The Drawing of the Three (9 page)

“Well, pardon me for living,” the old woman said huffily, “I guess I just fell off the hearse!”

And strode past them, nose tilted like the nose of a dog scenting a fire still some distance away, tote-bag clutched in one hand, ticket-folder (with so many boarding-pass stubs sticking out of it that one might have been tempted to believe the lady had come most of the way around the globe, changing planes at every stop along the way) in the other.

“There’s a lady who may never fly Delta’s big jets again,” Susy murmured.

“I don’t give a fuck if she flies stuffed down the front of Superman’s Jockies,” McDonald said. “She the last?”

Jane darted past them, glanced at the seats in business class, then poked her head into the main cabin. It was deserted.

She came back and reported the plane empty.

McDonald turned to the jetway and saw two uniformed Customs agents fighting their way through the crowd, excusing themselves but not bothering to look back at the people they jostled aside. The last of these was the old lady, who dropped her ticket-folder. Papers flew and fluttered everywhere and she shrilled after them like an angry crow.

“Okay,” McDonald said, “you guys stop right there.”

“Sir, we’re Federal Customs officers—”

“That’s right, and I requested you, and I’m glad you came so fast. Now you just stand right there because this is my plane and that guy in there is one of my geese. Once he’s off the plane and into the jetway, he’s your goose and you can cook him any way you want.” He nodded to Deere. “I’m going to give the son of a bitch one more chance and then we’re going to break the door in.”

“Okay by me,” Deere said.

McDonald whacked on the bathroom door with the heel of his hand and yelled, “Come on out, my friend! I’m done asking!”

There was no answer.

“Okay,” McDonald said. “Let’s do it.”

Dimly, Eddie heard an old woman say: “Well, pardon me for living! I guess I just fell off the hearse!”

He had parted half the strapping tape. When the old woman spoke his hand jerked a little and he saw a trickle of blood run down his belly.

“Shit,” Eddie said.

“It can’t be helped now,” the gunslinger said in his hoarse voice. “Finish the job. Or does the sight of blood make you sick?”

“Only when it’s my own,” Eddie said. The tape had started just above his belly. The higher he cut the harder it got to see. He got another three inches or so, and almost cut himself again when he heard McDonald speaking to the Customs agents: “Okay, you guys stop right there.”

“I can finish and maybe cut myself wide open or you can try,” Eddie said. “I can’t see what I’m doing. My fucking chin’s in the way.”

The gunslinger took the knife in his left hand. The hand was shaking. Watching that blade, honed to a suicidal sharpness, shaking like that made Eddie extremely nervous.

“Maybe I better chance it mys—”

“Wait.”

The gunslinger stared fixedly at his left hand. Eddie didn’t exactly disbelieve in telepathy, but he had never exactly
believed
in it, either. Nevertheless, he felt something now, something as real and palpable as heat baking out of an oven. After a few seconds he realized what it was: the gathering of this strange man’s will.

How the hell can he be dying if I can feel the force of him that strongly?

The shaking hand began to steady down. Soon it was barely shivering. After no more than ten seconds it was as solid as a rock.

“Now,” the gunslinger said. He took a step forward, raised the knife, and Eddie felt something else baking off him—rancid fever.

“Are you left-handed?” Eddie asked.

“No,” the gunslinger said.

“Oh Jesus,” Eddie said, and decided he might feel better if he closed his eyes for a moment. He heard the harsh whisper of the masking tape parting.

“There,” the gunslinger said, stepping back. “Now pull it off as far as you can. I’ll get the back.”

No polite little knocks on the bathroom door now; this was a
hammering fist.
The passengers are out,
Eddie thought.
No more Mr. Nice Guy. Oh shit.

“Come on out, my friend! I’m done asking!”

“
Yank
it!” the gunslinger growled.

Eddie grabbed a thick tab of strapping tape in each hand and yanked as hard as he could. It hurt, hurt like hell.
Stop bellyaching,
he thought.
Things could be worse. You could be hairy-chested, like Henry.

He looked down and saw a red band of irritated skin about seven inches wide across his sternum. Just above the solar plexus was the place where he had poked himself. Blood welled in a dimple and ran down to his navel in a scarlet runnel. Beneath his armpits, the bags of dope now dangled like badly tied saddlebags.

“Okay,” the muffled voice beyond the bathroom door said to someone else. “Let’s d—”

Eddie lost the rest of it in the unexpected riptide of pain across his back as the gunslinger unceremoniously tore the rest of the girdle from him.

He bit down against a scream.

