Short Money

by Pete Hautman

  Crow frowned. The Murphys, running another hunt. None of his business what they did, but it pissed him off anyway, the untouchable Murphy brothers running their canned hunts, blowing away everything from antelope to zebra. He’d tried to convince his chief to have a talk with George Murphy about the machine guns. It just didn’t seem sporting. Orlan Johnson had listened, then told him he had to learn to mind his own “got-damn beeswax.”

  “You get a complaint from some citizen, Crow? I didn’t think so. Listen to me. George Murphy runs a nice clean operation. The man has a class three firearms license. You just do your job, keeping the streets safe, and don’t be worrying about a few got-damn zebras.” Police Chief Orlan Johnson was married to George Murphy’s sister.

  Crow leaned over the radio and sucked the coke into his sinuses.

  An hour later, his shift officially over, he was still sitting in his car, fighting the yen to drive the 150 miles into Minneapolis for another gram, thinking dark thoughts about his dead-end job, his troubled marriage, his hazy future. The rib joint now seemed like an impossibility, the rock-and-roll band another cokehead fantasy. He would grow old and fat, another small-town cop good for nothing but to provide a little sport for the local teenagers. Melinda would leave him, divorce him, marry a man with prospects.

  He felt the burning again in his gut. Stomach cancer, or worse. Something rotting in there. Thirty-three years old, and his innards were dissolving from all the coke, the booze, the fried food. What did he have to look forward to? Melinda had promised him a birthday dinner, something with plenty of red meat and wine. Too bad she was such an indifferent cook, especially when it came to meat, which she wouldn’t eat. They would eat dinner, drink a few glasses of wine, then she would try to start a fight—he could count on that—arguing over something trivial. He saw himself sitting there, staring wordlessly back at her as she yapped at him, numbing his brain with her New Age bullshit. Telling him something she’d seen in her tarot cards.

  Or they would have what he thought of as the “feeling fight.” He recalled the last one, Melinda’s voice hitting a new level of stridency when she told him he was a fish. “You are so unfeeling, so flat,” she’d said, “it’s like you aren’t really there. I get to one side of you, I can hardly see you. You don’t know how to share your feelings. You’ve got the emotional depth of a flounder.”

  And maybe she was right. Certainly he didn’t feel things the way she did, nor did he possess her rich emotional vocabulary. He had never cried over roadkill or felt the great bolts of joy of which she seemed capable. But he was not a flatfish. He’d said, “If I have so much trouble expressing myself, then how come you know so goddamn much about me?”

  As always, the snappy comeback had failed to enrich their relationship.

  Too bad he’d used up all the coke. When they were doing coke together, things usually went better. They were going through three or four grams a week lately, which was hell on the bank account but made it easier to be in the relationship. Sometimes he thought the coke was all that held their marriage intact. He knew it couldn’t go on, that sooner or later they would have to give it up. Sooner or later they would bottom out.

  The late afternoon sun had disappeared behind a layer of cloud, the sky gone from blue to lead; the temperature was dropping rapidly. The air felt moist and smelled like snow. Crow rolled up his window. Winter coming. He could hear the wind.

  A Hummer with a camouflage paint job roared by at 78 miles per hour, 23 mph over the posted limit. That would be Ricky Murphy. Crow had never met George, the elder brother, but he’d run into Ricky too many times. The last time, Ricky had got shit-faced and started slapping some girl around outside Birdy’s. Crow had intervened, given Ricky a couple slaps back, then hauled him down to the station. Ricky had spent almost an hour and a half in the lockup that time—a personal record—before the call came in from Chief Johnson, demanding that he be set free.

  What the Murphys did was none of his got-damn beeswax.

  A few seconds later, another car flew by—79 on the radar—a bright-pink Jaguar. Crow thought about chasing it down, but his shift was over, and besides, the last thing on earth he wanted was to meet someone who would paint a nice car like that hot pink. Opening the brown coke vial, he turned it over and tapped it against the top of the radio, hoping to dislodge a few last grains, but the vial was entirely empty.

  II

  You want to stay in business, you got to take what business you can get.

