Drawing Dead Read online

  Freddy contorted his face again.

  “Never mind,” Joey said. “Let me lay it out for you. You find out where they went. There're these stores that sell nothing but comic books, you go ask around there, find out who they know, find out where they went. You know how to do that. Just keep asking and then go find them wherever they are, and when you find them? Do like you did with Billy Yeddis, then bring me my car back.”

  Freddy went blank for a moment, then he smiled. “I could do that,” he said.

  Something Freddy Wisnesky had learned from Mister C.—if you want to know something, you do not waste your time trying to figure it out; you ask guys. If you ask enough guys, one of them will tell you. Some guys are very cooperative, they even tell you stuff you don’t want to know, but other guys you have work with to get them to open up. The fat guy behind the counter at Fatman’s Emporium of Comic Book Arts was that kind of guy. He had an amused, shifty-eyed look that Freddy had often noticed in small-business owners who were meeting him for the first time. Didn’t take him seriously. When Freddy asked about Paine and Disraeli, the fat guy—Freddy figured he had to be Fatman—lost interest in him just like that. Just shook his head and went back to reading his comic book like nobody was there.

  Freddy’s first idea was to drag the guy across the counter and bounce his head on the floor, but years of experience had taught him that it was usually safer and nearly as effective to employ more civilized, gentle tactics. He felt for the knot in his orange-and-black tiger lily tie and made sure it was tight and centered, then turned to survey his surroundings, looking for inspiration.

  Fatman’s Emporium was a thirty-by-forty-foot labyrinth of shelves loaded with more comic books than Freddy had ever known existed. He was the only customer in the store. He wandered through the maze, stopping now and then to flip through a row of comics. Each comic was wrapped in a plastic bag and had an orange price sticker on the upper-right-hand corner. There was a familiar cover up on the top shelf: Captain America #100. Freddy reached up and took down the comic. The price sticker read: “$80.00—Near Mint.” Freddy thought about his mom throwing away his comic books the first time he had gone away—a lousy six months in the joint, and she throws all his junk away. He untaped the top of the plastic bag and removed the comic.

  “Hey, no reading the merch.” Fatman was right there, grabbing the comic away from him. Freddy held on and pulled back, ripping Captain America in half, right across his red-white-and-blue shield. Fatman stared in horror at the shredded comic. “Look what you did,” he said, his already high voice rising, his big cheeks turning red. “You’re gonna pay me for this, fella. That’s eighty bucks you just tore up.”

  Freddy felt bad about tearing Captain America in half, since he had wanted to read it, but Fatman’s shrill reaction was giving him an idea. He picked out another comic, Batman #163, with a picture of the Joker on the cover, and tore it in half lengthwise.

  “Jesus Christ! What are you doing?” Fatman grabbed Freddy’s arm and started pulling him away from the shelves. Freddy twitched his arm and sent Fatman spinning against the opposite wall. He destroyed Daredevil #5, #6, and #7 while Fatman was trying to get back on his feet. When Fatman came at him again, Freddy unleashed one of his size-fourteen wing tips and let Fatman have a good one on his right shin. The best wing tips were the big black ones from Sears; they weighed a ton and made his feet sweat, but when he kicked a guy, the guy went down.

  Freddy destroyed Batman #280 while the fat guy was trying to get his act together, curled up on the floor holding his shin, drooling and moaning, tears running from his squeezed-shut eyes.

  “Please, stop,” he finally managed to gasp as Freddy paged through a late-1950s copy of World’s Finest, tearing away the pages one at a time. Freddy looked down. Fatman had managed to open one eye. Freddy tore off one last page, dropped the remains of the comic on the floor.

  Fatman asked, “What do you want?”

  Freddy smiled. This was more like it. “I was asking if you knew where I could find a couple guys, that’s all. Paine and Disraeli.”

  The fat guy was shaking his head. Freddy reached for another comic book.

  “Wait, please. I don’t remember—you got to help me out here. How come you think I know them? I mean, maybe I do. Lots of guys come in and out of here. What do they look like?”

  Freddy crumpled up a copy of Green Lantern #10 and threw it across the store. He was kind of enjoying himself.

  “No! Wait a second. These guys you’re looking for—is one of them a tall guy with a deep voice? Talks like a college professor?”

  Freddy shrugged. He did not know how college professors talked.

