Drawing Dead

by Andrew Vachss

  “Sure, they won’t,” Cross said, without a hint of sarcasm. “You couldn’t have capped your hair?”

  “Not unless I cut it real short first. And who’d want that?”

  “You could shave your head, it wouldn’t make any difference,” Cross said, already riding the tide. “Nobody watching you climb a ladder would ever forget that.”

  “Ah, you’re so cute when you’re trying to be a player.”

  THE SHARK CAR passed through areas of the city where people who might be awake at that time of night could never be sure exactly what they’d just seen.

  Not an unusual situation for most of the watchers: those on their way to work auto-blurred their eyes whenever they saw something the police might question them about later. Curiosity had long since been deleted from their senses. They moved stolidly forward, one foot in front of the other, walking a treadmill that discharged meager paychecks, a health plan that covered everything but illness, and a pension that made them pray Social Security would survive federal plundering long enough for them to collect it.

  “CAN I ask you a question?”

  “Sure,” Cross told Tiger, his tone clearly communicating that she should not mistake his affirmative for anything more than “ask.”

  “Princess…”

  “Princess what?”

  “I love him, you know that. But…this has been just killing me for a long time. I would never ask Rhino why he dragged Princess along on the way back from that job down south. I can tell it’s not something he’d want to talk about. Not to me, anyway. But I know he—Princess, I mean—he was some kind of…‘cage fighter,’ right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, what is that? I mean, it couldn’t be a sport or anything. Princess doesn’t like fighting. All he ever wants to do is make friends. He never even gets mad. Not unless—”

  “Not unless someone ‘starts it,’ I know.”

  “Well, if you’re a fighter—I don’t care what you call it; ‘cage fighter,’ that could mean anything—if that’s the way you make your living, you don’t have to like it, I guess. But I can’t see Princess doing it. Not at all. That’s just not him.”

  “You know how old he is?”

  “No. I mean, who could tell? He acts like a kid. A sweet kid. But he’s been with the crew a good while, and—”

  “We don’t know how old he is, either. Rhino taught him English. All Princess can remember is fighting. From the time he was a baby, some kind of fighting. Rhino says he was probably abandoned by his mother. Or sold. But he must have gotten away somehow. When the soldiers found him, they knew he was worth money. You know why? Even when they had him netted, he fought like a wild animal. Scared them, serious.

  “They brought him to el jefe—el rey, more likely. That’s when he got trained for fighting. Once he was ready, they put him into one of the cages. Very simple deal: the one who kills the other one gets to walk out.

  “Princess always tried to make friends with the other guy. That never worked, but he kept on trying. For years, this was. He got so damn good at fighting, he figured out he could cripple the other guy bad enough so that he couldn’t move—that way, he wouldn’t have to kill anyone.

  “But he’s not stupid. The first time he heard the gunshot behind him, he knew the other guy was going to end up dead, one way or the other. One time, he told Rhino, he just refused to fight. Just stood there. But that didn’t work, either—he’d do that, the other guy would always attack.”

  “That must have driven him crazy.”

  “He’s not crazy, he’s…damaged. When he thinks someone else ‘started it,’ he’s going to start breaking bones. How’s he supposed to know any better? In his mind, once he’s in a fight, he wins or he dies. If that makes him crazy, it makes us all crazy, right?”

  “But…”

  “But what?”

  “I know about that degenerate who got harpooned to a wall. Everyone in Chicago knew about it. That was you delivering a message, I get that. But how could you convince Princess that this guy ‘started’ anything?”

  “We told him that the guy was a buncher.”

  “A what?”

  “Guy who goes around to the animal shelters, adopts as many dogs as he can. Then he sells them to the people who need live dogs for their pits to practice on.”

  “If Princess thought anyone was getting puppies ripped to shreds…”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you used him,” Tiger said, her husky voice suddenly just short of a feral snarl.

