Drawing Dead (40 page)

“Don't do it, Joey. Drop the gun.” Crow started walking toward him, looking down the long barrel. Joey froze, but he didn't drop the gun. It was pointed at the ground, just to Crow's left.

“What the fuck're you doing here?” he demanded.

“Put the gun down, Joey.”

Joey locked eyes with Crow, then glanced off to his right. “Fucking hell—I knew it!”

Debrowski was coming across the clearing.

“How you doing, Joey?” she said.

“Fuck you.”

“Put the gun down, Joey,” Crow repeated. Sam and Wicky had eased to the side. Wicky's face was dead white; even the red spots on his cheeks were gone. He was breathing though his mouth, almost panting. Jimbo Bobick, by contrast, remained motionless, his expression one of mild wonder.

Joey stared at the end of the shotgun. “That's some gun you got there, Crow.”

Crow tightened his finger on the trigger.

“You know you got a gun full a spiders, Crow? That piece ain't been shot in years. Probably blow up on you, if it shoots at all.”

“You can find out,” Crow said.

“We were playing cards, I'd call you, Crow.”

Crow smiled.

Joey the Avenger felt ready to explode, and he was loving it. Holding it back, keeping the cool on his face, but ready to go apeshit on this guy. Any second now. The barrel of the shotgun was full of spider eggs. The thing looked like it had been rusting away for years. He wouldn't use a gun like that to knock off a 7-Eleven. It was a piece of junk, and this Crow was full of shit.

The more he thought along these lines, the more certain he became. Crow was a bluffer, after all. Joey licked his lips and thought about how he would do it. He would shoot Crow in the face, take his time, see the little black hole appear. Then the ball-busting leather bitch. And the three drunks. Do them all and take the comic books. It was solid, a good payback, righteous vengeance. It was too bad he had missed the Tom and Ben Show, but he could take care of them later.

He laughed and raised the Davis, aligning the shallow silver sights with the center of Crow's forehead. He was feeling the trigger pressing against the flesh of his index finger when he saw the flash from the end of the shotgun barrel and felt something hit him in the chest.

A
few weeks earlier, Jimbo Bobick had been driving home from the Grand Casino near Lake Mille Lacs at 4:00 a.m. Suddenly, a deer, a large doe, had appeared in his headlights. He had understood immediately that it would be impossible for him to stop. Time had slowed, and the single second it had taken for the deer to slide up over his hood, shatter the windshield, and travel through the car into the back seat had taken, subjectively, over a minute. He remembered thinking, as the deer was in the process of penetrating the safety glass, that the poor animal looked surprised.

Now the sensation that time had slowed was repeating itself. Jimbo saw Joey's hand coming up with the chrome-plated automatic. He saw the stubby barrel lining up with Joe Crow's forehead. He saw Crow stepping back, bringing the shotgun up, pulling the stock against his shoulder, firing. The sound of the shotgun firing was like that of a paper bag being popped. A cloud of fine lead shot struck Joey Cadillac on the chest, bounced off, and pattered to the grassy earth. Joey staggered back, startled but uninjured. Crow pulled back on the pump to eject the dud, but the paper casing had jammed in the chamber.

Joey Cadillac laughed and again raised the automatic.

This time Jimbo had time to understand that he was about to see a man being shot. Simultaneously, in another sector of his mind, he was watching his eight-thousand-dollar commission on the Whiting Lake property being blown away. In another second there would be no Joe Crow, and therefore no sale. This equation projected itself into the realm of the physical: with a piercing, atavistic shriek, Jimbo propelled his body horizontally through space and hit Joey Cadillac hard on the side of his left knee. He heard the knee pop and the gun fire as one explosion, an intensely loud
crack
only inches from his ear. He rolled away, sat up. Something was wrong with his foot. A red hole in his shoe. Blood. Joey had gone down hard but had held on to the gun. Sitting on the grass, his face contorted with pain, he was holding his knee with one hand, bringing the gun up with the other, now aiming it toward Jimbo, ready to make a new hole in some other part of his body. Though he had acted quickly and decisively a moment before, Jimbo now found himself charmed to paralysis by the small dark hole at the end of the shiny little automatic. He had just enough time to regret that he would never be able to close the sale, when he saw the shotgun flicker through the air like a spinning baton.

