Comeback (Gun Pedersen Book 1) (12 page)

19

He drove home in the dark with the windows down,
letting the storm-cleared air wash the inside of the
truck. He thought of Mazy, of who she was and why. He tried to think of Tig Larson and brought up only
the sight of nipped-off fingers. He remembered how Carol had stood on the bluff that afternoon, looking
for him down in the freezing water, the wind snapping
at her hair. Then the noise of the wind in the cab took
thinking out of his mind and made the trip home as
easy as sleep.

There was a solitary letter in his battered mailbox. One he should have thrown away, would have any
other time. But tonight the logo of the smiling child next to the return address caught at his brain and
made it remember.

The messenger had arrived at Gun’s home less than a week after the World Series. It was Gun’s Series; his
three home runs and ten RBIs in seven games had sent
the Cardinals sulking and earned him Most Valuable

Player. He’d celebrated with Amanda and Mazy a few
days, taken them to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for
salmon. It was Indian Summer on the lake, a rare sixty
degrees, and three-year-old Mazy scouted the beach,
her long baby curls platinum in the sun. Amanda
dressed in too many sweaters and kept her pretty chin
pointed at Detroit. They went home early.

Gun was still unpacking when the door bell rang.
He waited, not wanting visitors. It rang again. Amanda and Mazy were out, getting groceries. Gun went to
the door.

He said his name was Rudy and he had something
to deliver from a Mr. Cheeseman.

“Who’s Cheeseman?” Gun asked. He had a hard
time not staring at Rudy’s face, his eyes. The left was
normal, but the right had an iris like a little green
sequin. It swam in the white.

“Businessman. Import-export,” Rudy said. He
grinned and slipped a long yellow envelope from the breast pocket of his suit coat. “Has a very big interest
in baseball, loves the game. Sends this as a gift.”

“Can’t take it,” Gun said, stepping back and start
ing to swing the door closed. “I don’t know any
Cheeseman, and I didn’t do anything for him.”

Rudy took a step forward and put a hand on the
door. “You did, Gun,” he said. “You really did. And Mr. Cheeseman appreciates it. And he won’t appreciate it if I come back and the delivery isn’t made. He’ll
butcher my ass and bake it up with an apple.” The
strange eye sparkled, and Gun believed him. He took
the envelope, tore it open, and tilted a check for
$35,000 into his hand.

“Can I tell him you said thanks?” said Rudy.

“Tell him I’ll see him.”

“That wouldn’t be the best, slugger. Just spend and enjoy. You earned it.” Rudy turned on a shiny black
heel and left.

It had taken Gun half the afternoon to find
Cheeseman’s import basement in downtown Detroit.
He’d gotten the name of the company off the check—
he wished he could remember it now—and checked
for a local address in the Yellow Pages. He parked the
Lincoln he was driving then out in front of a molder
ing brick office building, dropped a couple of quarters in the meter,
went down some steps a flight below street level.

Now, smoking Prince Albert at his kitchen table, Gun couldn’t bring up the name on the door. Some
thing or other Ltd. Something African, it must have been, because that’s what Cheeseman dealt in. He’d
gone inside expecting dimness and cement and saw
instead a set from the
African Queen,
banana plants bursting under grow lights, red and blue parrots
preening in miniature palm trees, a family of
taxidermied cheetahs at play among the greenery.
Somewhere a reel-to-reel tape played a loop of scream
ing birds and hissing night bugs. A fat man in
shorts with a watering can said, What can I do for
you?

Gun said he was looking for a Mr. Cheeseman, and
the fat man sized him up, recognized the World Series
MVP and smiled as though thinking of a pay raise. “Mr. Cheeseman just happens to be here,” he said.
“You’re a lucky customer. He spends most of his time
in his East Coast offices.” He led the way through
hanging vines past two jackals and a small gorilla,
and showed him a walnut door, then disappeared into the jungle like Tarzan.

Gun knocked, then went in when there was no
answer. An even fatter man, maybe fifty and charging
toward coronary, sat behind a metal desk. He was
talking quietly into a black telephone. He didn’t even bother with a call-you-later, just put the phone in the
cradle when Gun came in. He stood up, and his hard
round face gave off the slightest blush of pleasure. Or,
Gun thought, maybe it was just the exertion of
standing.

“Friedrich Cheeseman,” he said, putting out his
hand. “And you, by God, are Gun Pedersen.” Gun
shook the hand, warily. It was a strong hand.

“Pedersen, I’m happy you came. I’ve watched you
hit for years, and I think you’re an artist. Besides, you
hit in the clutch—and those clutch hits practically
doubled my net worth in Reno last week. I’ve got a
casino there. I’m indebted to you.”

