Drawing Dead (14 page)

They sat for a few minutes without talking. The air was thick and warm, muting the hiss of First Avenue traffic. Debrowski had found a wedge of early-evening sunshine. She was leaning against the corner post, both feet up on the railing, a slash of sun falling across her black leather jacket and jeans. Tonight she was barefoot and chain- less. Her toenails were unpainted, her short blond hair looked soft in the yellow light.

“You look nice tonight,” Crow said.

Debrowski made a face. “Screw you, Crow.” She tipped up her near beer and swallowed. It was hard to tell in the yellow light, but he thought he detected a rise of color in her cheeks.

“How's your mom?” he asked.

“She's all right. She liked my penny loafers. Sometime you got to meet her, Crow. You'd like her.” She paused and looked over the railing. Crow heard a car door slam. “You know anybody drives a big yellow car, Crow?”

He stood and looked past Debrowski's knees. The yellow Cadillac was pulled over to the curb, engine idling. Tommy Aquinas was coming up the walk, his head moving back and forth like a hopped-up radar dish. Crow called over the railing, “Come on up.”

Aquinas flinched and took a step to the side, looked up at Crow, nodded. He scanned the area again, then opened the downstairs door. Crow stared at the Cadillac, trying to make out the driver. He could see a long, pale hand resting atop the steering wheel. Not Catfish. Not Freddy.

“Is that the guy with the Batman underwear?” Debrowski asked.

Crow nodded and went into the front hall to open the door. Tommy Aquinas was on the stairs a few steps below the landing. He

stretched his neck, trying to see past Crow into the apartment.

“Listen, you seen this big guy, ugly as shit, wears these wild ties, drives a big blue Caddy? You seen anybody like that hanging around?”

“Not here,” Crow said. “You want to come in?”

Tommy looked back down the stairs, then climbed the last few steps and entered the apartment. He stalked the perimeter of the room, stopping at Crow's framed baseball cards, looking at each of the cards for five seconds, grunting after each brief scrutiny. “Worth a few bucks,” he said, rubbing his fingers together. His face was decorated with several shallow horizontal scratches.

“He a friend of yours?” Crow asked.

“Who? Harmon Killebrew? Yeah, I know him.”

“I'm talking about the guy with the ties.”

Tommy jerked his head up. “You seen him?”

“His name is Freddy, right?”

“You got it, man. Fucking Freddy Wis-fucking-nesky. You seen him?”

“He's waiting for you back at your motel room.”

“No kidding?” Tommy shrugged. “Oh well, it was a shit place anyhow. Fuck'm.”

“Who is he?”

“Just a guy, works for a guy that fucked me over on a business deal. Old business.”

“He says he wants to get ahold of you.”

“I bet he does,” Tommy said, putting a hand to the base of his throat. “I gotta get going,” he said suddenly. “You want me to sell those for you?” He pointed at Crow's cards. “I can get you top buck.”

Crow shook his head.

Debrowski came in from the porch and introduced herself.

Aquinas pumped her hand vigorously. “Call me Tommy,” he said. “You remember the Pet Rock? That was me.”

“What happened to your face?” Debrowski asked.

“I got in a fight. A couple guys jumped me. I beat the crap outta the one guy, but the other guy got away.” He turned to Crow. “You got something for me? I gotta get going.”

Crow held up Wicky's check. Tommy frowned. “What the hell happened to cash? Doesn't anybody do business in green anymore, f'chrissake?”

“You don't want it?” Crow asked.

Tommy looked at Debrowski. “What do you do for a living, Deb?”

“I'm in rock and roll.” She crossed her arms, holding one tight fist in front of each breast. She didn't like being called “Deb.”

“I used to do that shit. You remember that song '96 Tears'?”

“Question Mark and the Mysterians,” Debrowski said. “I remember, sure.”

“Question Mark, that was me. I was just a kid. Made a lot of money on that tune, but I couldn't handle the bullshit.” He looked at the check in Crow's hand. “What the fuck. I suppose it's good. Tell Dickie thanks, man.” He reached for the check, but Crow had made it disappear.

“Tell me more about Freddy,” Crow said.

“What's this shit?” Tommy's eyes bounced around Crow's body, looking for the check. “You gonna pay me or not?”

