Plainclothes Naked (39 page)

There was no way he could stay in the Pawnee Lodge. Not now! This was a bad idea to begin with. He’d killed a lady in the next room.
What was he thinking?
Sometimes he didn’t know what his brain was saying until he smoked some crack and it started yelling at him.

“Okay,” he said, trying not to piss himself off. “Okay, be quiet, I’m

leaving
. Shut the fuck
UP!
”

He spun back to the dresser and squooshed all the rocks back into vials. Before a run, he liked to handle his shit. After the crack was stashed, he slid the pipe in his sock, retrieved the .357, and scooped up the keys to the Saab. He rushed to the door, opened it a sliver, and checked the room one last time. That’s when he realized he had no pants on.

“Close call,” he muttered, and moved jerkily back inside. The pants weren’t anywhere he could see, so he looked under the bed.
No.
Maybe she’d thrown them in the closet.
No.
Maybe the bathroom.
No.

Did he already check under the bed? No!
No, No, No, NO NO NO NO!

Naked from socks to navel—he hated underpants, they chafed— Zank paced in tight circles in the center of the room. He squeezed his hands into fists, mashed them into his pan-fried eyeballs, and moaned. Then he opened his eyes again, to see if he was still in hell.

“Stole your pants,”
a voice from the TV giggled. Tony looked over his shoulder. The TV wasn’t on.

“Stole your pants,”
screeched the tube again.
“Bitch stole your pants.”

“Shut
UP!”

Tony hoisted the .357 and blew the screen to a thousand pieces. A puff of tinkling smoke filled the motel room.

“Teach you to mess with me!” he said.

Fuck the pants
. It wasn’t like he needed to stop for anything. He had his big-ass Colt Python and a batch of crack. What else did he need?

He just had to make it back to his pad and call some big-time Republicans, and the future was his.

Manny found Tina outside the station, chatting with Stuey the Hunchback and nibbling a pretzel. She had one arm slung over the deformed mound of his shoulder.
‌

“Stuey used to double-date with Brando,” Tina said, while the vendor beamed up at her.

“We did a lot of bowling,” Stuey crowed, swiping a rag over the top of his cart. “Lotta people don’t know this, but Marlon coulda gone pro.”

“Tough call,” said Manny. “Do I go with the greatest-actor-of-my-generation thing, or do I stick with the ten pins?”

“Manny does nothing but mock,” Stuey told her sadly. He threw down the rag and began pumping French’s mustard from a jumbo tub into a plastic squeeze bottle. “A man hates himself, he can’t be nice

to nobody else. You got such nice kaboolies, whyn’t you forget him and let me take care of you?”

Tina dropped the pretzel in the trash and smiled. “Only if I get my own cart.”

The Impala was across the street, and Manny had to kick the pas senger door to get it open. “You know,” Tina said as she got in, “I can’t decide if we’re
Bonnie and Clyde
or
Starsky and Hutch
.”

“Probably
Bonnie and Hutch
,” he said. “One more stop, then we unload the goods and get comfy.”

“So should I ask how it went with Mac and the police chief ?” “It was pretty much what you’d imagine.”

Tina watched Manny reach under the seat for his prescription bot tle. He tapped out three pills, crunched them dry, then popped three more. He saw her looking as he shoved the bottle back under the seat. “When this is over, I’m gonna cut this stuff out.”

“You talking to me or you?”

Manny didn’t answer. He slammed into
DRIVE
and skidded into traffic.

“You don’t mind my saying so,” Tina continued, “for a guy who’s supposed to be a cop, you seem to pretty much do what you want.”

“It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta fuck it up. Anyway, I don’t see you doing much nursing.”

“Personal leave. You want, I can put on the uniform. What I hear, a lot of guys like that. So where we going?”

Ahead of them, a line of cars stopped at an intersection. Manny made a quick left into an alley and floored the Impala, dodging pot holes and garbage cans. “
I’m
going to Tony Zank’s. Our pal McCardle was nice enough to tell me where it is, and it turns out that’s where Lipton’s been calling from. But I can drop you anywhere. I just want you off the streets while Tony’s on the warpath. By now he’s gonna know McCardle gave him up, so he has to figure we know his moves. Where he lives, and all the rest of it.”

“The guy didn’t strike me as the logical type.”

