“You have to admit,” Vargas said, “as nice as Lake Michigan is, Lake Superior is the far better lake.”
“It’s the superior lake,” Jackie said.
“Hell yes,” Vargas said. “Hence the name.”
“It’s so far away though,” Jackie said. “Even Bay Harbor was a stretch. It’s four hours from Detroit.”
“Who needs Detroit?” Vargas said. “Bay Harbor has the airport in Traverse City. We’ve got one right here in the Soo.”
“I guess you could call it an airport,” Bennett said. “Not many flights in and out.”
“Least of our worries,” Vargas said. “Hell, a lot of these guys have private jets.”
“Still,” Bennett said. “It’s a lot different up here. The weather. The way people are. Everything.”
“That’s part of its charm,” Vargas said. “You’ve still got the feeling of wilderness up here. Not to mention the best casino, thanks to Gill here.”
Gill nodded. “Glad to help,” he said. “That’s why I built it single-handedly.”
“You know what I mean,” Vargas said. “You and your people. Those lousy little casinos down by Traverse City, they can’t even compare to the Kewadin. You can really take care of the high rollers up here. And then there’s the international thing. You’ve got something foreign and exotic right across the bridge there.”
“Bennett,” Jackie said, “did they move Hong Kong over there without telling me? Because last time I went over that bridge, I was in Canada.”
“That’s foreign,” Bennett said.
“And exotic,” Gill said.
“You know what I’m talking about,” Vargas said. “It’s different over there. They’ve got clubs over there, for one thing.”
“Oh, so when you say exotic,” Jackie said, “you mean exotic dancing. Why didn’t you say so?”
“Let me ask you something, Alex,” Vargas said. “You live out in Paradise, right? What’s that, about a half-hour drive?”
“Something like that,” I said.
Jackie cleared his throat. “On a good day. When there’s no snow.”
Vargas didn’t even hear him. “You go right through Brimley, right? Where they’re building that new golf course?”
“Yes.”
“What’s land going for out your way? On the coast, say out by Whitefish Point?”
“Well…” I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to say anything at all. I wanted to hit him over the head with something.
“Because I’m thinking,” he said, “maybe we should be looking out that way instead. Here we were thinking it’s nice to already have some infrastructure in place. Some good roads and services and all, not to mention the golf course, which needs a little work, I admit. But maybe we’re thinking too small. If we got something going out on your side of the bay, we’d have a lot more land to work with. Plus we’d actually be on the lake itself. Here we’re on the river.”
Kill him now, I was thinking. Kill him now, cut up his body into little pieces and throw them to the fish.
“You don’t want to be on the lake,” Bennett said. He said this calmly, like he didn’t want to kill the man at all. “The lake will wreck everything eventually. Here you’ve got some protection at least.”
“Yeah, the weather,” Jackie said. “It’s even worse over there, believe me. I can’t imagine trying to build anything over there.”
“How are your black flies out there?” Gill said. “They can get pretty bad here in town. I’m imagining out there in the woods…”
“Oh God,” Jackie said. “The black flies. Every June. Tell him about the black flies, Alex.”
“Horrible,” I said, which was a lie. The black fly season hadn’t been that bad this year. Not bad at all. Especially when you got close to the water and the breeze helped keep them down. “People talk about mosquitoes eating you alive, they don’t know about black flies.”
“Mosquitoes are like surgeons,” Bennett said. “They got those little needles, in and out. But black flies, those goddamned things just gnaw on your flesh like blood-thirsty little zombies.”
Vargas shook his head as he got up to refill his glass. “It’s something to think about, I guess.” He was probably imagining a giant airplane dropping insecticide all over Whitefish Point.
Kenny looked us all over one by one, shaking his head. He knew what we were doing. This was what Jackie meant when he told me there was another reason why they played cards with Vargas, this whole idea of helping him rethink his development plans. But that look on Kenny’s face seemed to say, “You can fight it all you want. But it’s coming. If not this year, then next year. Bay Harbor is coming.”
The phone rang while Vargas was pouring himself another shot of Macallan. He picked it up and said, “Vargas here.” Then he excused himself, told us to deal him out a couple of hands.
We played without him. It wasn’t quite the same. Too quiet, for one thing.
“Tell me, Kenny,” Bennett finally said. “What’s it like working for him?”
“Why do you want to know?” Kenny said.
“Just making conversation,” Bennett said.
“I’ve got a house there myself,” Kenny said. “In Bay Harbor. That’s how it is to work for him.”
“Fair enough,” Bennett said. And that was the end of that.
When Vargas got back to the table, something had changed. He left his Macallan sitting untouched on the bar, took out a real glass and filled it with three fingers of Jack Daniels. “You had it right, Alex,” he said. “This does feel like a J.D. night.”
“Everything okay?” Gill said. “You seem a little tense all of a sudden.”
“I’m an old first baseman,” he said as he sat down. “I’m always tense. Right, Alex?”
“My deal,” I said. “You know the game.”
“Five card stud,” Vargas said. “And speaking of studs, where’s Mr. Swanson tonight, anyway?”
“Don’t know,” Bennett said. “He said he couldn’t play tonight.”
“He couldn’t play last time either,” Vargas said.
“He’s a busy guy,” Bennett said.
“Yeah, he’s busy,” Vargas said. His voice was getting colder by the second. “Fortunately, we’ve got Alex here to take his spot. I guess you’re not as busy as Swanson is, eh Alex?”
“I asked him to play,” Jackie said. “So we’d have six guys. Is there something wrong with that all of a sudden?”
“No, not at all,” Vargas said. He emptied his glass, then got up for a refill. He brought the bottle back with him this time.
“It’s a shame you didn’t get a chance to meet my wife, Alex. Her dog you got to meet.” He looked around the room. “Where’d that dog run off to, anyway?”
“He’s under the table,” Gill said.
“What’s he doing down there?”
“He’s licking himself.”
“Okay then,” Vargas said. “Now that we’ve established that…” He poured himself another triple, spilling some on his precious table. He didn’t bother to clean it up.
“Maybe you should ease up on that,” Jackie said.
“Always the bartender,” Vargas said. “Don’t worry, I’m not driving tonight. My wife took my car, anyway. She left me the little Miata, which she knows I hate. The car, I mean, not the dog. It’s like driving a little tin cigar box.”
“King high,” I said. “It’s your bet.”
“Five bucks,” he said. “On the king. You wanna know something funny, guys? You wanna know who that was on the phone just now?”
Apparently, nobody did. He told us anyway.
“That was a private investigator,” he said. “Did you know that there’s only one private investigator in the whole county?”
Oh no, I said to myself. Please, God, no. This will not be good.
“He struck me as kind of a goofball at first, quite honestly. But I gotta hand it to him. He’s got some energy. Just give the guy a little money, point him in the right direction, and he’s all over it.”
Jackie was trying very hard not to laugh. I wanted to smack him.
“Do you want to know what this private investigator is doing for me tonight?”
Again, no takers.
“I’ll tell you,” he said. He took another hit off his glass of J.D. “He’s watching my wife. He’s been following her, in fact, for two weeks straight.”