Plainclothes Naked (30 page)

Quickly, the rock ’n’ rollers began thrashing around for cash. “Right on,” said Tony. “Now take off your fucking clothes and

throw ’em out the window. Start at the bottom and work up. Do it!”

Boots, socks, and pants came flying out of the Saab. Followed by jackets, T-shirts, and a black lace bra. Zank elbowed McCardle and leered. “Panties, too, Ellie May. Hand ’em over. And you studs peel off your undies. Hurry up, I’m clothin’ the homeless.”

When he was holding three sets of underwear and three wallets with chains attached, Zank tried to open the door, but it was locked. He sniffed the girl’s leopard-skin panties and made a face.

“
Somebody’s
bakin’ brownies.” He balled up the panties and shoved them in the driver’s mouth. “You wanna play games, Iggy Pop? I’ll play fuckin’ games. You must be a real brainiac, lockin’ the door and leavin’ the window open.”

Tony inscribed a tight circle on the driver’s cheek with the gun bar rel. The kid nodded frantically, still biting the leopard-skin, and the autolock made a satisfying crunch as the doors unlocked.

“That’s better.” Tony made his voice coplike.
“Now step away from the vehicle.”

During this performance, McCardle kept glancing up and down the street. Citizens driving by either didn’t see them or didn’t want to. Zank had that effect on people. Still, Mac was worried. “Tony, man, somebody’s gonna call the police.” He knew it would piss Tony off, but he couldn’t help himself.

Sure enough, Zank glared. “Be a black man, McCardle.
Fuck the po lice!
”

Mac stopped talking after that. He wrung his hands while Tony marched up and down beside the Saab, smiling and bleeding like a depraved valet as the naked driver slid out of the car and handed him the keys. The naked girl followed, her arms over her breasts and a giant red squid tattooed over her ass. Wavy blue tentacles extended down ward, embracing the word
PRODUCT
in Gothic script. Tony leered at her, tongue poking through the hole where his tooth had been. “How’d you know I love seafood, beautiful? If we didn’t have business, I’d take you with. I don’t care what anybody says, I like little tits. How ’bout it?”

Zank puckered up, and even McCardle had to cringe. The girl shuddered and crouched behind the driver as Hulk-skull, cupping his bleeding nose, joined them on the street.

“You’re right,” Tony sighed, “business before torture. But tell you what, just to show I’m a stand-up guy, you can keep the crack. Fuck it, I’ll even throw in the keys to the Lincoln. All she needs is some axle work. And a new tire. But hey, you can’t argue with the price.”

Two blocks
later, Mac couldn’t hold his mud anymore. “Man, we can’t just drive around. We gotta
go
somewhere.”

“Who’s drivin’ around,” Tony said. “I’m just getting the feel of this cage. I never rode Swede before.”

“I just want to know what we’re doing.”

Tony grumbled. “Back to Plan A, okay? We swing back and tor ment the bitch ’til she tells us where the photo’s at. She has it, we grab it. She doesn’t, we rip off whatever she’s got, then find out where it is.” “What if she
gave
the picture to somebody? You know, to help unload it.” If it were
him
stuck with Mister Biobrain, Mac figured he’d hook up with a fence who knew what to do with the thing and split it

fifty-fifty.

“If she gave it to somebody, then we got no choice.” “Meaning what?”

“Meaning we fuck her ’till she goes bald, then sell her for parts.

Anybody dumb enough to give somethin’ worth a million bucks to somebody else
deserves
a dirt nap. We’d be doing her a favor.”

Tony produced a Slim Jim and belched as he shoved it in his mouth. His jerky burps blended with the scented pine tree dangling from the rearview, perfuming the Saab with a peculiar, woody halitosis odor, a pungent, piney-beef combo that nearly burned the skin.

McCardle, blinking tears from his eyes, realized they were driving right by Tina’s front yard. “Tony, pull up. This is it!”

“This is shit,” Tony hollered back, without slowing down. “We go in there and do her, I wanna be smoked up.”

“Where we gonna get it?”

“Fucking Pepe can’t run too fast on one foot. We head on over and take off his corner, then we come back and party with the pretty thief.”

Tony gunned the Swedish engine. McCardle closed his eyes and prayed.

