Short Money (7 page)

The man said, without turning back, “Don’t worry about it.”

Crow noticed a faint gray path across the carpet, evidence of many feet passing since the last cleaning. The glass tabletops supported a patina of dust. Crow followed the man who was not a butler through the parlor and into a formal dining room that carried over the same sterile theme. The floral arrangement on the table had been dead for weeks, or longer. They walked down a short hallway. The man rapped twice on the door at the end. “My brother’s office,” he said laconically as he turned and walked back down the hall.

A moment later, Dave Getter opened the door. “Car trouble?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

Crow jerked his head from side to side. The odor that he had noticed before was much stronger here.

Getter ran his eyes down Crow’s well-worn brown herringbone sport coat, black cotton turtleneck, and faded twill pants. He stared for a moment at the beat-up wing tips, then took it all in again in reverse.

“Looking sharp, Joe.”

“Thanks, Dave.” He looked past Getter. “Oh,” he said, recognizing the smell at last—the smell of leather and bone.

The “office” was as large as the living room but had been decorated after a somewhat different aesthetic. Grayish pink suede wallpaper was sandwiched between the oak wainscoting and a picture rail, from which a collection of elaborately framed wildlife paintings—a bull elk, a herd of bison, a stalking mountain lion, a flock of Canada geese—hung on braided maroon cords. A chandelier made from bleached deer antlers and wrought iron hung to within seven feet of a grizzly bear rug that lay in ambush in the center of the room. A gas flame flickered in a fieldstone fireplace at the far end of the room. Above the mantel, a mounted bison head was flanked on one side by an eight-point whitetail and on the other by a four-foot-long elephant tusk mounted on a teak plaque. A snarling leopard, seven feet from nose to tail, crouched against one wall, frozen in time. The rest of the room was crowded with furnishings that appeared to have been constructed exclusively from the hides, antlers, horns, and bones of large dead animals. A sofa and a love seat—pale leather accented with zebra hide—looked almost sedate beside an uncomfortable-looking but cleverly designed chair made from moose antlers and woven strips of dark leather. Crow felt as if he were in the belly of a great beast, about to be drenched by stomach acids, surrounded by the indigestible parts of previous victims.

A man wearing professionally faded jeans, an ornately embroidered red rodeo shirt, and a deep suntan stood with his hip resting on the corner of an antique mahogany desk, the only piece of furniture in the room that did not include parts from dead animals. When he saw that he had Crow’s attention, he walked across the grizzly bear’s flattened back, holding out his hand.

“Thanks for coming, Joe,” he said, flashing a wide, white smile. “Dr. Nelson Bellweather. Good to have you on board!” He stood about five-nine in his ostrich-hide cowboy boots, giving him a couple of inches over Crow. He raised his chin, took Crow’s hand in a firm, precise, ephemeral grip—long fingers clasped and released and were gone. Tipping his head back a few more degrees, he looked at Crow expectantly, waiting for a response. Getter followed the encounter with the intensity of a dog on point. Crow examined Bellweather’s face: soft, smooth, regular features. Narrow lips. Gray eyes, wispy blond hair. Somewhere between forty and fifty. Dr. Nelson Bellweather looked like his brother the nonbutler, but younger and with more attitude. He kept his head tipped back. Crow’s eyes fixed on the small, perfect ovals formed by his nostrils.

“Nice place,” Crow said. “You shoot all this furniture yourself?”

Bellweather cocked his hip and hooked a thumb in his belt. It looked utterly artificial, like a pose he had seen a bad guy strike in a fifties horse opera. He laughed, a little too loud. “Some. You remember me, don’t you?”

Crow hadn’t, but suddenly he did. “I remember you,” he said. He felt as though someone had shoved a long, rusty pin into his likeness. “The pink Jag, right?”

Bellweather grinned, showing most of his teeth. “I loved the way you handled Ricky.”

Crow felt no pleasure at the compliment. The episode had cost him far too much. He looked at Getter.

“You having a good time there, Dave?”

Getter squelched a smile and held out his empty palms as if to say, Who, me? Crow gave him a blank stare, the same expression he had found so useful as a cop, and held it until Getter looked away, finding something fascinating about the wallpaper. Crow turned back to the doctor. “What’s going on here?”

Bellweather turned up his smile. “Joe, I can’t tell you how pleased I was when David told me you had agreed to work for me.”

