“These guys were a little different,” I said. “They were probably dressed a lot better than most of the hunters you get in here. And it sounds like they weren’t exactly behaving themselves. At least, all but one of them.”
“What did the other one look like?” she said.
“Like me,” Vinnie said. “He’s my brother.”
The woman studied his face. “Five guys, you say? Rich white guys and one Indian?”
“Yes.”
“I remember them. They stopped in for breakfast. Bunch of slick old boys. Four whites and one Indian.”
“Breakfast?” I said. “That must have been on their way up, eleven days ago?”
“Yeah, that sounds about right. I remember they seemed like real pains in the ass, you know, sending the eggs back because they weren’t done right. Making a racket. But then they left me a twenty dollar tip on a thirty dollar bill. In American dollars. A twenty dollar tip I’ll remember.”
“But you didn’t see them again when they were on their way back?”
“Nope, just the one time.”
“How about another two men?” I said. “One with a big nose. They might have come through here yesterday.”
“We got a lot of big noses up here, hon.”
“Okay, never mind.” I thanked the woman, we had our dinner, and then we left.
“We’re about three hours away from the lodge,” I said. “So maybe they didn’t need to stop yet.”
“Or maybe they saw that little bar in there and decided to go somewhere else.”
We checked the other two bars in town. We didn’t get anything.
“Okay, so on the way back, they just kept driving. Maybe they stopped in Wawa.”
“Let’s see,” he said.
So we did. Through the dark woods we drove another hour and a half. My eyes were getting tired. It was 10:30 when we hit Wawa again. The giant goose looked down at us once again, this time lit up by two spotlights.
“We know what our favorite bar in Wawa is,” I said. “You figure these guys found the same place?”
“Might as well start there,” he said. “Just promise me you won’t get into trouble again.”
“That wasn’t trouble,” I said. “That was just a misunderstanding with the locals.”
The parking lot actually had a few vehicles in it this time, and when we stepped into the place, it almost looked busy. Every bar stool was taken, and a few more men were sitting at the round tables. There were two guys playing pool, the chalk dust hanging in the air below the single fluorescent light. Thankfully, our friends weren’t trying to play the bowling game.
The same big man was behind the bar. He was working a lot harder now, trying to keep everyone happy, with apparently nobody to help him. He was sweating like he’d just buried a dead horse. He did a double take when he saw us leaning on one end of the bar. “You guys again,” he said, his voice a hell of a lot less cordial than the first time we heard it. “Just what I need.”
“We just want to ask you a couple of questions,” I said.
“Can’t you see I’m busy here? You want something to drink or not?”
“A Molson and a 7-Up,” I said. “Our usual.”
He didn’t smile. He hit the draft handle, drew me a glass that was at least half foam, squirted some soda water out of his shooter into a glass and put it down next to the beer. “Five bucks,” he said.
“Your prices went up,” I said.
“It’s a tough business.”
“Whatever your problem is-”
“My problem is as soon as you guys left here today, Stan and Brian got in a big fight. Brian’s in the hospital.”
I almost laughed. “Stan’s the guy who got his nose broken, right? And Brian’s the guy who didn’t stand up for him? What the hell does that have to do with us?”
Vinnie leaned in front of me. “We’re just looking for somebody,” he said, raising his voice over the noises around him. “Do you think you could help us out?”
“Who you looking for?”
“My brother.”
“Go check the parking lot. That’s about as far as an Indian gets before he passes out.”
The look Vinnie gave him right about then should have scared him. But the bartender didn’t know Vinnie like I did. He didn’t know the kind of day we’d been having, or that Vinnie’s seven-mile-long fuse was about to burn all the way down.
That’s when our friend Stan showed up. There was fresh white tape on his face, and his two black eyes looked even worse. “Lookee here,” he said. “It’s the Lone Ranger and Tonto again.”
He was still wearing his Maple Leafs jersey. It took Vinnie about two seconds to hit him twice in the face and then pull that jersey right over his head. Somebody else jumped in, and then me. Usually I’m smart enough to cover myself in a bar fight, especially when I’m fighting over something stupid in a roomful of strangers. But somehow it all boiled over at that exact moment, all the driving and the dead ends, and everything Vinnie had told me about Tom. Having your brother go to prison and then finding him in the shower, trying to hang himself. Somehow I was plugged into the same anger now, for Tom and for the men he had come up here with, and for everyone else in this goddamned backwoods bar. Fortunately, nobody else in the place seemed too interested in fighting. Most of them just watched us for a minute or two until they could step in and separate us.
“Easy now,” a man said in my ear as he wrapped me from behind in a bear hug. “Just take it easy.” I struggled to break free, but he was strong enough to wait me out.
Where all this anger had come from, I didn’t know. I was thinking about it thirty minutes later, as two officers from the Ontario Provincial Police station down the street had us sitting at a table in the corner. They weren’t happy about Vinnie not having a driver’s license, but they ran mine and stood around for a while, figuring out what to do with us. It wasn’t the first bar fight they’d seen that week-hell, maybe not even that night-so they let us go with the standard warning.
I was still thinking about it at midnight as we checked in at the local motel. I sure didn’t feel like driving another four hours to make it home. Spending the night in Wawa wasn’t my idea of a vacation, but at least it wasn’t the local jail.
I got Vinnie some ice for the scrape over his left eye, used the toothbrush the man at the front desk had given me, washed it down with tap water that tasted like pure iron. When the lights were out and I was staring up at the ceiling, I tried to let go of the anger. I tried to let go of it the way you let sand run between your fingers. When it was gone, there was nothing left but a question. And then another.
“These guys didn’t just vanish into thin air,” I said. “Where in hell did they go?”
Vinnie lay on the bed across from me. “I wish I knew, Alex.”
“And these other two guys, the ones who are looking for them. Who are they?”
He didn’t answer. He stared up at the same ceiling. We both listened to the night, a long way from home, and waited for the morning.
Chapter Six
The chirping woke me up. Some kind of bird was making a racket, and it was doing it about three hours too early. I opened one eye and saw a dim ray of light coming through the window-whose window I could not say. I had no idea where the hell I was.
I sat up. There was a dull ache in my right hand. The bird started chirping again. What in goddamned hell, I thought. And then it came back to me.
I was in a motel room-in Wawa, Ontario, of all places. Vinnie was face down on the other bed, still wearing his clothes from the night before. The ache in my hand told me that I had gotten at least one good shot in before the fight was broken up. And that damned chirping had to be-
My cell phone rang again. Where the hell was it? I picked up my pants, then my coat, but I couldn’t find it. Finally, I stood still and listened. The ring was muffled, and it seemed to come from Vinnie himself, like maybe he had swallowed the damned thing. I rolled him over and picked it up off the bed.
“Hello,” I said. I looked at the clock. It was 6:32.