Free The Dead Caller from Chicago by Jack Fredrickson Page A

pockets of his black trench coat, against the cold. He looked square and dark and evil. He was looking right at me.
    I turned a little, pretending to look up the shore. I could still see the ticket shack out of the corner of my eye.
    The bulky man passed something to the ticket taker. It might have been money for the next ferry, but it could have been money to talk. “Why, Eustace,” the ticket seller could be saying. “The damned fool wants to go to Eustace, though there’s nothing there this time of year but a few seasonals, and lots of rocks.”
    Impossible, I said to the thought. I’d lost the bronze Malibu back in Illinois.
    It started to rain, a little. I went belowdecks, where I’d be dry and less cold.
    Where I wouldn’t be seen by the bulky man’s eyes.

 
    Eleven
    A hundred yards out from the shore, the water began kicking harder, making whitecaps two feet high. The ferry was big, but the roil in the water was stronger. The ferry bobbed like a small boat.
    I went up to the wheelhouse. The captain was talking casually to the deckhand. They both turned, smiling. They were used to angry water.
    â€œGot work on Mackinac?” the captain asked.
    â€œI’ve got a friend on Eustace Island.”
    He winced. “Hell to pay, if that’s your destination.”
    â€œCan you take me? I’ll pay large.”
    He shook his head. “We’d crash on the rocks.”
    â€œHow do I get there, then?”
    â€œArnie Pine,” the deckhand said. “Keeps his boat on the next dock over from ours. The Rabbit. He’s adept.”
    â€œEven in this kind of weather?”
    â€œDepends on his lunch,” the deckhand said. They both laughed at the inside joke.
    We docked on Mackinac Island fifteen queasy minutes later. I stepped onto the wide plank pier, and for a second I just stood in the soft rain, sucking air and enjoying the unyielding steadiness of the wood below my feet.
    As promised, the Rabbit bobbed at the next dock. It was a swaybacked thing and seemed to groan under the weight of a weathered white cabin that looked too long and tall for its narrow deck. There were deep gashes, some grayed, some fresh, cut into its green hull. No one was on board.
    Farther down, a man knelt on the pier, ready to pull a small motor out of a rowboat heaving in the chop. The water rose and he lunged, grabbed the motor, and set it down with a thud onto the pier. “Bad damned water today,” he called across, standing up.
    â€œIs Arnie Pine around?”
    â€œHe’ll be back just before his four o’clock run to Eustace.”
    I looked down at the water crashing into the pilings next to him. “Isn’t it too rough?”
    â€œFor everyone else, maybe, but Arnie takes his little ferrying income serious. And,” he added, “he’ll have had lunch.”
    â€œLunch?” The ferryboat captain and his deckhand had mentioned Pine’s lunch, too.
    He wiped the mist of rain from his forehead. “Arnie takes his lunch serious,” he said. “Especially in rough weather.” He lifted his motor and started down the pier.
    I had three hours to kill. I walked up the incline to what must have been the main trap for tourists. A few blocks of businesses sat on a gently curving street. Every third or fourth one appeared to be selling fudge. Or would shortly, when the vacationers started coming. For now, everything appeared to be closed.
    The Grand Hotel loomed enormous and white above the winding street, easily visible through the leafless trees. Amanda and I had talked once about spending a weekend there. We’d talked about doing all sorts of things like that in the beginning, before my life short-circuited ours.
    I wondered, then, if Jenny and I could ever talk of such things, and whether new beginnings were possible at all. It was a gloomy day all around.
    I walked up the hill. A cast-metal sign announced that gentlemen were