Drawing Dead (10 page)

“Yeah. That.”

Crow closed his eyes. “I charge five hundred a day,” he said.

“You find the guy and get it taken care of, I tear up your marker, even if it only takes you half an hour.”

“Suppose I don't find him.”

“You will. I'll tell you what. If you have to put more than four days into it, I'll go your regular rate for the extra time.”

“And if I don't find him?”

“Oh, you'll find him, Joe. I know my wife.”

Every time you play a hand differently from the way you would have played it if you could see all your opponents' cards, they gain; and every time you play your hand the same way you would have played it if you could see all their cards, they lose.

—David Sklansky,
Poker Theory

In the bright summer daylight,
from a distance, Catfish Wicky had an ordinary, almost dowdy look about her. She could have been any young woman in Reeboks and a baggy cotton dress running her Thursday afternoon errands—a long visit to the mall, a trip to the Porsche dealership for an oil change, an hour spent window- shopping at the Galleria, a stop at Sherman's Bakery for scones and a baguette, then downtown to Gaviidae Common. Her driving, however, was not in the least bit dowdy. She hit thirty miles per hour in the Gaviidae parking ramp, her little red-on-red Porsche 944 screaming past rows of Audis, Volvos, and Mercedeses.

For the past week Crow had been keeping Catfish Wicky under surveillance, waiting for her lover to appear. He had worked off his two- thousand-dollar debt within the first four days without producing any results, but Wicky wouldn't let him quit. “Don't leave me hanging, Joe. I think she's going to meet him this afternoon. I want you to stay on her, Joe. You just stick with her, and she'll lead us to him.”

So far, Catfish had been leading him in circles. She did a lot of sunbathing, and a lot of shopping, and a lot of fast driving. Bored, Crow fantasized seducing Catfish himself. He would become her lover, take her to his island cabin, then offer himself the ten thousand dollars to give her up. Technically, it was a good plan. The ten thousand dollars Wicky had budgeted seemed low, but Crow was willing to sacrifice if necessary. He let the fantasy run while he was standing behind a potted avocado tree in Gaviidae Common, watching her through the glass front of a shoe store. Catfish was trying on sandals.

For the first few minutes, he thought she might have a thing going with the shoe salesman. She was such a compulsive flirt it was hard to tell. He watched her putting the salesman through his paces, holding her leg up to look at the sandal, giving him the peek up her dress, getting him all steamed up, finally buying a pair of red leather sandals and leaving the store. Crow ducked behind the avocado tree until she passed. Two kids with designs shaved onto the sides of their heads were watching him. One of them started laughing, looking right at him. After an intensely angry moment, Crow took a look at himself hiding behind a potted plant. What the hell. He would have laughed too. He followed Catfish toward the parking ramp.

Apparently, adultery was not a daily thing with her. Not unless she was making it with the invisible man. The red Porsche screamed out of the ramp, onto Marquette, narrowly missing a taxi. Crow followed, pushing the Jaguar through the downtown traffic, staying with her until she had crossed the river and was turning into the parking ramp at The Summit.

Crow parked by a phone booth at the corner of Hennepin Avenue and called Litten Securities. Janet answered the phone and informed him that Mr. Wicky was taking a meeting. He asked her how she liked working for Dickie Wicky. She said she didn't work for Mr. Wicky, she worked for Litten Securities. He asked her if she thought Dickie was any good at his job. She said Mr. Wicky had been with the company for six years and was one of their top performers. Crow hung up, then dialed the number again.

“Mr. Irwin Jacobs calling for Mr. Richard Wicky,” he said, invoking the name of Minnesota's high-profile corporate raider.

Wicky was on the line within ten seconds.

“Rich Wicky speaking.” The voice was so contrived, so artificially deep, that Crow had to laugh aloud. He could almost hear Dickie's face collapse.

“Sorry, Dickie. It's me.”

“Jesus Christ, Joe, don't do that!”

“Your wife was a good girl again today.”

“She didn't meet anybody?” Wicky asked.

“You're disappointed? You should be happy, Dickie. She bought herself some sandals. I'm sure you'll like them.”

Wicky snorted, a wet sound that made Crow hold the phone away from his face.

“She set a new speed record for the Gaviidae parking ramp,” Crow added.