Crow raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t know that I had agreed to anything,” he said.

Bellweather tipped his head back another five degrees and swiveled it toward Getter. “David?”

Getter jerked his head around. “Yes? What?”

“Didn’t you tell me that Joe was on board?”

“That was my understanding. I told Dr. Bellweather he could count on having you, Joe.”

“I don’t remember saying anybody could ‘have’ me, Dave,” Crow said. “I want to know what’s going on here before I agree to anything.” The last time he’d felt like this was when a friend—now an ex-friend—had invited him over for a beer and he’d found himself in the midst of an Amway recruiting seminar.

Getter reached out and put a hand on Crow’s shoulder. “Joe—” he began. Crow twitched his upper body, and Getter’s arm bounced off him as if repelled by a magnetic field. Getter backed off a step. “Now listen, Joe, this is exactly the kind of attitude that gets you in trouble. Dr. Bellweather has offered you a good job here, and I’ve gone to a lot of trouble—”

Bellweather interrupted. “Why don’t you let me and Joe talk, David. I’m sure we can work this out. He has some very legitimate concerns, and I’m confident that I can satisfy him. You’ve done your part, and I thank you for it. Mary must be waiting up for you.”

Getter looked from Crow to Bellweather. “You sure?”

“Quite sure.”

Getter shrugged and left the room.

“You don’t like him,” Bellweather said. “I don’t blame you. David is a good lawyer, but he likes to make people uncomfortable. It was never my intention to take you by surprise. David is like that. He likes to blindside people, catch them off guard, make them uncomfortable. It’s part of his power trip.”

Crow looked again at the mounted leopard.

Bellweather followed his glance and laughed. “I guess we all have our power trips. Do you hunt, Joe?”

“Just birds. I like duck hunting. So what’s this all about? Why do you think you need protection?”

“Because I’ve been threatened. So you’re a hunter then? I should take you out sometime. We could go duck hunting, if that’s what you like. Me, I like every kind of hunting.”

Crow looked from the leopard to the bison head to the elephant tusk, thinking that a day in a duck blind with this man would be enough to make him give up hunting forever.

“I’m living here alone now, as David may have mentioned. My wife left me a few months ago.”

“Dave didn’t mention anything. I still don’t know what I’m doing here.”

“It was no big deal, getting the divorce, except it cost me a lot of money. We were married only a year and a half. Just long enough for her to spend a fortune decorating this place. What did you think of the front parlor?” He read Crow’s expression and laughed. “It’s pretty awful, isn’t it?”

“So you’re being threatened by your ex-wife?”

Bellweather frowned. “I don’t believe I said anything like that.”

“You haven’t said anything at all.”

“David warned me you were feisty. Did he ever tell you how he came to represent me?”

“He didn’t even tell me who you
were
.”

“Oh—of course. We just went over that, didn’t we? Well, when my wife decided to divorce me, I didn’t have a lawyer I liked. The guy I was using was a wimp. So, on a whim, I dialed U-N-H-I-T-C-H.”

“I always wondered what kind of clients he gets off those billboard ads.”

“I drive past David’s outdoor advertising every day on the way to the clinic. It works—what can I say? Have you seen
my
ads?”

Crow shook his head. Other than their brief meeting at Birdy’s, he’d never heard of Dr. Nelson Bellweather.

“I got the idea from David. Every Sunday. ‘Fed up with dieting? Dial F-A-T-G-O-N-E.’ You wouldn’t believe how many calls I get.”

A light came on. He’d seen the doctor’s ads after all. “You’re the one in the
TV Week.”

“That’s me!” said the doctor. “West End Clinic—Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons.”

“You do nose jobs, silicone breasts, things like that?”

“We offer a full range of services. Tomorrow I’m seeing Mrs. Archer Pillsbury-Cargill. We’re going to take a little subcutaneous fat off her hips.”

Crow recalled the printed advertisements. “‘Liposuction our specialty’?”

“That’s right.” Bellweather pursed his lips. “In this business, it pays to specialize.”

Crow swallowed, then wished he hadn’t. Something tasted awful. Better he should have walked into another Amway meeting. How did these people find their way into his life? Were they attracted to him the way a cat is attracted to the one person in the room who hates cats?

The doctor was talking again.

“My brother Nate—you met Nate?”

“More or less.”

