Drawing Dead

by Grant Mccrea

  Hell no, he laughed. He’s one of my main guys.

  So it was easy to get some of the others to play along with you. Like Xena, the bartenders …

  Are you kidding? Andy laughed. Their whole lives are an act. Like mine. They loved it.

  You know what the difference is between a transvestite and a transsexual? Lola asked.

  Anatomy?

  No. Some transvestites have implants. Some transsexuals don’t, yet. Haven’t had the surgery yet. No, the difference is, I take my makeup off when I get home.

  That dim lighting again. Lola was actually Larry, or whoever, when she got home? Jesus. Hadn’t even occurred to me as a possibility.

  So, I said, feigning nonchalance, how did you know what to do? Where I was going to be?

  We got text instructions.

  Do you have the number they came from?

  The number was always concealed. User unknown.

  Didn’t you worry that you were being asked to do something wrong, something illegal?

  Come on, Rick, said Andy, reverting to his husky Delgado voice.

  Okay, I said. Stupid question.

  I mean, if it turned out somebody was going to actually hurt you …

  Yeah, yeah. I understand.

  I leaned back in the blue and silver sofa. It had a nice enveloping feel. It was going to be hard to get up. The whole scene was way enervating. But there was no way I was going to hang around here with a bunch of bit players who didn’t know shit about what was really going on.

  You know anything else at all about these guys? I asked. Either of you?

  I knew the answer.

  The answer was no.

  I was going to have to get out of there. Get somewhere quiet. Think shit through. Figure out the next move. Which might well be: get the hell out of town. Get away from all this crazy shit. Not show my face in public for a year. Goddamn. I was banned from the New York games anyway.

  I asked some desultory questions about Brendan. They didn’t know anything, of course. Brendan was a new guy in the scene. Good-looking guy. Got a lot of attention. One night he stopped showing up. They hadn’t heard anything at all.

  I got their contact information. Gave them my number. Asked them to call me if they learned anything.

  One last question, I said.

  Fire away, said Andy.

  They were clearly enjoying the attention.

  Knitting needles, I said.

  Lola got a sneaky smile on her face. His face. Whatever.

  You want to know what knitting needles are for? Andy asked with a smile.

  Other than knitting.

  Sure, he laughed. Well, you know what the prostate is, right?

  Yes, I know what the prostate is. I get mine poked once a year by a guy with a rubber glove.

  Hah. Well, this is sort of like that. I mean, you know that there’s a certain type of guy, woman, it can be women, too, but it’s usually guys, who hang around with … us, that they have this need for extreme, I don’t know …

  Stimulation, said Lola.

  Stimulation, I said.

  Right, said Andy.

  Don’t tell me this, I said.

  Yes, he said. All the way up.

  Through the …

  Urethra. Right. To the prostate. Stimulation.

  Stimulation.

  Right.

  That’s pretty gross, I said.

  Some people might think so, he said with a wink. Some people think it’s … ecstatic.

  Let’s not go there. But what I want to know is, I mean, it’s weird and all, and I suppose you should sterilize the thing, you could get an infection. But unless you sort of, Jesus, pushed the thing too hard or something, punctured something, there’s nothing inherently dangerous about this … activity, is there? I mean, it’s not going to kill you or anything, is it?

  No more than a lot of shit that goes on, said Andy.

  Lola laughed.

  Like what?

  Andy laughed too.

  They both gave me a Look that said, That’s all you’re going to get, buddy.

  I got the hell out of there.

  I thought about it. Yes. There was something there.

  But it wasn’t Brendan’s blood on the thing.

  I had learned a lot. But I didn’t feel any closer to the truth.

  Yes. Life is like that.

  77.

  THE SECOND I STEPPED OUTSIDE, I was grabbed from behind, thrown face up against the stone wall. My forehead met an unyielding protrusion. My forehead yielded. Something warm and unpleasant flowed into my mouth. It seemed vaguely familiar. A salty taste. Ah yes. Blood. My own. A gray curtain descended. Scene over.