“Listen—”

“On the other hand, Gun—may I call you Gun?—
I’m sorry you came, because I know what you want to
do. Rudy told me you’d be around sooner or later, probably sooner, and it’d be my guess as a business
man that you’ve got my check there in your wallet and
you’re just aching to hand it back to me.”

“It’s in my shirt pocket.”

Cheeseman chuckled. “Old Rudy. Got a bitch of an
eye problem, but can he judge character.” He sat back
down behind the desk and motioned Gun to a leather chair by the door. “The thing is, Gun, that I reward
people who deserve rewards. Doesn’t matter if they did it for me or for themselves; if somebody’s got
something coming, I like to see them get it.”

Gun put a hand to his shirt pocket.

“Please, don’t do that. You’re concerned about
dirty money, I see. What a wonderful example for our
children. Let me tell you, then, that the particular
check you’re carrying—those thirty-five thousand specific dollars—came directly from the import sec
tion of my business. Stuff I bring over from the dark
continent and sell—granted, at a markup, but legiti
mate all the way.” Cheeseman’s eyes were gray as a
warning. Gun sat quietly.

“You know, I’ve visited African tribes where it’s considered an insult to return a gift. It’s bad luck, like
breaking a mirror. I don’t think either of us needs any
bad luck. There’s plenty out there already.”

For an answer Gun stood up, leaving the check in
his pocket, and opened the door.

“You’re one sweet hitter, Gun,” Cheeseman said, smiling now. “I hope we’ll see each other again.”

“I doubt it,” Gun said, and left.

He wondered awhile what to do with the check. Rip
it up, send it back to Cheeseman via mail, put it in a
drawer and forget it. In the end he sent the whole
chunk to a children’s fund in Missouri. Mazy had a
pen pal there. Now Gun heard from Missouri twice a
year:
Thanks for your past generosity.

This letter was no different from the rest. He
crumpled it and hit the wastebasket on the first try, banking it off the refrigerator.

He woke at three
a.m.
to the sound of an elephant
blaring a high-pitched alarm. In his dream he had
approached it from behind, a rifle in his hands, and
the animal had turned slowly, red eyes ablaze. Gun sat
up in bed and immediately identified the sound: the
double-trunked birch outside his window, sawing
away in the wind. He lay back down and shut his eyes.

At the tricky border between sleep and conscious
ness he came into the sensation of standing in a boat
on a clear lake and looking into the depths. Way down
on the sandy bottom he saw the check for $35,000 from Friedrich Cheeseman. The check said Kudu
Club, Ltd. Higher up, in the middle depths, was Lyle Hedman’s stuffed elephant, its heavy legs treading
water. And higher still, floating just beneath the
surface, was the list of Hedman’s investors Carol had
described to him. He couldn’t make out the names.

He lay still and told his thumping heart the connec
tion wasn’t likely, not likely at all. All the same, it was
common knowledge that Lyle and Mrs. Hedman took
an annual trip to Reno—Friedrich Cheeseman’s
stomping ground. How farfetched was it to think
Cheeseman was the man Lyle was working for? Or
working to please?

Tomorrow I’ll find out, Gun said to the darkness.
Tomorrow, he thought, then fell back into dreams of
zebras and lions and hyenas laughing.

20

Cheeseman’s number was unlisted, and no one at the Kudu Club’s home office in Reno admitted to know
ing anything about any development project in Minnesota. One man, a marketing vice-president and the
fifth person in Gun’s tag-team conversation, said,
“Minnesota? Yeah, nice town—stopped there once on
my way to Chicago.”

Gun hung up and dialed the number again, asked for customer service. A honey-voiced woman named
Camille came on the line and Gun told her his name
was Lyle Hedman. He complained that the mounted elephant he’d bought was getting saggy in
the belly. She asked how long ago he’d purchased it.
He said he couldn’t remember. Ten, twelve years ago
maybe. She went to look it up, then came back with the verification Gun was after.

“Yes, eleven years ago, Mr. Hedman. And the
invoice was signed by Mr. Cheeseman himself. It was
the very first elephant he imported, according to our

records. I’ll pass you along to Mr. Anders, he handles
these repair matters.”

“Thank you,” Gun said, and hung up.

So, Hedman and Cheeseman were acquainted. It
was time for another chat with Lyle.

He looked up the number and dialed it. No answer. Probably the whole damn clan was out for a happy
morning swim. Gun hung up, went to the cupboard to
find breakfast. Hedman could wait, and in the mean
time Gun meant to learn all he could about Ruther
ford.

