North of Nowhere

Chapter Twenty-one

We rolled into Vargas’s driveway around 5 A.M. The sky was just starting to brighten on the eastern horizon. With no sleep, with the sight of the cabin still burning in my head, and the sound of Jackie’s voice on the phone, I was running on pure adrenaline. There’d be plenty of time to deal with it after this was done. If I lived through it.

I knocked on Vargas’s front door. As we stood there waiting, I remembered the night Jackie and I had stood on this very spot, waiting for Vargas to let us in to play poker. Somewhere inside, we heard the familiar barking of the world’s toughest Chihuahua.

Mrs. Vargas answered the door wearing a bathrobe, sticking her head out and blocking the dog with her leg. “Alex,” she said, “what’s going on?”

“We need your husband.”

“Nice face you got going there, Alex. And this must be Mr. Prudell. Didn’t he fire you yesterday?”

“Where is he?”

“I’m right here,” Vargas said, appearing behind her. He was wearing purple silk pajamas. He had the dog in one arm. “What the hell’s going on? Why are you here?”

I pushed the door open. “We came to ask you a little favor.”

“What are you doing? You can’t come in here.”

“Call the police,” I said. “Tell them we’ll all meet down at your boat. Have them bring somebody from Customs, too.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We don’t have time for games, Vargas. We need to use your boat.”

“Ha, that’s good.”

“Leon, you got your cell phone handy? Call the police, tell them to go to the marina.”

“All right, just hold on,” Vargas said. “Let’s talk about this. Why do you need my boat?”

“I’ll give you the quick version,” I said. “One of the men who broke into your house has Jackie. He wants us to meet him out in the middle of the lake. We’ve got one boat, and we need one more. Something fast. You let us use your boat, we bring it back today, we forget everything we know about your little side business, you never see us again. That’s the deal. Now give us the keys.”

“You’re telling me one of the men who broke into this house and put a gun to my head is gonna meet you out on the lake?”

“He wasn’t the guy who took you upstairs,” I said. “He was one of the men who stayed down here with the rest of us.”

“Good enough,” he said. “Give me five minutes to get dressed.”

“Vargas, you’re not coming with us.”

“The hell I’m not. You want the boat, you get me, too.”

“No way,” I said. “Absolutely not.”

“You can’t take the boat out of the marina without me,” he said. “Mr. Shadmore will never let you out.”

“That would be the dockmaster, I take it? Yeah, he’s a sharp one, all right.”

“You don’t even know how to get through the locks,” he said. “Who do you call? What channel are they on?”

I gave Leon a look. “Go on and get dressed,” I told Vargas. “Make it fast. And so help me God, if you think you’re taking that dog with you…”

“The dog goes where I go,” he said.

“Vargas, I’ve got a gun in the truck. If you bring that dog, I swear, I’ll shoot him right between the eyes.”

Somehow the dog picked up on that one and started barking again. Vargas was still trying to calm him down as he went up the stairs to his room.

“You shouldn’t threaten that dog,” Mrs. Vargas said. “That’s the only thing in this world he loves. Besides money.”

“Thanks for the tip,” I said.

“You’re so welcome,” she said. “Where are you taking the boat?”

“Mrs. Vargas, I’m sorry. We don’t have time to talk about this right now.”

“Okay, fine,” she said. “We won’t talk about it. You know, the two of you look like you could use some coffee about now.”

“If you happen to have some.”

“No,” she said, as she left the room. “I don’t.”

We stood there for five more minutes, until Vargas came back down the stairs, dressed in black nylon from head to toe. Add the mask and he would have been a ninja. My heart stopped when I saw the black Baretta in his hand. I was waiting for him to point it at me. Instead, he checked the safety, unzipped his jacket, and slipped it into a shoulder holster. “I’m ready,” he said.

“I hope you know how to use that gun,” I said.

“We’ll go to the shooting range someday, McKnight. I’ll show you.”

We drove to the marina in my truck. It felt a little cozy, the three of us crammed into the front seat, with Leon in the middle, but it was a short trip. When we got there, Leon took the truck and went off to pick up some supplies. “Thank God for the twenty-four-hour Super Kmart,” he said. “I’ll meet you back at O’Dell’s place.”

That left Vargas and me on the boat. The dockmaster gave us the fish-eye when we checked in. “Where’s the other one?” he said. “I thought there were two of you waiting.”

“He had to go home,” I said. “He was too sleepy.”

