A Cold Day in Paradise

CHAPTER THREE

When I woke up, my head was hanging over the edge of the bed. I opened my eyes and stared at the wooden floor. My mind was perfectly empty for a long moment. Then it all came back to me.

I bolted out of the bed and into the bathroom, still wearing the same clothes from the night before. The eyes that stared back at me were red at the rims, and there was a nice little bruise over my left eye where Prudell’s keys had hit me. Despite the November chill in the air, I was sweating. I looked at myself in the mirror, letting the anger build. When there was just enough of it, I went outside.

There was a pile of white oak outside the cabin. I grabbed the ax and attacked. I split each log in half, and then each half into quarters, aiming the ax with my left hand alone and then bringing it all the way back with both hands, slowly and carefully, letting the weight of the ax head build its own momentum as I brought it all the way up over my head and then down, all the way through the log. Not even aiming at the log, but at the center of the chopping block. I swung right through each log and right through the pain that was building in my shoulder where they had taken out the second and third bullets.

I needed to feel the rhythm of it, just like batting practice once felt. For those few minutes every day when nothing existed but a steady stream of baseballs, fed right down the middle to you so you could hit them deep, off the wall or into the seats, again and again.

When I finished the pile, I backed the truck up, my hands still tingling. I could still feel it in my body, the aftereffects of the fear. There was a soreness in my muscles as though I had run a marathon.

I drove down the dirt road to the first rental cabin and unloaded a half cord, stacking it next to the front door so the men wouldn’t have to go far to get it. I did the same for the next cabin, came back for another load, and then dropped off the wood at the third, fourth, and fifth cabins, working my way deeper and deeper into the woods. It was late in the morning, so I didn’t run into anybody. They were all out hunting.

It was still archery season for deer. Or so I thought. It was hard to keep all the seasons straight. I knew that regular firearm season would be starting soon, and then muzzleloading season a couple of weeks after that. Bear season had just ended, although I wasn’t sure about wild turkey season. Gray and red fox were open all winter, I knew, as well as bobcat, raccoon, coyote, rabbit, squirrel, pheasant, grouse, and woodcock. Elk season was closed but would start again in December. By now, most of the hunters were repeat customers, downstaters who came back for the same week every year. They liked the cabins and the fact that they could walk a hundred feet and be on state land. And they liked that I delivered the wood right to their door.

When I got back to the cabin, I fired up my own wood stove to get a little heat going. I stripped down to my undershorts and did some push-ups and sit-ups. The wooden floor was cold against my bare back, but I kept working until I had a good healthy sweat going. I was trying to flush the chemicals out of my system, work it out of my muscles, out of my blood.

I took a hot shower, just standing there letting the water blast me for a full twenty minutes. I got dressed and got some eggs and coffee on. While I waited, I pushed the play button on my answering machine. It was Uttley’s unmistakable voice, as smooth and practiced as a concert violin. He must have called while I was out delivering the wood. “How are you, Alex? This is Lane, it’s about twelve-thirty on Sunday. Just calling to make sure you made it home last night. And to say thanks again for your help. I don’t know what Edwin would do without you. You’re the best friend a guy could have. I mean that. I’ll be home all day if you want to give me a call. Otherwise I’ll just see you tomorrow at the office. Hope you can stop by. But if you want to take a couple days off, go right ahead. Either way, no problem. I’ll talk to you later, Alex. So long for now!”

I didn’t feel like talking to Uttley just yet, or anyone else for that matter. I threw my coat on and headed out into the day. The sun was out, maybe for the last time before winter came. I walked down my access road and across the main road into the woods. It wasn’t a smart thing to do in the middle of deer season. The law requires you to wear bright orange if you hunt in the state of Michigan, but even if you aren’t hunting, you’d be a fool not to wear orange if you walk around in the woods. God knows there are enough half-drunken downstaters stumbling around in these woods, ready to shoot anything that moved. But I didn’t care. Not today.

I walked down the path to the lake, through the tamarack trees and the jack pine, and then north along the shoreline. There are no sand beaches on this stretch, nothing that easy and inviting. Instead there are rocks, more rocks than there are stars in the sky, pounded and washed by the waves ever since the glaciers left. There was a lot of debris on the rocks from the night’s winds, driftwood and a few pieces of what was once a small wooden boat. The water was fairly calm, but it had that November feel to it. It was ready to turn ugly at any time.

