“Come on,” he said. “We’ll talk about it later.” He turned to go.
“Vinnie-”
“Later, Alex. I promise.”
I watched him get into one of the cars. I stood there for a while, breathing in the cold air, and then I finally went to my truck and followed them.
We ended up over at the home of his cousin Buck, just down the street from his mother’s house. Buck had built a little sweat lodge in the backyard. It was a half sphere, about ten feet in diameter, made by lashing saplings together and covering them with canvas and old rugs. The men already had a fire going, several yards from the lodge. They were heating rocks in the fire, and then moving them into the lodge with a long shovel.
There were eleven men, counting me. The others stripped down to their underwear, piling their clothes on the ground. They waited patiently until everyone was standing there together, these mostly naked men of all ages, with long dark hair over their shoulders. I couldn’t imagine doing the same on a day like this, but I figured what the hell. I’d certainly done worse things on days even colder than this one. Like jumping into a lake so a madman could shoot at me.
I almost choked on the steam when I went into the lodge, but it was warm and made every muscle in my body go loose. There was a faint light from the sparks and from the glowing rocks in the center pit. I felt my way over to the edge and sat down with the other men, closing my eyes and letting the steam fill my lungs. Someone dipped a large ladle into a bucket of water and poured it on the rocks. Then he added some sage. One of the four medicines, that much I knew. I sat there hoping that the medicine would work and that it would make Vinnie start feeling like himself again.
That little scene up on the cliff. Vinnie not wanting to talk about it, or to even think about what to do next. That wasn’t the Vinnie I knew.
We sat in the lodge for at least an hour. It was better than any sauna I had ever been in. The sweat rolled down over my face, as if every poison in my body and every bad thought in my mind were being drawn out by the heat. Nobody said a word.
Finally, one man opened a flap and we all crawled out. The air felt as cold as the water had been in that lake, but I didn’t shiver. Instead I felt a tingling all over my body, and a lightness in my chest. I put my clothes back on, moving in slow motion. When I was dressed, I looked around for Vinnie, but didn’t see him. He was still in the lodge, fast asleep.
I helped a couple of his cousins carry him out of the lodge and into one of the cars. He didn’t wake up, and we didn’t bother dressing him. We just wrapped him up in blankets.
“Just take him to his house,” I said. “I’ll take care of him.”
“We’ll take him home,” Buck said.
“Good, I’ll follow you.”
“No,” he said. “I mean we’ll take him to the reservation.” He stood there in front of the car door, his body between me and Vinnie. He was four inches taller than me. The other cousins were all looking at me.
This was the look. I’d seen it before. Between one moment and the next, my welcome among them had ended. I was an outsider again.
“Thank you for everything you did,” Buck said. “We’ll take care of Vinnie now.”
Thank you, he says. The man says thank you and they’ll take care of him now. I had a sudden urge to fight them, all of them at once. They would have taken me apart, but what the hell.
“He’s my brother now,” I said. “You understand? Vinnie’s my brother.”
Nobody said a word.
“You can’t change that,” I said. “This time you’re not going to come between us.”
Buck didn’t move.
There was nothing else to do. I shook my head and left. As I looked in the rearview mirror, they were all still standing there, watching me drive away.
I headed back home. I pointed the truck straight down the road and I drove. I was tired and used up and empty. Finally, I pulled off the road. I sat there for five or six minutes, staring off into nothing. The wind kicked up and whistled past the windows. I thought about how good it would feel to go sit by the fire at Jackie’s place. Put your feet up and forget about it.
Then I turned the truck around and went back the way I came. I drove due east, straight toward Sault Ste. Marie.
If I was going to do something stupid, I couldn’t do it alone. And if Vinnie couldn’t help me now, then I knew there was only one other choice.
It was time to talk to my old partner, Leon Prudell.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I found Leon Prudell at the big custom motor sports shop on Three Mile Road. It was the kind of place that’ll sell you a snowmobile in the winter, an outboard motor in the spring, and a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle for hunting season. I found Leon in the showroom, pointing out the features of an Arctic Cat to a prospective buyer and his young son. “This is a hell of a sled,” I heard him say. I knew that’s what the real riders call them. They’re sleds, not snowmobiles.
When he spotted me, he stood up straight and switched off the sales pitch. “Excuse me,” he said, and then he came over to me and took my right hand.
“Leon,” I said. He was the same old Leon, 240 pounds of nervous energy and wild orange hair-the Leon who had always wanted to be a private eye, the Leon who introduced himself to me by trying to take me apart in Jackie’s parking lot, and who would later talk me into becoming his silent partner in the short-lived Prudell-McKnight Investigations. He tried to go it alone after that, but it didn’t work out. Sault Ste. Marie just isn’t the right market for a private investigator, especially when everybody in town remembers you as the goofy fat kid in the back of the class. That’s why he was selling snowmobiles now. He wore a black windbreaker with the name of the business on one side of the zipper, and “Leon” on the other.
“Alex, my God. Are you all right?”
“You must have heard-”
“Of course I did. You were in the paper. You and Vinnie. I’m sorry I didn’t get out to the funeral.”
“Don’t worry about that,” I said. “Listen, I hate to bother you, but I don’t know who else to ask.”
“Hey, once a partner, always a partner,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“It’s about what happened,” I said. “I’m trying to find some things out.”
“Oh yeah?” The way he said it, the way his eyes came alive, I knew I had him hooked. It made me feel even worse.
“I’m sorry, Leon. It’s just-”
“I’m almost done here, all right? You hang tight for a few minutes. We’ll go somewhere and talk.”
When he turned around, the man and his son had disappeared.
“I blew your sale,” I said.
“Nah, they weren’t buying. I could tell. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“Can you just leave?”
“It’s slow today,” he said. He went in the back for a moment. I heard him talking to somebody, and then he came back out. “Where do you want to go?”
“You still have your computer at your house? You see, I just wanted to look up a couple of names.”
“Say no more,” he said. “Let’s go to my house. I’ll drive. Just leave your truck here.”
“But then you gotta bring me back.”
“It’s all right, Alex. Come on. You can brief me on the case in the car.”
Brief me on the case, that’s the kind of thing Leon would say. Two minutes around me and he was already talking like a private eye again.
He opened the car door for me and got in the driver’s seat. It was the same old red Chevy Nova he’d had forever. How he could drive this piece of crap in the snow was a mystery to me. “It’s good to see you,” I said. “Everybody at home okay?”
“Yeah, Eleanor’s a lot happier,” he said as he pulled out of the parking lot. “Now that things have settled down a little bit.” Settled down meaning he didn’t have his little office in town anymore, and he wasn’t buying any more high-tech listening devices or hidden cameras.