Short Money (3 page)

Bellweather grinned and took a cautious bite of his own Juicy Lucy. He chewed and swallowed before replying. “I am,” he said. “Except when I’m on a hunting trip. Then I turn into this carnivore. It’s a hormonal thing, Stevie. Can’t you feel the juice? That buff started toward you, you looked so scared I bet you could’ve run a four-minute mile. You’re still feeling a little shaky, right? Your glands pumping out that adrenaline, noradrenaline, glucagon, all kinds of neurotransmitters. Your blood is still loaded with the stuff. You need meat to replace those hormones. It’s a medical fact.”

Anderson took another, smaller bite of his cheese-filled burger.

The doctor went on, as if seeing it all again. “Buff coming at you, eyes popping out of your head, you got your gun. …” He rapped the tabletop rapidly with his knuckle. “Bapbapbapbapbap! Never knew what hit him.”

Anderson shifted his eyes away from the doctor’s florid features. They had driven to within fifty yards of the bison. Ricky had shown him how to load and operate the MAC-10 with the buff standing right there, watching them, about as suspicious as a pet cow. It had started trotting toward them, and Anderson had enjoyed a brief moment of fear before squeezing the trigger of the MAC. The gun had jumped in his hand, but he’d managed to get half of the thirty-round clip embedded in the bison’s woolly body. The animal had stood there stupidly for several seconds before dropping, first its front legs, then its hindquarters, then tipping to the side, eyes protruding, blood-streaked gray tongue unrolling and lying motionless on the grass.

Now with the glory of the kill fading, he was left with the suspicion that the bison had been approaching them expecting to be fed a carrot. Still, it had been a kick unlike anything he had experienced before.

“I tell you, Stevie, the way you turned that buffs face to hamburger, Ollie here is going to be patching holes for days. Right, Ollie? You going to mount up this young man’s first kill?”

Ollie shrugged. “If he wants.”

“Patty isn’t going to let me keep the damn thing anyways,” Anderson said. “I don’t know why I should have it mounted.”

“Got to have it mounted, Stevie. Your first kill? Got to have it mounted. I bet Ollie, here, will give you a discount. Right, Ollie?”

Ollie made a noise through his nose. “Negatory. You wanna play cards or what?”

Ricky said, “Yeah, let’s play some cards.”

Bellweather gave Anderson the elbow. “Whaddya say, Stevie—shall we show these country boys how we do it in the big city?”

Bellweather won the first three hands, buying the first one with a blind twenty-dollar bet and taking the other two with a pair of aces and a baby straight.

“Sheeit,” Ricky muttered, throwing his cards away facedown.

Bellweather laughed, raking in the small pot. Anderson shuffled the deck and slowly dealt a hand of five-card draw. The hormones in his bloodstream were turning sour. The Juicy Lucy had settled low in his gut, swimming in a sea of Budweiser. He completed the deal, picked up his hand, and looked at three queens and two deuces—a full house before the draw. His weary adrenal gland managed to produce a few more molecules; his heart started thumping.

“Your bet,” Anderson said. A full house! He was no expert, but a full boat was a powerhouse in anybody’s hand.

Bellweather took a look at Anderson’s flushed cheeks and pulsing carotid artery and said, “Whoa! I check! What the hell kind of hand you got there, Stevie?”

Anderson tried to hold his face still. He had always been a lousy cardplayer, ever since college. He looked at Ricky, who was the next to bet, but Ricky was looking at something up by the front door, his mouth twisted into a practiced Clint Eastwood snarl. Anderson turned and followed Ricky’s stare. A cop stood leaning against the bar, watching them. His dark, rumpled hair was a couple of inches too long, and his uniform—the brown-and-tan two-tone that seemed to be the style out here on the prairie—fit him oddly, as though it had been tailored for a larger, wider man. He was not an unattractive man—women might find him interesting—but his expression seemed a bit blank, the sort of look favored by male models, military cadets, or poker players. Anderson tried to put a name on it but could only come up with “intense.” The guy was intense. Intensely what, he had no idea.

The cop lifted a shot glass from the bar, poured its contents down his throat, followed it with a swallow of beer, turned away.

Anderson said to Ricky, “What’s the problem—are we not supposed to be playing cards here or something?”

Ricky gave his head a snap, as if trying to flick a bead of sweat from his nose. “Don’t worry about it. He ain’t gonna do nothing.”

“You gonna bet?” Anderson asked.

Ricky glanced at his cards, threw them away. “Fuck it.” He crossed his arms and glared at the table, a small muscle at the corner of his right eye twitching repeatedly.

