Short Money (31 page)

“Yeah. Listen, I’ve got to get this boy home. Have you got a car or something I can use?” Crow stood up. He was still wearing his shoes and his coat. His legs were shaky, but they seemed to be holding him up. That was good. “Or a phone?”

Puss lit another cigarette. “No phone. There’s H.’s jeep back in the shed. The heater don’t work so good, but it runs. Or if you want, we got this old Polaris. You’re heading for the Murphy place, you might want to take the Polaris, go cross-country. It’d be a lot shorter. There’s a trail runs along the river, you come right up in their backyard that way. If you take the road, you’ve got to go all the way around.”

“I don’t feel up to handling a snowmobile today, Puss. Mind if I give the jeep a try?”

“I don’t mind, but H. might. You know how he gets.”

“I suppose it won’t hurt to ask.”

Puss shrugged. “Mind if I ask you something, Crow? Why the hell you come back to Big River? You don’t got enough grief already?”

“Business.”

She snorted smoke. “I keep telling H. we should move, get him a real job, something with dental insurance so he could, you know, get his choppers worked on. He don’t want to go.”

Crow said nothing. A series of metallic booms announced Harley’s descent from the roof. When he entered the trailer, Crow asked, “How’s that jeep of yours running, Harley?”

“Runs fine,” Harley said suspiciously. “Why?”

“I was wondering if I could borrow it to give this boy a ride home.”

“I don’t like nobody using my wheels.”

“I won’t need it long. Just an hour or so.”

“Uh-uh.”

“Harley,” Puss said, “let the man use your goddamn jeep.”

Harley twisted up his face and glowered at her. He raised a fist and worked it back and forth in the air between them.

Puss crossed her arms. “You touch me, you’ll never be able to fall asleep again. You unnerstand me, H.?”

“Always taking the other side, ain’tcha.”

“Only when you act like a shithead. Christamighty, H., you want these two hanging around for the rest of the day, or you want to make him a loan of the goddamn jeep?”

Harley scowled, then brightened. “How about I drive ’em into town myself.”

“You ain’t going nowhere, H.”

“I’ll go anywheres I damn please, bitch.”

“You call me bitch again, I’m gonna piss in your goddamn beer next time you ain’t lookin’. Now where you got those keys stashed?”

“Up my fuckin’ ass. You wanna see?”

Fascinated by the display of interpersonal dynamics, Crow stood silently by as Puss negotiated the jeep for him. He tried to imagine having such a conversation with Melinda—down and dirty, no verbal holds barred. Maybe it would be good, if either of them survived it. It seemed to work for Harley and Puss—at least they were still living together.

The discussion went on for a few more minutes, getting louder and fouler all the time. Shawn, still sitting at the table gripping his half-empty beer, stared open-mouthed at the domestic drama. Crow wasn’t sure what triggered it—perhaps they had run out of insults—but the discussion suddenly ended with Harley sitting back on the bed, sulking, while Puss dangled the keys to the jeep before Crow’s nose.

“A couple things,” she said. “You got to gas it up, and you got to pick us up a case of beer on your way back.”

Crow took the keys.

“Hell with that,” Harley snarled. “You get me a jug a that J.D. One a them big ones.”

Puss said, “No way, H. I see you with a jug, I’m’n’a bust it over your thick skull. I had it with that shit. You stick with the beer.”

“A case of beer it is. Let’s go, kiddo,” Crow said to Shawn.

After considerable hacking and groaning, the jeep, a veteran of the U.S. Postal Service, steering wheel on the wrong side, started. Crow put it in gear and lurched out of the tin garage, crawled through the snow toward the highway.

“So you think your dad will be happy to see you?”

“I dunno,” said Shawn. “I think he might be kind of mad.”

“Why? It wasn’t your fault that Bellweather kidnapped you.”

“I s’pose. Only he didn’t, exactly.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Well, I sort of ran away.” Shawn wiped his nose on his jacket sleeve.

“Why’d you do that?”

Shawn shrugged. “I dunno.”

“What did you do, hitchhike into town?”

“You took me.”

“What? Me? I don’t think so.”

“I climbed in the back of Doc’s car, and you drove me to Doc’s house.”

Crow said, “Tell me you’re kidding.”

“And then we went to stay at Nate and Ginny’s. And then Doc said he was gonna take me home, only he didn’t. He’s really weird.”