I must have walked north for an hour, past the last of the boat launches and up into the wild shore where there was no trace of human life. There were more birch trees up there, along with some balsam and black spruce. I was far enough from everything, I could let myself think about the night before. Okay, so somebody killed a bookmaker. I had known many bookmakers back in Detroit. I could remember arresting two of them. They took it in stride. It was part of the deal. You get picked up, you pay your fine, you go back to your business. Aside from that, it was a pretty monotonous way to live, sitting by your phone all evening handling bets. Most of a bookmaker’s customers are regular people. Some are cops even. As criminals go, a bookmaker is practically an upstanding member of society. So why did this guy get slaughtered in his motel room?

He didn’t pay someone. Somewhere up the line, somebody got it in their head that this guy was taking liberties. So they took him out. I’m sure it happens. Not every day, but it happens.

Whoever it was, the killer obviously had it worked out ahead of time. He probably used a silencer, after all. So why cut his throat? You just shot him in the face. If he’s not dead already, he’s dead within two minutes. Why make a mess of the place? Somebody who kills people for a living doesn’t do that, not unless it’s a message. To other bookmakers who might make the same mistake? Maybe. Or maybe it was just personal.

I threw a few rocks in the water until my shoulder complained. The sun went behind a cloud, the wind started to pick up again. The waves started to hit the rocks with a littie more feeling. As I started to walk back I picked up a petoskey stone and put it in my pocket for good luck.

I walked a lot faster on my way back to the cabin. Having gone over it in my mind, having put some distance between myself and a random act of violence that had nothing to do with me, I felt a little better. I walked over those rocks like a man who had someplace to go again. And besides, I was starting to get too damned cold.

I watched for hunters this time as I walked through the woods. The six cabins I owned were strung out down an old logging road. My old man had bought this land back in the early sixties, came up here every weekend, clearing the trees and planning his first cabin site. He built them the old-fashioned way, the “right way.” You take some good solid pine and you scribe it all the way across with a chain saw so that each log fits perfectly on top of the other. He didn’t do any chinking at all. That wouldn’t have been the right way.

I helped him that summer. That was 1968, the year the Tigers won the World Series. I had one more year of high school, and then I was on my way to minor league ball instead of college. He wasn’t too happy about that. But he didn’t talk about it much. I caught the tip of the chainsaw on a log one afternoon and almost took my ear off. He drove me to the hospital in the Soo while I held a rag against the side of my head. “You like to learn things the hard way, don’t you,” he said. “I wish I was young and stupid again.” Then he went on to tell me how I wouldn’t last a day in the minor leagues if my throws to second base kept sailing on me. He had caught some himself when he was younger. He told me again about the four-seam drill, even though I had heard it a hundred times already. “When I was your age,” he said, “I had a baseball in my hand every waking minute. You grab it, you turn it so you have four seams across your fingers. Grab it, turn it, again and again until it becomes a part of you. Then your throws to second don’t sail.”

That was what, thirty years ago? He died a couple years after I left the force. I was still trying to deal with what had happened, collecting three-quarter pay on disability. I came up here expecting to sell off the property and the cabins. He had built five more of them by himself, each one bigger and better than the first. When I decided to stay a while, I took the first one, even though it was the smallest and there were some gaps in the logs that let in the cold. I’m sure those were the logs I had done myself, back when I was young and stupid.

Later on I spent a slow Sunday night at the Glasgow, reading the paper over a steak and a cold Canadian beer. The murder had come too late for the Sunday edition, so the good people of Chippewa County would have to wait another day to hear about it. Violent deaths weren’t uncommon up here, but it was usually the lake that did the killing. Maybe four or five men a year, caught in sudden storms. Murder was a little different. It would make everyone nervous for about two weeks and then they’d forget it ever happened.

“Good evening, Alex.”

I looked up from my paper. Edwin stood next to the chair across the table from me.

“Sit down,” I said, and he did.

“So,” he said. “Anything interesting in the news?”

I looked at him and turned a page. “Not in today’s paper,” I said. “Tomorrow’s will be a little more exciting.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “A reporter already called me today. Can you believe that?”

“A reporter called you? How did he get your name?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But you know how those reporters are.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I didn’t give them your name,” he said. “I mean, I didn’t tell them about you coming out to help me. I figured that’s the least I can do.”

“Hm.”

“I’m really sorry, Alex. I shouldn’t have bothered you with it.”

