Drawing Dead (31 page)

I looked at Butch. I shrugged. He shrugged.

Life tilt, I said.

Yeah, he said.

We stood there for a while. I was feeling stupid and sweaty in my cowboy hat. I wanted to go after him. But what was I going to say? Come back to the motel, Brendan, we’ll set up our own cabaret, just for you and your buddies?

I sighed. We headed out. I brushed off the leers of a couple of older guys. Worried that it was only the older guys.

N
EXT DAY, BACK AT THE SUITE
, around about the fourth scotch, I started thinking about Tori. Jami. No. Something ending in an untoward
i
.

I wanted to smell that mango again.

The basement angle. Yes. Saying I had to talk to Matt wouldn’t work at all. In fact, I had to hope Matt and the kiddies hadn’t gotten back from Reno yet. But the basement. Yes. Who knows, I might even find something there.

I got the Mini Cooper out of the lot. It cost me forty minutes and another five bucks. I tried to remember where the house was. Henderson, wasn’t it? I trolled around the Vegas suburbs for a while. I was wandering, really, thinking about shit. Basements. Melissa. Why
she died. Why people kept dying. Madeleine, on the other hand. Very alive. New. Like a replacement for the dying. Kind of sick, that thought. And by the way, I had the time to let the thought intrude, who the hell was her mother? I should know. I suppose I did know. I suppose I didn’t want to think about it. So why was I thinking about it? Because it made me feel like shit. What had I done? Had a fling, apparently, when Kelley was a baby, two years old maybe. And then forgot it completely? How many different people was I disrespecting there, all at once?

I blundered into the right neighborhood.

Funny how the subconscious works.

I found the house.

It looked the same. Preservative, the desert air. I guess that’s why you find a lot of old folks out there. Old cars, too. Old lizards.

Tori, or Lori, or Gustavi, answered the door. I smiled.

Sorry to bother you again, I said.

Who are you? she asked, genuinely puzzled, it seemed.

Rick Redman. The investigator? I was here a couple of days ago? Asking about the couple who used to live here?

Oh, she said, and began to giggle. The giggle rose to a snort, a laugh.

Oh dear, I thought. She’s stoned.

Sorry, she said, composing herself somewhat. Yes. I remember. Come on in!

Thank you.

She pulled her hand from behind her back. It had a large lit joint in it. She looked at it, at me, sheepishly. Thrust it towards me.

Just a touch, I said, not wanting to be rude. But equally not wanting to be stoned. Dysfunctional. More dysfunctional than normal.

I took a small hit. Handed it back to her.

The taste of her was on it. Strong enough to compete with the powerful taste of first-class weed. My, I thought. She packs an olfactory punch, this one.

I’d never do this if Matt was here, she giggled. He’s soooo straight? But it’s okay, once in a while, you know?

She asked it like a genuine question. Like she needed my approval.

Sure, I said. Once in a while is great.

Matt wasn’t there.

Perhaps there was a God.

She grabbed my arm, hooked it through hers. Walked me into the couch-filled living room. I remembered it. I still liked it. It wasn’t just the dope. Though that clearly helped. We sat together on the couch. She leaned my way. I felt very, very relaxed.

Business first, I reminded myself. I wasn’t Brendan.

You know, I said, I was remembering our conversation.

She giggled again.

You mentioned that you’d overheard Eloise and her … the man with her, Vladimir I guess, talking in the basement. And it occurred to me that I should have asked to see it.

What?

The basement.

The what?

The basement.

The basement? she said absently, handing me the joint again. Sure. Go look. Nothing down there, though.

Thanks, I said, taking another polite hit. Where is it?

Where is what?

The basement.

Oh, that. Downstairs.

I looked at her, trying to figure out if she was joking. I couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter. I started to laugh. She looked at me, laughed too. We both laughed. We couldn’t stop laughing. The whole thing seemed utterly hilarious. Except I couldn’t remember what it was that was so funny. Which didn’t matter at all.

Especially after she collapsed giggling into my arms.

