The Mortal Nuts (16 page)

“I'm gonna take her over to this lawyer tomorrow,” Axel said. “Get it all set up. Why wait?”

“Christ, Ax, why don't you wait till the fair's over, at least. Give yourself a chance to think on it.”

“I think on it, I might not do it, and I want to do it, Tom. If I wait till the fair's over, I'll forget what it's like to be alone in this business.”

Tommy said, “You're always alone in this business. Well, look what we got here—speak of the devil's daughter. How you doing, Carmen?”

“Hi, Tommy,” said Carmen. “I'm doing okay.”

“How's the eye?” Tommy asked her. “I hear you got a heck of a shiner under those shades.”

Carmen shrugged and turned toward Axel. “Sophie says for me to go get some change,” she said.

Axel dug in his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. He handed them to Carmen. “You know where the truck is? Along the far row, way over on the other side of the lot About ten cars in from the back The change is in the back; you have to use the round key.”

“Thanks.” Carmen floated off.

“You're lucky he didn't use a baseball bat,” Tommy called after her. Carmen gave no sign she had heard. “She looks sort of out of it,” he said to Axel. “If she worked for the railroad they'd have her pissin' in a cup.”

“She's just sleepy,” Axel said.

“Yeah, right. Prob'ly been up all night banging Bald Monkey.”

“He's gone, I told you. He's been gone almost three days.”

“You mean you ain't seen him in three days. Guys like that don't go away until you make 'em. It's like trying to get rid of a hungry dog. They just lie in the weeds and wait.” He looked up and pointed at the thirty-story-tall, blue-and- white Space Tower, with its rotating elevator. “He's probably sitting up there looking down at us right now.”

Chapter 25

Carmen arrived at the truck, it seemed to her, only moments after she left Axel and Tommy at the Tiny Tot stand. Her hair was wet. She didn't remember the walk at all. She let herself into the cab and, resting her hands on the wheel, let her mind wander, hoping to remember what she was doing there. It started raining harder, she watched through the windshield as the world went out of focus. Dean had been gone going on three days now. She might never see him again. She knew she should be glad he was gone. It was no fun getting punched in the eye; it was hard to see in the rain, looking through mirrored sunglasses. Now, though, she found herself bored into a near-catatonic state. The days and nights of her future appeared endless and gray and smelled of frying tortillas. She almost wished some guy would come along and blacken her other eye.

After a time, more than a minute but less than half an hour, she remembered why she was there. She was supposed to get change. Sophie was out of change.

The back of the truck was as precisely organized as Axel's room at the Motel 6. Cartons of cups and napkins and plastic forks were laid out along the left wall; condiments, chips, and other nonperishables were arranged on the opposite side. Carmen stood at the back of the truck, looking in through the open tailgate, feeling the rain on her bare arms. Where would he keep the change? She was supposed to know this. The bed of the truck was covered with a green packing pad. Carmen climbed inside. At the far end, against the cab, the packing pad stepped up and over a boxlike shape. Carmen pulled the pad back and discovered an oblong wooden box with an open top. The box contained a row of coffee cans. She felt excitement struggling to penetrate the Valium haze as she pried the top off one of the coffee cans.

It was filled with packets of sugar.

The second can was full of salt packets. She opened the rest of the cans. Taco sauce. Horseradish. Horseradish? More sugar. Equal. She replaced the covers and drew the pad back up over the box, wondering in a mild Valium sort of way why Axel was saving coffee cans full of condiments. Where was the change? She had done this before, last year, and she was supposed to remember. Axel kept the change in a special place, but where? She took inventory of the items surrounding her. Cups, napkins, paper servers, forks, canned chilies, chips, taco sauce . .. Wait. Back up. Cups. She opened the top of the carton and reached inside. There it was, the canvas bank bag. She opened it, emptied the contents out onto the packing pad, took five rolls of quarters, a roll of dimes, and three fifty-dollar bundles of one-dollar bills, and stuffed it all in her purse. That left three rolls of pennies, a roll of dimes, two fifty-dollar bundles, and two rolls of fives, tens, and twenties, held together with thick blue rubber bands. Carmen took a twenty from each roll, folded the two into a small square, and slid it into her back pocket.

