by Loren D. Estleman

I ran off the road in the Lake Superior State Forest, straight at an old-growth pine. It was a rumble strip that woke me. The rubberized chevrons in the asphalt made my tires buzz and my hands tingle on the steering wheel and I stomped on the brake.

I’d driven eleven hours one way, following a bad-check artist clear from Detroit to Manistique, giving him time to lay down a paper trail long enough to hang himself. Now that he was in the capable hands of the state police and off my client’s, I was on my way back and hoping to make Mackinaw City before I turned in. A judge in Detroit expected me in the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice at two p.m., dewy eyed and with my head chock full of salient facts in an unrelated case.

The trunk of the tree I’d almost smashed into was so wide my lights didn’t show around it. The woods were as black as Lake Michigan on the other side. There wouldn’t be any motels for a while.

I hate the woods at night; doesn’t everyone? They’re okay by day, with Disney creatures scampering about, but after dark, give me any gloomy alley and keep those black holes for yourself. When I’m in a deep funk I’m convinced I’ll end up in some shallow depression covered with dead leaves instead of a cozy luggage compartment in Long-Term Parking. The Upper Peninsula is a great place to visit, but I don’t want to die there.

I took the last tepid swallow of Mountain Dew from the two-liter jug I kept in the car for surprise marathons—my hand had begun to shake from the delayed reaction—backed around, and got back onto Highway 2 to look for a place that poured coffee. A modern one, I hoped, with cheery fluorescents and expired hot dogs revolving on a carousel.

No such luck. Happy’s Diner looked like a New Deal roadhouse, built low and square from local pine and covered with cheap stain that still showed in shiny patches like peanut brittle. More recently it had been a bowling alley, but from the condition of the six-foot wooden pin by the entrance, no strikes or spares had been rolled there this century. The windows and glass door looked new and ground spots illuminated the name on a square sign in the little parking lot. All the lights were burning. I pulled in next to a new Escalade with heavily tinted windows and got out. Crickets serenaded me with their sprightly little ode to Restless Legs Syndrome.

The SUV was backed into its space, concealing the license plate from the road, but my instincts were on low battery. I got a whiff of coffee and pushed through the door like a herd smelling water. A gong sounded when it opened.

The air was dense with roasted beans, pine, and layer upon layer of fried grease. Machine-embroidered tapestries of deer in the wild hung from gilded ropes like Rotarian banners, and Windsor chairs surrounded eight or ten round wooden tables, deserted at present and probably usually. There was a counter with stools upholstered in green leather, separated by a sliding frosted-glass panel over a pass-through. I sat on a stool and asked for coffee.

“We’re closed.” The woman behind the counter, a creature of pumpkin-colored hair, sharp bone, and skin like Saran Wrap, stood in a pink uniform and white utility apron with her hands hugging her upper arms. She wasn’t looking at me. I didn’t know just where she was looking at first.

“The sign says you’re open all night.”

“Cook’s got the flu.”

“All I want’s coffee.”

“Last batch boiled away. You don’t want coffee the way I make it.”

“I thought everyone was born knowing how to make coffee. If you think it’s too strong it’s just right.”

“Closed, sorry.” Her voice went up half an octave.

I followed her eyes then. The pass-through panel was open a crack. That woke me up. An airhorn next to the ear would have been too subtle.

“Well, tell him get well soon.” I got up and headed toward the door, moving as casually as a marching band.

Which wasn’t casual enough. The gong rang again and I lunged for the bar across the glass door, to pull it shut on the hand coming around the edge with a gun in it, but the panel behind me opened with a whoosh and a bang and a shell slid into a chamber with an oily metallic slam that can’t be duplicated any other way. That was to get my attention; the shell that was already there made a brassy tinkle when it landed on the floor.

“I’d stop,” someone said.

I was already stopped. The door was open now, and the man standing there held a deep-bellied Magnum braced against his hip. He was big and broad, soft looking, in a gray hoodie and old black jeans, which with his dark, mixed-blood face had blended with the shadows inside the tinted windows of the Escalade out front. “I should flag you for trying to bust my wrist.” His tone was a bottomless guttural. A hundred fifty years ago he’d have worn buckskin leggings and plaited his hair. It was as black as the woods at night.

“Plenty of time for that. Feel him up.”

This was one of those hand-me-down Swedish singsongs you still hear sometimes in the North Country. I turned around and held out my arms while the Indian went over me with one hand top to bottom. The man leaning inside the square opening to the kitchen—the owner of the singsong voice—might have been his photographic negative, drawn thin: colorless hair cut close to the skull, narrow pale face, and a tubular torso in a plaid flannel shirt over a black Zevon T-shirt. The hand resting on his stainless-steel nine-millimeter had a swastika tattooed on the back. Maybe there’s hope for peace when skinheads and redskins start hanging out together.

