Drawing Dead (40 page)

I couldn’t avoid him, this time. I slunk over.

There was only one thing to do. It would have been churlish to do otherwise. Not to mention dangerous.

I looked him in the eye. Evgeny, I said. I fucked up.

Yah, yah. I know. I know everytink. Not to be worry about it. We got it done. You got be careful, guys like that.

This was the last thing I’d expected. Commiseration. Jesus. Maybe there was hope for world peace after all.

Yah, he said, noting my look of bewilderment. Maybe we got other job for you.

Jesus, I said involuntarily, you got to be kidding me.

Rick-ay, Rick-ay. Not to be worry.

Sure, I thought, not to be worry. Next time maybe Rick-ay die.

Here, said Evgeny, handing me a double scotch.

Evgeny ordered up a shovelful of appetizers. Started up a round of Russian folk songs. At least, at first I assumed that’s what they were. Judging by the raucous laughter involved, though, I revised my view, figured they must be the Russian equivalent of Irish limericks. Everybody but me joined in, shouting out the apparently hilarious lyrics, spilling vodka shots on the floor. Not a problem there. The waiters were well greased. The shots kept coming. They had a guy there with a mop.

The Russians knew how to keep a party going.

Somebody came up with a bowl full of pickled onions. Evgeny proposed a toast:

To Amerika! he bellowed. To Rick-ay! To friendship of cultures!

I neglected to enlighten him regarding my nationality.

Someone tossed a smoked herring at me. It bounced off the top of my head, splashed into Evgeny’s shot glass. Without missing a beat, he raised the glass, poured the herring down his throat. A roar went up.

There were many more toasts. More bawdy Russian songs were sung. I scarfed down some pierogies, to lay some sandbags down against the scotch.

It didn’t work. The levee broke.

My back was slapped by several dozen hands. I grabbed the bar, to keep from falling on my face.

A strong pair of hands grabbed my arm. Pulled me away from the bar. Sat me down at a table. My back was to the room. It made me feel insecure. But then, what didn’t?

Ricky, said Manfred. We got another job for you.

Job? I said, trying to orient myself to this new notion. Didn’t I already do a job? Or not do it? Or whatever?

Another job, Ricky. You want the job?

Sure. Sure. Depends what it is.

This is a big job, Ricky. Much bigger. But you got to do this one right. No fuckup.

Sure, Manfred, I said.

I felt nauseous. The table began to tilt upward, accelerating towards my face. Vaguely, through the relentless blast of bleary Slavic cheer, I realized, as my forehead hit the table, that it was not rising at all. I was falling.

As I descended, I thought, all right, I got the job.

Now all I needed to do was find out what it was.

F
IRST, THERE WAS ANOTHER JOB TO DO
.

Nothing like a good old-fashioned stakeout, I always say.

The Mini Cooper was unavailable, the guy at the garage said. Something about the brakes. The best they could do for us was a Chevy Malibu.

You’ve got to be kidding me, I said.

No, sir. It’s been a very busy day. Unless you want to pay for a premium.

What’ve you got?

Well, it just so happens that we have a special today, for players in the poker tournament.

Really?

Yes, sir. We have a brand new Shelby Ford. The new model. Hundred-twenty-thousand-dollar car. Two ninety-five for the day. Gas included.

Jesus, I said. That’s pretty steep.

Normally it goes for five hundred.

I bet, I said.

You ever drive one of these?

No, I must admit I haven’t.

Worth every penny, sir.

I’ll take it, I said.

I was never one for resisting temptation.

The paperwork done, I corralled Butch, told him about our good fortune.

What the fuck, he said. Okay. You drive there, I drive back.

All right, I said. Deal.

The Shelby’s hood was as long as a donkey’s lifetime. It was black, with an unostentatious gold stripe. One might have said it was almost elegant, if a mammoth American muscle car could ever be said to be elegant. They’d tuned the thing to reproduce that early sixties rumble and thrum.

It wasn’t really a sports car. It wasn’t built to hug the corners like glue, inconceivably fast-moving glue, like a Porsche. No, what it really was, was a straight-ahead machine, a rocket ship. A big black hurtling mass of teenage testosterone.

In short, just the therapy I needed.