Wandering back toward the Taco Shop, she wondered what Axel had done with his coffee can money. One thing she was pretty sure about—it had to be somewhere. Cheap as Axel was, there was no way he could have spent it. It occurred to her that he might have put it in a bank, which was what any normal person would have done a long time ago. But Axel hated banks. He said you couldn't trust them. He even hated going into a bank to buy change, always counting it twice, right there in front of the teller. It was embarrassing. Carmen experienced a moment of disorientation. She stopped and let her brain spin free for a moment, enjoying the floating sensation.

Her mind returned to the physical task at hand. Her hair was heavy with water. The rain was lighter now, but steady, and the parking lot had become a maze of puddles, the larger of which Carmen walked around. She paid no attention to the smaller puddles; there were just too goddamn many of them.

James Dean sat in the torn and stained beanbag chair and watched Tigger tattooing Sweety's forehead.

“Sweety's even got muscles on his forehead,” Tigger said, pausing to wipe away the blood and excess ink. Sweety turned toward Dean and contorted his brow, which writhed impressively. The words
FUCK ME
were carefully outlined in black. Sweety himself had conceived the message. Dean had helped draw the letters with a felt-tip pen, and Tigger was working now on filling them in, using a pushpin to open the skin and a red Sanford marker for color.

“You know, it's not going to last,” Dean said. “You want it to last you should use ashes from Styrofoam. That's how we did it in Lincoln.”

Tigger said, “Yeah, well, we ain't in Lincoln, and we don't have any Styrofoam.”

“When's the guy going to be here?” Dean asked.

“He'll be here. Pork always does what he says he's gonna.”

“That's what you said yesterday.”

“Yesterday he was in Wisconsin. He didn't get my message.”

“Fuckin' Pork,” Sweety said, gritting his teeth as Tigger performed a series of pricks on the letter C.

“Hold still,” Tigger said. “You want this to look good, don't you?”

He worked in silence for a few minutes.

Dean was bored. He figured he'd give Pork another hour, then take his money and leave. The more time he spent with Tigger and Sweety, the less he was inclined to trust then- choice of drug dealers.

For the past two nights he'd had a room at the Golden Steer out on 1-94, watching MTV, counting and recounting his money, and waiting for Tigger to arrange an introduction with “Pork,” the supposed connection, the guy with the meth. His idea was to parlay most of the six thousand seven hundred dollars into a half kilo of crystal methedrine—an incredible price, if it was any good—then double his money by selling it to a guy he'd met in Lincoln named Stinger, who, if all went as planned, had got out of prison on schedule, had returned to Sioux Falls, had got back into the drug business, and had as much cash as he'd claimed to have. And even if Stinger didn't work out—a distinct possibility—there were always people looking to get high.

He hadn't minded waiting at first. The Golden Steer wasn't a bad place, but late last night he'd heard a crash outside his room and looked out to see that some drunk in a Cadillac had crushed his Maverick, driven right up onto the trunk. The guy was staggering around, muttering to himself, every few seconds giving the Cadillac a kick in the side.

Dean's first reaction was to go out and beat the hell out of the guy, but then he started thinking about how the cops would be showing up pretty soon. At first, they'd be interested in the Cadillac guy, but sooner or later they'd be looking at those Nebraska license plates on the Maverick, and if they ran the plates, well, that couldn't be good. He threw his stuff into his bag, walked down the hill to Concord Avenue, and called a cab. Since then, he'd been staying with Tigger and Sweety.

A scraping sound came from the window.

“There he is.” Tigger set the pushpin on the table. “That you, Pork?” he called.

A pair of black lace-up motorcycle boots entered through the basement window, followed by a blocky man with a stubble of dark hair covering his scalp and jaw. His eyes were black and alert.

“This here's Pork,” Tigger said.

Pork was wearing a camouflage-pattern sweatshirt and a pair of baggy olive-drab pants with cargo pockets. Though he was about Dean's height, he carried another forty pounds. His fingers were thick and short, and he held his arms a few inches out from his body, letting everybody know that he'd put in his hours on the bench. The guys Dean knew with bodies like that, they'd spent at least five calendars in Lincoln.

Pork grinned, his mouth forming a wide, pointed vee. “This place reeks,” he said. He looked at Sweety. “What did you do to your head, Sweety?”

“I'm giving him a tattoo,” Tigger said. “It was his idea.”

Pork took a closer look. “Hope you don't land in jail with that on your head, my man.”

“They can fucking try,” Sweety growled.

