Free Ring Game by Pete Hautman

blame somebody for a situation he can’t do a damn thing about.”
    Axel glared, then his mouth fell into an open grin, and he began to chuckle. The chuckle enlarged into a laugh. His face, always ruddy, bloomed deep red, and his green eyes filled with tears. Crow watched, astonished. Axel was not a man who laughed easily, and certainly not like this. It was all the more bizarre because Crow didn’t think that what he’d said was funny. He’d been genuinely angry. Within a few seconds, Axel’s laughter took on a wheezy quality, and he started coughing—big, gasping coughs that sounded as if his chest was filled with Jell-O.
    “Are you okay?” Crow asked.
    Axel nodded, still coughing. He waved his hand in a don’t-mind-me gesture.
    Crow found himself thinking how hard it would be, if Axel died, to get that big body down the hill and into Sam’s boat. As soon as he had that thought, he felt ashamed—it was the sort of self-centered, unfeeling thought that he would expect of a guy like Hyatt Hilton.
    Axel’s coughing fit subsided. He thumped his chest, clearing his throat, wiping tears from his fading cheeks.
    “That’s funny,” he said in a ragged voice. “Bone up his butt. Sounds like something your old man would say. I needed a good laugh.”
    “I thought you were going to blow an artery. You scared the hell out of me.”
    Axel gave him a flat smile, his eyes bright. “Yeah, right. Probably scared you were going to have to haul my dead ass off this island.”
    Crow laughed. If Axel detected a hollow quality to the laugh, he didn’t show it. Crow picked up the crib, looked over the cards, threw it down. “No points. It’s your deal.”
    Axel scooped up the cards and squared the deck. “I wanted to ask you something, Joe. That fellow Hilton. I really am worried that Carmen is making a mistake here.”
    “Can’t say I blame you.”
    “I was thinking about having him checked out. You know. See if there’s anything Carmen ought to know.”
    “Like what?” Crow asked. He was afraid he knew what was coming.
    Axel picked up his can of beer, looked at it, set it back on the table. “Like if he’s got a record. You do that sort of thing, don’t you? Find out about people?”
    Crow shook his head. “Not really.”
    “I mean, when you’re not hanging with the old cockers. You used to be a cop. You know how to investigate people, right?”
    Crow shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He did not want to get involved in this. No matter how it came down in the end, somebody was going to hate him for it. He felt a burning in his gut. He’d just come up here to go fishing with his dad, that was all, and now this. Maybe he should simply say “No,” and live with the consequences. At least he’d be done with it.
    Axel, reading the direction of his thoughts, said, “I need your help, Joe. It’s bad enough she wants to marry the son-of-a-bitch, but if she married him and it turned out he was a wife-killer or a bigamist or something, hell, I just couldn’t stand it that I didn’t check him out. You know the guy. You used to be a cop. You know how to find stuff out. Help me out here.”
    “I don’t know,” Crow said, unable to look at Axel’s face. “I’m kind of busy these days.”
    “Look, I’ll pay you for your time. You could at least find out if he’s got a record. What’s that take, a phone call?”
    Guilt smothered anger; there was no way out. He couldn’t say no. The fact was, he hadn’t told Axel the whole story. He could almost smell the incense and old wood of St. Mary’s Church on a Saturday morning, see the red light above the confessional door. He felt like a kid who’d gone to confession and left out his most grievous sin. What was the penance for that?

8
Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it,
    —W. Somerset Maugham
    “P OLYHYMNIA DESIMONE?”
    “Yes?”
    “I’m calling from Drew Chance Productions.”
    “Drew