When we got to the boat, Vargas jumped aboard and fired it up. I jumped in behind him. “I did quite a job on your face,” he said as he backed the boat out. “You been putting ice on it?”

“I hear you’ve been walking a little funny,” I said.

He didn’t say anything. He just pushed the throttle forward, heading down the river toward the locks.

“So the deal went sour,” he finally said. “Your little team fell apart?”

“What team are you talking about?”

“You said one of the robbers has Jackie. You must have had a disagreement on how to split up the money.”

“When this is all over,” I said, “I promise you, I’ll make sure you know everything there is to know. For right now, I’ll tell you two things. Jackie had no part in this, and neither did I. That’s the God’s honest truth, Vargas. I’ve got no reason to lie to you.”

“Okay, whatever you say.”

A light fog covered the river. The sun began to rise behind us.

“So how much did they really take?” I said.

“If you were in on it, you wouldn’t have to ask.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

He thought about it. “They got just over seven hundred thousand.”

“That’s a lot of refrigerators.”

“I guess you could say that.”

“Was this all from payoffs to avoid the duty? Or was there more to it? Maybe a few stoves that fell off the back of a truck? That would be a hundred-percent profit, wouldn’t it? Or maybe there’s something else you’re moving, as long as you’re going around Customs?”

“You’re not giving me your whole story,” he said. “Why should I give you mine?”

“Fair enough.”

I could see the locks appearing in the fog.

“Who’s this man you’re gonna meet?” he said. “The one who has Jackie…”

“They call him Blondie.”

“I’ve heard that name. Blondie. Canadian guy, right?”

“What do you know about him?”

“I’m trying to think. Blondie. He was one of the men in my house?”

“Yes.”

“Son of a bitch. Blondie.”

“Anything you can tell me about him would help us.”

“I’ve never met him. I’ve just heard his name somewhere. From some of the, um…well, from some of the people I deal with.”

“Keep thinking,” I said.

“That guy they found, Cox, he was in the house, right? I assume Blondie killed him?”

“Apparently.”

“Blondie was in my house. He broke into my house with a gun.”

“Yes.”

“I want him, Alex.”

“I want him, too,” I said. “Believe me.”

The locks were getting closer.

“Who was the third man?” he said.

I hesitated. “Somebody from out of town,” I said. “You don’t know him.” It was half a lie. I didn’t want to get Vargas going on the O’Dell family yet. There’d be time for that later. “Like I said, I’ll make sure you know everything when we’re done.”

He picked up the radio handset and called the locksmaster. When we were in the lock, he cut the throttle down to an idle. We waited for the water to lift us twenty-one feet.

“I thought I was being pretty smart keeping that money in the safe,” he finally said. “No IRS, no first wife, no soon-to-be-second wife. I should have known something like that would happen. You can’t hide that much money for long. Some people can just smell it. You know what I mean?”

“Let me ask you one thing,” I said. “You remember that pewter mug you had in your collection? The one from the Royal Navy?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“I assume the police will give it back to you someday. You can put it back in that glass case of yours. If anybody ever asks you if they can have it, do me a favor, will ya?”

“What’s that?”

“Give it to him.”

It was just after six o’clock when we docked behind O’Dell’s place. There was another boat already there, a twenty-five-foot cruiser. It wasn’t half the boat Vargas had, but it looked like enough.

Bennett and Ham were both looking out separate windows when we walked in. Gill was sitting by himself in the corner. Margaret was nowhere to be seen, and apparently Leon was still out picking up supplies.

Bennett’s eyes got big when he saw Vargas walk in behind me. “What the hell’s he doing here?”

“He’s letting us borrow his boat,” I said. “He’s got a gun, and I bet he knows how to use it. We need all the help we can get.”

“He’s not going out there with us.”

“Bennett, whatever your problem is, just keep it in your pocket, all right? We’re gonna get Jackie, and then the two of you are gonna sit down and have a nice long talk. I’m sure you’ll have some interesting things to tell him.”

He swallowed hard, but didn’t say another word.

I pulled a chair out for Vargas. “Have a seat,” I said. “We all better eat something. We’re gonna need the energy.”

Bennett kept one uneasy eye on Vargas for the next couple of hours. “What the hell did you have to bring him here for?” he said when he finally had me alone in the corner. “And what’s this about me having a long talk with him?”

“I figured you’d want to tell him the truth about what happened,” I said. “One piece of advice, though. If you guys end up going at it, you better fight dirty.”

“That I know how to do, don’t worry.”

“Do you have a bag we can use? To hold the money in?”

