Freaky Deaky (19 page)

Chris got up and went over to his own desk piled with case folders, looked at the typed list of Sex Crimes squad members beneath the plastic cover of the desk pad and phoned Maureen. They said hi and Chris asked her if she’d ever got hold of Robin’s mother.

“I tried all day yesterday.”

“How come, Maureen?”

“Remember Robin saying she kept all those books and newspapers at her mom’s? I wondered if
she kept any other stuff there, since Wendell didn’t find anything.”

“But you haven’t talked to her, the mom.”

“I got a busy signal for about ten minutes, then no answer after that,” Maureen said, “so I called the Bloomfield Hills police. They said the mother was away on a trip.”

“But somebody was on the phone.”

“I told them that. They said it was probably the maid, or maybe painters, rug cleaners, you know.”

“Are they gonna check?”

“They said they’d look into it. Why, what’re you up to?”

“Not a thing. You tell Wendell you called and got a busy signal?”

“Yeah, but he didn’t seem too excited.”

“That’s all you can do, Maureen.”

“Have you talked to him?”

“He’s busy. There a lot of people killing each other.”

She said, “Where are you?”

“I’m not sure,” Chris said, “but if I find out I’ll let you know.”

He went back to Maureen’s desk, dialed Robin’s number and listened to four rings before she answered: her voice softer than Maureen’s, sounding bored as she said hello.

“Robin? It’s Skip.”

There was a silence.

Chris said, “What’s the matter?”

Now a long pause before she said, “Who is this?”

“I just told you, it’s Skip.”

She hung up.

Chris waited about twenty seconds and dialed Robin’s number again. The line was busy. He looked at Maureen’s notes, dialed Robin’s mother’s number, got a busy signal and continued to listen to it, telling himself it didn’t mean it was Skip. Telling himself the hell it didn’t. It was, it was Skip. During the next couple of minutes he dialed Robin’s number five times before it finally rang and she answered.

“Hi. This is Chris Mankowski.”

He waited. See if she remembered him. Picturing her in that dingy room with the zingy red design painted on the wall, Robin trying to think fast, get it together, wanting to sound cool when she came on.

She said, “You just called, didn’t you?” With the bored tone.

“And you hung up on me,” Chris said. “I tried to call you back, but I guess you were talking to Skip.”

There was a silence.

“Hang up and call Donnell this time. If he hasn’t already told you about me, ask him. Mankowski?”

She said, “I know who you are, but that’s about
it. You’re either a cop or a two-bit hustler and I don’t know why I’m even talking to you.”

“I’ll drop around and tell you,” Chris said, “in about an hour.”

“I won’t be here. I have to see a lawyer.”

“That’s not a bad idea.”

There was a pause before Robin said, “Well, if you’re going to be downtown later. . . .”

“How about Galligan’s?”

She said, “No, I’ll meet you at Hart Plaza about six,” and hung up.

Chris waited, dialed her number and got a busy signal. He copied phone numbers and addresses, Greta’s, Robin’s and her mother’s, on a sheet of notepaper and put it in his coat pocket. When he dialed Robin’s number again the line was still busy.

He couldn’t think of why she wanted to meet him outside and not in a bar. There was not much doubt Skip would be with her. He didn’t know Skip, if Skip was mean and nasty or what. He believed Skip was the type—judging from the way he put a bomb together—who didn’t give a shit and would let you know it. Skip and Juicy Mouth.

Chris left Sex Crimes and went down to six, to Firearms and Explosives, his old hangout. He had turned in his police .38 along with his shield and I.D. The gun his dad had given him, the Glock 17 auto, was still here in a locked cabinet. He filled the
magazine with 9-millimeter rounds, remembering the St. Antoine Clinic doctor trying to make something out of it, asking him if he liked guns and getting into all that shit about spiders. Spiders, Jesus, who worried about spiders.

Skip couldn’t stand it for long
down in the basement rec room, being underground. It seemed nice at first. The bar had a pinkish mirror back of it that made you look tan and healthy while you sat there getting smashed, all by yourself. He had to stay clear of the first floor, other than slipping into the kitchen now and then; somebody could look in a window and see him. So he hung out upstairs in Robin’s mom’s bedroom. It had a bed with a canopy over it, a fireplace and living room furniture, it was so big, and a bathroom full of different kinds of bubble bath, lotions, skin creams and shit and really smelled good in there.