“Put your shirt on,” the gunslinger said. His face, which Eddie had thought as pallid as the face of a living man could become, was now the color of ancient ashes. He held the girdle of tape (now sticking to itself in a meaningless tangle, the big bags of white stuff looking like strange cocoons) in his left hand, then tossed it aside. Eddie saw fresh blood seeping through the makeshift bandage on the gunslinger’s right hand. “Do it fast.”

There was a thudding sound. This wasn’t someone pounding for admittance. Eddie looked up in time to see the bathroom door shudder, to see the lights in there flicker. They were trying to break it in.

He picked his shirt up with fingers that suddenly seemed too large, too clumsy. The left sleeve was turned inside out. He tried to stuff it back through the hole, got his hand stuck for a moment, then yanked it out so hard he pulled the sleeve back again with it.

Thud,
and the bathroom door shivered again.

“Gods, how can you be so clumsy?” the gunslinger moaned, and rammed his own fist into the left sleeve of Eddie’s shirt. Eddie grabbed the cuff as the gunslinger pulled back. Now the gunslinger held the shirt for him as a butler might hold a coat for his master. Eddie put it on and groped for the lowest button.

“Not yet!” the gunslinger barked, and tore another piece away from his own diminishing shirt. “Wipe your gut!”

Eddie did the best he could. The dimple where the knife had actually pierced his skin was still welling blood. The blade was sharp, all right. Sharp enough.

He dropped the bloody wad of the gunslinger’s shirt on the sand and buttoned his shirt.

Thud.
This time the door did more than shudder; it buckled in its frame. Looking through the doorway on the beach, Eddie saw the bottle of liquid soap fall from where it had been standing beside the basin. It landed on his zipper bag.

He had meant to stuff his shirt, which was now buttoned (and buttoned straight, for a wonder), into his pants. Suddenly a better idea struck him. He unbuckled his belt instead.

“There’s no time for that!” The gunslinger realized he was trying to scream and was unable. “That door’s only got one hit left in it!”

“I know what I’m doing,” Eddie said, hoping he did, and stepped back through the doorway between the worlds, unsnapping his jeans and raking the zipper down as he went.

After one desperate, despairing moment, the gunslinger followed him, physical and full of hot physical ache at one moment, nothing but cool
ka
in Eddie’s head at the next.

“One more,” McDonald said grimly, and Deere nodded. Now that all the passengers were out of the jetway as well as the plane itself, the Customs agents had drawn their weapons.

“Now!”

The two men drove forward and hit the door together. It flew open, a chunk of it hanging for a moment from the lock and then dropping to the floor.

And there sat Mr. 3A, with his pants around his knees and the tails of his faded paisley shirt concealing—barely—his jackhandle.
Well, it sure does look like we caught him in the act,
Captain McDonald thought wearily.
Only trouble is, the act we caught him in wasn’t against the law, last I heard.
Suddenly he could feel the throb in his shoulder where he had hit the door—what? three times? four?

Out loud he barked, “What in hell’s name are you doing in there, mister?”

“Well, I
was
taking a crap,” 3A said, “but if
all
you guys got a bad problem, I guess I could wipe myself in the terminal—”

“And I suppose you didn’t hear us, smart guy?”

“Couldn’t reach the door.” 3A put out his hand to demonstrate, and although the door was now hanging askew against the wall to his left, McDonald could see his point. “I suppose I could have gotten up, but I, like, had a desperate situation on my hands. Except it wasn’t exactly on my
hands,
if you get my drift. Nor did I
want
it on my hands, if you catch my
further
drift.” 3A smiled a winning, slightly daffy smile which looked to Captain McDonald approximately as real as a nine-dollar bill. Listening to him, you’d think no one had ever taught him the simple trick of leaning forward.

“Get up,” McDonald said.

“Be happy to. If you could just move the ladies back a little?” 3A smiled charmingly. “I know it’s outdated in this day and age, but I can’t help it. I’m modest. Fact is, I’ve got a lot to be modest about.” He held up his left hand, thumb and forefinger roughly half an inch apart, and winked at Jane Dorning, who blushed bright red and immediately disappeared up the jetway, closely followed by Susy.

You don’t
look
modest,
Captain McDonald thought.
You
look
like a cat that just got the cream, that’s what you look like.

When the stews were out of sight, 3A stood and pulled up his
shorts and jeans. He then reached for the flush button and Captain McDonald promptly knocked his hand away, grabbed his shoulders, and pivoted him toward the aisle. Deere hooked a restraining hand into the back of his pants.

