Free The Dead Caller from Chicago by Jack Fredrickson Page B

expected to wear coats and ties on the hotel grounds after 6:00 P.M.
    A man in a yellow paisley scarf and long wool coat approached me. “We’re not yet open for the season.”
    â€œI’m just looking around, you know, like for the future,” I said.
    â€œIndeed.” He glanced pointedly at the inch of blazer that drooped below the hem of my peacoat. His nose was rather pointed, too, and long.
    â€œHow much?” I asked.
    â€œThey start at a little over four hundred,” he said, raising the prominent nose as though he knew I’d come north in a duct-taped Jeep, with my duds in a paper bag.
    â€œFor a week?” I asked, snooting right back at him.
    â€œPer night, of course. Good day, sir.” He touched the brim of an imaginary top hat in salute and walked away.
    Though thick snow covered its sunken terraces and broad expanses of lawn, I could imagine the hotel in full bloom. In a month, maybe two, a hundred white rocking chairs would be set out for the sorts of semiembalmed butts that would be only too happy to shell out four hundred a night to enjoy the view. I was inspired, then, as to how I might amuse myself in such a place. I’d park myself at one end of the long porch, instruct a white-coated waiter to bring me a mint julep, then proceed to work my way slowly down the long expanse, taking the tiniest sip as I tried each available rocker. The objective would be to see how many rockers I could traverse before either the julep ran out or I got ejected, accused of lunacy.
    Certainly such a stunt seemed no crazier than spending four hundred bucks just to sleep in such a place for only one night.
    Two dozen young men came out from behind the hotel and began walking down the hill toward the tiny fudge town. I checked my watch. It was 3:45. I fell in behind them as they made the turn toward the piers. By now, the whitecaps had swelled higher and were sloshing onto the tops of the piers. One by one, they walked through the puddles and climbed down into the oversized wood cabin of the bobbing Rabbit .
    Nothing happened for another fifteen minutes, and then a man came down the incline. He had white hair and white stubble on his chin, and he wore an ancient ski jacket and a black watch cap and one glove. There was a decided roll to his gait that had nothing to do with the downward slope of the ground.
    â€œArnie Pine?” I inquired, when he stepped onto the dock.
    He stopped and stared at me for a moment with rheumy, shifting eyes. No doubt, he was seeing me blurred. Arnie Pine had had his lunch.
    â€œI need a ride to Eustace Island,” I said.
    â€œThe lake’s a tad ripply,” he said through the booze sloshing in his gullet, of the water sloshing on the dock.
    I pointed to the workers sitting on the benches in the boat. “They’re going.”
    He nodded, sensing truth, and squinted at me. “Fifty, for the two of you.”
    I gave him two twenties and a ten and followed him on board. Several of the workers looked at me, disbelieving, when I went to stand at the open space at the back of the boat. My paranoia had returned, remembering the bulky man at the ticket shack back in Mackinaw City. I wanted to keep an eye on the water, for other boats.
    Pine fired the engine, banged the Rabbit hard enough against the pier to carve a new gash, and headed out to open water. We’d only gone a fraction of a nautical mile, whatever distance that might have been, when suddenly the sky opened up and began hurling down sheets of hard rain. The lake kicked up even more then, sending great scoops of water crashing into the open back, almost knocking me down. I scrambled into the long, narrow shelter and grabbed onto a stanchion supporting the roof. It wiggled, loose in my hand. In front of us, Arnie Pine was whistling, unconcerned within the haze he’d acquired from lunch.
    We plowed on, or prowed on, or whatever one does when one is in a boat bobbing like an