52 Pickup (24 page)

“My mind is clear, man,” Alan said. “Think about it a minute. How am I going to tell you with Leo sitting there? I called you later, you were gone. I called Doreen's, nobody answered.”

“She was home.” Bending his wrist, Bobby raised the trajectory of the revolver and shot two birds off a mobile hanging to Alan's left.

“All right, maybe she was home. I'm saying nobody
answered
, for Christ sake.”

The barrel shifted past Alan to ten o'clock. Bobby squeezed the trigger and shattered the globe of a mood lamp hanging from the wall.

“You could be shooting into the next room, for Christ sake!” Alan said. “What if you hit somebody!”

Bobby sprung open the cylinder of the .38 and began reloading it, taking the cartridges from his coat pocket. “I'm going to hit somebody, you don't say what the man offer us. Last call,” he said, snapping the revolver closed and putting it squarely on Alan. “How much?”

“You know as well as I do,” Alan said. “Fifty-two thousand.”

Bobby Shy smiled. “Don't you feel better now?”

“Look,” Alan said, “how was I going to tell you if I can't find you?”

“Tell me now, I'm listening.”

“All right, the man made us an offer. Fifty-two thousand, all he can afford to pay.”

“You believe it?”

“I looked at his books,” Alan said. “Yes, I believe him. The way he's got his dough tied up he can't touch most of it. He offers fifty-two. All right, let's take it while he still believes it'll save his ass. But—here's what we're talking about—what do we need Leo for?”

“I don't see we ever needed him.”

“Leo spotted the guy. He did that much. But now he's nervous, Christ, you don't know what he's going to do next.”

“So me and you,” Bobby said, “we split the fifty-two.”

Alan nodded. “Twenty-six grand apiece.”

“And we go together to pick it up.”

“And we go together to hit the guy, whether we do it then or later.”

“All this time,” Bobby Shy said, “what's Leo doing, watching?”

“Leo's dead. I don't see any other way.”

Bobby Shy thought about it. “Yeah, he could find out, couldn't he?”

“We can't take a chance.”

“Man's too shaky, ain't he?”

“Do it with the guy's gun,” Alan said. “How does that grab you?”

“Tell Leo we want to use it on the man.”

“Right. He hands it to you.”

“I guess,” Bobby Shy said, “seeing he's a friend of yours, you want me to do it.”

“Not so much he's a friend,” Alan said, “as you're the pro.” He grinned at Bobby Shy. “Don't tell me how you're going to do it. Let me read it in the paper and be surprised.”

IT WAS THE NEXT DAY THAT ALAN PANICKED.

He came out of the men's room and there they were, a patrolman and a plainclothesman he knew right away was a cop, standing by the door to his office. So he walked down the aisle and took a seat and watched the last fifteen minutes of
Going Down on the Farm
, now in its Second Smash Week. Saved by his bladder.

Maybe the plainclothesman was on the vice squad and they were cracking down on dirty movies again. That was a possibility. Or maybe they were selling Police Field Day tickets to local merchants. Yeah, or they were here to give him a good citizenship award. Bull
shit
, Mitchell had changed his mind, hit by his straight-A conscience, and blown the whistle. That had to be it. After only a couple minutes of thinking about it, Alan was convinced Mitchell had gone to the cops. As the picture ended and some of the audience began to leave, Alan moved down the aisle to
the fire exit and went out that way, into the alley.

He got away from there in a Michigan Bell telephone repair truck, a Chevy van, that was parked near the end of the alley with the key in the ignition. He drove out North Woodward for no reason other than it was the quickest way to get some distance.

But within a few miles he began to calm down and think about it again. Maybe the cops weren't after him. Maybe they really were from the vice squad. Every other year or so there was a crackdown on porno movies. No explicit sex within five feet of them actually doing it. No front shots of guys, though beavers were all right. Alan hated censorship. He hated himself a little now for running. He should have somehow found out what they wanted. Call and see if they talked to anybody. But was he really running? Or was he going this way for a reason? His instinct telling him what to do before his head even realized it. Like everything was clear and simple and he knew all the time what he was going to do. Why not? Put the plan to work that he'd been thinking about. A little luck wouldn't hurt; but if his timing was off he could always improvise, or try it tomorrow or the next day. The plan in general would work, one way or another.

He turned off Woodward into downtown
Royal Oak, took the telephone company truck up to the top of a municipal parking structure and left it there. He'd pick up something else on the way out, something a little sportier.

At the pay phone by the entrance he dialed Mitchell's home number. He listened to Barbara say hello three times, then hung up. He dialed a local number next.