The morning sun was bright as Gun drove along
County 13 toward the Broken Rock resort. He knew
he’d met the owner of the Broken Rock, but couldn’t
bring a face to mind.

Six, seven years ago he and Jack had stopped in
after fishing Tornado Lake, eaten hamburgers at the
little bar and grill located in the same low building
that housed the resort office. Poor burgers, Gun
remembered now, and Jack had made a point of
telling the cook.

More recently he’d gotten a phone call from Billy Stanton, an old minor-league buddy who was vaca
tioning at the Broken Rock. That must have been four
years ago, maybe five, one of those back-to-back
summers of high water. Billy had driven over to Stony
at Gun’s invitation and taken some swings against the
iron arm. No resort owner in that memory.

Gun made a photograph of the place inside his
head. The long brown windowless office and store, the
dinky yellow cabins, the grassy slope down to the
weedy shoreline. Nothing clicked. Then, as he
rounded a curve that bordered one of the lake’s
reed-filled bays, a landmark came into view. It was
split in half vertically and looked like the daddy of all
watermelons, halved and petrified. Above it was a sign
that read
broken rock resort, since
1941. Gun’s brain
gave a nudge and yielded the answer.

Fourth of July, 1981. Gun was asked to throw out
the first pitch for a softball tournament in Emer
sonville, a small town just south of Tornado Lake. For
some reason he accepted. He threw the first pitch that
day to a chunky guy wearing a white uniform with a split-boulder logo on the chest. Across the back were
letters spelling out
hedman paper company.
That man
was the owner of the Broken Rock. Gun visited with
him for a minute before the game started. Listened to him, actually. The guy was a talker. Tried to impress
Gun by claiming to be a “close acquaintance” of Lyle
Hedman. What the hell was a close acquaintance?

He parked the old Ford in front of the building and
walked inside. It was the same as Gun remembered it:
dark and low-ceilinged, with a bar straight ahead, a
little grill off next to the bottles, a door marked
office
to the left. Through an archway to the right was a
game room with pool tables, pinball machines, and video games blinking like idiots. On the other side of
the game room around a corner would be the little
grocery store where resort patrons could load up on
beer, pop, hot dogs, and Rolaids.

Gun stepped up to the bar and pressed the button
on the silver countertop bell. It took about three
seconds for the office door to swing open. Same guy.
His shoulders were wide and sloping and bent forward
in a muscled hunch. His head was large, his face dark
with whisker shadow, his nose exceptionally small.

“Well, Gun Pedersen!” he yelled. “Yeah!” and stuck
out his hand. Gun shook it. “Been a while. Too long.
How’ve ya been? You don’t look any different than the day we played catch. You remember. July the Fourth.
What year? Believe it was nineteen hundred and

eighty-one. Have a seat, Gun, have a seat. I’ll get you a
beer, on the house. Damn, it’s good to see ya again.
Siddown, siddown, please.”

Gun sat.

The man touched the tips of his fingers against both
Gun’s shoulders and shook his head. “Goddamn,” he
said, “I’ll never forget that one you hit at Met Stadium
in ‘sixty-five when you beat the Twins in the ninth—
middle of August, I believe it was, Kaat was on the hill
and he threw a big curve and you swung from the
heels”—here the man took a big, loose imaginary
swing that spun him clear around and landed him
back next to a plastic rack of beer mugs—”and boom!
Second deck. Bobby Allison out in left didn’t even
bother to turn around and watch it come down. Shit. I
was sitting up there that day and didn’t get the ball.
Some hog with a glove reached out right in front of
me. Should of busted his face.” Now the man picked
up a mug from the rack, lifted it, and wiped his sweaty
forehead with a hairy wrist. He smiled. A lot of pink
gum showed above his upper row of teeth. “What’ll it
be, Gun? We got Miller, Pabst, and Mick.”

“Miller.”

“Miller it is.” He drew a mugful by feel, smiling and
keeping his eyes on Gun. “There you be.”

“Thanks,” Gun said. “Now, what’s the name?”

The man looked hurt for a moment, then bright
ened again. “Slacker, Larry Slacker. You know, we
met at the softball —”

“I remember you well,” Gun said.

“Yeah, I thought so. Saw the recognition in your
eyes right away. Damn”—he popped a fist into an
open palm — “I’m gonna just take a little beer break
myself, if you don’t mind.” He was already filling a
mug with Miller. Turning his face away from Gun, he
coughed. The cough had a bad sound.

“I’d like it if you joined me, Larry,” Gun said.