  “Don’t be stupid. That sack of waste was already dead. All Princess did was pin him to that wall. So he had nothing to do with bunching dogs, so what? He was part of that gang that was raping women, and making tapes of it for sale. You think Princess wouldn’t consider that ‘starting it’?”

  “But, Princess, he’s just a—”

  “He’s a maniac,” Buddha cut in. “So what? He’s one of us. It took me a while to understand that. And, yeah, he gets on my nerves sometimes, but—”

  “Chop it, Buddha,” Cross said. Just in time.

  “Was it a real cage?” Tiger asked, as if Buddha hadn’t said a word. “I mean, with bars and all?”

  “Sometimes it was. Sometimes it was down in a pit they made with a backhoe. And when the big shot wanted to show off, they’d make the cage real small, and use a crane to hoist it into the air. That way, the kingpins and their women could all sit up high above the rest of the crowd and have a perfect view.”

  “I never even heard—”

  “The narco-reyes didn’t invent it—you can thank the Japanese for that. There’s a breed of dog over there. Tosas, they call them. Only the Emperor was allowed to own such dogs, going back hundreds of years. But no emperor could really control all the territory, so it was the Shoguns who did most of the breeding.

  “Those dogs are huge. Three, four times the size of any pit bull. In those little cages, they’d lock up right away. The dog who died, so did his trainer. The dog who won—even if he died later on from his wounds—his trainer would get some big reward.

  “I heard they still do it. Not like before. No emperor, not in public. But yakuza obyans put on those same kind of fights, even today.”

  “Too bad we couldn’t have tested those A-bombs on them,” Tiger said, grimly.

  “Yeah. Well, that’s the thing about bombs—they don’t cherry-pick.”

  NO ONE else spoke for a while.

  The Cross crew knew Mural Girl didn’t work every day. The permanent camera-feed was downloaded every hour. That’s how they knew she had no fixed schedule; how they knew she was never interfered with by any of the gangs warring over that single block of unclaimed turf.

  And how they knew that whatever had branded Cross was always around. Its last message had been that full-house version of the Dead Man’s Hand. Whatever was protecting Mural Girl wasn’t something they could contact. The chance that she could reach out that far was what had brought the crew to her.

  “POSSE CAR at three o’clock, boss.”

  “Yeah. I hear them. Rolling slow, working the muffler bypass just enough to represent. That thumping, some kind of rap?—probably heavy bass out of a trunk-speaker setup. They shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Oh, they won’t be,” Buddha promised, slowly pulling a long-magazine 40mm semi-auto from his jacket and resting it on the seat to his right.

  “Buddha, stop. Stop the car, okay? There’s no reason for us to cross paths. Cut the lights, they’ll roll on past, never even look our way.”

  The pudgy man behind the wheel muttered something under his breath but followed orders.

  Less than two minutes later, Buddha touched the button that re-started the Shark Car and motored down the road for another few blocks. Finally, he shifted into neutral and cut the engine, letting the big car glide to the vacant lot next to the slab-sided building where the woman they called Mural Girl did her work.

  “SHE’S NOT here,” Tiger said, not hiding her disapp
ointment.

  “It isn’t quite first light yet,” Cross said. “If she’s coming, she’ll be here soon enough. But if she rides up and sees this car, she might think one of the local mobs doesn’t want any tags in their territory.

  “Only she’s not tagging, Tiger. She’s painting. And there’s no way she’s gonna be scared of any damn car. She couldn’t have been working this long without all the gangs knowing she’s covered.”

  “You think she actually talked to—?”

  “I don’t know. The nearest I can figure it is that they…or whatever it is…they can send messages, but—damn!”

  “What?”

  “I felt that one. Right here,” Cross said, tapping just under his right eye. “They don’t miss much. Wherever they are, they can see us. Hear us. So Mural Girl must be—”

  “Bicycle coming, boss. Riding the street, not the sidewalk. Hear the hum?”

  “I do now. Okay, remember, Tiger’s the only one leaving the car.”

