Drawing Dead (17 page)

Shaking his head, Crow said, “A list of kids' names from the forties and fifties? How many of them do you think you're even going to find, never mind that their mothers probably already gave the comics away for the church bazaar. It'll be a waste of time.” Crow crossed his arms.

But Wicky was smiling. “Joe, you have to appreciate what a nut this Jones guy was. He didn't just make a list. He had a file on everyone he ever wrote to. He wrote down their addresses, their parents' full names, names of brothers and sisters, how many comics they had, everything! And these weren't just your average kids that read a few comic books; these were collectors. A lot of those comics are still out there, Joe, all boxed up in attics and basements, just waiting for us. And best of all, we aren't talking a few dozen names here. He had files on eight hundred names.”

“Eight hundred?”

“At least. And even if we strike out on every single one of them, we still have Jones's own twelve-million-dollar collection in the bag.”

Crow shook his head, hard, pushing back the greed that was threatening to overrun his common sense. “It sounds to me like somebody's getting ripped off.”

“Somebody's always getting ripped off. But this case is a win-win situation. Everybody comes out ahead.”

“Except for the old lady.”

Dickie was shaking his head. “It doesn't work that way, Joe. The guys that started the fund, if they hadn't discovered the collection, the old lady would have probably let it sit there till she died. She had no idea what she had. In fact, they could have bought the entire collection for a few thousand dollars if they'd wanted. The fact that they offered her a fair price tells you what kind of guys they are.”

“What kind of guys are they?”

“They're a little strange, but they know comic books. I think Franklin is the smartest guy I ever met. He lives and breathes numbers. A real gentleman. And Jefferson . . .” He shook his head, smiling. “You remember the Lava lamp? Jefferson invented it. And he was the guy who had the original idea for Pac-Man, even though he never got a dime off it. You know those Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? That was his idea too. He was sitting around one night drinking beer with the two guys that started the comic book and he came up with the idea of the turtles. They send him free copies of all their comics. He's one of the most creative minds I've ever met.”

“They sound like quite a pair.”

“They're really something. So what do you think, Joe? Do you want in?”

Wicky had demolished his burger and fries and was sucking down a second beer, staring at him. Crow sat back in the booth. “I just want my fifty-seven hundred dollars, Dickie.”

Wicky rolled his eyes and shook his head. “I can't believe what I'm

hearing, Joe. I offer you a sure thing, six figures, and you can't get your mind off a measly six K. Let me put it to you this way. I will personally guarantee you that the fund will pay off for you. If it goes sour, which it won't, I'll still pay you the six K, okay?”

“How about you pay me now?”

“I don't have it, goddamn it. I'm offering you the opportunity of a lifetime, Joe, and I'm personally guaranteeing it. Christ, I'm even buying your goddamn lunch. What more do you want from me?” He was glaring across the table, red-faced, a spot of catsup on his chin.

Crow shrugged. “Your Rolex.” He smiled and looked down at his plate. The walleye was gone, but he couldn't remember eating it. A hand appeared, and the plate slid away. Another mug of beer materialized in front of Wicky, who was trying to hold his face perfectly still. His eyes looked ready to burst.

“I'll give it back to you when the Galactic Guardians thing pays off,” Crow said. “I promise.”

Wicky lifted the beer, sipped, banged the mug down on the table not quite hard enough to spill any. He undipped the watchband, jerked it off his wrist, dropped it on the table.

“There. You satisfied?”

Crow lifted the watch. It was astonishingly heavy. He clamped it onto his wrist, checked the time.

“You lose that baby, you're out fourteen big ones, Crow.”

“Don't worry about it. I won't bet it on less than aces full of kings.”

Wicky winced and drained his beer. “You want anything else? My car? My wife?”

“I could use your car. Mine's in the shop, you know.”

“Christ, here I'm offering you the deal of a lifetime, giving you my personal guarantee, giving you my fucking Rolex President, and you want my fucking car.”

“I'm just kidding, Dickie. Relax. The watch will do me fine. First dividend I get from this Galactic thing, I give it back.”

“Yeah, right.”