  —BERDETTE WILLIAMS

  BACK IN 1946, BERDETTE WILLIAMS had named his joint Birdy’s, but everybody who knew him called him Berdette. Birdy’s was the only decent place to get a bump and a burger between Big River and Montevideo—and it wasn’t all that decent. The tables were sticky, the chairs unstable, the atmosphere a yellow mist of rancid grease, cigarettes, and sour beer. The songs on the jukebox were ten years out of date.

  Nevertheless, it remained a popular spot with the locals. Arlene, Berdette’s wife, knew how to fry up a Juicy Lucy, a beer at Birdy’s was as good as a beer anywhere, and if Berdette watered his whiskey, as was rumored, he kept the dilution within reason. A guy could still get a good buzz for five or ten bucks, and most nights there was a card game going at the back table.

  Dr. Nelson Bellweather loved the place. “Isn’t this great, Stevie?” he said as Berdette slid Juicy Lucy baskets in front of him and Anderson. “First time Ricky brought me, I asked Berdette here to see the wine list.” He laughed. “He looked at me like I was from Venus—isn’t that right, Birdy?”

  Berdette said, “You want another round?”

  They were sitting at the big table in back, Anderson, Doc Bellweather, and Ricky Murphy, fresh from the hunt. Ollie Aamold, the taxidermist, sat shuffling a deck of cards. When Ollie wasn’t up to his elbows in the carcass of some large dead animal, he spent his hours at Birdy’s, beer in hand, lower lip distended by a wad of Copenhagen, looking for a game of chance. Ricky Murphy, Stetson pulled low over his eyes, sipped his 7 & 7 and watched Ollie handle the deck. Neither Ricky nor Ollie had ordered food, but they both indicated with hand motions that another round would be fine.

  “So I asked him,” Bellweather continued, “if he had any, you know, imported beer. What did you say, Birdy? You remember what you said?”

  Berdette shook his head wearily and walked away.

  Bellweather was not offended. To him, Berdette was part of the local color. He continued his story. “So Birdy said, he said, ‘What, you mean like from Wisconsin?’” He exploded with laughter, was dutifully joined by Anderson’s hearty chuckle and a perfunctory heh-heh from Ricky. Ollie Aamold’s features, never particularly mobile, remained inert. Grinning and red in the face, Bellweather pushed a cluster of french fries into his mouth, chewed, followed it with a pull from a Bud longneck.

  Steve Anderson, famished after the drama of his first hunting experience, giddy from three Scotches and two Budweisers, took a huge bite of his Juicy Lucy. Hot cheese spurted from between the twin hamburger patties, searing his lower lip. “Yow!” he gasped, dousing the pain with a torrent of beer.

  Bellweather laughed, snorting through his nose, hitting the table with his palm.

  Anderson wiped his mouth with a handful of paper napkins. “Man, that’s hot!” He swallowed a few more ounces of beer, then gave Bellweather a puzzled look. “Hey, Doc, I thought you were a vegetarian.”

  Bellweather grinned and took a cautious bite of his own Juicy Lucy. He chewed and swallowed before replying. “I am,” he said. “Except when I’m on a hunting trip. Then I turn into this carnivore. It’s a hormonal thing, Stevie. Can’t you feel the juice? That buff started toward you, you looked so scared I bet you could’ve run a four-minute mile. You’re still feeling a little shaky, right? Your glands pumping out that adrenaline, noradrenaline, glucagon, all kinds of neurotransmitters. Your blood is still loaded with the stuff. You need meat to replace those hormones. It’s a medical fact.”

  Anderson took another, sm
aller bite of his cheese-filled burger.

  The doctor went on, as if seeing it all again. “Buff coming at you, eyes popping out of your head, you got your gun. …” He rapped the tabletop rapidly with his knuckle. “Bapbapbapbapbap! Never knew what hit him.”

  Anderson shifted his eyes away from the doctor’s florid features. They had driven to within fifty yards of the bison. Ricky had shown him how to load and operate the MAC-10 with the buff standing right there, watching them, about as suspicious as a pet cow. It had started trotting toward them, and Anderson had enjoyed a brief moment of fear before squeezing the trigger of the MAC. The gun had jumped in his hand, but he’d managed to get half of the thirty-round clip embedded in the bison’s woolly body. The animal had stood there stupidly for several seconds before dropping, first its front legs, then its hindquarters, then tipping to the side, eyes protruding, blood-streaked gray tongue unrolling and lying motionless on the grass.

