Short Money

by Pete Hautman

  She was on her second Pepsi when George and Ricky came in through the kitchen door, talking and laughing. When they caught sight of her sitting alone at the table, their grins faded away.

  “You ring that bell?” Ricky asked, peeling down his black nylon snowmobile suit.

  “I ranged it,” Amanda said darkly.

  George and Ricky arranged themselves at the table.

  “Where’s that boy?” George asked.

  “I thought he was with you.”

  George shook his head. “I ain’t seen him since this afternoon. You seen him, Ricky?”

  Ricky, loading his plate with hot dish, shook his head. George frowned and stood up. “I’ll go see if he’s in his room.” He clomped up the stairs. A minute later, he was back, holding Shawn Murphy’s single-shot .22 rifle in his fist. He pushed the gun at Ricky, who opened the breech and sniffed, then made a sour face.

  “He’s not up there?” Amanda asked.

  George shook his head. Ricky set the rifle on the floor and pushed a forkful of hot dish into his mouth. George remained standing.

  Ricky said, his mouth full, “Prob’ly hidin’ out in the barns, bro.”

  “Either that or he’s been taken,” Amanda said.

  “Taken?” George said.

  “That stranger this afternoon. He was up to no good, I could tell.”

  George stood up. “I’m going to check the barns.” He started for the door.

  “What stranger, Mandy?” Ricky asked.

  “That Crow,” Amanda said.

  “Crow?” Ricky looked wildly at George. “You hear that?”

  “I heard it,” said George. “I talked to him. He didn’t take the boy.”

  “You talked to him? Christ, why didn’t you keep him around till I got back? I owe him, goddammit.”

  George’s face darkened. “Don’t you ‘goddammit’ me, goddammit.”

  Amanda said, “Language, boys.”

  “Just ’cause you didn’t see him take Shawn don’t mean it didn’t happen,” Ricky said. “He’s working for Bellweather.”

  “I know that.” George opened the door. “I’m going to look in the barns.”

  “It won’t do any good,” Amanda said. “I can feel it in my bones. The boy has been taken.”

  George closed the door behind him.

  “That son-of-a-bitch!” Ricky slapped his hand on the tabletop. Amanda Murphy brought a serving spoon down sharply on his knuckles. “Oww!”

  “Watch that mouth! Don’t you be talking about your brother that way.”

  Ricky brought both hands under the table and glared. “I was talking about Crow.”

  “He’s gone.” Amanda swallowed the last of her drink, then coughed. “Can’t you feel it?” Her eyes watered. “The boy is gone.”

  The Minnetonka cokeheads were more subdued, more suburban than the Golden Valley crowd, but it was the only meeting he could find on Saturday night. The old Minnetonka Mills Middle School, now abandoned by its faculty and students, provided space to a wide range of community groups, from the various twelve-step programs to the Beautiful Boulevards Floral Club. Crow didn’t know anybody there, and when it was his turn to introduce himself, he smiled and shook his head. He knew he wasn’t doing himself any good by sitting there silently, feeling superior to the young white male upper-middle-class drug addicts that made up the rest of the participants, but it was the best he could do. It beat tossing and turning in bed, beset by flickering Murphys and Melindas.

  A man who looked like he sold BMWs for a living was talking about step eleven. Crow had long since decided that he would never make it to step eleven. He wished he hadn’t come. When they broke down into smaller groups, Crow left the room, went out into the hallway, sat on a bench, and listened to the building. Other groups, in other rooms, produced a low, throbbing sound. To Crow, it sounded like a prolonged moan. He knew he should go back to his apartment and try again to sleep, but he didn’t feel like moving.

  A door opened down the hall, and a group of people trickled out, moved slowly toward him, toward the front entrance. Mostly men, a little older than the group he had just abandoned. Juicers, Crow decided. AA. Again he felt superior. As if it was somehow smarter for him to have destroyed his life with cocaine. Never mind that he had nearly always begun his cocaine binges with a drink and invariably had drunk himself to a stupor when the coke was gone. Intellectually, Crow knew that he was as much a drunk as he was a cokehead, but he identified more readily with the CA people. The myth that cocaine was a civilized, refined, and exclusive pleasure still had power over him.

