Drawing Dead (2 page)

“Consider the alternative,” said Ben. “We could be back in Chicago entertaining Joey C. We could be having him and Freddy Wisnesky over for dinner. We could all sit around admiring Freddy's tie. Freddy would appreciate that.”

“Freddy and his fucking ties,” Tom growled.

“Maybe Joey would fix the tape deck for us. You're Joey's good buddy, right?” Ben said. “I'm sure he stands behind the cars he sells.”

Tom extracted a bottle of Children's Tylenol from the pocket of his black jeans, shook out half a dozen of the purple, grape-flavored tablets, licked them off his palm, and chewed. Ben compressed his thin lips until they disappeared, and waited for his partner to finish chewing.

“We'll be in Minneapolis soon. We can get a nice room, order some food. Joey won't be looking for us there. Nobody goes looking for anyone in Minneapolis. We can make a few calls, get the Galactic Guardians thing in motion.”

“So who you gonna call? Who the fuck do we know in Minneapolis?”

Ben looked at his partner, who had both feet up on the seat, chin on his knees, glaring out at the highway. “Tomas, we don't know anyone in Minneapolis. That is why we are going there.”

Half a mile later, Tom said, “Yeah, we do.”

“Yeah, we do what?”

“Yeah, we do know somebody in Minne-fucking-apolis.”

“Who would that be?”

“Cat.”

Ben frowned and adjusted his hands on the steering wheel.

“I'm gonna give her a call soon as we get there,” Tom said. “Maybe she knows somebody'd be interested in the Galactic Guardians. Maybe her new hubby.”

Ben cleared his throat. “Catherine got married? I doubt, then, that she'll take kindly to us going after her meal ticket.”

“You think getting married is gonna change anything? You don't know Cat. She likes a good show more'n anybody. Only thing she can't stand is being bored. That's how come you two never got along. Anyways, I don't see you coming up with anything better.”

Ben's pallid face turned a deeper shade of beige. “I might be boring, but I thought we had a good arrangement back in Chicago. And we did, until you decided to lay the Stasis Shield routine on Joey C. For a used car that gets ten miles to the gallon.” He slapped the steering wheel.

“How was I s'posed to know he was going to try and read the damn things? I told him not to open 'em up.”

“And I told
you
not to get involved with people like that.”

“How was I s'posed to buy us a car without I get involved with guys like that? You know anybody sells cars isn't connected?”

They had been having variations on the same argument ever since leaving Chicago. Ben shrugged and kept the Cadillac rolling.

“You don't think Freddy'll show up in Minneapolis?” Tom asked a few miles later. “I don't want to end up eel bait like Billy Yeddis.”

“Why would he do that? First, he is not likely to find us there, and if he does, even Joey C. has his practical side. How angry could he get over a few comic books?”

“All Billy did was miss a few car payments.”

The Tom and Ben Show listened to the hum of the Cadillac's big wheels on concrete.

“You've got a point there,” Ben said.

“You
sure?” Joey Cadillac said.

Freddy Wisnesky, slumped in the chair in front of Joey's desk, rolled his mountainous shoulders and looked down at his tie. Today he was wearing his tie with the big red flowers on it. Roses. Real silk. Lots of class. “I been lookin' everywhere, Mister C. I been over to their apartment a bunch of times. I been askin' around everywhere. I don't think they're around no more.” Freddy's nose, a flattened, solid mass of healed cartilage, was no longer available as an air passage. His voice sounded like that of a man with a bad cold speaking from the other end of a culvert.

Joey Cadillac picked up a memo pad and started tearing off pages, balling them in his fist, flicking them across his eight-foot-wide desk at Freddy, who let them bounce off his chest, unblinking.

“You know who Diogenes is?” Joey asked him.

Freddy contorted his face. A bit of white spittle oozed from the corner of his mouth. He seemed to swell, then collapse, sinking down a few inches in the chair. He gave his head a shake, then ventured, “One a those Greek guys, has a joint over on Halsted?”

Joey grinned. “That's pretty good, Freddy.”

Encouraged, Freddy elaborated, “One a them restaurants over there?”

“Diogenes,” Joey said, standing and hiking up his pin-striped linen

trousers, “is this guy who walks around with this lantern looking for an honest man. He did this his whole life, looking for this one honest guy.” Joey stopped and looked to see if he was making an impression.

