Short Money (36 page)

“That’s not true.” He stared at her face, which had come into hard focus. Her eyes glittered with life and anger.

“Bullshit,” she snapped. “All you care about is being right. Fuck you.”

He hadn’t heard her talk like that in years. “That’s not true,” he repeated, watching her carefully.

Mary leaned across the table, getting her face inches from his. “I want my husband. I want him back. If you aren’t going to help me I’ll go get him myself, goddammit.”

Crow said, “Look, if I wasn’t going to go after the son-of-a-bitch, I wouldn’t be here.” His lips formed a wry smile. He remembered this woman. This was his big sister, Mary Crow, back for a visit. “I knew you were in there somewhere,” he said.

Mary sat back, her shoulders rigid, holding him with hard eyes.

“Tell me something. Is it really you, or is the other Mary channeling you?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Is that supposed to be funny?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to help me?”

“I said I was. But tell me something else. Where is Melinda?”

Mary’s eyes shifted to his chin. “In what sense?”

“The physical. As in: Where has she gone? You know where she is, don’t you?”

She remained motionless.

“Is she all right?”

After a pause, Mary nodded.

“Where is she?”

Mary shook her head. “First you bring me back my man.”

Crow said, “It’s good to see you again.”

The phone rang twice before George’s voice answered.

“This is Crow. How’s it going, George?”

“We’re still waiting here, Officer Crow.”

“Let me talk to him.”

“He doesn’t feel like talking right now.”

“You want Bellweather, you put Getter on the line.”

“He’s doing fine.”

“Put him on.”

Crow heard an exasperated exhalation, then the sound of cloth on cloth, then heavy breathing, then George’s distant voice: “Heads up, Counselor. I’ve got Officer Crow on the line. You want to talk to him?”

Ragged breathing, a cough.

“Joe?”

Crow looked over at Mary, gave her a thumbs-up. She nodded. The hope in her eyes was painful to see.

“That you, Dave? How’s it going?”

“Tell him I’m making calamari risotto for dinner,” Mary said.

“Dey’re goding do
gill
be! Dey shod thad old ban in da ba. I saw id do it. You god do ged me oud a here, Joe.”

“You’re having squid for dinner,” Crow said. They’d shot Berdette? He wished Getter hadn’t mentioned that in front of the Murphys. It sort of limited his options for negotiation.

“Let me talk to him.” Mary grabbed the phone. “David?” Her face fell. She looked at Crow, stricken, handed him the phone.

George Murphy was back on the line. “You satisfied?”

“He doesn’t sound so good.”

“I told you he didn’t feel like talking. So you know where Nelly Bell is?”

Crow smiled into the phone. “I know exactly where he is.”

Drinking Black Russians in the middle of a weekday afternoon made Steve Anderson feel dark and dangerous. He had claimed a booth for himself way in the back of Myron’s Pub and was playing videos in his mind. Some of the tapes were pleasant fantasies, like the one where he got to shoot George Murphy with his Weatherby. Other tapes were recent memories, like the one where he’d walked into Rich Wicky’s office and been told to take off.

Anderson’s heart had about stopped.

“I don’t understand,” he’d said. “Am I being fired?”

Dickie said, “I just want you to take a few days off, Stevie.”

“What for? What’s going on here?”

“I just listened in on your conversation with Mrs. Pilhoffer, Steve.”

“Oh. You listened?”

“You know I do that, Steve. It’s part of my job. Now all I’m doing is asking you to take a few days—a week, say—and get it together.”

“I’ve got it together. Who was your top performer last month?”

“I was, Steve. But you did good. You’re a hell of a salesman, Steve. That’s why I’m suspending you instead of firing you. Understand?”

“For one bad phone call?”

“One bad phone call on a three-million-dollar account.”

“Yeah, a three-million-dollar pile of dogshit.”

Dickie had said, “Go home, Steve. Come back to work a week from Monday.”

Ouch. Bad video. Anderson took another sip. A black river of vodka and Kahlua cascaded down his throat. He hit his mental remote control. Dickie Wicky running across a snowy field, tie flapping over the shoulder of his Brooks Brothers suit. Taking careful aim, going for the knee shot.

“Kapow,” he said.

“Kapow? What’s he talking about, ‘Kapow’?”

“Damned if I know.” Rich Wicky leaned over the table. “Stevie? Who are you talking to?”

Anderson blinked, momentarily confused. Rich Wicky and Jack Mitchell, another broker. He hadn’t seen them come up. He was torn between wanting to punch Dickie in the nose and throwing the remains of his drink in his face.

Wicky, who could read facial expressions the way most people can read a menu, quickly said, “I can’t tell you how goddamned sorry I am about what happened this afternoon, Stevie.”

