“Ahoy!” I shouted. “Anybody home?”
The door to the cabin opened, and Vargas looked out. He looked even more bald in the light of day, if that’s possible. “Alex,” he said. “Come on aboard.”
It was a long step from the dock to the side of the boat. I felt a little zing in my groin muscles as I stretched for it, just another daily reminder that I was getting old. As soon as I stepped foot on the deck, the dog came running out of the cabin, barking at me like I was Satan himself.
“Miata, take it easy! It’s just Alex! You remember Alex!”
The dog danced around me like a bantamweight, moving side to side and looking for an opening. Vargas picked him up with one hand. “Sorry, Alex. He’s still a little high-strung since the other night.”
“That’s all right,” I said. Since the other night, my ass. That dog was born high-strung.
“Frankly, Alex, I’m a little surprised you came. I don’t imagine you had a very good experience at my poker party.”
“You didn’t have such a great time yourself,” I said. “I know it wasn’t your idea to get robbed.”
“No,” he said, rubbing the dog’s head. “That wasn’t the plan.”
“I guess I’m wondering why you invited me, though. I know I’m not your first choice for a lunch date.”
“There may be a thing or two I’d like to ask you about,” he said. “Just to get your opinion. But why don’t we head out first? It’s such a nice day for it. Do you fish much?”
“Once in a while,” I said. “Not as much as I’d like.”
“Perfect then,” he said. “We’ll catch a couple of whitefish.”
He put the dog back down on the deck, which set off another round of barking and carrying on. “Don’t make me put you inside, Miata. Just go lay down over there.”
The dog barked a few more times, but then finally backed away and sat down next to Vargas’s captain’s chair. He watched me as I sat down, ready to leap at my throat if I made any false moves.
“I had to bring the dog today,” he said. “My wife is out. Again.” He hung on the last word, shaking his head. I didn’t feel like asking him about it, or hearing anything about what was going on between his wife and the family lawyer. Or telling him what his wife had told me the night before, that she knew he had hired Leon to follow her. The whole scene was already uncomfortable enough, and I was beginning to regret it.
Vargas fired up the boat. I could feel the deck vibrating, the twin engines throbbing with so much power it was like sitting on a rocket. He stepped past me to untie a couple of lines, the dog barking again just on general principle. Then he sat back down in his captain’s chair and pulled the throttle back a notch. There was a furious churn behind the boat as he backed it and quartered, then he kicked it forward and we were on our way.
“You ever been through the locks before?” he said as we cruised down the St. Marys.
“No, that I haven’t done.”
“Sometimes you have to radio ahead,” he said, “but it looks like there are already a couple of boats lined up. It gets interesting when you’ve got a freighter in the lock at the same time. You feel like a very small fish in a tank with a whale.”
There were three pleasure boats waiting for the southern-most lock to open. Vargas fell in behind them. Almost immediately, the gates to the lock opened. Two giant steel doors, each one at least fifty feet across, swung open. The three boats ahead of us proceeded into the lock, and then Vargas joined them. I could see the viewing platform above us. With the water level down, it felt like we were at the bottom of a well.
A bell rang as the gates closed behind us. Slowly the boat began to rise, as the water from the other side was fed in from below. The gates on the far side were holding back the crushing weight of Lake Superior, which seemed at that moment like a ridiculous idea. A thin stream of water was leaking through the line where the two gates joined, like they would break open at any second. But of course they didn’t. Ten minutes later, the boats had risen the twenty-one feet, and the gates began to open. The people on the viewing platform were at eye level now. A few of them waved to us. The dog barked back at them.
Once we cleared the locks, we still had a couple of miles of river to negotiate, under the International Bridge. We went around the bend where the river narrowed, past the Shallows, O’Dell’s place prominent on the shoreline.
I could be in there right now, I thought, having a cold beer and watching a baseball game. Instead I’m on a boat with Vargas and his dog.
When we passed the last bend, we finally hit the open water of Whitefish Bay. The sun came out from behind a cloud and lit up the water, turning it a thousand shades of green and blue. Vargas pushed the throttle up and we were off, the bow rising as we gained speed, the cold spray lashing at our faces. He tried to say something to me, but his words were lost in the noise of the engines. The lake was as calm as it ever gets, but even so we started bouncing around on the deck. I grabbed onto the gunwale. The little dog was getting thrown around like a beanbag, until Vargas caught him in midair.
He really opened it up, pushing the boat to the limit and sending us screaming out into the heart of the bay. Any boats that were puttering around behind us were long gone. I imagine he was trying to impress me. I just held on and waited for him to slow down.
Finally he did, kicking it down to an idle and letting us drift. We were miles from shore now, so far out I could see only the barest outline of land on the horizon.
“Tell me the truth, Alex,” he said, wiping off his face. “Is this a boat or what?”
“You’ve got a boat here,” I said. “I’ll give you that one.”
“I’ve got some poles here, if you feel like catching some whitefish. Of course you can’t depend on catching your lunch, so I brought some sandwiches. And some cold beer.”
“I’ll pass on the fishing for now,” I said. “I was hoping you’d tell me what’s on your mind.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “But not on an empty stomach.” He pulled out a big cooler and opened it, set me up with a pastrami and Swiss on rye bread, and a cold Molson’s. It was American Molson’s, but it went down well enough as I sat there in the glare of the midday sun. It was all starting to feel a little surreal, with the bright light and the gentle rolling of the boat on the lake. I felt like I was being lulled to sleep.
Finally, Vargas broke the spell. “You have some problems with me, don’t you,” he said. “I picked up on that the other night, before everything else happened.”
“I’m sitting on your boat, eating your food and drinking your beer,” I said. “I’m not sure this is the right time to criticize you.”
“But I know you’ll give me an honest answer,” he said. “You’re a straight shooter.”
“Let’s just say I don’t agree with you on some things.”
“Like what?”
“We don’t have to go through them,” I said. “I know I’m not going to change your mind about anything.”
“Who says you won’t? Try me.”
“Look, the other night you were telling me how much you love it up here, right?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, but it doesn’t seem to mean much to you if you can’t own it-if you can’t buy it just for yourself and maybe a few of your friends, rope it off and put a ‘No Trespassing’ sign at the gate.”
“Like Bay Harbor,” he said.
“Like Bay Harbor.”
He took a bite of his sandwich, and looked out at the lake. The dog watched him, waiting for some food to come his way.
“Even that stuff you collect,” I said, “up in that room of yours. Those things from the shipwrecks. The Indian artifacts. It’s not enough to just appreciate what they mean. You have to own them and put them in a glass case. In your own little room where nobody else can see them.”
“You seem to have a strong opinion about that.”
“Not strong enough to break into your house and destroy the whole room,” I said. “But yeah, it does bother me.”