Drawing Dead Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  GRANT McCREA AND DEAD MONEY

  WINNER OF THE ARTHUR ELLIS AWARD FOR

  BEST FIRST CRIME NOVEL

  “There are many things to praise about this debut novel…. The dialogue snaps and the characters click.”

  The Globe and Mail

  “Redman, for all his flaws, has a soul that he has not sold to anybody. Maybe that is what makes him fascinating in his own flawed way.”

  Edmonton Journal

  “All of McCrea’s characters are distinctive, and the solution to the murder mystery is a surprise. The dialogue between Rick and Dorita snaps back and forth faster than a Ping-Pong ball. Dead Money is the first in a series, and McCrea has set the hook well.”

  Quill & Quire

  “Grant McCrea can really write. Dead Money is a high-octane mystery that has all the right ingredients. It kept me up well into the night.”

  James Swain, author of Mr. Lucky and Grift Sense

  To Annie Nocenti,

  without whom this book would not be

  half as good as however good it is,

  however-good that may be.

  1.

  HE HAD AN ODD EXPRESSION ON HIS FACE. Half smile, half grimace. Part puzzlement. That may add up to more than a whole. But death does strange things to people.

  He was lying face up. His right arm was twisted behind his back. He clutched something in his left hand. I couldn’t make out what it was.

  He was in black tie. Tuxedo. White ruffled shirt. Bow tie. Bare feet. Clean, though. As though recently shod.

  Oh, Brendan, I whispered. What have you done?

  A guy in a lumpy brown suit waved me back.

  Hey, I said. That’s my friend.

  Sure, he said. And I’m J. Edgar Hoover.

  Who’s in charge here? I asked.

  Who wants to know?

  I told you. He’s my friend.

  And I told you. I’m J. Edgar Hoover.

  I wasn’t getting any respect.

  Maybe it was the squid-shaped wine stain on the front of my shirt. My bleary eyes. The two days’ growth of intermittent beard.

  J. Edgar, on the other hand, presented a more imposing figure. Sagging belly. Stick legs. That lumpy brown suit. And a gun.

  There was no way around that last bit. I had to go over his head.

  I stepped back. Unholstered my cell phone. Called my buddy, Butch Hardiman. New York cop. Shaved head. Mammoth shoulders. Not a bad poker player. He’d probably say he was better than me. I’d disagree.

  Butch, I said.

  Rick, he said in his big baritone voice.

  Brendan’s dead.

  You’re fucking with me, he said, his voice suddenly smaller, far away.

  No, I’m not. I wish I were. I’m at the casino. They won’t let me near him. Can you pull some rank?

  I’ll pull whatever rank I have down here. Which isn’t much.

  Do your best.

  Have I ever done less?

  No, I had to admit. He hadn’t.

  He called some friends who called some friends. It’s a small world, law enforcement. Butch could almost always find someone. Someone who knew someone who could call someone who could call in a favor, real or imagined. Even in Vegas. Especially if the favor was a minor one. Like letting him and his buddy past a bit of crime scene tape.

  I waited for him at a long bar studded with the usual array of electronic keno and poker machines. You barely had room to put down your glass. Why waste a moment of drinking time when you could be losing some more money to the house? I stared at the plasma screen behind the bar. Some goddamn horse race. Never understood that horse race thing. Lack of empathy, I guess. But it seemed like only the most degenerate gamblers played the horses.

  I couldn’t identify.

  I drank a scotch. I drank another one.

  A hand on my shoulder. I turned around. Butch.

  What the fuck? he said.

  I don’t know, I said. I don’t know anything. He’s over there.

  Butch strode over. Asked for Detective Warren. The stick-leg guy. Butch introduced himself. Mentioned a name. The name did it.

  Call me Earl, J. Edgar said, extending a hand to Butch.

  Guy had a lot of names.

  Rick Redman, I said, extending my own hand.

  J. Edgar ignored it.

  He lifted up the yellow tape. We ducked under it. Walked towards the huddle of uniforms. The well-dressed remains of my former brother-in-law.