“There’s logic and there’s logic.” Manny reached in the back for a thick sheaf of papers, stapled at the top, and tossed it on the seat between them. “I grabbed the guy’s jacket. Often as he’s been popped, there’s not a whole lot anybody could make stick. He did a jolt for

burglary, assault, minor possession. But none of the people he really tore up—I mean the ones who weren’t dead—ever wanted to show up in court and talk about it.”

“How surprising.”

Manny took a left wide and Tina was thrown against him. She stayed with her hand on his thigh an extra second, then straightened up. “To go around that crazy, you gotta be smart,” Manny said. “A cat like Zank learns young. Far as anybody can tell he killed his old man, but the only person who could testify against him was his mother, and

she gave him his alibi.”

“And he
still
throws her out a window. Whatever happened to grat itude?”

“Right. You want me to leave you anywhere special?”

“And let you keep those swanky yoga pants? I don’t think so.” Manny contemplated her before speaking. “Tina, let’s cut the bull

shit, okay? If Lipton’s in Zank’s pad, then he’s in it as deep as anybody. But if we’re gonna make a move with Mister Biobrain, we need to know the back story. Lipton’s the missing piece.”

“Yeah, and?”

“And something seriously bad could go down, that’s all. Zank is a major piper. He hears voices telling him to buy a steak knife and X out pretty white girls, it could be a shitstorm. I don’t want you in it.”

Tina beheaded another Viceroy and flipped the cigarette to her lips. Manny lit her up. She exhaled a slow train of smoke and stared out the passenger window. In spite of himself, Manny felt a pang of desire. If there was anything sexier in the known universe than Tina smoking a Viceroy, he hadn’t seen it yet. He had to force himself to watch the road.

“I can’t leave you,” she said at last, tossing the lipsticked cigarette out of the car half smoked. “Somebody has to make sure you don’t blow up another sink. You’ve got to be stopped.”

“Tina,” Manny began, then let his voice trail off. He made the turnoff toward the river and drove in silence. The Impala crawled past blocks of abandoned meat-processing plants toward the unlikely apart ment building. By the time they were close enough to see the faded letters spelling BUNDTHOUSE ARMS, the stench had penetrated the closed windows. He parked a hundred feet past the door, killed the

engine, and turned to her again. “I’m gonna give you the car keys, okay? Take off. I’m not asking. If I need a ride, I’ll call you.”

“What if you need a ride in a hurry?” “I’ll dial fast.”

Something in his eyes told her not to argue and she held out her hand. Manny dropped the keys in her palm, then folded his own hand over hers. The codeine was kicking back in and he felt that opiated itch to get intimate. Though maybe it wasn’t the codeine. “This isn’t my style,” he confided, “but I want to tell you something.”

Tina met his gaze. “Go ahead.”

“Okay, listen. The reason I don’t want you going up there with me? I’ve got this total fear of being shot in the spine and ending up some kind of dead-from-the-neck-down hump in a wheelchair.” He cleared his throat. “What I’m saying is, if that happens, I’ll need you alive. I don’t want anybody giving me baths but you.”

Tina grabbed the keys. “Is that your idea of romantic? You fucking asshole, get out of the car before I cripple you myself.”

She slid behind the wheel while he gathered himself on the side walk. “Just remember. If you do end up paraplegic, I’ll use your face as a seat cushion.”

“Promise?”

“Definitely,” she said sweetly, “but only when I have company.” Manny watched her roar off down the street, in love all over again.

Once, at the flaming height of indian summer, Manny’d stumbled on two half-decayed bodies in a Tit-ville garage. It was a double suicide, weeks old, and the stench hit him like a fist. He had to shove mud up his nose to keep from throwing up. Thirty seconds in Zank’s apartment and the suicide garage seemed like a happy memory, meadow fresh compared to the rank miasma that made every breath in Chez Zank as gut-churning as a gulp of sewage.
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The smell was so stupefying, he didn’t even notice Lipton’s cries. He was overcome. Then he heard them, faintly at first, then louder. The model-handsome may oral assistant was keening.

Manny’s head cleared, and he swam his way deeper into the apartment, into the bedroom. He found

Lipton in the closet, fully fetal under an army blanket, his peroxide-blond hair pasted to his head. His Armani jacket was badly stained and his crisp white shirt had wilted. When Manny pulled him out, he could barely stand.