Ollie, who had been watching Anderson from beneath his thick, slablike eyelids, rapped a knuckle on the table. “Check t’da powa,” he muttered, his lips barely quivering.

“What?” Anderson cocked an ear and leaned closer to Ollie.

Bellweather interpreted. “He’s checking, Stevie. ‘Check to the power.’ It’s your bet.”

Anderson, trying to stay cool with his big hand, bet ten dollars.

Everybody folded.

“Damn!” Anderson threw his hand down faceup, swept in the four dollars in antes.

Bellweather laughed. “Nice hand, Stevie!” He scooped up the deck, shuffled. “So, Stevie,” he said, his voice taking on a new tone of forced casualness, “what’s happening in the financial markets these days? You got any hot picks for me?” He dealt out the cards. “Any more of those oil stocks?”

Anderson frowned. His last hot pick, Maritime Drilling, had cost the doctor over one hundred eighty thousand dollars. Shortly after the doctor had bought in at twenty-six dollars a share, an intoxicated Maritime employee had decorated eighteen miles of the Louisiana coastline with a layer of raw, black petroleum. The stock was now so deep in the basement its share price was measured in sixty-fourths of a dollar, hardly worth the transaction cost to sell it. Dr. Bellweather had not been happy.

“That was a bad deal,” Anderson said weakly. He examined his cards. Nothing. Maybe he’d wasted all his luck on that last hand.

Bellweather picked up his cards. “I’m going to be frank with you, Stevie. I need a winner. You understand? Something good this time.”

Anderson understood. He’d made close to eighty grand off the doctor’s account over the past year, and the guy was understandably tired of watching his small fortune get smaller. Anybody else, he’d have them mostly in mutual funds, T-bills, maybe some utilities and blue chips. But the doctor, he wasn’t interested in the safe stuff. He was a thrill seeker from the word go. The only investments that got his attention were the wild ones—the Casino Magics, the Stratospheres. Bellweather was not a sophisticated investor by anyone’s measure but his own. He’d even dabbled in the commodities market, but losing a hundred grand in three days had cured him of that. Still, if there wasn’t a chance to quickly double or triple his money, Bellweather simply wasn’t interested. Anderson wanted to tell him to jack down, let some of his money sit in some safe little fund making seven or eight percent. But he knew his client. It would be like telling a hyperactive kid to sit still and read a book—it just plain wouldn’t happen. The best thing to do, Anderson had learned, was to feed the guy the little companies with sexy prospects. Maybe he’d get lucky, and maybe he wouldn’t. Either way, there would be commish.

“You ever hear of BioStellar GameTech?” he asked.

“Bio … Stellar … Game … Tech.” The doctor tasted the name, shook his head.

“Ten a’you,” Ollie grumbled.

“What?”

“‘Ten bucks at you,’” Bellweather translated.

“I fold,” said Anderson.

Bellweather called the ten, raised twenty, returned his attention to Anderson. “So? What about it?”

Anderson cleared his throat. “Strictly speaking, I’m not even supposed to be talking about it yet. Small California outfit, very low profile, makes virtual-reality gambling systems, IPO scheduled for early January. They’ve got a new-concept gambling machine that’s going to make the video slots look like horse buggies. You can get in at five a share now, and I think they’re going to be issuing warrants too—only thing is, I don’t know how much of it I can get my hands on. Dickie’s not letting us have much of it.”

“That’s not good,” Bellweather said, dealing three cards to Ricky, one to Ollie, and two for himself.

“Actually,” Anderson said, “it
is
good. Knowing Dickie, it means he’s feeding all the BioStellar he can get to his own accounts. That means it’s hot. Really hot. My guess is it’ll open at ten or twelve, then go ballistic from there, especially if the big casinos buy into the concept, and Dickie thinks they will. This one’s going to make a lot of people rich.”

Bellweather bet, was raised by Ricky. Ollie folded.

“Watch this, Stevie,” Bellweather said as he raised the pot another fifty dollars.

Anderson was too far into his pitch to stop talking now. “If you’re interested, I could talk to Dickie. He knows you’ve had a rough couple of months; I’m sure he’d be willing to work with us, maybe let us have five, ten thousand shares.”

Ricky called the raise.

“Hah!” Bellweather slapped his hand down on the table. Ace high flush.

Ricky said, “Sheeit,” and flipped over two pair.

Bellweather elbowed Anderson. “See what I mean? These country boys haven’t got a prayer.” He swept in his winnings. “So this is a good one?”

Anderson was confused. “What? The pot?”

“This BioStellar.”