“Sounds like Cat. Spending my money as fast as she drives.” He paused. “Listen, I've got to take a couple guys out for dinner tonight. Cat knows I won't be home, so she'll probably go out. How about you stay on her, see where she goes?”

It was a familiar conversation. “That's what you said yesterday, and she stayed home all night. You sure you want me to keep spending your money on this?”

“Don't worry about it.”

“I'm going to need a check from you.”

“I said no problem.”

“She's at home right now. You want me to just sit here?”

“She won't stay long, buddy; you can count on it. You just wait awhile, and she'll be out and about.”

“Okay,
buddy
.”

Wicky laughed. The sound came over the wire like a cartoon balloon: “Ha ha ha!”

Catfish
Wicky's red Porsche was parked at an angle on the second level of The Summit's ramp, taking up the parking spaces marked C. Wicky and R. Wicky. Crow found a slot in the next row where he could keep an eye on both the car and the elevator lobby. He passed the time by rereading Sklansky's
Poker Theory
. Four cars over, a man was sitting in a big blue car, also waiting for something. Crow couldn't see him clearly, but he could hear the radio, the foamy, pulpy sounds of lite rock echoing off the low concrete ceiling. He tried to push the music from his consciousness, focusing on Sklansky's brilliant but nearly impenetrable tome. Lite rock oozed over the chapter on Game Theory and Bluffing. Crow was about to get out and ask the guy to turn down his radio, when the elevator doors opened and Catfish Wicky stepped out into the parking ramp.

She had transformed herself from dowdy young housewife into what Debrowski would call, wrinkling her nose, “Tits and lips.” Crow tried to identify the elements of her metamorphosis. Red lipstick, a little something on the eyes, a black cotton dress that looked like it would crawl up her thighs at the slightest provocation. Her dark hair, which during the day she had worn tied back in a loose ponytail, was now piled casually on top of her head, as though she had pushed it up there to get it out of the way, then forgot about it. She was wearing her new red sandals. Was that all? Was she walking differently? The superficial changes were slight, but there was nothing minor about the lump that had formed under his stomach. The Porsche swallowed her up, and Crow let his breath escape.

He started his car and followed her down the ramp. A big blue convertible was crowding his rear end. The lite rock guy. Catfish waved at the attendant and drove through the exit without stopping. The gate arm dropped in front of Crow; he had to pay three dollars to get out. The guy in the convertible, an ugly guy with a big head, was right on his back bumper. The Cadillac hood ornament was level with the top of Crow's head; his rearview mirror was full of bug- spattered chromium grillwork. Crow paid the attendant and resisted the urge to turn and give the guy behind him a look. He got the Jaguar out onto Hennepin just in time to see the Porsche turning right at University Avenue; by the time he made the corner, she was a quarter of a mile ahead.

Crow punched the accelerator and brought the Jag up to fifty, passing a little green Honda. Catfish was still pulling away, moving her Porsche deftly through and around the slower traffic. Feeling a seductive jolt of adrenaline, Crow shifted into fourth gear, prepared to follow her at any speed, when he heard a screech, a metallic thud, and the piercing sound of sheet metal on asphalt. He took his foot off the accelerator and flicked his eyes to the mirror. The Honda he had just passed was on its side in the road, still spinning, and behind it he could see the blue Cadillac convertible, its proud grille riding up over the remains of a small ash tree. Crow pulled to the side. Other cars were stopping. The windshield of the Honda had popped out in one piece and skidded across the four-lane avenue; the driver, a kid in a red T-shirt, was climbing shakily out through the front of his car. The Cadillac man, uglier than ever with blood running from his nose, was already out of his car, glaring at the ash tree that was jammed under his front bumper. A group of energetic young men came out of a frat house across the street and ran to the aid of the drivers. Crow dropped the Jag in gear and took off.

Catfish's Porsche was nowhere in sight.

Crow frowned and continued east on University Avenue, through the campus and toward Saint Paul, relying on luck and instinct. She could be going anywhere. If he didn't stumble on her within the next few miles, he decided, he would give it up, save Dickie some money.

