Free Drawing Dead by Grant McCrea Page A

you mean, you don’t know?
    I pissed off Evgeny. He’ll be there, for sure. I’m not sure I’m comfortable going there when Big Daddy’s not happy with me.
    Don’t worry about that. I took care of it.
    What do you mean, you took care of it?
    I mean it’s okay. I talked to the guys about it. He’s not pissed.
    The guys?
    Andrei and Tolya.
    What the fuck do they know?
    They know. And anyway, you don’t want to be a pussy, do you?
    It was funny hearing that from Brendan.
    Okay, I said. But let’s go to the All In Club first. Warm up a bit on some fish.
    Good plan. Let’s meet at Puffie’s.
    Where’s that? I asked.
    Right next to Shoegasm.
    Did I hear that right?
    Yeah. It’s a shoe store on Twenty-seventh.
    Must be a good one.
    If you like big heels.
    I found some less than rotting jeans. I buttoned up a ridiculous Hawaiian shirt. The black one with the pineapples. I threw on my ultra-faded bomber jacket, circa 1942. I’d found it in a vintage shop in Brooklyn. I figured it was thematic. I posed for the mirror. I looked completely ridiculous.
    Perfect.
    Then I thought about the Mauser. Brighton Beach. Russians. Not to mention that I’d pissed off Evgeny. Let’s be prudent. I took off the jacket. Pulled the antique holster over my head. It fit snugly. It felt nice. Safe. Safer, even, with the gun in it.
    I put the Mauser in it.
    Truth was, it felt a little dangerous. I mean, I’d had one lesson. I get in a gun thing with somebody, something tells me that guy’s used his a bit more than me. I’m going to lose. I’m going to die.
    Fuck that. It made me feel manly.
    Manly was good.
    Puffie’s was good, too, in a different kind of way. It was one of those old-time New York taverns, dark and warm and the walls plastered with famous people’s publicity shots.
Puffie you’re the greatest
, scrawledDesi Arnaz.
Puffie, loved the shepherd’s pie
, from Jack Palance. That kind of stuff.
    Brendan walked in. I had to suppress a double take. He was decked out in designer chic. Form-fitting black silk shirt, tailored black pants, a Dior belt buckle saying exactly that, Dior, in brass letters at least three inches tall. He had a black leather jacket, too. But it sure didn’t come from the same place I got mine. And there I was, in my pseudo Hawaiian biker cowboy dude outfit. We must have been the oddest couple in town.
    Brendan got a few looks. He was a handsome guy. Tanned, in great shape. A vague resemblance to Sylvester Stallone, but more refined. He’d had a part in a straight-to-video parody once, playing the Stallone part. Silently. His voice was too high. They’d dubbed in someone who talked like a man. That was about as far as his acting career got. A couple small parts in commercials. The Ant Terminator, dressed up like Schwarzenegger in the movies. Couldn’t even see his face. Hasta la vista, vermin, he said. His only spoken line.
    Brendan spent a lot of time in the gym toning those tanned muscles. Hired a voice coach to turn him at least into a tenor. That Stallone thing had shaken him up. He wanted to be the perfect manly object. For other men. But the funny thing was, never mind the muscles, he was the biggest wimp on earth. One night he’d wandered into the wrong neighborhood and got chased halfway around Manhattan by a gang of twelve-and thirteen-year-olds. He’d come over to my place in tears. Hid in the basement for three days getting over it.
    He’d grown up gay in a rural Midwestern community. That’ll do it to you. His only friend had been his sister. That’ll make it worse.
    Do you really have to flaunt it that much? I asked.
    Flaunt what?
    The belt buckle, for starters.
    That’s a Dior, he said defensively.
    You’re kidding me, I said.
    The shirt’s Dior, too. Five hundred dollars at Bergdorf’s.
    Five hundred bucks that didn’t come out of your pocket.
    Not a chance, he said.
    Brendan, for all his fragility, was good at getting older men to buy him expensive stuff. Or maybe it was the