  A new scene opening. Set in the half-world. I felt large, rough hands administering handcuffs. I suspended judgement. It was just happening. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. I’d done some bad things, after all, in my day. Deserved a little punishment …

  A familiar voice growled in my ear as I slumped to the ground.

  It was saying something about Downtown.

  78.

  THEY BANDAGED MY HEAD. Splashed cold water in my face. Woke me up. Shoved me into a room. Took my cell phone. Don’t I get a phone call? I asked. They didn’t answer. They took my belt, too. My wallet. My shoelaces. I wasn’t really a suicide risk. But they probably wouldn’t have guessed that, to look at me. I remembered what had met me in the closet mirror, at Sheila’s behest. And that was several traumas ago.

  They left. Locked the door.

  And there I was.

  Alone with myself.

  I hated that.

  I wasn’t completely alone, I guess. I had a wooden table to keep me company. Scored and patchy from endless elbows, fingernails, the odd smuggled-in nail file. The table was bolted to the floor. I understood the precaution. I might have tried to off myself by lifting the thing up, hitting myself over the head.

  Amazing, how concerned they were for your welfare in these places.

  And a chair. There was a chair. One of those gunmetal swiveling things that somebody, somewhere, lo these many eons ago, invented for the express purpose of making persons awaiting interrogation as miserable as humanly possible. Police departments the world over snapped them up. The whole production run, apparently. You never saw them anywhere else.

  I would have liked to talk to the guy. Ask him what he was thinking when he included the contoured ass-crack ridge down the middle, the butt-cheek indentations on either side. Did he think asses came in only one size—sumo? I mean, the only conceivable purpose for the design, other than the placid comfort of a Japanese wrestling champion, was to prevent you from shifting your place in the chair, on pain of … well, pain.

  An ingrate, I was. At least they hadn’t strapped me upside down to some ancient, peeling torture device. Of course, they had smashed my head against a rock. But I was sure they’d done it with the best of intentions.

  An hour and a half later, I was considering revising my view on that, and longing for the presence of some tied-together shoelaces with which I might end all this misery, thinking, I mean, where was the wet bar? If they were going to leave you alone in this desolate twelve-by-eight-foot dust emporium, the least they could do was lay in a generous supply of spiritual condiments, right?

  I was just about to lodge a complaint with management when the door opened. And there, in all his brown-clad lumpy glory, was my very favorite well-tanned former-NYC-now-Las-Vegas detective. Rod.

  My standards were pretty low.

  Rod closed the door behind him. Gave me a Look of infinite Smug. Here you are, it said. Without your big black cop buddy savior guy. Now, scumbag, I’m going to take you apart. I’ll start with the testicles. Work my way up to the more painful parts.

  That was a lot of stuff for one Look to contain. But it was all there.

  Roddy, I said. So good to see you.

  Yeah, said Roddy. Get out of the fucking chair.

  What? Why?

  ’Cause it’s my chair, he
said.

  I wanted to get our little confab off on the right foot. So I got out of the chair.

  You can sit on the floor, he said.

  I’d rather stand.

  Sit on the fucking floor, Redman.

  Oh. Yes. Certainly. I’ll just sit over here on the floor, I said, sitting on the floor.

  Roddy grabbed the chair. Hauled it around to his side of the table. Took a heavy-breathing seat. Looked me in the eye.

  You, he said.

  Me?

  Yeah. You. We got you fourteen ways from Sunday.

  I ignored the bizarre metaphor. Well, I didn’t ignore it. I tried momentarily to trace the provenance of such a turn of phrase. Fourteen ways from Sunday. I didn’t succeed. It was almost as impenetrable as two cats fucking the same … whatever it was Elmer had said. Bottle. I made a note to look it up. Both of them up.

  You do? I inquired with an utterly sincere air of innocence.

  Shut up, said Roddy.

  I wasn’t aware that I’d been talking, I said.

  Yeah, he said. You’re smarter than me. Let’s see what it buys you.

