by Pete Hautman
“That you, Dave? How’s it going?”
“Tell him I’m making calamari risotto for dinner,” Mary said.
“Dey’re goding do gill be! Dey shod thad old ban in da ba. I saw id do it. You god do ged me oud a here, Joe.”
“You’re having squid for dinner,” Crow said. They’d shot Berdette? He wished Getter hadn’t mentioned that in front of the Murphys. It sort of limited his options for negotiation.
“Let me talk to him.” Mary grabbed the phone. “David?” Her face fell. She looked at Crow, stricken, handed him the phone.
George Murphy was back on the line. “You satisfied?”
“He doesn’t sound so good.”
“I told you he didn’t feel like talking. So you know where Nelly Bell is?”
Crow smiled into the phone. “I know exactly where he is.”
Drinking Black Russians in the middle of a weekday afternoon made Steve Anderson feel dark and dangerous. He had claimed a booth for himself way in the back of Myron’s Pub and was playing videos in his mind. Some of the tapes were pleasant fantasies, like the one where he got to shoot George Murphy with his Weatherby. Other tapes were recent memories, like the one where he’d walked into Rich Wicky’s office and been told to take off.
Anderson’s heart had about stopped.
“I don’t understand,” he’d said. “Am I being fired?”
Dickie said, “I just want you to take a few days off, Stevie.”
“What for? What’s going on here?”
“I just listened in on your conversation with Mrs. Pilhoffer, Steve.”
“Oh. You listened?”
“You know I do that, Steve. It’s part of my job. Now all I’m doing is asking you to take a few days—a week, say—and get it together.”
“I’ve got it together. Who was your top performer last month?”
“I was, Steve. But you did good. You’re a hell of a salesman, Steve. That’s why I’m suspending you instead of firing you. Understand?”
“For one bad phone call?”
“One bad phone call on a three-million-dollar account.”
“Yeah, a three-million-dollar pile of dogshit.”
Dickie had said, “Go home, Steve. Come back to work a week from Monday.”
Ouch. Bad video. Anderson took another sip. A black river of vodka and Kahlua cascaded down his throat. He hit his mental remote control. Dickie Wicky running across a snowy field, tie flapping over the shoulder of his Brooks Brothers suit. Taking careful aim, going for the knee shot.
“Kapow,” he said.
“Kapow? What’s he talking about, ‘Kapow’?”
“Damned if I know.” Rich Wicky leaned over the table. “Stevie? Who are you talking to?”
Anderson blinked, momentarily confused. Rich Wicky and Jack Mitchell, another broker. He hadn’t seen them come up. He was torn between wanting to punch Dickie in the nose and throwing the remains of his drink in his face.
Wicky, who could read facial expressions the way most people can read a menu, quickly said, “I can’t tell you how goddamned sorry I am about what happened this afternoon, Stevie.”
“You didn’t look very sorry,” Anderson said. He dipped a forefinger into his drink, examined his wet digit, licked it off. “What’re you guys doing here?”
Wicky looked at Mitchell, made a wide-eyed face. “It’s ten minutes past the bell, Stevie. Quittin’ time. Mind if we join you? How ’bout I buy you a drink?”
“I don’t care.”
Wicky signaled a waitress. He and Mitchell slid into the booth across from Anderson.
“So tell me, Stevie, what got into you with Mrs. Pilhoffer anyways? I gotta tell you, I just about bust a gut when I heard you call her ‘Mrs. P.’”
Anderson hiccupped, then laughed. Wicky laughed too, then Mitchell joined in. The waitress brought their drinks.
“You know,” Wicky said, “if I hadn’t been afraid that old man Litten might be listening in too, I’d have let it slide. Hell, everybody’s gotta blow off a little steam now and then. So tell me, Stevie, what’s on your mind? It isn’t like you to go off on a client that way, no matter how much she deserved it.”
It took two more drinks and a lot of prodding by Wicky, but Anderson eventually spilled it, what had been bothering him. He told them how he’d been tricked into shooting a dead elk.
“Let me see if I got this right,” Wicky said. “You paid this guy twenty K to let you shoot an elk.”