“Mustard or dry?” “Mustard. Lots.”
‌

Stuey the Hunchback plucked a pretzel out of his oven and went to work. He’d parked his cart in the mini mall parking lot between Dr. Roos’s office and the Ross Dress for Less next door. Tina and Manny ran into him after leaving the squirrelly plastic surgeon, and Manny insisted on stopping. The pretzel vendor, an Upper Mar ilyn institution, was a surprisingly vigorous eighty. His claim to fame was having been an extra in
On the Waterfront.
By way of nostalgia—and proof—he kept a photo of Brando taped to the side of his cart, signed “To Mike, from your friend Marlon Brando.” When anybody asked why the actor signed the picture to somebody else, the hunchback would tug up the collar of the pea

coat he wore year-round—in the manner of a fifties stevedore—and explain defensively, “If Marlon liked you, he called you Mike.”

Stuey slathered French’s like a cake artist on the jumbo pretzel, and winked at Tina. “I know you ladies like ’em wet.”

“Aren’t you cute?” Tina accepted the the hot bow of salted dough and aimed a smile at Manny. “Pretzels, plastic flowers, boy-boy pic tures—I’ve said it before, Detective, you know how to make a girl feel special.”

“Nut-cruncher,” said Stuey, slamming the lid on his oven. “Eva Marie Saint was the same way. Used to tease Marlon somethin’ awful. Kept tellin’ ’im Mickey Rooney was better in the sack. Give ’im credit, though, Marlon never popped her. Strangled a pigeon once, during the rooftop scene, but he never smacked Eva Marie, even when she was beggin’ for it.”

Stuey rolled off, still muttering, and Manny pulled out his cell phone. Tina grabbed his arm. “Hang on.You want to tell me what that was all about? Starting with Pretzel-man?”

Manny lowered the phone. “Stuey’s got ears. Sometimes he tells me stuff.”

“He’s a snitch?”

“I prefer ‘information facilitator.’ He fences, too. You want a Game Boy, a CD player, some videos, he’s got a regular small appliance store in that oven. Kids rip the radio out of a Beamer, they know Stuey’s good for a dime bag.”

“He deals, too?”

“It’s called multitasking. C’mon, I have to check my messages.” He lifted the phone, and Tina stopped him again.

“If he’s an informant, why didn’t you ask him about Zank and McCardle? And how did he know you’d be here?”

Manny sighed. “Stuey moves around. He probably saw my car.

There aren’t a lot of mayo Impalas on the streets these days.” “So ask him if knows anything about those freaks.”

The look Manny gave her was almost sad. “I ask him about some body, I know he’s gonna tell whoever I asked about that I was asking. Sometimes that’s okay. Sometimes that’s the idea. But right now, the best thing we got going is that Zank and McCardle don’t know we’re onto them. I mention them to Stuey, that could change.You never know.”

Tina nibbled the hot pretzel, slow-licking mustard off the top while Manny tried to concentrate on calling his answering machine. Since he’d never read the manual, he hadn’t put himself on speed dial. But the buttons on his cell phone were so tiny, he felt stump-fingered. He looked up and Tina was still licking. “Must be fun,” she said, “being a dick.”

“Not now, okay?”

Manny aimed his eyes somewhere else. How could anybody make eating a jumbo pretzel nasty? His machine sounded like it was in Greenland, and he had to cover his free ear to hear. When he was done he snatched the pretzel from Tina, took a bite, and said, “Strange.”

“What’s strange?”

He handed the pretzel back. “I got two calls. One from my ex-wife’s assistant, this Brit named Lipton. Gay guy. Very cool. He tells me his car’s been stolen, but not to say anything to my ex-wife. Then I get a call from my ex, telling me Lipton’s
missing,
would I please find him, and by the way don’t say anything to Chief Fayton.”

“It’s nice you two keep in touch.” “Me and Fayton?”

“You and the ex. It’s heartwarming.”

Manny ignored the sarcasm. “Actually, this is the first time she’s called since we were divorced. She didn’t even call
before
we were divorced. I’m telling you, if Mayor Marge is picking up the phone and calling
me,
she must be sweating. And our mayor doesn’t sweat easy.”

“I guess you’d know. So what are you going to do?” “Let her sweat, what else?”

“That’s what I like,” said Tina, “a man of action. What about this Lipton guy?”

“DWIL.”

“What?”

“Deal-With-It-Later. Right now you and I have some business.” Manny took her roughly by the arm and led her toward the car. “Ooh, police brutality. Maybe later you can show me your cuffs.” “Please, if anyone’s watching, I want ’em to think I’m arresting

you.”

“Oh wow. Most guys just say, ‘C’mon baby, you know you want it.’ ”

“So you’re not a virgin?”

“No, but I’m sure your pal Roos could make me one. I’d probably end up shitting out of my armpit, but what the hell, it’d be worth it to feel nine again.”