“You mean what we’re gonna pass off as the money.”

“Unless you think your son will show up with it.”

“Alex, we’ve been through this, okay? What else do you want me to say?”

“Show me the bag,” I said.

He picked up a blue gym bag. “I put all the money I could dig up on the top,” he said, opening it. “There’s about two thousand dollars on top. The rest is torn-up newspaper.”

“That’ll have to do.”

“It’s Sunday morning, Alex. The banks are closed. This is all the money from the till, every dollar I could get my hands on.”

“Relax, Bennett. It’s not gonna matter. Blondie’s probably planning on shooting you as soon as he sees you. This will be your little joke on him.”

“Then what the hell are we doing, Alex? How’s this going to work?”

“Wait ’til Leon gets here. Then we’ll talk about it.”

Leon came in around seven o’clock, with Kmart bags in both arms. We had one hour to go until Blondie’s phone call. We spent that time wrapping all of the hunting rifles in black electrical tape. Leon took a black bicycle grip out of the bag and taped it to the bottom of one of the rifle barrels. “From a distance, what do you see?” he said, picking up the gun.

“An assault rifle,” Bennett said.

“A big assault rifle,” Ham said. “The kind that’ll blow your fucking head off.”

“Whoever goes in Vargas’s boat, they put on one of these windbreakers.” He pulled them out of another bag. They were all black. “One of the black baseball hats. These sunglasses. Alex says this guy has seen all of you at least once, right? So I’ll be up front.”

“What,” Bennett said, “you mean he’s supposed to think we’ve got the feds coming to the rescue or something?”

“That was what I was thinking originally,” Leon said. “Now I think I’ve got something better. Or for Blondie, anyway, it’s worse.”

“What’s worse than the feds?”

Leon looked over at Vargas. Vargas was sitting quietly in his chair, a few feet from the table, watching us.

“Mr. Vargas,” Leon said. “We need a name.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Somebody in Canada,” Leon said. “We need the one name that’ll make Blondie wet his pants.”

He thought about it. “If we use this man’s name,” he finally said, “you forget you ever heard it. When we’re done here, the name gets erased from your mind.”

“Understood.”

“The name is Isabella.”

Nobody said anything for a moment.

“I can see why he’d be scared,” Bennett finally said. “That’s the most terrifying name I’ve ever heard. For a ballerina, anyway.”

“It’s Mr. Isabella,” Vargas said.

“Yeah?” Bennett said. “Is he some mobbed-up wiseguy over in Soo, Canada?”

Vargas stared at him. It was the same look I got just before he did his Moo Duk Kwan act all over my body.

“Blondie and Isabella,” Bennett said. “Not exactly Bugsy and Scarface, are they. Dumb Canucks can’t even get their names right.”

“Take it easy,” I said. “You heard what he said. We use the name and then we forget it.”

“Is that the plan?” Jonathan said. “The second boat comes in like this Mr. Isabella is breaking up the party?”

“That’s the idea,” Leon said. “It only has to work long enough to catch them off guard. We want them to think that giving up Jackie is in their best interests.”

“And then what?”

“We see what happens,” Leon said. “We react accordingly.”

Jonathan didn’t look happy. But he didn’t say anything else.

It was almost eight o’clock at that point, almost time for Blondie’s call. We all sat there with our own thoughts, waiting for the phone to ring. Eight o’clock came and went. Five more minutes passed. Then ten.

When the phone finally rang, everybody jumped.

“Let me answer it,” I said. I went behind the bar and picked it up.

“Good morning,” he said. “Is this Alex?”

“Yes.”

“Good man. Are you ready to come get your friend?”

“Let me talk to him.”

“He’s tied up at the moment, Alex. You remember that gun I had stuck to your head at your little poker party? Your friend is getting the same treatment right now.”

“I swear to God, if anything happens to him…”

“If anything happens to him, it’ll be your fault, Alex. It’ll mean that something didn’t happen exactly as it was supposed to. Are we clear on that?”

“Tell us what to do.”

“That’s more like it. I want you and Bennett to meet us at a certain location on the lake. I’m going to give you the GPS coordinates. Are you ready?”

“Go ahead.”

He gave me the latitude and longitude in digital format. I wrote them down and showed them to Bennett.

“Bennett drives, and you carry the money, Alex. Nobody else is in the boat. We see anybody else, Jackie’s dead. We see a gun, we see somebody’s hand on a radio, we see a fucking seagull that looks suspicious, Jackie takes one in the temple. Are we clear on that one, too?”

