Drawing Dead (15 page)

Wicky scratched under his Adam's apple. “How do we know he's going to live up to his end of it?”

“This was your idea, Dickie. I never said I thought it was worth a damn.”

Wicky shook his head. “I'll have to get back to you on this, Joe.”

“Dickie, don't do this to me. It's not worth it.”

“I'm going to pay you, Joe. If I'd got a few good cards, I'd've maybe even paid you tonight. Only thing is, I've got my liquid assets all tied up in this Galactic Guardians deal.” Wicky frowned. “I had to tap my IRA to come up with the ten thousand you just gave away, Joe. I'm one hundred percent invested in Galactic. Opportunity of a lifetime.”

“Your lifetime, maybe. But no money for me.”

“No money for you
right now
.” He fixed his eyes on Crow's face, blue irises muddy in the yellow light. “But I'll have something for you tomorrow,” he added.

“What do you mean, 'something'?”

“I mean I'll pay you. Come by my office tomorrow. What do you say?”

“You shouldn't play cards when you're tapped, Dickie. It makes bad poker. You're into me for a total of fifty-seven hundred so far. I could use the money.”

“Lighten up, Joe. It's just a little cash-flow thing. We're all in the same boat here.”

Crow thought about being in a boat with Dickie Wicky, out on the ocean someplace. You wouldn't want to fall asleep.

“Come on by my office tomorrow. I'll buy you lunch.”

“How about I just stop by and you pay me. Then I can afford to buy my own lunch.”

“Whatever. I'll see you tomorrow, then?” Wicky smiled, cuffed him on the biceps, and moved off down the sidewalk. Crow watching until Wicky reached his Mercedes and drove off, then walked back up the stairs and rejoined the card game with the forty dollars he had left in cash. It took him nearly an hour to lose it all. He tried to sell some of Wicky's markers to Frank Knox, who had most of the cash. Knox laughed.

At
three-thirty in the morning, Dickie Wicky fumbled his way through the door of his condominium. Catfish was reclined on the sofa in her black velour bathrobe with Katoo, her cat, stretched out beside her. A zombie was hulking its way across the television screen. Catfish watched her husband close the door, shuffle into the kitchen, and mix himself a vodka and Alka-Seltzer on the rocks. The cat kept its eyes and ears trained on the master of the house. When Dickie carried his drink toward the sofa, the cat clawed its way down and wheeled itself toward the bedroom.

Catfish watched Katoo disappear, her lips pressed tight together, the corners of her mouth drawn back and down. Dickie crossed the room to the recliner and fell into it. He sipped his drink, squinted at Catfish, and belched.

“How much did you lose tonight?” she asked.

Dickie belched again. “What makes you think I lost?”

“I can tell,” she said. “You're drunk.”

“I'd be drunk either way.”

“How much did you lose?”

Dickie pressed the cold glass against his forehead. “Sixteen thousand dollars,” he said.

Catfish sat up. “What?”

“Six thousand I lost to Joe Crow; the other ten I spent on you.”

“You bought me something?”

“I bought
me
something.”

“I thought you said you spent it on
me
.” She pouted. “What did you buy?”

“I bought you.”

Catfish narrowed her eyes. “You're drunk,” she said.

Dickie drained most of his drink. “Not drunk enough,” he said. “I'm celebrating. I sold the last of the Galactic Guardians units last night. Your friends Tom and Ben should be pretty happy about that.”

Catfish was surprised. “You sold them all?” But then she wasn't. One thing Dickie was good for, he could sell anything to anybody.

“Yeah. I sold them to myself.”

“You what?”

“I figure it's about time I get to be a millionaire.” He grinned at her. “Don't you want us to be millionaires?”

“You actually bought Galactic Guardians?”

“Why not? I had to liquidate the Keogh, but it's going to be worth it. You don't get rich by squirreling it away. Got to spend it to make it. This is our chance to go ballistic, Cat. Comic books are just going to keep going up and up. And up.”

“You bought it with our money?” She thumped her chest with a fist.

“Yeah. What's the problem?”

Catfish sank back onto the sofa, shaking her head. “You bought your own story. I don't believe it. I thought I told you about those guys.”

