Drawing Dead Read Free

s'posed to know he was going to try and read the damn things? I told him not to open 'em up.”
    â€œAnd I told
you
not to get involved with people like that.”
    â€œHow was I s'posed to buy us a car without I get involved with guys like that? You know anybody sells cars isn’t connected?”
    They had been having variations on the same argument ever since leaving Chicago. Ben shrugged and kept the Cadillac rolling.
    â€œYou don’t think Freddy’ll show up in Minneapolis?” Tom asked a few miles later. “I don’t want to end up eel bait like Billy Yeddis.”
    â€œWhy would he do that? First, he is not likely to find us there, and if he does, even Joey C. has his practical side. How angry could he get over a few comic books?”
    â€œAll Billy did was miss a few car payments.”
    The Tom and Ben Show listened to the hum of the Cadillac’s big wheels on concrete.
    â€œYou’ve got a point there,” Ben said.
    â€œYou sure?” Joey Cadillac said.
    Freddy Wisnesky, slumped in the chair in front of Joey’s desk, rolled his mountainous shoulders and looked down at his tie. Today he was wearing his tie with the big red flowers on it. Roses. Real silk. Lots of class. “I been lookin' everywhere, Mister C. I been over to their apartment a bunch of times. I been askin' around everywhere. I don’t think they're around no more.” Freddy’s nose, a flattened, solid mass of healed cartilage, was no longer available as an air passage. His voice sounded like that of a man with a bad cold speaking from the other end of a culvert.
    Joey Cadillac picked up a memo pad and started tearing off pages, balling them in his fist, flicking them across his eight-foot-wide desk at Freddy, who let them bounce off his chest, unblinking.
    â€œYou know who Diogenes is?” Joey asked him.
    Freddy contorted his face. A bit of white spittle oozed from the corner of his mouth. He seemed to swell, then collapse, sinking down a few inches in the chair. He gave his head a shake, then ventured, “One a those Greek guys, has a joint over on Halsted?”
    Joey grinned. “That’s pretty good, Freddy.”
    Encouraged, Freddy elaborated, “One a them restaurants over there?”
    â€œDiogenes,” Joey said, standing and hiking up his pin-striped linen
    trousers, “is this guy who walks around with this lantern looking for an honest man. He did this his whole life, looking for this one honest guy.” Joey stopped and looked to see if he was making an impression.
    â€œI musta been thinking of some other guy,” Freddy said.
    Joey nodded. “Diogenes doesn’t own no Greek restaurant. Even a Greek knows he ain’t gonna find an honest man in the restaurant business. Anyways, this Diogenes is kinda like me, Freddy. I just wish I could find one honest guy, one guy I could count on. These comic book guys, this Paine and this Disraeli, these are not your honest guys, Freddy. So what I want you to do is like Diogenes with his lantern, only instead of looking for an honest guy, which you ain’t gonna find, you go find those comic book guys. You go looking for them guys and you
find
them, you know what I mean?”
    Freddy contorted his face again.
    â€œNever mind,” Joey said. “Let me lay it out for you. You find out where they went. There're these stores that sell nothing but comic books, you go ask around there, find out who they know, find out where they went. You know how to do that. Just keep asking and then go find them wherever they are, and when you find them? Do like you did with Billy Yeddis, then bring me my car back.”
    Freddy went blank for a moment, then he smiled. “I could do that,” he said.
    Something Freddy Wisnesky had learned from Mister C.—if you want to know something, you do not waste your time trying to figure it out; you ask guys. If you ask enough guys, one of them will tell you. Some