Lieberman's Day (15 page)

Frankie felt the surge of the wet, hot eel of anger, but he grinned. “Indian magic?” he asked. “You read minds?”

“No,” said the woman. “I'm a social worker here. You've got the look of an angry drunk who tries to hide it with a false smile. Only you're worse. You're not drunk on whiskey.”

Frankie took a step toward the woman, but the two Indian men stepped between them.

“I don't want any trouble,” said Frankie, holding up his hands, his eyes darting between the men.

“Yes, you do,” said the woman. “But we're not going to give it to you. Turn around, walk out that door, and don't come back here again, ever.”

The two Indian men took a step toward Frankie, who backed up.

“You don't understand,” he said, stopping, determined. “I'm doing God's work.”

The woman puffed out her lower lip, said nothing, and shook her head.

Frankie was face to face with the larger of the two Indians.

“Big Bear was in jail,” the woman said. “He lifted weights for four years. You want to find out if I'm telling the truth?”

“I fear only the wrath of the Lord,” said Frankie.

“I wasn't trying to frighten you,” the woman said. “I was telling you what you were up against so you'd consider your options more seriously.”

“I've never insulted your people,” said Frankie.

“That's good,” said the woman. “I've insulted yours. Maybe you'll go to Heaven and I'll go to prison, but somehow I don't think so.”

Big Bear's huge hands started to rise.

“Don't touch me,” Frankie said through clenched teeth, trembling with rage.

“Don't touch him, Bear,” the woman said. “He wants to walk, let him walk.”

Frankie took a step back and then turned and went out the door and down the concrete steps. The heavy wooden door banged behind him.

Inside, Billy Blue Feather turned to Connie Sekajowa and said, “What the fuck was that all about?”

“I don't know,” said Connie. “Go tell Angie that he was looking for her. Tell her what he looks like. Ask her if she knows him and then get her out the back and someplace safe.”

“She can stay at my place two, three days,” said Big Bear.

Connie Sekajowa, her eyes still on the door through which Frankie Kraylaw had fled, nodded again.

“World's full of goddamn crazies,” Billy Blue Feather said with a sigh, starting up the stairs.

Outside Frankie hurried to his pickup, got in, and tried to control his breathing. He was panting, trying to catch his breath. She was in there. She was in there. No doubt. He could tell from the way the fat Indian woman had boned him. She had no right.

He watched the door and thought for a minute and then turned on the ignition and moved the pickup to where it couldn't be seen from the doorway of the Indian Center. He stopped in the driveway of a cleaning store on the corner, where he could watch the front door of the center and see down the street on the side of the building in case someone came out of the alley.

Frankie shivered from the cold and something else he did not give a name. The taste of blood from JJ.'s ear was still clinging like dry metal to his tongue. He had not slept in more than thirty hours and was not now tired. He would stay awake for days. He would pursue for the rest of the life that God gave him if he must, but Frankie Kraylaw would endure and be rewarded. And if the Lord chose that he not be rewarded on earth then so be it. His will be done.

From the alley came the Indian named Big Bear, helping a tiny woman in a long cloth coat around the dirty mounds of ice and snow. It was Angie, no doubt.

“So,” said George. “Let me see if I got this straight.”

They were in the rattling car, not much heat and no energy, rambling down the Dan Ryan Expressway heading south in the general direction of Florida.

“Your cousin Celia, she married Massinet Hart,” George went on, the Russian hat tipping back on his head.

“Yes,” said Raymond, looking around for an empty field, something, somewhere he could get George out and shoot his fool head off.

“So,” said George, holding up two fingers for no reason that Raymond could understand, “that makes you and me some kinda cousins, something like that?”

“No,” said Raymond. “It doesn't make us cousins.”

Raymond tried not to sound surly. But his life was on the line and he was driving away from the place he had to be, where he had the most important business of his life, driving away from Lilly. Raymond didn't like the way he had been picking up on the Islands accent that he had worked so hard to lose. Associating with George had done that to him.