“You,” said Manny, “are a very unique girl.”

“You want unique? We had a virgin once at Seventh Heaven. Seventy-seven and never been kissed. Her name was Phoebe. One time I asked her why she never tried it and she said, ‘Darlin’, I just didn’t want none of them female problems.’ The old men used to give her ten bucks to show them her hymen. It looked like a big pink fang.”

“Oh, man... .”

“No wait. You’ll like this. There were six old goats who paid for a peek every Sunday. You should’ve seen them, bulging their diapers and dragging their IVs back to their rooms before they lost their inspira tion.
Dignity in the Twilight Years
. That’s what it says in the brochure.”

“This is really fascinating,” said Manny, “but we better get back to your house. See if the psycho-twins have been to visit. I have a plan.”

“You wanna make God laugh, make a plan,” said Tina.

“Guys like Zank running around, He could probably
use
a laugh.”

Manny held open the Impala’s dented passenger door. “But even if it just pisses God off, you’re gonna like it. It’s a little sick.” With this he pushed her into the car and leaned in to sneak a bite of her mouth.

Tina returned his kiss, then pulled back.
“Smooth.”

Lipton scuttled on hands and knees beneath the win dow, trying to hold his breath and not sneeze. The whole neighborhood smelled as if it had been built on top of rotting carcasses. In his near delirium, Lipton imagined that some giant muskrat, Three Mile Islanded, had spawned a Buick-sized brood who scooted south to this corner of Upper Marilyn, then slunk underground and died. The sour must off Zank’s shag did battle with the dead animal fumes. This close to the magenta fibers, breathing Zank’s personal odor, Lipton felt weirdly inti mate with the man who’d ripped him off.
I’m sick in the head,
that odor said.
I never change my clothes. I smoke crack and stay up for months.
It was horrifying
.
“I am such a dunce,” Lipton thought bitterly. Of
‌

course a crook like Tony Zank would double-cross him!

He’d been dumb enough to hire him to burgle his own home—the mayor’s mansion, in which Lipton occupied a room on the top floor— so why wouldn’t Zank think he could get away with screwing him? Who was he going to call, the police? “Why not just wear a sign around my neck,” Lipton muttered, in a tizzy of self-recrimination, “I’m a complete boob, please steal from me!”

He pounded the floor, then peeked under the sofa to see if maybe the photos were under there. His Armani jacket was already stained from the garbage-and-beer-soiled carpet, so he stopped worrying about it.

Demoralized, Lipton recalled the neat little map he’d made for Tony, all those ruler-straight arrows to the jewelry drawers and the nightstand where Mayor Marge kept her twin Cartier watches. He jammed a fist in his mouth to keep from screaming.

If they show that map in court, I’m dead. . . . DON’T THINK ABOUT IT!

Oh God, please help me
....

Lipton felt the panic attack coming on. What was he thinking when he trusted Tony Zank? Well, he knew what he was thinking. ... It was his eighth day on Wellbutrin, and he’d had a sudden burst of world-changing confidence. Everything was going to be okay! He had energy. He felt charged-up, capable of great things. So he went to the Parakeet Lounge, the only gay bar in Upper Marilyn, to celebrate. And got arrested.

Look where you met him
, he derided himself,
in the holding tank!

This was
after
the unfortunate morning he’d found himself swooped up in the backroom of the Parakeet. It happened during the Church Hour. Sunday morning at ten, when Tiny the bartender gave you every third drink free. Nobody was there but Lipton and a couple of regulars, along with Tiny himself, watching Siegfried & Roy. Tiny had a major Siegfried thing. Somebody in Vegas shipped him show-tapes twice a month.

Anyway, Lipton was happily sipping banana daiquiris, watching Roy kiss a tiger on the lips, when, out of nowhere, there’s this fat cop, Officer Merch, smirking behind him. “Hands on the bar, ladies.”

Next thing you know, Lipton, still cashmere elegant, is in the slam. And Tony Zank is asking him to trade shoes. Well, not
asking

exactly.... Lipton handed over his square-toed Prada loafers, and Tony tossed him his own pair of damp, filthy, hole-in-the-bottom generic tennis shoes with the laces missing in return. After that they were friends.

Riding his daiquiri-laced Wellbutrin buzz, just
bursting
with fellow feeling, Lipton chattered away to his cellmate about his job: how much he
adored
living at the mansion, and how much stress was involved,
like you wouldn’t believe,
trying to keep Mayor Marge stocked with L’eggs panty hose, her absolute
fave,
or running to the airport to pick up vis iting venture capitalists.