  He clasped his hands together and stared at the worn linoleum floor, waiting for the AA crowd to pass by.

  A pair of leather jeans tucked into motorcycle boots stopped directly in front of him.

  “Hey, what do you know? The shoe salesman.” A cloud of smoke drifted toward the floor.

  Crow lifted his head, his eyes passing a metal-encrusted black leather jacket, landing on a small, heavily made-up face framed by a spiky halo of pale hair. Debrowski, the wild card from last night’s meeting, grinned and took another drag off her cigarette.

  Crow said, “What do you know, it’s the bitch with the attitude. You missed the CA meeting.”

  Debrowski fired two jets of smoke from her small nostrils, looked down at the black-and-red button on her jacket, removed it, and put it in one of her numerous zipper pockets. “I’m in AA mode tonight, Shoe. I do the whole show. AA, NA, CA, Triple A. Sort of a holistic approach to installing clean mental software. I got to tell you, though, this recovery routine gets old.”

  Crow nodded. “I know what you mean.”

  “I bet you do.” She sat down beside him on the bench. “So how come you’re sitting out here? You in a zone or something?”

  “I couldn’t handle the scene.” Crow gestured toward the room where the CA meeting was still in progress.

  “Let me guess.” Debrowski put a forefinger to her chin. Her nails were short but not bitten. “Too suburban for a big-city boy like you, right?”

  Crow grinned and shook his head. “Actually, I’m a smalltown boy.”

  “Yeah? They still talk about you back in Lake Podunk, I bet. Local boy makes it big in the shoe business. How am I doing, Shoe?”

  “I’ll make you a deal,” Crow said. “You quit calling me Shoe, and I’ll buy you a slice of pie.”

  “This a date, or are you just hungry?”

  “Hungry,” Crow said.

  Debrowski nodded. “So what am I supposed to call you?”

  “Call me Crow.”

  “Like the bird?”

  “Yes. Crow like the bird.”

  XII

  BioStellar GameTech President, CFO Indicted—SEC Investigators Allege Massive Fraud

  —WALL STREET JOURNAL

  TAKING CALLS AT HOME was part of the job, and for the most part Anderson didn’t mind. With all the trading happening on the overseas exchanges, a lot of his customers had gone on-line with their home computers, numbers junkies sitting in front of the screen all night, watching their digits flicker. He’d lost a few clients to the automated trading systems, but a lot of them stayed with him for the hand-holding, which was turning out to be a twenty-four-hour, seven-days-a-week job. He just wished they wouldn’t call during Seinfeld.

  “Let the machine get it,” he said to Patty as she moved to answer the phone. Jerry Seinfeld and Elaine were fighting over a piece of cheesecake. He heard his answering machine pick up, heard his own recorded message, a beep, then a familiar and most unwelcome voice.

  “Stevie? This is Dr. Bellweather. You home? I have to talk to you. I’m going to have to sell a chunk of that BioStellar a little ahead of schedule. I need a little cash, you know? Call me … ahh … soon, okay? Bye.”

  Anderson groaned and let his head flop back.

  “What’s the matter?” Patty asked, hitting the mute button on the remote.

  “I’m going to have a very unhappy client. You remember t
hat Dr. Bellweather?”

  Patty frowned and looked up over the mantel at the enormous mounted bison head that had invaded their household. “What about him?”

  “Remember I told you he took this huge position with BioStellar?”

  She shrugged. Patty didn’t have much interest in shoptalk. Aside from the money, which she liked, and the bison head, which she did not, her husband’s activities were not of great interest to her.

  “Well, he did. I don’t think he knows yet what happened. I couldn’t bring myself to call him when the news broke this afternoon. They stopped trading it this afternoon, you know. Dickie got all his guys out of it yesterday and this morning, but I didn’t hear about it till it was too late. I never got around to calling the doctor.” He shook his head. “He’s not going to be a happy camper.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “He’s a child molester, you know. It serves him right.”

  “How do you know he’s a child molester?” Patty was interested in scandal.

  “George Murphy told me. Remember last month, I was telling you that our guide at the hunt club attacked the doctor?”

