since then?”
“No, I haven’t.”
I sat there and thought about it. Finally, I got up out of the booth and said, “Let’s go.”
“What are you talking about? I’m not going anywhere.”
“Yes you are. We’re going to go find his house.”
“Like hell I am. I’m in the middle of working here.”
“Go tell your boss you need to take a little break. Call it a family emergency.”
He worked his way out of the booth, adjusted his white apron, and picked up a plate. “You can go fuck yourself,” he said.
I counted to ten in my head while he cleared the table. “Prudell,” I said. “You got two choices. Number one is I bounce you off every wall in this place and then throw you through a window. I’m sure I’ll get arrested. I don’t care anymore. Number two is you help me find Julius’s house, and I pay you five hundred dollars for your time.”
He looked up at me. “You expect me to believe that? You’re going to pay me?”
“You’re a private investigator, aren’t you? Consider it a case.”
“I was a private investigator,” he said. “Now I’m a busboy.”
“What’s your choice, Prudell?”
“You’re something else, you know that? You’re a real piece of work.”
“Choose, Prudell.”
He dropped the plates on the table and went back through a couple of swinging doors to the kitchen. I didn’t know if he was calling the police, or getting a big knife, or sneaking out the back door. Finally, he burst back out through the doors, untying his apron. A frowning little man who had to be his boss came out behind him.