“Soon as you tell me who this guy Freddy works for.”

“Freddy? He works for Joey Cadillac,” Tommy said, astonished that this was not common knowledge.

“Joey Cadillac?”

“Yeah. You know. Out of Chicago. We had a little misunderstanding. Joey sent Freddy up here to talk about it. But fucking Freddy, he don't talk.”

Crow looked at Debrowski. “You ever hear of a guy named Joey Cadillac?” She shook her head. Crow looked back at Tommy. “Me neither,” he said.

“You gonna pay me or not?” Tommy demanded. “I got somebody waiting on me. I gotta go.”

“Who's Joey Cadillac?”

“Joey Cadillac is Joey Cadillac, man. He runs a bunch of car lots down there, sells Cadillacs to the dealers and pimps, you know? Now there's a cash business. Joey loves cash.”

“Joey Cadillac is a car dealer?”

“That's what I said, man. New or used. Cash or stash.”

“You know how I can get ahold of him?”

“Why? You in the market for a car?”

“Maybe I am.”

“Well, you go on down there, then. He's got a place on Franson. J.C. Motors. Tell him I sent you.”

“I thought you were having problems with him.”

“Just a misunderstanding. Joey's a friend of mine.”

“You got his address?”

“What do I look like, a fucking Rolodex? I gotta go. You gonna give that check or what?”

Crow hesitated, shrugged, made the check appear, and handed it to him. Tommy jammed it in his pocket. “You ever want to sell those baseball cards, you let me know. I got connections all over the country. You ever hear of Wayne Gretzky? He buys all his baseball cards from me. You want to make some serious money, you got to look me up. Anything else I can do for you, guy?”

Crow grinned and shook his head. “You got it coming out your ears, don't you?”

“You betcha. Isn't that what you say up here?”

“You betcha.” Crow opened the door. “Where should I look you up? Where are you staying now?”

Tommy stepped out onto the landing and started down the stairs. “I'll be around,” he said over his shoulder.

Crow closed the door. “What do you think?”

“You better go check your silverware, Crow.”

“If I had any, I would. You get down to Chicago now and then, Debrowski. You never heard of this guy Joey Cadillac?”

“Chicago's a big town, Crow. There are a lot of sleazy characters down there. I only know maybe half of them.”

“Weren't you just giving me shit about associating with Dickie Wicky?”

“I said I know 'em, Crow. I don't work for them.”

“I suppose I could get the address out of the phone book.”

Debrowski smirked. “ 'Why? You in the market for a car?'“

Crow shook his head. “I'm getting my Jag fixed. I'm thinking I'll send this Joey Cadillac a bill.”

Freddy ain't been the same since he was born.

—Joey Cadillac

Freddy Wisnesky glared
at the ringing telephone. On the third ring he set his tweezers on the nightstand, picked up the receiver, and held it gingerly to his right ear.

“Hullo?”

He listened.

“Not yet, Mister C.” Freddy winced and pulled the phone away from his ear. Joey Cadillac's voice screeched from the handset.

“I dunno, Mister C. I ain't seen 'em since,” Freddy said. “I don't think they're coming back here, Mister C.”

Freddy listened, his face twitching every time a new epithet exploded from the handset.

“I dunno, Mister C. There was this other guy come by that was with 'em, but he got away.”

Freddy was sitting on the bed in room 22 of the Twin Town Luxury Motor Hotel. The television was on, the sound turned off. Freddy was wearing only a pair of yellowish boxer shorts. Several large areas of his body were raw and oozing. The bed was stained red and pink in several places. His shredded shirt and pants lay in a soiled pile on the carpet.

“I s'pose I could go ask the lady.” He listened for a while, holding the handset a few inches out from his ear. “I s'pose I could ask him too. Only I don't know who he is.” He listened again. “Okay, Mister C. Uh-huh. Okay. Okay. Okay.”

Freddy hung up the phone and leaned carefully back against the headboard. The bed groaned. He raised his left knee, examined the saucer-size abrasion, and picked up the pair of six-inch tweezers from the nightstand. They looked tiny and thin in his hand. Biting his lip, he removed another small gray flake of stone from his knee and dropped it on the nightstand.

