Short Money (33 page)

“I am being very serious with you now, Officer Crow. Ricky is like a duck on the ground when he gets in the city. He would not be able to find this doctor. You may not be able to find him either, but it would be best if you would. I am not the only person involved in this conversation to have a family member in danger. Are you listening?”

Crow’s body began to tingle. Melinda.

He heard himself say, “I’m listening.”

“Good. The doctor left here about three hours ago, shortly before you dropped off my son. He has a piece of property belonging to me, a mounted Russian boar about five feet long. Inside the boar is a small metal safe. I want you to find the doctor and the safe, and bring them both to me. Do you understand?”

Despite the horror he was feeling, Crow found himself thinking that Murphy sounded a lot like a
Mission Impossible
instruction tape.

“I understand,” he said. “But I have no idea where Bellweather is.”

“Find him.”

“I want to talk to Melinda,” Crow said.

Murphy hesitated. “Who is Melinda?” he asked.

Crow felt a pang of hope. “You said something about a family member.”

“That’s right. Your brother-in-law, the lawyer. He’s with Ricky right now, but I don’t think he’s enjoying himself. Find the doctor, and I’ll let you have the lawyer.”

“Are you talking about Dave Getter? You think I care what happens to him?”

Murphy said, “I think you do.”

Crow laughed and hung up the phone. He sat at the kitchen counter and waited for his insides to settle. So Bellweather had ripped off George Murphy. I should be enjoying this, he thought. He rotated the bottle, running his eyes across the words printed on the label without extracting any meaning from them. He was still sitting there when, ten minutes later, the phone rang again. He picked it up and listened.

“You’re welcome,” said Debrowski after a pause. “I just wanted to let you know—no one’s called here yet.”

“Here either.”

“I stopped at the Humane Society. No yellow-eyed black cats.”

“Thanks.”

“You don’t sound so good, Crow. What are you doing?”

“Sitting here.” He cleared his throat. “You want to come over and help me get drunk?”

Pause. “Sure. What are you drinking?”

“I got a jug of fine Kentucky bourbon here.”

“I’ll be right over.”

Debrowski arrived, replete with leathers and chains, fifteen minutes later. Her eyes scoured his face, then flicked to the bottle on the counter. The bottle was open. Beside it sat two glasses, each of them containing a carefully poured inch of amber fluid.

“Thanks for waiting,” she said. “So what are we celebrating?”

“The end of sobriety,” said Crow. He felt horrible. When he had poured the drinks, the smell of raw liquor had nearly made him vomit. Waiting for Debrowski, he’d managed to eat a few crackers. Now he was salivating uncontrollably, each swallow followed by a wave of nausea.

“You don’t look so good,” she said, perching on one of the stools. She picked up a glass, swirled the liquid, smelled it. “I used to drink this shit by the gallon.”

Crow stared at her, horrified by the sight of her holding the glass so near her lips. “Are you … how long has it… how long have you been straight?” He was thinking of a matter of weeks.

Debrowski bit her lip and thought. “Four years,” she said.

“Four
years
? Look, I don’t like this. I don’t want to—”

“Screw you, Crow.” Debrowski raised the glass, swallowed the entire shot, slammed the glass back down on the counter. She squeezed her eyes shut, emptied her lungs, took a deep breath, opened her watering eyes.

Crow gaped at her, hardly able to believe what he had seen.

“See how easy it is?” she said, her voice lower by an octave. She poured herself another, larger drink.

“I don’t want you to do that,” Crow said.

“Why not? Isn’t this why you invited me over here?”

Crow shook his head. He had no idea why he had invited her over.

“What’s going on, Crow? Talk to me.” She lifted her glass of bourbon.

“Please don’t do that.”

“Talk to me, Crow.”

Crow took a breath. “What do you want?”

“You’ve got a problem, Crow. Tell me about it.”

Crow turned and walked back and forth in front of the sofa. “It’s sort of complicated,” he said.

“Try me.”

“My brother-in-law is the asshole of the world.”

Debrowski set her glass gently on the counter.

“That’s a start,” she said.

She was a good listener. Crow wound his way through his story, giving it to her in bits and pieces, answering her questions, taking every opportunity to tell her what a jerk he had for a brother-in-law. He wanted to be sure she understood that part.

“So you don’t like the guy.”

“I never liked him.”

“Why not?”

“I thought I explained that.”

“What, he’s a sleazy lawyer? Treats you like shit?”

“Basically.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad, Crow. You go around hating everybody that treats you like a dog, you wind up putting out a lot of negative energy. I mean, you act like a dog, people are going to treat you that way.”

“Thanks a hell of a lot.”

“What about your sister?”

