Read Online Whiskey River by Loren D. Estleman - Free Book Online Page A

down an antique logging trail leading toward the lake, that blank expanse with the lights on the American side looking tiny and far away. The lamps of the other cars followed us and slowed when we slowed. We were barely moving as we crunched through spears of tall grass in the snow where the trail frayed out. The blades lisped along the running boards.
    “This is the interesting part,” Jack announced. “Sometimes it don’t freeze all the way to the edge.”
    I said, “Shouldn’t one of us get out and check?”
    “Nah.”
    In decades past, the foot of the trail had provided a gentle grade for launching sleighs and barges loaded with logs bound for Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo; but the lake had receded since that time. Our front tires dropped from earth to ice with a sickening lurch, answered by a groan that seemed to issue from the depths of the lake and made my heart skip. But the ice held. After a moment Jack slipped the clutch again and the rear tires bumped down the bank and plunged with a jingling of bottles. The chains munched at the frozen surface. Behind us, the second car made a similar descent. The lamps of the third swayed, flickered, and then jolted into a frightening forty-five-degree angle, but righted themselves, and within minutes the entire procession had quit land. Anyone watching would have seen what looked like a ghost convoy rolling across the water, a Second Coming with backfires.
    Papery flakes had been fluttering down when we left shore, but now a shrapnel moon glinted through an unpredicted hole in the clouds, causing the lake to glow under its layer of white, except in dark ominous patches.
    “Fucking radio creeps,” said Kramm. “Couldn’t tell you it’s raining if they was standing up to their ass in a puddle.”
    Jack was sanguine. “Don’t get your balls in an uproar. Nobody knows we’re out.”
    “What are those dark spots?” I asked.
    “Shoals. Current flows over them and hollows out the ice on top. Little Augie drove smack across one and that’s how come he’s down there looking up.” As Jack spoke he corrected his course to circle a patch larger than most.
    After that I relaxed by degrees. We were in expert hands. Even the creaking and groaning of the ice, paralyzing at first, ceased to worry me as the others ignored it. The car was swaddled in black silence, heightened by the sight of the distant lights of Monroe beyond the windshield and the burbling of the engine under the cowl-shaped hood. The black box heater beneath the dashboard, little more than an extension of the manifold, didn’t reach past the front seat, leaving the back cold and dank, but I felt safely cocooned, even drowsy. It was well past one.
    Conversation—the first in many minutes—awakened me. The shore lights appeared much closer. I had done more than just doze.
    “I didn’t see nothing,” Springfield was saying. “Maybe it was just your reflection.”
    Jack said, “Maybe not.”
    The Hudson was equipped with a police spotlight on the driver’s side. Jack twisted it up by its chrome handle and switched it on. A hard white shaft rammed a hole through the darkness. I saw shapes of cars two hundred yards ahead, strung out in a horizontal line. Their lamps were dark.
    Jack’s eyes sought mine in the rearview mirror. “You tell anybody about this run?”
    “Not a soul.”
    Something struck the post to the left of the windshield. Sparks sprayed. The report followed an instant later, a hollow plop.
    “They’re trying for the light!” Kramm cranked down his window hurriedly, letting in a blast of arctic air. He poked the machine gun’s snout out the window.
    Jack killed the spot and headlamps. Behind us the lamps of the other cars in our party broke formation in both directions and blinked out raggedly. I wondered how they could avoid the shoals without light. Then Jack hurled the Hudson into a skidding turn that barked my ribs against the crate of whiskey, and I wondered about us.
    All the