The cartwheeling shotgun smashed into the back of Joey's right hand, sending the little automatic through a twenty-foot arc into a patch of dark-green woodbine. Joey stared at his hand, bewildered. His wrist did not appear to be working; the hand hung limp.

Wicky, who was closest to where the gun had landed, picked it up and waved it in front of him like a shield, pointing it at everyone and no one. “Okay,” he said, his voice cracking. “Okay!”

“Take it easy, Dickie,” Crow said.

“You broke my fucking hand!” Joey said, looking at Crow, astonished.

“Okay!” Wicky shouted. His eyes were wild, pointing in too many directions, his pupils constricted to pinheads.

“Easy now, Richie,” Sam said, starting toward him.

“Okay!” Wicky screamed, bringing the gun to bear on Sam.

The sudden crashing of brush jerked everyone's attention from the drunk with the gun. Freddy Wisnesky, his red face bearing dozens of scratches, charged out of the woods, into the clearing. His Minnesota Twins T-shirt was shredded, and his arms were covered with scratches from plowing through acres of thornbushes.

“Frederick!” said Joey Cadillac, his expression a melange of pain, hope, anger, and triumph.

Freddy was breathing heavily. His eyes rested briefly on the gun in Wicky's hand, then landed on Joey Cadillac.

“Mister C.?”

Holding his hand against his belly, Joey climbed painfully to his feet and jerked his head toward the dock.

“Okay!” rasped Wicky. He was aiming the gun at Freddy. Crow hoped he wouldn't shoot. A guy like Freddy, getting shot would just piss him off.

Joey looked at Wicky, at the gun. “Get me down to the dock, Freddy.” As the words left his mouth, the sound of the twin Pratt & Whitneys rumbled up from the shore and the seaplane started moving away from the dock.

Joey screamed at the departing plane. “You son-of-a-bitch, you leave me here, you're a fucking dead man!” He stared at the seaplane, breathing heavily, then turned back to Freddy. “Fuck him. He can't hear me. Get in that truck, Freddy. You're driving.” He shot a look at Wicky. “You shoot that thing at me, Rich, and you're fucked.” He hopped and limped to the truck, opened the passenger door with his left hand, climbed in. Crow, Debrowski, and Sam were all moving back, away from Freddy, away from the truck, away from Dickie Wicky and the gun. Bobick sat on the ground, gaping white-faced at the blood seeping from the hole in his white shoe.

Wicky staggered to the side, holding the gun unsteadily in both hands. Freddy got into the cab, started the truck.

“No!” Wicky fired the gun. A short gash appeared on the truck hood. “My comics!” he shrieked.

“Get moving!” Joey yelled, ducking his head down. Freddy popped the clutch, and the truck lurched forward.

Wicky screamed, “No!” He pulled the trigger again, shattering the truck's back window.

“Go! Go! Go!” Joey shouted. Freddy found second gear and pressed the gas pedal to the floor. Wicky staggered after them, firing again, missing the truck completely, and again, shattering the driver's side mirror. The truck was bouncing down the uneven surface of the driveway, picking up speed. Freddy slammed the shifter into third gear, keeping his right foot on the floor. Wicky fired again, running splay-legged down the driveway after the truck. “Go! Get me the fuck out of here!” Joey shouted, his head between his knees. The speedometer read thirty miles per hour when Freddy saw the lake in front of him and remembered the sharp turn in the driveway. He took his foot off the gas, but oddly, the big red fucker continued to accelerate.

The
sound of the racing truck engine ended with a splash. Crow looked at his father and asked, “You ever get around to fixing that bad gas pedal, Sam?”

Sam shrugged. “I thought I had 'er taken care of, but maybe not.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Debrowski asked.

“Let's walk up to the bend and take a look,” Crow suggested.

“Jimbo here's got hisself shot up,” Sam said.

“My foot,” Jimbo moaned, his face bloodless.

“Let me see.” Debrowski squatted beside him, carefully removed his shoe, and peeled off his sock. “Looks worse than it is,” she said. “You got a groove down the side of your foot now. A little tape, you'll be fine.”

“It doesn't feel fine.”

“Let's go inside and see what Ozzie's got in his medicine cabinet. Can you walk?”

“I think so.” He climbed painfully to his feet and hobbled toward the cabin.