  I hung back a bit. I didn’t want to get too close. See too much. I’d never get it out of my dreams. There were enough dead bodies in there already.

  Butch went right up. Nudged a couple of blue shirts aside. Knelt down. I felt stupid, hanging back. So I followed, blank.

  I looked. I didn’t want to look.

  The technicians were doing their technician thing. Butch wasn’t there to interfere. He wasn’t there to help, either. He wanted to see the scene for himself. Do what I couldn’t. File it away. Every scratch mark and dust mote. Every stain on the elaborately tiled lobby floor. What Brendan had in his hand.

  The hell is that? I asked. A chopstick?

  It’s a knitting needle, said Butch.

  I leaned in to get a look. A technician bagging evidence looked up, nodded.

  Jesus, I said. The hell does that mean?

  Butch shrugged.

  I wandered over to the lobby’s central grotesquerie. Concrete fishes and small boys were respectively spouting and pissing into a green pool. Generating little fountains of splash. One of which was slowly soaking the jacket of an old guy sitting on the low retaining wall. Old and spotted and hunched forward. The Universal Loser.

  A couple of cops wandered over, poked him with a stick. He looked up. Calm. Resigned. Too far gone to be startled.

  The cops asked questions. How long had he been there? What was his name? Had he seen anything unusual?

  Unusual? I stared blankly at the concrete fish, the pissing boys. I guessed it was a matter of context.

  I heard Butch’s voice. Rick, he said. I turned around. Saw his extra-wide smile. Trying to be reassuring. Succeeding, a bit.

  Come on, he said. Let’s go home.

  Home. The Dusty Angel Motel.

  I felt his arm around my shoulder.

  I suppose, I said, as Brendan’s closest known relative, even if by defunct marriage, I should hang around. Find out what they’re planning to do with him.

  They have my cell number. They’ll call.

  Okay, I shrugged.

  I’d seen a morgue or two before. There’d be time for the formalities later.

  We flagged a cab. It smelled of sardines and sweat.

  2.

  BUTCH ALWAYS KNEW WHAT WAS RIGHT. Well, most of the time he did. More often than me, for sure. Which isn’t saying much. He had a temper on him, though. On a guy that big, the temper could be a problem. Once in a while it came in handy.

  When serious shit happens, it brings you together. Butch had been with me through a lot of serious shit. The Case of the Red Car Door. That had been good shit. We solved a crime. Butch found the photos. Somebody had hidden them away. The witnesses said the car was all black. The pictures showed a red driver’s-side door. Prosecutorial misconduct, we convinced the judge. Got some innocent kids off. Got some good press.

  Then there was the FitzGibbon case. Foisted on me by my unlamented former boss, the über-pompous Warwick. FitzGibbon was a major client of our firm, back then. He had a wayward kid. Turned out they were both big-time nut jobs, FitzGibbon and the kid, but the kid was worse. And his adoptive brothers put them both to shame. Twins. Wheels within wheels. Daddy got dead. So did the kid. The twins got life without. So Butch and I solved another crime. But not before a bunch
of people got dead. It was hard to call that one a victory.

  I wasn’t a detective, a cop. I’d never even been a prosecutor. Hell, I was just an ordinary litigator who got caught up in some criminal shit once in a while, and tried to do the best for my client. Who usually wasn’t paying. So, I could never have played detective without Butch to do the real work. Get access, get the phone records, run the license plates. Find the photos, think in a straight line. Pack the gun. Most important, go in first. I had a thing about going in first. Wouldn’t do it. Scared the shit out of me.

  And Brendan. Dear, fucked-up Brendan.

  I hadn’t quite known what to do with Brendan. Being as he was my former brother-in-law, or maybe still my brother-in-law—had he retained the status after Melissa died? anyway, he felt like family—it was like I owed him something, somehow. Which I didn’t, really. But one thing for sure, I was all the family he had. And he had a certain naïve charm, and played a mean game of poker.

  There was a Friday at the bar, a couple months before. The Wolf’s Lair. My hang. My home. My commiseration. Thom behind the bar. The cool brass rail. The warm mahogany. The endlessly various New York crowd. A serious bar. Two blocks from home, even better.