“Seems to me it does,” said George, clutching the battered bag containing the few thousand dollars that he had stolen.

“Seems to you,” said Raymond, nodding.

He hit the radio, hoping the sound of anything would stop George from talking. There weren't many stations the radio could receive. The antenna had long since been torn off by who knows who.

Someone, a man with a high voice or a woman with a strange one, was singing in Spanish. George shut up, listening or thinking.

“That corn out there?” George asked.

“Weeds,” said Raymond.

George nodded, ingesting this important information.

“Raymond, you mind I ask you again?”

“What?”

“Why you shoot the white fella?”

“Why did you shoot the woman?”

“I asked you first off,” said George. “An' you shot first.”

“Thought he was going to give us a fight,” said Raymond.

“Didn't look that way to me.”

“It did to me,” Raymond answered, raising his voice and hitting himself on the chest with his right hand. “Why did you shoot her?”

George tried to think about it again, to remember, to make sense.

“You shot. I shot.”

“I had a reason,” said Raymond.

“Not me,” George said. “I just got bucked.”

They were quiet for about five minutes while Mexican bands and singers wailed plaintively or sang so fast that the entire song seemed to be one word.

“What's that book you bring with you?” George asked.

“What Makes Sammy Run?”

“What it about?”

Raymond didn't answer.

“I think I'm hungry,” said George.

“You got the McDonald's sandwiches.”

“They don't taste so good anymore. I want something else. I don't know, shrimp maybe,” said George.

There was a vast field of weeds on their right beyond which seemed to be some low buildings, probably houses. Set back on the left of the highway were factories that had signs near the road giving their names, but not what they did.

“We'll stop when we see something,” said Raymond. “Maybe Indiana.”

“I like Stuckey's. You been to Stuckey's, man?”

“If we see one, I'll stop.”

“Even we don't see one I like 'em,” said George with a smile.

“What are you so fuckin' happy about?” asked Raymond, unable to fully control his anger.

“We home free,” George explained.

“Yeah,” said Raymond, turning quickly to the right down a dirt road that seemed to lead nowhere.

“Where we goin'?” asked George. “We gonna pop a tire we do this way.”

“I've got to piss,” said Raymond. “Bad, and I don't see anyplace up ahead.”

“Be cold, freeze your peck-dog,” said George. “I heard of a guy his piss froze right when it come out of him. That's a fact.”

The road got rougher, bounder, and in the rearview mirror all Raymond could see of the Dan Ryan was the moving rooftops of cars going in both directions.

“Here,” said Raymond, stopping the car.

“I don't see no place to turn around,” said George.

“We'll back up if we have to,” said Raymond, opening the door. “You coming? Might be a while before we come to a toilet.”

“I guess,” said George, opening the passenger door and stepping out, one arm firmly holding the closed bag like a football, the other rising quickly to keep the fur hat from being taken by the wind.

The snow wasn't deep. Maybe it had been blown by the prairie wind or cut by the millions of weed stalks.

Raymond walked ten yards ahead of the car, whose engine he had left running, shuddered, and unzipped his pants, feeling the sudden blue-cold icy touch of winter on his limp penis. One hand stayed with his penis. The other eased into his pocket and found the gun. Behind him, Raymond heard George step off the road, trampling crisp, frozen weeds.

“Oh, brother,” George shouted. “This is one damnit-to-hell of a country, I can tell you that.”

Raymond quickly zipped his fly and turned. George had his back to the road a few feet away. Raymond took two steps toward him and raised his pistol, holding it in two hands to keep himself from trembling.

“When I get back …” George began, his back still turned, a stream of urine steaming from him.

The shot from Raymond's gun finished the thought for George.

George jumped, not quite understanding what had cracked next to him, and then, still exposed, one hand still cradling the bag of money, he turned his head and saw Raymond, gun in hand, looking at him.

The second shot went through the bag, which George held up in front of his face, and took off the small finger on his left hand.