I held her, the laughter slowly subsiding. I stroked her back. It was a strong back. It curved to a firm and delectable waist. An apricot scent enveloped me. I liked mango better. But this would do. She kissed my neck. Her lips were cool and wet. I closed my eyes.

Uh, Toni, I said.

Dani, she murmured into my neck.

Dani, right. Sorry. Uh, Dani?

Yes, she said, nibbling at my earlobe.

Where’s Matt? Your kids?

I had to make sure.

She started giggling again. Lifted herself up. Held my face in her hands. Smiled.

They’re still in Reno, she said.

She had exquisite teeth. Her blonde hair was loose.

Ah, I see. Won’t be back for a while, then?

Tuesday, she murmured, moving back down to my neck.

I lifted her face. Looked into her eyes. They were green. I’m a sucker for green eyes. Sort of like I’m a sucker for strong-bodied natural blonde Southwestern gals with succulent lips and the scent of apricots who throw themselves into my arms.

We went upstairs.

She put on Sinatra.
Only the Lonely
. How she knew it was my favorite, I have no idea.

Willow Weep for Me.

We lay down together. The bed was huge and soft.

I told her about a book I’d read a long time ago. A book about a machine. I kept confusing it with other things, but the thing I did remember was that the machine, a computer I guess it was, became so complex that inside it grew a whole world of virtual people, a complete society, mirroring our own to the extent that they developed consciousness, an idea of God, who was, of course, the creator of the machine. The machine’s creator was able to observe, eavesdrop on, his creation, and agonized about his role. His role as God.

It’s a great responsibility, being God, I said to Dani as she removed my shirt.

I began to remember why I hated getting stoned.

Are you God? she asked.

Yes. It happens that I am.

That’s a relief, she said, feeling for the evidence of my claim.

Mmmph, I said.

I hate the small ones, she mumbled.

I think we’re okay.

So I see, she said, having discovered the burgeoning object of conversation.

The laughing started again.

And some other stuff.

I changed my mind about the stoned thing. The only thing dope is good for, I always say, is listening to music and having sex. And there I was. Listening to music and having sex. Taking full advantage.

It was, as they say, satisfactory.

We lounged for a while. I drifted in and out of sleep. She brought us some coffee. We sipped it and laughed.

Jesus, I thought. Could a guy have a life like this?

Not this guy.

Well, I said, I gotta go.

Aww, she said.

Unfortunately, I do. Business to take care of.

She was sweet. Gathered my clothes together. Walked me to the door. We had a good long hug. I reluctantly pulled away. Turned for the car.

Um, didn’t you want to see the basement? she asked.

Jesus, I said. I totally forgot.

She laughed. I laughed. We went back into the house. She took me to a door behind the kitchen. Led me down a flight of wooden steps. Led me by the hand.

At the bottom of the stairs she flipped a light switch.

The basement was unfinished. Concrete floor. Bare plywood walls. Drifts of dust on the floor. A rack of tools. Odd-looking tools. Not hammers, pliers, stuff I was used to. Heavy metal objects that looked like tools. A large wooden bench with a mammoth vise bolted to it. The remains of some large piece of machinery. Someone had been taking it apart. There were wrenches on the floor. Pieces of the machine. I didn’t recognize it. The machine. What it was. Seemed like it was electrically powered. A large three-pronged plug lay on the floor near an outlet. There were gears. Some kind of conveyor-belt thing angled into the interior. I got down on my knees. Peered inside.

See, said Dani, nothing.

Well, I don’t know if this counts exactly as nothing, I said.

Then what is it? she asked with a faux innocent smile.

The remains of a machine.

Is that anything like the remains of a day? she asked.

Something like that.

I just didn’t under
stand
that movie? she said enthusiastically. How that woman, I mean, you know …

I started to laugh again. She joined in.

Back at the car, I succumbed to a moment of melancholy.

I’d had another piece of something I could never have.

And what else? I’d seen some old metal stuff. I’d got brown stains on my pants. And dust on my shirt. I stopped to brush as much of it
off as I could before getting in the car. It stuck to my hands. I slapped and rubbed them together to get rid of it. It stuck around. The hell was this stuff?