“Record-book elk,” Anderson clarified. “Boone and Crockett.”
“Right. This huge mother. And so you went out and you shot it, and then later you found out it had been dead a week. And you couldn’t get it off your mind, so you told Mrs. P. to take a flying fuck.”
“That’s right,” Anderson said.
Mitchell and Wicky looked at each other, then broke out laughing.
Anderson was not amused.
Mitchell was the first to stop laughing. He donned a serious expression and asked Anderson what he planned to do.
“Get drunk,” Anderson said. “Can’t go home. Can’t tell Patty I got suspended.”
“I mean about the elk,” Mitchell said. “You gonna let those guys get away with it?”
Anderson squeezed his eyes closed, opened them wide. “Whad’ya mean?”
“I mean, if somebody sold me a piece of bad meat, I sure as hell know what I’d do. I’d send it back to the kitchen.”
XXX
Extensive interviews show that not one alcoholic has ever actually seen a pink elephant.
—CENTER OF ALCOHOL STUDIES, YALE UNIVERSITY
CROW CONTEMPLATED HIS UPENDED Volkswagen. The sun had nearly set, and the car’s shadow stretched far to the east, fading out after several car lengths. Both doors hung wide open; the front end remained buried deep in a snowdrift. He was sorry he couldn’t remember the accident; it must have been quite an experience. He closed and locked the Jaguar, trudged through the drift toward the snowbound Rabbit.
For once, he was perfectly warm and comfortable.
He was wearing Getter’s waterproof Sorels, and he liked it. They were a size too large, but they kept his feet warm and dry. He felt as if he could walk through anything. The quilted parka, a high-tech affair with dozens of Velcro’d pockets and zip-out layers, enveloped his body like warm armor. A matching Thinsulate hat with earflaps, and a pair of fur-lined gloves, completed his borrowed outfit. One thing about Dave Getter—when it came to clothing, he bought the good stuff.
Thinking he might have to walk in on the Murphys, Crow had asked Mary if she had a parka he could use, something with a bit more warmth than his cheap trench coat. She had shown him a closet packed with Dave’s outdoor clothing, most of it looking as if it had never been worn. After he’d dressed himself, turning up three inches of pant cuffs and a couple inches of sleeve at each wrist, his sister had nodded approvingly. Now that Crow had agreed to try to get her husband back, she seemed calmer, as if his success were preordained.
To his surprise, as he left, she had told him to be careful.
Crow leaned into the upended Rabbit, opened the glove compartment, and recovered his Taurus. He put it in one of the many pockets. Now he was completely dressed.
Armed and suitably clad, he still needed a way to get to his destination. A few minutes earlier, he had driven past the entrance to Talking Lake Ranch. The county plows had made another, wider pass down Highway 7, throwing up a ridge of dirt-gray ice and snow three feet high, blocking access to the ranch. No problem for a jeep, but he’d left Harley’s vehicle at Bellweather’s, and there was no way the Jag would be able to mount that barrier. Short of walking in, only one other possibility occurred to him.
Fifty yards away, the door to the trailer opened, and Harley Pike stepped out.
“Hey!” Harley shouted, staggering forward. “What the hell you doing?”
“It’s just me, Harley,” Crow called. “Crow.”
“Crow? Where the goddamn hell are my wheels?
”
Crow walked to meet him. “How’s it going, Harley?”
“It’s going fine. Where the goddamn hell is my jeep? You took my goddamn jeep. You were gonna bring it right back.”
“Your jeep is fine, Harley.” Crow looked past Harley at the trailer. “Is Puss around?”
“Why?” He held his bare fists clenched at his hips; his bloodshot eyes glared from beneath a shelf of wild eyebrow.
Crow said, “You get that beer I left off here?”
“Yeah, I got it.” Harley’s eyes misted, and his face went soft, all the anger flooding out of him at the memory of the free case of beer. “You want a cool one?”
“No, thanks,” Crow said. “I need to ask you for a favor.”
Harley frowned. “What’s a matter, you don’t want to have a drink with me?”
“I need to borrow your snowmobile, Harley.”
