The Switch

by Elmore Leonard

  Louis kept wondering if the man had told his wife about the money he was putting away and if it made any difference one way or the other. Yes, it was the man’s problem, but he kept wondering what could happen if the man’s wife got pissed-off at him. She could make an awful lot of trouble for the guy. Ordell had showed him their house, big English-looking place with the dark beams outside, set in concrete that had been stuccoed over. Ordell had also showed him the guy’s latest condominium project—about a hundred units going up and the sign saying

  GRANDVIEW MANOR ESTATES

  FAD Designed Homes

  for as low as $39,995.00

  “There’s a FAD in Your Future!”

  Frank A. Dawson Associates

  Louis had looked at it and said, “That’s a grand view, all right. Of Chrysler’s Mound Road assembly plant.”

  The guy, Dawson, had a lot to lose.

  “Aw right,” Ordell said, coming away from the phone, clapping his hands together once. “That was Richard. Richard was out in his black Hornet doing his surveillance he calls it and says the man left the house at 10 p.m. with a suitcase, went out to Metro and got on a Delta flight to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Like he does every month or so.”

  “Richard found all that out?” Louis sounded surprised.

  “Richard’ll fool you,” Ordell said. “Only thing different this time, man had his boy with him and his boy had a suitcase. And you know something. That’s even better. Leave mama home alone.”

  Louis said, “So you’re thinking about tonight? Right now?”

  “No, I want to call Mr. Walker first, see if he ain’t drunk and his shoes are dry. Make sure of everything,” Ordell said. “But I don’t see nothing wrong with tomorrow.”

  9

  * * *

  “GIVE US ABOUT AN HOUR,” Ordell said to Richard on the phone. “We got to pick up something to use . . . Richard, we not gonna drive up in the van. We got to get something else, then make a switch. You understand? . . . Right, now see, what you do”—Ordell looked at his watch—“Richard, you better give us a little more than an hour. Say, call us at between eleven-thirty and quarter to twelve . . . Yeah, the number I gave you, the pay phone . . . Yeah, that’s cool, Richard. We see you later.”

  Ordell looked over at Louis Gara having his morning coffee in his skivvies, his bare feet up on the coffee table where the box of masks was still sitting.

  “She’s out in Pontiac someplace at a bump shop, getting an estimate,” Ordell said. “Second one she’s been to.”

  “I was thinking maybe a Detroit Edison truck,” Louis said, “or Michigan Bell. You know, look like we’re making a service call.”

  “We don’t want to keep it more than about a half hour,” Ordell said. “Come back, make the switch at the parking garage and leave it there. I mean whatever kind of vehicle you like. Sound good?”

  “Fine,” Louis said. “You’ve got it mapped out. I don’t see we have any problems, long as you say Richard can handle his end.”

  “I programmed him, pushed the on button,” Ordell said. “Now he moves till you shut him off.”

  Mickey was home before eleven with her estimates. Frank would call that evening and she would tell him—straight, without the needle—it would cost him somewhere between $5- and-$600 to have her car repaired. Which seemed unbelievable. She might as well play it straight, because Frank would play it down. So, it would cost him $100 deductible; don’t worry about it. Don’t worry—but what about the inconvenience? Getting the estimates (“Yeah? What else did you have to do?”), being without a car for awhile (“You can’t get a ride to the club?”). Right, forget the whole thing. Frank was paying for it. Frank paid the bills. She rode along. (Her mother said, “Isn’t he a wonderful provider? He’s so good to you. You have everything you want.”)

  He would call in the evening and—maybe she wouldn’t mention the car at all.

  Marshall, the lover, would call around noon with, “Hi. The coast still clear?” Or some dumb thing. She could let the phone ring, not answer. Except it might be Bo. Or her mother about Bo.

  Through the kitchen window over the sink, as she filled the tea kettle, Mickey saw the policeman in the backyard. He was walking across the grass from the drive toward the patio. Then he was over too far for her to see him. Mickey turned the water off and listened. After a moment she left the kitchen, moved through the back hall to the family room and stood looking at the French doors that opened onto the patio. The curtains were pulled back, panes of glass sparkled in the sunlight. She could see the wrought-iron patio table, the canvas chairs. There was no sign of a policeman. Mickey moved back through the hall to the kitchen and was approaching the door to the garage when the front-entrance chimes rang. She jumped.

