Freaky Deaky by Elmore Leonard

  "Your mom was a trip," Skip said, "had that sarcastic way of speaking. You do it better."

  "Thanks a lot," Robin said. She blew her smoke at him and took a sip of wine.

  "I rode a government bus down to Milan," Skip said. "I don't know where my mommy was. This bus had heavy wire over the windows in case we got loose of our handcuffs and leg irons. Me and a half a dozen Hispanic brothers with needle tracks up their arms. I thought, The fuck am I doing with these dudes? Man, I'm political. I should be going to one of those country-club joints like where they sent those Watergate assholes, but I guess they thought I was ba-a-ad."

  "You were," Robin said. "I think it was blowing up the Federal Building that pissed them off."

  "Yeah, but hell, the money they kept when we jumped bond, it would've paid to fix up the damage, wouldn't it? Some of it." Skip was chewing on a breadstick, crumbs in his beard. "Man, when they brought us up that second time, if they'd known even half the gigs I was into . . . I mean those years living underground."

  Robin said, "Living out there with the great silent majority. I know why they're silent, they don't have a fucking thing to say. I got into shoplifting just for something to do. One time I even stole a bra."

  Skip said, "I was living in a commune near Grants, New Mexico, with these leftover flower children bitching at each other, bored out of my skull. I went up to Farmington and got the job as a TV repairman 'cause, you know, I always had a knack for wiring up shit. This one day I said to myself, Man, if you're a wanted criminal then how come you aren't into crime? That's when I moved to L.A. the first time."

  "You ever look for your picture in a post office?"

  "Yeah, but I never saw it."

  "I didn't see mine either," Robin said. She leaned in closer, resting her arms on the table. "When I finally got your number, and your service said you were in Detroit . . ."

  "Couldn't believe it, could you?"

  She said, "You know, you haven't changed much at all."

  Skip said, "I may be a half a step slower, but I still have my hair. I lift weights when I'm home and I think of it."

  "I like your beard."

  "I've had it off and on. I first grew it when I was over in Spain. That's where I went soon as I got my release. Started as an extra in the picture business and worked my way into special effects and stunt work. This guy Sidney Aaronson was doing a big epic called The Sack of Rome. But what it was, it was a sack of shit. You know how many times I got killed in that fucking picture?"

  Robin watched him reach out to stop their waiter going by with a tray of dinners. Skip ordered another drink and a bottle of Valpolicella. The little fifty-year-old waiter said with an accent, "Just a minute, just a minute, please," and hurried on.

  Skip winked at her. "Time him. He gets one minute."

  "You haven't changed at all," Robin said.

  Skip Gibbs smiled, a thirty-eight-year-old kid: dull-blond streaked hair tied back with a rubber band in a short ponytail, bread crumbs in the beard that grew up into his cheeks; Skip the Wolfman wearing a black satiny athletic jacket that bore the word Speedball across the back in a racy red script: the title of a film he'd worked on handling special effects, blowing black-powder charges and squibbing gunshots. He said to Robin, "You still look like you can hit and run"--crinkling his light-blue eyes at her. "Man, there's something about a thin girl with big tits." Staring at her beige cotton sweater, three wooden buttons undone at the neck. "I notice they're still in the right place."

  "You put on Jane Fonda's Workout," Robin said, "all you have to do is sit and watch it, you stay in shape."

  Skip said, "I knew you'd be into something. Just don't tell me you've become a women's lib vegetarian lesbian, okay? I have beautiful memories of us in bed--and on floors and in sleeping bags, in back seats . . ."

  Now Robin Abbott was smiling, sort of, agreeable without admitting anything: calm brown eyes gazing through the tinted glasses set against a pale fox face, her brown hair sleeked back into a single braid she would sometimes finger and stroke, a rope of hair, holding it against her breast in the cotton sweater.

  "Your hair's different," Skip said, "otherwise . . ." He squinted at her and said, "The first time I ever saw you, Lincoln Park in Chicago, man, that was a long time ago. We were only--what, nineteen years old?"

  "You were. I was still eighteen," Robin said. "It was the Saturday before the start of the Democratic National Convention, August twenty-fourth, 1968." She was nodding, seeing it again. "Lincoln Park . . ."