Crow was still working on the suggestion that he had taken Shawn Murphy. He remembered Bellweather showing him the large storage space in the Jaguar, a space big enough for a ten-year-old boy.

“You know what he likes to do?” Shawn asked.

Crow cleared his throat. “No. What?” He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this.

“He has this little machine. It’s like a little thing that you put batteries in, you know?”

“Yeah?” Crow didn’t, but he suspected the worst.

“He, like, he sticks it in his nose. He trims his nose hairs.”

“He trims his nose hairs,” Crow repeated.

“Yeah. Isn’t that weird?”

“Hey, I told you no more of that,” Berdette said.

Ricky shook out his fist. “Sorry, old man. I had a spasm.”

Dave Getter wrapped his arms around his belly and coughed. His nose was swollen grotesquely from its encounter with the top of the bar. Ricky had been treating him to the occasional punch in the ribs, whenever it occurred to him.

“Long as you’re in my place, you keep your damn hands off him. And don’t call me ‘old man.’”

“No problem, Bird.”

“And don’t call me Bird.” Berdette didn’t like having these three guys sitting at his bar, and he didn’t like what was happening to the guy in the suit. It was a very strange situation. They would sit there and talk, then all of a sudden Ricky would give the guy a shot for no particular reason. Typical Ricky Murphy behavior.

George Murphy sat hunched over the bar, staring morosely into a glass of beer.

“Where is he?” he asked. “It’s almost eleven, and I don’t see my son.”

“I don’t know,” said Getter miserably.

Ricky said, “I’m getting sick a waiting here.”

The telephone rang. Getter’s head lifted hopefully.

“That better be good news,” George said.

Berdette answered the phone, listened for a moment. “No, sugar, there’s nothing going on here. You come on in about noon, we’ll be fine.” He hung up. “Arlene,” he said.

George scowled. Both George and Ricky looked at Getter, who drew back and squeaked, “What? What’s wrong?”

Ricky’s fist crashed into his cheek, knocked him off the stool.

“Hey!” Berdette shouted. This was getting way out of hand. They were going to kill the guy. He was getting all pumped up, feeling like he hadn’t felt in years. “I’m talking to you, boy!”

Ricky ignored him.

“Let’s go.” George was up off his stool, headed out the door. “Bring him,” he said over his shoulder. Ricky grabbed Getter’s collar, jerked him to his feet, started dragging him toward the door. Getter screamed and tried to pull away. Ricky punched him again, in the belly, propelled him toward the exit. Getter dropped to the floor beside the bar, wrapped his arms around the foot rail. Ricky kicked him in the ribs. “Get up, damn you!”

“Hey!” Berdette shouted, coming around the end of the bar. “I mean it this time. Lay off him.” He held the shotgun in front of his body, not exactly pointing it at anybody but letting them know it was there. “You hear me?” The shells were loaded with rock salt, a painful but nonlethal alternative to lead shot. Hadn’t fired the thing for years, but he was ready to give Ricky Murphy a load any second now.

Ricky gave him a slit-eyed look, then grinned, helped Getter to his feet, brushed him off. “You okay?”

Getter nodded, wincing, wrapping his arms around his rib cage.

Ricky said to Berdette, “See? He’s fine.”

“Now you get your ass out of here, Ricky.”

“No problem, Bird. Come on, Dave. You ready?”

Getter shook his head. “Please—”

Ricky gave him a jab, right on the tip of his swollen proboscis. Getter shrieked. Ricky said, “There, that’ll give you something to cry about.”

That did it. Berdette brought the shotgun up and around. A long-barreled revolver materialized in Ricky’s right hand. Berdette heard a double explosion and suddenly found himself walking backward. The lawyer was screaming. Berdette wondered, Why am I walking backward? The shotgun fell from his hand. Ricky Murphy and his grin were getting smaller, racing away into the distance. Berdette thought, The son-of-a-bitch shot me. A moment before, he had been feeling his oats. Now he didn’t feel a thing.

These guys you see walking down the street talking to themselves—they always seem to know what to say.

—JOE CROW

L
OYAL FITZ, OWNER OF
the Sea Breeze Motel, was happy to have his Isuzu back but seemed somewhat alarmed by the legless hog. “What is it?”

“What does it look like?” said Bellweather.

“A stuffed pig,” said Fitz. “I thought you said you was going to save some little girl’s life.”

“I did,” said Bellweather.

“So what’s with the stuffed pig?”