“Don’t get personal,” Eddie said. His voice was light and just right—he thought so, anyway—but inside everything was in free fall. He could feel that other, feel him clearly. He was inside his mind, watching him closely, standing steady, meaning to move in if Eddie fucked up. God, it all had to be a dream, didn’t it?
Didn’t
it?

“Stand still,” Deere said.

Captain McDonald peered into the toilet.

“No shit,” he said, and when the navigator let out a bray of involuntary laughter, McDonald glared at him.

“Well, you know how it is,” Eddie said. “Sometimes you get lucky and it’s just a false alarm. I let off a couple of real rippers, though. I mean, we’re talking swamp gas. If you’d lit a match in here three minutes ago, you could have roasted a Thanksgiving turkey, you know? It must have been something I ate before I got on the plane, I g—”

“Get rid of him,” McDonald said, and Deere, still holding Eddie by the back of the pants, propelled him out of the plane and into the jetway, where each Customs officer took one arm.

“Hey!” Eddie cried. “I want my bag! And I want my jacket!”

“Oh, we want you to have
all
your stuff,” one of the officers said. His breath, heavy with the smell of Maalox and stomach acid, puffed against Eddie’s face. “We’re very interested in your stuff. Now let’s go, little buddy.”

Eddie kept telling them to take it easy, mellow out, he could walk just fine, but he thought later the tips of his shoes only touched the floor of the jetway three or four times between the 727’s hatch and the exit to the terminal, where three more Customs officers and half a dozen airport security cops stood, the Customs guys waiting for Eddie, the cops holding back a small crowd that stared at him with uneasy, avid interest as he was led away.

Eddie Dean was sitting in a chair. The chair was in a small white room. It was the only chair in the small white room. The small white room was crowded. The small white room was smoky. Eddie was in his underpants. Eddie wanted a cigarette. The other six—no, seven—men in the small white room were dressed. The other men were standing around him, enclosing him. Three—no, four—of them were smoking cigarettes.

Eddie wanted to jitter and jive. Eddie wanted to hop and bop.

Eddie sat still, relaxed, looking at the men around him with amused interest, as if he wasn’t going crazy for a fix, as if he wasn’t going crazy from simple claustrophobia.

The
other
in his mind was the reason why. He had been terrified of the
other
at first. Now he thanked God the
other
was there.

The
other
might be sick, dying even, but there was enough steel left in his spine for him to have some left to loan this scared twenty-one-year-old junkie.

“That is a very interesting red mark on your chest,” one of the Customs men said. A cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth. There was a pack in his shirt pocket. Eddie felt as if he could take about five of the cigarettes in that pack, line his mouth with them from corner to corner, light them all, inhale deeply, and be easier in his mind. “It looks like a stripe. It looks like you had something taped there, Eddie, and all at once decided it would be a good idea to rip it off and get rid of it.”

“I picked up an allergy in the Bahamas,” Eddie said. “I told you
that. I mean, we’ve been through all of this several times. I’m trying to keep my sense of humor, but it’s getting harder all the time.”

“
Fuck
your sense of humor,” another said savagely, and Eddie recognized that tone. It was the way he himself sounded when he’d spent half a night in the cold waiting for the man and the man didn’t come. Because these guys were junkies, too. The only difference was guys like him and Henry were their junk.

“What about that hole in your gut? Where’d that come from, Eddie? Publishers Clearing House?” A third agent was pointing at the spot where Eddie had poked himself. It had finally stopped dribbling but there was still a dark purple bubble there which looked more than ready to break open at the slightest urging.

Eddie indicated the red band where the tape had been. “It itches,” he said. This was no lie. “I fell asleep on the plane—check the stew if you don’t believe me—”

“Why wouldn’t we believe you, Eddie?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie said. “Do you usually get big drug smugglers who snooze on their way in?” He paused, gave them a second to think about it, then held out his hands. Some of the nails were ragged. Others were jagged. When you went cool turkey, he had discovered, your nails suddenly became your favorite munchies. “I’ve been pretty good about not scratching, but I must have dug myself a damned good one while I was sleeping.”

“Or while you were on the nod. That could be a needlemark.” Eddie could see they both knew better. You shot yourself up that close to the solar plexus, which was the nervous system’s switchboard, you weren’t ever going to shoot yourself up again.

“Give me a break,” Eddie said. “You were in my face so close to look at my pupils I thought you were going to soul-kiss me. You know I wasn’t on the nod.”

The third Customs agent looked disgusted. “For an innocent lambikins, you know an awful lot about dope, Eddie.”

“What I didn’t pick up on
Miami Vice
I got from the
Reader’s Digest.
Now tell me the truth—how many times are we going to go through this?”

A fourth agent held up a small plastic Baggie. In it were several fibers.