  I have no intention of implying that you’re not smarter than me, Rod. I apologize if I have conveyed any such impression. In fact, given your position, both physical and … what is it, legal? authoritative? I think it goes without saying that you’re way, way smarter than me. Given the circumstances.

  Shut the fuck up, Redman.

  I shut the fuck up.

  Detective Rod scraped his sumo chair, the one that mere moments ago had been my very own sumo chair, across the floor until he was inches from me. I looked up at him with the most winsome pair of eyes I could conjure.

  Just how winsome that might have been, hey, let’s just say I’m not bragging.

  We got you coming, he said, and going. And everywhere in between. You’ve been all over that woman. And now she’s dead. And you know a whole lotta shit you ain’t been telling us.

  Roddy, Roddy. I have to tell you. And I say it with the utmost sincerity. I really do. I couldn’t mean it more sincerely. I don’t have any fucking idea what the fuck you’re talking about.

  As I said it, I braced myself for a physical blow. But it didn’t come. I admired Roddy’s restraint. I saw his hand, the almost-fist of his right hand, twitch. I observed the pugilistic hunch of his shoulders. But the smack, the swat, the hurling of the ashtray, didn’t come.

  Well, Roddy said slowly, deliberately, I guess we’re just going to have to give you the audiovisual.

  He nodded at the mirrored part of the wall that beyond a reasonable doubt concealed a host of his confederates, hunched over recording equipment, cameras and whatever other exciting technological doodads had by now infiltrated the law enforcement community. You could count on them to be way behind the times. But not so way behind that they couldn’t surprise you.

  The door opened. A miserable minion in a gray overall wheeled in a seven-foot-tall metal stand on which reposed, on various shelves thereof, a gigantic video monitor, a DVD player, a fairly compact desktop computer of the horizontal orientation, and something that looked like a pre-amp/mixing board sort of thing, all of which I had no doubt could be remotely controlled from behind the one-way glass.

  I had no idea what Rod was going to show me. But I was fairly sure I didn’t want to see it.

  The minion came back in with a folding wooden chair.

  If anything could have been more uncomfortable than the Police Room Special, this chair was it. The seat was made of wooden slats, spaced too far apart. Designed for maximum buttock discomfort. But it was better than the floor.

  We’ll dispense with the two-hundred-watt bulb in the face, said Rod. For now.

  Much obliged, I said. And thanks for the chair.

  You’re so very welcome. Now, tell me everything you know about Eloise Wittenburg.

  Wittenburg?

  That was her name.

  Not …

  What?

  Never mind. I thought it was something else.

  What?

  I don’t remember. I guess she must have got married.

  Redman.

  Yes, officer?

  First, cut it with the officer shit. Second, you have one more supposed lapse of memory and I’m going to cut your balls off with a ballpoint pen.

  Interesting choice of implement, I said. But seriously, Rod, I know you’re not going to do that. And you know that I know you’re not going to do that. And more important, you gotta understand, I’m a sick alcoholic depressive. Our memories are for shit. Look it up.

  Rod took a nail file out of the breast pocket of his lumpy brown jacket. Inspected it, as if wondering if it might not do a better job than the pen.

  I’ll cut you a little slack, Redman, he said as he scraped some flaking skin off the side of his nose with the file. But only if I think—no, only if I know—that you’re telling me everything you know. Starting with why you’re so fucking interested in this broad.

  What makes you think I’m so interested in her?

  Rod banged the table so hard the nail file flew halfway across the room. Which, now that I think of it, wasn’t very far.

  Redman, he yelled, you’re not off to a good start. First, you show up to look at the body, way before anybody should have even known about it. That would seem to show a bit of interest.

  Uh, Butch called me about it, I said.

  Second, he said, ignoring me, we’ve talked to your buddy Elmer. Seems you’d already been showing a whole lot of interest in her.

  Elmer? Elmer talked to you?

  Ha-yup, he said, doing a fairly convincing imitation of Elmer’s down east drawl.

  Didn’t strike me as the type of guy would want to be talking to the cops too much.

