The Witch Tree, page 10
“You’re sure?”
“Sure, I’m sure,” he said, though he was anything but.
19
Driving home from work, Eli insisted on dropping by a Lake Street used lot to see a Cadillac, one he’d brought back to life. They’d get some air. Stretch their legs. Make like chiefs.
“For kicks, hey? Whaddaya say? You got to see this thing. I shot it in a new kind of paint to cover all the bondo, took three and a half gallons to fill the rust holes and dents.”
He’d noticed, a mile or so back, a car following them. Turn for turn, a little rice-burner, one with tinted windows. Not Lester’s style – and certainly not Dr. Miller’s. Not Cleve or Vern’s.
“Let’s see what my rust bucket’s going for,” Eli said, “’81 Fleetwood. All the whistles and bells.”
He turned into the lot, and the rice burner shot by. In the lot were twenty or so questionable cars, prices in white paint dashed across their windshields, flags, too cheerily flapping, from antennas.
No sooner had they reached the Cadillac, than a salesman darted out. “Now, you just look at her!” he said.
His hands gaudy with rings, he had one of those thin upper lips and carroty red hair. He slapped the fender. It made a leaden sound, from all the plastic filler Eli had used on it.
“Just think how you’d look in this beauty! Classy, am I right?!”
The salesman threw the front door open. Nodded to Buck. “Come on, get behind the wheel.”
The door held open like that, it seemed the only thing to do was slide into the driver’s seat.
“Fits you like a glove,” the salesman said, “an old lady drove this beauty down in Sarasota. It’s only got fifty some thou on the clock. Check out the actual mileage there, what is it?”
While he read the odometer – 57,265.8 – Eli scooted around the rear, where he stooped, as if to admire the paint job, and the salesman crossed by, to pop open the passenger door.
If he hadn’t known better, he’d have missed it. The pass off, only, what had they exchanged? Money, or…. Whatever it was, it had to do with the cars, maybe even this Cadillac. Stolen, by Eli, no doubt.
“Leather interior, cruise control, and the big engine, ” the salesman said, “oh, and new rubber.
“Take ‘er for spin.”
With a laugh, Buck gave the dashboard a definitive slap, then unbent himself from behind the wheel.
Stood alongside Eli, who was making an appearance of bartering over the car, “–yeah, that’s just too rich for us, but if you’d–”
In the street, the rice-burner skidded to a stop. Two Asians jumped out of the rear. In a malign strut, they came across the lot, shoulders clocking, heads crazily a- waggle.
They lunged, and Buck caught the first, spun him off his feet into the side of the sedan, the second swinging a length of pipe at his head, and missing. Buck undercut him, right in the kidneys. In seconds, they were both back in the sedan. The driver let the window down, lifted a gun from inside and pointed it at Eli.
“You warned,” he said. “No sell your product on our lot.” The car went up the block, veered left at the light, and was gone.
Already, the salesman was in his booth, on the phone it looked like.
“Let’s go,” Eli said, catching Buck’s arm. “We don’t want to get caught up in this guy’s mess, right?”
“Right,” he said, only, as they were driving away and at a good clip, he wasn’t hearing sirens.
20
Saturday, the end of that week, Eli was out of the apartment and he sat with Jen watching T.V. He’d been waiting forever, it seemed, to get her alone, to see what she knew.
An old movie was on, one he’d seen starring Jack Nicholson. The woman in it, with the big eyes, was attractive but strange-looking, sulking about something. As was Jenny.
In her wheelchair, she sipped from a Flintstones’ glass, intermittently tearing at her fingernails.
“Dipesto,” Nicholson was saying, “Why don’t you take that sign off your tit and you and me go out and have a real good time?”
Buck scraped his boot on the coffee table, to get the gunk off. It made a rough, grating sound. He was always getting bits of reddish-orange glazing compound stuck to his boots, which made them walk unevenly. But it got Jenny’s attention, which was what he’d wanted.
“So, you going to tell me what all that last week was about, or do I have to guess?” he asked.
