‘Forty dollars for the night,’ the woman behind the counter said as I jangled the bells above the door, coming in. She was wrinkled and her skin and hair were colored almost the same gray as the collapsed barns I’d passed, south of town.
‘The sign outside says thirty.’
‘Them’s off-season rates.’
I cocked a thumb at the window looking out at the parking lot, empty except for the truck and the Porsche. ‘Hasn’t snowmobiling season just ended?’
‘You from Illinois?’
‘Does that matter?’
‘I like to know how our clientele finds us.’ She smiled, showing me where she needed dental work.
‘In desperation,’ I wanted to say but didn’t. Loons’ Rest was the only place around, it was getting dark, and it wasn’t hard to imagine insects the size of antelope roaming the deserted old town. I pulled out my Visa card.
‘No credit; cash,’ she said.
‘American currency OK?’ I asked as I peeled off four tens.
‘That’ll be forty-four with tax,’ she said.
I added four singles. ‘Do you know where Arthur Lamm’s place is?’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘Illinoyance,’ she muttered.
‘Cheesehead,’ I said, but only after I’d stepped outside and banged the door shut on the woman and the jangling bells.
It was all so very adult.
My room smelled of the same strong pine cleaner the Rivertown Health Center sloshed about when a tenant expired, and I wondered whether the weak, twenty-six-watt bulb hanging from the stained tile ceiling was meant to conceal as well. Even in the dim light, the knots on the knotty pine paneling appeared troublesome, and I thought it best not to look at them closely, for fear some weren’t knots at all but rather shoe-heel marks on top of cockroach splats.
A tufted orange spread covered the mattress, and a disconnected gold pay box for a long-gone Magic Fingers electric bed massager was screwed to the headboard. It never boded well when the Magic Fingers fled a town. For sure I would only stay one night.
I sat on the bed to check my cell phone for messages. It had not rung. The reason was not that there had been no calls or texts. My display showed that no bars of service were available.
I left my duffel tightly zipped on the bed – in case any of the knots jumped off the wall paneling, frisky – and went out into the dusk. Across the street, several teenagers were running along the sidewalk, yelling as they raked broom handles under the ribs of the corrugated metal awnings of the vacant stores. The racket was deafening, reverberating along the deserted street as though monkeys were banging on pans. Every few seconds, shadowy things dropped from beneath the awnings, which set the teens to waving flashlights, jumping up and down, screaming and laughing with delight.
It made no sense. ‘What are you doing?’ I called across the street.
They stopped and stared at me. ‘Stomping bats, a course,’ one young girl, pretty in denim and a pale yellow jacket, yelled back.
‘A course,’ I shouted back. There were worse places to grow up in than Rivertown, I supposed.
I stepped into the center of the street, reasoning that bat splatter was less likely out there than on the sidewalks, and walked down to the neon Budweiser light. Three men in flannel shirts sat at the bar inside, jawing with a bartender who had a red beard.
‘Can I get something to eat here?’ I asked.
‘Pickled eggs which I prepare special myself, and Slim Jims,’ Red Beard said. ‘Anything fancier, you got to go to the DQ.’
I told him I needed fancier, and would be back for a brew after I’d eaten.
The Dairy Queen’s parking lot was still empty, since the town’s evening merriment remained underway beneath the metal awnings at the other end of the block. Inside the hut, a teenaged boy and girl were pressed together as tight as a double-dip of soft-serve ice cream jammed hard in a cake cone. The girl saw me appear in the glow of the yellow bug lights and broke the clinch. So long as I only wanted a hamburger, they could serve me dinner, she allowed. I asked what if I wanted two? That froze her face until I said I was making a joke. They both smiled then, sort of, though I suspected they’d discuss it later. No matter. Two hamburgers soon appeared, and I ate them with fries and a chocolate shake at a picnic table facing the road, so I could watch the cars that passed by. There were none. Afterward, I gave them back their plastic tray and walked down to the tavern.
The three flannel shirts and Red Beard stopped talking when I came in. I ordered a beer.
‘Up here for some early fishing?’ the bartender asked, skimming the head off the beer.
‘At Arthur Lamm’s camp. Know him?’
The six eyes above the three flannel shirts turned to look at me directly.
‘I don’t think he’s around,’ the bartender said.
I put on my confused face which, in truth, is never far away. ‘I came up from Chicago a day early. I hope I didn’t get the date mixed up.’
‘Lamm’s car is there, but no one has seen him,’ the bartender said.
‘Does anyone know where he’s gone?’
‘Herman says Lamm’s off camping. It’s caused a ruckus. You guys from Illinois…’ The bartender’s lower lip curled down, following the thought that was dropping away.
I bought beers for the men at the bar, the bartender, and another for myself. It set me back four bucks, not counting the single I left on the counter. It made everyone more talkative.
‘Us guys from Illinois, you were saying?’ I asked.
‘Cops,’ the bartender said.
‘There was only the one,’ said one of the flannel shirts – his was red.
‘Young sonofabitch,’ said the man next to him. His flannel was green.
‘What was he asking?’
‘I didn’t actually talk to him. I just heard he was up from Chicago, asking for Lamm.’
‘Nobody knows exactly where Lamm is, and that includes Herman,’ the third man at the bar said, speaking for the first time. His flannel shirt was plaid, half red, half green, which I supposed made him an excellent arbiter for the other two. ‘And if Herman’s been drinking, he wouldn’t have noticed Lamm being abducted in an alien spaceship.’
‘Herman works for Lamm?’ I asked.
‘Supposedly he takes care of Lamm’s camp,’ Green Flannel said, ‘but Herman Canty’s never done a lick of work in his life. Herman’s what you call an opportunist. He latches on to things.’
‘Like Wanda, over at Loons’,’ Red Flannel said. ‘Latched on to that some long time ago.’
‘Rockin’ the cot, God help him,’ Green Flannel said.
That got the three flannels and the bartender laughing.
‘She even lets him stay nights, sometimes, when his sister throws him out,’ Red Flannel said.
‘Not all nights. She’s not all dumb,’ the bartender said. ‘She knows Herman for what he is.’
‘A damned user,’ Red Flannel said. ‘Strikes at every opportunity.’
‘This Canty, he latched on to Lamm as well?’ I asked.
‘Big time,’ Green Flannel said. ‘Sooner than later, you’ll see a new blue F-One Fifty over to Loons’. That’s Herman’s truck. No one can figure out what he done for it, being as he’s never been useful.’
‘That truck come out of Chicago, according to the license plate frame,’ Green Flannel said. ‘He didn’t buy it up here.’
‘Either somebody died, leaving him an inheritance,’ the plaid man said, ‘or he’s got Mr Lamm paying him way too large for watching his camp.’
The bartender was giving me a long look. ‘You say you’re a friend of Lamm’s, yet you didn’t call ahead to say you were coming up?’
‘I’m more like an insurance client,’ I said, ‘but you’re right. It’s been a couple of months since he invited me. I should have checked before I drove up.’