I put my head back on the pillow, forced myself to relax, to think about nothing. I remembered what an old teammate had told me, that the secret to thinking about nothing is not trying to stop thoughts from coming into your head. Instead, you let them come and then slip right through your head. In one ear, across the slippery floor, and then right back out the other ear. But then, this was a left-handed pitcher talking, and everybody knows that lefthanders are crazy.
The nurses made their rounds. Later a man waxed the floor in the hallway. The machine kept pumping air into me. From outside I could hear the sound of the wind.
I slept. Finally, a good night’s sleep. In the morning the doctor came around again. We did the X rays again, and then he asked me if I wanted him to take the tube out.
“Is that a trick question?” I said. “Pull the damned thing out already.”
He gave me a local before he pulled the tube out. On the end of it there was a deflated balloon, covered with whatever that stuff is that coats the inside of your lung. He stitched up the incision in my side and told me to just lie there for a couple more hours until he got back before I tried standing up. When he left the room, I waited all of one minute before I swung my legs around to the floor. Very slowly, I stood up. It felt good, in a violently sick-to-my-stomach sort of way. I was ready to try it again about an hour later.
Leon stopped in around lunchtime. “Where’s your breathing machine?” he said.
“I’m flying solo,” I said.
“Great, where are your clothes? Let’s get you out of here.”
“Leon, it still takes me fifteen minutes to get up and go to the bathroom.”
“Well, I’ve been busy, at least. Your two friends are definitely staying at the Brass Anchor Motel. They have a unit on the end with a window overlooking the main road. With you in the hospital, they haven’t had much to do, I guess. I did see them leave one day and drive around the reservation.”
“What, you’ve been watching them the whole time?”
“Off and on,” he said. Now that I thought about it, he did look tired. “I couldn’t think of any good way to inquire about them at the motel desk. If it got back to them, they’d know somebody’s on to them.”
“I don’t know what else we can do,” I said. “Except call Brandow again, see if he’s gotten anywhere.”
“Cops don’t play ball with private eyes,” he said. “It’s an unwritten rule.”
“Leon, you should really listen to yourself sometime. ‘Cops don’t play ball with private eyes.’ For God’s sake. This is Bill Brandow we’re talking about. He’s a good guy.”
“Not when he’s wearing the badge, Alex.”
“Okay, fine,” I said. “Whatever you say.”
“Now, about the Bruckman situation…”
“What Bruckman situation? He didn’t take Dorothy.”
“Are you sure?”
“The more I think about it,” I said. “Nothing else makes sense if he did.”
“Then who took her?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe the two guys who are following me?”
“But if they have her, why are they following you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe they have Dorothy but they don’t have the white bag.” I gave him the quick rundown on the white canvas bag that Bruckman wanted so badly.
“No matter who those guys are, or what they want,” he said, “we still have to find Bruckman. He’s our only source of information, number one. Number two, don’t we sort of owe him something now? After what he did to you?”
“Give me a couple days before I have to think about that, okay? It’s all I can do to get up and take a piss.”
“Where do you think he is?” he said. “Right now.”
“Who knows, Leon? He could be anywhere.”
“Think, Alex. What did he say?”
I ran the night through my head, trying to remember what he said. Or what his teammates said.
“One of his guys called him Captain Fuckhead,” I said. “That’s pretty good.”
“Okay, so he has some dissension there,” Leon said. “What else can you think of?”
I kept thinking. “Well, let’s see. They beat the hell out of me. He wanted to know where Dorothy was. He wanted to know where the bag was. Then they carried me outside, beat the hell out of me again. Then they dragged me behind their snowmobiles for a while. Then they stopped…”
“Yes?”
“They argued,” I said. “The guy who called him Captain Fuckhead, he asked him if they were going to drag me all way back over the river.”
“The river,” he said. “The St. Marys. They’re in Canada.”
“Yes,” I said. “They must be.”
“They’re hiding out over there. Something must have happened.”
“And the only reason they came back over,” I said, “was to find that bag.”
“What do you think is in it?” he said. “Drugs?”
“I don’t know what else it could be,” I said. “Although if that’s true…” I didn’t want to complete the thought.
But I couldn’t escape it. Even when Leon was gone and I spent my last night in the hospital, I couldn’t stop asking myself the same question over and over.
I knew Dorothy was in trouble. She was mixed up with some bad people, and she came to me because she didn’t know what to do next. She had obviously made some mistakes, but beyond that I thought she was just an innocent victim. That’s the part that got to me that night. It’s what made me feel so bad when she was taken from my cabin. It’s what drove me to go out looking for her. But if that bag she was carrying around was full of speed or coke or God knows what, then what did that say about her?
And after all I had been through in the last few days, what did that say about me?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I left the hospital on a Thursday morning, after three nights on the machine and one more night just to make sure my ribs were going to stay put. The doctor took one more X ray, gave me strict orders to do nothing more strenuous than drive home and go to bed for a couple more days, and then I was a free man.
The wind was waiting for me as I stepped out the front door of the hospital. It hit me across the face with a blast of air so cold it made my eyes water. Vinnie was sitting in my truck.
“Welcome back,” he said as I eased myself in. “How d’ya feel?”
“Cold,” I said. Even with the heater going, the car seat felt like a slab of ice.
“The wind chill is minus forty today,” he said as he put it in gear. “I say we point this truck south and keep driving until we run out of gas money.”
“I’m not going anywhere until I eat breakfast,” I said. “I mean real food.”
“Jackie’s waiting for you,” he said. “Soon as you drop me off at the casino. My car wouldn’t start this morning.”
“Some day I’ll get this window fixed,” I said. It felt strange to be sitting on the wrong side of my own truck, especially with the cold air whistling through the plastic.
“I saw your man Leon this morning,” he said. “He looked like he hadn’t slept in three days. He came into Jackie’s for a cup of coffee. When he saw me he took me outside and told me he was checking on a couple guys at one of the motels. I’m supposed to tell you that he’s already working on the other, what did he say, the other individuals at large in Canada.”
“He’s something else,” I said.
“Alex, don’t you think he’s a little weird?”
“Just drive,” I said. “I’m too hungry to talk.”
As the snow blew across the road, it swirled in an ever-changing pattern, hypnotizing me as I watched it. I wrapped my coat tight around my body and leaned back in the seat. Somehow I dozed off, even with the cold wind in my ear. When I opened my eyes again, we were just coming to the Bay Mills Reservation. Even on a freezing cold Thursday morning in the middle of January, the casino parking lot was mostly full.
“Thanks for picking me up,” I said as he opened the door.
“Watch out for snowmobiles,” he said.
I slid over and took the wheel. My head started to hurt again as I concentrated on the road, but I thought about Jackie’s omelets and that kept me going. On the main road into Paradise, I looked for the Brass Anchor Motel on the left. There it was, just after the welcome sign. It was a simple string of doors, maybe eight units in all. A dark green Jeep was parked at the end closest to the road.