Saturday afternoon lying on the couch he watched a movie on TV called
Straight Time
that had one of his all-time favorite actors in it, Harry Dean Stanton. Jesus, but the guy made it look so real, the nervous state you were in pulling a stickup. Then to have your partner turn geek on you and you can’t get him out of the fucking
jewelry store—Skip could imagine that feeling. He was starting to get it with Robin as she turned from fun-loving to being a female hard-on. Harry Dean Stanton had died in that picture only because he made a bad decision and agreed to associate with geeks. Had to run when their driver spooked and got shot off a fence by the cops.

It was weird. This morning Skip had caught the tail end of
The Sack of Rome
on cable TV and watched himself get killed as one of Attila the Hun’s guys. He felt he looked like a biker in drag. On location near Almería he was run over by chariots and hacked to death with those short Roman swords. Then had to lie in the sun among the dead and wounded talking Spanish to each other while the director and his star sat in an air-conditioned trailer drinking German beer and shooting the shit. After a couple of months they moved up to Madrid to a five-million-dollar set of the Roman forum. Here, Skip was killed several more times in close shots wearing different wigs and fake animal skins, having been spotted as a good dier. Twice in Almería the star himself, Steve Walton playing the Centurion, Fidelus, had killed him. But when they picked Skip to die at his hands on the forum set, part of the big finish, Walton looked Skip up and down and said, “He’s too short.” Ray Heidtke, the director,
said, “We’re in Spain, Steve. He’s the biggest one we have.” Skip, almost six foot, sized
up Walton as he and the director argued, Walton was maybe six three but knock-kneed and had hips like a girl. Ray Heidtke said, “You sense this Hun coming at you from behind, but you wait. Time it just right. You turn, nothing to it, and stick him as he’s about to take your nuts off.”

Fourteen times Skip, hiding behind a statue, jumped down from the pedestal about eight feet off the ground, landed in his Hun shoes, Christ, that were like bedroom slippers, and fell the first couple of times. “Cut!” After that Skip had his moves down, but then Walton was never ready, the guy screaming, “He’s coming too soon!” Ray Heidtke said to Skip, “Pause after you land. Give it a three count. A thousand and one, a thousand and two. . . .” Walton said, “You tell me it makes sense, I have to stand here while you teach this asshole his timing?” That was when Skip decided to kill the star. Stick him in the throat with the wooden sword and push him down the temple steps. Ray Heidtke said, “Here we go.” Skip got up on the statue and when the A.D. yelled for action he jumped, paused, but only for a second instead of a three-count, ran at Steve Walton, raising the wooden sword to ram it into him, and the knock-kneed son of a bitch turned
too fast, stumbled, lunged trying to stay on his feet and drove
his
wooden sword into Skip, into that tender area where the leg meets the groin. The puncture wound wasn’t serious; it was the infection
that kept Skip in the hospital ten days. After, he tried to go back to work, but they wouldn’t let him on the set.

That’s what could happen to you associating with geeks. You could get hurt and fired or, in Harry Dean Stanton’s case, get shot off a fence in Beverly Hills.

Right after Harry Dean’s geek partner drove off at the end of the picture, going down a highway on his way to hell, Skip heard somebody downstairs. A minute later Robin was in the room. She came over to Skip on the couch, kissed him on the head and he thought to himself, Look out.

“You’re moving,” Robin said, stepping over to the TV to turn it off. “Let’s get your clothes and your dynamite.”

He asked her how come.

On the phone a couple of times she’d mentioned this guy Mankowski, the suspended cop, and Skip didn’t like the sound of him. What she told now, about Mankowski knowing he was here, he liked even less, saying to Robin, “I might just go back to L.A. You and Donnell could be cutting me out as it is, once I do the heavy work for you. I’ve an idea what you want, too. Find out where this Mankowski parks his car and wire it up.”

“You’d do it, wouldn’t you?” Robin said.