“You did. You said we could make some easy money.”

“That's right. You made thirty percent on the units you sold, right? They gave you a hundred twenty units at two thousand each, right? Your commissions would have added up to over seventy thousand dollars. Right?”

“Seventy thousand is nothing. This deal is worth millions.”

Catfish sighed. “Dickie, Dickie, Dickie. It's a story, don't you get it? It's a paper chase. It's just a little thing Tommy came up with so we could all make some money. You were supposed to sell the story, not buy it. It's not real.”

Dickie's eyes seemed to swell. “Sure it is,” he said. “Isn't it?”

Catfish shook her head.

“How come you didn't tell me?”

Catfish smiled ruefully. “I didn't think you'd want to know. You better figure out a way to get rid of those shares, Dickie. And you better do it in a hurry, 'cause if this is like all of Tom and Ben's other deals, it's gonna blow up big-time. Do they know you bought the shares?”

“Who?”

“Tom and Ben.”

Dickie shrugged. “Probably. They get records of all the limited partners. So what?”

“So right now Tommy's got to be laughing his little Italian ass off.” “I don't get it. Since when is Jefferson an Italian name?” Catfish shook her head. “Never mind,” she said. “Have another vodka Alka-Seltzer. Mix one for me too.”

Despite its race-bred handling and spirited response, today one of Jaguar's most admired aspects is a financial one.

—Advertisement

According to Charles,
the Customer Service Specialist at Jaguar Motor Cars of Minneapolis, repairs to Crow's XJS were going to cost $4,385. It would be two days before they could get the parts and another two weeks before they could finish the bodywork. He took Crow out into the immaculate shop, where they had the car up on a lift, and showed him the damaged strut on the underside of the Jaguar.

“Jaguar parts are expensive,” Charles pointed out unnecessarily. He pronounced it
Jag-you-are
. Crow stood under the lift and stared gloomily at the twisted strut.

“You can't just straighten it out?”

Charles laughed at Crow's little joke: “Ha ha.”

Crow scowled and looked down at the spotless floor. “How much of that forty-four hundred goes toward keeping this floor clean?”

“Jaguar parts are very expensive,” Charles repeated. He seemed happy but was unable to infect Crow with his good cheer. “It's not just a matter of replacing a few parts,” he explained. “I don't know what you were doing, but it looks to me like somebody picked this vehicle up by the door, shook it, then threw it back down on the street.”

“Yeah, that's pretty much what happened,” Crow said.

Charles laughed: “Ha ha ha.” He showed Crow the other damaged parts, describing in detail the work that would have to be done.

“What about a loaner?” Crow asked.

“No problem.” Charles smiled. “I can let you have an old XJ-6. We charge our repair customers a nominal thirty dollars per day.”

The idea of letting Jaguar Motor Cars of Minneapolis have any more of his money sizzled. Crow left the shop in a dark mood. After waiting at the corner for twenty minutes, he paid eighty-five cents to squeeze into an overfilled bus and rode downtown between a twitchy young woman with a pointy nose and a beery-smelling, bug-eyed old man who bounced against him every time the bus swayed to a stop. Crow had never liked being touched by strangers. He kept thinking about Freddy Wisnesky's huge white fingers holding the Jaguar in place.

After enduring a few more blocks of public transport, Crow got off at Eighteenth Street and walked the last mile to the Mills Building. He hoped that this would be his last professional interaction with Dickie Wicky.

Janet was still working the front desk.

“Dickie told me he was going to fire you,” Crow said.

“Mr. Wicky can't fire me,” she said with a hard smile. “I'm the only one that knows what's going on here.”

“That doesn't surprise me. What's going on?”

“The usual. Sell low; buy high. Whatever runs up the gross.”

“Is Dickie in?”

“He's expecting you. Do you remember where his office is?”

“I can find it.”

Wicky was sitting on the edge of his oversize leather office chair, hunched over his desk, staring at a miniature snowstorm. From outside the glass front of his office, Crow saw him pick up the tennis- ball-size glass sphere, shake it, set it back on the center of his maroon leather desk blotter, watch the white flakes settle slowly onto a tiny plastic church.