Pork shrugged. “Believe me, they do.” He looked at Dean. “You the guy?”

Dean, half buried in the beanbag chair, gave a slight nod.

“How good you know this guy, Tig?”

“He's cool,” Tigger said.

Pork put his hands in his back pockets, raised his eyebrows, and looked at the ceiling, still smiling, shaking his head like he couldn't believe it. Dean didn't blame him. Tigger was not the kind of guy you would believe anything he said. But Pork looked like a guy you could do business with. A guy who'd paid some dues, learned how it's done.

“Look,” Dean said, “you don't know me; I don't know you. That's cool. You don't want to talk, I can take my business someplace else.”

“Relax,” said Pork. He was looking at Dean, his alert eyes probing. Noticing the antithefl strip on Dean's jacket sleeve, he said, “How come you don't cut that thing off there?”

Dean looked at the plastic strip anchored to his jacket sleeve. “I kind of like it,” he said.

“So you walk down the street and everybody knows you're a bad guy?”

Dean shrugged. “They can think what they want.”

Pork shook his head, but the stolen jacket seemed to make him more comfortable. What kind of cop would go around wearing something like that?

“What you looking for?”

Dean said, “What do you got?”

“Tigger said you were asking about some crank.”

Dean shrugged.

“I can get it.”

“Good.”

“How much you looking for?”

“I was thinking a half key, if the price is what Tigger said.”

“The price is good. I suppose you'll want to sample the merch.”

“You got it with you?”

Pork laughed. “You got your money with you?”

Dean, who did in fact have the money stuffed in his jacket pockets, shook his head.

Pork said, “Let's take this one step at a time, then. How about we get together tomorrow night for a little taste. You got someplace we can meet? I mean someplace besides this pisshole?”

Chapter 26

At ten-thirty Thursday morning, Frank Knox greeted Axel and Sophie at the front door of his aging two-story South Minneapolis Tudor. The house smelled like Lysol and something that Sophie could not identify. The attorney nodded to Axel, then smiled at Sophie and said, “You must be Sophia Roman.” He did not offer his hand but rather backed away from her, then he turned and led them through a cluttered hallway and up the wooden stairs, which were half covered with stuffed manila folders, notebooks, and loose stacks of paper. Knox moved through his possessions with a kind of sinuous grace, like a cat, keeping his hands close to his sides and touching nothing

His office may have once been the master bedroom. Sophie halted at the door, fearful of entering. The far wall was braced by a collection of four-, five-, and six-drawer file cabinets, all different heights, widths, makes, and colors, all featuring no fewer than two open drawers, and all capped by piles of folders and papers that could only be the result of years of careful stacking The floor of the office also supported a mass of paperwork, mostly piled along the walls and, except for one teetering stack, limited to a height of four feet. Everything seemed to lean in toward the center of the room, drawn in by the mountainous jumble of books and files that dominated the space and served to mark the location of Knox's desk. Sophie was afraid it was all going to come crashing in on her.

Axel put his hand on Sophie's back and coaxed her into the room. Knox moved two piles of documents from a pair of wooden side chairs, then wiped his hands on the shiny lapels of his black twill suit. Axel directed Sophie to one of the chairs and sat beside her.

Knox sat behind his desk and smiled at them, his chin barely clearing the stacked documents. Frank Knox was an ashen, wispy-haired man. The hands he folded in front of his chin had a gray, powdery aspect, the nails stark yellow in contrast to the surrounding flesh. Large-lensed, black- rimmed bifocals made his face seem insubstantial, as though he were made of dust and the shiny suit was all that contained him. Sophie thought he looked like a ghost.

“I guess I should congratulate you,” he said to Sophie, sliding his glasses up his long nose with a gray forefinger.

Sophie folded her arms over her breasts and nodded, her expression serious. The air in the room was suffused with a familiar chemical smell. What was it?

Knox looked at Axel and raised his eyebrows.

Axel said, “Frank has put together a contract for us, Sophie. Frank? You want to explain to her how we're going to do this?”

Knox nodded, causing his glasses to slide down his nose. He cleared his throat and began to talk.

By the time he had finished his explanation, Sophie's lips had become a thin line, her face was pink, and her breasts hurt from the pressure of her tightly crossed arms.

“You said you were going to make me your partner,” she said, not looking at Axel.