  “And the other guy, kind of little and greasy and talks really fast? 'Cause it sounds to me like you want the Tom and Ben Show. I should have known.”

  Freddy shrugged. “Tom and Ben Show?”

  “That’s what they call themselves. Ben Fink and Tommy Campo. They got more names than Beelzebub.”

  “Who?”

  “The Tom and Ben Show. I bet they're the guys you want, don’t you think? They owe you money or something?”

  Freddy reached down a big hand and helped him stand up. Fatman was talking now, turning into a real motormouth. “ 'Cause it wouldn’t surprise me. They been in the business for years and never done a deal yet where somebody didn’t get screwed. Couple of comic book con men, if you ask me. They were in here just a couple days ago, come in here trying to unload a bunch of junk, bunch of those Stasis Shield things. Like I'm gonna buy something from those fuckers. I think they blew town.”

  “Where they go?”

  “How should I know? No, wait a second. Just a goddamn second! I think they went up to Minneapolis. I'm sure of it.”

  Freddy reached out and placed his hand on Fatman’s head. The heel of his palm covered his forehead. “You real sure?” he asked.

  “I think so. Christ, man, I don’t know—all I know is that they were talking about it, asking me if I knew any comics people up there. I told 'em I didn’t know anybody. Even if I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t give their name to those fuckers.”

  Freddy squeezed lightly, as if by compacting Fatman’s gray matter he could cause information to flow more rapidly. It seemed to work.

  “You just ask around the Minneapolis comic book shops, you ought to be able to find 'em in no time. You want to find 'em, you go on up there and ask around. They’ll turn up.”

  “You real sure?”

  Fatman’s head bobbed in Freddy’s grip. Freddy released him.

  “Okay,” said Freddy.

  “Okay?”

  “I'm gonna find 'em in Minneapolis, right?”

  Fatman nodded vigorously.

  “I don’t, we can talk some more.”

  Fatman nodded again, though with less vigor.

  Satisfied, Freddy turned toward the door.

  “Just a second,” Fatman said. Wincing, he hopped on one leg around the counter and pulled out a Rolodex. “I just remembered something.” He flipped through the cards. “I think I still got her name on my mailing list. They get to Minneapolis, she’ll know about it. Most recent address…yup. Minneapolis.” He copied down a name and address on a slip of paper, handed it to Freddy. Freddy screwed up his eyes and spelled out the name in his mind, moving his lips with each new letter.

  “Cat Fish?” he asked.

  “That’s right. Catfish. Tom’s old girlfriend. You think Tom and Ben are a piece of work, wait’ll you meet her.”

  2

  The way Hold 'em works is, each player gets two cards, right? That’s called The Deal. Then you bet, then three more cards are dealt faceup in the middle of the table. These three cards get used by all the players. This is called The Flop. Then you bet again, and another card gets turned up. They call that The Turn. You bet again, then a last card gets turned up. That’s The River. Then you get one more bet. The guy that makes the best five-card poker hand out of the two cards he holds and the five cards on the
table wins. It’s simple. You just play your cards and you take home the money. You want to sit in a few hands?

  —Zink Fitterman

  The Texas Hold 'em game in the apartment above Zink’s Club 34 was eight hours old when Joe Crow made his most potentially expensive mistake of the night. He had folded an eight, deuce after the deal, and was watching the other guys play out the hand. Ozzie LaRose threw his hand away. Al Levin raised it up, Frank Knox and Jimbo Bobick called, Zink Fitterman raised it up again. Ozzie pulled out his wallet, nudged Crow with his right elbow, and showed him a snapshot of the big fish he had caught that weekend.

  “Check it out. Right off the end of my dock,” he said. “Caught it on a Dardevle.”

  Crow looked at the photo. There was Ozzie, skinny white legs sticking out the bottom of his shorts, long blond hair under a Minnesota Twins baseball cap, standing in front of his cabin on Crook Lake, holding up a walleye that looked to be over six pounds. Crow was impressed. He imagined himself there, throwing out a line, reeling it in nice and steady. Right about then, Crow made his big mistake.

  He said, “I wouldn’t mind that. Get myself a cabin on a lake, walk out the door, throw out a line, catch a little breakfast. . .” He realized too late what he had done.