“I'm going to see what's happened with Dickie and company,” Crow said. He started down the driveway, followed by Sam. They found Wicky sitting on the shore at the bend in the driveway, staring out onto the lake.

“You okay, Richie?” Sam asked, taking the gun from his hands.

Wicky nodded but showed no interest in standing up. The tail end of the truck was jutting from the water, pointed straight up, forty feet out from the shore. A few boxes were still bobbing on the surface.

“You s'pose those fellas are still in there?” Sam asked.

“I suppose they are,” said Crow.

Sam shook his head. “It's too goddamn bad. Ozzie had one hell of a porn collection.”

Wicky said, “My comic books. All those comic books.”

Sam patted him on the shoulder. “It's okay, Richie. It's just ink on paper.”

THOUSANDS OF NUDES CLUTTER CROOK LAKE SHORELINE – RESIDENTS OUTRAGED BY MYSTERIOUS PORNOGRAPHIC TIDE

—Headline,
Brainerd Northern Sun

Crow and his father
left Wicky sitting on the point and walked back toward the cabin.

“Sorry I was late,” Crow said. “My car wouldn't start.” “It's that fancy-ass car you got—that's your trouble, son.” Crow nodded. “So how'd we do?”

Sam squinted up at the sun and scratched his four-day beard. “ Welp, that Ben Franklin fellow was here and all but gave me a bag of money, but then the big guy in the blue Caddy showed up. Franklin, he took off. Runs like a goddamn deer. Took his bag of money with him too.”

Crow nodded philosophically. Somehow it did not surprise him that he was going to come out of the deal with a big zero.

“Do you think he's still out there in the woods?”

“Sure. 'Less the dogs ate him. They'll chase down anything run- nin'. “ Sam laughed and fitted a cigarette between his lips. They were coming into the small clearing around the cabin. He lit his cigarette and, closing one eye against the smoke, said, “You know, son, you might just want to take a look in that yellow car over there. That money that fellow was offering me, it came out of the trunk. Wouldn't surprise me there was still a buck or two left in there.”

Catfish
Wicky had been driving in and out of people's driveways for half an hour, searching for the yellow Cadillac. One way or another, she was going to get her share. Two things she could not bear: to be bored and to be left out. She pulled out of one driveway—there had been nothing at its end but a boarded-up shack—spun her wheels in the dirt, and roared up the road, looking for the next mailbox.

“That fucking Tommy,” she muttered, angry with him for taking off after Ben and, at the same time, relieved that he had gone. He had been fucking up her life ever since she could remember. At the same time, there was nobody like Tommy. Ever since they were kids. No one else had ever understood her the way he did. Especially not Dickie.

The eighth driveway she tried, a long, narrow, rutted path, Catfish almost ran over her husband. She saw him at the last instant, sitting like a lump in the middle of the driveway, jammed her foot down on the brake, and skidded to a stop.

“Hey.” She stuck her head out the window.

Dickie raised his head and stared at her, open-mouthed. “Cat?”

“Who do you think?”

Dickie staggered to his feet and pointed vaguely in the direction of the lake. Catfish followed his gesture and saw the back of the truck jutting from the water.

“My comics,” he said.

“What happened?”

Dickie shook his head helplessly.

“Where's your car? Did you come up here with Ben?” Dickie pointed up the driveway. Catfish put the Porsche in gear and drove around him. Dickie stood weaving in place, then started up the driveway after her. His memories of the last hour were neither clear nor arranged in their proper sequence. All he knew for sure was that the comics were gone, and with them his future. He had no idea what Catfish was doing there or where everybody else had disappeared to. He remembered, in a dreamy way, that he had been shooting a gun, but he couldn't remember why, or at who. Perhaps Catfish could explain it to him.

Jimbo
was already feeling better. Debrowski had taped up his foot and mixed him a bourbon and water. Jimbo was telling her about the island on Whiting Lake.

“It's Joe's kind of place. Quiet, secluded, no neighbors. Bass, walleye, northerns, you name it. Anything a guy could want.”

“That's great,” said Debrowski. “I'm sure he's going to love it.” She was tired. Crow and his dad were out in the woods, prying open the trunk of Ben's mired Cadillac. “You think you can drive with that foot all bandaged up?”