  I was telling Thom about my new outfit. I called it The Outfit. So far it consisted of me. I’d quit my day job as a litigator to pursue my overstuffed dreams of poker grandeur. I felt I needed a cover. Just in case later I’d need another gig. Didn’t look good on the resumé: failed poker player. Actually, it was a little more complicated than that. Something about a woman. Dorita. A tall babe with a killer set of legs and an attitude to match. Maybe we’d get to that later.

  A woman sat down to my right. The sad-sack barfly type. Downcast eyes and a world of long lonely days hanging from her shoulders like the ancient Laura Ashley dress she wore, drifting to the floor, and had worn, it looked like, on every one of those days. She had a big, pouting mouth. On a girl with good bone structure it would have been striking. But it just accentuated the homeliness of her soft oval face. The freckles were cute, though. Cute enough to draw my attention for a second longer than mere curiosity required. That and her air of depressed and vulnerable sensuality.

  I noticed that she was wearing only one shoe. I noticed how red it was. The shoe.

  It was on her left foot.

  On her right was a yellow bandage. Her toenails were painted with small piglet faces.

  Five tiny snouts.

  She noticed me looking. Turned to me.

  I was up all night, she said. Hydrating my cat.

  Well, this was a promising entrée, but just at that moment Butch showed up, and I had to excuse myself from the Piglet Lady.

  Butch started bitching right away. He’d had another run-in with Inspector Nose.

  Fucking guy, Butch said. Suspended Ritchie for throwing away a perfectly good paper clip. Wasting police property. I gotta get out of there.

  I wasn’t sure I believed the story. Not literally, anyway. But The Nose—I could never remember his real name, but the schnozz was unforgettable: long, lean, hooked, barely restraining a serious case of out-of-control nasal hair—was a tight-ass kind of a guy.

  Mostly Butch and The Nose had managed to stay out of each other’s way over the years, but Butch had got promoted, thanks to the FitzGibbon case, and had to spend a lot more time in the precinct. Funny how it works. One day you’re about to be fired for doing shit you weren’t supposed to. Like babysitting a stupid lawyer named Rick Redman, in way over his head. Next day, the bad guys get caught, it’s all over the Daily News. You’re a fucking hero. You’re a big shot.

  But Butch wasn’t happy about the promotion. He was a real cop. A street guy. A hustle guy. Now he had to lord it over a bunch of newbie geeks. Check on their paperwork. Tell them how to wear the blue shirt.

  He hated it.

  It’s like the Peter Principle, he said. But I didn’t get promoted to my level of incompetence. I got promoted to where I just want to get the hell out of there.

  Maybe it’s the same thing.

  Maybe, he said, swirling the ice in his double scotch.

  Come on, I said. You telling me you never wanted to be a big shot? Everybody wants to be a big shot.

  Not me, man, said Butch, shaking his head slowly. Really. I never cared about that shit. Never. I like the job. The real job. Catching bad guys. That stuff. I don’t know. There’s got to be a better way.

  To make a living? There’s no good way to make a living. Marry rich, live high. That’s the only ticket.

  Yeah, but then you have to put up with her.

  There’s that. I’ve never given up the dream, though.

  A couple of scotches later, Brendan showed up. Took a stool. Said sorry for being late. Told us some story that had to do with ginger ale, enemas and prosthetic devices. I smiled politely. It was probably a funny story, but Brendan told it all wrong. He was a terrible storyteller. Butch gave him the big baritone chuckle. Butch is a nicer guy than me.

  We took a corner table to eat. Butch in the center seat. He liked to have command of the room. That authority thing. Brendan took the corner, back to the wall. Something about abject insecurity. I took what was left. Something about my life.

  So guys, I said. You know I quit the firm …

  Tell us something we don’t know, said Butch.

  You did? said Brendan.

  I did, I repeated for Brendan’s benefit.

  Apparently he’d missed the news. Been living in some fetid cave off the Polynesian coast for the last few months, or something.

