Drawing Dead (38 page)

“These aren't in perfect condition,” he said. “The paper is getting a bit yellow. Fifty thousand dollars seems a bit high, to tell you the truth.”

O'Gara's eyes bulged. “Fifty?”

Ben took a step back and said, “Yes, that's the figure Mr. Wicky mentioned.”

“Son-of-a-bitch offered me fifteen. A buck a book.” O'Gara boxed the air, two rapid jabs and a right hook, about the same height as Wicky's chin would be, had he been there. Ben stepped back. O'Gara said, “You telling me he was trying to rip me off?”

“I believe he was attempting to steal from both of us. You see, I'm the one who was to have provided the money. Mr. Wicky was merely acting as my agent, but since both you and I are now speaking directly, I see no reason why we can't make our own deal. My opinion is, Mr. Wicky's duplicitous acts have served to disqualify him.”

“Damn right! He's gonna be here in a few minutes. We can tell him to take a hike. Give him a boot on his rear to get him started.”

Ben shook his head. “I don't think we should wait,” he said. “Mr. Wicky has an associate, a large man with a violent personality. That man may be with him.”

“He has a
stooge?
Is he some kind of mobster or something? What the hell are we talking about here?”

“Let's just say that we'd be best off doing our deal and then clearing out for a while. That is, if we can agree on a price. What do you think?”

“You said something about fifty thousand smackeroonies, my friend.” O'Gara made his eyebrows jump up and down.

Ben looked over his shoulder. It was quiet in the woods; the only sounds were those of small waves coming from the shore and the faint scraping sound of leaves in the wind. He did not like being out on a peninsula, at the end of a narrow driveway, only one way in and out. It was one of those moments, he suddenly realized, when he would have to make a decision without having sufficient time or information, like playing a big hand with an unmarked deck.

“If I pay you twenty-five thousand in cash, right now, will you get in that truck and follow me back down to the cities? Right now?”

“Fifty thousand bazookas,” said O'Gara, his eyes glazing. “Man, a guy could buy a lot of dog food with that. You show me that kind of cash, my friend, and we'll be rolling south before you can say 'Fuck me, darling.'“

Ben stared down at the smaller man, a leprechaun in a lumberjack shirt, grinning up at him. He looked at his watch. Eleven forty-five. He took a deep breath, walked to the back of the Cadillac, opened the trunk, took thirty bundles of bills out of a black Samsonite suitcase, and stuffed them into a cloth roll bag printed with the Gold's Gym logo. He handed the bag to O'Gara.

“Thirty thousand bazookas,“ Ben said. “My final offer.” He had brought $72,000 along, the entire remaining assets of the Tom and Ben Show, but he was hoping that the old man would go for the thirty.

O'Gara looked into the bag at the strapped bundles of twenty-dollar bills. He sucked in his breath, reached in, and pushed his hand deep into the bundles. Ben allowed himself a faint smile.

“I'll be damned,” O'Gara said, his voice reverent. He raised his head and looked into Ben's tea-colored eyes. “Son, you just bought yourself a whole goddamn truckload of funny pictures.”

“I
told you we were gonna lose him.” Catfish stopped the Porsche in the middle of the road.

Tommy had reached a new level of fidgetiness. His head was jerking back and forth as if he were receiving an electric charge. “Gotta be around here someplace. Go back, try that little road we were looking at.” He pulled out his bottle of Tylenol, shook it, poured the last four tablets into his palm, and lapped them up.

“That was an old logging path, Tommy. This is a Porsche, not a four-by-four.”

“Okay! Okay! Forget about it! Keep going. It's got to be one of the places on this lake here. How many cabins can there be?”

“Must be hundreds.”

“Fuck! Fuck! Now what're we gonna do?”

Catfish had about had it with Tommy. It was like sitting next to a hyperactive Saint Bernard puppy—the only difference was that so far he hadn't pissed on the Recaro seats. She was beginning to understand why Ben was doing his wheeling and dealing solo.

“Let's start looking. You can see most of these places from the road. All we have to do is spot his car. There can't be too many yellow Cadillacs up here.”