  The policeman was standing close, almost on top of her as she opened the door, the dark-blue uniform bulging at her, the serious, round face beneath the hat brim staring solemnly. He smelled of perspiration.

  “Yes,” Richard said, “we’re investigating an alleged burglary in the neighborhood and I wonder did you hear or notice anything unusual last night or early this morning.”

  Mickey held the door open all the way, the air blowing the man’s odor. She had to concentrate on what he was saying because the uniform distracted her. It was so busy. She wondered why the designer hadn’t stopped before making the epaulets and pocket flaps and buttons light-blue. And the stripe down the pants. The badge said something, but she couldn’t read it.

  “No, I didn’t hear a sound. Who was broken into?”

  “Well, there was several houses,” Richard said. “One of them didn’t know it till we come around investigating.”

  “I’m sure no one came in here,” Mickey said.

  The policeman’s eyes moved past hers. “You are sure. You checked the house?”

  “I’d know,” Mickey said. “Wouldn’t I? Everything was in order this morning. Nothing missing.”

  “You checked your basement?”

  “No, I haven’t been down there.”

  “Well, I noticed looking around outside,” Richard said, “you know one of your basement windows is broken?”

  It startled her. “No, I didn’t. Are you sure?”

  “Well, I can tell when a window’s broke.” Richard didn’t smile; he meant it. He said, “You want me to, I’ll come in and have a look around.”

  Mickey stepped aside. “Yes, please. I’d appreciate it.”

  He asked Mickey how to get downstairs. When she took him into the back hall and opened the door to the basement, he said she didn’t have to go down with him, he’d find it all right. He was gone only a few minutes, came back up the steps filling the stairway—right hand pressed against the tooled-leather Tex Shoemaker holster that held the big Colt Python—then looked both ways along the short hall. Richard didn’t say much when he was investigating. He went into the family room, crossed to the French doors and looked out, then jiggled the knob, trying to turn it.

  “It’s locked,” Mickey said.

  Richard drew the beige curtains closed, then reached in between them and jiggled the door knob again.

  “How about your upstairs?”

  “I know it’s in order,” Mickey said. “The basement’s the only thing I wasn’t sure of.”

  Richard didn’t volunteer information about the basement. He said, “I wonder if I could use your phone.”

  Mickey brought him into the kitchen, Richard glancing at a card palmed in his hand. As he dialed a number Mickey asked him if he’d like coffee or iced tea.

  Richard stopped. He said, “No thanks,” then had to dial the number again. He waited, then straightened as he said, “Yeah, this is . . . uh-huh, I’m at—” He looked over at Mickey. “What’s that address here?” She told him. “I’m at twenty-four twenty-two Covington. There’s a broken window in the basement, but everything seems okay. There is no MO as at the alleged burglary. Doors all locked. The one in back by the patio would seem to be the way to get in, but I don�
��t see it’s been touched . . . That’s correct. Yeah, well, I’ll keep on then . . . Right.” He hung up.

  “Was there much stolen?” Mickey said.

  “Where?”

  “The houses that were broken into.”

  “Well, the usual. TV sets, jewelry.”

  She let him out the front door and waited to watch the plain black car back out the drive and disappear up the street. She assumed he was with the Bloomfield Township Police. But why wasn’t he driving a squad car, with the emblem on the side? She tried to remember what the local police cars looked like.

  Louis had picked up a florist delivery van parked on the side of a gas station, the key in the ignition, waiting to be serviced or all through, Louis couldn’t tell which. It ran all right and he drove it straight out Woodward ten miles to Birmingham and met Ordell and the tan van on the lower level of the town’s south parking structure. They went up a flight of concrete steps to a vestibule and waited nearly twenty minutes for the phone to ring.