We roared past Red Rock Canyon. We sped through miniature, dying adobe villages, so quickly I had no time to get depressed about them. We flew past miles of rolling lizard hills dotted with black, drooping cacti, like old men long past their pollination days. We curled to a stop outside the badly leaning chicken-wire gate to Eloise’s trailer park. Parked there.

No need to draw attention to ourselves.

We stopped by to talk to Elmer. Get the twenty-dollar news.

I introduced Butch. Elmer nodded. The practiced nod of the truly unconcerned.

After he pocketed the twenty-dollar bill, Elmer told us a story.

Other night, he says, over t’other trailer thar.

Which one? I asked.

Down thar, he said, indicating a pale blue thing on stilts a hundred yards in the other direction. All on a sudden they’s a crowd of guys over there’n. So I gets me up, go over yonder scrubble bush, get me a view. Figured it was a fight, a car accident, or somethin’.

And?

And I look’n over they heads, the gennelemen thar, and right thar, in her doorway, right thar, Dick, across the street thar.

Yes?

She’s buck fuckin’ naked, Dick.

Who is?

Lady lives in that thar trailer, Dick.

You’re kidding me.

I am not, Dick. I wouldn’ do that to ya. She’s buck fuckin’ naked and doin’ some kinda dance, kinda swayin’ around. She got a bottle in her hand.

Really.

So anyways, ’round about thar the cops showin’ up. Guess’n her husban’ called ’em or whatnot. They come on over. Put a blanket on her. Calm her down. Get her back in the trailer.

I guess the gentlemen were kind of disappointed.

I dunno ’bout that, Dick. They got a dern good show fer they money.

I guess, I said.

Nothin’ ain’t nothin’ but it’s free.

Right, I said.

Elmer chewed a bit. Spat a bit.

Elmer, I said.

Yeah, Dick.

This got anything to do with the other lady? The one I’m interested in?

Nothin’ what I know about.

I thought about asking for my twenty dollars back. Decided against it.

Elmer, I said.

Yeah, Dick.

I loved that turn of phrase. ‘Buck fucking naked.’

Say what?

‘Buck fucking naked’? I love that.

I don’t git what yer gittin’ at, Dick.

Ah, forget about it.

Guess I was jest about figurin’ to do that, Dick.

Well, Elmer, I said. You have a good one out here.

Ayup, he said, spewing a yard-long skein of black into the dirt. Gots to say I use-ally do.

Well, that’s good, then.

Ayup.

We parked the Shelby off the access road a bit, half concealed behind a pile of rocks. The damn thing was stupid conspicuous. Hadn’t thought of that. Butch and I took turns in the car, with the air-conditioning on. There was no way to minimize your carbon footprint, on a stakeout in the desert in July, sitting in a Shelby Cobra on the shadeless dirt. If you didn’t keep the air on, you’d die. And then, when the bad guy showed up, you’d be useless dead.

Whichever one of us wasn’t in the car hung around as discreetly as we could, fifty yards or so from Eloise’s trailer. There was a stack of gray rotting plywood out there you could skulk behind. We had to change places every half hour or so. Too easy to lose your concentration out there in the prickly mirage-inducing haze. Start counting ants. Never knew when the Bad Guy might show up, give you only a nanosecond’s
glimpse of his Evilness, during which you had to absorb and process an almost inconceivable amount of information, nearly all of it unreliable, and come to a conclusion about What Action to Take. Which conclusion might well turn out to be irrevocable. Permanent in its consequences. Especially given the surrounding circumstances.

Were there circumstances that did not surround? I made a note to look it up.

I was on my eighth plywood shift. My ass, my lower back, hurt even more than usual. The likelihood that I would later compensate for these difficulties, by means of some otherwise inexplicable heinous act of road rage, well, it was increasing by the minute. I was about to call Butch, tell him to get the hell back here and relieve me before I detonated the explosive device that I did not have, out of spite, or at the very least refuse ever again to pick up the tab at the Wolf’s Lair, when a black Chevy Suburban pulled in through the trailer park gate, slowly crunched its way down the dirt road, rolled onto Eloise’s green gravel lawn.

A guy got out of the Suburban. There was something seriously wrong with the picture. I mean, he had the right vehicle, but it was the wrong color. It was supposed to be brown, out here. Pale blue, for the adventurous.

