Steve Hamilton - Ice Run

He stopped and put his knife down.

“Hell, Alex, you did it for me.”

“I think you’re exaggerating.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I’m not even going to argue about it. I know the way you are. You know it, too.”

“So what am I supposed to say, Jackie?”

“Just tell me what’s really going on with this woman,” he said. “This Natalie, what’s her story?”

“You really want to know?”

“Start talking.”

I leaned back against the door frame, thinking about it for a second. Then I began. I described my first trip to her house, the awkward beginning of it all, and then the ups and downs over the next few visits. Then the night in the hotel room, the old man, the hat on the floor. All the while he kept working on my omelet, chopping up the mushrooms and the ham, grating the cheddar cheese. He put everything in a shallow skillet and cooked it, somehow making it turn into an omelet instead of a half-burned mess of eggs and whatever else, which was what always happened when I tried to do it myself at home.

I told him about the picture we had found in her basement, the visit to Mrs. DeMarco’s house, then finally everything I knew about her mother.

“That sounds familiar,” he said. “Are you sure that’s not my ex-wife you’re talking about?”

“Not unless you’re Natalie’s real father. Instead of Pierre Trudeau.”

“Seriously, Alex. Everything you’re saying about Natalie… It just gives me a really bad feeling.”

We went back out to the bar. I sat on one of the stools and had my omelet while he stood on the other side. He wasn’t moving until I heard everything he had to say.

“I’ve never even seen the woman,” he said. “But I can tell, just from what you’re saying. She’s what, in her late thirties now? Never been married, you say? Hasn’t even been in a relationship in a long time?”

“Neither have I, Jackie.”

“All this stuff about her mother? How many people do you know who haven’t spoken to their mother in five years?”

I shook my head.

“She’s got some problems, Alex. Some big problems, going back a long, long way. Sounds like her whole life has been cockeyed. What’s that old saying? Never sleep with someone who has more problems than you do?”

“So you’re saying what, I shouldn’t be with her? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No, Alex. Not that you’d listen to me, even if I was saying that.”

“Then what is it, Jackie? What do you want me to do?”

“I just want you to think about what you’re doing,” he said. He leaned in closer to me. “Like I was saying, I know what you’ll do for a friend. Okay? I know what you’ll put yourself through, just to help somebody out. I wouldn’t change that about you, Alex. It’s one of the things I admire about you.”

“Jackie, you’re making me blush. You just can’t tell with all the bruises.”

“Knock it off. I’m being serious here. If you’ll go that far to help out a friend…” He held his hands out in front of him, about two feet apart, like a man telling a fish story. “Then how much farther will you go for a woman you really care about?”

“Jackie-”

“I’m scared to death for you, Alex. I really am.”

He left me sitting there, with those words hanging in the air. After everything I had been through, in all the time he had known me, Jackie Connery had never said something like that to me before.

I finished eating. Then I took out my cell phone and called Natalie. The machine picked up again. Nobody home.

I was starting to get a little scared myself.

The cold air hit me again as soon as I stepped outside. I hurried to the truck, slammed the door shut, and got the heater going.

“Okay, now what?” I said out loud. I didn’t want to start panicking. It wasn’t time to drive over to her house yet. If she wasn’t home, that wouldn’t do any good anyway. I knew her mother lived in Batchawana Bay… But no, how bad would that look? Me showing up on her mother’s doorstep, asking to see Natalie, like I was her date for the prom. Apologizing for tracking her down, telling her I was worried about her.

You’re driving yourself crazy, I thought. You’re imagining the worst, based on nothing.

I didn’t want to go back and sit around in my cabin, so I pulled out of the lot and headed toward Sault Ste. Marie. On the way, I called Leon at work. The man who picked up didn’t sound too thrilled to be acting as his secretary. When he came on, I asked him who had answered the phone.

“Oh, that’s just Harlow.”

“Is he your boss?”

“Yeah, sort of.”

“He didn’t sound real happy, Leon. I don’t want to mess up your job.”

“Ah, who cares, Alex. It’s not what I want to be doing, anyway.”

There was an uneasy silence then. We both knew what his dream job would have been.

“How ’bout I buy you lunch again?” I said.

“You on your way in? Sure.”

“I’ll stop by,” I said. With the omelet still in my stomach, I wasn’t even slightly hungry, but I needed to see Leon. I needed to be around somebody who believed in good information as the solution to every problem. A half hour later, I picked him up at the motor shop and took him across town. I parked outside the Ojibway Hotel.

“You really want to eat here?”

“It’s still the nicest place in town,” I said. “Maybe eating here will make me think of something.”

“Whatever you say, Alex. Are we gonna have a seance, too?”

“If you weren’t doing me so many favors, I’d bust you one,” I said. We got out of the truck and suffered the cold air for twenty seconds, then we were inside. My young friend the doorman was nowhere in sight.

There was a new woman at the front desk. And of course there was no old man sitting in the lobby, tipping his hat to me. Everything felt different about the place, like nothing bad had ever happened there. We sat down in the dining room. In the daylight, the view out the big windows was blinding white in all directions. We sat one table from where Natalie and I had been that night. How many days ago had that been?

“You say there was a bar here,” I said. “Right here where this dining room is now?”

“A long time ago,” Leon said. “Maybe twenty, twenty-five years.”

“It’s hard to imagine.”

“Things were different back then. If you can picture all those men stationed up here at the air bases. Thousands of them. One minute you’re in Texas or California-next thing you know, you’re in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. It’s twenty below zero and there’s snow up to your ass. If it’s December, it’s dark eighteen hours a day. I tell ya, Alex. This place…”

He looked out the window, like he was conjuring the whole scene in his mind.

“I was just a kid, remember, but even so, I’d hear people talking about it. Places that would be open all night long. Women who’d come up here just to keep the men company. That’s what my father called it. Keeping the men company.”

“And you’re telling me they actually arrested the chief of police back then?”

“The state troopers did. Walked right into his office and put the cuffs on him. Turns out he was being well compensated to ignore certain things.”

“Could Simon Grant have been involved in this?”

“Since I last saw you guys, I asked my man at the Evening News to run Simon Grant’s name. There were a lot of hits, because Grant was involved in the dockworkers’ union.”

“That’s a rough line of work.”

“Naturally. There was nothing about him ever being in big trouble, though. Or even getting arrested.”

“Anything more on Jean Reynaud?”