  Patty nodded.

  “George called me up a few days later and apologized, offered me a free duck hunt. He told me that Bellweather had tried some funny business with his kid. I always had a funny feeling about that doctor.”

  “So he lost a lot of money?”

  “He lost it all. And then some.”

  “It’s inspirational,” Debrowski said, puffing on her Camel between bites of cherry pie. “I see these young guys, want to make it big in the music biz, killing themselves every way they know how. I’ve had two bands flame out on me in the past six months.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Drugs, egos, and girlfriends—the three death knells for a rock band. Most of ’em use and abuse all three. I know I did. Damn near lost my business.” Debrowski was in process of rebuilding her one-woman business, organizing tours for up-and-coming rock bands.

  “You abused your girlfriend?”

  “Don’t take me so goddamn literally, Crow-like-the-bird. Let’s talk about you a minute. So you don’t sell shoes? How do you survive?”

  “I’m … ah … I’m working for this doctor.” This child-abusing liposuctionist, he thought.

  “You’re a nurse?”

  “Sort of. I’m a bodyguard.”

  Debrowski laughed, then quickly stifled it when she saw his face color. “Hey, sorry! It’s just that that’s almost like being a cop. You don’t look like the type.”

  “Too short?”

  “Not what I meant.”

  “I used to be a cop.”

  “No shit? I’d never have guessed.”

  The waitress topped off their coffees.

  “Thank you,” said Crow to the waitress.

  “You’re welcome,” said Debrowski. “So how come you’re not a cop anymore?”

  Crow smiled, pressed a forefinger against his right nostril, sniffed.

  Debrowski said, “Ah.”

  “Actually, they got rid of me for other reasons, but the coke was there, making it happen. Like what I did to get fired wasn’t worth getting fired for, but I felt like such a piece of shit ’cause of all the dope I was doing, I just didn’t have the guts to fight it. On some level I figured I deserved it, you know? We balance our own set of scales.”

  “No shit.”

  Outside, a light snow had begun to coat the parking lot. Baker’s Square customers came and went. Crow and Debrowski ate pie and traded lives. At one point Crow asked her how long she’d been clean.

  “I’m not clean. I still smoke cigarettes and listen to nasty music.”

  Crow waited for more. He was guessing it was days, weeks at most. Her eyes were too tight, her words too sharp. She stubbed out her cigarette.

  “I made it through today,” she said. “That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

  Crow closed his eyes, opened them. Debrowski was intently tearing the cellophane off a fresh pack of Camels. “Is that a quote or something?” he asked. It sounded familiar.

  She smiled, not looking at him. “It’s from a thing by this Brit dude. Died when he was twenty-six.”

  “Drugs, ego, or love?”

  “All three, Crow.” She lit a cigarette. “It’s like I was telling you: they go together.”

  The digital clock on his dashboard read 9:49. Late again. The Rabbit started, reluctantly. Crow sat huddled over the steering wheel, shivering, waiting for the temperature gauge to show signs of life. Until the needle moved, he had discovered, the car would not. Put it in gear too soon, the thing would die and maybe not start again. He watched Debrowski pull away in her rusted yellow Honda, watched her taillights disappear.

  In a few minutes he would be back at Orchard Estates, making life safe for a zebra-shooting, fat-sucking possible pederast. Instead of eight hours of sleep, he was running on five cups of coffee supplemented by a slice of French silk pie and a couple hours of conversation with Debrowski, first name Laura, fellow recovering dope fiend. He felt as if he’d had his first real conversation in months, maybe years.

  The idling engine settled into a smooth roar. Crow put the Rabbit in gear and headed out of the parking lot, sliding a bit as he hit the street. The snow felt greasy under his tires, and the steering wheel was a few degrees off center, courtesy of Ricky Murphy’s Hummer. He drove carefully through the frosted streets, pulled up in front of Bellweather’s house a few minutes after nine. The windows were dark, and there was no sign of Nate’s beat-up Dodge wagon. It didn’t look as though anyone was home. Had Bellweather and his brother gone out? What was he supposed to do, sit outside and wait for them to return? Leaving the car running, Crow walked up to the front door and rang the doorbell. Thirty seconds later, he pressed the button again, repeatedly, then returned to his car and waited, inventing reasonable explanations for Bellweather’s absence. He decided to wait until ten-thirty. He let his mind replay bits of conversation with Debrowski.