The Indian pried my wallet out of my hip pocket. “Amos Walker. Private investigator, from Detroit.”

“I knew he was a cop when he made for the door. Where’s your piece, Amos?”

“I left it home. It’s not big enough for bear.”

He watched me. He didn’t appear to have developed eyelids. He raised the semiautomatic.

“Don’t!”

He looked at the woman behind the counter. She had her hand to her mouth. “He some kind of friend of yours?” he asked.

“I never saw him before. Just don’t kill him—please.”

“Suppose I decide to kill you. Think he’ll beg for you?” He turned the pistol on her. He held it sideways, the way you see in movies. I hoped he was that green.

I made a decision and started toward the counter. The muzzle swung back my way and squirted white flame. The slug smashed through a glass display case containing a slice of coconut cream pie on a stand and buried itself in drywall. The woman screamed hoarsely. The echo of the shot rang like raining hubcaps.

“Man said no shooting,” the Indian said.

“That’s ‘cause he’s a city feller. Somebody’s always popping off in the woods.” Skinhead looked at me. “First jokes, now this. You’re starting to tick me off. I was saving that pie for later.”

“No more shots. State cops patrol these roads.”

“You sure spook easy for an injun.” But he put down the pistol.

That was all the encouragement I needed. I took another long step. I just wanted to get closer to the kitchen. The floorboards shifted behind me. I turned away from the blow and lifted a shoulder, hoping to absorb most of it with tendons and muscle and not skull.

I was only partially successful. The barrel of the Magnum caught a piece of posterior lobe on the follow-through. Sparks flew and I sprawled out full-length on the floor. I didn’t try to catch myself; that’s how wrists get broken, and I needed all my limbs now more than ever. The Indian kicked me hard in the ribs and told me to get up. I groaned—it came easily—pushed with both hands, and when I was standing I had the ejected cartridge from Skinhead’s pistol between two fingers.

“Get him in here out of sight before anybody else comes in. You, lock the door and turn off the outside lights.”

The Indian said, “They might miss the place in the dark.”

“The man picked it out, not us.” He looked at the woman. “Lock. Lights. Now!”

She hurried around the end of the counter while the Indian shoved me toward the swinging door to the kitchen, using his empty hand. He’d handled hostages before; enough anyway to know better than to use the one holding the big revolver. His was the stable half of the partnership. I wasn’t sure which one to take out first.

In a little while we were all crowded in a narrow room with the usual equipment, including a six-burner electric range: the woman, the gunmen, me, and a black man as big as the Indian but older and harder-looking, sitting on the floor in a corner with duct tape around his ankles and across his mouth and his hands behind him. One eye was swollen shut with a gash over it that had bled down the side of his face onto his white T-shirt. He raised his head high enough to take me in with his working eye, then put his chin back on his chest. That’s the kind of confidence I usually inspire.

I said, “He doesn’t look happy.”

“Shut up.” The Indian made a motion with the gun as if measuring its heft.

“Let ‘em jabber.” Skinhead had my wallet now and was going through it. “Passes time. What kind of diner don’t have no TV or radio?”

The woman found her voice. “Luke says it distracts him.”

“Who the hell’s Luke?”

“That’s his name. We called the place Happy’s to get people’s attention.”

He’d lost interest. He took out my cash and threw the wallet on the floor. “No credit cards. No pictures neither. Looks like nobody’s going to miss you, Amos.”

“You and Luke are partners?” I asked the woman.

“Fifty-fifty. We’re married.”

“Hear that, Roger? That’s what this country’s coming to, mixing the races like chocolate chip cookies. I’m glad now I didn’t eat that pie.”

The Indian grunted. He didn’t look like a Roger. “I’m French-Irish on my mother’s side.”

“I wouldn’t eat pie in your place neither.” Skinhead grinned at me. His teeth seemed to have come in any old way. “Luke gave us grief. Them people don’t understand the basic principles of occupation.”

“Military man,” I said. “Power Rangers or Hitler Youth?”

The grin went. He played with the pistol, then shook his head. “You’re tired of living, but I’m tireder of being the only white man in the room. It ain’t natural. But we brung plenty of duct tape.”

“We need to save some,” Roger said.

“We’re good.”

His voice dropped. “We talked about how this was going to go down.”

“You talked. I thought all you people said was ‘ugh.’”

I smiled at the woman. The name Pearl was embroidered above her breast pocket in white script. “Bake your pies here?”