“Hey Richard, how you making it? Alan. Listen, I'm out your way, Bobby asked me to pick him up some scag . . . . Man, I don't know. That's what he said, scag. Maybe he's changing his habits or it's for a friend, I don't know . . . . Yeah . . . No, he'll pay you next time. Bet on it, you know Bobby . . . . At the parking thing in town . . . Man, the big fucking five-story parking lot whatever the fuck you call it building  . . .Yeah, I'll be up on top.”

Alan went down the street to a drug store and paid a buck forty-seven for a package of ten Plastipak disposable U-80 Insulin syringe/needle units.

By the time he got back to the roof of the parking structure, Richard the dealer was there. Alan didn't see him—skinny young black guy with a big grin and a newspaper folded under one arm—until he stepped out of the med panel truck that had
SUPER-RITE DRUGS
painted on the side in white letters along with an RX prescription symbol.

“Jesus,” Alan said, “nobody will ever say you don't have some kind of a fucking sense of humor.”

“It's a touch,” the dealer said, grinning. “I seen the truck in the used-car lot. I said, man, I got to have it.”

“In your name?”

“Shit, my cousin's name. He still in the slam.”

“Bobby's got to see it,” Alan said. “Too fucking much.”

“Yeah, Bobby have something to say. Speaking of Bobby.” He handed Alan the folded newspaper. “Shit never been his pleasure, but as you say, maybe it's for some chickie friend. You need anything for yourself?”

Alan took the envelope out of the newspaper and folded it into his pocket. “You have it in the truck?”

“No man, but I can get it right now.”

“I got to be somewhere,” Alan said. “In fact, I'm late.” He paused a moment. “Hey, you wouldn't let me use your truck, would you?”

“Use my truck—how'd you get here?”

“Guy dropped me off. Listen, it's a long story. What I got to do is see a man wants to buy some smoker movies. Take me about a half-hour at the most.”

The dealer wasn't sure and wasn't grinning now. He said, “The man live around here?”

“Over in Southfield. He wants to buy some movies, you know, for his club; but he's got some old equipment and he doesn't know if it's any good. I got to look at it. Half-hour's all, Richard. You don't have any stuff in the truck, do you?”

“It's clean.”

“Then what're you worried about? It isn't even in your name.”

“I got a piece in there.”

“So keep it there,” Alan said. “You want to stand on the roof of the fucking parking lot with a piece in your hands?”

“You want to get stopped with it?”

“Stopped for what? I'm a very careful driver, obey all the traffic regulations. I'm not worried about the piece. I don't even know where it is, I don't want to know. All I want to do is to see a guy.”

“Something I don't like,” the dealer said.

“What don't you like? Richard, hey, go have a cup of coffee or something, I'll be back in half an hour. No shit, scout's honor.”

That's how Alan got the panel truck with
SUPER-RITE DRUGS
written on the side. That was also how he got the piece, another Lucky Jackpot of the Year Award for clean living. It wasn't in the glove compartment—which he had to bust open, snapping the lock with a screwdriver—it was up under the instrument panel, hanging there in a
wool sock: a kind of automatic he had never seen before, a cheap little Saturday night gun without a name or number, but it had nine live ones in the clip and that's what counted.

It was turning out to be a good day.

* * *

It was, in fact, the first warm sunny day in almost a month: a clear sky finally, now that it was the middle of May, temperature in the high sixties. The touch of wind was cool, but the stockade fence held off the gusts that came across the yard and it was almost hot on the patio.

Barbara reclined in a lounge chair with the backrest set low, her eyes closed, her face raised to the sun. The first good hot feel of sunshine in three months, since Mexico. She wore a yellow bikini that once had been her daughter's. With her flat-sunken stomach, firm thighs and trace of the winter-vacation tan, her body seemed made for the bikini. But she had a feeling about wearing one and she put it on only for backyard sunning or if she was off somewhere with Mitch, alone.

Lying there she thought of Mitch. She thought of the girl and wondered what she had looked like. No, she couldn't do that. She thought of Mitch again and hoped he was at the plant and if she called him
he would answer. But she didn't get up to call. Mitch handled matters his own way. She would have to be patient and wait, not nagging or pleading or telling him to be careful. If you want him, she thought, that's the way he is. And she wanted him.

She thought about the house and having the storms taken off and the windows washed and the lawn cut and fertilized and the swimming pool cleaned out. She tried to think of the name of the pool maintenance company they had called last year. Aqua something. Aqua-Queen—

“You got a nice navel.”

Her eyes opened abruptly. The sun was on a line over his shoulder, a halo behind him, and for a moment until she shielded her eyes, she could not see his face clearly.

“I like a nice deep navel in a little round tum-tum,” Alan said. “Please don't move, lady, till I tell you to.”

She had started to push up out of the chair, swinging her legs to the side away from him. She stopped as he took the newspaper from under his arm, opened one fold and showed her the gun inside.

“You see it?” He folded the newspaper, putting it under his arm again. “Now you don't. But you know where it is.”