“Edwin, can I ask you something?” I put the paper down and looked him in the eyes. He was wearing a red flannel shirt that day, trying to look like one of the locals. It wasn’t working.

“Sure, go ahead. Anything.”

“What are you doing getting mixed up with that guy in the first place? Didn’t you tell me that you weren’t going to gamble anymore?”

“Yes, I did,” he said. “I did say that.”

“You were sitting right across the table from me, just like you are right now,” I said. I looked across the room. “No, it was right over there. That table right there by the window. Remember? ‘I, Edwin J. Fulton the third, hereby resolve that I will never gamble again, and that I will go home and be a good husband to Sylvia, and Alex will never have to come to the casino and drag my butt home because I’ve been gone for two days.’ Do you remember saying that?”

“Yes,” he said. “I remember that very well.”

“When was that?”

“I don’t know, it was around the end of March. Right after that last little episode.”

“Yeah, that little episode,” I said. I could feel the anger building inside me, and it wasn’t just because Edwin was gambling again. If the man throws his money away, that’s his business. But then he leaves his wife at home for days at a time, all alone in that big empty house out on the point. A woman like Sylvia, who had too much of what I was starving for. The winters up here are too long. I had too much time to think about it, knowing she was alone in that house waiting for me.

“Alex, it’s not what you think.”

“No, of course not. You were delivering five thousand dollars to his motel room in the middle of the night, but it’s not because you were gambling.”

“Alex…”

“As it turns out, the guy was selling Girl Scout cookies on the side and you bought two thousand boxes.”

“You don’t understand,” he said.

“Yes, I do. That’s the problem. I understand you completely.”

Edwin got up from the table. I thought he’d leave, but instead he went up to the bar and ordered a Manhattan. He came back with it and sat back down.

“Alex,” he said. “I have a problem. I know that. And I thought I had solved that problem. I thought I was done with it. But I was wrong. I admit it. Okay? I was wrong. I still have a problem.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever had a problem like this,” he said. “You don’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d ever have a gambling problem. You probably can’t relate to that. But it’s really not that much different from any other kind of compulsion or addiction or whatever you want to call it. Whether it’s gambling or alcohol or drugs, it’s really the same thing. Have you ever had any kind of problem like that at all?”

“For the sake of argument,” I said, “let’s say I have.”

“Okay, but whatever it is, it gives you something. Whether it’s a drink or a pill or a bet. It gives you a certain kind of feeling. You know what I mean? It’s a feeling that you can’t get anywhere else. And eventually you get to the point where you know it’s starting to hurt you, but you still have to have that feeling. For me, it’s the feeling of having something at risk. That ball is spinning in the roulette wheel. Or the dealer is showing a six and I’ve got eleven. It’s like a bolt of electricity right through me, Alex. And believe me, there is nothing else that makes me feel that way. There is nothing that can take its place.”

“I understand that much, Edwin. I know it’s an addiction like any other kind of addiction.”

“Okay, so let’s say you’re an alcoholic. And instead of going right into your twelve-step program, you try something else first. Let’s say that instead of trying to give up alcohol altogether, you just try to cut down on it, you know, so you can get a handle on it. So say instead of drinking whiskey, you just drink beer.”

“Sounds like you’d be fooling yourself,” I said.

“You’re probably right,” he said. “But that was my idea, you see? I thought if I could cut down on my gambling, then I could deal with it.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Alex, it’s not the winning that gets you. It’s the anticipation. It’s not knowing if you’re going to win or lose. That’s how you get that feeling. So what I figured is, if I bet on football games, I could stretch out that anticipation. Instead of having to play a hand of blackjack again and again to keep that feeling going, all I had to do was bet on one football game and then just sit on that one bet all week long. Like I was nursing one beer for days at a time.”

“Edwin, for God’s sake.”

“I’m just telling you what I was thinking, Alex. The football lines come out on Monday morning. So I get a bet down right away, and it’s just like taking that little hit. As long as it was enough money to matter a little bit. Like five hundred dollars, usually. Maybe a thousand. It’s all I would need. I could relax all week long.”

“So how long have you been doing this?”

“Couple months,” he said. “Just since football season started. I was doing pretty well, too. Until that stupid Brigham Young game. Can you believe it, they were up twenty points with two minutes to go. Twenty points! And then they give up two garbage touchdowns. I was giving seven, so I lose by a point. Those Mormons, they can’t play defense, that’s my problem.”

