by Tom Drury
“Do you have an address?”
“I don’t. I thought I would call the bar I met her in. Or the hotel.”
“Did you sleep with her?”
“No.”
“It’s all right if you did.”
“I didn’t. I’d tell you. That’s why she gave me the rock.”
“Okay, good. Now, do you have any weapons?”
“For what?”
“To defend yourself, I suppose.”
“I have a twelve-gauge and a rifle, but I’m not planning to use them.”
“But what if you need to?” she said. “It’s like the rock. You weren’t planning on that, either, but it’s a good thing you had it.”
“A rock is one thing.”
“I’m not sure you understand,” said Stella. “Do you see this? This is a fortune.”
“I need a cardboard box.”
She went and came back with a box in which Habenaria bulbs had been shipped. This seemed ideal because no one inclined to steal from the mail would get excited about flowers.
That night at the Jack of Diamonds, Pierre made some calls to the town of Cassins Finch, Utah, and got the woman on the phone.
“Hey, I remember you,” she said. “We were looking for a ladder that night.”
Pierre leaned over the bar with pen and paper. “Give me your address. I’m sending you something.”
“Bad or good?”
“Good.”
“I don’t want the rock back.”
“It’s not the rock.”
* * *
Shane followed the river south and arrived around midnight in Chartrand, a city laid out along the water and one that had a reputation for shadiness because of its unusual concentration of dealers and fences and bookmakers. The man he went to see was called Ned Anderson, short for Edmund.
Ned’s trade was partly legal and partly not. He ran a car rental place at the regional airport and sold methamphetamines in the form of little white pills. It was a solid and quiet living that he made from the two enterprises. He could have cleared more selling modern drugs but believed that the white cross drew less attention from cops and competitors.
He had the speed flown in from California, bypassing the fly-by-night meth labs, which he considered shabby and unreliable. The rental operation provided a clandestine freight depot for the speed. Ned thought of himself as a regular businessman and made it a point to donate to charities and political candidates.
Ned lived in a ranch house in a low-slung neighborhood where only the mailboxes were ornate. Shane knocked on the door and was ushered in by a woman with a red wool blanket drawn around her shoulders. Without a word she led him back to the kitchen, where she took her place at an oval table of quarter-sawn oak.
There she and Ned and two others were trying out a batch of amphetamines. They crushed the tablets with the edges of coins and inhaled the powder through rolled dollars. With the money and the white dust on the sturdy table, they looked like employees in the last days of banking.
Ned stood at the head of the table, tall and imposing with a big stomach that seemed to symbolize power rather than excess weight, though that’s what it was. His hair and eyebrows were wavy and dark red and his head tilted forward with a serious squint to his eyes. He wore a coarse gray suit and a blue tie loose at the collar.
“I got a car out here you should get rid of,” said Shane.
“Why don’t you get rid of it?” said the woman who had brought him in. She had black glossy bangs that came down to the top of her eyelids.
“I’ll leave it where it is if that’s where you want it,” said Shane.
“Here, here, let’s not fight,” said Ned. “What do you want done with it?”
“It’s your town, you decide,” said Shane.
“Get the car out of here,” said the woman in the red blanket.
“We haven’t been introduced,” said Shane.
“This is Luanne Larsen,” said Ned.
“Pleased to meet you. I’m Shane.”
“We know who you are.”
Ned introduced the two others. One was Jean Story, who sat with her arms folded in a shirt of light gray cotton and smiled fiercely with hard green eyes. The other was Lyle Wood-Mills, whom Shane had met before, a mechanic who made deliveries for Ned and coordinated his network of dealers. In Shane’s view, Lyle was a complainer, who viewed any given situation as a nest of negative implications for Lyle, but Ned considered him capable and even essential to both his businesses.
“Join us,” said Ned. “This stuff isn’t bad.”
“It’s fresh,” said Jean, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand. “It has a certain quality.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Luanne. “It’s all right. I don’t love it.”
“I think I’ll clean up and go to bed,” said Shane. “We have something to talk about, but we can do that tomorrow.”
“What kind of thing?” said Ned.
Shane went to the refrigerator and got a wedge of Swiss cheese and stood at the counter slicing it with a knife. “Money,” he said.
“What happened to your head?” said Jean.
“I was in a car accident.”
“Get the car out of here,” said Luanne. “He can’t stay here. Tell him, Ned.”
“Leave it, Luanne,” said Ned. “I owe him. Shane’s troubles are my troubles.”
“Yeah, they probably will be,” she said. “I know. He went to jail on your behalf or some stupid thing like that.”
“Never mind what,” said Ned.
“I didn’t go to jail,” said Shane.
“Lyle, move the car, will you,” said Ned.
“Where?”
“Take it that place we took that other one. And get the plates. Jean, you follow Lyle.”
“Will do, Ned.”
“It’s a Buick,” said Shane. “Where do I go?”
“There’s a room upstairs with an exercise bike. You can have that.”