She hooked a leg over the flowery arm of the
couch, started fooling with his ponytail, and once again Skip told himself to look out.

“We haven’t been able to talk much,” Robin said.

Skip knew that. He waited.

“Donnell wants to cut you out.”

Skip knew that too. It stood to reason.

“He thinks he’s calling the shots, so I play along. You’re going to be proud of me, the way I’ve worked it out.”

Skip let her play with his ponytail.

“I have to call Donnell before we leave,” Robin said. “See if he’ll do us a favor.”

Skip kept quiet. Let her talk.

“We
do
need him. At least till Monday morning when the bank opens. Donnell wants one million even, he likes all those oughts, as he says. But our take has to be less than his because he’s the brains. You believe it? I said fine, we’ll go in for seven hundred thousand.”

“That’s a familiar number,” Skip said.

“Our original idea. But if you have no objections let’s go for the whole thing.”

“Cut Donnell out.”

“It wouldn’t be hard, the way I see it work.”

Skip began to relax, feeling a little better about his one-time old lady.

“Sweetheart, tell me how we get paid.”

“Woody gives us a check.”

Skip grinned at her. “You’re cuckoo, you know it?”

Robin was shaking her head and stroking her braid at the same time. “Monday morning, as soon as the bank opens, Woody calls the Trust Department and has a million seven transferred to his commercial account. We see him do it, so we know the check’s good.”

“We’re holding a gun on him, or what?”

Robin shook her head, giving him that faint smile, and Skip closed one eye, looking up at her, trying to see if there was a hole in her idea. This was kind of fun.

He said, “Well, shit, Woody can stop payment any time right after.”

Robin said, “Not if he’s dead, he can’t.”

Skip said, “Uh-huh, and if you don’t see giving Donnell his share . . . I suppose there’s a big explosion of some kind and the two of them are found underneath the rubble.”

Robin said, “Hey, there’s an idea.”

Skip looked down the road, thinking about it. “The cops find out we took a check off him for a million seven. . . . It has to be made out to one of us and we put it in a bank. You don’t just cash a million seven. They’re gonna find it out.”

Why was she grinning at him?

“The check isn’t made out to either of us,”
Robin said. “It’s pay to the order of—you ready? Nicole Robinette.”

It took Skip a moment. “That’s
you
, huh? Your book name.”

“Woody doesn’t know it yet,” Robin said, “but he’s buying theatrical rights to all four of my novels, herein referred to as the ‘Fire Series.’
Diamond Fire, Emerald Fire
—”

“Jesus Christ,” Skip said.

“
Gold Fire
and
Silver Fire
. I’m meeting a lawyer,” Robin said, looking at her watch, “guy I used to know. He’s coming to his office on Saturday as a special favor. I typed up a Purchase Agreement and Assignment of Rights, pretty much boilerplate, from standard contracts I picked up when I worked in New York. He’ll look them over, make sure they’re okay.”

Skip said, “This guy owe you one?”

“I’m going to pay him,” Robin said, “if he asks. Maybe he will, I don’t know.”

“I bet you make sure he doesn’t.”

“Anyway, we get Woody’s signature on the contracts, so it looks legit, for after. Okay, we deposit his check in Nicole Robinette’s account and then—listen to this—I write checks payable to you and me in our own names,
and
a couple of the names we used when we were underground. Like good old Scott Wolf will get a check. What do you think?”

“I liked being Scotty Wolf,” Skip said, “he was a
nice guy. That other one I used—the hell was it? Derrick Powell—when I was living in New Mexico. But, shit, those I.D.s’re old, they’ve expired.”

“For a million seven,” Robin said, “I’ll bet we can think of ways to get them renewed, or make up new ones. I’ll have to reactivate Diane Young and Betsy Bender.”

Skip said, “Man, I remember Betsy Bender, with her ‘fro. That motel in L.A. off Sunset. I wouldn’t mind bending her again right now.” He softened his eyes at Robin, waiting to give her a nice grin.

But she wasn’t looking. Robin got up from the arm of the couch sounding like she was thinking out loud, telling him she was going to have to make up contracts between the fake names and Nicole Robinette. For different services the fake names provided. Otherwise the bank would report the deposit to the IRS and Nicole would owe . . . Christ, at least five hundred thousand dollars. Or she’d make up invoices or some goddamn thing, from the fake names to Nicole.