  You’d be surprised. He’s a lonely old fart. Likes company.

  I guess I could see that.

  And then you show up at the fucking Mercury Rising.

  The what?

  The Mercury Rising Club, asshole.

  There you got me, Rod. I swear, I never heard of the place.

  Rod gave me the Cop Look, above described.

  Having retrieved his nail file, he set to work again at an angry flaking spot on the other side of his nose. Little flecks of skin showered the top of the table. He carefully arranged them into a handsome little flake pile.

  I had an urge to vomit.

  Hector! Rod called out. Roll the Mercury tape!

  Ah, I thought. The long-awaited film presentation.

  Rod, I said.

  Shut up and watch, Redman.

  But, really, I said. Where’s the popcorn?

  He gave me a Look that said, One more fucking joke and I really will use this nail file to perform some ugly and unnecessary procedure on some extremely sensitive part of your person.

  I shut up and watched.

  It was grainy black-and-white footage, clearly from a security camera. One that slowly rotated a hundred-eighty degrees and then back, on a cycle of about a minute. Judging by the view, it was mounted on the ceiling in the corner of the room. A darkly lit, stone-walled room containing a number of elaborate contraptions and a fair number of mostly naked men and women. One particularly pale and pudgy specimen was strapped head down on one of the contraptions, which with the benefit of this new view looked very much like an abstract rendering of a gynecologist’s examining table.

  Now I really needed to puke.

  That you, asshole? Rod asked with even more contempt than usual.

  I am profoundly sad to say that it is, I said. But I can unequivocally assure you, kind sir, that I did not voluntarily put myself in that position. I was drugged. Put there against my will. And if you don’t mind my asking, if anything particularly vile was perpetrated on my person in subsequent frames, I have no recollection of it and don’t care to acquire one, so please be so kind as to permit me to close my eyes.

  That at least got a laugh out of Rod.

  Cut out the lawyer-talk crap, Redm
an, he said.

  I laughed. Too long and too loud. But it felt good.

  Hector! Rod called out again. Back it up!

  A low, rumbling voice descended from the ceiling.

  Rod, it said. You don’t have to shout. We can hear you.

  Oh yeah, said Rod, lowering his voice. Okay. Back it up to 10:23.

  And I wasn’t trying to be cute with you, Rod, I said. It wasn’t called the Mercury Rising, okay? There was a sign outside—

  Shut the fuck up.

  Another view appeared. Same camera, slightly different angle. In the shot, a formerly respected New York attorney somewhat down on his luck and engaging in a rather pathetic attempt at a poker and investigation career was to be seen fully naked, in a clear state of arousal, and draped on either side by tall, attractive—or so it seemed; it was hard to make out everything in the grainy dark—women. They approached the apparatus, laughing and talking, and the former attorney could be seen quite voluntarily clambering onto it, slipping out of place several times, to general great hilarity, and being strapped securely down with weathered leather straps. That the straps were weathered leather was not actually discernible on the tape. The attorney filled in that detail. From memory.

  The tape stopped. The scene was frozen in front of me. I was sorely tempted to make use of the closing-the-eyes option.

  Not voluntary? Rod asked.

  Video can be so misleading, I said.

  Really?

  Yes. Remember Rodney King?

  You found that misleading?

  Some people did. It takes out a lot of context. Context is everything, you know.

  I see.

  Listen, Rod. I wasn’t lying to you. I have no memory whatsoever about what’s going on there. I woke up the next morning, strapped to that thing. I know I had to have been drugged. I mean, look at how I’m stumbling around like an idiot.

  Doesn’t seem like that’s maybe so unusual for you, he said drily.

  Touché, I said. Sure. Touché. But I’m telling you, if that was voluntary, it was the voluntary of the guy on acid who jumps off the roof of the Hilton.

  Interesting comparison.

  Damn it, Rod. You know what I mean.

  Maybe I do, dickhead. You like that word better? And, as they say in the commercials, there’s more.

  I don’t want to see any more.