  Now with the glory of the kill fading, he was left with the suspicion that the bison had been approaching them expecting to be fed a carrot. Still, it had been a kick unlike anything he had experienced before.

  “I tell you, Stevie, the way you turned that buffs face to hamburger, Ollie here is going to be patching holes for days. Right, Ollie? You going to mount up this young man’s first kill?”

  Ollie shrugged. “If he wants.”

  “Patty isn’t going to let me keep the damn thing anyways,” Anderson said. “I don’t know why I should have it mounted.”

  “Got to have it mounted, Stevie. Your first kill? Got to have it mounted. I bet Ollie, here, will give you a discount. Right, Ollie?”

  Ollie made a noise through his nose. “Negatory. You wanna play cards or what?”

  Ricky said, “Yeah, let’s play some cards.”

  Bellweather gave Anderson the elbow. “Whaddya say, Stevie—shall we show these country boys how we do it in the big city?”

  Bellweather won the first three hands, buying the first one with a blind twenty-dollar bet and taking the other two with a pair of aces and a baby straight.

  “Sheeit,” Ricky muttered, throwing his cards away facedown.

  Bellweather laughed, raking in the small pot. Anderson shuffled the deck and slowly dealt a hand of five-card draw. The hormones in his bloodstream were turning sour. The Juicy Lucy had settled low in his gut, swimming in a sea of Budweiser. He completed the deal, picked up his hand, and looked at three queens and two deuces—a full house before the draw. His weary adrenal gland managed to produce a few more molecules; his heart started thumping.

  “Your bet,” Anderson said. A full house! He was no expert, but a full boat was a powerhouse in anybody’s hand.

  Bellweather took a look at Anderson’s flushed cheeks and pulsing carotid artery and said, “Whoa! I check! What the hell kind of hand you got there, Stevie?”

  Anderson tried to hold his face still. He had always been a lousy cardplayer, ever since college. He looked at Ricky, who was the next to bet, but Ricky was looking at something up by the front door, his mouth twisted into a practiced Clint Eastwood snarl. Anderson turned and followed Ricky’s stare. A cop stood leaning against the bar, watching them. His dark, rumpled hair was a couple of inches too long, and his uniform—the brown-and-tan two-tone that seemed to be the style out here on the prairie—fit him oddly, as though it had been tailored for a larger, wider man. He was not an unattractive man—women might find him interesting—but his expression seemed a bit blank, the sort of look favored by male models, military cadets, or poker players. Anderson tried to put a name on it but could only come up with “intense.” The guy was intense. Intensely what, he had no idea.

  The cop lifted a shot glass from the bar, poured its contents down his throat, followed it with a swallow of beer, turned away.

  Anderson said to Ricky, “What’s the problem—are we not supposed to be playing cards here or something?”

  Ricky gave his head a snap, as if trying to flick a bead of sweat from his nose. “Don’t worry about it. He ain’t gonna do nothing.”

  “You gonna bet?” Anderson asked.

  Ricky glanced at his cards, threw them away. “Fuck it.” He crossed his arms and glared at the table, a small muscle at the corner of his right eye twitching repeatedly.

  Ollie, who had been watching Anderson from beneath his thick, slablike eyelids, rapped a knuckle on the table. “Check t’da powa,” he muttered, his lips barely quivering.

  “What?” Anderson cocked an ear and leaned closer to Ollie.

  Bellweather interpreted. “He’s checking, Stevie. ‘Check to the power.’ It’s your bet.”

  Anderson, trying to stay cool with his big hand, bet ten dollars.

  Everybody folded.

  “Damn!” Anderson threw his hand down faceup, swept in the four dollars in antes.

  Bellweather laughed. “Nice hand, Stevie!” He scooped up the deck, shuffled. “So, Stevie,” he said, his voice taking on a new tone of forced casualness, “what’s happening in the financial markets these days? You got any hot picks for me?” He dealt out the cards. “Any more of those oil stocks?”

  Anderson frowned. His last hot pick, Maritime Drilling, had cost the doctor over one hundred eighty thousand dollars. Shortly after the doctor had bought in at twenty-six dollars a share, an intoxicated Maritime employee had decorated eighteen miles of the Louisiana coastline with a layer of raw, black petroleum. The stock was now so deep in the basement its share price was measured in sixty-fourths of a dollar, hardly worth the transaction cost to sell it. Dr. Bellweather had not been happy.