“I work out there,” said Luanne.
“I wonder if there’s one thing you wouldn’t have to fight me on,” said Ned. “It could be anything. I’ve been waiting. I hope it appears one day.”
Shane went upstairs and took a shower and lay on a couch in the exercise room with the coat he’d stolen from the bar as a blanket. Sometime later he woke to find Jean in the room. She stood by the door in the gray cotton shirt, which seemed to float in the darkness.
“We took care of your car,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“Ned said come tell you.”
“All right, then.”
“And see if you want anything else.”
“I’m all set.”
“Any old thing.”
“Oh, I get it.”
“Yeah, I seen the light bulb come on.”
“What kind of place is this?”
“It’s Ned Land. You want to get laid?”
“I guess, if you want to.”
“Not especially.”
“This is real seductive.”
“I know my pulse is racing.”
“Skip it. You don’t have to. Ned isn’t anything.”
“He’s my boss.”
“Where?”
“The rent-a-car.”
“Don’t you have your own place?”
“Do you mind if I smoke?”
“Go ahead.”
She sat on the arm of the couch. Her lighter was one of those little blow-torch numbers that hiss and emit a spear of blue fire. She tilted her head back and blew smoke at the exercise bicycle. “My hubby and me had a falling out.”
“How come?”
“He’s got a girlfriend. You know. So I said either she goes or I go. So anyway, I went. And then Ned said it was okay here.”
“When was this?”
“I don’t know. A year ago, maybe.”
“Do you and Ned . . . you know. . . .”
“Oh, God, no. He’s too old for me. ’Course he’s to
o old for Luanne too, but Luanne lives in her own space. You saw what she’s like. Everything to look out for Ned, to the point where she almost despises him.”
“So what do you do, sit around doing speed the whole time?”
“Not really. I mean, I’ll have it, it makes me kind of happy, but I’m not a fanatic about it.”
“So why’d you stay?”
She thought the question over, staring into the room. “I think I’m depressed,” she said. “Maybe that’s it. And this is a good place for that. No one tells you to get out of it. We keep the shades down in the windows. We watch the vids. I ride to work with Ned. It isn’t so bad.”
“What would you do if you had to find someone? And you didn’t know their name.”
“I don’t know. Probably look on the Internet.”
“He lives north of here.”
“That’s not much to go on. What else?”
“Just got back hitchhiking from California.”
She took the cigarette from her lips and gestured with it and nodded. “Now, see, that,” she said. “That is something you could work with.”
“On the Internet.”
“Well, no. Just talking to someone. Unless he has a blog.”
“What’s that?”
“An online diary,” said Jean. “Do you think he might?”
“I don’t know. I fucking doubt it.”
“Yeah, probably not.”
“You could help me,” said Shane. “People tell women things they wouldn’t tell men. Or if you have contacts up there. I’ll pay you.”
“How much?”
Shane thought for a minute. “Couple hundred. If I find him.”
“Yeah, I don’t know. I’ll sleep on it.”
“Stay a minute.”
“Yeah? Why?”
“I want you to sit on my back.”
“Is this a sexual thing for you?”
“No. I’ve always had problems with it. I think I hurt it when my truck went off the road.”
“Okay.”
Shane lay on his stomach with his head turned to the side and Jean sat on his back. She reclined and rested her arms on the top of the couch.
“How’s that?” she said.
“Good. Much better.”
“What did you do for Ned? That he was alluding to.”
“Why do you want to know? You wouldn’t want to sit on my back anymore.”
“It can’t be that bad.”
“It’s right up there.”
“Tell me.”
“I burned a house down,” said Shane. “It was a job for hire. Supposed to be empty. But there was somebody in it and she didn’t get out.”
“Wow.”
“Told you.”
“That is bad.”
“I know it.”
“Who was she?”
“I don’t know. She was watching the house.”
“And you didn’t know?”
“No,” said Shane.
“God.”
“And what do you do?”
“What?”
“For Ned.”
“Oh. Nothing. I bump people up.”
“What’s that?”
“They come in, they want the economy car, I—and she died? This person?”
“Yeah. It was a couple years ago.”
“Did Ned know?”
“No. We all thought it was empty. He said it was my fault. That I should have known. But what were you saying? The people come in—”
“And I just—I just bump them up to something more than they want. A different car.”
“How do you do that?”
“It’s easy. Talk low, talk slow. Wear a gold necklace with your shirt open a couple buttons.”
“And then what?”
“That’s it.”
“Just in the appearance.”
“Yeah. Everyone knows this.”
“The men.”
“Men, women . . . businessmen, it makes no difference,” said Jean. “Of course it doesn’t always work. But I think most people kind of want to be bumped up anyway.”
One Thursday night, the Reverend John Morris of the Church of the Four Corners came into the Jack of Diamonds and sat at the bar to have supper. He did this most every week. He would have the venison and onions, or the red snapper with grilled tomatoes, and red wine with his food and Calvados after.