  At one point, while he was finishing his third or fourth cup of coffee, Crow had mentioned that he was married. Without missing a beat, Debrowski had said, “That means we can both relax now, right?” It had been a good moment. Crow needed a friend, not a lover, and apparently Debrowski was riding a parallel track.

  At ten-twenty, gazing idly at the dark house, Crow noticed the window. The juniper bushes that wrapped around the corner of the house obscured most of it, but when he looked directly at the window he could see that it was open. Crow felt his heart rate increasing, followed by numbness and a sense of unreality. He had felt this way often as a cop. He recognized fear. Don’t think about it. Go through the motions. He buttoned his coat and got out of the car. A set of footprints he had not noticed before led from the driveway across the front lawn to the window. The glass pane had been shattered, the window unlocked and raised. Crow peered inside. He brushed a few shards of glass from the sill, then boosted himself up and into the small guest room next to Bellweather’s office. The door was closed. Crow stood without moving for a full minute, listening. He could hear nothing. Easing the door open, he let himself out into the hallway and stood for another minute, listening.

  Nothing.

  Crow explored the house. Bellweather’s office had been slightly trashed. The bison head had been ripped off the wall, a chair was kicked over, a framed print lay shattered on the antique desk. It didn’t look as if the office had been searched but appeared more as if someone had had a temper tantrum. It had that Ricky Murphy feel to it. Crow reached under his armpit and touched the Taurus, turned his back on the office, and started up the stairs.

  Bellweather’s bedroom looked like a decorator’s attempt to create a hypermasculine decor—everything was covered with ducks, dogs, lions, bears, and horses, from the framed reproductions of British fox-hunting scenes on the walls to the mallards embroidered on the pillows and bed skirts. Even the bedposts terminated in stylized lion heads. A row of bulle
ts had shattered the ornately carved ebony headboard and ripped into the mattress. No blood. Crow stared at the perforated headboard, trying to make out the complex bas relief. A safari, he finally decided. A great white hunter, a file of native bearers, giraffes in the background. He went back downstairs and checked the garage. It was empty, the Jaguar gone.

  One muscle at a time, he began to relax. He picked up the kitchen telephone, searched his mind for a number, punched it in.

  The phone rang eight times before his sister Mary answered with a husky “Hello?”

  “This is Joe.” He waited three seconds.

  “Joe?”

  “Joe your brother,” he said. “I need to talk to your husband.”

  A minute later, Dave Getter came on the line. “What is it, Joe?” He cleared his throat. “What’s wrong?”

  “Why would something be wrong?”

  Getter took a moment to reply. “I was asleep.”

  “Your friend has disappeared.”

  “What friend? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m at Bellweather’s. He’s gone. Nobody’s home, and there’s a broken window.”

  “Why are you telling me this? Why don’t you just call the cops?”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “No. Are you saying somebody broke in? What are you saying?”

  “Somebody broke in, but I think Bellweather had already left. He hasn’t paid me a dime, you know.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be back, Joe. In any case, this has nothing to do with me. All I did was introduce you two.”

  Crow squeezed the phone. “What do you know about this guy?”

  “Nothing. I’ve done some legal work for him. Look, if it’s not working out, I’m sorry. Maybe I can find you something else.”

  “No, thanks. Tell me something, Dave. Does Bellweather have a taste for young boys?”

  “What? No. Really?”

  “According to George Murphy, Bellweather molested his son.”

  “Well … you know how that goes. One wild accusation, and everybody goes nuts.”

  “What kind of work did you do for him? Has he been in trouble before? Anything to do with little boys?”

  Getter hesitated. “Uh, not to my knowledge. Our business had nothing to do with little boys. In any case, I don’t generally concern myself with my clients’ sexual preferences. Besides, don’t you think …” He paused, then began again in a deeper voice. “Looking at it logically, Joe, it seems to me that if that were true, he would have gotten into some other area of medicine.”