Barbara stared at him. “What do you want?”

“You remember me? Silver Lining Accounting
Service.” Alan smiled. “What was the line? We make a mistake we eat it. Something like that.”

“I know who you are,” Barbara said. “I know what you are.”

“So I don't have to introduce myself and give you references,” Alan said. “Now what I want you to do is get up, put your little sandals on and go in the house. I'll be right behind you.”

When Barbara swung her legs to his side of the lounge and bent over to straighten her sandals, to slip them on, Alan got a good clear shot of her breasts. He said, “Jesus, I don't know what he was fooling around with that skinny chick for.”

Then, inside the house, after he had checked to make sure the doors were locked, following close behind her, his eyes holding on the movement of her hips, he said, “Jesus, I bet you start that thing going it takes all night to shut it off. My, having that right at home.”

He took her into the kitchen and told her to get up on the table and fold her legs under her like an Indian. She sat there watching him, not sure what he was doing until he took the package of disposable syringes and the envelope out of his pocket.

Alan used an egg poacher. He got the water boiling, set the aluminum tray over it and cooked the heroin, diluted with a spoonful of water, in one of the concave sections of the tray, where the
egg would go. Alan grinned and said, “Shit, man, gourmet cooking; Bobby'd take one look at this setup and have to get one.” Bobby mostly blew coke, though, he told Barbara. Bobby said shit messed him up and made him sick.

She watched him bend over the egg poacher and carefully draw the white-powder-turned-to-liquid into a syringe, pushing the plunger in to release the air bubbles then drawing it out again slowly, getting almost every drop of the liquid.

When he turned to her, holding the syringe so that the needle pointed up, he said, “It won't feel hot. Maybe a little warm going in.”

“I don't want it,” Barbara said.

“Lady, it's just scag. Give you a nice slow ride uptown, see the lights.”

“I don't
want
it.”

“Jesus, I'm not hooking you. I just want to make you quiet and easy to handle. Put your leg out, either one.” His free hand reached toward her.

When she pulled away from him, holding onto the edge of the table, he slapped her hard across the face. She made a sound, more of surprise than pain, and he hit her again.

“Now put your leg out!”

He grabbed her by the ankle and pulled. Barbara fell back against the curtain covering the lower part of the window, off-balance now, on her
elbows. Alan turned, taking her leg under one arm, squeezing the angle and pushing the syringe into the vein that popped out beneath his thumb. He felt her tighten and try to draw her other leg free, but not in time to kick him or push him away. His thumb raised over the syringe, stroked it down slowly and the lady was on her way.

* * *

She remembered the feeling from a time before, lying in a hospital bed after the nurse had given her the shot. Like that, but a deeper, more complete feeling: her mind and body wrapped in comfortable comforting softness, floating without moving in warm water that had no wetness, floating without moving to keep afloat, suspended in the good feeling. She was aware but not sure if she was awake. It was not something to think about because there was nothing, no reason to think. Being, without touching, lying on a bed, her bed, their bed, that had always been firm but now had no feeling, as though she were lying not on the bed but in the bed and the bed was warm motionless water. Someone else was in the room. The skinny man. Skinny legs and shoulders and long hair, his hair hanging, his skinny face looking down at her. Now he was closer to
her and she felt him touch her, his hand on her thigh, on her stomach. She said, “I'm so tired.” His voice, someone's voice, said, “Then why don't
you go sleepy-bye? Close your eyes—”

“How was it?”

Her eyes were open. She was looking at the white ceiling. She thought of the hospital room again. No, she was at home, lying on her bed. In bed. Someone had spoken to her, a sound of words, or a dream. There was light in the room, maybe time to get up, but she felt more asleep than awake: the nice drowsy early-morning feeling of peace and quiet and a warm bed. Roll over and look at the alarm clock on the bed table. Next to the telephone. The telephone had been moved and was in the way. She raised her head from the pillow. It was only six o'clock. It seemed later. She let her face sink into the pillow and closed her eyes. A few more minutes. Lying on her side she drew her legs up. Her body was warm, but she felt a chill, a draft, on her back and she reached down for the sheet and blanket. Her hand felt only her bare thigh and hip. She turned, opening her eyes and pushing up on one arm, still with the drowsy feeling, but with awareness and memory clicking in her mind. She was naked except for the yellow bikini
bra covering her breasts.

“I asked you how was it?”

“What time is it?”

“Six.”

“You were here all night?”

“It's six in the evening, Slim, not the morning.”

She sat up, too quickly, almost falling back down again, seeing Alan at the foot of the bed, and had to put her hands behind her to support herself, closing and opening her eyes with the warm light feeling in her head, but also aware of herself reclining naked in front of him, like a painting, a model in a painting.
The Nude Maja.
By—she rolled to the edge of the bed, trying to push her legs over the side and get up.