Free Winter of the Wolf Moon by Steve Hamilton Page A

gonna stay in here all winter or am I gonna help you get out of here?”
    “I’m gonna stay in here all winter,” he said. When he looked up at me I saw he had nice shiner under his right eye.
    “That’s what Indians do,” the man against the back wall said. “They get arrested so they can spend the winter in jail.”
    “Thanks for the observation,” I said. “Now go fuck yourself.”
    “You wouldn’t be talking like that if there wasn’t no set of bars in the way.”
    “You’re right, I wouldn’t,” I said. “I’d be sticking your head down that toilet.”
    He smiled. It didn’t do anything for his looks. For the rest of the time I was there, he kept staring at me, his arms folded against his chest.
    “All right, tell me what happened,” I said to Vinnie. “And why the hell didn’t you call me?”
    “What was I supposed to say?”
    “That you were arrested and I should come get you?”
    “I couldn’t do that,” he said.
    “What about the tribe? They’d bail you out in a second, wouldn’t they?”
    “No way,” he said. “There’s no way I’m gonna call the tribe to come bail me out.”
    “No, perish the thought,” I said. “It’s so nice in here.”
    “No fucking way.”
    “So tell me the story, at least.”
    “What story?”
    “What story. That’s cute. The story of how you got arrested. Start with me leaving you at the bar the other night, and then work your way up to hitting a cop with a hockey stick.”
    Vinnie let out a long, tired sigh, rubbed the swelling around his eye. “I didn’t mean to hit that cop, Alex. I didn’t even know he
was
a cop. He wasn’t in uniform.”
    “So what happened?”
    “He just got in the way, Alex. I was going after Bruckman.”
    “Hold it,” I said. I moved my chair closer to the bars. “Vinnie, this is very important. Tell me everything that happened.”
    “After you left the other night, I took a couple of the guys back to the reservation. I was going through town, there’s a gas station on the loop there, I saw Bruckman and some of his friends gassing up their snowmobiles.”
    “So they
did
have snowmobiles,” I said. “But at the bar, they weren’t wearing suits—”
    “No, they still didn’t have suits on. Just leather jackets. It’s pretty stupid, but then I’m not surprised.”
    “That young woman you saw with them at the bar, was she with them then?”
    “Yes,” he said. “She was there.”
    “Her name’s Dorothy Parrish.”
    “I know,” he said. He looked down at the floor.
    “How do you know her, Vinnie? I asked her about you. She said she doesn’t know you at all.”
    He let out a burst of air. I might have taken it for a laugh if he wasn’t sitting in a jail cell. “I’m not surprised,” he said.
    “I don’t get it,” I said.
    “Alex, I’ve known Dorothy Parrish since I was a little kid. She was a couple of years older than me. In high school, she was …” He shook his head. “She was so pretty, first of all. And a really good student. And popular. Everybody loved her. All the guys were hanging around her all the time. The white guys, I mean. The football players. She was the first girl from the tribe to be homecoming queen, did you know that?”
    “I take it the two of you didn’t hang around together.”
    “No,” he said. “Not hardly. Back then, the reservation was a bunch of shacks. It must have still been that way when you first came up here. You must have seen it.”
    “Yes, I remember.”
    “I suppose things are a lot better now, but back then … a lot of other kids from the tribe … well, it was hard. But not for Dorothy. She was the exception. When she was at school, at least.”
    “Did you hate her for that?”
    “Hate her?” he said. “I think Dorothy Parrish was the first girl I ever loved. As much as you can love somebody when you’re sixteen years old and she doesn’t even know your name. Or
want
to know yourname. I would have just reminded her of where she came