As he crossed the invisible boundary between Minneapolis and Saint Paul, the character of the neighborhood changed. The businesses on the street got older, the buildings became more varied and peculiar, the trees fewer, and the signs at the intersections were no longer numbered streets but names. It was like sliding back in time. Some blocks seemed unchanged by the last half of the century. Tiny service-oriented businesses—shoe shops, tailors, TV repair, beauty salons, hobby stores—were sandwiched between red- and gray-brick factories. The Turf Club, “The Best Remnant of the '40s,” featured country dancing seven nights a week. Porky's Drive-In, still painted like a giant red-and-brown checkerboard, had been feeding people burgers and malts in their cars since 1953.

Crow was looking for a convenient place to turn around, when he passed the Twin Town Luxury Motor Hotel, another fifties relic, and saw what looked like Catfish's Porsche parked in front of one of the rooms. The car was empty. Crow circled the block and drove past again, checking the license plate. It was hers. He parked on the street and entered the motel lobby. An old man wearing a Minnesota Twins baseball cap was sitting in a swivel chair behind the counter. He lowered his newspaper and raised his eyebrows.

Crow decided to use the direct approach.

“Did the woman driving that red Porsche just check in here?”

The man stared back at him, black eyes buried in a whorl of wrinkles.

“That's her car parked outside. Are you sure you didn't see her?”

The old man shrugged. Crow stared glumly through the lobby window at Catfish's car. He didn't want to sit there all night waiting for her to show up. The Porsche was parked next to a lemon-yellow Cadillac Fleetwood that needed a wash and wax. It had an Illinois license. Crow turned back to the desk clerk, who was still watching him over the top of his newspaper.

“You know whose Caddy that is?”

The old man slowly smiled. He had nice yellow dentures—they almost looked real.

Crow took out his wallet and put a twenty-dollar bill on the counter. It was worth a try. The old man sat up in his chair and stretched his neck to see the bill. He put it in the cash register and handed Crow ten dollars in change.

“Fella named Tom Aquinas in there now. Number twenty-two.” He smiled again and went back to his newspaper.

Crow looked at the ten-dollar bill in his hand. He had never before received change on a bribe.

“You ever see the girl in the Porsche before?”

“Yup.”

“She usually stay in there long?”

“Nope.”

Crow decided to wait around. After Catfish left, he could approach “Tom Aquinas” and make him an offer. If all went well, he would be out of Dickie Wicky's employ by the end of the day.

“Thanks,” said Crow, starting toward the door.

“He's a strange one,” the old man said.

Crow stopped. Apparently, he hadn't used up his ten bucks yet.

“Never stops moving,” the old man continued. “Like he's got ants in his pants.”

Crow drove across the street to Porky's Drive-In. In its heyday, Porky's had been a full-service drive-in, complete with carhops, multicolored neon lights, and a fistfight every other Friday night. Their burgers had been the juiciest, their fries the crispest, and their malts the thickest. Somehow it had survived the onslaught of McDonald's and Burger King and was still serving its high-fat delights, although the carhops were ancient history. You could eat at one of the umbrella tables set out on the fenced-off patio area, or you could use the drive-up window and eat in your car. Crow ordered a bag of french fries and a Coke. He set the bag on his passenger seat and drove around to the end of the hundred-foot-long corrugated-metal awning, parking where he could see across the street to room 22 of the Twin Town. The underside of Porky's awning was decorated with colored neon bulbs. Crow picked a limp french fry out of its red- and-white-checkered paper tray. Contemporary reality could not compete with memories. Or maybe he had lost his tolerance for saturated fat. He squeezed the foil packet of catsup over the fries.

Twenty minutes later, he was looking at the last catsup-soaked french fry, daring himself to eat it, when Catfish Wicky stepped out of room 22. She was followed by a compact, dark-haired man in a bright-orange polo shirt. They walked between the yellow Cadillac and the Porsche and crossed the street on foot, heading directly toward him. Had she seen him following her? It was possible—he hadn't made much of an effort to remain unnoticed, and the Jag did not exactly blend in with the traffic—but they weren't looking at him. Every few steps, the man reached up with his right hand and pushed a slab of glossy black hair from his forehead; the hair would almost immediately fall back down over his thick eyebrows. He was talking, gesturing with one hand and working his hair with the other. Once across the street, they turned, entered the patio area, and sat at one of the umbrella tables. Crow could just see the tops of their heads over the low cedar fence; he pushed the french fry into his mouth and chewed.