“These are filaments. We’ll get the lab confirmation, but we know what sort they are. They’re filaments of strapping tape.”

“I didn’t take a shower before I left the hotel,” Eddie said for the fourth time. “I was out by the pool, getting some sun. Trying to get rid of the rash. The
allergy
rash. I fell asleep. I was damned lucky to make the plane at all. I had to run like hell. The wind was blowing. I don’t know what stuck to my skin and what didn’t.”

Another reached out and ran a finger up the three inches of flesh from the inner bend of Eddie’s left elbow.

“And these aren’t needle tracks.”

Eddie shoved the hand away. “Mosquito bites. I told you. Almost healed. Jesus Christ, you can see that for yourself!”

They could. This deal hadn’t come up overnight. Eddie had stopped arm-popping a month ago. Henry couldn’t have done that, and that was one of the reasons it had been Eddie,
had
to be Eddie. When he absolutely
had
to fix, he had taken it very high on his upper left thigh, where his left testicle lay against the skin of the leg . . . as he had the other night, when the sallow thing had finally brought him some stuff that was okay. Mostly he had just snorted, something with which Henry could no longer content himself. This caused feelings Eddie couldn’t exactly define . . . a mixture of pride and shame. If they looked there, if they pushed his testicles aside, he could have some serious problems. A blood-test could cause him problems even more serious, but that was one step further than they could go without some sort of evidence—and evidence was something they just didn’t have. They knew everything but could prove nothing. All the difference between world and want, his dear old mother would have said.

“Mosquito bites.”

“Yes.”

“And the red mark’s an allergic reaction.”

“Yes. I had it when I went to the Bahamas; it just wasn’t that bad.”

“He had it when he went down there,” one of the men said to another.

“Uh-huh,” the second said. “You believe it?”

“Sure.”

“You believe in Santa Claus?”

“Sure. When I was a kid I even had my picture taken with him once.” He looked at Eddie. “You got a picture of this famous red mark from before you took your little trip, Eddie?”

Eddie didn’t reply.

“If you’re clean, why won’t you take a blood-test?” This was the first guy again, the guy with the cigarette in the corner of his mouth. It had almost burned down to the filter.

Eddie was suddenly angry—white-hot angry. He listened inside.

Okay,
the voice responded at once, and Eddie felt more than agreement, he felt a kind of go-to-the-wall approval. It made him feel the way he felt when Henry hugged him, tousled his hair, punched him on the shoulder, and said
You done good, kid—don’t let it go to your head, but you done good.

“You
know
I’m clean.” He stood up suddenly—so suddenly they moved back. He looked at the smoker who was closest to him. “And I’ll tell you something, babe, if you don’t get that coffin-nail out of my face I’m going to
knock
it out.”

The guy recoiled.

“You guys have emptied the crap-tank on that plane already. God, you’ve had enough time to have been through it three times. You’ve been through my stuff. I bent over and let one of you stick the world’s longest finger up my ass. If a prostate check is an exam, that was a motherfucking safari. I was scared to look down. I thought I’d see that guy’s fingernail sticking out of my
cock.
”

He glared around at them.

“You’ve been up my ass, you’ve been through my stuff, and I’m sitting here in a pair of Jockies with you guys blowing smoke in my face. You want a bloodtest? Kay. Bring in someone to do it.”

They murmured, looked at each other. Surprised. Uneasy.

“But if you want to do it without a court order,” Eddie said, “whoever does it better bring a lot of extra hypos and vials, because I’ll be damned if I’m gonna piss alone. I want a Federal marshal in here, and
I want each one of you to take the same goddam test, and I want your names and IDs on each vial, and I want them to go into that Federal marshal’s custody. And whatever you test mine for—cocaine, heroin, bennies, pot, whatever—I want those same tests performed on the samples from you guys. And then I want the results turned over to my lawyer.”

“Oh boy, YOUR LAWYER,” one of them cried. “That’s what it always comes down to with you shitbags, doesn’t it, Eddie? You’ll hear from MY LAWYER. I’ll sic MY LAWYER on you. That crap makes me want to
puke!
”

“As a matter of fact I don’t currently have one,” Eddie said, and this was the truth. “I didn’t think I needed one. You guys changed my mind. You got nothing because I
have
nothing, but the rock and roll just doesn’t stop, does it? So you want me to dance? Great. I’ll dance. But I’m not gonna do it alone. You guys’ll have to dance, too.”

There was a thick, difficult silence.