  "Thousands of people," Skip said, "and I picked you out right away: Why, there's a little Wolverine from the University of Michigan. Though I hadn't seen you at school before. You had on a tank top and you were holding up a poster that said, real big, FUCK THE DRAFT, waving it at the cops. I kept looking at you, your little nips showing in that thin material, your hair real long down your back. I said to myself, I think I'll score me some of that."

  "Your hair was longer too," Robin said. "Cops kept grabbing it, trying to hold you. We got away and I tied it up in a ponytail."

  Skip said, "You think I don't remember that?" Touching his hair. "I don't ordinarily wear it like this, but I did this evening."

  Robin said, "I'd know you anywhere. Remember the first night? In the guy's car?"

  "The cops pounding on it"--Skip grinned--"whole bunch of them wearing those baby-blue riot helmets. I look up and see these pig faces staring at me. Cop bangs on the window. 'What're you doing in there?' I go, 'What's it look like I'm doing? I'm getting laid, man.' That's when they started beating on the car. The guy comes along that owned the car, remember? He couldn't believe it. 'Hey, what're you doing to my fucking car?' He tears into the cops and they club the shit out of him and throw him in the wagon. Oh, man." Skip rubbed his eyes with a knuckle. "I get tears thinking about it."

  Robin said, "You remember the last time we were here?"

  The waiter appeared with Skip's drink and the bottle of wine, opened it and poured a taste into Skip's glass. Robin watched Skip hold the wine in his mouth and wink at her, and for a moment she thought he was going to spit it out and do a scene with the waiter. Skip loved scenes. But this time he swallowed and gave her a sly grin.

  "I wasn't gonna do nothing. Guy's a real waiter, wears a tux, probably been here all his life."

  Robin tried again, patient. "You remember the last time we had dinner here?"

  Skip had to stop and think. She watched him look around, maybe for something that might remind him. "We got picked up in 'seventy-eight. . . . It wasn't after they brought us back."

  "Before that. Before we went underground."

  "Man, that was a long time ago."

  "We came here December fifteenth, 1971," Robin said, "about a week after we got back from New York." She waited again as Skip frowned, thinking hard. "We went to New York for that stop-the-war benefit."

  He came alive. "Yeah, in that big cathedral."

  "St. John the Divine," Robin said. "You sold tickets at the door and walked off with something like nine hundred dollars."

  "I think it was more."

  "You told me nine hundred."

  "The People's Coalition for something or other."

  "Peace and Justice."

  "Yeah, they had a bunch of celebrities giving talks. It was so goddamn boring, that's why I ripped 'em off. I figured they weren't gonna cut it, so fuck 'em."

  "But when we came here for dinner, you were broke."

  "I'd bought a ton of acid and a few pounds of weed by then."

  "You said, 'It looks like we're going to have to eat and run, fast,' and I said, 'Why don't you take up a collection?' Remember?"

  He was looking around again. "Yeah, shit, I remember."

  Robin watched his gaze stop and hold on a trio of strolling musicians across the room, short, heavyset guys in red vests, two with guitars, one with a stand-up bass. They were singing "The Shadow of Your Smile" to a table of diners trying to ignore the trio.

  "I dumped th
e bread out of the basket and that's what you used," Robin said, bringing Skip back. "You went from table to table."

  Skip was grinning. "I went up to this couple, I go, 'Pardon me, but can you spare some bread?' The guy thought I meant bread. He goes, serious as can be, 'You ask your waiter, he'll get you some.' I like to died."

  "You sound more Indiana farm boy," Robin said, "than even you did before."

  "From hanging out with these two stunt guys from Texas. Couple of shitkickers, but good guys. I think before Mr. Mario told me to sit down I scored about fifty, sixty bucks."

  "Thirty-seven," Robin said, "and the drinks and dinner came to thirty-two fifty. You might've left a tip, but I doubt it."

  "Come on--you remember the exact amount?"

  "After we talked on the phone I looked it up in my journal. It was thirty-two fifty."

  "That's right, your notebooks. You filled up a bunch, huh, writing your column."

  "I have everything we did," Robin said, "from the summer of 'sixty-eight in Chicago to June of 'seventy-two, when we were busted and jumped bail. I have the names of every single person we were involved with, too. Including the copouts."

  "I always liked your stuff, had a mean sound. You kept writing, didn't you?"