“I musta been thinking of some other guy,” Freddy said.

Joey nodded. “Diogenes doesn't own no Greek restaurant. Even a Greek knows he ain't gonna find an honest man in the restaurant business. Anyways, this Diogenes is kinda like me, Freddy. I just wish I could find one honest guy, one guy I could count on. These comic book guys, this Paine and this Disraeli, these are not your honest guys, Freddy. So what I want you to do is like Diogenes with his lantern, only instead of looking for an honest guy, which you ain't gonna find, you go find those comic book guys. You go looking for them guys and you
find
them, you know what I mean?”

Freddy contorted his face again.

“Never mind,” Joey said. “Let me lay it out for you. You find out where they went. There're these stores that sell nothing but comic books, you go ask around there, find out who they know, find out where they went. You know how to do that. Just keep asking and then go find them wherever they are, and when you find them? Do like you did with Billy Yeddis, then bring me my car back.”

Freddy went blank for a moment, then he smiled. “I could do that,” he said.

Something
Freddy Wisnesky had learned from Mister C.—if you want to know something, you do not waste your time trying to figure it out; you ask guys. If you ask enough guys, one of them will tell you. Some guys are very cooperative, they even tell you stuff you don't want to know, but other guys you have work with to get them to open up. The fat guy behind the counter at Fatman's Emporium of Comic Book Arts was that kind of guy. He had an amused, shifty-eyed look that Freddy had often noticed in small-business owners who were meeting him for the first time. Didn't take him seriously. When Freddy asked about Paine and Disraeli, the fat guy—Freddy figured he had to be Fatman—lost interest in him just like that. Just shook his head and went back to reading his comic book like nobody was there.

Freddy's first idea was to drag the guy across the counter and bounce his head on the floor, but years of experience had taught him that it was usually safer and nearly as effective to employ more civilized, gentle tactics. He felt for the knot in his orange-and-black tiger lily tie and made sure it was tight and centered, then turned to survey his surroundings, looking for inspiration.

Fatman's Emporium was a thirty-by-forty-foot labyrinth of shelves loaded with more comic books than Freddy had ever known existed. He was the only customer in the store. He wandered through the maze, stopping now and then to flip through a row of comics. Each comic was wrapped in a plastic bag and had an orange price sticker on the upper-right-hand corner. There was a familiar cover up on the top shelf:
Captain America #100
. Freddy reached up and took down the comic. The price sticker read: “$80.00—Near Mint.” Freddy thought about his mom throwing away his comic books the first time he had gone away—a lousy six months in the joint, and she throws all his junk away. He untaped the top of the plastic bag and removed the comic.

“Hey, no reading the merch.” Fatman was right there, grabbing the comic away from him. Freddy held on and pulled back, ripping Captain America in half, right across his red-white-and-blue shield. Fatman stared in horror at the shredded comic. “Look what you did,” he said, his already high voice rising, his big cheeks turning red. “You're gonna pay me for this, fella. That's eighty bucks you just tore up.”

Freddy felt bad about tearing Captain America in half, since he had wanted to read it, but Fatman's shrill reaction was giving him an idea. He picked out another comic,
Batman #163
, with a picture of the Joker on the cover, and tore it in half lengthwise.

“Jesus Christ! What are you doing?” Fatman grabbed Freddy's arm and started pulling him away from the shelves. Freddy twitched his arm and sent Fatman spinning against the opposite wall. He destroyed
Daredevil #5, #6,
and
#7
while Fatman was trying to get back on his feet. When Fatman came at him again, Freddy unleashed one of his size-fourteen wing tips and let Fatman have a good one on his right shin. The best wing tips were the big black ones from Sears; they weighed a ton and made his feet sweat, but when he kicked a guy, the guy went down.

Freddy destroyed
Batman #280
while the fat guy was trying to get his act together, curled up on the floor holding his shin, drooling and moaning, tears running from his squeezed-shut eyes.

“Please, stop,” he finally managed to gasp as Freddy paged through a late-1950s copy of
World's Finest
, tearing away the pages one at a time. Freddy looked down. Fatman had managed to open one eye. Freddy tore off one last page, dropped the remains of the comic on the floor.

