George Martin - Lowball

The first time he’d come to the police station he hadn’t slept a wink the night before. But he’d come anyway-no one knew what his characters got up to at night, and his fellow freelance artist Swash had insisted that the job was easy and the money good. And, indeed, he’d gotten nothing from his occasional forays into cop territory but a few modest paychecks and a paradoxical sense of civic pride. He could even boast that his work had helped to put away some very nasty characters.

If, that is, he had anyone to boast to.

“’Scuse me,” said one of the cops, a shapely redheaded nat with a detective’s badge clipped to the waistband of her skirt, and Eddie shuffled out of her way. But despite her surface politeness, as she pushed past he saw that her nose wrinkled in distaste. Eddie thought about what Mister Nice Guy might do with a redhead like her and a leather strap.

“Eddie Carmichael?” Eddie jerked his eyes up to see a pale nat in a cheap suit. “I’m Detective Black.” He was young, even younger than Eddie, and had a soft voice that Eddie recognized from the earlier phone call. “You can call me Franny. This is my partner, Detective Stevens.” Stevens was a tall, black nat in a dark suit. He was slim, with prominent ears …

Jesus Christ. It was Mr. Trio.

“Whoa,” Franny said, catching Eddie’s shoulder with one slim hand. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I…” He swallowed hard. “I just had a tough time getting here this morning.” He wiped his face with his handkerchief. “I don’t deal well with crowds.”

“Maybe you should sit down.”

Franny helped Eddie to a seat, then fetched him a paper cup of water. He took it with shaking hands, trying not to look at Stevens. “I’ll be all right.”

If the situation weren’t so terrifying it would almost be laughable. Called in to sketch his own creation! But there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to connect him to Gary Glitch. As long as he kept calm and did his job-maybe not too good of a job, but not so bad as to attract attention-he could just collect his paycheck and that would be the end of it. The hardest part would be pretending that he’d never seen Stevens before.

No, the hardest part would be not drawing Gary Glitch as though he’d drawn the character ten thousand times before.

“What’s the case?” Eddie asked, struggling to keep his voice level.

Franny shrugged. “Missing persons. Sort of.”

“I, uh-oh?” Eddie fumbled with his portfolio and cane to cover his confusion and relief. “What do you mean ‘sort of’?”

“It’s not much of a case,” Franny admitted.

“It’s the best you deserve,” Stevens muttered under his breath, so low that Franny couldn’t have heard it. Oh, really?

“We aren’t even really sure anyone has actually gone missing,” Franny explained as he led Eddie through swinging doors and across the crowded, noisy wardroom, where too many desks were crammed together under harsh fluorescent lighting and a miasma of stale vending machine coffee. “Very few of the supposed missing persons are, you know, anyone that anyone would miss. But now we’ve got a witness-someone who claims he saw some of the missing jokers getting snatched off the street.” They paused outside an interrogation room and looked through the one-way glass. “For all the good he does us.”

Slumped in a plastic folding chair on the other side of the glass was one of the most pathetic-looking jokers Eddie had ever seen. His head resembled a wolf’s-a mangy, flea-bitten, ragged-eared cur of a wolf. The fur was matted and patchy, with a lot of gray around the muzzle; the watery, red-rimmed eyes stared wearily at nothing; and the lolling tongue was coated with gray phlegm. The rest of him was essentially human, with a stained and tattered Knicks T-shirt stretched across a swollen beer gut. Dandruff and fallen gray hairs littered the shoulders of his filthy denim jacket.

Stevens crossed his arms on his chest. “His name’s Lupo. Used to tend bar at some swank joint, he says, but that was a long time ago. Now he’s just another denizen of No Fixed Abode.”

“He was passed out behind a Dumpster,” Franny continued, “and woke up just as the supposed kidnappers were leaving the scene. Didn’t get a very good look at the perps, but maybe enough for a sketch.”

Eddie was dubious. “I’ll do what I can.”

Franny sighed. “I sure hope so, or else this case is just going to fizzle out.”

At the sound of the door, Lupo’s head jerked up like a spastic puppet’s, his eyes wide and feral. Eddie let the detective precede him into the room.

“It’s just me, Lupo,” Franny said.

Lupo’s muzzle corrugated as Eddie entered, his eyes narrowing and his ears going back. Though the wolf-headed joker was no rose himself-he stank of garbage, cheap wine, and wet dog-his beer-can-sized muzzle probably gave him a keen sense of smell. “What’s that ?”

Love you too , Eddie thought.

“This is Eddie Carmichael, the forensic artist,” Franny said. “He’s going to draw some sketches of the men you saw last night.”

With some reluctance Lupo pulled his eyes off of Eddie and stared pleadingly at the detectives. “I tol’ you, it was dark. And I don’ remember stuff so good anymore.”

Stevens gave Lupo something that Eddie figured was supposed to be a reassuring smile. “Mr. Carmichael is a professional, Lupo. He’ll help you to remember.” He looked sidewise at Eddie, his hard glance saying Right?

Eddie froze for a moment, remembering those cold cop eyes looking over the barrel of a gun at him, then shook away the memory. “That’s, uh, that’s right.”

“Well then.” Stevens stood. “I’ll leave you two to this oh-so-important case while I get back to some real detective work.” He looked pointedly at Franny. “If you need any help … don’t call me.” And then, without a backward glance, he left.

Eddie swallowed, his heart rate slowing toward normal. There was something weird happening between the two detectives, but as far as Eddie was concerned, he felt like he’d dodged a bullet for the second time in twenty-four hours.

Hauling himself up into a chair, Eddie unzipped his portfolio. He pulled out a sketchpad, a fat black 6B pencil, and a battered three-ring binder of reference images, but to begin with he just laid them all flat on the table. “There’s nothing magic about this process,” he said, beginning a spiel he’d used a hundred times. But this time he was trying to calm himself as much as the witness. “I’m going to ask you some questions, but you’ll be doing most of the talking. All right?”

Lupo’s ears still lay flat against his head, but he nodded.

“So, just to begin with … how many of them were there?”

“Three, maybe four. They had this poor asshole with four legs all tied up carrying him toward a van. I only saw the front, couldn’t get no plate-”

“Um, actually,” Franny interrupted, “he doesn’t need to know about the crime. That’s my department.”

Eddie nodded an acknowledgment at the detective, then returned his attention to Lupo. “All I want to know is what they looked like.”

A wrinkle appeared between Lupo’s eyebrows, and the pink tip of his tongue poked out. “Well, they were all guys … or really ugly women.” He smirked. “This one big guy seemed to be ordering the other ones around.”

“Tell me about him.”

Lupo spread his hands like he was describing the fish that got away. “Big.”

Eddie sighed. “ How big? Six feet tall? Bigger?”

“I dunno. Six four, maybe?” The lupine joker squeezed his eyes shut and clapped his hands over them, bending his head down. “I used to be good at this,” he muttered into the table’s scarred Formica. “When I was tending bar at the Crystal Palace, I knew every regular customer. What they liked, how they tipped, everything.”