Drawing Dead (19 page)

And when I told Louise Chandler about it, she seemed awfully anxious to get hold of it.

Hold of what?

The envelope.

So? She’s the client, isn’t she?

Yeah, but I got a weird vibe about it. I told her we’d sent it out for testing.

Testing what?

Check out the powder, Mr. Detective.

Butch lifted the envelope. Took a close look. Gingerly put his finger in the torn corner. Examined it. Touched it to his tongue.

Doesn’t look like any dope I know about, he said.

Really?

Really.

Then what is it?

I don’t know.

Well, maybe we should find out.

There are ways.

Problem is, there may be some ethical issues involved. I meant to look it up. Haven’t got around to it.

To what?

Looking it up. I mean, interference with the mails and all. A federal crime. But does that apply to couriers?

Don’t know, he said. Never ran across that one.

Hard to think it wouldn’t, though.

Maybe. Anyway, I’ll take care of it.

Take care of it?

Take my word for it. I’ll take care of it.

Yeah. I figured you could do that.

Butch was good at taking care of things. I could trust him with it. And keep my hands clean. Relatively.

In bed, I lay awake. What was going on with Brendan? Shit, I didn’t know. He always acted weird. Hell, I forgot to ask him about his day with the Russkies. Maybe it had something to do with that …

I fell asleep. I had a dream. I was naked in the bed. Asleep. I began to wake up. I felt my chest. There was a strange protrusion there. Years ago, I’d noticed a small lump on my sternum. At first it worried me. But then I got used to it. Years went by. It was just there. Part of me. In the dream, it had grown. It was the size of a plum. But hard. Bony. It scared the hell out of me.

I woke up. It was pitch-black. I felt my chest. Nothing there. Nothing but the usual lump.

I
GOT UP
. I went to the bathroom. There were spots everywhere. On the mirror. In the sink. On the floor. I didn’t know if they were real spots or brain spots. Spots generated from my brain. Non-objective spots. Like maybe my whole life. This whole episode. Starting at the Brighton Beach game. Maybe it wasn’t happening at all. Could be my whole life was like that, of course. Wasn’t there this theory just came out? That in the universe as we know it an infinite number of disembodied brains floating in the ether is more likely to exist than the world we think we actually live in? Or brains in a vat. We could all be brains in a vat.

Shit, I was having an anxiety attack. Heart palpitations. Oh God. Another heart attack. Hard to breathe. Had to keep taking deep ones to calm myself down. Helped with the palpitations. I knew they weren’t palpitations. It was called PVC, or something. No, that was plastic pipe. I’d had them for years. Doctor said they were harmless. But they gave my anxiety extra ammunition. Maybe this was something else. Something that just felt the same. But more serious. Another infraction. Infarction.

I could call the Smiling Doctor. But fuck that. I’d see his fatuous grin over the phone. Maybe I could ask Sheila. She’d diagnosed the PVC the first time. Talked me down from it. But she was in New York. She’d do a session on the phone, I knew, but it just wasn’t the same. I needed the whole sitting-on-the-couch thing. I needed to see the diplomas on the wall, the comforting rows of books on the shelves.
How to Be an Addict and Not Die, Quite Yet
. Nothing else would work.

I somnambulated to the living room. Butch was on the sectional. Reading
Bluff
magazine. A pile of
Guns & Ammo
next to him. Hell, I thought, maybe Butch can be my shrink. Such a sensitive soul, after all. I didn’t tell him that, of course. He was a guy. But he was sitting on a couch, of a sort. And in the circumstances, that was the best I was going to get.

He put down the magazine. Picked up his boots. Black. Police issue. He had a bootblack kit with him. He always did. He started polishing them. I knew this routine. The goal: a mirrored shine. Cops tend to do
that. Normally, I’d make fun of him about it. But I wasn’t in the mood.

The hell’s wrong with that woman? I asked.

Isn’t that redundant? he replied.

Of course, I said, oh Wise One, I’m sure you’re right. But it doesn’t provide much guidance.

I see.

What is it, exactly, that you see?

I see the problem.

Well, then, we have communication. And so, what to do?

I thought the question was, what’s wrong with that woman?

I suppose it was, I said.

Well, there is one thing, said Butch.

Which is?