“A Mormon football team can’t play defense? You think that’s your problem?”

“I was just kidding, Alex. I know what my problem is. Seeing that dead guy was a wake-up call for me. That could be me some day if I don’t clean up my act.” He took a long swallow from his drink and leaned back in his chair.

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I’m through with gambling. Forever. I mean it this time.”

“Would you like to make a bet on that?” I said.

He laughed.

“Gamblers Anonymous,” I said. “They’re in the book.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m calling them tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“No, I mean it,” he said. “I’m really going to call them.”

“Okay.”

“I’m going home now, Alex. I’m going home to my wife.”

“Edwin,” I said. “If you walk out of this door and go to the casino, I will find you and I will kill you with my bare hands.”

“I’m going home, Alex. I promise.”

“Then go already.”

“Thank you, Alex. Let me pick up your check.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

“I want to.”

“Just go.”

“I want to buy you dinner.”

“Out!”

“I’m going to buy you dinner. You can’t stop me.” He went up to the bar and put a few bills in Jackie’s hand, pointing back at me. And then with a wave he was out the door.

I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. There was something about the man, I just couldn’t bring myself to hate him. In a way, he was just like my old partner, Franklin. Edwin was barely five foot four, shaped like a pickle barrel, as white as a man can be, richer than hell, and a compulsive gambler. Whereas Franklin was a good six five, two-forty at least, an ex-football player, black, and as strapped for cash as any other working cop in Detroit. And he wouldn’t even put five bucks in the weekly pool. But somehow, to me, the two of them were exactly alike.

“You’re my best friend, Alex.” Edwin had said that one night, sitting in this very bar. He had just finished his third Manhattan, but I knew it wasn’t the liquor talking. He said it like it meant something, like it was something he had thought about for a long time and had finally worked up the nerve to say.

Franklin never got the chance to say it himself. Not to my face, anyway. I had to hear it secondhand, after he was gone, when I met his widow. “He used to talk about you all the time,” she said. “All the arguments you used to have about sports. And all the times you helped him, too. He really looked up to you, Mr. McKnight. I know he never would have said so in a million years, but you should know he considered you his best friend.”

Thinking about Franklin, and then about what happened to him, it took that smile right off my face.

I went home. It was another windy night. Before I went to bed I stood in the bathroom and looked at my bottle of pills. You don’t need these, I said to myself. I looked at myself in the mirror. You don’t need these. I rubbed the scars on my shoulder. It doesn’t hurt that much anymore. You don’t need a pill to go to sleep. And if you dream about Franklin, well, you can handle that. It was fourteen years ago.

I could hear the wind coming through the cracks in the cabin.

You don’t need them anymore. You are strong enough without them.

I opened the bottle. And then I closed it again. I put the pills back in the medicine cabinet and turned out the light.

I slept for a while. And then the phone rang again. I looked at the clock. It was three o’clock.

I picked up the phone. “Goddamn it, Edwin,” I said. “What is it now?”

“Good evening, Alex,” a man’s voice said. It was definitely not Edwin. It was a low, hissing voice, almost reptilian.

“Who is this?”

“It’s me, Alex? Don’t you know who this is?”

“Who are you,” I said, “and why are you calling me at three o’clock in the fucking morning?”

“Did you like it, Alex?”

“Like what? What are you talking about?”

“I knew he’d tell you about it, at least, but I can’t believe he actually woke you up and made you drive all the way out there to see it.”

I felt a burning in my stomach. Concentrate on his voice. Keep your mind clear. Let the face come to you.

“I can’t tell you how happy it makes me feel, Alex. It makes me feel like we’re connected now. I didn’t know if that would ever happen.”

I couldn’t place that voice. I had no idea who this person could be.

“What did you think, Alex? What did you think of my work?”

“Are you referring to the murder that took place last night?”

“I wouldn’t call it murder,” he said. “Nobody will miss him. I saw him talking to your friend, you know. They didn’t see me, but I was there. I didn’t like what he was saying to Edwin. He was a very bad man, Alex. So I figured, if I can’t do something good for you yet, at least I can do something good for your friend.”

“Who are you?”

“Edwin seems like a very charming little man, Alex. I’ve been watching him. I was a little jealous at first, I have to admit.”

“Goddamn it, who are you? ”

“I’ll be talking to you, Alex. Sleep tight. It won’t be long now. I’m so glad we’re finally going to be together.”