“Then
this one guy, Mister C. tells me to hurt him on account of he did something, I don't know what. So this guy thinks he's a tough guy, a big guy, bigger'n me, and so I kinda ease up next to him, he's standing in line for to see this movie,
Terminator 2
, he's one a them bodybuilders like Arnold, and I drop a quarter on the ground and say, 'Hey, that your money?' The guy says yeah, and he bends over to pick it up, and I hit him back a the head with my elbow. Went down, wham, lost a bunch of teeth on the sidewalk. I didn't even have to do nothing else.” Freddy laughed.

Wicky stared numbly out the windshield, holding a bottle of Moosehead between his legs. He had taken the Stoli down to the level where he could listen without envisioning himself in the roles of Freddy's victims. He would never have believed that Freddy could be so voluble, but all you had to do was get him on the right subject, and he opened right up.

Freddy took his foot off the accelerator and slowed the Caddy down to fifty-five. Ahead of them, just coming into sight, a maroon MHP car was parked on the shoulder. As they drew closer, Wicky could see that the cop had pulled over two people on a motorcycle. A man and a woman, the woman arguing with the cop. He watched the scene flash by, wondering what would happen if the highway patrol pulled Freddy over. Terrible things, no doubt.

He took another swallow of beer. The woman had looked familiar. He let his mind run with it for a few seconds, then gave it up, unscrewed the cap on the Stoli, took a hit.

Freddy had thought of another story.

“I ever tell you about the time I hadda do a priest? I hadda cross myself every ten minutes for a week after that one. See, there was this priest…”

Wicky scrunched down in his seat, refusing to give meaning to the words. He didn't like priests either, but Jesus Christ! Freddy was remembering and laughing.

An intersection flashed by. Wicky blinked, turned in his seat, and looked back. County 42.

“We got to turn around,” he said. “That was the turn.”

After
a difficult half hour, the cop finished writing Debrowski's ticket and let them go.

“Did you see them go by? That was Dickie and Freddy,” Crow said as Debrowski kicked the Kawasaki to life. “What the hell is Freddy doing up here?”

Debrowski signaled, looked back over her shoulder, and pulled out onto the highway. As soon as the cop was out of sight, she brought the bike back up to eighty-five.

“You think Sam can handle Freddy?” Debrowski shouted.

“Yes!” he shouted back. “Maybe,” he said to himself. “Maybe not.”

Now Chester, he'll take off after anything. And Festus, he don't care what he does, long as be gets to be with Chester.

—Sam O'Gara

“What's that?”
Ben said, cocking his head.

Sam O'Gara listened. “You mean that engine sound? Sounds like a car without no muffler on it coming up the drive. Could be Richie, I s'pose.” He laughed. “Ain't he gonna be surprised to see you here!”

Ben froze for three seconds, his eyes flicking from side to side. The sound of the approaching car intensified. The front end of a blue Cadillac convertible appeared. He snatched the bag of money from O'Gara, ran to his car, got in and took off, going forward, straight into the woods, aiming the big car at what appeared to be a break in the trees.

O'Gara shouted, “You don't want to go that way!”

Three car lengths into the woods, the left front tire hit a moss- covered rock; the Cadillac slewed to the side, the long tail knocking over a three-inch-diameter spruce tree. Ben wrenched the wheel to the right, trying to avoid a cluster of birch trees, came up over a low hummock, and dove down into a boggy depression, burying the front bumper in wet, mossy peat. He jerked the gear selector into reverse and floored the accelerator. The wheels kicked up a few clods of peat moss, but the car would not move. Ben threw open the door, grabbed the gym bag, and got out.

O'Gara was yelling, “That don't go nowhere, Mr. Franklin!”

The blue Cadillac had skidded to a halt beside O'Gara's truck. Freddy Wisnesky was climbing out of the driver's seat.

Ben looked into the woods—a mass of trees, thornbushes, poison ivy, hungry bears, wolves, moose.…Freddy was in motion, walking toward him, less than fifty yards away. Ben's choice was clear. Lifting his long legs high, he bounded into the forest. Freddy hesitated for a beat, giving Ben a sporting ten yards on his lead, then launched himself in pursuit, parting the underbrush as if it was smoke.

O'Gara looked at Wicky, who was sitting in the car unscrewing the top from a bottle of vodka.

