Short Money (37 page)

He was ready to go, but he couldn’t see a got-damn thing. He grabbed an ice scraper off the seat, got out, scraped a saucer-size hole in the ice-covered windshield. A minute later, the Big River police’s flagship squad car, a Ford Crown Victoria with all the performance goodies, fishtailed out onto Highway 7, headlights sweeping the road from side to side to side, Orlan Johnson driving with his chin on the steering wheel, peering out through the hole he had scraped in the frost. He was not looking forward to seeing his wife. The woman had a mouth that wouldn’t quit. He imagined himself giving her a good one, right on the kisser. One a these got-damn days he was gonna do it. Maybe tonight, if she gave him a hard time. Wasn’t for those brothers a hers, he’d a done it a long time ago.

Something pink appeared in his headlights.

“Whoa there,” Johnson said. He moved his foot to the brake pedal, pushed it down. Even with the ABS, the big Ford slewed sideways, came to a stop perpendicular to the highway.

Couldn’t see a thing. Johnson rolled down his window, his head out, looked back down the road. There it was, that pink car George was looking for.

Johnson got the car turned around. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about taking on a load of shit from his wife tonight. He found that doctor for her brother George, he’d be King of the Hill for a week at least.

That was the phrase for it when a safari went bad. You ran into another white hunter and you asked, “How is everything going?” and he answered, “Oh, I’m still drinking their whisky,” and you knew everything had gone to pot.

—ERNEST HEMINGWAY, “THE SHORT HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER.”

T
HE MURPHYS’ LODGE FIRST
appeared as a ghostly glow, its lights filtered up through the tree branches, spilling down the coulee toward the frozen river. Crow throttled down the Polaris, rolled to a stop, turned off the engine. He figured he was about a quarter of a mile away. He would walk in, come at them silently from below.

Beyond that, his plan remained in development.

Crow got off the machine and followed the icy zigzag track up the bluff toward the lodge, his boots squeaking on the packed trail, one hand in his pocket warming the grip of the Taurus. He didn’t know how he was going to play this, but something would occur to him. According to Sam, when you’re playing with a short stack, you’ve got to go with your instincts, and you can’t afford to wait for the cards to come to you. “You get dealt deuces, you’d best play ’em like they’s aces.”

In other words, there was no percentage in computing the odds.

He reached the back of the lodge building, stood looking up at the bank of picture windows. The room was lit up, and from his angle he could see the big log beam running the length of the ceiling, the top of the fieldstone fireplace, the tip of the mounted rhino’s horn. He would have liked to see who was in the room, but the bottom sill was six feet above his head.

Crow explored the perimeter of the buildings, considering each window and door as a candidate for clandestine entry. He continued around the house. A door on the east side, where he had met Amanda Murphy on his first visit, led into the kitchen. Crow looked through the window, saw Shawn Murphy at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of cereal.

One strategy would be simply to wait. Sooner or later one of them would come outside. He’d be much better off if he could separate George and Ricky. The problem was, even in Getter’s high-tech regalia he was getting colder by the minute, and besides, he was tired of waiting for things to happen to him.

He heard a sound coming from behind him, a low woof.

Oh, shit, he thought. The dogs.

He turned and looked at them in their chain-link enclosure, at which point they exploded into a series of howls, barks, and growls. So much for stealth.

Having no other options, he decided to take the direct approach. He walked up to the lodge door. George Murphy was standing there, holding it open, looking to see what had his dogs all upset.

“Officer Crow!” said George Murphy. He looked past Crow and frowned. “Where is he?”

Crow ignored the question. “Is Getter here?”

“Sure he is. Where’s your friend?”

“Right here,” said Crow, planting the barrel of the Taurus in George Murphy’s ample gut.

George looked down, his face collapsing into a sorrowful expression. “Not a good idea,” he said, shaking his head. “Somebody’s been giving you bad advice.”

Crow pushed the gun deeper, forcing George to step back into the lodge. As more of the room became visible, he saw Ricky sitting at one of the tables. A few inches from his left hand, a long-barreled revolver lay on its side on the tabletop.

“Tell him to move his hand away from the gun,” Crow said.