Bennett held up a map of the lake and pointed to the general area. It was well past Whitefish Bay, into the heart of the lake.

“This position is almost a hundred and fifty miles away,” I said. “You know we can’t take a small craft out there. The weather can change in a second.”

“The weather is the least of your problems, my friend. We’ll see you there at noon.”

“At noon,” I said.

Bennett threw up his hands.

“We need more time,” I said. “I don’t think this boat can go that fast.”

“Let me put it to you this way, Alex. We’ll be there at noon. If you’re not there, Jackie’s going for a little swim.”

He hung up.

“Let’s go,” I said. “We’ve got a little less than four hours.”

We all piled out the back door. I told Margaret I’d call her on my cell phone as soon as we got back into range. “If you don’t hear from us by four o’clock,” I said, “call the police.”

Bennett and I got into the boat he had borrowed. Vargas drove the other boat, with Leon, Ham, Jonathan, and Gill aboard. The idea was they’d hang back about three or four miles behind us, and then catch up after we’d made contact.

“Wait, you need this,” Leon said, as he set a television monitor on the chair next to Bennett’s captain’s chair. He plugged it into the cigarette lighter.

“What’s this?” Bennett said.

“My wristwatch video camera,” he said. “Alex is going to put it on and keep it pointed at them. They’ll get to see themselves on the screen.”

“I don’t get it. What’s that going to do?”

“Just wait ‘til Alex tells them Mr. Isabella is watching them on a live feed. That should put the fear of God in them.”

Bennett watched me put the watch on. “There’s an actual camera in there?”

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get going.”

Leon went back to the other boat, and then we all headed down the river and into the bay. Bennett pushed the throttle all the way forward. We were doing about thirty-five knots. The sun was finally starting to burn off the morning fog.

“Do you have enough gas?” I said. I had to yell over the din of the motor.

“I hope so!”

I thought about asking him why he hadn’t thought of that before. I let it go.

“This is all my fault!” he yelled.

“Don’t worry about it now!”

“I thought that money could do some good for my son! Like money could ever be good for anybody!”

I nodded my head.

“Money is bad, Alex! It’s that simple!”

“Okay, Bennett!”

“I hate it!”

“Just drive the boat!”

He frowned and shook his head. I looked behind us. Even with the heavy cargo, Vargas’s boat was having no problem keeping up with us.

Oh hell, the cargo, I thought. You should have had him take all that stuff out of the cabin, get a little extra speed. You gotta think, Alex. You gotta keep your head on straight. Jackie needs you.

It took us a good two hours to clear Whitefish Point. The sun came out and warmed our backs as we rode the waves. A freighter went by us, heading the opposite way, toward the locks. The sound of the motor, the constant rise and fall of the deck, the spray in our faces-it all became mind-numbing, almost hypnotic. I looked at the GPS read-out on the console. We were approaching 47 degrees north, and 85 degrees west. The coordinates were still more than an hour away.

This was the biggest lake in the world, over thirty thousand square miles of open water, bigger than a few states. It all made terrible sense, why Blondie would bring us out here. Nobody would see us. There was no law out here, no consequences. And the lake was deep enough to hide a dead man. Or two dead men. Or three. You just dump them overboard and they disappear forever.

As we passed the 47th parallel, Vargas started to hang back further and further behind us. Soon his boat was no more than a speck on the horizon.

“We’re almost there!” Bennett said, looking at the GPS.

I picked up the binoculars and looked ahead of us.

There. I saw the boat. It was too far away to see any details, but it was there. Time to get ready.

I took my revolver out and put it on the shelf behind the gunwale. It would be easier to get to that way. I looked in the binoculars again. It was a big boat, about the same size as Vargas’s. It looked like it was pointed away from us. I could make out one man standing at the back rail, and it looked like he was holding a serious weapon-some sort of assault weapon, no doubt. A real one.

I untied the anchor from its rope and tied it onto the handle of the money bag.

“What are you doing?” Bennett yelled.

“They’re gonna shoot us as soon as we’re in range!” I said. “Unless I give them a reason not to!”

We got closer. Bennett throttled down to half speed. The man at the back rail was watching us through his own pair of binoculars. It was Blondie’s brother. I couldn’t see Blondie yet. Or Jackie.

“Show time!” I said. I put Leon’s video watch on my left wrist, then turned it on. An image appeared on the monitor-first the sky, then the side of the boat. I grabbed the bag and the anchor.

My hands were shaking.