Plainclothes Naked (35 page)

Manny nodded and backed away. “Well, think happy thoughts. I have to make some calls, then we go down to the station. You don’t think your partner’s gonna stage some Steven Seagal rescue thing, do you?”

“Tony? Help somebody else?” McCardle laughed sourly, and Manny was struck all over again by how much his insouciant grin evoked the prime-of-life Martin, Dino in his Celebrity Roast days. “Not fucking likely.”

“Just making sure.”

Unless he was driving, Manny could not stay seated and talk on the telephone. He was a terminal pacer. As he dialed his answering machine, he crunched back and forth over the broken glass in a pair of Marvin’s open-toe sandals. Tina marched by with an armful of broken sink, shaking her head, and Manny gave her an apologetic shrug. She stopped on the way back, listening to the shouts coming out of the receiver.

“Who the hell is that?” “Mayor Marge.”

“Doesn’t
she
sound happy.” “Very. She called eleven times.”

“Wow.” Tina stooped to tie the drawstrings dangling around his waist. “She must miss you huh?” She pulled the drawstring extra tight.

“
Ooof
... .” “Too snug?” “Kind of.”

Manny found it oddly arousing, but decided not to broadcast it. For her part, Tina had to smile, taking in the vision of Manny

Rubert, cockmonster and sensitive detective, decked out in orange yoga-wear. “You know,” she said, “you shave your head, grow a pigtail,

I’m guessing you could mop up at airports. There aren’t a whole lot of badass Hare Krishnas.”

Not sure how to take this, Manny held up the cell phone to show he was busy. “You don’t mind, I’ve got some stuff to deal with.You can insult me later. Why don’t you go off and cry a little? Get your eyes red.”

“Excuse me?”

“You should at least
look
like a grieving widow. Now please... .”

But Tina didn’t move. “Oh, gosh, am I in the way? You can come over and destroy my home, but don’t let me bother you when you’re making a phone call. For your information, fucker, I’m grieving on the inside.”

Even as Tina spoke, part of her was thinking:
I must love this guy, it’s so much fun giving him shit.
Still, she saw the strained expression on Manny’s face and lightened up. “I’m not as cold-blooded as you think, okay? This is how I do sadness, I get sarcastic.” She thought about giv ing him a hug, but decided against it. Not with McCardle on the couch. “So Mayor Marge has some problems, huh?”

“Two, as a matter of fact.” By now Manny was fighting for breath, and clawed at the knotted drawstrings. It felt like he was trapped in a napkin ring. “Her personal assistant, Lipton,” he gasped, “the guy she called about earlier, he’s still missing. Only now she’s—
man, I can hardly breathe!
—she’s frantic. She’s called, like, nine times.”

Tina pushed his hands away and had a go at the drawstring. The knot untied instantly. “What’s her other problem?”

Manny took a gulp of air. “I never call her back.”

They both turned when McCardle, who’d been more or less doz ing, jumped to his feet and began swatting the air in front of him. “Bats...
Yeesh!
. . . SHOO!
SHOO
!!” Then he fell back on the couch in a tense hunch, exhausted. In another second he was snoring.

Tina beamed. “It’s so cute, the way his little feet don’t even touch the floor. Anything else happening in cop-land?”

“Well, that’s the bizarre part.” Manny stuffed the cell phone in his jacket pocket. “I actually got another call from Lipton.”

“The missing link. What’s he want?”

“I don’t know, but he sounds hysterical. We have to split. We should be getting down to the station. Wake up mini-Dean.”

“I’m not asleep,” McCardle called from the couch. “I’m restin’ my nerves.”

“My mistake.”

Tina grabbed Manny’s arm. “Wait a second. You want
me
to come?

To the
police
station?”

“As my
guest
. You think I’d let you stay here alone? You saw Zank.

He’s psychotic
and
he’s hyper. That’s a bad combo.”

“He’s more stupid than anything. Did you catch the way he jumped on those Polaroids?”

Manny held a finger to his lips. He nodded toward McCardle, who was now drooling. He didn’t appear to be listening, but you never knew.

“That’s the thing about making plans,” said Manny, keeping his voice low. “A guy as wrong as Zank comes along and fucks ’em up, and they end up working out even better. It’s almost cosmic.”

“It is,” said Tina. “God’s probably just a bored five-year-old with A.D.D.”

“That explains everything. Anyway, this saves us having to run back to Roos to develop the disposable. Tony probably won’t come back here, but you never know. What he’s probably doing is running around tryin’ to sell pictures of my nuts.”