“No. We order them from a place in Marquette.” She stroked her upper arms as if she were cold. Actually it was close in the room even with the stove turned off.

“Jo’s Bakery,” Skinhead said. “Our Christmas pies came from there.”

Roger said, “Now who’s talking too much?”

I said, “All this pie talk makes me hungry. Okay if I ask Pearl to fry me a couple of eggs?”

“Mister, you don’t want me to cook. I burn salads.”

“Anybody can fry an egg,” I said.

“You heard her,” Skinhead said. “Be hungry.”

“I need to keep my up my blood sugar. I could faint.”

“So faint. We could use some quiet around here.”

“I’ll do the cooking.” I took a step toward the stove.

Roger shifted his weight to his gun side. I stopped. But I was in reach of the controls.

Luke started coughing, a strangling sound behind the tape across his mouth. Everyone looked at him, bent forward and looking a little green, his chest heaving; everyone but me. I made a try for the knob under the nearest burner.

Pearl spoiled it. She pushed me out of reach and started toward the man convulsing on the floor.

“Whoa.” Skinhead jerked up his pistol. His lidless eyes had all the humanity of dripped paint.

She put on the brakes. Her face was white. “He has trouble breathing through his nose. He broke it playing football.”

“Why ain’t I surprised?”

“Please! He’ll suffocate.”

“I guessed that already.”

Roger stuck his revolver in his hoodie pocket and crossed the room in two strides. Luke’s eyes were rolling over white when the Indian bent down and tore away the tape. Luke sucked in air like a swimmer breaking the surface and fell back against the wall, rattling all the pots and pans hanging from it. His chest emptied and filled and emptied again and his natural color returned.

“Buzzkill.” Skinhead lowered his weapon.

Pearl sagged. I caught her. She hadn’t fainted; the wire that had been holding her up all this time had worn through.

“Shoot ‘em both if he opens his mouth for anything but oxygen.” Skinhead looked around, eyes bright. “Well, what do we do for fun now?”

“The man said no killing,” the Indian said.

“He should’ve told his boy that years ago. It was the same way with my old man: Too little, too late.”

Something glimmered then; this was no ordinary hostage situation. I gave Pearl’s thin shoulders a reassuring squeeze and she straightened and stepped away from me. “What about those eggs?” I said. “I can’t be the only one who can use a bite.”

“It’s always eggs with you,” Skinhead said. “What are you, part weasel?”

Roger said, “I could eat.”

“No time.”

“We don’t know how much time we got. These things never come off on schedule, the man said.”

“Mitchell don’t know squat about how things work up there.”

The Indian looked around at the rest of us, then went over to Benny and whispered something.

“You worry too much. Big Chief Worry Wart, that’s you.”

Roger retreated, falling silent. He was troubled by something other than insults.

His partner stuck the nine-millimeter under his belt. “I’m going to the can. Keep ‘em covered, and see he makes mine runny. I like to lick the plate.”

The Indian grimaced. “Jesus, Benny.”

He looked like a Benny. I wasn’t sure why.

I wasn’t crazy about the timing. Electric burners take time heating up, and Benny didn’t seem like the type who stopped to wash his hands. I didn’t know if I could take both men at once. I didn’t know if I could take even one, but from the way the skinhead slung information around, there was only one way this thing was going to end if I didn’t start cooking. I knew who Mitchell was. For once in my life I wished my hunch had been wrong. I turned to the range and twisted the knob all the way to High. “Eggs, please.”

Pearl stared at me a moment, but the Luke incident seemed to have sapped her of the will to protest. She opened a Sub-Zero refrigerator and took out a carton.

“Skillet.”

Roger was standing by the pots and pans. When he turned his head to take one down, I took the pistol cartridge out of my pocket and tucked it back between my fingers.

“No butter.” He passed me the skillet by way of the woman. “I’m fat enough.”

I put it on the burner. “I hear they pile on the starch in Marquette. Makes it hard to squeeze your gut through a tunnel.”

“You and Benny both talk too much,” he said.

“Give me some credit. Prison’s the only circle the two of you would ever travel in together.”

“He’s got his good points. Up there you need a friend in the White Power gang if you want to live till parole.”

“The joint’s a great leveler. Where else would a couple of bums hook up with a rich kid like Emmet Mitchell Junior?”

“He drops names, Benny does. I told him it wasn’t cool.”

“I didn’t need the hint. I keep current. Emmett Senior spent millions trying to acquit his boy. Looks like he had a few left over. Junior’s a serial killer. Benny’s got an excuse; he’s a psycopath. What’s yours?”