The pastor liked to eat and drink. Yet he was old and troubled. He had absorbed the problems of the congregation and some of his own. His wife had left him several years ago for a younger minister, and though she had returned after a few months, he was never quite the same. The past was in his eyes, and he walked stiff shouldered and full of regret.
“Hi, pastor,” said Pierre. He had two glasses in either hand and slotted them up to dry.
“You know that little white convertible your dad used to drive?” said John Morris.
“Sure. The MGA.”
“Sweet car.”
“It was.”
“Whatever happened to it?”
“I don’t know. It got sold when the house got sold.”
“How come you didn’t get any of that stuff?”
“It was part of the estate. I didn’t really get involved in it.”
“Well, I think I saw it the other day.”
“Oh, yeah? Where?”
“It was up for sale where I get my car worked on.”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing it.”
“Well, it’s not there anymore. It went out the next day.”
“Too bad,” said Pierre.
“Yeah. I saw it and I thought, Pierre should have this.”
“He rebuilt it himself. I remember he had it all taken apart to where it didn’t even look like a car. There were wires laying all over the place.”
“Well, anyway, here’s the keys.”
John Morris put them down on the bar. It was the same key ring too, a little brass snaffle bit.
“You bought it?” said Pierre.
“Yeah. It’s yours. I heard you were hitchhiking again and then I saw the car and it all made sense.”
They went out of the bar and to the edge of the lot by the brook where the car was. Pierre walked beside it, trailing his hand down the long subtle curve of the fender.
“Are you serious, John? What’d you pay for it?”
“Not that much. I baptized the guy’s kids so he cut me a deal.”
After the bar closed, Pierre and the chef, Keith Lyon, took the car for a drive. They went up to the Grade and drank a couple beers and smoked a joint.
“You owe that minister,” said Keith.
“Probably I should go to church now or something.”
“A time or two wouldn’t hurt.”
“Hey, listen. Somebody might be after me.”
“For what?”
“I took something they had.”
Keith opened the glove box. “Light still works,” he said. “Well, I guess you could give it back.”
“I don’t have it.”
“What is it?”
“Seventy-seven thousand dollars.”
“Really. That’s different, isn’t it? What did you do with so much money?”
“Gave it away.”
“Stole it and gave it away.”
“No,” said Pierre. “I didn’t steal it. I wouldn’t call it that. It was more like gambling, but he didn’t understand how much he was betting.”
“You’re going to have to tell me what we’re talking about.”
They got out of the car and walked to the edge of the Grade and stood throwing rocks down at the water as Pierre explained what happened.
“So what you’re saying,” said Keith. “This guy got your clothes, and you got enough money to buy a house.”
“Well, no,” said Pierre, “because I got the clothes back.”
“It was not his day, was it?”
“No.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t
know. Long-haired guy. Big guy.”
“What the fuck, you hit him with a rock?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you draw?”
“Some.”
And this was true. One year in the fall after Pierre finished college he had gone on an illustration kick. He read up on perspective and shading and how to measure distant objects using only a thumb and pencil. He got a sketch pad and blue 2H pencils and did some very passable drawings of women and chairs and sneakers before losing interest.
“Maybe draw a picture of the guy,” said Keith. “We could make copies and hand them around a little bit.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“You have some friends. Roland Miles would probably love anything to do with the possibility of violence. Does he know?”
“Yeah.”
“And there’s the police.”
“I don’t want to tell them,” said Pierre. “The first thing they’d want to know is where the money is. And if you don’t say anything about the money, there’s nothing for them to act on. You know, ‘There’s this guy, maybe, I don’t know his name or where he is.’ Hell, they wouldn’t even write it down.”
“You know Telegram Sam?”
Nicknamed for his terse manner of speaking, Telegram Sam was a state trooper operating out of the Gamelon barracks who came into the Jack of Diamonds sometimes.
“I’ve seen him,” said Pierre.
“You should tell him.”
“I’ll think about that. Did you ever have anybody after you?”
“One time, yeah,” said Keith. “There was this friend of mine, and we were in a bar in La Crosse, and somebody was giving him a hard time about something. I don’t remember what anymore. This was years ago. So anyway I told the guy to shut up, not my friend but this other guy. And he did. Backed right down, which was kind of a lesson to me, and I thought that was that. But then him and his friends found me a couple of weeks later in another bar and beat me up pretty good. You know. They’d come off from working in a factory and I was sort of drunk, so you can imagine how it went. That was the night I lost my hat. First hat I ever bought on my own. Got it at a men’s store for, like, twenty-nine dollars.”
Keith was silent for a moment, remembering his hat.
“So don’t do what I did,” he said. “I did nothing. That was a mistake.”
That night Pierre went home and attempted to draw the driver of the pickup. He sat at his big steel desk with a goosenecked lamp and paper and pencil and Artgum eraser. He worked on the drawing for over an hour, sketching the figure as he remembered it behind the wheel of the pickup and half turned toward the viewer.