Harley’s mouth went slack, then closed with a click. “You already got my wheels—now you want my skis?” He looked Crow up and down. “What the hell you got on there, Crow? You look like some guy in a catalog picture.”
“The thing is,” Crow persisted, “I need to get over to the Murphys’ place, and I don’t think my Jag’s got the clearance to handle that road of theirs.”
Harley’s eyes hunted for, then landed on, the pink Jaguar. “Somebody oughta shoot that thing,” he said.
“Somebody has. Where’s your woman, Harley?”
“She’s watching one a her soaps. You want a beer?”
“I want to borrow your skis, Harley. Tell you what, you loan ’em to me for an hour, I’ll buy you a bottle of J.D.”
Harley’s eyes went small and greedy. “One a the big ones?”
“I’ll get you a whole liter. How’s that?”
Harley looked over his shoulder. “You won’t tell Puss?”
“I won’t say a word.”
“I can hide ’er in the snow,” he said, thinking out loud. “Keep ’er nice and cool.”
The door opened, and Puss stuck her head out.
“What’s going on out here?”
Harley grinned at her. “Ol’ Crow here wants to borrow the Polaris, Puss. I told him it was fine with me. I’m gonna go get ’er fired up right now.” Harley slogged through the snow around the trailer.
Puss frowned at Crow. “Where’s his jeep?”
“I’ll get it back to you tomorrow.”
Puss brushed a shank of long gray hair away from one eye, squinted at him. The sputtering of a snowmobile engine rattled the aluminum walls of the trailer. Her thin lips formed a short arch. “I’m surprised he’s letting you take his skis, Crow. I just hope you didn’t promise him a jug.”
Harley Pike’s ancient Polaris was no improvement over his dilapidated jeep. It rode rough and slow, and every time Crow hit a dip in the trail, the fiberglass hood popped up, blocking his vision. He headed due west from Harley and Puss’s snowbound trailer toward the bluffs along the river, following a faint snowmobile track. The ten inches of new snow covering the trail made it difficult to follow. Twice, he went off the edge and became mired in soft drifts. Up to his waist in unpacked virgin snow, he’d had to muscle the heavy old machine back up onto the path. The trail zigzagged down the coulee toward the river. By the time he reached the wider, more recently traveled trail that followed the east bank, he was drenched with sweat.
As he crossed the southern border of Talking Lake Ranch, moving faster now that the trail was clearly visible, the confidence and resolve that had brought him that far started to waver. The wind clawed at his face and his perspiration-soaked undergarments began to cool. He tucked his head between his shoulders and squeezed the throttle, telling himself that so far everything was going according to plan. Boiled down to its essentials, the plan had been to pick up the gun he’d left in his Volkswagen, get to Talking Lake Ranch, and save Dave Getter’s miserable life. It would serve as a kind of penance, a selfless act, an act of pure, courageous altruism. Melinda would hear about it, and she would be proud.
Crow sat erect on the speeding snowmobile. Imagining that she was watching him, he concentrated on driving the snowmobile perfectly, his jaw set, guiding the machine flawlessly across the winter landscape.
“Well, I’ll be got-damned.” Orlan Johnson gripped the doorframe and swayed, muttering to himself. “Dark out. How’d that happen?” Cold air swept past him into Birdy’s, rustling the empty potato chip bags that represented the remains of his dinner. His squad car, windows opaque with frost, sat parked a few yards away. Johnson felt his pockets, found a set of keys, and launched himself toward the car. His chosen trajectory was off by about twenty degrees, but by closing one eye he was able to make a mid-course correction and arrive safely at the driver’s-side door. He fumbled with the door handle, came to the conclusion it was locked, made several stabs at it with the key. “Slippery bugger,” he growled, breathing loudly through his nose. He finally succeeded in opening the door, inserted his bulky torso into the car, got the right key into the ignition, started the engine.