“So how long will it be before I see some money?”

“Right away.”

“Like next week?”

Dickie frowned. “That's not what I meant. Be reasonable.”

“When, then?”

“Soon. All we have to do is take possession of the collection and

start selling it. You don't want to just dump it on the market, understand. Sell a few titles at a time, keep it quiet, that's how you make the money. You don't want to flood the market with top-quality comic books. But as soon as the money starts rolling in, we start dividing it up. The fund's number-one top priority is to take care of the limited partners. That means you and me and Ozzie and all the other guys I got into the deal. We get paid even before the founders. By the way, I invited them to play cards at Zink's. Give you and Ozzie a chance to meet the guys that're going to make us rich.”

“These guys play cards?”

“Sure. They love to gamble. One time Jefferson threw seventeen straight passes at the Horseshoe in Vegas. He was up sixty-three thou, so he passed the dice, walked over to the sports book, bet it all on the Cubbies. Easy come, easy go.”

“I thought you said this guy was smart.” Crow was thinking he knew how he was going to pay Charles for the “Jag-you-are.”

“Oh, he's smart. But he gets stupid behind a bet, just like anybody. Except you, of course.” Wicky grinned and winked. “You're going to like being rich, Joe. Trust me.”

It's not what you think, it's what you see—
It's not what you see, it's what you be.

—The Coldcocks, “Existentionalized”

Crow's feet hurt.
He propped them up next to Milo on the railing and let the afternoon sun warm his soles. At times, Minneapolis felt like a small town, but not when you had to walk it. Milo, his tail twitching, examined the bare human feet, sniffing each of them with tremendous concentration.

Crow was feeling sorry for himself. He had no woman, no car, and very little money. Times like these called for a cocaine fantasy, but he resisted. The fantasy, he had learned, became reality. And vice versa. He picked up one of the sheets of paper balanced on his lap and tried, again, to read it. The documents looked good, pages filled with columns of numbers, copies of news articles about the investment potential of rare comic books and baseball cards, biographical data on F. B. Franklin and T. K. Jefferson, the founders and general partners of the Galactic Guardians Fund, plus an impressive foldout page featuring a four-color bar graph projecting the value of golden-age comic books well into the next century. It was a nicely designed package, very sober and official-looking. Crow turned again to the most astonishing page of all—the one on which he had scrawled his own jagged signature. He swayed between a gambler's greedy joy at the potential windfall and the poker player's sure knowledge that you're not a winner until you're out the door with the cash in your pocket, and sometimes not even then.

He forced his mind to the more immediate and practical problem of transportation. He wouldn't have the Jag back for a couple of weeks, and maybe not even then unless he could figure out a way to pay for it. In the meantime, did he know someone who might have a spare vehicle? Only one name occurred to him: Sam O'Gara. Crow made a sour face. He hadn't called Sam in weeks. Could he pick up the phone now and ask to borrow a car? Not yet, he decided. All the shit going down in his life, he wasn't quite ready for Sam.

A banging at the door interrupted his thoughts. He pulled his feet down off the railing, let the Galactic Guardians Fund documents fall to the floor, and went to answer the door.

It was Debrowski, looking stark in black leather and red lipstick. “You got a beer?”

Crow went to the refrigerator and opened an O'Doul's. Debrowski wandered out onto the porch and sat in Crow's chair. “Hi, cat,” she said to Milo. Milo flicked his tail and squinted. Crow handed her the O'Doul's and leaned his hip against the railing.

“Dressed for action,” he said, looking at the five feet of motorcycle chain wrapped twice around her hips.

“I've got a couple business meetings tonight. I'm trying to put together a midwestern tour for the Coldcocks, and they keep running me around. Don't want to play this town, insist on playing that town, won't do outdoor—bunch of prima donnas. What the hell happened to rock and roll, anyway? I don't want to talk about it. How you doing with your buddy Dickie? He pay you?”

Crow pointed at the papers on the floor. Debrowski scooped them up and paged through.

“Comic books?” she said. “What the hell do you know about comic books?”

“Not much,” he said. “This is how Dickie has decided to pay me off.”