Axel, as relaxed as Sophie was tense, smiled broadly and said, “That's what we're trying to do. But we have to do these things right.”

“What's he talking about, ten percent?”

“Excuse me,” Knox said. “I'll be right back.” He left the room.

“He's going to wash his hands,” Axel whispered. “Kill the germs.”

“What's that smell?”

“Rubbing alcohol. That's what he washes his hands with.”

“What's this about ten percent? You said we were going to be full partners.”

“It's ten percent a year,” Axel said. “Every year you get another ten percent, and in five years you own half of Axel's Taco Shop. Fifty percent. We have to do it that way because of taxes.”

Sophie shook her head.

“I can't just give you half the business all at once,” Axel said. “It doesn't work that way. We're valuing the business at one hundred thousand dollars, even though it's worth twice that, and you'd never be able to pay the taxes on fifty grand. If I just up and gave it to you, you'd be stuck with a twenty-thousand-dollar tax bill.”

Sophie said, “Five years? What if…”

Axel waited a moment, but she did not finish her sentence. “You want to know what if I die,” he said for her.

Sophie nodded.

“Then you'll have to negotiate with your new partner. My share of the business will go to my heir.”

“Your heir?”

“Yeah. Alice.”

She looked at Axel. “Alice from California? You're leaving it to Alice?”

“Yup.” Axel grinned. Alice Zimmerman was his sister, a bad-tempered, disapproving, formidable matron who, contrary to the usual aging sequence, had grown taller, louder, and stronger in her advancing years. Axel had seen her only once in the last decade—two years ago she had flown out from San Diego for an unannounced seven-day visit, a week that left Axel with a bad stomach and a lifetime's worth of unsolicited advice. Alice had never approved of Axel or his friends, particularly his women friends.

“You don't even like her. You told me you never wanted to see her again as long as you lived.”

“That's right, I don't. And I won't have to.”

“Alice hates me.”

Axel shook his head sympathetically. “Yeah, that could be a problem. But you don't have to worry about it now. I've decided I'm not gonna die till later.”

On the ride back to the fairgrounds, Axel kept the conversation going by telling Sophie how great it would be to be partners. Sophie watched the traffic, gripping the armrest and pushing her right foot against the floor, trying to make the truck go faster. She didn't like being a passenger.

“I'll stop by Midway Sign and get a guy out to paint your name on the stand.
Axel and Sophie Speeter, Proprietors
.”

Sophie gave Axel a sharp look. “Sophie Roman,” she said.

Axel turned red.

“You're blushing!” Sophie said, her face breaking up into laughter.

“Anyway, I'll get the guy out to paint it.”

They rode along in silence. Axel rested his hand on her back. It felt good. She had never seen Axel blush before.

“It's going to be great,” he said again. “We'll make one hell of a team.”

Sophie was starting to believe it. She reached up and put her hand over his, held it there against the back of her neck.

Axel's Taco Shop was still standing when they returned. Carmen and Kirsten had handled a few minor emergencies, and failed to deal with a few others, but people were still lining up and pushing their money across the counter. That was what counted. Sophie tied on an apron and dove into the fray. Axel went for a walk, heading down Carnes Avenue with no destination in mind.

The idea of making Sophie his partner had grown quickly, like the idea of buying a new truck, or the decision to pay for Carmen's schooling. He was glad he'd acted while the idea was still fresh and clean and free from doubts and overanalytical thinking. This streak of impulsiveness had been with him all his life. It didn't hit him as often now, but when it did, he embraced it as a sign that the young man still resided within him.

He no longer had to wonder whether he wanted Sophie in his life. It was done. They were partners now, for better or worse. He'd felt this way after committing himself to a big poker hand, after buying the Taco Shop, after burying his money in Sam's backyard.

A sudden movement from above caught his eye. He looked up, to see a round metal cage fly straight up into the air, reach a height of about one hundred feet, then tumble earthward. Two screaming figures were locked into the cage. The Ejection Seat, one of the fair's newest attractions, was a cross between a giant slingshot and a bungee cord. Sixty bucks a ride, and they had a constant line of thrill-seekers waiting to get strapped in and shot skyward. Axel grinned and watched the cage bounce up and down between the sixty-foot-high towers. He understood how they felt, and why they paid the money. The thrill was in the decision to go for it, the idea of being strapped in, the moment before the slingshot was triggered.