“You didn’t look very sorry,” Anderson said. He dipped a forefinger into his drink, examined his wet digit, licked it off. “What’re you guys doing here?”

Wicky looked at Mitchell, made a wide-eyed face. “It’s ten minutes past the bell, Stevie. Quittin’ time. Mind if we join you? How ’bout I buy you a drink?”

“I don’t care.”

Wicky signaled a waitress. He and Mitchell slid into the booth across from Anderson.

“So tell me, Stevie, what got into you with Mrs. Pilhoffer anyways? I gotta tell you, I just about bust a gut when I heard you call her ‘Mrs. P.’”

Anderson hiccupped, then laughed. Wicky laughed too, then Mitchell joined in. The waitress brought their drinks.

“You know,” Wicky said, “if I hadn’t been afraid that old man Litten might be listening in too, I’d have let it slide. Hell, everybody’s gotta blow off a little steam now and then. So tell me, Stevie, what’s on your mind? It isn’t like you to go off on a client that way, no matter how much she deserved it.”

It took two more drinks and a lot of prodding by Wicky, but Anderson eventually spilled it, what had been bothering him. He told them how he’d been tricked into shooting a dead elk.

“Let me see if I got this right,” Wicky said. “You paid this guy twenty K to let you shoot an elk.”

“Record-book elk,” Anderson clarified. “Boone and Crockett.”

“Right. This huge mother. And so you went out and you shot it, and then later you found out it had been dead a week. And you couldn’t get it off your mind, so you told Mrs. P. to take a flying fuck.”

“That’s right,” Anderson said.

Mitchell and Wicky looked at each other, then broke out laughing.

Anderson was not amused.

Mitchell was the first to stop laughing. He donned a serious expression and asked Anderson what he planned to do.

“Get drunk,” Anderson said. “Can’t go home. Can’t tell Patty I got suspended.”

“I mean about the elk,” Mitchell said. “You gonna let those guys get away with it?”

Anderson squeezed his eyes closed, opened them wide. “Whad’ya mean?”

“I mean, if somebody sold me a piece of bad meat, I sure as hell know what I’d do. I’d send it back to the kitchen.”

Extensive interviews show that not one alcoholic has ever actually seen a pink elephant.

—CENTER OF ALCOHOL STUDIES, YALE UNIVERSITY

C
ROW CONTEMPLATED HIS UPENDED
Volkswagen. The sun had nearly set, and the car’s shadow stretched far to the east, fading out after several car lengths. Both doors hung wide open; the front end remained buried deep in a snowdrift. He was sorry he couldn’t remember the accident; it must have been quite an experience. He closed and locked the Jaguar, trudged through the drift toward the snowbound Rabbit.

For once, he was perfectly warm and comfortable.

He was wearing Getter’s waterproof Sorels, and he liked it. They were a size too large, but they kept his feet warm and dry. He felt as if he could walk through anything. The quilted parka, a high-tech affair with dozens of Velcro’d pockets and zip-out layers, enveloped his body like warm armor. A matching Thinsulate hat with earflaps, and a pair of fur-lined gloves, completed his borrowed outfit. One thing about Dave Getter—when it came to clothing, he bought the good stuff.

Thinking he might have to walk in on the Murphys, Crow had asked Mary if she had a parka he could use, something with a bit more warmth than his cheap trench coat. She had shown him a closet packed with Dave’s outdoor clothing, most of it looking as if it had never been worn. After he’d dressed himself, turning up three inches of pant cuffs and a couple inches of sleeve at each wrist, his sister had nodded approvingly. Now that Crow had agreed to try to get her husband back, she seemed calmer, as if his success were preordained.

To his surprise, as he left, she had told him to be careful.

Crow leaned into the upended Rabbit, opened the glove compartment, and recovered his Taurus. He put it in one of the many pockets. Now he was completely dressed.

Armed and suitably clad, he still needed a way to get to his destination. A few minutes earlier, he had driven past the entrance to Talking Lake Ranch. The county plows had made another, wider pass down Highway 7, throwing up a ridge of dirt-gray ice and snow three feet high, blocking access to the ranch. No problem for a jeep, but he’d left Harley’s vehicle at Bellweather’s, and there was no way the Jag would be able to mount that barrier. Short of walking in, only one other possibility occurred to him.

Fifty yards away, the door to the trailer opened, and Harley Pike stepped out.

“Hey!” Harley shouted, staggering forward. “What the hell you doing?”

“It’s just me, Harley,” Crow called. “Crow.”

“Crow? Where the goddamn hell are my wheels?”