She flipped through the pages, frowning. “What the hell have you gotten yourself into, Crow?”

Crow cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, “there was this comic collector named John Jones—”

“John Jones? You got to be kidding me.”

“You want to hear this or not?”

“Sorry.” Debrowski crossed her arms. Crow waited for the sound of clicking chain links to subside, then told her, as best he could remember, the story of the Galactic Guardians.

Debrowski listened, asking few questions, taking tiny sips from her O'Doul's. When Crow had finished, she said, “So the idea is to rip off some old lady for her brother's comic books.”

“Something like that,” Crow said gloomily. Repeating Wicky's sales pitch had underscored its absurdity. “They say she would have just let them rot if they hadn't made her an offer.”

“Huh.” She scratched Milo behind the ears and drank the last of her beer.

“So what do
you
think?”

“You really want to know what I think?”

“Yeah,” said Crow, knowing from her tone of voice that he really didn't.

“I think you're getting sucked into the sewer. I think you'll be lucky to come back up with your pockets full of shit. I think Dickie Wicky is leading you around by the nose, and I think you're letting him do it.”

Crow searched his mind for a withering comeback. “Yeah?” he said.

“Yeah,” said Debrowski. Her “yeah” was the more convincing. She lit a cigarette and let the thick smoke trail from her nostrils.

“What was I supposed to do, break his fingers?”

“I don't know, Crow. Collection work is a little out of my area. All I know is, this Galactic Guardians thing smells a lot like eau de merde.”

Crow pulled back his left sleeve and held up the gold Rolex. “How does this smell to you?”

Debrowski shook her head. “It's not you, Crow. It stinks. You get it from Dickie?”

“Collateral.”

“Right. I hope it's real. Listen, I know a guy that's into comic books in a big way. Natch Jorgeson. Has a little shop down on Fourth, just up the street. Do me a favor and go see him, ask him what he thinks of these 'Galactic Guardians.' You want me to give him a call?”

Crow looked at the agreement he had signed. He didn't want to know any more about the Galactic Guardians. The whole deal was making him queasy. He started to tell Debrowski to forget it, but she was already on the phone, punching numbers.

“In
the first place, dude, the nums are all wrong,” said Natch, fingering his gold earring.

Crow asked, “What do you mean? Which numbers?”

“All the ones you told me, and probably the rest of'em too.” Natch paged through the Galactic Guardians prospectus and agreement. “This is some weird shit, man. People actually buy this, huh?”

“I guess they must.”

He squinted and stabbed a long-nailed forefinger toward Crow's chest. “How long you known L.D.?”

“Debrowski? Not long. About a year.”

“You two an item?”

“We're friends.”

“Yeah? She likes you, man. I could hear it in her voice. You don't know shit about comics, do you?”

Crow shook his head. He had been sitting right there when Debrowski had made the phone call to Natch, and
he
hadn't heard anything in her voice.

Natch pulled his bare feet off the countertop and stood up. He circled the end of the counter, locked the front door, and motioned Crow to follow him toward the back of the shop. “Show you something, dude.”

Natch was a thin, pale, angular creature wearing vintage bell bottoms and a T-shirt that read: HARD ROCK CAFE—MIDDLE EARTH.

Long gray-blond hair radiated out from a bald patch at the top of his head and trickled down over his shoulders. According to Debrowski, he'd been in the comic book business since the late sixties. His storefront business had survived several location and name changes—its present incarnation was called Ephemera—but it had retained that special sixties flavor. Perhaps it was a cone of strawberry incense burning somewhere among the piles of magazines, or the half- smoked joint propped behind Natch's right ear. Crow followed him past uneven stacks of comic books and magazines. Overfilled boxes were jammed into narrow, sagging shelves, and piles of assorted magazines, books, and newspapers covered the baseboards. Dust bunnies scurried for cover. Natch pushed a stack of cardboard boxes to the side, revealing a metal door. He selected a key from the ring hanging at his belt, unlocked and opened the door. An invisible cloud of cool air touched Crow's face. Natch flipped up a light switch, illuminating a bright white stairwell.