Have you thought about AA?

Alcoholics Anomalous? I went for a while.

And?

Didn’t do a thing for me.

No?

I didn’t get high. Even once.

That would be a problem, I guess.

You’re damn right. The only good thing about AA is that it sounds like Aces.

I got up to make myself a scotch.

But seriously, Rick, generally speaking, women, and I’m not saying all women, but …

He bore down on a particularly stubborn dull spot on the toe of his left boot.

But what? Give me the punch line. You’re killing me here.

Well, women tend to like men who are, perhaps, a bit more, say, sober than you.

Sober? You mean drunk sober? Or down-at-the-mouth sober?

Drunk sober, Rick. Women like sobriety.

Not the kind of women I like.

That would be another problem, then.

Why would it be a problem?

Well, now that you mention it, I guess it wouldn’t.

So there you are. And anyway, Butch, I’m talking about our client. I’m not talking about the, you know, Woman Thing.

Oh. Shit. Well, count me out, then. I wasn’t even there.

That was my last shrink session with Butch.

And I wasn’t about to pay him two hundred bucks for it.

T
HE LEFTOVER PAINKILLERS IN MY SYSTEM
were communing happily with the scotch. I went back to sleep. My dreams were mud. Entrails. Bloody shoe prints. Cracked vertebrae. Crawling things. I woke up. Looked at my watch. I’d only slept an hour. I could barely lift myself off the pillow. Once off the pillow, I could barely arrange for my legs to reach the floor. Once on the floor, my legs protested avidly, insistently, that they’d done enough work for the month.

My breathing was shallow. Close to terminal.

Rick! called Butch from the living room.

Minute, minute, I said.

You know what time it is?

No, I said, and frankly, I don’t give a shit. You got any Demerol?

No.

Percodan?

No.

What the fuck use are you, anyway?

Oh, you’ll find out. When it matters.

Sure, I said. Like the way you took care of Bruno.

There was silence from the living room. Oops, I thought. I’d touched a sore spot. Butch took his manhood very, very seriously.

I pulled on a pair of jeans. Slowly. One leg at a time. I suppose that’s the normal way to put on jeans. But this was different. After the first leg, I needed a break. I took one.

I heard ice tinkling in the next room.

Make me one too! I called out.

Butch grunted.

I went to work on the other leg.

Maybe, I thought, that’s why they call it a leg? In a race? We’re just passing the second leg, etcetera. Which was where I was. Just passing the second leg. I felt like passing some other stuff. I tamped down the urge. Too early in the day for carpet cleaning.

I struggled into the living room and located my breakfast bourbon. A good warm slosh and the urge subsided, only to be replaced by the desire to kill someone. Didn’t matter who. Just wanted to commit some mayhem.

Butch walked into the living room. He had a gun in his hand.

Hey, man, I said, I was just joking.

You think you’re the only one gets to shoot people?

I didn’t have any intention of doing that, I said, swallowing another soft-boiled egg of bourbon.

Meet Pandora, he said, extending the firearm in my direction.

She’s a handsome lady, I said, trying not to flinch. You pick her up last night? Some cowboy bar in Paradise?

Rick, my man, I never leave home without her. In fact, I never go to bed without her.

You sleep with that thing? Ouch.

Nah. Too obvious, he said, lowering the mammoth weapon. Come here.

He led the way to his bedroom. Lifted up the sheets at the side of the bed. Clamped under the bed frame was a spring-loaded gun rest.

You got to be kidding me, I said.

I am not, he said. Learned this one in the Air Force.

Nobody goin’ to fuck with my man in the nighttime.

You said it.

He wasn’t smiling.

But I feel naked now, I said.

Ah, Rick, he said. So little faith.

That I can’t deny.

I got something for you.

You know how I love a present.

This one isn’t new.

Ah, too bad, I said.

Butch opened the drawer next to the bed. Pushed aside the Gideons, pulled out the Mauser in its box, the shoulder holster.

You shouldn’t have, I said.

Actually, I thought it was kind of essential.

I get your drift. But how did you get it down here?

Oh, we have our ways, he said.

I suppose you do.

I didn’t have to ask who the ‘we’ was.

Brendan over to Binion’s?

What?

Binion’s. The bartender. Investigations. What we do. Remember? Did he go?