Oh well. I could wash up back at the motel. I drove slowly. I felt drained. She’d drained me. Of my vital bodily fluids, as someone somewhere was fond of saying. It was a good drained, though. Like draining a pustule. Or something.

Jesus, I thought. I guess I’m still stoned.

N
OW, IN MY FORMER LIFE
, as a put-upon partner at a relatively large and hideously confining law firm whose clients consisted mainly of large corporations and their owners and hangers-on, men, and the odd woman, whose idea of a risqué act would be putting down a ten-spot on the Kentucky Derby, I would not have contemplated for a moment doing a job for some highly suspect meatballs from Brighton Beach that very likely involved picking up a brown paper bag of cash—or perhaps something much worse—of unknown provenance from a mysterious guy named Yugo in some outer borough of Las Vegas. In fact, rather than picking up whatever the hell it was, I might well have picked up the phone and called the authorities. Well, probably not. But I certainly would have called in the firm’s resident ethics guru, the terminally unsmiling Uptight Bob Shumaker, so that he could listen gravely to the story, ostentatiously consult the relevant passages of the Bar Association’s Code of Ethics, read them aloud to me slowly, like I was the slow kid in his third-grade French class, tell me that he would take care of it, and scuttle back to his manicured office to do whatever it is that law firm ethicists do about such things.

But Evgeny had me pegged correctly: a guy with a debt and a drinking habit, too much free time and a short attention span, a guy whose wife had recently died in most unpleasant circumstances, a guy who, if he ever actually cared about the niceties, which was doubtful, cared less so now. A guy who needed some quick cash. Desperately.

I got a call from Manfred. He’d meet me at the motel. In the lobby.

I hoped the two chairs weren’t occupied.

Then I remembered.

I’d never told them where I was staying.

Damn these guys.

Manfred was waiting when I got there. He filled his beige chair to cubic capacity. I slouched into mine. I like to slouch. Lower back, I always say. And I do, actually, have a lower back thing. But I also just like to slouch. I spent most of my adolescence slouching. Hell, all of my adolescence. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t stopped slouching since. It’s a hard habit to give up.

Manfred gave me the details. Yugo lived in some suburb with a name like all the others. Something with a tree in it. He gave me the address. Told me to be careful. Yugo was a little, ah, eccentric.

Sure, I said to myself. Thanks for the tip. I should need to be careful.

Thanks, Butch, I also said to myself. For the gun.

Funny how these things worked. You got a gun, all of a sudden you needed it all the time.

Yugo’s place was at the end of a long drive lined with tall cedars closely spaced. Cedars, in the fucking desert? A water-sucking monstrosity of conspicuous magnificence. The road opened onto a circular driveway. Four or five new SUVs were parked haphazardly. The house was a huge square stone thing with pillars and a crenellated top. The windows were tall and narrow. Supposed to look like some kind of castle, I supposed. Fit right into the neighborhood. With all those other castles and cacti.

At any rate, it seemed like Yugo was a pretty successful guy. At whatever he did.

The door was a big solid thing with a large brass knocker. No bell in sight. I used the knocker.

I waited a while.

I knocked again.

I waited some more.

Yes, a muffled voice said.

Is Yugo there? I asked.

Who wants to know? the voice responded.

Rick Redman. I’m here on business.

What kind of business?

A little business for Evgeny.

Hold on, the voice said.

I heard a number of locks being opened.

The door cracked. An eye peered out. Looked me up and down.

The eye opened the door a ways. Let me in. Behind the door there was another door. It was closed. Between the two doors there was barely room for me and the owner of the eye.

He was a small, wizened fellow with an air of imminent demise. His hair was wispy and white. There were large black spots on his forearms and face. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt several sizes too large. And sandals too big for his feet. As though he’d been shrinking for some time.

Wait here a moment, he said.

He went back through the second door. I heard him lock it behind him.

The space had the dank air of illness. I thought of an underground jail cell. But it was too small for that. There was just enough dim light, coming from a wrought iron chandelier far above, for me to make out a framed scroll visible on the side wall. It conferred upon someone the Grand Order of the Knights of Malta.