“I’d like you to take down your shorts again, please, Mr. Dean,” one of them said. This guy was older. This guy looked like he was in charge of things. Eddie thought that maybe—just maybe—this guy had finally realized where the fresh tracks might be. Until now they hadn’t checked. His arms, his shoulders, his legs . . . but not there. They had been too sure they had a bust.

“I’m through taking things off, taking things down, and eating this shit,” Eddie said. “You get someone in here and we’ll do a bunch of blood-tests or I’m getting out. Now which do you want?”

That silence again. And when they started looking at each other, Eddie knew he had won.

WE
won,
he amended.
What’s your name, fella?

Roland. Yours is Eddie. Eddie Dean.

You listen good.

Listen and watch.

“Give him his clothes,” the older man said disgustedly. He looked at Eddie. “I don’t know what you had or how you got rid of it, but I want you to know that we’re going to find out.”

The old dude surveyed him.

“So there you sit. There you sit, almost grinning. What you say doesn’t make me want to puke. What you
are
does.”

“
I
make
you
want to puke.”

“That’s affirmative.”

“Oh, boy,” Eddie said. “I love it. I’m sitting here in a little room and I’ve got nothing on but my underwear and there’s seven guys around me with guns on their hips and
I
make
you
want to puke? Man, you have got a problem.”

Eddie took a step toward him. The Customs guy held his ground for a moment, and then something in Eddie’s eyes—a crazy color that seemed half-hazel, half-blue—made him step back against his will.

“I’M NOT CARRYING!”
Eddie roared.
“QUIT NOW! JUST QUIT! LET ME ALONE!”

The silence again. Then the older man turned around and yelled at someone, “Didn’t you hear me?
Get his clothes!
”

And that was that.

“You think we’re being tailed?” the cabbie asked. He sounded amused.

Eddie turned forward. “Why do you say that?”

“You keep looking out the back window.”

“I never thought about being tailed,” Eddie said. This was the absolute truth. He had seen the tails the first time he looked around.
Tails,
not tail. He didn’t have to keep looking around to confirm their presence. Out-patients from a sanitarium for the mentally retarded would have trouble losing Eddie’s cab on this late May afternoon; traffic on the L.I.E. was sparse. “I’m a student of traffic patterns, that’s all.”

“Oh,” the cabbie said. In some circles such an odd statement would have prompted questions, but New York cab drivers rarely question; instead they assert, usually in a grand manner. Most of these assertions begin with the phrase
This city!
as if the words were a
religious invocation preceeding a sermon . . . which they usually were. Instead, this one said: “Because if you
did
think we were being tailed, we’re not. I’d know. This city! Jesus! I’ve tailed plenty of people in my time. You’d be surprised how many people jump into my cab and say ‘Follow that car.’ I know, sounds like something you only hear in the movies, right? Right. But like they say, art imitates life and life imitates art. It really happens! And as for shaking a tail, it’s easy if you know how to set the guy up. You . . .”

Eddie tuned the cabbie down to a background drone, listening just enough so he could nod in the right places. When you thought about it, the cabbie’s rap was actually quite amusing. One of the tails was a dark blue sedan. Eddie guessed that one belonged to Customs. The other was a panel truck with
GINELLI
’
S PIZZA
written on the sides. There was also a picture of a pizza, only the pizza was a smiling boy’s face, and the smiling boy was smacking his lips, and written under the picture was the slogan
“UMMMMM! It’s-a GOOOOD Pizza!”
Only some young urban artist with a spray-can and a rudimentary sense of humor had drawn a line through
Pizza
and had printed
PUSSY
above it.

Ginelli. There was only one Ginelli Eddie knew; he ran a restaurant called Four Fathers. The pizza business was a sideline, a guaranteed stiff, an accountant’s angel. Ginelli and Balazar. They went together like hot dogs and mustard.

According to the original plan, there was to have been a limo waiting outside the terminal with a driver ready to whisk him away to Balazar’s place of business, which was a midtown saloon. But of course the original plan hadn’t included two hours in a little white room, two hours of steady questioning from one bunch of Customs agents while another bunch first drained and then raked the contents of Flight 901’s wastetanks, looking for the big carry they also suspected, the big carry that would be unflushable, undissolvable.

When he came out, there was no limo, of course. The driver would have had his instructions: if the mule isn’t out of the terminal fifteen minutes or so after the rest of the passengers have come out, drive away fast. The limo driver would know better than to use the
car’s telephone, which was actually a radio that could easily be monitored. Balazar would call people, find out Eddie had struck trouble, and get ready for trouble of his own. Balazar might have recognized Eddie’s steel, but that didn’t change the fact that Eddie was a junkie. A junkie could not be relied upon to be a stand-up guy.