Read Online North of Nowhere by Steve Hamilton - Free Book Online Page B

whiskey and working up the courage to fight me in the parking lot.
    I had taken his job—or so he thought. He’d been doing some work for Lane Uttley, a lawyer here in town. Lane found out that I had been a cop once, that I had been shot and still had a bullet in my chest. He came to me and talked me into trying out the private investigations business. I was dumb enough to give it a shot, just long enough for some truly horrible things to happen. Leon was the odd man out. To this very day, as I stood in front of his office door watching him sitting at his desk, he still didn’t know what a great favor I had done him.
    After that, being a private eye was the last thing in this world I wanted—or even worse, being a private eye and also Leon’s partner. But he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He started acting like my partner, and damned if he didn’t help me out of a couple of tight spots. He even saved my life. So I told him, okay, I’ll be your partner. Your silent partner. Your occasional, call me if you really, really need me partner. He helped me out of another tight spot, but this time I figured it was time for me to stop getting into tight spots in the first place. I asked him to take my name off the business, and off the Web site he had made up. No more Prudell-McKnight Investigations. No more business cards with the two guns pointed at each other. I hadn’t talked to him much since then. I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty about it.
    It doesn’t take a hell of a lot to become a private investigator in the state of Michigan. All you need is either three years as a law enforcement officer, or a college degree in police administration. Leon went the college route, right here in town at Lake Superior State. He should have left, though. He should have gone south and started his business down by Detroit, or any other city downstate. Somewhere where there was enough business, somewhere where everybody didn’t remember him from school, that goofy fat kid with the glasses who always sat in the back row and got in trouble for reading the private eye novels during class.
    I rapped my knuckle on the glass. Leon twirled around and looked at me. He looked puzzled for just one second, and then he smiled. “Come on in, Alex,” he said. “The door is open. What do you think of my office?”
    I stepped in, looked around the place. It was small, maybe ten feet by twelve. There were some file cabinets, Leon’s desk. Two guest chairs in front of it. He had a calendar on one wall, with the Lake Superior State hockey team on it. “Go Lakers!” it said. There was a print on the other wall, the International Bridge shrouded in fog. And then the window, looking down at the street one story below. It looked exactly like what a private investigator’s office would look like, if somebody had gotten the crazy idea of putting such an office in Sault Ste. Marie. “It’s perfect,” I said. “It’s you.”
    “Thanks. It’s good to see you.”
    “I was over seeing my old friend Chief Maven,” I said, sitting down in one of the guest chairs. “He told me you had an office now. I thought I’d stop by and say hello.”
    “Chief Maven, huh? I bet I know what the two of you were talking about.”
    “Yeah, about this guy Vargas…”
    “My client,” he said. “Winston Vargas.”
    “Yeah, your client.”
    “You were present at his residence last night,” he said. One of the things I’ve always loved about the guy is the fact that he’ll say I was “present” at a “residence,” instead of just being in a house.
    “I was there,” I said. “He happened to mention that you were working for him. Something about his wife.”
    “As long as he told you I was working for him, yes, I can confirm that.”
    I looked at the ceiling. Confirm that, he says. “Leon, what’s the deal? Are you following his wife around, trying to catch her fooling around with the family lawyer? What was his name, Swanson?”
    “My