Drawing Dead (34 page)

Freddy Wisnesky was still there in his apartment, eating his food, drinking his beer, waiting for him to come home. Wicky took a shaky breath and followed it with a half ounce of icy gin, then another.

Catfish and Tommy, another painful memory, slipped between the molecules of alcohol and flashed on his brainpan. He finished his drink and looked around for Melly. As always, she was right there. She put a plate of french fries on his table.

“The cook had an extra order, Mr. Rich. On the house.”

He knew that the fries had been brought to moderate the effects of the alcohol he had consumed. Melly didn't want him passing out at her table. But he appreciated it. “Thanks, Melly. I'd like another drink.” He picked up a french fry and ate it, smiling up at her.

“Sure thing, Mr. Rich.”

His mind kept returning to the image of Catfish kissing Tommy. He tried to make it a friendly, sisterly kiss, but even his flexible memory could not erase the lust that had passed between them. He jerked his mind away from one painful memory and landed in another: The call he had made to Freddy's boss, Joey Cadillac. He had a bad feeling about it, like he had made a big mistake getting him involved. He reassured himself. One way or another, whatever happened, the Tom and Ben Show was fucked. He felt a surge of testosterone. The Tom and Ben Show was going down the tube. He didn't even care about the money.

Actually, that wasn't true. If only he could figure a way around Freddy's new attitude. All the nice stuff he'd done for Freddy, and the guy. . .

He shivered, barely avoiding the memory.

He could leave straight from work, just head straight up to Crook Lake, find the old man's cabin…No, that wouldn't work. Freddy would be on him before he made Anoka. He needed time to secure the deal with O'Gara before Tom and Ben got there with the money. Timing was everything. He ticked off the agenda in his mind.

Check out the comics, make sure they weren't all chewed up by mice or something.

Meet Tom and Ben someplace nearby. Make it a public place, someplace in Brainerd.

Get the money from them. Wicky took a swallow from the martini that had appeared in his hand, stabbed an olive with the red plastic spear, and chewed thoughtfully. If they thought that Freddy was waiting back at the old man's cabin, they wouldn't want to go near it. They probably wouldn't let loose of the money, either. And the old man had been sticky on that one point—he had to see the cash money, or the comics were going nowhere.

Shit. It made him dizzy to think about it. What had possessed him to get involved with Freddy? He should've got the money and the comics and
then
called in the Incredible Hulk. Now it was looking like he was in the same deep shit as Tom and Ben. Before Freddy, it had all seemed so simple: buy low; sell high. Now the screechy voice of Joey Cadillac had come over the wire and turned it all around, turned his incredible opportunity into a horror show.

He wouldn't get a second chance at Sam O'Gara's comics, especially if the old man found out what they were really worth. Why the hell did the old cocker keep the things up north? Wicky hated the woods. He hated mosquitoes. He took a pull at the martini. Logical, orderly thought was becoming unavailable to him. Fuck it. He'd have to wing it, and whatever happened, well, he wouldn't be any worse off than he was now—his wife cuckolding him, a murderous three- hundred-pound ogre living in his apartment, a phony limited- partnership scam about to blow up in his face.

His thoughts became flash cards. Catfish. Tommy. Joe Crow. The way the swimming pool looked upside down. Freddy bellowing down at him, “How do you get to the cabin on Crook Lake?” Trying to scream back directions while inverted. “Who's Sam O'Gara?” Looking into his downstairs neighbor's window. “Where do I find Joe Crow?” Being shaken up and down. “The comics—how much are they worth?” The swimming pool too far out; he would never make it. He squeezed his eyes tight, tighter, squeezed until it hurt and everything inside was red. His breaths were coming rapidly, his chest felt constricted. He felt for the edge of the table, gripped it with both hands, willed himself to unclench.

Slowly, his eyes opened. Joe Crow, stone-faced, was staring pitilessly across the booth. Wicky closed his eyes again, then opened them, but Crow was still there.

Paying
six thousand nine hundred eighty-six dollars and sixteen cents to Charles the Customer Service Specialist at Jaguar Motor Cars of Minneapolis had put Crow in exactly the right mood to talk to Dickie Wicky. His agenda was simple. He would ask one last time for his fifty-seven hundred dollars. When Wicky refused, Crow could proceed without compunction.