“Just help me get it into my room,” Bellweather snapped. He pulled on the pig’s ears until it slid out of the Isuzu and landed with a crackling thud on the ice-coated asphalt.

“It’s got no legs,” Fitz said.

“I know that. I had to perform an emergency legectomy. You want to grab on there and give me a hand?” He grabbed the boar’s snout with both hands.

Fitz grimaced but persuaded himself to grasp the curly tail and help the doctor carry the thing across the parking lot to room sixteen.

“Thanks,” said Bellweather once they had lifted the pig onto the bed.

“What you gonna do with it?”

“Nothing.”

Fitz frowned at the upside-down porker, his imagination straining but failing to grasp the significance of a stuffed, legless pig in one of his motel rooms. “You ain’t some kind of cult weirdo, are you?”

“No, I am not,” Bellweather said.

Fitz nodded slowly. “Checkin’ out today?”

“Yes. Very soon. Now if you’ll excuse me …?”

Fitz nodded again, even more slowly, but did not leave.

“Would you please leave now?” Bellweather grasped Fitz’s arm and guided him toward the door.

Fitz shook off his grip. “What about my two hundred bucks?”

Bellweather pulled out his wallet and gave him a handful of twenties. “For the room and the truck. Okay?”

Fitz accepted the money and said, “I got that pink car of yours all shoveled out. She’s ready to go.”

“I know, I saw. Thank you.”

“What you gonna do with that pig?”

Bellweather gave him a final push out of the room. “I’m going to make bacon,” he said as he slammed the door. He watched through the curtain as Fitz wandered back toward the motel office. He would have to move quickly. There was still the possibility that the kid had got home and spilled his guts. Bellweather opened his overnight bag and extracted a flat black vinyl case filled with medical paraphernalia. Using a scalpel, he began furiously to slice away at the boar, ripping through the tough, dry pigskin with the short steel blade, cutting around the small safe embedded in its side, stopping every few seconds to peer out the window. Within minutes, the bed was covered with shards of pigskin and musty-smelling excelsior, and Bellweather was holding a black metal safe that measured twelve inches on a side, frowning, wondering how the hell he was going to get the thing open.

“I don’t think my dad’s home,” Shawn said. “Hummer’s gone.”

“He’s probably out looking for you,” Crow said.

“I bet Grandy’s home. I’m really hungry.”

“Grandy’s your grandmother?”

“Uh-huh. I bet she’s making lunch. You want to come in?”

Crow was hungry too, but not hungry enough to spend any longer than he had to on Talking Lake Ranch.

“No, thanks. I have to get going.” He wanted nothing more to do with the Murphys. He would give George his kid back, and that was it. He wanted out.

“Okay,” said Shawn. He opened the door and ran around the house to the kitchen door. Crow turned the jeep and headed back up the long driveway. He felt ill, whether from the beating he had taken, from the lack of good, quality sleep, or from the bouncing and swaying of Harley’s jeep. His sense of purpose had deserted him. Not that it had been that strong in the first place, but he now felt as if he were falling in several directions at once. He needed desperately to land, to come to rest. Anywhere would do.

Bringing the jeep to a halt where the Murphys’ private road intersected the highway, he sat there, engine idling. Puss hadn’t been exaggerating about the heater not working so good. As near as he could tell, it didn’t work at all.

“What am I doing here?” he said aloud.

“You’re sitting in a damn jeep, freezing your ass off,” he replied. He dropped the jeep into gear and pulled out onto the highway, turning left.

“Wrong way,” he said.

“I know.”

A camouflaged Hummer appeared, heading toward the ranch, George Murphy hunched over the steering wheel, staring straight ahead. As the Hummer passed, Crow caught a glimpse of a passenger who looked like … Dave Getter? Nah. He continued down the road, choosing not to waste any of his slim reserves of mental energy on a puzzle that could not possibly have anything whatsoever to do with Joe Crow.

“Old Joe Crow, he don’t care,” Crow muttered. A former idea bloomed again, sent a seductive surge of endorphins down his spinal column.

Crow drew a shaky breath.

“Okay, then,” he said in a hoarse voice.

George climbed out of the Hummer and opened the door leading into the lodge. The tiger opened one eye.

“You all alone in here, gal?”

The tiger yawned.

George went back to the vehicle. “Take him inside. I’m going to go check my phone machine, see if that little son-of-a-bitch called here.”

Ricky pulled Getter out of the Hummer and walked him into the lodge.