Her eyes on the television, Jenny said, “Your little ‘scuffle’?” She shrugged, reached for her glass and drank from it. “They all operate shops. The Russians are up in Nord East, the Asians in Frogtown and over into Chicago, and the Hispanics are south and west down into Kansas City. Everybody competes to unload their ‘product,’ so it can get rough.
“And everybody knows everybody. Where the lines are, and that you don’t cross them.”
“So,” he said, “you’re telling me that was just a bit of a… turf war?”
Jenny held her eyes on the T.V. set, a willfully blank look in her eyes, which made him think – shit, it was even worse than he’d thought, Eli’d really gone and done it this time.
“When the ‘accident’ happened,” Jen said, glancing over from T.V., “we were getting out.”
“So, Eli’s been crossing lines, playing the short game? That it? Playing the ends against the middle?”
Now Nicholson and – Karen Black, that was the actress’s name – were arguing again.
“No one would want to hit on you,” Nicholson was saying, “you look too pathetic.”
“I am not a piece of crap,” she said.
Jenny gave him a cutting, bitter look. “If he were doing something like that, don’t you think he’d tell me?”
On the T.V. set Nicholson grinned. “Now now, Ray–”
Buck lifted his boot onto his knee and took in the blood-stained toe. Bear’s blood.
He almost had to laugh. It was just like Eli to try to do it all himself, and to hell with propriety.
“I’m going out,” he told her, and that was that.
He spent Wednesday evening with Eli and Jenny, nearly crawling out of his skin for waiting. He’d break into the shop, maybe get lucky, find what he needed. Dinner, then television, some show about an alien with a silly name, Mook, or Muck or something.
He brought the bird from the windowsill, fed it out of his palm, its feathers, when it preened, making an airy, papery clatter.
Jenny slung over Eli, they dozed, until, at last, Eli rose and shooed Jenny to their room.
No sooner than their door had shut, he was gone.
At the Paradise, he disabled the alarm at the back door and was through in a breath. Cut the electric eye spanning the entry to the office, and inside rifled through the file cabinets, just daylight shop work, insurance forms, titles to vehicles, invoices for supplies and inventories of parts, job orders, receipts, then got Lester’s desk unlocked, in it more of the same.
The floor safe he opened with the cutting torch, hoping against hope he’d find something inside, but – here were checks from customers, and those made out to Eli, Vern, Cleve, and Ambrose, payroll.
At the back door, he all but went out, only stopped to think if there was something he might have missed.
He heard a distinct, mechanical clunk! then tried the door, but the door had locked, and the shop lights flashed on, blinding, an alarm sounding. He looked around him, the shop a nightmare of dead ends. So strode to the office’s alley-facing windows and, breaking one, climbed out it into the alley, where he bolted, low over his feet and out of sight of Lester’s cameras.
Going up past Moby’s and away, patrol cars, gumballs flashing, pulled up to the Paradise.
He sat on the stoop of The Evergreens, his hands shaking and the alarm ringing in his ears. Lighting a cigarette, he dropped the match. Tried again, collecting himself. Got one going.
Lester, he was certain now, wanted him gone, but intended to leave Eli on his feet, free. No doubt, to go after what he’d taken from them, but what could it be if not money?
And with that thought, he crushed his cigarette under his boot and went in.
Over lunch the following day, he called Miller’s home from the booth outside The Kruller. Rain sheeting the glass, he told himself, if old Dr. Death answered, he’d hang up. Ambrose watched from the lot, and he waved to him, a mean little wave, and turned his back.
It was too soon after the ‘break in at the shop’ to call, but that couldn’t be helped now. And would Dr. Miller’s wife, Carol, mention something like a call from Northern States Power to him, anyway?
Come on, come on, come on, he thought, the phone ringing, the receiver pressed to his ear.
He just needed Carol to pick up, and then she did.
“Yes?” she said.
“Tom Norman, for Northern States Power,” he said. The storm had brought trees down in their neighborhood, and NSP line workers were repairing power lines; one ran along the Millers’ property line. They were going to have to excavate, and needed signed consent.