“Mister, you don’t get no more unemployable than an Indian ex-con. Even the casinos won’t touch me. What’s it to me how many night-call nurses got themselves raped and killed so long as the old man pays cash?”

“Emmett Mitchell,” Pearl said. “I heard that name.”

I said, “They moved him to maximum security in Marquette State Prison after he tried to escape from Jackson. That was before DNA linked him to Victim Number Six. Not even the press knows when they’re taking him downstate for the hearing. But Roger and Benny know. It’s tonight. You need a bankroll like Emmett Senior’s to buy that kind of information.”

The eggs were starting to sizzle, but just then Benny came back in. I could tell by his face he’d overheard plenty, but he wasn’t upset. He looked like a man who had won a bet with himself. He leveled the pistol at me.

“Private cop walking in just when he did,” he said. “He was laughing at us the whole time, us talking all around what he knew already.”

“You’re wrong, Benny. Why would he have his ID in his wallet if he was undercover?”

“Cops are dumb, that’s why. They keep talking about the world’s dumbest criminals, but they’re the ones make all the mistakes. Our boy Amos made two: The day he was born and the day he died.”

I concentrated on the eggs. It was an argument I couldn’t win. The trick was to keep him close without pushing him over the edge.

“You’re smarter than you look,” I said. “If Old Man Mitchell is paying the officers transporting Emmett Junior to stop here, and he’s paying you to tie them up and maybe knock them out to make it play like an old-fashioned escape set up by a couple of Junior’s former inmates, you can be sure he’s paid someone else to make sure you don’t turn state’s evidence against him when you get caught.” I chose that moment to let the cartridge drop into the middle of a yolk to avoid making noise.

“So we don’t get caught.” The skinhead placed the muzzle against the bone behind my right ear.

That was too close. Any sudden disturbance would startle him into jerking the trigger.

“Pearl, they’re fixing to kill all of us.”

This was a new voice, hoarse from lack of use. Luke had recovered from his choking fit. He sat in his corner perfectly alert, his good eye glistening.

Benny didn’t move. “Roger, I told you what to do the minute he opened his mouth.”

“I don’t flag people. They only got me because I wouldn’t shoot.”

“Luke’s right,” I told him, watching the skillet. The brass shell was almost submerged in yellow goo. “Mitchell Senior can’t afford to leave anyone behind, Benny knows that. Not even the cops he bought. That’s the way the two of them worked it out. You won’t need any more duct tape.”

“Benny?” Roger’s tone was less guttural, almost shallow.

“Don’t be a dumb digger injun. If you wasn’t so skittish we’d’ve done this at the start and saved all this jabber.”

I knew then I couldn’t wait for a diversion. If I moved fast enough ... but no one was that fast.

No one except Luke. He shoved himself away from the wall, rolling, and caught Roger behind the knees with a bulky shoulder. The Indian folded like a cardboard cutout, the gun flying from his hand when his elbow struck the floor, but for a man running to fat he wasn’t clumsy. He dove to retrieve it.

Benny pivoted that way, taking the pistol away from my head. I swung the skillet with all I had, catching him square on the corner of the jaw with the edge, spraying hot egg over both of us, grabbed his gun arm in both hands, and broke it over my knee. He shrieked and his fingers lost their grip. I caught the pistol as it fell, but by then I didn’t need it.

Pearl was faster than all of us put together. She’d beaten Roger to the Magnum and stood in a feral crouch, covering him with the weapon in both hands. He remained motionless on all fours.

A loud report made us all jump. The pistol cartridge from the skillet had continued to heat up for a second after it hit the floor, and went off like a kernel of popcorn. The slug dug a hole in a baseboard. I’d worried about what direction it would take.

“You work for Mitchell?” Pearl seemed ready to include me in her firing trajectory. Her pumpkin-colored hair hung in her face.

“Don’t make me lose respect for you. I’m only here because of a rumble strip.”

“What?”

“You know. Those things they put on the edge of the highway to warn you you’re drifting off the road.”

“We can use those other places,” she said.

I found the roll of duct tape and trussed up Benny, clucking over his screams when I jerked his shattered arm behind his back. I remembered to take my money out of his pocket. Then I saw to Roger. There was enough tape to go around after all. Finally I helped Pearl cut Luke loose. “Good tackle,” I said.

He grinned lopsidedly; his bruised eye was a kaleidoscope of color. “You should’ve seen me on the field.”

“NFL?”

“St. Helens High. They overlooked me in the draft.”

“Too bad I’m not a scout.”

“Now what?” Pearl repaired her hair, a pin in her teeth. “They cut the phone wire.”

“Now we stop a prison van and reunite father and son.” I went out to the car to get my cell.