“What about her?”

“Does she like him?”

“She hasn’t divorced him.”

“That’s not the same.”

Crow considered. “I think she cares about him,” he said. “I don’t know why, but she does.”

“You like your sister?”

“She’s a space cadet, but she’s my sister.”

“Do you think they’d actually hurt him?”

“Who? Getter? I think they’d hurt him a lot.”

“But you think he deserves it.”

“Oh, yeah.” Crow sat on the sofa, crossed his arms, stared at his knees. “They’d hurt him good.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I’m not sure. What do you think?”

Debrowski shook her head. “Uh-uh, Crow, this one is all yours. Besides, you’ve already made up your mind.” She picked up the two glasses, poured the bourbon into the sink.

Crow raised his head. “What are you doing?”

Debrowski tipped the bottle into the sink, let the liquor gurgle out. Crow watched, his eyes dull.

“I have to get going, Crow. I’ve got a meeting with one of my bands. Toesucker. You ever hear of them?”

Crow shook his head.

“Neither has anybody else.” She opened the door. “Thanks for the drink, Crow.”

They want you to make it like it never bled, and died, like all they did was stop time. Like they snapped this three-D photo, and you’re the developer.

—
OLLIE AAMOLD

O
LLIE AAMOLD SAT IN
his workshop, surrounded by the body parts of assorted animals, contemplating the head of a four-point buck. He dipped the tip of a number-four sable brush into a jar of thinned acrylic paint and carefully darkened the edges of the buck’s eyelids. Some taxidermists would use a marker for these final touches, but Ollie was a perfectionist. The details were what made the difference. A good mount looked alive—frozen in time, but alive.

Taxidermy was an art form, and Ollie Aamold was an artist.

He sat back and examined the shoulder mount. It was a pretty animal, had a nice inquiring tilt to its head, but no matter how good a job he did, the animal would never make much of a trophy. He was repeatedly amazed by these so-called hunters who would plunk down hundreds of dollars to have their substandard kills immortalized. Buck like that, he would maybe have shot it for meat, but more likely he’d have let it walk.

What the hell. It was a living. He’d even mounted a few pet dogs in his time. Once, he’d even done a gerbil for his nephew. Later, he learned, the kid had used the thing to terrorize his little sister.

Thank God for the Murphys. At least they came up with some interesting animals. He’d done zebras, caribou, gemsbok, all sorts of creatures he’d never seen before. A few years back, they’d brought him a white rhino—not a huge specimen, as rhinos went, but the biggest thing he’d ever had a chance to work on. His favorite animals, though, were the big cats. Beautiful. George had told him that the tiger would be coming his way soon. Ollie was really looking forward to that. He’d never done a tiger before.

The telephone rang. Ollie let it go for five rings, then picked it up.

“Ollie? Steve Anderson here.”

“Yeah?” The name didn’t do anything for him.

“You got my elk. I dropped it off a couple days ago?”

“Oh, yeah, the shoulder mount. You want it to be bugling, right? Nice rack.” Another worthwhile trophy courtesy of the Murphys.

“Four hundred eighteen points.”

“Is that right.”

“I was wondering … I’m having a little party at my place in a couple weeks, some old buddies are going to be in town, and I’d like to, you know, show it off a little. I know it’s kind of soon, but I was wondering if there was any way you could have it ready by then. A week from next Saturday, say?”

Ollie rolled his eyes up. He didn’t trust himself to reply.

“Ollie? You there?”

“Yeah, I’m here.” Always a mistake to pick up the damn phone.

“What do you think?”

“Negatory.”

“Damn! Not even if I kick in a little extra money? Say an extra couple hundred?”

Assholes with money, think they can buy anything. “Negatory,” Ollie repeated. “Haven’t even sent your elk to the tannery yet, and that takes better’n a month.”

“Jeez. I gotta tell you, I’m really disappointed. It would mean a lot to me.”

Ollie gave the telephone the finger.

“Isn’t there some way? I mean, suppose I was the President of the United States. Could you do it for the President?”

Ollie let out the breath he had been holding for the past thirty seconds. “Look,” he said, keeping a tight leash on his voice. “This isn’t like hammering together a birdhouse. Good work takes time. You bagged yourself a nice animal here. You don’t want me to do a hack job on it, do you?”

“No, but—”

“But nothing. Even if you were the president of the goddamn universe I couldn’t have it for you. A mount takes time—there’s just no way.”

“Suppose I—”

“Suppose nothing. Can’t do it. Give me three, three and a half weeks, I could maybe pickle it here instead of sending it out, but it’d be losing hair inside a year. First you bring me a bison with its face all shot to hell, now this. If you were in such a damn hurry, you should have brought your elk in the day you shot it instead of letting it sit around. You think I like working with an elk that’s been dead a week?”