“Lipton, Jesus, what the fuck are
you
doing here?”

“I broke in,” Lipton sobbed. “And then, oh God, I got trapped with a dead puppy. He’s got a really cute, really dead puppy in there!”

Manny gripped his shoulder. “Try not to lose it, okay?”

The bedroom was no more than a mattress dumped on a molting carpet, strewn with sex mags. Most, as far as Manny could tell, featured “anal” in the title.
Anal Antics, Asian Anal, Anal Cheerleaders.
Even
Senior Anal,
which he first misread as
Señor.

“Would you listen to me?” Lipton pleaded. “He’s got a deceased pet in the
closet!
”

Before Manny could tear his eyes away from the Anals, Lipton let out a cry and threw a shoe box at his feet. Manny’d never seen him like this. As long as he’d known him, the Brit had never appeared anything less than debonair. He patterned himself as a kind of peroxide Tony Randall. Mannered, suave, impeccably attired. Lipton was the perfect complement to Mayor Marge’s iron blandness. Now here he was, rocking back and forth on the floor of Tony Zank’s meat-stink bed room, hugging himself and babbling.

Manny kicked the lid off the shoe box. There was indeed a cuddly puppy corpse jammed inside teeming with maggots. Lipton let out a hysterical giggle.

“What are you doing here?” Manny asked quietly, dropping the lid back on the box and kicking it aside. There was no point in even
attempting
to deal with this right now. Not with Lipton still giggling and sobbing. In movies, the hero slapped hysterical characters across the face. In Manny’s experience, all a slap did was make them mad
and
hysterical. What he liked to do was scream in their ears. Which is what he did, squatting beside Lipton, leaning close, and shouting “CALM DOWN!” at the top of his lungs.

This did the trick. Manny led the shaken assistant into what passed for the living room: a scarred coffee table and green-plaid couch so rid dled with burn holes it looked like it had been strafed by machine gun fire.

“Sit down,” said Manny, and Lipton dutifully lowered himself to the one good cushion, stopping long enough to wrinkle his nose and remove a pair of burnt bottlecaps and a furry pizza slice. Manny won dered if furniture could grow gangrene.

“I can’t believe this,” Lipton sniffed. “How does he live?” “Doesn’t matter how he lives. It’s his house,” said Manny. “Ever

hear of breaking and entering?” “But Tony’s a thief !”

“Thieves have rights, too. This is America. You wanna tell me what you’re doing here or you wanna go downtown? I’m sure Mayor Marge would be happy to provide you with a lawyer.”

“Mayor Marge!”
Lipton grabbed Manny’s hand. “Is there a problem?”

Manny freed himself and picked his way through the empty Iron Cities and KFC buckets to the window. He tried to wrench it open, and nearly threw his back out before giving up.

“Painted shut,” he said, hopscotching through the carpet rot back to the couch. “You still haven’t answered me.”

Lipton played with his hair, trying to shape it in approximation of its former splendor. “Tony stole something of Marge’s.”

“I don’t remember her filing a report.” “It’s not that kind of something.” “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Tony stole a photograph that belonged to her, all right?” Lipton smoothed down his shirt, rubbing at a fresh brown stain over the pocket. “She sent me to get it back.”

“She did, huh? It wouldn’t be anything like a picture of our beloved President smiling at his own balls, which happen to have a happy face drawn on them, would it? With Mayor Marge down in the right-hand corner rooting him on?”

Lipton clamped his hand over his mouth. “You
know?
”

Manny stared at him, expressionless, until Lipton couldn’t take it and started babbling.

“Okay, don’t look at me like that! You probably know all this already. There’s a congressional seat opening up because of redistrict ing, and Marge wants it.”

“So?”

“So, the Heinz family gave a quarter million dollars to the Repub lican party. They wanted to get one of H. J.’s heirs, some character named Melton, out of the ketchup business, which he’s apparently run ning into the ground. So they thought they’d put him in Congress. For their ‘contribution,’ the party will back him, supply endorsements, even fly in a couple of trophy Republicans, like William Bennett, to talk about his character. There’s not even going to be a Democrat opponent. Maybe the Heinz people bought
them
off, too. I don’t understand the American system.”

“What’s that have to do with my ex-wife?”