52 pickup

Alan got the warning in the man's quiet, cut-dry tone. Bobby was in a mood, so don't mess with him or ask questions. But stay loose; don't ever look scared. Alan clapped his hands once and said, "That's it for a while, kids," like a stage manager. "Let's take a break."

The girls pouted and said awwww and oh shit, but Alan got them into their clothes and out of there in a couple of minutes. He closed the door and looked over to see Bobby taking a chair away from the table in the dining-L. He placed it in the middle of the floor and sat down. Alan sat against the wall on a pillow, yoga-fashion, and began building a joint. When he finished it and looked up again, reaching toward the low coffee table for a match, Bobby, seated about fifteen feet away, facing him, was screwing a silencer attachment into the barrel of his.38 Special.

"Hey now, come on," Alan said, "don't fool with guns in here, okay? The goddamn piece's liable to go off."

"It's due to go off," Bobby Shy said, "unless you give me the straight shit when I ask you a question."

"Come on, what is this?" The extension on the barrel was pointing at Alan now; he could see the little round black hole. "Are you kidding, or what?"

"This number don't kid," Bobby Shy said. "You ready for the question?"

"Man, what're you on?"

Bobby Shy crossed his legs and rested the butt of the revolver on his raised knee. "The question," he said, "is how much did the man say he give you?"

"Give me?"

"Give you, give us-say it."

Alan was silent. He stole a little time by lighting the joint and tossing the matches back on the coffee table.

"You went out to see him, didn't you?"

"What's the answer?" Bobby said.

"Before I can talk to you, you go out on your own and see the guy. Is that it?"

Bobby turned the revolver on his knee slightly, a couple of inches, and shot a pig off the coffee table-a blue ceramic jar shaped like a pig that seemed to explode from within because there was no sound relating the exploding fragments to the gun.

Alan sat up straight, his back against the wall, his eyes open. He said, "Bobby, listen to me for a minute, all right?"

"Man pull shit on me," Bobby said, "he got to be very brave or stoned out of his head." His gaze lowered, he pulled the trigger and shot a fairy-looking figurine he never did like off the coffee table. It flew apart, was gone, with bits of it landing in Alan's lap. "Which are you," Bobby said, "brave or stoned?"

"My mind is clear, man," Alan said. "Think about it a minute. How am I going to tell you with Leo sitting there? I called you later, you were gone. I called Doreen's, nobody answered."

"She was home." Bending his wrist, Bobby raised the trajectory of the revolver and shot two birds off a mobile hanging to Alan's left.

"All right, maybe she was home. I'm saying nobody answered, for Christ sake."

The barrel shifted past Alan to ten o'clock. Bobby squeezed the trigger and shattered the globe of a mood lamp hanging from the wall.

"You could be shooting into the next room, for Christ sake!" Alan said. "What if you hit somebody!"

Bobby sprung open the cylinder of the.38 and began reloading it, taking the cartridges from his coat pocket. "I'm going to hit somebody, you don't say what the man offer us. Last call," he said, snapping the revolver closed and putting it squarely on Alan. "How much?"

"You know as well as I do," Alan said. "Fifty-two thousand."

Bobby Shy smiled. "Don't you feel better now?"

"Look," Alan said, "how was I going to tell you if I can't find you?"

"Tell me now, I'm listening."

"All right, the man made us an offer. Fifty-two thousand, all he can afford to pay."

"You believe it?"

"I looked at his books," Alan said. "Yes, I believe him. The way he's got his dough tied up he can't touch most of it. He offers fifty-two. All right, let's take it while he still believes it'll save his ass. But-here's what we're talking about-what do we need Leo for?"

"I don't see we ever needed him."

"Leo spotted the guy. He did that much. But now he's nervous, Christ, you don't know what he's going to do next."

"So me and you," Bobby said, "we split the fifty-two."

Alan nodded. "Twenty-six grand apiece."

"And we go together to pick it up."

"And we go together to hit the guy, whether we do it then or later."

"All this time," Bobby Shy said, "what's Leo doing, watching?"

"Leo's dead. I don't see any other way."

Bobby Shy thought about it. "Yeah, he could find out, couldn't he?"

"We can't take a chance."

"Man's too shaky, ain't he?"

"Do it with the guy's gun," Alan said. "How does that grab you?"

"Tell Leo we want to use it on the man."

"Right. He hands it to you."

"I guess," Bobby Shy said, "seeing he's a friend of yours, you want me to do it."

"Not so much he's a friend," Alan said, "as you're the pro." He gri

16

It was the next day that Alan panicked .

He came out of the men's room and there they were, a patrolman and a plainclothesman he knew right away was a cop, standing by the door to his office. So he walked down the aisle and took a seat and watched the last fifteen minutes of Going Down on the Farm, now in its Second Smash Week. Saved by his bladder.

Maybe the plainclothesman was on the vice squad and they were cracking down on dirty movies again. That was a possibility. Or maybe they were selling Police Field Day tickets to local merchants. Yeah, or they were here to give him a good citizenship award. Bullshit, Mitchell had changed his mind, hit by his straight-A conscience, and blown the whistle. That had to be it. After only a couple minutes of thinking about it, Alan was convinced Mitchell had gone to the cops. As the picture ended and some of the audience began to leave, Alan moved down the aisle to the fire exit and went out that way, into the alley.

He got away from there in a Michigan Bell telephone repair truck, a Chevy van, that was parked near the end of the alley with the key in the ignition. He drove out North Woodward for no reason other than it was the quickest way to get some distance.

But within a few miles he began to calm down and think about it again. Maybe the cops weren't after him. Maybe they really were from the vice squad. Every other year or so there was a crackdown on porno movies. No explicit sex within five feet of them actually doing it. No front shots of guys, though beavers were all right. Alan hated censorship. He hated himself a little now for ru

He turned off Woodward into downtown Royal Oak, took the telephone company truck up to the top of a municipal parking structure and left it there. He'd pick up something else on the way out, something a little sportier.

At the pay phone by the entrance he dialed Mitchell's home number. He listened to Barbara say hello three times, then hung up. He dialed a local number next.

"Hey Richard, how you making it? Alan. Listen, I'm out your way, Bobby asked me to pick him up some scag… Man, I don't know. That's what he said, scag. Maybe he's changing his habits or it's for a friend, I don't know… Yeah… No, he'll pay you next time. Bet on it, you know Bobby… At the parking thing in town… Man, the big fucking five-story parking lot whatever the fuck you call it building…Yeah, I'll be up on top."