  "I did 'Notes from the Underground' the first couple of years. The Liberation News Service picked it up. Since Huron Valley I've written four historical romance-rape novels. Have you ever heard of Nicole Robinette? Emerald Fire? Diamond Fire?"

  "I don't think so."

  "I'm Nicole."

  "Why'n't you write your own story? Be more exciting."

  "I have a better idea," Robin said.

  She waited for Skip's reaction, watched him pick up his vodka, drink most of it and rattle the ice in the glass. He was with her but not paying attention to every word--grinning in his beard now.

  "Man, we let it rip, didn't we? Dope, sex, and rock and roll. Old Mao and Karl Marx tried to keep up but didn't stand a chance against Jimi Hendrix, man, the Doors, the Dead, Big Brother and Janis. Hey, and my all-time favorite outlaw band--you know the one it was? MC5. Jesus, those dudes, man. . . ."

  Robin heard the strolling trio coming to the end of "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina." She said, "How about the dynamite runs? Stoned out of your mind."

  "You had to be," Skip said, "car full of high explosives. That first time coming back from Yale, Michigan, M-19, two lanes, I kept seeing the road disappear, like a big hole would open up in front of us and I'd think, Oh, shit, we're gonna die. Except I knew I was tripping, so I'd hang onto the wheel like my knuckles were gonna pop. But I'll tell you something, I never had what you'd call a bad trip in my life. I mean dropping acid. The only bad trips I can remember is when I wasn't stoned. Wake up in some goddamn holding cell with these assholes giving each other peace signs."

  Robin said, "I could tell you were a little ripped when you walked in."

  "Not bad. All I had after work was some hash and beer. I'm still geeked on acid, but couldn't find none. I can get blotter in L.A. once in a while, it's okay. But old Owsley's preemo purple or even windowpane, that stuff could get you in touch with your ancestors. All they want to sell you on the street is crack and that's bad shit, messes you up. Acid's good for you--I mean you don't overdo it, become a burnout. It's like a laxative for the brain, it mellows you while it cleans out your head."

  Robin sipped her wine. She said, "I have some," and saw Skip's sly grin peeking through his beard, a sparkle coming into his pale eyes.

  "You know I suffer from anti-acrophobia, fear of not being high."

  "My apartment's right around the corner."

  "Bitchin'. What kind is it?"

  "Blotter. Has a little numeral one on it."

  "Shit, I gotta go back to work. They're gonna shoot some night for night."

  "It's there when you want it," Robin said.

  Skip grinned at her. "You're setting me up, aren't you? You got a dirty trick in mind and you need the Skipper to help you pull it."

  Robin gave him her sort-of smile.

  When the trio in the red vests strolled up she decided to let Skip handle it, not say anything. She watched him look up as the leader asked with an Italian sound how they were this evening and would they like to make a request. Maybe their favorite song? She watched Skip's bland expression and saw it coming. "You guys remember a group used to be around here, the MC5?" The leader frowned. MC5? He wasn't sure. What was one of their tunes? She watched Skip, with his pale, innocent eyes, say, " 'Kick Out the Jams, Motherfuckers.' You guys know that one?" Robin watched, thinking, Oh, man, have I missed you.

  Chapter 3.

  Chris asked the St. Antoine Clinic doctor if he thought a psychiatric evaluation was really necessary. All he was doing was transferring to another section. He'd still be at 1300 Beaubien, up from the sixth to the seventh floor and down at the other end of the hall.

  The St. Antoine Clinic doctor, a serious young guy with narrow shoulders and glasses, not much hair, was looking at the sheet Chris had filled out. He didn't seem to be listening. He said, "Tell me if anything I read is incorrect. You're Christopher Mankowski, no middle initial. Date of birth, October 7, 1949."

  Chris told him so far it was correct.

  The doctor cleared his throat. He cleared it a lot, faint little growls coming from deep in there. "You're presently a sergeant, bomb and explosives technician, assigned to the Crime Laboratory Section."

  "I'm also a firearms examiner, you might want to put down. Or I was. Right now I'm not sure what I am."

  "You like guns?"

  "Do I like them? I know guns, I'm not a collector."

  "How many do you own?"

  "I carry a thirty-eight Special and I have a Glock my dad gave me I keep at work. I don't want to get burglarized and have some head running around with a seventeen-shot automatic."

