The Exotic Darla said, “Yeah?”
“That’s the end of the story.”
“You’re not gonna buy me a drink, are you?”
“No, I’m not,” Jack said. “You want to hear another Roy story?”
She thought a moment. Maybe that’s what she was doing, Jack wasn’t sure. She said, “No, thank you,” swiveled around on the stool, looking over the room, raised both arms to adjust the halter holding her tired breasts, and left him.
Roy came down the bar holding a bottle of vodka by the neck. He poured a shot into Jack’s glass, then twisted off another one, Jack saying, “Darla’s got bruises on her arm. You notice?”
“Bumping into the wrong guys. That girl’s a sack of roaches.”
“I read in the paper that in the U.S., I think it was just this country, a woman is beaten or physically abused something like every eighteen seconds.”
Roy said, “You don’t tell me.”
“Somebody made a study.”
Roy said, “You wouldn’t think that many women get out of line, would you?” He walked off.
Jack watched Roy making a drink down the bar. He wondered why he remembered a short piece in the paper about women being abused but hardly anything at all about Nicaragua.
When he came back Roy said, “Delaney, you know what broads do when they get sick? I’ve never seen it to fail, they throw up in the washbasin. They don’t throw up in the toilet, like you’re suppose to.”
“That’s interesting,” Jack said. “You think that’s why they get beat up?”
“Who knows why. They’re all different and they’re all the same.”
“Still hate women, huh?”
“I love women. I just don’t trust ’em.”
“I met one you can.”
“Yeah? Good for you.”
“And heard an amazing story you aren’t gonna believe.”
“But you’re gonna tell me it anyway.”
“You’d be hurt if I didn’t. You’d pout and probably never speak to me again. It’s an opportunity story, as in chance of a lifetime.”
“Is it about money?”
“Five million, give or take a few bucks.”
“That’s money. Where is it?”
“You’re jumping to the best part. It belongs to a type of individual, Roy, that if you can take it from him you’d not only never have to work again as long as you live, you’d be performing a service to humanity. The kind a thing that makes you feel good all over.”
Roy said, “You understand I serve humanity every day for eight hours and it doesn’t make me feel worth a shit. They come in, a guy wants a Sazerac. He has no idea in the world what a Sazerac is, but he’s in New Orleans. I serve him something with a lot of bitters in it. Another guy comes in, looks around, he whispers to me, ‘You got any absinthe?’ He says, ‘They don’t have none at the Old Absinthe House. They tell me it’s against the law to serve it.’ I say how do I know, to this little pussy fella, you’re not a cop? He shows me he’s from Fort Wayne, Indiana. I glance around the bar, get out a clear bottle I make up that’s got Pernod in it and a piece a deadwood with a caterpillar stuck on it. Asshole drinks five of ’em at five bills a shot. Serve humanity, I serve ’em any fucking thing they want.”
Jack said, “That’s why I’m talking to you, Roy, you’re a sensitive, understanding person. This guy gets finished collecting his five million he’s most likely gonna hop in a private plane and leave the country with it. We get a half share we split three ways.”
“Who’s we?”
“You and I, maybe Cullen.”
“Cullen, they let him out?”
“Medical release, so he can get laid.”
“What was he in, twenty-five years?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Jesus, they’d a had to shoot me off the fence.”
“Well, he’s out and feeling pretty good.”
“What’re we talking about, a bank, for Christ sake?”
“Not anything like it.”
“Then what do you need Cullen for?”
“I think he’d enjoy it. Why not?”
“You’re feeling pretty good yourself, aren’t you?”
“I’ve been born again. Since yesterday I have an entirely new outlook on life.”
“This guy’s gonna collect five mil you say, give or take. . . . Are we talking about cash, with bank straps on it?”
“You’ve never heard of one like this, Roy. It’s never been done before.”
“It has to do with the funeral business.”
“Not unless somebody gets shot.”
“This doesn’t sound like you atall, Delaney.”
“I told you, I’m a different person. You want to know what it is, or you rather guess?”
“I know every kind of scam or heist there is grown men have tried to pull and fell on their ass doing.”
“All except this one.”
“Have you seen the guy? You know who he is?”
“I met him today.”
“Yeah? . . . Well, what is he?”
“He’s a Nicaraguan colonel.”
Roy stared at Jack. He turned then, walked down the bar, made a drink, rang it up, and came back.
“You met a woman you say you can trust and she told you an amazing story I’m not gonna believe. How to pick up five mil.”
“Give or take.”
“How come she gets half? The guy her husband?”
Jack shook his head. “She needs it to build a hospital, for lepers.”
Roy paused, then nodded. “A leper hospital, yeah, that’s a good idea. You know why lepers never finish a card game?”
“They have to quit,” Jack said, “when they throw in their hands.” He looked at Roy with the same deadpan expression, because he knew he had him and knew they were going to play this one and might even have a pretty good time working it out.
He said, “What I need at the moment is a police officer. Or someone who knows how to speak in that same ugly, obscene way they have of addressing offenders.”
9
* * *
ROY’S KILLER LOOK DIDN’T work on lavatory doors or in creeping traffic, so he’d have to kick something or pound the dashboard of Jack’s VW Scirocco with the edge of his fist. It was a tan ’78 Scirocco, faded but still mean-looking, Jack Delaney had bought used and now had 153,000 miles on the odometer. He wasn’t worried Roy could hurt the car hitting it, but he’d jump when Roy yelled, “Move it, goddamn it,” the man’s impatience coming out unexpectedly, in spurts; then Roy would be quiet for a while. Jack got them out of the narrow streets of the Quarter, across Canal, and through the new downtown that looked like every other big city. They were heading uptown on St. Charles Avenue, once again in New Orleans, before he told Roy about the deal, why the guy was collecting five-million dollars.