When she didn’t answer, he added, “I’m sorry, Ma’am, for the inconvenience, but if we can’t get to you, your entire block could lose power, and for days. We won’t be back until–”
“You say the neighbors might be affected, too?”
Carol, from all the years she’d come up to the lodge with Dr. Miller, he knew as conscientious.
“Ma’am, that is correct.”
“Well, does it have to be this evening?”
“No, ma’am, and again, I apologize, but we’re already making repairs in a bordering neighborhood.”
There was a silence on the phone; Carol deciding.
“I see,” she said, finally. “All right. We’ll be out after six, back after nine? Could you get it done that late?”
Yes, he told her. They certainly could, and he thanked her for her time and patience.
21
Headed home from work, they were caught in traffic on Nicollet, and Buck bent into the windshield, desperate to get moving. In the distance, the clock in the Foshay Tower read 5:25. Getting out to the Millers’ place would take an hour, at least, which left him no time.
A light snow was falling, and the temperature had dropped again, and the cars, backed up for blocks, were stopped near Dayton’s display windows. Holiday shoppers with bags thronged the streets, couples, and parents ushering children in and out of stores, some of them in costumes, Peter Rabbits, and little yellow chicks, and flowers, red and purple tulips from the looks of them.
On the radio something punchy was playing and he turned it down, and it was quiet in the car.
“What?” Eli said, glaring. “You’re not going to twist my head around again, are you? Because, my neck, that last time? It hurt for days, and there’s nothing more I can tell you.”
“So, what kind of paper, exactly, do you ‘move’ for them?” he asked. “Since you didn’t say.”
With a shrug, Eli replied, “Most of it’s money under the table, brother, and that doesn’t mean just cash.”
On the radio, the announcer said, “–lucky winner of the sweepstakes will take an all-expenses-paid trip for two to sunny, southern California, where–” He switched it off.
Up ahead, a gumball was flashing, a fender bender there holding up traffic. That’s what it was.
At the wheel, Eli was in a huff, all over again the indignant boy he’d loved who had the audacity to ask, But why? – and Why not? and What if? and When can we? and How long until?
You couldn’t help but love someone like that, his mug set in a frown, and all that life in him.
“So why you?” he asked, “why are you moving the paper?”
A look of indignation on his face, Eli turned to him. “You think, for one second… Lester is going to show up in person with faked documents at the DMV? Or that those doctors, they’d drop off payouts to their fake patients or to the likes of Lester and his crew?”
“Look,” he said, “I’ve seen them, the dirty adjustors, the dirty cops – even the ambulance guys are on the take. You go out on a job–”
“You mean, one of your ‘accidents.’”
“All right. Out on an accident. And just when you’re sure you know all of them, there’s somebody new, so it’s all too clear that, once you’re… involved, they can always get to you.”
Eli craned his head into the window, bent on something. Then glanced over, said, “And, anyway, I’m just a mule.
“If anyone gets wise,” he said, bitterly, “red-flags some title, say at the DMV, who’s going out the back door? A nobody.”
The traffic was moving again, and Buck all but sighed with relief, until Eli swung up a side street and parked, alongside them Dayton’s brightly lit display windows, bright as a made for TV dream.
“What are you doing?” Buck asked. “Let’s go.”
“In a city this size,” Eli replied, “there are – what, fifty DMVs? I just… play faceless, and–”
“–move their paper,” Buck said. “Yeah, I get that.”
“Right. And the paper gets the shit. I mean, look at it!” he said, and pointed into the lighted windows.
To their right, the Dayton’s windows were cram-packed with spring wear, dresses and sandals for women, golf outfits for men. In one window, a miniature train circled a bed decked out in a blue silk comforter, the silk so shiny he could see the reflection of Eli’s car in it.
“Doesn’t it make you a little mad?” Eli asked.
“Mad? About what?” He had to get Eli moving. Get him off whatever it was he was after.
“Don’t you ever just – want something, because you want it?”