He was ready to go, but he couldn’t see a got-damn thing. He grabbed an ice scraper off the seat, got out, scraped a saucer-size hole in the ice-covered windshield. A minute later, the Big River police’s flagship squad car, a Ford Crown Victoria with all the performance goodies, fishtailed out onto Highway 7, headlights sweeping the road from side to side to side, Orlan Johnson driving with his chin on the steering wheel, peering out through the hole he had scraped in the frost. He was not looking forward to seeing his wife. The woman had a mouth that wouldn’t quit. He imagined himself giving her a good one, right on the kisser. One a these got-damn days he was gonna do it. Maybe tonight, if she gave him a hard time. Wasn’t for those brothers a hers, he’d a done it a long time ago.
Something pink appeared in his headlights.
“Whoa there,” Johnson said. He moved his foot to the brake pedal, pushed it down. Even with the ABS, the big Ford slewed sideways, came to a stop perpendicular to the highway.
Couldn’t see a thing. Johnson rolled down his window, his head out, looked back down the road. There it was, that pink car George was looking for.
Johnson got the car turned around. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about taking on a load of shit from his wife tonight. He found that doctor for her brother George, he’d be King of the Hill for a week at least.
XXXI
That was the phrase for it when a safari went bad. You ran into another white hunter and you asked, “How is everything going?” and he answered, “Oh, I’m still drinking their whisky,” and you knew everything had gone to pot.
—ERNEST HEMINGWAY, “THE SHORT HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER.”
THE MURPHYS’ LODGE FIRST appeared as a ghostly glow, its lights filtered up through the tree branches, spilling down the coulee toward the frozen river. Crow throttled down the Polaris, rolled to a stop, turned off the engine. He figured he was about a quarter of a mile away. He would walk in, come at them silently from below.
Beyond that, his plan remained in development.
Crow got off the machine and followed the icy zigzag track up the bluff toward the lodge, his boots squeaking on the packed trail, one hand in his pocket warming the grip of the Taurus. He didn’t know how he was going to play this, but something would occur to him. According to Sam, when you’re playing with a short stack, you’ve got to go with your instincts, and you can’t afford to wait for the cards to come to you. “You get dealt deuces, you’d best play ’em like they’s aces.”
In other words, there was no percentage in computing the odds.
He reached the back of the lodge building, stood looking up at the bank of picture windows. The room was lit up, and from his angle he could see the big log beam running the length of the ceiling, the top of the fieldstone fireplace, the tip of the mounted rhino’s horn. He would have liked to see who was in the room, but the bottom sill was six feet above his head.
Crow explored the perimeter of the buildings, c
onsidering each window and door as a candidate for clandestine entry. He continued around the house. A door on the east side, where he had met Amanda Murphy on his first visit, led into the kitchen. Crow looked through the window, saw Shawn Murphy at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of cereal.
One strategy would be simply to wait. Sooner or later one of them would come outside. He’d be much better off if he could separate George and Ricky. The problem was, even in Getter’s high-tech regalia he was getting colder by the minute, and besides, he was tired of waiting for things to happen to him.
He heard a sound coming from behind him, a low woof.
Oh, shit, he thought. The dogs.
He turned and looked at them in their chain-link enclosure, at which point they exploded into a series of howls, barks, and growls. So much for stealth.
Having no other options, he decided to take the direct approach. He walked up to the lodge door. George Murphy was standing there, holding it open, looking to see what had his dogs all upset.
“Officer Crow!” said George Murphy. He looked past Crow and frowned. “Where is he?”
Crow ignored the question. “Is Getter here?”
“Sure he is. Where’s your friend?”
“Right here,” said Crow, planting the barrel of the Taurus in George Murphy’s ample gut.
George looked down, his face collapsing into a sorrowful expression. “Not a good idea,” he said, shaking his head. “Somebody’s been giving you bad advice.”
Crow pushed the gun deeper, forcing George to step back into the lodge. As more of the room became visible, he saw Ricky sitting at one of the tables. A few inches from his left hand, a long-barreled revolver lay on its side on the tabletop.
“Tell him to move his hand away from the gun,” Crow said.
George took another step back, turned his head. “You hear what the man said, Ricky?”
Ricky nodded his head a scant centimeter. His hand did not move.
George said, “He’s mad at me, Crow. Besides, he never listens to me anyways. You gonna shoot me now?” The lower half of George’s face stretched into a grin, but his eyes remained opaque.