Fatman asked, “What do you want?”

Freddy smiled. This was more like it. “I was asking if you knew where I could find a couple guys, that's all. Paine and Disraeli.”

The fat guy was shaking his head. Freddy reached for another comic book.

“Wait, please. I don't remember—you got to help me out here. How come you think I know them? I mean, maybe I do. Lots of guys come in and out of here. What do they look like?”

Freddy crumpled up a copy of
Green Lantern #10
and threw it across the store. He was kind of enjoying himself.

“No! Wait a second. These guys you're looking for—is one of them a tall guy with a deep voice? Talks like a college professor?”

Freddy shrugged. He did not know how college professors talked.

“And the other guy, kind of little and greasy and talks really fast? 'Cause it sounds to me like you want the Tom and Ben Show. I should have known.”

Freddy shrugged. “Tom and Ben Show?”

“That's what they call themselves. Ben Fink and Tommy Campo. They got more names than Beelzebub.”

“Who?”

“The Tom and Ben Show. I bet they're the guys you want, don't you think? They owe you money or something?”

Freddy reached down a big hand and helped him stand up. Fatman was talking now, turning into a real motormouth. “ 'Cause it wouldn't surprise me. They been in the business for years and never done a deal yet where somebody didn't get screwed. Couple of comic book con men, if you ask me. They were in here just a couple days ago, come in here trying to unload a bunch of junk, bunch of those Stasis Shield things. Like I'm gonna buy something from those fuckers. I think they blew town.”

“Where they go?”

“How should I know? No, wait a second. Just a goddamn second! I think they went up to Minneapolis. I'm sure of it.”

Freddy reached out and placed his hand on Fatman's head. The heel of his palm covered his forehead. “You real sure?” he asked.

“I think so. Christ, man, I don't know—all I know is that they were talking about it, asking me if I knew any comics people up there. I told 'em I didn't know anybody. Even if I did, I sure as hell wouldn't give their name to those fuckers.”

Freddy squeezed lightly, as if by compacting Fatman's gray matter he could cause information to flow more rapidly. It seemed to work.

“You just ask around the Minneapolis comic book shops, you ought to be able to find 'em in no time. You want to find 'em, you go on up there and ask around. They'll turn up.”

“You real sure?”

Fatman's head bobbed in Freddy's grip. Freddy released him.

“Okay,” said Freddy.

“Okay?”

“I'm gonna find 'em in Minneapolis, right?”

Fatman nodded vigorously.

“I don't, we can talk some more.”

Fatman nodded again, though with less vigor.

Satisfied, Freddy turned toward the door.

“Just a second,” Fatman said. Wincing, he hopped on one leg around the counter and pulled out a Rolodex. “I just remembered something.” He flipped through the cards. “I think I still got her name on my mailing list. They get to Minneapolis, she'll know about it. Most recent address…yup. Minneapolis.” He copied down a name and address on a slip of paper, handed it to Freddy. Freddy screwed up his eyes and spelled out the name in his mind, moving his lips with each new letter.

“Cat Fish?” he asked.

“That's right. Catfish. Tom's old girlfriend. You think Tom and Ben are a piece of work, wait'll you meet her.”

The way Hold 'em works is, each player gets two cards, right? That's called
The Deal
. Then you bet, then three more cards are dealt faceup in the middle of the table. These three cards get used by all the players. This is called
The Flop
. Then you bet again, and another card gets turned up. They call that
The Turn
. You bet again, then a last card gets turned up. That's
The River
. Then you get one more bet. The guy that makes the best five-card poker hand out of the two cards he holds and the five cards on the table wins. It's simple. You just play your cards and you take home the money. You want to sit in a few hands?

—Zink Fitterman

The Texas Hold 'em game
in the apartment above Zink's Club 34 was eight hours old when Joe Crow made his most potentially expensive mistake of the night. He had folded an eight, deuce after the deal, and was watching the other guys play out the hand. Ozzie LaRose threw his hand away. Al Levin raised it up, Frank Knox and Jimbo Bobick called, Zink Fitterman raised it up again. Ozzie pulled out his wallet, nudged Crow with his right elbow, and showed him a snapshot of the big fish he had caught that weekend.