  Ordell picked it up and said, “Richard, my man.” He nodded most of the time, saying, “Uh-huh—” But hung up shaking his head. “Richard and his alleged.”

  Louis said, “She’s home.”

  “She’s home,” Ordell said. “We go in through the patio.”

  Down on the lower level again, Ordell took a shopping bag out of the tan van and brought it over to the florist van. Louis waited behind the wheel. When Ordell was in he opened the shopping bag, brought out one of the black masks and handed it to Louis who put it in a side pocket of his blue nylon jacket. He was wearing his tan cap with it, and jeans.

  Ordell brought the revolvers out then, both of them .38 Smith and Wessons, Detective Specials. He handed one to Louis.

  “Just in case,” Ordell said.

  “I know,” Louis said.

  “I don’t want to use it. I don’t intend to,” Ordell said. “But if somebody is standing between me and going to Jackson for forty years then it’s too bad, cause I’ll use it. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “I know,” Louis said. “It’s not a choice.”

  Marshall Taylor spent the morning at Detroit Diesel discussing cold-form extrusions—sucker rod couplings, swage nipples, bull plugs—and looking at his watch. He tried to get out before eleven-thirty so he wouldn’t have to take the purchasing guy to lunch. When he didn’t make it, Marshall thought it over and made a decision with a certain risk involved, considering that Detroit Diesel was Taylor Industries’ best customer. At ten to twelve—the purchasing guy having already assumed he was going to be taken somewhere for the martinis and the New York strip sirloin—Marshall said Jesus Christ, he just remembered a previous engagement, and exploded out of the purchasing guy’s office. (Fuck him, he could eat in the cafeteria.)

  All the way north on Telegraph to Bloomfield Hills, Marshall kept telling himself it was worth it. He decided he wouldn’t stop and call Mickey, as he promised. (He’d call the purchasing guy later and invite him out to the club Saturday with his wife.) What he’d do, he’d get to Mickey’s house about a half-hour early, hopefully while she was still getting dressed. He imagined her opening the back door with some kind of shorty housecoat on, just bra and panties on underneath. He’d say why didn’t he make them a drink while she got dressed. Tell her to take her time. Then throw a couple of martinis together fast, run upstairs with them and catch her standing in the bedroom in the bra and panties, about to slip her dress on. They’d look at each other. He’d walk over. She’d let the dress fall to the floor—

  Louis drove the florist delivery van past the house twice, 2422 Covington, the English-looking house. On the third pass he swung into the drive, brushed the high hedge and took the van all the way to the back. The garage opened on the backyard side. Louis made a tight turn, a quick adjustment, and pulled in next to the Grand Prix. The woman might have heard them. She might have caught a flash of the van if she’d been looking out the window.

  Ordell stepped around the van to the door that led inside the house from the garage. He tried the knob carefully. It didn’t budge.

  “Show time,” Louis said. He took his cap off, snapped the black mask in place and put his cap back on. They looked at each other, maybe both of them thinking the same thing: something to tell later on: what they looked like standing in the garage with their Halloween masks on, fairly tense because it was about to happen, but both of them grinning a little. As though it had to be a little cuckoo or else it wouldn’t be worth doing.

  Maybe both of them thinking, Shit, what am I doing here? as they ran low along the back of the house, underneath the windows to the patio. Ordell put a hand flat on the French door, turned the knob with the other and the door pushed in easily, then stopped against the curtains. That was no problem. They got into the family room and stood listening. Louis remembered the feeling now, what it was like to break into somebody’s house. It had been a long time ago; even longer ago than the time he had played golf at the country club. Ordell was peeking into the hall, slipping the .38 Smith out of the hip pocket of his flared jeans. Louis put his hand in his jacket pocket, but didn’t take the gun out. Ordell glanced back at him, motioning with his head.

  They walked through the hall to the kitchen.

  When Mickey turned the water off and came around from the sink with the dishtowel in her hand she jumped and made an odd sound, sucking in her breath.

  Ordell said, “Trick or treat, mama.”