  Ozzie laughed and put his wallet away. Zink was scooping in the pot, having won it with queens over sevens. Crow stared down at his chips, hoping without hope that his offhand comment had gone unnoticed.

  “So what kind of place are you looking for, Joe?” asked Jimbo Bobick, the realtor from Brainerd, his wide smile shining across the table like the headlight of an approaching train. “I mean, are you set on having some shoreline, or just looking for something near a good fishing lake?”

  “It’s your deal, Jimbo,” said Zink. “You here to play cards or sell cabins?”

  Jimbo laughed. “Both,” he said, riffling the deck. Jimbo Bobick was a big man with a big laugh. He loved to gamble, and he didn’t mind losing. “Good hand,” he would say to the winner each time he watched his money migrate across the table. He was down two thousand, give or take a hundred, which was less than he’d dropped at the Minneapolis Golf Club that afternoon. Jimbo was wearing his lucky green blazer. It wasn’t bringing him much in the way of cards, but it had delivered Joe Crow. He squared up the deck and offered the cut to Knox, who waved it away.

  “You ever been up around the Brainerd area?” Jimbo asked Crow as he began to deal two cards to each player. “Beautiful country up there. Lakes full of fish, lots of nice folks. Ozzie loves it, don’t ya, Oz?”

  “Spend every weekend up there,” Ozzie said. “It’s the only chance I get to relax.”

  “What it is, it’s the only chance you get to look at your porn collection,” said Zink. “You guys should see the skin mags this guy’s got stashed away up there. A whole room full of the things. Invites me up there to catch a stringer of walleye, and the first thing he does is show me his porn collection.”

  Ozzie shrugged. “Ginny made me get 'em out of our house,” he said, referring to his most recent live-in girlfriend.

  Jimbo laughed. Ozzie’s porn collection was legendary, his pride and joy. And it was true—Jimbo had seen it—it almost filled the back room of his three-room log cabin. “That’s one of the advantages of having a second home,” Jimbo said. “Two separate life-styles. You never have to give anything up.” He watched Crow, looking at him closely. Nothing.

  “Yeah, except now Ginny’s into this do-everything-together thing,” Ozzie said. “Now she wants to go fishing with me. Next thing you know, she’ll be here playing poker. Anyway, my porn collection has got to go. Any of you guys interested?”

  “Just what I need,” Zink said. “A room full of used pornography.”

  “You never know,” Frank Knox said. “It might come in handy.”

  Jimbo noticed that Crow was riffling his chips, not participating in the banter. Joe Crow never had a lot to say. His sense of humor was too dry for most of the players—although Zink seemed to find him amusing—and he didn’t know how to make small talk. Jimbo had noticed that before about Crow: the guy was there to play cards. Jimbo, being in the people business, was curious about Crow. He’d heard stories about him from the other players, but he had yet to separate the true from the untrue. Physically, Crow was on the small side—five feet eight inches and maybe a hundred fifty pounds—but he was usually perceived as being larger, especially when sitting at the card table. His stolid, expressionless face—dark-brown eyes and a wide, straight mouth—gave him a massive, dense look. At times he reminded Jimbo of a cigar store Indian, but his features were Irish—more petrified leprechaun than Native American. Poker face. The only part of him that didn’t fit the picture was his hair—brown, black, sometimes with a hint of red, depending on the light—always sticking out, always in need of a trim. Jimbo didn’t like or dislike him. He thought of Joe Crow as a force, like water in a river, or like the weather. The guy just didn’t have a lot of personality.

  According to Ozzie, Crow was an ex-cokehead. Ozzie claimed that Crow had recently graduated from the cocaine program at Saint Mary’s. Jimbo chose not to believe this. Crow was not his idea of a drug addict. Ozzie—one of the world’s great bullshitters—also claimed that Crow was an ex-cop. Jimbo found it easier to believe the cop story than the cocaine story. In any case, it wasn’t important. Whatever Crow was now, or had once been, he was starting to look a lot like a guy who was in the market for some lakeshore.

  Jimbo pointed a forefinger at Zink. “Bet 'em, Zinker.”

  Zink checked. Crow looked at his cards and bet twenty dollars. Ozzie folded. Al Levin twitched as if he had received a mild electric shock, then called. Frank Knox considered his cards, frowned, shrugged, and called. Jimbo laughed and added his forty dollars to the pot. He was holding a pair of deuces. Deuces never looses, he said to himself. “A lot of really nice properties have come on the market this year. The recession, you know.” He flopped three cards faceup on the table. Ace, jack, eight. “Your bet, Crow.”