Bellweather gave him a quizzical look, then continued. “Nate stayed with me last night and this evening, but he has a regular job, and
his
wife hasn’t left him yet. That’s why I asked David to track you down, Joe. Did he tell you anything at all?”

“He told me you were looking for a bodyguard. Look, I don’t know what your situation is, and apparently you aren’t interested in telling me. I’m sorry if Dave gave you the wrong impression, but I really don’t think I’m the right person for this job. There are companies that specialize in this sort of thing—”

“I’m not interested in some tough-guy bodybuilder type, Joe. I saw you handle Ricky Murphy. That’s what I want.”

“I was drunk, and so was he.”

“Think how good you’ll be sober.”

“Let me give this one more try. Why do you think you need a bodyguard?”

Bellweather stood up and walked toward the fireplace. He looked up at the bison mount, straight into its flared nostrils. “You saw it. The Murphys. You heard Ricky threaten to kill me.”

Crow shook his head. “Ricky’s just a hothead. Besides, that was weeks ago. If Ricky was really trying to kill you, he’s had plenty of time to do it. Why do you all of a sudden think you need protection?”

“I’ve been gone. After he attacked me in that bar, there were phone calls. I decided to take a vacation. I’ve been staying with a friend in Costa Rica. I just got back the night before last.”

That explained the suntan. “What set him off that night?”

“I have no idea. And I thought, like you said, that whatever it was that caused him to go off on me like that, he’d have calmed down after six weeks, but I was wrong. Last night he made another attempt on my life,” Bellweather said. He added, “It was unsuccessful.”

Now Ricky, he’s got a temper on him, and I got the brains, but the one you got to watch out for is my mom.

—GEORGE WASHINGTON MURPHY

CROW SAT IN THE moose-antler chair. After testing all the furniture, he had found it to be the most comfortable. Bellweather had retired an hour earlier, and the house was dead quiet. He stared dully at the rug, at the grizzly bear’s open mouth. Crow yawned. He could feel himself fading. Less than three hours since he’d walked into this job, and he was already bored comatose.

He was having trouble taking his new employer’s concerns seriously. True, he had seen Ricky attack the doctor at Birdy’s, but that was nearly two months ago. Bellweather claimed that Ricky had taken a shot at him two nights ago as he was driving home from the clinic. It sounded unlikely, though not impossible. Ricky had driven up behind him, the doctor claimed, as he was cruising west on I-394. Right there in rush hour traffic, he’d leaned out the window of his Hummer and started blasting away with a revolver.

Bellweather had gripped an imaginary steering wheel as he told his story, reliving the experience. “If I hadn’t managed to get a truck between us and then get off the freeway, who knows?” He steered to the right, then dropped his hands onto his lap. “He might’ve killed me. He gets in that Hummer of his, has a few drinks, he’ll do anything. He’s crazy, you know.”

Some of Crow’s doubt must have crept onto his face, because Bellweather had insisted on taking him into the attached garage to show him the bullet holes in his car.

“Can I ask you something?” Crow asked. “Why did you paint it pink?” He opened the passenger door. “Jesus, it’s pink inside too.” Pink leather upholstery, pink-wrapped steering wheel, pink sun visor …Even the gearshift—a manual transmission, to his surprise—was topped by a pink knob. It was enough to make him blush.

“I bought it for my wife. She was a Mary Kay distributor when I met her.”

“You’re kidding.”

“All custom paint and leather, cost me a fortune, and she hated it. When we split up, she got the Mercedes. You see this hole? This is where the bullet came through.”

Crow put his finger in the hole. “You sure it wasn’t a rock?”

“In the rear window? The slug was buried in the back of the passenger seat. There’s another hole in the trunk lid. I found the bullet rattling around in here.” He lifted a hinged, leather-upholstered lid to reveal a large, empty compartment in place of the back seats.

“I thought these new Jags were four-seaters.”

“I had them pull out the back seats—too small to sit in anyway—and build a storage compartment. Room for my hunting equipment. The trunk in this thing is barely large enough for the spare.”

“And you think it was Ricky shooting at you?”

“How many camouflage Hummers do you think there are in this state?”

“Did you call the police?”

“Sure I did. I gave them Ricky’s name, told them where they could find him. But guess what? Ricky was playing cards all night with Orlan Johnson and a bunch of his buddies. I don’t know why I bothered. What I need is a guy like you, Joe.”