“I’d buy one, if you signed it.” “Nasty is as nasty does,” said Manny “You make that up?”

“No, my grandfather used to say it.”

“Huh. My granddaddy was a little different. He used to say, ‘Lift up your dress, Candy-pants. Show Pap-Pap some of that pink sugar.’ ”

“Jesus... .”

Tina sighed, and Manny wondered if he was supposed to share some monstrous confidence of his own. He’d have said anything to make her feel better. “My mother made me cuddle nude till I was twelve.... In seventh grade, I let a priest slap himself in the face with my penis for twenty dollars. . . .” But when he finally got the gump tion to meet her eyes, she seemed fine, apparently free of fallout from her remembered trauma. Which made him wonder: Did it mean any thing that the first woman he felt he could actually love was some kind of serious sexual abuse victim? No doubt this accounted for the alter

nating currents of tenderness and anger that seemed to sizzle through her, so you never knew if she was going to snuggle up or say some thing that made you feel like an idiot. And yet. . . . The truth was, he felt more comfortable knowing Tina’d survived some supremely horrific shit. It meant he would not have to hide the supremely hor rific shit he’d been through himself. Penile priest-slapping was the least of it....

Beyond all that, Manny could not stop obsessing on the word
candy-pants.
Just thinking it set off little pleasure bombs in his head, and he fought a guilty urge to make her say it again.

Get a grip,
he told himself, and pointed at McCardle. “Be careful waking up His Nibs. Guy coming off a monstro crack binge, he’s bound to be a tad cranky.”

Tina ripped the filter off a fresh Viceroy and nodded. “Gotcha.”

Taking no chances, she went into the kitchen and returned with a vacuum cleaner. Planting herself halfway across the living room, she poked him in chest with the lint attachment.

“Hey Mr. Universe, up and at ’em.”

McCardle blinked, as if he wasn’t sure where he was but knew he didn’t want to be there. Tina held him at vacuum length while Manny yelled into his phone. “I said,
WHERE ARE YOU, LIPTON?
You sound like you’re in a closet ... You
are
in a closet? Fine, that helps, but I need an address. There are a lot of closets in this town, that’s the crazy thing about it.”

Manny covered the mouthpiece and rolled his eyes. “The poor guy’s in shock.” Then he went back to shouting. “Lipton? LIPTON! You still there? Good. Listen to me, I need a street where the car was stolen. Gimme a store, an apartment building, anything. . . . The what? The Bundthouse Arms? That’s where you are?
What?
Calm down. I said calm down, damn it! I’ll be there.” Manny began to yell even louder. “
What?
I don’t know. As soon as I can. . . . Lipton? LIPTON!
Shit.
”

Manny snapped the phone shut. Tina raised an eyebrow. “So?” “So he’s out of his mind, in the Stink District, where the slaughter

houses used to be. Great part of town if you own a gas mask.”

“If it’s such a shithole, why would the mayor’s assistant be there?” “I have no idea, but I hope he’s comfy, ’cause it’s gonna be a while

till the cavalry arrives. We gotta get to the station.” He turned to their de facto prisoner. “Ready, Mac? The cuffs okay?”

Shocked out of his stupor, McCardle simply stared, his mouth mak ing abortive attempts at speech. His tongue skidded over his lower lip, as if struggling for traction.

“For Christ’s sake, Mac... .”

Manny and Tina ran to the sofa and helped him up. Wedged between them, the addled weight lifter moved in a dazed, splay-footed shuffle toward the door and continued sputtering.

“Spit it out,” Manny told him. “We don’t have much time.”

But McCardle only gaped, his eyes darting and frantic.
“Zank’s,”
he finally managed.

“What’s Zank’s?” Tina asked, but Manny was losing patience. “Forget it, he’s tweaking.”

Manny handed her the keys. “Unlock the car. I’ll bring Crack-man in a second.”

“Does this mean I’ve been deputized?”

“I’m not sure that’s what I’d call it,” Manny replied. Then McCar dle started babbling again and Tina stayed to watch.

“Zank’s,” he ranted, slamming his cuffed hands off his forehead, hopping around in a way that reminded Manny of Rumpelstiltskin. They were about the same size. “Where Zank is,
where Zank is!
”

“Where Zank is, huh?” Manny’d booked a zillion pipeheads. The harder they tweaked, the steadier you needed to be to deal with them. “I don’t know where Zank is. Probably out crippling the weak. Just relax, okay?You’ll be all right as long as you shut up.You want, I can hit you in the head with something, knock you out. Might make the ride easier. Your call.”