  Does Polynesia have a coast? I asked.

  They were used to my non sequiturs. So we considered that question for a while. We decided the answer was yes, and no.

  I had to quit, I said, getting back on message. Jesus, the place was going down the tubes anyway. FitzGibbon was the firm’s best client. And he just got pitched off a thirty-third-story balcony. And his heirs are all in jail, or dead.

  And it was all your fault, said Butch.

  About as much as yours, buddy, I replied. No, it wasn’t all our fault. Just some of it. But that was more than enough for Warwick. So I decided to preempt him. Told him to go fuck himself.

  Got to tell the Man to fuck off once in a while, said Butch.

  Easy for you to say, I said.

  Yeah, he said. I have no responsibilities.

  You don’t have a child to support, I said. And an ex-wife’s grave to maintain.

  Brendan cringed. It was his sister’s grave, too.

  Sorry, man, I said to him. That’s just me. Humor to cover up the pain and all, you know.

  It’s okay, said Brendan.

  It was always okay with Brendan. That was part of his problem.

  A life of endless trauma will do things to you. It made me feel bad. But I didn’t know what I could do about it. I didn’t even know if it was my job to do anything about it. I mean, was I my ex-brother-in-law’s keeper? He ain’t heavy, he’s my ex-brother-in-law? Didn’t really have that ring to it.

  Damn. Where was my shrink when I needed her?

  So, I said, trying to head off the impending gloom, what’re we gonna do?

  We? said Butch.

  Yeah, I said. We. Me, you, Brendan. I thought we were a team.

  Damn it, Redman, said Butch, you are a presumptuous mother-fucker.

  That’s why you love me, I said.

  Brendan laughed. It wasn’t that funny a line. But that was Brendan, too. When he laughed, it always seemed like he was laughing at something else. Something far away. Out of reach.

  So, I said. I have an idea.

  Shoot, said Butch.

  You guys can join my outfit.

  Outfit? said Butch.

  Outfit, I said. It’s called The Outfit.

  What the fuck are you talking about?

  Listen, just think about it. No, forget thinking. Just listen. I’m a lawyer. I’ve done some criminal stuff. Some sick divorces. All sorts of shit. I have some skil
ls. Some contacts.

  Sure, said Butch.

  Sure, said Brendan.

  Butch, you’re a cop.

  Detective, to you.

  Better yet. You’re a detective. You know the ropes. The technical shit. You have your own connections.

  I see where you’re going.

  Brendan was sinking into his chair.

  And Brendan, I said, with perhaps a touch too much obvious cheer. You’re the perfect undercover guy.

  He straightened up a bit.

  Sure, I said. Nobody would ever think you’re a cop or anything. You’re an actor. A carpenter. You’ve been around. Lived in different places. You can be anybody, any time.

  Sure, he said. Yeah. I can do that.

  So. It’ll be our outfit. Investigations, enforcement. Whatever comes along. Once we get it going, Butch, you can quit your job. Brendan and me, we don’t have anything to quit. We can start right away.

  Rick, said Butch, it’s not that simple. You got to establish some credibility, get a client base. And it’ll cost more than a shingle and a pole to hang it on. You got to set up an office, make it look nice. Get a receptionist. And you got to have a license to do some of that shit.

  So, we’ll call it something else, until we get a license. Hey, I’m still a lawyer. It’ll be a law firm, to start. And the thing of it is, we can go to the World Series of Poker. Qualify in satellites. Win big in the Main Event. Use the proceeds to set up shop.

  Vegas, said Brendan. I’m there.

  You gotta be kidding me, said Butch. There were eight thousand players in the Main Event last year. More this year, probably. And about eight hundred of them are probably better players than any of us.

  Brendan lost his smile.

  Okay, okay. We’re not going to win the Main Event. Probably. But there’s three of us. Any one of us could go deep. Get to the serious money. We’ll make a pool of ourselves. If we lose, we lose. If we win, it’s a bonus. And anyway, how can we lose in the cash games? The place’ll be rank with tourists.

  You got a point there, anyway.