  Louis didn’t waste time. He walked up to her, seeing her eyes widen, scared to death—the dark-brown eyes—turned her around and held her by the shoulders, not feeling her try to resist, as Ordell got out the mask for her that had tape covering the eyeholes. Ordell slipped it over her head, adjusted it just right, and Louis turned her to face him again. She seemed calm, her mouth slightly open. She had nice hair that was parted and slanted down across her forehead, pulled and held tightly now by the elastic band of the mask. Ordell went over and opened the door to the garage.

  Louis said, “She doesn’t have any shoes on.” She was wearing white slacks and a faded blue cotton shirt that looked to Louis like a cheap workshirt.

  “She don’t need shoes,” Ordell said. “Come on.”

  Mickey said, “If you want money—my purse is on the breakfast table. I have some jewelry upstairs, not much—”

  “Shhhh. Quiet,” Ordell said.

  They stood still, hearing the car then in the drive—the sound close to the house—then the idling, low hum of the engine in the backyard. Ordell stepped carefully to the alcove of windows by the breakfast table.

  “Somebody—you expecting somebody?” He stared out, holding the beige curtain. “A man—”

  Mickey couldn’t think for a moment, in darkness, feeling the hands on her shoulders. “My husband said he was coming home—”

  “Ain’t your husband,” Ordell said. He came away from the windows, motioning to Louis.

  Marshall was surprised to see the garage door closed; even more surprised to find it locked. The outside kitchen door was also locked. So Marshall moved to the bay of windows and looked in, wanting to see Mickey but not wanting her to see him quite yet. She wasn’t in the kitchen. But a purse was lying open on the breakfast table, and a wallet and ring of keys. He had to think.

  If he went around and rang the bell—the obvious thing to do—there was a chance he’d be seen by one of the neighbors. He didn’t know any of them; they didn’t know him. But why risk it: start talk, maybe get Mickey in trouble. He was thinking of her—you bet he was—as he moved across the grass to the patio. The door would be locked and he’d have to knock anyway, ruining his chance of surprising her and having a little fun. It was the kind of thing she would like him for later. (“You big kook.”) Okay, she was home. Probably upstairs now, changing.

  Then another surprise: the patio door was open. In fact it was ajar, pushed in against the curtains. Okay, she’d been out in the backyard getting some sun—wanting to look good—saw what time it w
as and rushed in to get dressed. A little anxious maybe?

  Marshall went through to the kitchen. There wasn’t a sound in the house and he tried not to make any himself as he got the Beefeater and vermouth out of the cupboard below the counter . . . the ice, the lowball glasses . . . no olives; and he wasn’t going to cut lemon twists. She was liable to come down any time and if he was going to surprise her—do something kooky—he might as well do it right. Marshall drank down half of a martini, refilled the glass with gin and gave it a swirl. There. He walked into the front hall and up the carpeted stairs with the drinks.

  The next part would be tricky: surprise her without frightening her too much. He didn’t want to catch her on the toilet either. His appearance was bound to give her a start. Then she’d be nervous, or pretend to be mad. He’d get her over that. He felt he knew how to handle Mickey. Gently. She didn’t seem the type who liked rough stuff. She was giving, agreeable. He’d had the feeling for some time that Mickey was more than likely the type who couldn’t say no. Whether because she liked it so much or because she didn’t want to hurt your feelings, Marshall wasn’t sure. But he was going to find out.

  The open doorway at the end of the hall looked as though it led into the master bedroom. How about just, “Surprise!” But not too loud. Or—yeah—“Did someone say they wanted an ice-cold martini?” Deadpan. Let her laugh first. Approaching the door he could see her sitting on the foot of the bed: her head lowered, as though she was looking down at her hands.

  Entering the bedroom, getting his expression just right, Marshall said, “Did someone say they wanted—”

  Her face raised as he spoke, something black covering her eyes. And something hard then nudging the side of his head. Wait a second—what’s going on? He stepped back with one foot, careful of the drinks he was holding, turning to see what touched him. He caught a glimpse. He saw the revolver in his face and two figures, two masks, but not like Mickey’s, there were eyes looking at him, one pair of eyes close, coming at him—