Crow opened the door and stepped inside. Wicky jerked his head up. The whites of his eyes were red, the flesh below looked bruised. He returned his attention to the paperweight, the fingers of his right hand drumming on the blotter.

“Morning, Joe,” he said as the white flakes precipitated.

“Rough night?”

Wicky shook the paperweight again and set it aside. “I was up late.” He opened his desk drawer, took out a roll of Certs, popped two in his mouth. “Want one?”

“I just stopped by to pick up a check,” Crow said.

Wicky sagged for an instant, then lifted his shoulders, sat forward, crinkled up his eyes, and laughed. It was one of his practiced expressions, the laugh that was not a laugh. Crow had often seen him use it after losing a large pot at the card table. “Always the practical one, aren't you?” He rolled his shoulders, as if loosening up in preparation for some feat of physical strength. “So tell me, Joe, do you ever think about your future? I mean, do you ever just step back and take a good hard look at the big picture? Or do you just count today's pennies? You know, the guys with a lot of money, they all thought long-term when it counted, Joe.” He pushed back in his oversize chair, crossed his arms, wiggled his eyebrows, and crunched down on the Certs.

“Why do I get the feeling you're not going to pay me?” Crow said.

Wicky leaned forward again, pressing down on his blotter with both palms, and pushed his face halfway across the desk. His breath was minty, with undertones of funk. “I'm gonna do better than pay you, Joe. First I'm going to buy you lunch. Then I'm going to make you rich.”

Prices extended their steady upward trend during the first half of the year as the economy continued to expand. Led by huge increases in the Silver Age area, sales remained at a brisk clip throughout the marketplace. As the second half of the year began, sales above the previously achieved highs became less frequent. Sell offers began to exceed want list requests for the first time in years as the economy slipped into recession.

—
The Official Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide

“What would you do
if you had, say, a quarter-million dollars, Joe?” Wicky asked.

They were seated in one of the high-backed wooden booths at Myron's Pub. Myron's did a huge lunch business with the lawyers and stockbrokers who officed in the Mills building—a sea of gray and blue suits, hunched over plates piled high with Myron's famous fries, getting their daily dose of cholesterol.

Crow tried to ignore Wicky's question. It was a tough one to get past—questions like that tapped directly into his island fantasy. With a quarter-million dollars he could buy the island, a little boat, get his Jag fixed, and have enough left over to fill it with gasoline. He looked up at the menu, a chalkboard screwed onto the wall, and tried to decide between the steak sandwich and the walleye fillet. “How's the fish here?”

Wicky pushed out his lips. “I don't know. I always get the cheeseburger.” He looked past Crow, grinned, and waved. A waitress, big and blond, wearing a pair of eyeglasses with glittering red frames, pushed the front of her thighs against the edge of their table.

“Afternoon, Mr. Rich,” she said, flipping back a page in her order pad. “What can I do you for?” She laughed. Wicky laughed. Crow smiled painfully.

“My usual, Melly, with a martini, up, four olives, and a beer with the food.”

“You got it, Mr. Rich.” She looked at Crow. “How about yours, honey?” She winked.

“I'll have the walleye. And a Coke.”

They watched Melly move away, her big hips swinging gracefully. “They know me here,” Wicky said.

Crow rested his big hands on the table and watched Wicky's face, saying nothing.

“So, Joe, how's it going with your girlfriend?” Wicky asked. “What's her name again?”

“Who?” The image of Catfish Wicky flashed across his retinas.

“What's her name? Doberman?”

Crow sighed. “You mean Debrowski. She's a friend, not my girlfriend.”

Wicky's martini materialized on the table, followed a nanosecond later by Crow's Coke. Neither man looked up.

“And she's fine,” Crow said.

“She seems like a nice person.” Wicky lifted his martini, saluted, and drained half the glass in one swallow.

“She's a very nice person.”

“I can always tell.” Wicky fished out two olives with his soft little fingers and pushed them into his mouth. Crow watched as the alcohol brought color flooding back into Wicky's nose and cheeks. Wicky chewed his olives and smiled. “So what do you think you'd do with a few hundred thousand bucks, Joe?”