Winter of the Wolf Moon Read Online Free PDF Page A

means over thirty and under fifty.”
    “I’m forty-eight, smartass. Now get up there andbring me a beer. And make me a sandwich while you’re at it.”
    “Such manners,” he said. He went behind the bar and opened up the cooler. I put my feet up on his little hassock and closed my eyes. The heat felt good. I could have gone to sleep right there.
    “Here,” he said. He put a plate down on the table next to me, along with a bottle.
    “Jackie,” I said. “What is this?”
    “It’s a sandwich, genius. Ham and provolone.” He went back to the bar, which was a good thing because I wasn’t going to give him his footstool back.
    “No, the bottle,” I said, across the room. A man in the corner looked up from his newspaper, smiled and shook his head, looked down again.
    “That’s beer, Alex.”
    “What kind of beer?”
    “Molson beer. You can read.”
    “What kind of Molson beer?”
    He let out a long sigh. “American Molson beer.”
    “Where’s my Canadian beer, Jackie?” We have this little arrangement. Whenever he goes across the border, he picks me up a case of Canadian Molson. He’s not supposed to be selling Canadian beer in the United States, but he keeps a few in the cooler, just for me.
    “I ran out of the Canadian,” he said. “I’ll get you some more tomorrow.”
    “You’re supposed to keep an eye on it,” I said. “You’re supposed to let me know if you’re getting low.”
    “Like I got nothing better to do than to monitor your personal beer supply.”
    “No, Jackie, as a matter of fact you don’t. Thatshould be your number one priority in life.”
    “Just drink the goddamned American beer, will you? I swear, I’m gonna make you put on a blindfold some day, see if you can even tell the difference. I’ll bet you five hundred dollars you can’t.”
    The door opened before I could take him up on his bet. A blast of cold air swept through the room, and a man walked in who was just about as welcome as the cold air. Leon Prudell.
    “Oh yeah,” Jackie said from the bar, “I was supposed to tell you. Leon Prudell was here last night looking for you. I told him to come back today at lunchtime.”
    “Thanks a lot,” I said.
    Prudell came over to the fireplace and sat down in the chair next to me. “How’s it going, Alex?”
    “Prudell,” I said.
    “Call me Leon, ay,” he said. He hadn’t changed much. He was still all, flannel and messy orange hair and that yooper twang.
    “Leon. What can I do for you?” The last time he showed up here, he drank a great deal of whiskey and then he tried to take me apart in the parking lot. Come to think of it, that was the same night my whole life started turning inside out. I hoped his coming into the bar again wasn’t an omen of more of the same.
    “I just wanted to talk to you,” he said. “I got a business proposition.”
    I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t even try.
    “Here’s the deal,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about getting back into private investigation, ay. I really miss it, Alex. I mean I still have my license and everything. Here, I had these made up.” He handedme a business card. It read “Leon Prudell, Investigation, Security, Bail Bonds.”
    “You’re serious,” I said.
    “I thought it would be a good idea to add the bail bonds in there. Did you know that there are no bail bondsmen in the whole county? Until me, I mean. If you had to get bailed out of jail, you’d have to wait for somebody to come up from Mackinac.”
    “I’ll remember that,” I said. “But what does this have to do with me?”
    “Alex …,” he said. He gave the room a quick scan and then he bent his head closer to mine. “Alex, here’s the way it is. I’ve been trying real hard to be an investigator again, because it’s what I love to do. And I think I’m real good at it. I helped you out that one time, remember? Getting into that guy’s house? You could tell I was pretty good at that kind of stuff, right? Am I