“No, no,
no!
” cried McCardle, emerging into something like coher ence. “You don’t understand!”

Manny grabbed him by both shoulders. “I understand fine, okay? I understand if you don’t calm down, it’s ’cause you want me to take a blunt object to your skull. It’s not the kind of thing I like to do, but if it makes you happy, I’ll go along. But only ’cause I like you.”

McCardle lapsed into stunned silence. Tina killed her cigarette. “You can be a cold son of a bitch,” she said, without sounding par

ticularly upset about it.

After Tina finally headed to the car, Manny hung back with McCardle, who’d started to spasm again. His teeth sounded like cuff links in a spin dryer. Manny dug in the side pocket of his yoga pants, unearthed the pair of soggy pills he’d retrieved from his soaking trousers, and offered them to the crack-damaged felon.

“Codeine,” Manny told him. “It’s still good, just a little mushy.

Takes the edge off.”

Offended, McCardle frowned at the drugs and raised his eyes. “No way, man. That shit’s
addictive!
”

The idea came to Manny as they passed the Parakeet Lounge. McCardle, who’d been bouncing on the seat since Manny’d locked him in, seized up at the sight of the place.
‌

“Scene of the crime, huh, buddy?”

This perked up Tina. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You don’t watch TV? Macky here’s a celeb. Got that Hollywood mug on
America’s Most Wanted.
Am I right?”

McCardle slunk lower in his seat as Manny slowed beside the bar, a powder-blue storefront with a yellow-and-green neon parakeet, dead in the daytime, perched over the entrance.

Tina wiped a porthole in the unwashed passenger window and peered out. “Isn’t that a gay bar?”

“Only one in town. But we don’t judge,” said Manny. “The Skankmobile is a judgment-free vehicle. Whatever goes on between consenting pervs is okay by me.”

They watched a pair of pigeons roost on the neon parakeet, and Manny smiled over his shoulder. “Of course, I don’t know if the boy Mac here wanged with a shovel actually consented. But who knows? Maybe he begged for it. Maybe he was one of those crazy shovel-freaks, and things got out of hand.”

“Go ahead, make fun,” McCardle whined, scratching his nose with his plasti-cuffs. “It’s not your keister about to get fried. Bad enough I gotta go through what I’m about to go through, I gotta have some white sumbitch with a pompadour on the TV talkin’ about it. No offense.”

“None taken,” said Manny, steering away from the bar. “Sometimes I’m ashamed to be a white man myself. Thing is, Mac, there’s a way you could get your ass out of this shit.”

“Which part of this shit you talkin’ ’bout my ass gettin’ out of ?” “The getting-on-TV part, for starters. But I wouldn’t be surprised

if you walked. Period.”

McCardle sighed. “Your gratuitous barbarity is uncalled for.” Then he slammed back in the seat and pouted. “Why you wanna do me like ’at?”

Manny met his eyes in the rearview. “Is it me, Mac, or are you some kind of a schiz? Half the time you sound straight outta Compton, the other half I’m thinking, ‘This guy majored in humanities at Dartmouth and he’s keeping it under his hat.’ ”

“Now you be talkin’ just like Zank. Maybe I got dual citizenship.” “Nicely put,” said Manny, switching lanes. “I’m no stranger to identity crisis. I’m a cop, and I don’t like cops. But because I’m a cop, people who aren’t cops don’t like
me.
It’s no picnic.” Manny cleared his throat. “But enough about my little problems. What I’m saying is, you don’t necessarily have to end up on national TV. Not if you don’t want to. Though what I hear, once you make it onto
AMW,
you’re a

big man in the joint.”

“That’s great,” sneered McCardle. “Problem is, people in
law enforcement,
all them DAs, are so down with that show, they’ll jack up your sentence just to kiss John Walsh’s balls. Some no-name do what I do, maybe he gets twelve to life, gets sprung in eight and change. But they flash your face on
America’s Most Wanted,
don’t matter
what
you did, they’ll give you five lifes consecutive. Shit, they’ll give you the goddamn chair, just so’s that dude can get on TV and
brag
on your dead ass.”

Manny laughed. “Call me a party-poop, you did kill a guy. But like I say, in this car we don’t judge. I’m just telling you, pal, you wanna go for it, I’m giving you a way to improve your situation.”