Crow walked to meet him. “How’s it going, Harley?”

“It’s going fine. Where the goddamn hell is my jeep? You took my goddamn jeep. You were gonna bring it right back.”

“Your jeep is fine, Harley.” Crow looked past Harley at the trailer. “Is Puss around?”

“Why?” He held his bare fists clenched at his hips; his bloodshot eyes glared from beneath a shelf of wild eyebrow.

Crow said, “You get that beer I left off here?”

“Yeah, I got it.” Harley’s eyes misted, and his face went soft, all the anger flooding out of him at the memory of the free case of beer. “You want a cool one?”

“No, thanks,” Crow said. “I need to ask you for a favor.”

Harley frowned. “What’s a matter, you don’t want to have a drink with me?”

“I need to borrow your snowmobile, Harley.”

Harley’s mouth went slack, then closed with a click. “You already got my wheels—now you want my skis?” He looked Crow up and down. “What the hell you got on there, Crow? You look like some guy in a catalog picture.”

“The thing is,” Crow persisted, “I need to get over to the Murphys’ place, and I don’t think my Jag’s got the clearance to handle that road of theirs.”

Harley’s eyes hunted for, then landed on, the pink Jaguar. “Somebody oughta shoot that thing,” he said.

“Somebody has. Where’s your woman, Harley?”

“She’s watching one a her soaps. You want a beer?”

“I want to borrow your skis, Harley. Tell you what, you loan ’em to me for an hour, I’ll buy you a bottle of J.D.”

Harley’s eyes went small and greedy. “One a the big ones?”

“I’ll get you a whole liter. How’s that?”

Harley looked over his shoulder. “You won’t tell Puss?”

“I won’t say a word.”

“I can hide ’er in the snow,” he said, thinking out loud. “Keep ’er nice and cool.”

The door opened, and Puss stuck her head out.

“What’s going on out here?”

Harley grinned at her. “Ol’ Crow here wants to borrow the Polaris, Puss. I told him it was fine with me. I’m gonna go get ’er fired up right now.” Harley slogged through the snow around the trailer.

Puss frowned at Crow. “Where’s his jeep?”

“I’ll get it back to you tomorrow.”

Puss brushed a shank of long gray hair away from one eye, squinted at him. The sputtering of a snowmobile engine rattled the aluminum walls of the trailer. Her thin lips formed a short arch. “I’m surprised he’s letting you take his skis, Crow. I just hope you didn’t promise him a jug.”

Harley Pike’s ancient Polaris was no improvement over his dilapidated jeep. It rode rough and slow, and every time Crow hit a dip in the trail, the fiberglass hood popped up, blocking his vision. He headed due west from Harley and Puss’s snowbound trailer toward the bluffs along the river, following a faint snowmobile track. The ten inches of new snow covering the trail made it difficult to follow. Twice, he went off the edge and became mired in soft drifts. Up to his waist in unpacked virgin snow, he’d had to muscle the heavy old machine back up onto the path. The trail zigzagged down the coulee toward the river. By the time he reached the wider, more recently traveled trail that followed the east bank, he was drenched with sweat.

As he crossed the southern border of Talking Lake Ranch, moving faster now that the trail was clearly visible, the confidence and resolve that had brought him that far started to waver. The wind clawed at his face and his perspiration-soaked undergarments began to cool. He tucked his head between his shoulders and squeezed the throttle, telling himself that so far everything was going according to plan. Boiled down to its essentials, the plan had been to pick up the gun he’d left in his Volkswagen, get to Talking Lake Ranch, and save Dave Getter’s miserable life. It would serve as a kind of penance, a selfless act, an act of pure, courageous altruism. Melinda would hear about it, and she would be proud.

Crow sat erect on the speeding snowmobile. Imagining that she was watching him, he concentrated on driving the snowmobile perfectly, his jaw set, guiding the machine flawlessly across the winter landscape.

“Well, I’ll be got-damned.” Orlan Johnson gripped the doorframe and swayed, muttering to himself. “Dark out. How’d that happen?” Cold air swept past him into Birdy’s, rustling the empty potato chip bags that represented the remains of his dinner. His squad car, windows opaque with frost, sat parked a few yards away. Johnson felt his pockets, found a set of keys, and launched himself toward the car. His chosen trajectory was off by about twenty degrees, but by closing one eye he was able to make a mid-course correction and arrive safely at the driver’s-side door. He fumbled with the door handle, came to the conclusion it was locked, made several stabs at it with the key. “Slippery bugger,” he growled, breathing loudly through his nose. He finally succeeded in opening the door, inserted his bulky torso into the car, got the right key into the ignition, started the engine.