  “That was a bad deal,” Anderson said weakly. He examined his cards. Nothing. Maybe he’d wasted all his luck on that last hand.

  Bellweather picked up his cards. “I’m going to be frank with you, Stevie. I need a winner. You understand? Something good this time.”

  Anderson understood. He’d made close to eighty grand off the doctor’s account over the past year, and the guy was understandably tired of watching his small fortune get smaller. Anybody else, he’d have them mostly in mutual funds, T-bills, maybe some utilities and blue chips. But the doctor, he wasn’t interested in the safe stuff. He was a thrill seeker from the word go. The only investments that got his attention were the wild ones—the Casino Magics, the Stratospheres. Bellweather was not a sophisticated investor by anyone’s measure but his own. He’d even dabbled in the commodities market, but losing a hundred grand in three days had cured him of that. Still, if there wasn’t a chance to quickly double or triple his money, Bellweather simply wasn’t interested. Anderson wanted to tell him to jack down, let some of his money sit in some safe little fund making seven or eight percent. But he knew his client. It would be like telling a hyperactive kid to sit still and read a book—it just plain wouldn’t happen. The best thing to do, Anderson had learned, was to feed the guy the little companies with sexy prospects. Maybe he’d get lucky, and maybe he wouldn’t. Either way, there would be commish.

  “You ever hear of BioStellar GameTech?” he asked.

  “Bio … Stellar … Game … Tech.” The doctor tasted the name, shook his head.

  “Ten a’you,” Ollie grumbled.

  “What?”

  “‘Ten bucks at you,’” Bellweather translated.

  “I fold,” said Anderson.

  Bellweather called the ten, raised twenty, returned his attention to Anderson. “So? What about it?”

  Anderson cleared his throat. “Strictly speaking, I’m not even supposed to be talking about it yet. Small California outfit, very low profile, makes virtual-reality gambling systems, IPO scheduled for early January. They’ve got a new-concept gambling machine that’s going to make the video slots look like horse buggies. You can get in at five a share now, and I think they’re going to be issuing warrants too—only thing is, I don’t know how much of it I can get my hands on. Dickie’s not letting us have much of it.”

  “That’s not good,” Bellweather said, dealing three cards to Ricky, o
ne to Ollie, and two for himself.

  “Actually,” Anderson said, “it is good. Knowing Dickie, it means he’s feeding all the BioStellar he can get to his own accounts. That means it’s hot. Really hot. My guess is it’ll open at ten or twelve, then go ballistic from there, especially if the big casinos buy into the concept, and Dickie thinks they will. This one’s going to make a lot of people rich.”

  Bellweather bet, was raised by Ricky. Ollie folded.

  “Watch this, Stevie,” Bellweather said as he raised the pot another fifty dollars.

  Anderson was too far into his pitch to stop talking now. “If you’re interested, I could talk to Dickie. He knows you’ve had a rough couple of months; I’m sure he’d be willing to work with us, maybe let us have five, ten thousand shares.”

  Ricky called the raise.

  “Hah!” Bellweather slapped his hand down on the table. Ace high flush.

  Ricky said, “Sheeit,” and flipped over two pair.

  Bellweather elbowed Anderson. “See what I mean? These country boys haven’t got a prayer.” He swept in his winnings. “So this is a good one?”

  Anderson was confused. “What? The pot?”

  “This BioStellar.”

  Anderson shrugged, watching Ollie gather up the cards.

  Bellweather put his hand on Anderson’s shoulder. “Look at me, Stevie.”

  Anderson looked. The doctor’s tiny eyes were red and watery; a lump of beer foam rode the corner of his mouth.

  “It’s good, right? Not another Maritime, right?”

  Anderson opened his mouth, not knowing how he was going to respond, when Ricky snarled, “The fuck do you want?” looking up at the cop, who was standing right there, looking at the deck of cards in Ollie’s hands.

  Joe Crow knew he should not be doing this. He blamed it on the pair of double Cuervos he’d just used to take the edge off the cocaine. The last thing he needed was to get into a poker game, particularly one in which Ricky Murphy was involved. He knew what Chief Johnson would say: What the got-damn hell’s a matter with you, Crow?