  What Jimbo needed was a toehold. “They’ve been pulling fifteen- pound northerns out of Gull all summer,” he said.

  Crow bet forty dollars but gave no sign he cared about the size of the northern pike in Gull Lake. Al Levin and Frank Knox immediately folded. Jimbo laughed, called Crow’s bet, and turned a fourth card. Another jack.

  In an average year, Jimbo Bobick lost about twenty thousand dollars playing poker, blackjack, and golf. Fortunately, he earned ten times that selling lake properties in the Brainerd area, where a quarter of Minnesota’s ten thousand lakes were located. Some of his fattest commissions had come from guys he had met while gambling. He got down to the Twin Cities every couple of weeks, usually got into at least one card game at Zink’s, and in the past two years had sold properties to both Frank Knox and Ozzie LaRose. The Minnesota dream of a cabin on a lake was alive in every man. Jimbo Bobick believed this the way he believed in heaven and hell. His job was to find the dream and to nurture it.

  “I had this one place, a beautiful three-room cabin.” Jimbo watched Crow’s eyes carefully as he said, “On an island.” He saw Crow’s pupils enlarge slightly. Jimbo smiled. He should have known—Crow was an island guy. He sat back in his chair. “You don’t see those island properties come on the market very often. I sold it to a guy who uses it about one week out of the year. Beautiful view. I’ll go forty.”

  Crow raised. Jimbo called and turned the final card over. A deuce.

  Crow bet eighty dollars. Jimbo looked at his hand—a full house, deuces over jacks—and considered his next move. “You ever think about owning your own island, Crow?”

  “It’s your bet,” Crow said.

  “I know. I'm thinking. You know, there is a guy I know, has an island on Tenmile. I think his business is in trouble. I’ll talk to him.”

  Crow shrugged. “You going to raise, call, or fold?”

  Jimbo threw his hand into the discards. “It’s all yours, my friend.” He watched
Crow rake in the pot. “Listen, how about if I show you a few of these places, Crow? You could drive on up, and we’ll go check out some properties. What do you say?”

  “Sure,” said Crow, stacking his chips. “Maybe we could do that sometime.”

  Jimbo smiled. There was no better time to push a sale than when the other guy thought he had you by the nuts. Joe Crow had just won himself one hell of an expensive pot.

  Richard Wicky drove around the block twice, finally squeezed his Mercedes into a spot between a black Jaguar and a beat-up Toyota. He had to give the Jag a little shove to get in, but what the hell. He’d paid a premium for those big German bumpers; might as well use them. He fumbled in the glove box with his right hand, came out with a sterling-silver coke vial, and treated each nostril to a little toot. He looked at his new watch—a Rolex President—sniffed, screwed the top back onto the coke vial, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, got out of the car, and inspected his parking job. The back end of the Mercedes was sticking out a couple of feet, but not too bad. He locked the doors and headed back up the sidewalk toward Club 34. The sky was beginning to lighten; the streets were deserted.

  The outside door leading to the upstairs apartment was unlocked. Wicky climbed the wooden staircase, telling himself he was feeling lucky. Wicky believed in luck, especially at the card table. He believed that winning at poker came half from being able to read opponents and half from luck. He considered himself a lucky person, and he could read faces as if they were Teleprompters. He tried not to think about the fact that he almost always lost. When he did think about it, he attributed the loss to a fluke, or a single expensive mistake, or a hole in his luck.

  In business, Wicky’s combined luck and perceptive abilities had served him well. His clients were still buying everything he recommended, and this new thing he had gotten into—the Galactic Guardians Fund—was bringing in some sweet commissions. He was even thinking about buying some of it for himself. Business was good. But in other areas, specifically those surrounding his marriage, his luck was hurting. His wife, he was sure, was fucking some other guy. Married two years, and already she’s going out on him. Two o'clock in the morning, he gets home and she’s gone. He’d sat around the condo for three hours thinking about it, drinking beer, watching cable, chipping away at a quarter-ounce chunk of coke, and finally had to get out of there, hoping to find the game at Zink’s still going strong.