Skip watched her turn and head for the phone now, by her mom’s canopied bed.

“I almost forgot. I have to call Donnell.”

Skip said, “How do you like it?”

Robin dialed before she looked over. “How do I like what?”

“Being in the straight world.”

* * *

Mr. Woody, seeming almost of sound mind but wet-eyed drunk, hooked onto the word “codicil” from somewhere in his past life, telling Donnell that’s what it was, a codicil, like an addendum. You didn’t scribble a codicil, it was a legal document and ought to be typewritten.

So they had to look through the cabinets in the library for the typewriter: found a favorite flashlight the man had misplaced; found tapes of monster movies, from when he was on that kick; came across the black athletic bag that had been put there by Mankowski, Mr. Woody wanting to know what was in it and Donnell telling him it was just stuff in there, nothing important. He put the typewriter on the desk and started copying what he’d written yesterday in longhand—about the man leaving him at least two million if and when he ever died—taking forever, looking for each letter as he poked the keys. So the man said to let him type it. He sat down and fussed, abused the typewriter, reading with his wet eyes as he typed, but damn if he didn’t get it done. Finished, pulled the sheet out of the typewriter and signed it. There it was, scrawled right at the bottom in big loops,
Woodrow Ricks
.

Donnell picked up the sheet of paper and kissed it, the man not looking, stumbling away from the
desk, starting to take his clothes off for his afternoon swim.

The phone rang.

Donnell slipped that lovely codicil into a desk drawer, picked up the phone and heard Robin’s voice say, “Hi, it’s me. How you doing?” He told her he couldn’t talk now. But she was in a hurry and said she needed a favor, asking him if he could get somebody to do a job. He told her just a minute and put his hand over the phone.

“Mr. Woody, you take off your clothes at the swimming pool. Go on now. I be right there.”

The man shuffled out and Donnell kept his hand on the phone a while longer thinking, Shit, the man could fall in the pool and drown and it would be too soon. The lawyer had to get the codicil first and put it in the will.
Then
the man could fall in the pool and drown or drink himself to death or hit his head on the toilet. . . .

So he hurried talking to Robin and agreed, okay, to get somebody, yeah, uh-huh, saying he understood when Robin said, “We want to take him out, but not all the way,” and let her tell him why it wouldn’t be good to have Skip do the job, risk his getting busted. Not at this point, blow the deal. Donnell had questions he didn’t ask. He told her he’d see. Robin said he had to do more than
see
, he had to get somebody. She said this was crucial and Donnell said all
right
, he’d do it, but right now had
to do something else. Hung up and ran down the hall to the swimming pool.

The man was already in the water, a scene of peace and contentment, floating naked on the rubber raft, fat little hands flapping at the water, barely moving him. . . . See? Everything was fine. Beautiful.

The man’s voice raised to call. “Donnell?”

“I’m right here.”

“I want Arthur Prysock instead of Ezio Pinza.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“For a change.”

“Yes sir, you got it.”

“ ‘On the Street Where You Live.’ ”

“One of my favorites too, Mr. Woody.”

What was wrong with
this
street where he lived,
this
house? Sit and wait for the man one day to take his last drink, throw up and die. What was the hurry to have a lot of money if he wasn’t going anywhere? He believed he could trust Robin to give him his million out of the check, scare her ass not to think otherwise. This Skippy he’d have to see about. Best now to keep it moving, get it over with and done. Million seven, all the different kind of money accounts and shit the man had, he wouldn’t even miss it. . . .

Sleeping on his rubber boat, Arthur Prysock running his voice up and down the street, belting the shit out of that old tune. Donnell brought the phone
from the bar to the table and dialed a number.

He said, “Juicy, tell me what you been doing,” and listened to this young dude growl and breathe animal sounds into the phone, in a bad mood after visiting the pink room up in Homicide, sitting hours in that closet while they asked him the same shit.

Donnell said, “You out of work, you out of finances. I have a man for you needs to be vamped on. Tell me what you charge to bust his leg, put him in the hospital about a month.”