  "That's what a Glock is?"

  "It's Austrian, nine millimeter. Very lightweight."

  "Even with all those bullets in it?"

  "That's correct."

  There was a silence. Then the sound of a throat being cleared. "You've been with the Detroit Police since June 1975."

  "That's correct," Chris said. "Another month will be twelve years."

  The young doctor said, "You don't have to tell me when the information is correct. Only when it isn't correct." So when the doctor said, "You were in the military, honorably discharged, but you served less than a year," Chris didn't say anything. That was correct. He was stateside five months and the rest of the time with the Third Brigade, 25th Infantry, in Vietnam. Chris had a feeling the doctor didn't like to ask a question unless he already knew the answer. He was the type of person witnesses never remembered. The wedding ring didn't mean shit. He probably vacuumed and washed the dishes in his lab coat. It was like he wanted you to know he was a doctor, but wasn't that sure of it himself. Why did he wear a lab coat to sit at his desk asking questions? What did he think might get spilled on him?

  Why was the chair, where Chris sat next to the desk, turned around instead of facing the doctor? So that they were both looking in the same direction, at framed diplomas on the otherwise bare wall. Two of them, from Wayne State. Chris would have to turn and look over his shoulder to see the doctor. But wouldn't see his face anyway, because of the afternoon glare on the windows and because the doctor almost always had his head down. Why was he hiding?

  His voice said, "I gather, while in the army you suffered some type of disability?"

  He gathered correctly, so Chris didn't say anything. There was a silence until the doctor cleared his throat a few times and said, "Is that correct?" Breaking his own rule. Chris told him yes, it was. Then had to wait some more.

  "You attended the University of Michigan two years."

  "I quit to go in the army."

  "You enlisted?"

  "That's right." There was no reason to tell the doctor he'd flunked out and would be drafted anyway.

  "Why?"

  "Why'd I en
list? I wanted to see what war was like."

  There was a dead silence, not even the sound of the guy clearing his throat.

  "When I came out I went back to school."

  "And got your degree?"

  "Well, actually I was about ten credits shy."

  "So you're not a university graduate."

  Jesus Christ. Chris waited again while the guy made corrections, got that record straight.

  "You're single, have never been married."

  That was correct, but required an explanation.

  "You might want to know I almost got married a couple of times," Chris said. "What I mean to say is I'm not single by choice, I would've married either one. But once they start wringing their hands you know it's not gonna work. See, they were afraid, more than anything else."

  There was a silence again, behind him and off his right shoulder, where the young doctor was making notes.

  "Why were they afraid of you?"

  "They weren't afraid of me. They were afraid, you know, something could happen to me, being a police officer. It's the same kind of situation I'm in right now, why I want to transfer. I've been going with a young lady--actually we're living together, in her apartment. It's right up the street, as a matter of fact, on East Lafayette. I can walk to 1300, or Phyllis drops me off if she goes in early. She's with Manufacturers Bank, in the Trust Department." Chris paused. What was he telling him all that for? But then felt he should explain why Phyllis drove him to work. "See, my car was stolen last month. Parked right across the street from 1300, if you can believe it. On Macomb. Eighty-four Mustang, they never found it."

  The young doctor didn't seem to give a shit about his Mustang. Chris heard the pen tapping.

  "Anyway Phyllis, we start out, was always a little nervous about what I do. The last couple months she's gotten more and more paranoid I'm gonna lose my hands. It's not what if I get blown up, it's just the idea of losing my hands that seems to worry her. How would I eat? How would I dress myself? I told her I'm not gonna lose my hands, I'm very careful in my work. But if I ever did, I told her she could help me out. See, at first I tried to kid about it, tell her different things she could do for me. Like when I go to the bathroom, things like that. But I realized it was the wrong way to handle it. She'd turn white. You could see her imagining different situations. But she brought it up so often I started looking at my hands. I'd be looking at them," Chris said, holding up his palms, looking at them now, "without even realizing I was doing it. I'd see things in my hands, lines, I never noticed before. I finally decided it wasn't worth it, talking about it all the time; I'd transfer to another section. Also, you have to understand, it isn't all that exciting. Most of the time you're just sitting around." Chris waited. Then glanced over his shoulder.