“Hey!” Larry pulled up a high stool and sat down
across the bar from Gun. One bead of sweat clung to
his short nose, several to his wide chin. He was still
grinning. He took a deep raspy breath. “So tell me,
what brings you out this way, Gun? Fishin’ Tornado, I
bet. And let me tell you, my people’ve been catching crappies the size of dinner plates without so much as
getting in their damn boats. Hell, they’re catching ‘em
off the docks with angle worms. Never seen anything
like it in the twenty years since I bought the place, but
of course—”

“Reason I’m here,” Gun said, “is to talk to you.”

“No shit.” Larry looked puzzled and pleased. He
took another breath. His lungs didn’t sound good at
all as they filled up.

“I need some information about one of your recent guests.”

“Oh?” Larry expelled his chestful of air.

“A guy named Rutherford. From Minneapolis, I
think. I want his address.”

Larry went bottoms-up on his beer, then set down the mug. “Sorry, Gun. But I’ve never even known
anyone by that name, that I remember. And I do make
an effort to get to know my people. That’s an impor
tant part of the business. You want your people to get
the feeling like they’re part of a family. Kind of like a team, you know?
You
must understand that, Gun—
team spirit and all. It’s what I try to do here at the
Broken Rock.”

“I think you’re forgetting one member of the team, Larry. His name is Rutherford. He was staying here
about a week ago. Think harder.”

“Look, Gun, even if he was staying here—and like I
said, I’m pretty damn sure he wasn’t—but even if he
was, I couldn’t tell you a thing about him anyway. My

files are confidential. Lots of pretty important folks
have passed through here over the years, and they go
home and tell their friends about the Broken Rock. So
I can’t just start passing out addresses and such to
anyone that asks—not that you’re just anyone, Gun.
But you gotta see my point. I start giving out stuff like
that and pretty soon I’m going to lose my reputation
and the resort goes to hell.
You
must understand, Gun.
You’re a guy that knows the value of privacy.” Larry’s face was running with sweat now. He drew himself
another mug of beer. “Your brew okay, Gun?
Hardly’ve touched it.”

“It’s fine,” Gun said. He could see Larry was going
to take a little persuading. It wasn’t fun to push a guy
who was so eager to please. Especially one with gravel
in his lungs. Gun took a sip of beer, which was getting
warm.

“No hard feelings, right?” said Larry. He was still
grinning, but not the same as before. His grin stopped
above the mouth.

“Of course not,” said Gun.

Larry sighed, then finished his second beer, taking
the bottom half of the mug in two swallows. He shut his eyes and shook his heavy face back and forth.
“Gun,” he said, “that same game I mentioned before?
With the Twins? Your homer in the ninth? Wasn’t
there a helluva brawl in that game? Benches cleared, if
I remember right.”

“Yup.” Gun got up from the stool and walked back
to the door, six paces away.

“Hey,” Larry said. “Leaving already? Thought you
might tell me about that little scrap with the Twins.
And your beer
...”

Gun shut the inside door, blocking out the sun and
making the room even darker than before. He threw the dead-bolt lock.

Larry stood up. “Whatcha doin’ anyway?” he said.

“I’m going to tell you about that brawl—and be
lieve me, it was one of the best ones I was ever in.
Then you’re going to go into your office and get
Rutherford’s address for me.” Gun walked back to the
bar.

“Gun, really, I can’t. . .” Larry coughed and shook
his head.

Gun stood before the bar, then leaned down with
his elbows so that his face was even with Larry’s. “I
spent most of my time on Earl Battey,” Gun said.
“Remember him? He was about your size, maybe a
little huskier. Anyway, we ran into each other between
the pitcher’s mound and third base and he hit me
pretty hard in the gut. So I threw a straight left into his
nose and roundhouse right to his ear. And you know, he didn’t go down. So I hit him hard as I could right here”—Gun touched a finger to a spot right below
Larry’s breastbone—”and damned if he didn’t go down. And stay down.”

Larry stepped back, one arm lifted in conciliation. He wagged his face and the perspiration flew. “Gun,
I’d like to help you. But I—you see—I told some
one I wouldn’t say anything about this Rutherford
guy.”

“Hedman, right?”

Larry’s eyes said yes.

“Don’t worry about Hedman right now, Larry.
Worry about me.”

Larry nodded slowly, then went into the office. He
came back promptly with a manila folder. Gun took a pen from his pocket and copied Rutherford’s address on a scrap of paper from his wallet. “Thanks, Larry,”
he said. “You’ve done the right thing.”

Larry was sitting again, and nearly finished with
another beer. The energy had drained from his face.

“What do you know about Rutherford?” asked
Gun. “What did Hedman say?”