“Now what the hell you think got into them two?” O'Gara asked.

Wicky took a hit off the bottle, offered it to O'Gara.

“Russky stuff? No, thanks.” He opened the door to the red truck and pulled a bottle out from beneath the seat. Jack Daniel's, with the black label. “I only drink American, son. You want a snort of the real thing?”

Wicky reached an unsteady hand for the bottle, poured an amber ounce into his mouth, swallowed. “That's pretty good,” he said. “Say, you given that Homestead Mining any more thought?”

Sam took the bottle back, upended it, swished the whiskey around his mouth, and swallowed.

“Goddamn,” he wheezed, snapping his head from side to side. “Ahhh. Homestead? Yep, I been thinking about it. You show me a good price on these here comic books, I'm almost sure to buy some.”

“Ben didn't make you a deal?”

“Nope. Tried to, but I said we hadda wait for you. Richie's my main man, I said. I'm sure he'll match your offer, I told him.”

During
the two and a half hours spent riding behind Debrowski on the open road, Crow had imagined himself flying through the air toward certain death no less than twenty times. Now that they were on a dirt road, the kind of surface the bike was made to handle, he had foreseen his death twenty times in the last five minutes. If doing eighty miles per hour on the highway was frightening, doing sixty on dirt and gravel was pure horror. They came up over a low rise—he was sure they were airborne for at least a second—and saw the lake not fifty yards directly in front of them. Debrowski hit the brakes hard, Crow slid forward, pushing her right up onto the gas tank, the bike skittering over the washboard surface of the road.

Somehow, she kept the machine under control, and they came to a dust-clouded halt twenty feet from the water. Debrowski coughed in the dust, spat.

“You want to get the hell off me?” she said, her voice hoarse.

Crow swung one leg over the back of the bike and stood shakily on solid ground. Debrowski kicked down the stand and got off.

“This must be Crook Lake,” she said. “You okay, Crow? You look like you're seeing your tombstone.”

Crow said, “Let's get going.” His voice cracked, as if he was thirteen again. He pointed. “I think we follow the shore road to the left.”

Debrowski climbed back on the bike.

“It's about a mile and a half, a turnoff to the right. There should be a mailbox with 'O'Gara' painted on it. Keep the revs down. When we find the drive, I want to stash the bike and go in on foot. We don't know what we're going to find. I don't want them to hear us coming.”

“Do you have anything with you?” Debrowski asked.

“Like what?”

“Like a gun.”

“Do I look like I have a gun?”

He could feel her shrug. When they reached the mailbox designated “O'Gara,” Debrowski turned up the driveway. Crow tapped her shoulder. She pulled the bike off the path and into a tall stand of nettles. They got off and pushed the bike between two wide-trunked basswoods.

“We've got about a quarter mile to the cabin,” Crow said. “Let's see what old Sam's got going on.” He started up the driveway at a run, hearing the distinctive, distant howls of Chester and Festus. Howls of celebration, anger, fear, or mourning? He had no idea.

A
lifetime ago, Ben Fink had been the number-one hurdler at Knickerbocker High School in White Plains, New York. If there had been a flaw in his technique, it was that he jumped too high and too far.
Time you spend floating around up there, Fink, is time you could be running
, his coach had told him.

The tendency to bound high and far was serving him well twenty years later. The uneven, brush-riddled, bog-dotted peninsula flashed beneath his flying feet. Behind him, he could hear the crashing of brush and dead wood. The gym bag gripped in his right hand kept slapping against the passing branches. He hugged it to his chest and concentrated on silent running. Freddy Wisnesky was out of sight, though still audible. Ben turned to his right, thinking to find the driveway, take it back to the lakeshore road, get out of this forest. Every clump of brush, every hillock, every fallen tree, could be concealing a bear, or worse.

As this thought joggled in his mind, he heard a distant howl, a primitive, carnivorous sound that sent violent tremors through his six-foot-three-inch frame. The first howl was followed by another. Ben sailed over an uprooted spruce and accelerated. Whatever they were, he could almost feel their hot tongues rasping shreds of flesh from his long, lonely bones.

What you want to do, you want people to do what you want, you want to give them two choices: They do what you want, or else.

—Joey Cadillac

“What was that?”
Catfish asked.