You come off the bridge and you’re right in the middle of downtown Soo Canada. It’s a big city by Canadian standards, at least four times bigger than Soo Michigan. I drove down Bay Street, past the fish hatchery and the Civic Centre, and pulled into a brightly lit parking lot. It used to be called Brewer’s Retail. Now it’s just the Beer Store. There’s one or two in every town in Canada, from Vancouver to Prince Edward Island. It’s a wonderful place. You walk in and you look at a row of bottles on the wall. You say that one, please, make it two, please. And two cases comes rolling out on the conveyor belt. They don’t roll them slowly. You have to be ready for them. I’ve heard a lot of things said about Canadians, good and bad. But when it comes to beer, they know what they’re doing.
With two cases in the back of the truck, I headed back to the bridge. I could feel my bad mood lifting as I drove under the streetlights of Queen Street. I paid the buck fifty toll again, and then this time I had to wait at the U.S. customs booth. When it was my turn, I drove to the window, said hello to the man. Another familiar face. He asked me the usual questions. I told him I had two cases in the back.
“You know you’re only supposed to bring back one case at a time,” he said.
“Can you blame me?” I said. “This is Canadian beer we’re talking about.”
He thought about it for a moment. “Go on, get out of here,” he finally said. “Be careful with that beer. You got it secured back there? You’re not going to break any, are you?”
“This beer is safe with me,” I said. “You can count on it.”
I drove back through Soo Michigan. The same roads, everything at least a half hour trip up here. No wonder my truck was pushing 200,000 miles. The snow was beginning to come down harder.
As soon as I passed the sign (“You’re entering Paradise! We’re glad you made it!”), a snowmobile came out onto the road. I jammed on the brakes, heard the bottles rattle behind me. The rider just sat there transfixed like a deer in the glare of my headlights. I couldn’t see his face through the visor.
If even one of those bottles was broken, I said to myself, there would be hell to pay. I gripped the steering wheel, made myself count to five, and then I opened the door. The snowmobile disappeared in a cloud of white.
I checked the beer and got back in the truck. I could feel my bad mood making a comeback. Just go to the Glasgow, Alex. Put one case behind the bar. Keep one in the truck. Better put it in the cab so it doesn’t freeze. Sit by the fire, take your boots off. Jackie will make you something to eat. You’ll sit there, you’ll have a cold Canadian. You’ll be a new man.
I took the case and backed myself through the door. The place was full of snowmobilers. A man walked by me to the bathroom with his suit open down to his waist, his boots clunking with every step and the shiny material on his legs going zip zip. Jackie was behind the bar, leaning over it and talking to a woman. The string of lights that ran along the wall behind the bar were blinking on and off, even though Christmas was long gone. I put the case down. I stood up and stretched my back, looking around the room. There were a lot of strange faces, but that was normal for this time of year. All these men from downstate, filling the place with stories and bad jokes and cigarette smoke.
The usual scene. And yet…
And yet what? Something wasn’t right. A certain noise, or a lack of a certain noise. A feeling I was being watched, even though nobody was looking at me. Just a feeling that something was…
What? What was the problem? I couldn’t say. I didn’t pursue it. I chalked it up to a strange mood on a strange day. I didn’t listen to the voice in the back of my head, that little voice I relied on every day when I was a cop. I could have gone into the room and looked at every man, one by one, slowly and casually, not making any fuss about it. Just make eye contact, smile and nod, move on to the next. Maybe I would have narrowed it down to the man in the corner, sitting by himself. Or the man by the window who kept glancing outside. Maybe I would have sensed that something bad was going to happen that night, and maybe I would have found some way to prevent it.
But I didn’t. I shook off the feeling the same way the pitchers used to shake off my signs. A single quick tilt of the head and it was dismissed.
Jackie appeared next to me. “Alex, come on over here,” he said. “I want you to meet somebody.”
I looked at the woman he had been talking with. The face was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t remember where I had seen her before. She was in her thirties, maybe mid to late. Brown hair, a streak of blond on one side. Blue eyes, a dark blue, almost violet. I probably would have found her attractive if Sylvia hadn’t just burned out most of my circuits. She was sitting at the end of the bar, the stool next to her empty, like there was an invisible bubble around her, keeping all the men away. She had her hands folded in front of her on the bar and she was looking up at the Christmas lights.
“Who is she?” I said.
“Her name is Dorothy,” he said. “She’s been waiting for you.”
She looked down in her lap, unfolded her jacket and pulled out a package of cigarettes. It was a leather jacket. Not nearly warm enough.
It came to me. I remembered where I had seen her before.
CHAPTER FOUR
“It wasn’t hard to find you,” she said. We had taken the small table next to the fireplace. She sat across from me, looking around the room at all the men in their snowmobile suits. Jackie had come by, dropped a beer in front of me, asked her if he could get her anything. She asked for a glass of water. “I started at that bar, you know, from last night. The one with all the animals.”
“The Horns Inn,” I said. “You were there with the other hockey team.”
“Doesn’t that place give you the creeps? All those eyes looking at you?”
“I never thought about it that way,” I said. “Next time I’m there, I probably will.”
She smiled. Her eyes were red. She looked tired. “The bartender at that place knew you,” she said. “He told me you were a private investigator. The lawyer you worked for, he hung out there a lot, used to talk about you. Is it true you have a bullet in your heart?”
“Next to my heart,” I said.
“Okay, that makes sense then,” she said. “If it was in your heart, you’d be dead, right? How did that happen, anyway?”
“It’s a long story,” I said.
She nodded, biting her lip. I could see a small chip on one of her front teeth. “He told me you lived here,” she said. “In Paradise. I knew it’s a small town, so I didn’t figure I’d have any problem finding you. I hitchhiked, can you believe it? I haven’t done that in twenty years. When I got into town, the guy at the gas station told me to try this place. I got talking to Jackie over there.” She looked over her shoulder at him. “He’s a very nice man.”
“You’re the Indian, aren’t you?” I said. If I hadn’t been looking for it, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it. There was just the slightest hint of it in her face, a certain calmness in her eyes. “Vinnie recognized you. He said you grew up on the reservation.”
“Vinnie who?”
“Vinnie LeBlanc.”
“I don’t know him,” she said. “I don’t remember many people from that time. I’ve been gone for, God, it must be ten years. Until a couple months ago, I haven’t even been in the Upper Peninsula.”
“He remembers you,” I said. “From when you were kids, I guess.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Anyway, you’re probably wondering why I was looking for you.”