casino without the chips and slots.”
“You want to know about steel? You come to me. There’s nothin’ I don’t know about how to make it, salvage it, extract it and sell it. Then get it back, chew it up and sell it all over again. This is what I know about. Investments? I don’t know shit about that stuff.”
I couldn’t admit it right then, but I sympathized with him. I didn’t know shit about that stuff either.
“So Jonathan told you to get into art.”
Ivor grinned a little at that.
“That was the only call that worked out. Those things over there on the wall? Worth five times what I paid for them.”
They might have been Chagalls, or painted by somebody trying to look like Chagall. No factories or heroic workers. Rather some spindly impressionistic flowers, butterflies and starscapes. Fit right into the scrap-metal ambience of General Resource Recovery.
“Same deal?” I asked Ivor. “Jonathan told you which artists to buy?”
“Yeah. Got a bunch of stuff. All’ve gone up, last I looked.”
“Including the big Ellingtons.”
“Shit, yeah. Maybe ten times. Got em on the cheap. His own fault, douche bag.”
“Jonathan?”
“Nah, the artist. Ellington. Professional wingnut. I’d only paid him about two-thirds of what he asked for before he got em hung in the reception area. I just asked him to paint some more clothes on the girls. Too much tit. Can embarrass people. He wouldn’t do it, so I didn’t pay him the balance. Said he’d sue me. Showed up here with this little bottle-eyed shit of a lawyer. Wouldn’t let em in the building. Told him if he wanted the pictures back, I’d take em down myself. Got a factory over there full of guys who know how to use a crowbar.”
That really made him happy. The happiest I’d ever seen him.
“You sure got him where you wanted him,” I said.
“Yeah. I sure did. Douche bag.”
I looked over at Cleo again, hoping Dobermans couldn’t read minds. She looked back at me, now awake, with a blank, noncommittal stare.
“Okay,” I said to Ivor. “I’m sorry again for bothering you. I really mean it this time.”
I jerked my head over at Cleo.
“Can I stand up?”
“Sure. Just keep your hands out where she can see them.”
I stood up and offered to shake, carefully. He took my hand.
“So that’s it?” he asked. “I thought you had a question for me.”
He was right. I’d lost my train of thought. Often happens when the talk turns to modern art.
“I do. I just wanted to know how you discovered Jonathan Eldridge. Who introduced you in the first place?”
“She didn’t tell you? Joyce Whithers. Sold Eldridge pretty hard. I figured that’s how you got on to me. Used to play cards with her. Still do, couple times a year.”
“I thought her husband was the card player.”
“Nah, the old lady had the brains and balls in that family. It was her game. She just brought him in so there’d be somebody around to get her a Scotch on the rocks and light her cigarettes. Smart broad. Getting me mixed up with that putz was the only thing she ever screwed me up on.”
“Thanks. That’s really all I wanted to know.”
“Next time you got a question like that, you can try picking up the telephone. Number’s in the book.”
“Sorry You’re right. I will. I appreciate it,” I said, making motions to leave. Then I thought of something.
“I’d really appreciate it if you cleared me with Ike and Connie. I don’t want any trouble.”
He waved that off.
“Nobody’s lookin’ for trouble,” he said, although with less sincerity than I’d hoped for.
Cleo stayed put on the couch, but as I passed by she pulled back her ears and wagged her tail. When Ivor opened the door Ike and Connie could see me scratching the top of her head and cooing softly in her ear.
“Cute pup,” I said to them as I fell into the parade back to the reception area.
—
I had an escort all the way from Ivor’s scrap-metal plant to the reaches of Suffolk County. A full-sized black pickup with a clattery diesel engine. They managed to keep several car lengths between us regardless of traffic or speed limits, so every time I thought they’d abandoned the tail they showed up again. I didn’t know if this was meant to convey a message, or just a signal, or even who was doing the signaling. Ivor seemed willing to let it go, but he might have been playing me the whole time. Or, Ike and Connie might have been taking a little independent initiative. Hard to tell. But it did interfere with my concentration, which was annoying, since right then I needed every bit of concentration I could muster.
I’d bypassed the traffic lights along the first leg of Sunrise Highway by going north and picking up the Southern State. From there I dropped down to Route 27 where they’d made it into a four-lane road. It was filled with cars and trucks, and local people trying to get back home to catch a little daylight savings relaxation in the outdoor furniture out on the pressure-treated deck. With a different car I might have been able to get some distance on the pickup by weaving my way through the heavy traffic, but the Grand Prix wasn’t exactly engineered for nimble lane changes.
It was, however, born, raised and modified to accelerate very quickly in a straight line, hurtling its impossible mass up to a cruising speed you wouldn’t want to experience in any kind of pickup truck.
I’d just passed the exit for Shirley, Butch’s beloved hometown, when I noticed Ike and Connie were boxed in behind a brace of compact Japanese sedans driving side by side in tight formation. In front of me Route 27 was clear of significant traffic, a set of parallel concrete ribbons dissecting the pine barrens and disappearing into the ocean haze hanging above the South Fork.
I rolled up the windows and pushed in the clutch. I slid the Hurst shifter into third gear, brought up the RPMs, then popped out the clutch while simultaneously sticking the accelerator to the floor mat. With all four barrels opened wide, the 428-cubic-inch V8 bellowed under the hood. Just shy of the red line, I put it back into fourth, but kept the throttle open and gripped the steering wheel with both hands as the speed climbed up over a hundred miles an hour.
I started to run through a mental checklist of all the equipment failures likely triggered by the sudden torque loads and excess velocity, but quickly gave it up. Too many to count, and it wasn’t going to stop me anyway.
I looked in the rearview as the speedometer pegged at 120 and the tack was flirting again with the red line. No sign of black pickups or law enforcement. I’d felt some vibrations in the suspension system as the big car accelerated up to its top end, but now everything was settled down, a tribute to Butch’s skill with the wheel balancer.
I could sense the scream of the big block engine, but I couldn’t hear it above the wind noise. Reality distorts a lot when you move past a hundred miles an hour. It goes by so quickly it loses definition, and takes on a jittery, smeared quality. I could feel alarm rising up in my rational brain, which was involuntarily processing the possible consequences of losing control, which at this speed could happen from nicking even the tiniest road hazard. My solution was to ignore my rational brain and keep the accelerator on the floor.
A green exit sign for Center Moriches flashed by. I eased back on the throttle until the speedometer needle came off the peg and started to move counterclockwise. A white step van appeared in the right lane. I gave him as wide a berth as I could in case he hadn’t seen me and accidentally drifted into my lane. It must have been frightening to have a gray-brown
I was almost within legal limits when I took the bend of the exit ramp. The smell of partially oxidized fuel