Anderson shrugged, watching Ollie gather up the cards.

Bellweather put his hand on Anderson’s shoulder. “Look at me, Stevie.”

Anderson looked. The doctor’s tiny eyes were red and watery; a lump of beer foam rode the corner of his mouth.

“It’s good, right? Not another Maritime, right?”

Anderson opened his mouth, not knowing how he was going to respond, when Ricky snarled, “The fuck do you want?” looking up at the cop, who was standing right there, looking at the deck of cards in Ollie’s hands.

Joe Crow knew he should not be doing this. He blamed it on the pair of double Cuervos he’d just used to take the edge off the cocaine. The last thing he needed was to get into a poker game, particularly one in which Ricky Murphy was involved. He knew what Chief Johnson would say:
What the got-damn hell’s a matter with you, Crow?

“How you doing, Ollie?” he said. “Stuff any rhinos lately?”

Ollie swiveled his head back and forth. “Negatory,” he said.

“You got a seat for me?”

Ollie let his head fall to his right, toward the empty chair next to the younger guy wearing the camouflage coveralls. Crow circled the table and sat down, Ricky’s eyes tracking him all the way. Ollie shuffled the deck, dealt five cards to each player.

“Five-card draw?” Crow asked.

“Now what the hell you think it is, Crow?” Ricky said. “Old Maid?”

The other player, the one in the pink cowboy shirt, said, “Crow? Your name is Crow?” The man reached across the table. Crow shook his soft hand. He didn’t like the way the man was looking at him, grinning like he had a secret. “I’m Dr. Nelson Bellweather.” He waited, as though expecting Crow to recognize him.

Crow blinked away the tequila haze, examined Bellweather’s flushed, bright-eyed face. “Let me guess,” he said. “Is that pink Jag out there yours? License plate
FATGONE?”

“Yes it is,” said Dr. Bellweather, looking pleased.

“You were doing seventy-nine out there on County Five.”

Bellweather raised his eyebrows. “Oh!” He laughed. “Were you hiding behind a billboard? Are you going to give me a ticket?”

Crow looked at his cards, focused with some effort, saw a pair of fours. “I check.”

“I believe we have a common acquaintance,” Bellweather said. “I mean besides Ricky here.”

“Crow ain’t no ’quaintance a mine,” Ricky growled.

“Hey Ricky!” Berdette yelled from behind the bar. He held up a phone. “It’s George.”

Ricky stood up. “Keep yer hands offa my cards,” he said, staring at Crow. “I’ll be right back.” He grabbed his drink and headed toward the bar, fighting a tendency to list to the right.

Bellweather giggled. “I guess he doesn’t like you.”

Crow nodded, staring at his cards, trying to turn his fours into aces. It had never worked before, but who knew? He’d rather indulge in fantasy than explore common acquaintances with a guy who’d painted a Jaguar pink.

Bellweather persisted. “I know your brother-in-law. Dave Getter, right?”

Crow’s head snapped up.

Bellweather flashed a victory grin. “My lawyer. Dave is my lawyer. When I told him I hunted out here, he told me his wife’s brother was a Big River cop. John Crow, right? I always remember names. That’s you, right? How many John Crows can there be?”

“It’s Joe,” said Crow. He did not like this Dr. Bellweather.

Bellweather waved away the correction. “John, Joe—what’s the difference? You’re the same guy, right?”

Crow sighed. His stomach was hurting again. In a prick contest, this guy would give his brother-in-law some serious competition. It made sense that they had found each other.

“Dave’s a good man,” Bellweather said.

“Dave’s an asshole,” said Crow. He was about to enlarge on this observation when he looked up and saw Ricky Murphy charging across the room, straight at him, brandishing one of Berdette’s wooden barstools, holding it high over his head like a bludgeon.

The image had a cartoonish, unreal quality about it. Ricky’s movements seemed slowed down, but then so were Crow’s reactions. He tried to stand up, his thighs hit the edge of the table, bottles of beer tipped, foam gushed over cards. Crow twisted, got his legs free. Ricky was still coming, his face red and distorted with fury. Crow took a step back and crouched, hands extended clawlike to meet the assault.

But Ricky had someone else in mind. He brought the stool down hard across Dr. Bellweather’s back. The legs of the stool splintered. Bellweather collapsed to the floor, air squeaking from his astonished lungs. Ricky’s momentum carried him crashing into the card table, stumbling over it, directly at Crow, who, without conscious thought, landed a perfect right jab on the point of Ricky Murphy’s jaw. Ricky went down hard, facefirst on the floor, and remained still, his Stetson rocking gently on its crown beside him.