George took another step back, turned his head. “You hear what the man said, Ricky?”

Ricky nodded his head a scant centimeter. His hand did not move.

George said, “He’s mad at me, Crow. Besides, he never listens to me anyways. You gonna shoot me now?” The lower half of George’s face stretched into a grin, but his eyes remained opaque.

Crow examined the rest of the room as best he could without letting Ricky out of his peripheral vision. Dave Getter lay curled up on the floor beside one of the club chairs, staring up at him with eyes the size of hen’s eggs. A piece of red cloth had been stuffed into his mouth.

Crow prodded George’s abdomen again with the gun, moving him farther into the room. He wanted to keep as much of George as possible between him and Ricky.

“You okay?” he asked Getter.

Getter shook his head frantically. Crow saw that his hands were attached to his ankles with bright-yellow nylon cord. George was standing very still, his head turned to the side, looking back at Crow.

“What are you going to do now, Officer Crow?”

A very good question.

George stood directly in front of him, his belly inches from the end of the gun barrel. Ricky sat about twenty feet away, his hand inches from his revolver, tendons and veins popping, eyes slitted.

At the far end of the room, Crow detected a fifth presence. The tiger yawned and blinked, watching the humans with the mild curiosity of a well-fed though never entirely sated carnivore. It stood and stretched, long claws digging through the straw into the wooden floor, muscles writhing beneath its striped coat. This is just great, thought Crow.

“Do you know what I’d do if I were you?” George asked.

“Please tell me,” said Crow. “I’m open to suggestions.”

“I would go home,” said George.

“I plan to do that.” He did not like the motionless Ricky Murphy. He wanted a blink, or a facial tic—anything other than the reptilian resolution he was seeing. He had no idea how Ricky would move, or when. Nevertheless, he was convinced that the man wouldn’t remain motionless for long. There was no way he would be able to untie Getter without getting both of them shot.

He would have to convince George to do it.

“I think you should go now,” said George, “before somebody gets hurt.”

“Soon. First let’s get Mr. Getter untied. You think you can handle that?”

“You want me to untie the man? Why would I do that? Ricky went to a lot of trouble to get those knots just right. Besides, I don’t see Nelly Bell. I thought we had a deal.”

Crow shook his head.

Again George displayed his capacious, mirthless grin. “You know what you could do? You could shoot me and Ricky both. How would you like that, Crow? Then you could go in the house and shoot my boy. Then you would have your kidnapping lawyer back. You think that’d be a good idea, Officer Crow?”

It sounded good to Crow. He was trying so hard to watch George and Ricky at the same time, his eyes felt as if they were protruding from their sockets. He had to make a decision. He visualized himself taking a step to the side, aiming, and firing at Ricky. The problem with that was that Ricky was almost certainly faster and more deadly with a handgun. Crow didn’t think his marksmanship would stand up, and even if it did, George would be on him before he got off a second shot.

“The other thing you could do would be to back slowly toward the door, close it behind you, and go find me that doctor.”

“The doctor is out,” Crow said. “He’s gone.”

“Oh?” George’s eyebrows ascended. “Where’s he run to?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think you do.”

“I want you to untie him.”

George shrugged but did not otherwise move. “It’s not going to happen, Officer Crow.”

For several seconds, the four men and the tiger formed a tableau.

Am I going to have to kill somebody? Crow wondered, less disturbed by the concept than by its flip side: Am I going to have to die?

The sound of tires rolling over snow crackled through the open door. George’s eyes narrowed and jerked past Crow. The sound of a car door opening, slamming. Crow backed up, getting farther away from George, holding the Taurus in both hands, the barrel now pointed more at Ricky than at George. Ricky’s hand had somehow moved an inch closer to the revolver grip, but his eyes were on the doorway. Crow thought, I could do it now, swing the gun a few degrees to the right, pull the trigger, pull it again for good measure, then deal with George and whoever was outside. He heard footsteps, something being dragged toward the door. The back of his body prickled.

George’s expression dissolved into a look of utter astonishment.

Crow couldn’t help it. He had to look. He turned his head.