“I don't know why you bother,” Debrowski had said. “Dickie is one notch down the food chain from a Joey Cadillac. Just do what you've got to do. You need help, you just let me know. I'd love to put it to the little skank.”

“I think I've got this one covered, Debrowski,” Crow had told her. “You did more than enough already.”

“I did it for the money.”

“Like hell.”

Now Crow sat across the booth from Wicky, watching him make faces, waiting to be noticed. He was sure Debrowski was right, but he had to give Wicky one last chance to slime his way out.

“Joe!” Dickie said after a few shocked facial contortions.

“Afternoon, Dickie.”

“Jesus, where'd you come from?”

“How's your cash situation these days?”

“Me? I'm hurting, Joe. This comic book thing. Christ, I'm really sorry about getting you into it. You know, I gave everything I had to those guys. I'm hurting real bad.” He looked at the Rolex. “Thanks for not pawning my Rolex, Joe. I thought you were gonna sell it on me for a while there.”

“Now's your chance to buy it back.” He thought about the twenty thousand dollars cash Wicky had promised to pay Sam the next day.

“I would if I could, Joe.”

He was good.

“But you know, it didn't work, what you did.” Wicky's face tensed and flushed, his voice rose in pitch and volume. “She's still not coming home, Joe. She's still fucking him. You know who he is?”

“You said you didn't want to know, Dickie.”

“I know who he is. It's her brother Tommy. My fucking wife is fucking her fucking brother. My kids could turn out to be monsters, and you don't even tell me?”

Crow was too surprised to point out the error in Dickie's genetic theory. He said, “Tommy is her brother? Are you sure?”

“How the hell do you think I met him? Sure I'm sure. They grew up together. You can't tell by looking at them?”

Crow called up the faces in his memory. The resemblance was there. He could believe it. He said, repeating it for his own benefit, “She's his sister?”

Wicky nodded jerkily, his mouth sucked into a knot, his fists quivering on the table. Crow took a long breath, not knowing quite what to say next. As he watched, Wicky's features seemed to melt. The angry Dickie faded and was replaced by a maudlin, teary Dickie. His fists unclenched and flattened.

“You did what you could, Joe. No one can control Cat. You know what she does with her lips? She rubs Tabasco sauce on 'em to make 'em swell up like that. You kiss her, your lips burn for hours.”

Crow swallowed, remembering the lingering heat from her kisses. Tabasco sauce? He was almost feeling sorry for the guy.

“You know what else she does? You know what she did once?” Somehow, he had made his squinty eyes big and doleful.

“No,” Crow said. “I don't want to know. I just want you to pay me my fifty-seven hundred dollars.”

“I can't do it, Joe.” His expression mutated again, to something resembling his business-only face. “I don't have it, and even if I did, you didn't get the job done, Joe. My sister-fucking brother-in-law is still out there with pepper on his lips. You want me to buy you a drink, I'll buy you a drink, but that's all I can do. If you have to sell my Rolex, then that's what you have to do. I'm sorry.”

“This watch isn't worth fifty bucks, Dickie. It's a fake, just like your comic book scam, just like you, just like your wife.” He stood up, stripped the watch off his wrist, dropped it in Wicky's martini.

Wicky was shaking his head sadly. “Joe, Joe, Joe. I can't believe this. What did I ever do to you?” He picked the watch out of the martini, shook it off, dried it on the lapel of his navy-blue blazer, slipped it on his wrist. “Why don't you like me?”

Crow shuddered internally and walked away, trying to extract a minim of joy from his childish act. What was it about Dickie? Did he recognize his other self, stoned at noon, strapping a martini- drenched counterfeit Rolex on his wrist, lamenting his wife's pepper-laced lips?

Friends? Tommy and I have never been friends. It's more like we're married.

—Ben Fink

“Just a moment.
I have to write this down. The Pop Top Lounge in Brainerd. I thought you told us the old man had a cabin of some sort.” Ben listened, pressing the receiver to his ear. He was sitting on the edge of his bed at the Whitehall, hunched forward, staring down at the gold-and-brown carpeting. “Dickie? I don't think that's going to be acceptable. I have to take a look at these comics. It's not that I don't trust you, but it would be bad business for me to simply give you sixty thousand dollars cash. Yes, I understand that. Take it easy. No, I know, you already told me that. Dickie? Perhaps you could bring the old man to this Pop Top place. We can have a drink and get friendly, then proceed to his place, look over the comics. Well, see what he says. The Pop Top Lounge, three in the afternoon. Okay, Dickie, I'll be there. No, just me. Tommy's not coming. Yes, of course he's in on the deal, but he's asked me to take care of it. Okay. Goodbye, Dickie.”

