“Yes,” I said. “He got killed.”
“Do you miss him?”
“Every day,” I said.
“I’d feel the same way,” he said. “And besides, you should see him hit a golf ball. We’ve won the DEA Two-Man Best Ball seven years in a row.”
I was still thinking about that when Leon stopped by. He had more private investigator magazines for me and a small box.
“I’ve got a present for you,” he said.
I opened the box. Inside were at least a couple hundred business cards. “What’s this?”
“Read it,” he said.
I took out one of the cards. “Prudell-McKnight Investigations,” I read. There were two guns under our names.
“You see, that’s your service revolver, and that’s my Luger.”
“It’s looks like they’re shooting at each other,” I said.
“No, no,” he said. “It’s like the two musketeers. All for one and one for all. Or both. Or whatever.”
“You actually had business cards made up,” I said.
“I thought they’d cheer you up,” he said. “I’ll be back later, after work.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“I don’t like seeing my partner lying in a hospital bed,” he said. “I won’t feel right until you’re back on the case.”
“The case,” I said. “How much time have we spent thinking about this? How much trouble did we get into? Well, me, anyway. Not to mention two trips to the hospital. What do we have to show for it?”
“Well,” he said. He thought about it. “We’ve eliminated some suspects.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “You’re right,” I said. “We have done that.”
“Just get better,” he said. “Then we’ll get back to work.”
“Leon,” I said. “Seriously, I don’t know what the hell we’ve been doing, but I will say this. I’m glad vou were helping me.”
“See ya later, partner,” he said.
“See ya later,” I said. “Partner.”
When he was gone, I looked through the magazines he had left for me, then I took a nap. When I woke up, the two snowmobilers were there to see me, a man and his thirteen-year-old son from Traverse City. They both had crew cuts and firm handshakes. I thanked them and gave them my phone number, invited them up for a week in one of the cabins, whenever they felt like coming up again.
Bill Brandow came back again that evening. This time he had a brown paper bag with a cold Canadian beer in it. “I figured you could use this,” he said.
“The doctor will kill you,” I said.
“I’m going to be buying you drinks for a long time,” he said, “so I thought I might as well get started now.”
“And it’s just what I need right now,” I said, feeling the bottle. “Something cold.”
He looked down at the floor. “Guess I wasn’t thinking.”
“Don’t worry about it, Bill.”
“I shouldn’t have played along with those agents,” he said. “You were right. I’m an elected sheriff. They can’t do anything to me.”
“Yeah, but that Champagne guy is such a smooth talker, you couldn’t help yourself.”
“I see I’m going to be paying for this for a long time,” he said.
When he was gone, Jackie came by, the man who would rather kiss his ex-wife than leave his bar and go out driving in the snow.
“What did you do,” I said, “close the place?”
“My son’s there,” he said. “I just had to come by and make sure you were okay.”
“You didn’t come here the last time I was in the hospital,” I said.
“Yeah, but you were just beat up then. By the time I even found out about it, you were out. If you’re going to freeze to death, on the other hand, I wish you’d pay your tab first.”
“Good seeing you, too,” I said.
The doctor came by again, and then Leon again after work, and then around dinnertime I looked up and thought I must be hallucinating. Chief Maven was standing in the doorway.
“What, no flowers?” I said.
“I just had to come by and see for myself,” he said. “They found you lying in the snow in the middle of Luce County, without a coat on, and you didn’t even lose a body part to frostbite?”
“My parts are all here,” I said. “All the original equipment.”
“How’s that saying go?” he said. “ ‘God looks after fools and idiots’?”
“I think it’s fools and drunkards,” I said.
“Either way,” he said, “ain’t you the living proof.”
When he came close enough to stand over me, he put his gloves in his pockets and folded his arms. He looked tired.
“Why did you come here?” I said. “Really.”
“I came here to ask you a few questions,” he said.
“Go ahead.”
“That cabin on Mackinac Trail,” he said. “I’ve already read the statement you gave to Brandow, but I have to ask you this myself. Did you really hit that thing with your snowplow?”
“Yes,” I said. “It wasn’t intentional.”
“You meant to plow the driveway and missed.”
“Next question,” I said.
“You saw what was done to those people,” he said. “After you accidentally caved in the whole side of the place with your snowplow.”
“Yes,” I said.
“And those men in the ice shanty,” he said. “The dead men they found lying in their underwear. Pearl and Roman? Is that what they called themselves? They’re the ones who killed those people in the cabin?”
“Yes.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes.”
“And the other man?” he said. “Molinov? You saw him kill Pearl and Roman?”
“Yes,” I said.
He nodded his head. “Okay, last question. Was it fast or was it slow?”
“What are you asking me?” I said.
“You saw what those men did,” he said. “When they died, was it fast or was it slow?”
I looked at him for a long moment. “It was fast,” I finally said. “They never even saw it coming.”
He nodded his head again. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.” He took his gloves back out of his pocket and put them on.
“That’s all,” he said. And then he left.
I sat there, staring at the far wall. The doctor came in a few minutes later and broke the spell.
“I’d like to keep you here a couple of more days,” he said. “Make sure your stomach is ready to digest food again. Hell, I’d like to keep you here for a month this time, make sure you don’t do anything stupid as soon as you get out of here.”
“I feel fine,” I said.
“You don’t feel cold anymore?”
“No,” I said. Which was a lie. But I couldn’t take the hospital anymore, and the endless parade of visitors. Everybody I knew had come by to see me.
With one exception.
I left the hospital at eight o’clock the next morning. I was wearing the new coat Leon had brought me. My old one was under the ice, after all, presumably still wrapped around Lonnie Bruckman’s body. But that was okay with me. I had gotten twelve good years out of that coat.
My truck was waiting in the parking lot, just as Leon had promised. I told him I didn’t want him to pick me up. I didn’t want to see anybody that morning. I just wanted to have a few hours by myself to do something important. He understood that, without needing any kind of explanation. The mark of a good partner.
I headed west that morning. It was cold, like most days. It looked like it would snow again soon, like most days. But I wasn’t thinking about the weather. When I hit the turnoff for Brimley, I took the road north onto the reservation. I parked the truck in the casino lot and went inside.
It didn’t take me long to find him. He was working a five-dollar blackjack table. There were three, players, two women and one man. I joined them.
“Alex,” he said, without looking up. When he was done shuffling, he slid the shoe to one of the woman and handed her the cut card.
“Vinnie,” I said.
After the cut, he started dealing. “Are you playing?” he said. He kept looking at the cards as he dealt them. He dealt himself a jack, so he pushed the other card over the sensor to see if he had blackjack. He didn’t, so the hand continued.
“I’m playing,” I said. I took out the envelope from my pocket, the one the renters had left for me. After my adventures at the ice rink, I had one hundred-dollar bill left.