  A trail bike came into view. All they could see was the knobby front tire, illuminated by the bike itself; it looked as if every downstroke of the pedals flashed an orange glow from its heavy frame. As the bike pulled up, its rider jumped off, floating to the ground. The bike itself rolled toward the freshly whitewashed wall, turning at the last second so it was leaning upright as it came to a stop.

  The dismounted rider pulled off a black helmet, shook her hair loose, unsnapped knee and elbow protectors, and strolled over to the wall. There was a ladder with a platform coming off the top shelf standing there—none of the car’s occupants had seen it before Mural Girl’s arrival.

  “Did that ladder just show up?”

  “Damned if I know,” Cross said to Buddha. “But she’s acting like it’s been there all along.”

  “My turn,” Tiger said softly as she stepped out of the back.

  BY THE time Tiger had covered the distance to the ladder, Mural Girl was already at its top, holding a brush as if deciding what to create on that giant easel.

  “Could I talk to you?” Tiger called up.

  Mural Girl looked down. Studied the big girl with the trademark hair that announced her name. “How are you at rock climbing?”

  “Good enough,” Tiger responded.

  “Come on up, then,” Mural Girl said, pointing at a series of pegs emerging from the wall.

  Tiger’s face showed no surprise at this development. Her spike heels proved no handicap as she pulled herself up using only her hands, as easily as a gymnast climbing a rope. When she was level with Mural Girl, she carefully felt for toeholds, then planted herself.

  “You do beautiful work,” Tiger said.

  “Haven’t done any work today.”

  “I’ve seen some. Before today, I mean.”

  “Camera’s still working, huh?”

  “You know. You’ve known all along, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do your murals disappear? It seems a shame, they’re so—”

  “They just disappear from here. When they leave this wall, they end up on other walls. All over town.”

  “Oh.”

  “Now you want to know if they get over-tagged in those spots, right?”

  “I…I guess so. Yes.”

  “No,” Mural Girl said. “Never.”

  Tiger frankly studied the woman standing just to her left. Dark-skinned enough to be almost anything, she thought. Could be Italian, Greek, Spanish, African…probably a whole bunch of roots went into that face. Sharp features, heavy hair…

  “I pass inspection?” Mural Girl said, her tone underscoring that she didn’t care about the answer.

  “You’re a beautiful woman,” Tiger said frankly.

  “To some, I suppose I’d be.”

  “I’m not hitting on you.”

  “I didn’t think that. Although”—looking Tiger over—“if you were, it wouldn’t shock me.”

  “Fair enough. I can play both ways. But what I said, it was just a…I don’t know, just an honest answer to that ‘inspection’ thing.”

  “You must be here for something, yes?”

  “Yes. Do you know how your murals get moved? Or why no gang ever defaces them?”

  “Not how. And the ‘why,’ that would only be a guess.”

  “The same guess covers how you can work here all the time and never get hassled?”

  “Yep. I’m not a painter, I’m—”

  “An architect.”

  “You did some research, huh?”

  “Not trying to get into your business,” Tiger assured her. “It’s just that this whole thing you do, it’s a mystery. Not the kind any of us would try to solve, except that we think whatever’s looking out for you, it’s looking out for us, too.”

  “And…?”

  “And we don’t know why. It started with…a tiny little symbol. On the face of one of us.”

  “Cross.”

  “Yes,” Tiger answered, nothing in her neutral voice revealing surprise.

  “They make their own decisions. I don’t have a clue who…or what they are. It’s not like I could talk to them, or anything. I was riding by this spot a few years ago, and I noticed this huge white wall. That’s when I started. And I’ve been doing it ever since.”

  “You didn’t whitewash the wall yourself?”

  “No. One day, it was just dirty brick. The next day, it was as white as a fresh canvas.”

  “How did you get the ladder over here? And all the paint?”

  “I’ve got a friend with a pickup. He didn’t want me doing this, but he didn’t try and stop me. If he’d said ‘no,’ I’d have just asked someone else.”

  “Which he already knew you’d do.”