“Ouch,” he said. He had been cleaning his wounds all afternoon and into the night, picking them clean a speck at a time. Freddy looked at the collection of rock flakes, grains of sand, and unidentified deleterious matter, all of which had been embedded in his skin. He put down the tweezers, opened and swallowed another can of beer. Arsenio Hall was delivering a silent monologue on the television, talking and laughing, wearing this shiny plastic leisure suit.

“Shut up,” Freddy said. Arsenio kept on talking. Freddy shrugged, picked up the tweezers, and probed his wounded knee. He wanted to get all the rocks out before he went to sleep. In the morning he would be all scabbed over, and it would be too late.

By
eleven o'clock that night, Dickie Wicky was down two thousand dollars. The usual guys were sitting in at Zink's Club 34. Al Levin was winning modestly, as usual. Ozzie LaRose had a nice stack—playing stupid but getting lucky. Zink was quietly riding the rail, and Frank Knox seemed to be controlling more than his share of the cash. Wicky was financing the game. He looked quickly up at Crow, who had just stepped in through the doorway, then back at his cards, then he bet fifty dollars on a baby straight. Frank Knox hesitated, peered closely at his cards, and raised.

Knox was a tall, loose-jointed lawyer who played a painfully conservative game of poker. He rarely won, never lost, and could be counted on to run a bluff about once in every fifteen thousand hands. When Frank Knox raised, anybody with less than perfect cards was well advised to fold.

On some level Wicky knew this, but he was on tilt, staying in on every hand, going for the long odds, and losing heavily. He called Knox's bet, and he lost again.

Al Levin picked up the cards and shuffled.

Zink turned to Crow. “Sitting in, Joe?”

“Sure,” said Crow. He took the seat across from Wicky. Levin spread a hand of Hold 'em. Crow peeked at his two cards. Ace, king of diamonds. It looked like this was going to be his night. He bet ten dollars. Al Levin folded. Ozzie LaRose folded. Wicky called. Zink stared at his cards for several seconds, shuffled through his cash, folded.

Levin flopped three cards. Ace of hearts, three of diamonds, five of diamonds. Crow watched Wicky as the cards were turned. Wicky looked back at him, raised his short, pale eyebrows, and bet twenty. Crow raised.

On the turn, Crow caught a fifth diamond, a jack. This was almost too easy. Wicky, probably trying for another baby straight, was drawing dead. Even if he made the hand he was looking for, he had already lost to Crow's nearly perfect hand.

Unfortunately for Wicky, the four of clubs came on the river, making his baby straight. He re-raised five times before realizing that he might not have the best hand. Crow scooped a large pot, including a hastily scrawled IOU from Wicky.

Three hours later, Wicky got up from the table, mixed himself another vodka tonic, and went to sit on the sofa.

“You gonna play anymore, Dickie?” Zink asked.

Wicky shook his head. He owed Zink five hundred and Crow thirty-eight hundred. Pouring the rest of his drink into his mouth, he stood up. “I'm out of here.”

Ozzie LaRose said, “Give me a call tomorrow, Dickie. Let me know what you've got left of that Guardians stuff.”

“Okay,” Wicky said. “I think I got five units for you.”

“I'll take whatever you got.”

Crow followed Wicky to the door. “Got a minute?” They walked down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk. “You Ozzie's broker now?” Crow asked.

“He throws me a bone now and then. I'm getting him into this Galactic Guardians deal. Very hot property. He's taking the last few available units.” He put his hands in the pockets of his sport coat and squinted up at the streetlamp. “So how you doing on our deal? You pay the guy off?”

“I paid him. You owe me nineteen hundred for the extra time I put in.”

“Jesus Christ, Joe, what are you trying to do to me? What about the two K you owed me from before?”

“I told you that was used up four days ago. I put over a week into this.”

“Christ, all I asked you to do was give a guy some money.”

“Dickie, I don't have time for this shit. I told you what I was charging you. You should have complained about my rates back then. You're lucky I'm not making you pay for my car.”

“Car?”

“I damn near totaled it. Your guy has some hood after him, some guy about the size of a buffalo. I accidentally got between them.”

“You got in a fight in your car?”

“Something like that.”

“Jesus,” said Wicky, shaking his head. “Maybe we should just get the two of them together, save me ten grand.”

“Too late now. Your guy came by and picked up the check a few hours ago. Said to say thank you.”