“Brother, there’s the things you can change, and things you can’t, and it’s best to know the difference.”
“Christ,” he said, “don’t you go getting all… AA epistemological on me. And I’m tired of all that. I mean, if I so much as walked into one of those stores they’d have security after me, rushing me out.”
He didn’t have time for this. “And, what, anyway, could you possibly want in there?”
His mouth was working, here the same old Eli, but was it with frustrations, or rage, or…. It hurt him to think – bitterness? In the past, Eli’d have said something amusingly caustic but true, Eli redeeming the moment.
But he didn’t do that now, he said, “Timing has everything to do with the outcome of a rain dance, brother.
“And why shouldn’t I want things?” he asked.
“Like that golf outfit – sure, I can see you in that, pink’s your color, and that white belt?” The thought of Eli in it made him laugh. “Yeah, you in a golf outfit, that’s about as funny as a dog in sunglasses.”
“What,” Eli said, glaring from the wheel, “you’re Carol fucking Burnett now or something?”
“You, golfing.”
“And why not?!”
Down in Florida, he’d learned to golf. He’d sent photos of himself home, one on the back of which he’d written, “In White Bucks,” meaning to be funny, since he’d had on white shoes.
Obviously, all these years Eli’d given it some unhappy thought.
“Trust me on this one, you’d hate it,” Buck said, “and, seriously, we don’t have time.”
“And why not?”
“Go!” he said.
“You think you know everything, but you don’t. So–”
“Yeah, you and Old Sam Sneed on the back nine, right?” He spoke through his nose now, trying to make light of it. “Kimosabe, what would you use here? The niblet or the nine iron?
“What, you can’t take a joke?” he added.
“Me?”
“Yeah, you,” he said, “you got a real stick up.” Maybe he’d get lucky and they’d finally get to it – what Eli and Ruben had been up to. Because that was the god-damned issue here.
“So, what’s this all about, huh?” he demanded, and when Eli only balked, he pointed with his chin. “Go,” he said, and when Eli didn’t, he opened his door, and Eli caught his jacket. “I’m goin’ one way or the other,” he said, “So, get to it.” He pointed. “Home’s that way.”
“That shithole?!”
“Go,” he replied. “And brother, this isn’t the time to get into why we’re here. Go.”
“And why not?!”
Oh, Christ, here it came, that whole rant, his mind full of all that… stuff he’d read. Nietzsche. Marx. John Fucking Stuart Mill.
“And just… where are you headed,” Eli said, “when this is over, if it’s ever over? Back up to the lodge? Yes, Sir, Yes M’am, and, Gee, can I carry that for you? And not even a place to call your own? You – living in that… room in an airport hanger, and cooking on a hot plate!
“I mean, brother, what happened to you?! Where’s your – I mean, they stole your cabin, and you’re still working there?”
He glanced over at Eli, then out the windshield. He needed, all the more, to get going.
“Shut the door,” Eli said. “It’s cold out.” And he did that, though wondering why he had.
“Look,” Eli said. “The only way is own things, so you can say to… whoever, ‘This is ours,’ and mean it. But you’ve got to get it first, buy your way in – no matter what the price.”
He nodded, as if having decided something.
“I’ve got a little wager,” Eli said. “If you put your paycheck up. And after, I’ll get us out of here. We go into Dayton’s and ‘look around,’ and, I bet, in ten minutes we’ll have four security people on us.”
“And what’s the point?”
“You on, or not?”
“Sure, against your week’s pay, I’ll take you on,” Buck said, hoping he could end it there.
Inside the lights were too bright, and everywhere was the rattle of registers, a mull of voices, Easter baskets brimming with eggs – yellow, pink, and blue – nestled in plastic grass on counters. In Sports, he tried on a baseball mitt, all the while just wanting this little “sociological experiment,” as Eli had called it, to be over. By the clock over the register, nearly ten minutes had gone by. He lifted the mitt to his nose, oiled leather, a whole world in it. Moved through China, glossy leaded-glass and silver, and gold-edged plates, found Eli in Lingerie.