  “Yes,” Mural Girl answered, flashing a smile that could only be measured in kilowatts. “He helped me get everything set up, that first time. He didn’t want to leave me here, but he has a job. When he came back to take me home, I was just about finished. With the first one, I mean. I don’t know why, but I can paint fast here. It’s like it goes from my mind to the brush, zip!”

  “Nobody bothered you?”

  “That first day? Oh yeah. Some boy standing at the bottom of the ladder. ‘Hey, girl, the view from here is something to see!’—that kind of play-pimp rap.”

  “He was the only—?”

  “No. Just the first one to show up. I ignored him and he went away. At least, he wasn’t there when I turned around a few minutes later. But a whole car of gang boys came later. Told me I couldn’t work on this wall without getting a ‘pass’ from them.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. And that’s the truth. They just…disappeared. Right in the middle of them waving their guns around, like they were posing for one of those lame TV shows. I think I heard this sizzling kind of sound, but…I’m just not sure. That wasn’t the last time. Other people came by. Some just watched—that was fine. But every time anyone got stupid, something happened. Different things. Nobody’s even tried to stop me from working for a long time now.”

  “You just see something in your mind and ride your bike over here, and it goes up on a white wall? And the next time you get an idea…a message you want people to see…when you come back, everything’s all ready for you?”

  “Sounds crazy, huh? I wouldn’t have known what happened to the murals except that I saw one on a building we were gutting a half-mile west of here.”

  “You must have gone back to that one. I mean, just to see—”

  “It wasn’t touched,” Mural Girl said. “None of them have been.”

  “How did you know Cross was the one they branded?”

  “I didn’t. Not until I saw you.”

  “Me?”

  “Don’t come at me sideways, lady. You think I’d have to be connected with…whatever they are…to know you?”

  “But you never—”

  “What? Visited Orchid Blue? That’s right. And so what? Here’s what everybody knows, okay? Cross doesn’t l
ook like much of anything, but you can’t miss that big bull’s-eye tattoo on the back of his right hand. Buddha, he can look like less than nothing, but word is, he’s a magician with a pistol. Or a car…”

  Mural Girl turned and deliberately looked into the shadow where the Shark Car lurked.

  “Yeah. Never far away, are they? I don’t know any of them, except by street talk, and that’s never worth more than who’s talking. There’s one I don’t know by name, but word is he’s twice the size of an NFL offensive lineman. And Princess, now, that one’s a pale gorilla with so much muscle he looks like he’s armor-plated. He gets his hands on you, you’re gone. Only he dresses up like some idiot’s version of ‘campy.’ Lays that makeup on heavy: rouge, eyeliner, lipstick…the works.

  “And you think there’s a lot of Amazons walking around in neon bodysuits? With daggers strapped to their thighs? And black and gold stripes in their hair? If that’s supposed to be a disguise, it’s a beaut.” Mural Girl chuckled. “All I’d have to do would be to drop word that you climbed this ladder in four-inch heels, street-talk would have them be six-inchers in a few hours.”

  She doesn’t know about Tracker, Tiger thought. Or Ace, either.

  “A lot of people—”

  “—talk. I know,” Mural Girl said. “The more they talk, the more outrageous they get, like some kind of multiplier effect. But they do talk, and it’s not hard to hear what they say, if you’re in places where they say it. That’s how you can tell the natives from the tourists. Ask a cabdriver to take you to Red 71, you get a blank look, that’s one thing. But if it’s ‘Are you out of your mind?,’ that’s all you need to tell them apart.”

  “That’s why you’re not worried?”

  “About what?”

  “About why I’m here? About why the car’s over there?”

  “You mean, because I think all that talk is so much BS? No. I know better. A lot of people know better, probably more than you think. But if you were here to try and do something to me, why even get out of that car?”

  “That’s not it,” Tiger said, eyeing Mural Girl’s face as if trying to memorize it. “You got…them watching your back, right? Whoever they are, they wouldn’t let anyone do anything to you.”