Bryan Gruley - The Hanging Tree

Michele Higgins and I had not talked since, until that morning when I had woken her with a call from my truck as it descended the freeway bridge at Zilwaukee, a couple of hours from Detroit. She’d told me to leave her alone, but I had talked fast and told her it was about my second cousin, my mother’s favorite girl in the world, and there was no else who could help me. I figured I had her when she said, “Why don’t you call one of the dumb shits at the Times?”

Now I told her in more detail about what had happened to Gracie. About the shoe tree, the absence of a car or a ladder, Gracie’s long hiatus downstate, the calendar hanging over her bed, the explosion in the Zam shed. I didn’t bother to tell her about the brush or the baby shoe or the key.

While I was speaking, Fred brought our breakfasts and left the bill, which I took. Mich had one spoonful of her soft-boiled eggs and pushed the porcelain cup aside. Her gaze went to the accordion folder again. I grabbed it, pulled out the police report, and shoved the stapled pages across the table.

“Take a look.”

I waited while she read. Near the end she nodded her head and smiled. She pushed the pages back to me, picked up her cigarette, took a long drag.

“What do you think?” I said.

She blew the smoke over her right shoulder. “Is that all?”

I pulled out my wallet and showed her the piece of paper with the name Vend on it. “Bingo,” she said, sliding the paper back. “Remind me: what was that country song you liked? ‘For the Old Times’?”

“‘For the Good Times.’ My dad liked it.”

“You liked it too. You used to play it at the Anchor.”

“Only when I was drunk. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“‘And make believe you love me one more time,’ ” she sang, way off key. “Brother. Buck Owens?”

“Ray Price.”

“So.” She put out her cigarette. “Your friend was mixed up with some dangerous people.”

“My cousin. Second cousin.”

“Whatever. You ever heard of this Vend dude?”

“Should I have?”

“I knew you weren’t reading the Detroit papers.”

I almost said I was sorry.

“Owns a bunch of strip clubs, here and over in Windsor. Bottomless across the river. Brings in chicks from all over the place: Michigan, Ohio, Quebec, even Poland.”

“Is he from there?”

“Canada. The clubs all cater to different clienteles-Livonia autoworkers, Trenton steel guys, right up to the doctors and lawyers in the Pointes and Bloomfield. You can stick a buck in a garter to slobber all over a fat chick from Garden City or you can have a private room where you can jack off on a nineteen-year-old’s face while she pulls on a dog chain around your neck. A real marketing genius. Or at least that’s what I read in the blow job your old paper gave him on the business page last year.”

Strip-club owners did make for good reading.

“And he’s a bad guy?”

“No, Gus, he’s a saint, like all guys who run strip clubs-all guys who run businesses, for that matter.” She shook out another cigarette. “Boy, once a business writer, always a business writer.”

“Give me a break, will you?”

She lit the cigarette and blew the first puff across the table. “I gave you a break. I’m here.”

“Please tell me more.”

“The guy’s constantly under investigation by the cops and the feds. Drugs, prostitution, guns, tax evasion. Even kid porn a ways back, though I think he got away from that. They’ll never catch the guy. He’s too smart, too generous with his money, too much the, you know, the whole bootstrap entrepreneur shtick. He’s good, I got to hand it to him. I mean, have you ever met a bad Canadian? Off the ice, I mean.”

I could think of only one and he was in prison.

She gestured toward the accordion file. “And he lives in Melvindale, for God’s sake. Brags about it. Blue-collar churchgoers, tree-lined streets, brick ranches. Just the place for a criminal mastermind, eh? He just built a new gym for some Catholic school there.”

He’s making more progress than Haskell, I thought.

“Al Capone lived in a neighborhood like that,” I said. I took a sip of my coffee. It was as bland as I remembered. “YA-rek, right? And Vend?”

“Shortened. Used to be Vendrowska or Vendrowski. He has some goofy nickname, Knobs or Knobbo or something. He has a huge head. Saw him once.”

Knobbo, I thought. It rang a bell.

“But you haven’t nailed him yet in the paper?”

“Got a file this thick”-she held her hands a foot apart-“but the guy’s slippery as an eel.”

“Is he from Windsor?”

“Sarnia.”

“I went up there once on a hockey trip. For twenty-five bucks, the chicks would blow you under the table.”

“I don’t need to hear that, thank you. He actually owns a piece of some team up there. He plays, or played. A goalie. Like you.”

Another bell went off.

“I’m not playing goal anymore,” I said.

“Really? Quite the changed man, huh?”

“Got bored with it.”

“Uh-huh. But you’re still fucking that cop?”

In reply, I sighed. She leaned back and looked at me like a skeptical judge might peer down at a defense attorney. “You really happy up there?”

“Sure.”

“I could still get you into the Freep, you know. They think you got screwed by those pussies at the Times who wouldn’t go to bat for you.”

My bosses at the Times had indeed run scared when the auto company discovered I’d raided its voice mail system. I also shouldn’t have done what I had done, even if every story I had written was true.

“Thanks,” I said. “Could we just talk about Vend? Is that his address?”

“Why? You don’t plan to go there.”

“Why not? I just want to ask him a few questions.”

“At his house? Gus. This isn’t the business beat. Vend isn’t some pasty-faced guy in his sixties who thinks hitting a squash ball makes him a badass. People who piss this guy off pay for it.”

“Got it.”

“You said there was a bombing up north?”

“Yeah. Nobody got hurt, though.”

“Nobody was supposed to get hurt. It was a warning. What’s-her-name must have known something she wasn’t supposed to know.”

Build it and they will die, the note said. Whoever had sent it clearly intended it for public distribution. But why would Vend or anyone else outside of Starvation care about a new hockey rink? And who would send something so crude and obvious?

“Gracie,” I said. “But he already-she’s already dead.”

Mich stopped to think. “Well,” she said, “maybe somebody else there knows something they shouldn’t.”

“Yeah, well, it ain’t me.”

We sat in silence for a bit, Mich smoking, her eyes wandering around the diner, me spreading grape jelly on my toast.

“Hey,” she said. “I hear your old ambulance chaser buddy is up there now.”

“Who? Oh, Haskell.” I put the knife down and noticed Mich looking directly at me. She had been with me when I’d had my unfortunate encounter with Haskell in Detroit. “Yeah. His son’s a hockey hotshot. Haskell’s trying to build a rink. I don’t think he has the money.”

She leaned slightly forward. “How could he not? The guy’s made a pile.”

“I don’t know. But he’s not paying his contractors. Work’s come to a stop. And now he’s trying to shake the town down for a hundred grand.”

“Huh. Have you written about it?”

“A few stories. Ticked everybody off.”

“Of course. How’s old Laird?”

“Same. Like you said about Vend. Slippery as an eel.”

“Yep.” She gathered up her purse and shimmied out of the booth. She seemed to be in a hurry. “Gotta meet a guy.”