“What you doin'?” George demanded, backing away.

Raymond fired again. This time the bullet hit flesh and sank into George's right side. George looked down at his side, looked at Raymond, and adjusted the fur hat on his head.

“I'm killin' you, man,” said Raymond, his accent returning in an angry rush, his voice vibrating with fear. “You just too fuckin' stupid to understand even when you're shot and looking at the goddamn gun.”

He fired again, but George was already moving to his right, toward the field of weeds. He was moving but not running. Raymond went after him.

“Shit,” said Raymond, as George stumbled ahead of him.

“You keep the money, man,” cried George. “I'm droppin' it. You jus' turn around and leave me here bleedin' and all. I be all right. You stop shootin' me and I give you all the money.”

Raymond didn't answer. George had the sense to crouch low so he might be hidden in the tall, thick weeds. And in spite of his size and the wounds he was suffering, George moved quietly. But what did him in was the blood that left a trail Raymond could follow slowly, patiently.

George suddenly stood up and ran, or rather, stumbled, trying to open the bag he carried as he did so. If he opened it, Raymond knew he would pull out his gun, change the game he had begun. Raymond fired at the fleeing figure, missing him twice but making him move so fast that he couldn't open the bag he carried.

Then, suddenly, as Raymond panted after George, his breath coming labored and hurting, George disappeared. He was just gone. One second there was his head and you could hear him breathing and gagging hard and heavy. The next, gone.

Raymond hurried now, following the trail of red blood on white snow, knowing that George might be pulling out the gun right at that moment.

Raymond almost fell into the ditch. He started to slip, reached back with his foot, and grabbed a clump of weeds with his free hand. He sat down hard and cold with a grunt and looked around in panic, this way and that. A small stream of ice lay along the bottom of the ditch, a small stream of ice and George. George was not moving. He was on his back, eyes closed, blood spurting from his chest but still clinging to the bag, the fur hat still on his head.

This was not the way Raymond had wanted it. He had wanted to shoot George on a road or a path and leave him there to be discovered with the dead man's hat and almost all of the Russian drug dealers' money.

If it was warmer, Raymond would have sat there another few minutes thinking it out. If it was warmer and he felt more confident that no crazy farmer would be driving up the road and find his car sitting there, the motor running.

The ditch was about five feet deep. Raymond wasn't sure if he could get out if he jumped down and took some of the money. If he jumped in he would have to walk in one direction or the other until he found some place to climb out and then, well, he might have trouble finding his way back to the road without the trail of George's blood.

He got up, his tailbone hurting, and looked back for the car. He couldn't see it. He could hear the sputtering engine and the hooting wind.

No help for it, he decided. He took one more look at George to be satisfied that he was dead and turned to follow the red trail. He would have to call the police, somebody, 911, maybe the fire department, say he was driving down some road and heard shooting, maybe describe enough for them to find George's body.

He tramped through the weeds that he and George had bowled over and tried to think.

It would have to be.

He now thought of the woman in the hospital.

Life is crazy nuts, Raymond said to himself, moving closer to the chugging engine of the car. Crazy nuts.

He got into the car, closed the door, put his gun in his pocket, and began backing out down the narrow road. He fought panic and the desire to hit the accelerator, take his chances, and get the hell out of there. He fought and, with the exception of a few minor runs off the road, made it safely back to the Dan Ryan, catching some luck when he backed onto the road, there being no one in sight, and drove ahead looking for a turnoff he could make so as to get back to the city.

He would have to get rid of the car. It had left tire marks in the snow. They might be able to trace them. The car was no damn good anyway, but it was sure better than no car, but real is real. Besides, Raymond had a plan that would get him a new car and something more valuable.

G
EORGE FOUND HIMSELF LOOKING
up at the most incredible cloud he had ever seen. It was shaped like a feather, right down to the quill. He also had the dizzying impression that he was standing or floating and looking not up but straight ahead. The feeling made him want to throw up, but that would have to wait until he could figure out what had happened.