“A week? But I—”

“Week, six days, whatever. You know when you shot it. All I know is I wouldn’t want to have to eat the damn thing. Looked like it was froze, thawed, and froze all over again. Thing’s already shedding hair like crazy. You shoot an animal like this, you got to get it caped and salted down right away. You had this big to-do planned, you should’ve brought it straight to me. Course, even if you had, I still couldn’t a done ’er for you.”

Anderson didn’t reply for a moment, then he said, “I dropped it off the same day I shot it.” It sounded as if he was holding the phone away from his mouth.

Ollie snorted. “Negatory. Let me tell you something, Mr. Anderson. I don’t need your business. You can come and pick up your cape and antlers anytime you want. And let me tell you something else. I’ve seen a lot of dead animals, and if you brought this puppy in the day you shot it, then you must’ve shot yourself an elk that was already deader’n Elvis may-his-ass-rest-in-peace Presley.”

Chief Orlan Johnson was faced with a dilemma. It was mid-afternoon, and he was already half drunk. Maybe more than half. What he wanted to do was go home, hit the recliner, and zone out, watch a football game or something. Problem was, Hill would kill him if he came home loaded again in the middle of the day. Probably come after him with the same frying pan she’d used on little Joe Crow. Way he saw it, he had two choices. He could start drinking coffee, get himself something to eat, and maybe get sober enough to fool Hill by, say, six or seven in the evening—in which case she’d be all over him for missing supper anyways. Or he could just keep on drinking and go home around five, plenty of time for supper, and let her ream his ass for being drunk.

Johnson fired up an El Producto, stared down at the bloody stain on the floor, and prodded the situation with his mind.

His radio buzzed. Maybe it would be Fleener or Nelson, calling to tell him that they’d caught the murderer or something.

“Yeah?”

“That you, Orlan?”

“George?”

“Yeah. Hey, I hear somebody shot old Berdette.”

“Somebody shot him, all right. A guy in a Mercedes.”

“No kidding. Listen … Orlan?”

“Yeah?”

“You know that Dr. Bellweather with the pink Jaguar?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, the good news is, Shawn’s back home now. But I’ve still got to talk to that doctor. You tell your boys, okay? This is real important now, Orlan. Anybody sees him, you let me know right away, okay?”

“Sure thing.”

“You sure you got that now?”

“I ain’t stupid.” Johnson turned off his handset. More orders from his brother-in-law. What the hell. He returned the full force of his mind to his previous dilemma. The solution was simple—either way, she was going to bust his balls. It would be a lot easier on both of them if he got himself shit-faced drunk for the occasion.

After breaking nine drill bits and pumping several ounces of perspiration onto his yellow suede rodeo shirt, Bellweather finally got enough holes drilled in the safe to knock the lock out with a hammer and chisel. Compared to liposuction, safecracking was a bitch. He looked through the ragged two-inch-diameter hole, expecting the worst, and was rewarded by the sight of a wad of banknotes. Yes! He congratulated himself on buying all these great tools and on pulling off the heist of a lifetime. His lifetime anyway.

Using the chisel, he tried to pry the safe door open. Nothing. He put the safe on the floor, wedged the chisel into the hole, and stomped on it. The shaft of the chisel snapped, producing a nasty gouge on his ankle. His face contorted with pain and anger, he kicked the safe, producing an explosion of pain in his big toe. Bellweather howled, but the safe remained impassively closed. He sat down on the floor, took off his shoe, and examined his throbbing, swelling digit. After a bit of painful prodding, he determined that he was suffering from a medical condition commonly referred to as a stubbed toe. He replaced his sock and shoe and renewed his attack on the safe, this time using a long-nosed pliers to reach in and extract the safe’s contents a jawful at a time. The first wad of bills to come out were hundreds, three of them. Working quickly, Bellweather yanked out bill after bill, keeping a rough count in his head as the pile of torn and crumpled bills formed a gray-green pile on the workshop floor. He quickly reached ten thousand, then twenty thousand. Most of the bills were hundreds, with a few twenties and fifties mixed in. No jewelry, bearer bonds, or other large-denomination negotiables appeared, but the banknotes kept coming. He continued to dig. The rough edges of the hole he had broken in the safe abraded his hands, but he kept at it, sitting on the floor, holding the safe under one arm, shaking it to redistribute the loose bills and bring them within range of the pliers’ snapping jaws. There was something else in there, a book of some sort. After twenty minutes, he managed to fold it with the pliers, then pull it through the hole. A notebook. He held up the safe, shook it. Nothing.