Um, shit, said Butch. No fucking way. He left early. He was wearing some suit with the wide lapels, pegged pants. He wasn’t going on no investigation.

Fuck, I said.

I called Brendan’s cell. No answer. No surprise.

Goddamn it, I said. I’m gonna kill that little fucker.

Calm, calm, said Butch. Don’t do anything til you got the facts.

He didn’t go. Just like the last job. I know it. You know it. Shit, the guy is more dysfunctional even than me. Can’t take a piss without a carrot dangled over the urinal.

Preferably uncircumcised.

How do you know that?

I don’t. It was a joke.

I eyed him suspiciously. Butch always seemed to know stuff I didn’t. Though he never flaunted it. It never came out as obvious. He never taunted you with it. But there was always some stuff in there. Stuff behind the blue wall. That you could only get when you really needed it.

You don’t know anything, said Butch. He could have gone. There could be a good reason he didn’t. Wait till he gets here.

Brendan was very lucky that I was still disoriented, enervated and crippled. I would have jumped up, found him, swiped him upside his pretty blond head. Did I have to do fucking everything?

Butch, I said. Would you do me a favor?

Sure, Rick, he said, affecting a conciliatory air.

Could you find him and punch the little fucker in the face?

Rick, take it easy.

I’m taking it really fucking easy. I can’t take it any fucking easier. At least I’m delegating.

Butch laughed. I couldn’t help it. I laughed, too.

All right, I said. Fuck it. I’ll go to Binion’s.

Have another drink.

I’ll take it to go. Work to be done.

All right, Butch sighed. You’re right. Go do your thing.

I didn’t need any more encouragement. I jumped up, shouted in pain. Sat down again. Got up more gingerly. Headed for the door. Limped down the corridor, down the stairs, burst out the door, was momentarily blinded. There was a cab line this time. Just what I needed. Stand in line with a bevy of Idaho bovines and garishly outfitted New Jersey chuckleheads, the midsummer Vegas sun burning the skin of my eyeballs.

I skirted the line. Limped half a block. Flagged one down. I got in. It smelled of dust and disaster.

Binion’s, I told the driver. Take the expressway.

T
HE CAB DROPPED ME OFF
at the end of the covered promenade that the city had constructed over the old Downtown casino strip. Trying to bring back some tourists to the faded old joints. Vegas Downtown is a world away from the Strip. The casinos advertise one-cent slots. The bartenders rarely have change for a hundred. The promenade is littered with souvenir booths selling things like
Scarface
posters. Do you have to fly to Vegas to buy a
Scarface
poster?

Past the promenade the place degenerates into what the Tourist Board doesn’t want you to know about. Check-cashing joints, pawnshops, boarded-up storefronts. Folks who shuffle instead of walk. Whole lot of shuffling going on. A guy in a wheelchair held together with duct tape. He’s wearing a Stars and Stripes t-shirt so old the stars are brown. Stark and crumbling single-story Loserville. No shelter from the sun. No shelter.

I headed that way. It felt right.

A guy on the corner was holding a stringless guitar and an empty bottle.

Hey, man, he whispered.

Yeah, I said.

There’s a guy around here. Time. He’s killing all the old people.

I’ll keep a lookout, I said.

Good, he said. Let me know.

I will.

I walked past another guy.

Sir? he said.

Yes? I said with a smile.

I was ready for the standard pitch. For which I’m always a sucker.

He said his name was Larry. He was darkly black and short and muscular. He wore a white t-shirt and jeans, strangely clean. He had an honest face. He asked me to stop and talk. I stopped. He talked.

He told me that he was HIV positive, was on a cocktail of drugs. On his way to New Orleans, he said. He showed me a very old, frayed bus ticket with a complicated itinerary that didn’t seem to end up anywhere near the Gulf of Mexico. Looked like a prop he’d used before, a few hundred times. New Orleans by way of Fort Worth. I guess some people don’t read the fine print.

Let me guess, Larry, I said. You want money.

No, he said to my surprise, he would never ask for money. We chatted for a while longer. He told me about how he had tried to find shelter in Vegas. A church had turned him away. He’d asked a cop what he could do, and the cop had said, Don’t come to Vegas to start with. We don’t want you here.