It took his mind a moment to identify what he was seeing. A man in a business suit backing in through the doorway, dragging an enormous set of antlers. The antlers were too wide for the opening; the man had to twist them sideways to get them through the door. The remains of an elk’s head, neck, and shoulders—or rather the empty hide that had once contained them—was attached to the antlers.

Crow snapped his attention back to Ricky, whose mouth was hanging slightly open. Entranced by the arrival of the man with the dead elk, he had missed his opportunity.

The man dropped the antlers and turned on George.

“I want my money back,” he gasped.

George said, “Stevie? What’s the matter?” He tried a friendly grin.

Both George and Ricky seemed to have forgotten Joe Crow. Even Getter had his eyes focused on the elk man. Crow now recognized him. He’d seen him once before, at Birdy’s. One of the Murphys’ customers, though apparently no longer a happy one.

“You know what’s the matter, you son-of-a-bitch—you had me shoot a dead elk!” Anderson shrieked, his voice cracking as it hit the word “elk.”

George cleared his throat. “Uh, Steve, you think we could talk about this some other time? I think you’ve somehow gotten the wrong idea here—”

“You think I’m stupid?” Anderson beat a fist on his chest, staggered to the side from the force of his own blow. Crow realized he was not only furious; he was also besotted. “You think I’m a fool?” He took a step toward George, jabbing a forefinger at his sternum.

George stood his ground and let Anderson thump him. His smile showed too many teeth, and his cheeks were visibly heating up.

Ricky had moved slightly. He was still seated, but his shoulders had shifted. His eyes remained fixed on Anderson.

Behind him, the tiger sat on its haunches, alert, its golden eyes following whatever moved. The black tip of the tail twitched. Its mouth parted slightly, revealing a creamy length of fang.

“You think I’m some kind of sucker? You think I’m stupid? This thing’d been dead a week when I shot him. What do you take me for?”

Crow thought, A guy that shoots a dead elk, then comes back shit-faced to complain about it. What does he expect to be taken for? He noticed that Getter was moving, performing a sidewinder-like motion that was carrying him away from Ricky Murphy an inch at a time. If no one else noticed him for twenty or thirty minutes, he might get somewhere.

“I want my money back, Murphy. Now!” Anderson raised his chin triumphantly, as if he had scored a fatal thrust of logic. To follow it up, he made another jab at George’s chest, but this time his finger ended up locked in George’s fist, George standing solid as a ton of scrap iron, Anderson swaying slightly, his extremities twitching with anger, staring with bewildered fury at his captured finger.

George growled, “Take it easy now, Stevie.”

Anderson squeezed his lips together, inflated his cheeks, and jerked his finger from George’s grasp. They could hear the soft pop of a knuckle dislocating. Anderson gasped and hunched over his injured hand, then lifted his head and launched himself at George with an unintelligible cry. George stepped aside to avoid him.

At that point, Crow realized that he had made a mistake. It had seemed that the Murphys had been totally focused on their unhappy elk hunter, but George had not forgotten Joe Crow at all. As he twisted back, away from Anderson’s charge, one arm shot out and up and struck the underside of Crow’s forearm. The Taurus flew from his grasp. George reversed direction, whirling like a fat dervish, and struck again, this time hammering Crow’s chest with a four-pound fist. Crow staggered back, registering as he did that Anderson’s drunken charge had taken him past George’s position and toward Ricky, who was now on his feet, bringing up his revolver, eyes on Crow.

Crow dropped to the floor, rolled behind one of the heavy leather sofas, thinking only of getting something solid between himself and Ricky’s gun. George was coming at him again, fast. Where had his Taurus landed? There, ten feet past the end of the sofa. Too far. He heard Anderson shout something, heard Ricky yell at him to get the fuck out of the way. Crow was on his hands and knees, speed-crawling toward his lost gun, expecting George’s weight to come crashing down on him at any moment. He dove out into the open, his hand landed on the gun, its taped grip feeling like the only solid thing in the universe. He twisted, looking back just in time to see George descending on him, his body filling Crow’s field of vision. Crow swung the gun in a short, hard arc and caught George on the jaw as he twisted his body away. George’s momentum carried him past Crow into the poker table, sending the table and several chairs crashing down as he landed hard on his belly.