And the guy was hooded. He was wearing a hood. The kind of hood they wear in the ’hood. Except this wasn’t the ’hood. It was the desert. In July.

Jesus, I whispered to myself. We got something here. But what? The whole thing seemed way overdone. How many lonely little old ladies in neighboring trailers were peering through their curtains, reaching for the phone to call 911?

Not my business.

Lights. Action. Where was the camera? I pulled out the Canon digital. Pushed the zoom to maximum. Snapped a shot of the plates. New York plates. Okay. Job one.

I pulled out the cell phone. Called Butch.

Something’s up, I said.

I saw.

Okay. Get out here. Cover me. I’m going to try to get close.

I got you.

Mr. Hood moved quickly. He didn’t go to the front door. He
skulked around the side. The left side. Exactly what I’d done, days before. Or was it weeks?

But this guy didn’t hesitate, look around.

He knew the place.

I looked back towards the gate. Saw Butch duck behind a trailer five to the right of Eloise’s. Okay. Now I had to move. I didn’t want to move. I was scared shitless. But I couldn’t just sit there. Sure, the old ladies might have called it in already. The trusty constabulary might already be mounting their steeds for an investigative run to the Happy Sunshine Trailer Park and Rest Home. But maybe they weren’t. And if they were, it’d be another half hour, minimum, before they got there. And this thing had all the marks of something that could get seriously nasty. Procrastination, unfortunately, did not seem to be an option.

I had to find out what the guy was up to, at least. Louise would expect nothing less.

Damn. Would I feel this way if my client was a pockmarked old fart?

Yes, I decided. I would.

The debate with myself finally over, I slunk out from behind the plywood. I tried to look as normal as possible. Tough to do when you’re slinking. I regretted neglecting to put on my mailman costume.

My footsteps on the sand felt loud as gunshots. I saw Butch around the side of the trailer next to Eloise’s. He nodded towards the back. I slunk around the left, following the guy’s route. Flattened myself against the side of the trailer, right before the gate. Waited a beat or two. Couldn’t hear anything. I climbed as carefully as I could over the fence—didn’t want the gate squeaking. Peered around the corner. The guy wasn’t there. Nowhere to be seen.

Which meant only one thing: he was already inside the house.

The situation took on a sudden urgency.

I crept up to the bedroom window. Given the necessity for speed, I squashed a couple of geraniums on the way. I mean, I think they were geraniums. I really wouldn’t know. I’m not a flower guy. What the hell were geraniums doing in the desert, anyway?

I don’t know how I knew it was the bedroom window. But my memory is clear as a suburban swimming pool, that I knew it. And, for some reason I can’t explain, even now, I also knew what I was about to see.

I
PEERED IN THE WINDOW
. Just one eye. I was saving the other for the stereophonic view.

Eloise was lying on a big brass bed. Her arms were over her head. Her head was turned away from me. She was mostly naked. The Hooded Man was standing over her. He had something in his hand. It was long and black, with a bulge at the end.

She was moaning.

The Hooded Man reached for something. Oh shit. It was a knife. He stuffed the black thing in his belt. Grabbed her neck with his right hand. Put the knife up to her face.

God, please, no, she said quietly.

Hey! I shouted.

The Hooded Man looked up. Let go of Eloise. She screamed.

What the fuck? he said.

He ran out of the room. Before I could react, he was lunging out the sliding glass doors. His face was masked. He threw himself at me.

I ducked down. Grabbed at his knees. Pulled them towards me. The knees buckled. But he fell forward instead of back. Right on top of me.

I tried to roll to my left. I didn’t get far. The guy was heavy. He got to his feet. I tried to stand up, too, got to my knees just in time to get whacked in the left ear by the black thing.

It paralyzed me. Long enough for the guy to rear back for another blow. I tried to duck left to avoid it, but the thing caught me flush on the spine.

My legs gave out. I thudded to the ground like a sandbag tossed from the back of a truck. I watched him turn and run, back around the side of the house. The guy moved fast.

I heard the Suburban start up. Spinning wheels on gravel. The roar of a big V-8 fading down the dirt road.

I lay there for a while. I made an inventory of body parts. Legs: tingling fiercely. Back: sore as hell. Arms: aching. Head: pounding. Genitals: we’d worry about them later. Butch: where the fuck was he?