Ben returned the telephone receiver to its cradle, put his ear to the wall, and listened. Things seemed to have calmed down in there. He picked up the phone, called the front desk, and asked to be connected to Tommy's room.

Catfish answered the phone; Ben frowned and moved the receiver away from his ear.

“Let me talk to your brother,” he said.

“He's in the shower, Benny-poo.”

He hated that Benny-poo stuff. “When he comes out, tell him I need to talk to him.”

Catfish said that she would do that. A few minutes later, Tommy was knocking on the door. His hair, wet and combed straight back over his skull, looked like a shiny black bathing cap. He was wearing his Hawaiian shirt, a pair of baggy cotton shorts, and thongs. Several crescent-shaped bruises were visible on his neck. He was grinning.

“What's up?”

“I just spoke with our friend Dickie. The deal's off.” “Off?”

“That's all I know. He sounded drunk.”

“Dickie is always drunk. Cat and me, we're going down to the Market Barbecue for some ribs. You want to come?”

“No, thank you. I've already made dinner plans.”

“You
sure you don't want some company on the drive, Crow? I'm not doing anything tomorrow.”

“No, thanks.” Crow was in a dark study, drinking coffee, smoking one of Debrowski's Camels, staring at the curling brown-and-blue smoke.

“I've never seen you smoke a cigarette before. Makes you look real fifties. Especially with the undershirt. Kinda sexy.”

Crow shrugged. They were sitting in his kitchen, with a sinkful of dishes and a floor that had needed cleaning weeks ago. Milo sat beside his bowl, blinking sleepily, twitching his tail, not particularly hungry but ready to eat should some food happen to fall into his bowl. Crow was wearing a sleeveless white T-shirt and dark-brown trousers. He sipped coffee from a white mug. Debrowski had been trying to cheer him up for the past twenty minutes. It wasn't working. His mind kept returning to Dickie, Catfish, and the rest of them. What he was doing, what he planned to do, seemed, by turns, trivial, impossible, cruel, just, absurd. That he should need these people in his life, even for so short a time, grated at his finish.

“Earth to Crow. You're funking out on me, Crow. Hello?”

Crow stubbed out the cigarette and smiled thinly. “Sorry.”

“You worried about your dad?”

Crow realized, with a start, that he wasn't. That he should be. Putting the old man out in the woods with a bunch of desperate con men, he should be worried as hell, but the fact was, he hadn't given it a thought. Sam O'Gara was invulnerable, incapable of taking on hurt, able to shake off the vagaries of life with a shrug of his hard, narrow shoulders. Crow could not imagine Sam in pain. If something went wrong, Sam would fix it with one of the “fuckers” in his ever-present tool chest.

Debrowski said, “He can take care of himself, Crow. Sam's a resourceful guy.”

“I know,” Crow said. “I wasn't worried about him. Besides, I'll be there with him.”

“Is he already up there, you think?”

“He probably got there a few hours ago.” It was just after sunset. Sam O'Gara had left town in his red truck early that afternoon. If the truck hadn't broken down, if he had found Ozzie's cabin, if none of the other millions of things that could have gone wrong had not, Sam would be comfortably asleep in Ozzie's bed or, more likely, perusing Ozzie's famous pornography collection. Crow tried to imagine his father staring at a copy of the
Shaved Revue
. No problem. Sam could take care of himself. Crow fixed the concept in his mind, set it forcibly aside.

“You sure you don't want company? I'd kind of like to see how this deal goes down. I feel like I'm involved in it.”

“I've got this one covered, but thanks.”

“You might need help.”

“Sam'll be there. It'll be me, Sam, Dickie, and Ben. What do you think they're going to do?”

“Why don't you want me to come?”

“I don't know.” He rolled his shoulders, trying to dislodge the kink in his back. “I feel awkward.”