Roy would say, “Now hold on a minute,” and ask a question. Jack would answer it or he’d say, “Don’t you know what’s going on in the world, Roy? Christ, don’t you read the paper? You never heard of the Sandinistas, for Christ sake?” Lucy had given Jack a book of color photographs called Nicaragua that showed all these young guys in sport shirts and baseball caps wearing masks, hoods with holes, or scarves tied around their faces, and armed with all kinds of dinky weapons, Saturday Night Specials, .22 rifles . . . A pickup army fighting well-armed uniformed troops wearing helmets, and it was a kick looking at pictures of these guys in print sport shirts and bandit masks. Jack could see himself one of them if he were Nicaraguan and had been there in ’79. There were pictures of bodies, too, death and destruction, fires, refugees running and crowds of people waving red and black flags. There was a picture of the guy they hated and finally overthrew, ran out of the country, Somoza, wearing a white suit with a sash. Jack could tell by looking at Somoza he was that type of person who was set in his ways and didn’t know shit.
Roy said he had a snitch one time who was a Nicaraguan. When he was working undercover with the f
elony action squad. He said there were plenty of Nicaraguans in New Orleans.
Jack said, “Yeah, and I think you’re gonna meet a couple of them pretty soon.”
With the windows open they would quit talking as Jack passed a St. Charles Avenue streetcar clanging along the median. It was his favorite street, overgrown with oak and all kinds of shrubbery, palm trees in the yards of old shuttered homes. He rode the streetcar for fun when he was little. The tracks ran all the way to the levee and then up Carrollton Avenue to a point where the motorman would flip the seatbacks, walk to the other end of the car, and drive it downtown to Canal.
Roy said, “I hope some guys I know don’t find out what this Nicaraguan’s up to. They’d be standing in line to take a swipe at him. Is the guy really as bad as you say?”
“Ask Lucy. She’ll tell you.”
“I mean this guy is bad.”
“That’s what’s good about taking his money.”
“But if he’s bad . . .”
“Yeah?”
“How come he doesn’t keep the money for himself? What is he, just bad in certain areas?”
“I wondered about that, too,” Jack said. “Maybe he’s got all the money he needs.”
“Or why would he want to go back and take a chance getting killed?”
“Why were you a cop?”
“It wasn’t for the money, I’ll tell you that.”
Jack said, “Well then.”
He took the Scirocco rumbling in second gear down Audubon, the street full of trees and the dark shapes of big homes, warm lights in windows here and there, a few porch lights showing through hedges and shrubs. He said, “There, on the left. That’s Lucy’s house, her mother’s.”
Roy said, “Get Lucy to buy you a muffler. I think she can afford it.”
“There’s the car. What should I do?”
“Keep going.”
“It’s the same one, the Chrysler. . . . Jesus, the guy behind the wheel, that’s the one named Franklin. The colored guy, or whatever he is. Creole, I don’t know.”
“Go down the end and turn around.”
“The other guy, I don’t think it’s the colonel.” Jack felt a need to talk. “But Franklin, Christ, he’s the one that was with him and put the gun on me.”
“I love that kind,” Roy said. “Come on, turn around.”
“I have to get down there first, don’t I?”
Near the river end of the street the dark mass of trees opened to show bare telephone poles and vacant lots that extended to the levee, a grassy barrier against the night sky. Jack circled one of the poles and his headlights again probed the aisle of trees.
Roy said, “Ease up behind them.”
“I get out, too?”
“You come up on the curb side. Stand close to the car but a few steps back, so they can feel you but can’t see you. It might confuse ’em otherwise. What is this guy, an undertaker or a cop? Before you get out, write down the license number.”
“I don’t have a pen.”
Roy said, “Jesus Christ,” took one out of the inside pocket of his corduroy jacket, pulled out a bunch of folded papers then, looked through them, and handed Jack the pen and an envelope that said The International Lounge Featuring Exotic Dancers from Around the World across the flap. “From now on you carry a pen and a notebook. And you wear a suit or sport coat any time we have to pull this kind of shit.”
Jack said, “What do you think I have on, pajamas?” He was wearing a tan cotton blazer with jeans.
“You look like an undercover fed trying to pass as a fucking yuppie. I get their IDs, I give ’em to you. You come back to the car like you’re gonna call it in, see if they’re felons or they’re wanted for anything, and you write the names down. Then tomorrow I’ll have ’em checked out.”
“Still have friends on South Broad.”
“I still have snitches, too, if I need ’em.”
“You gonna show these guys a badge or what?”
“Why don’t you wait and see what I do? Then you’ll know. Go on, pull up right behind ’em.”
“Should I give ’em a bump?”
“Yeah, whiplash ’em. They’ll be more cooperative.”
Jack could see the two guys inside looking back this way, into his headlights. He said, “Louisiana plate,” stopped close behind the Chrysler’s shiny black rear deck, and wrote down the number as Roy said, “It’s a rental,” and got out. By the time Jack was approaching the curb side of the car Roy was asking the driver to see his operator’s license, the Creole-looking guy. The other one was leaning forward, saying to Roy, “He don’t have to show you no license. We have the permission. Who the fuck are you, you don’t know that?” He was the one who had done all the talking at the Exxon station. The dude in the sunglasses, though not wearing them now.
Jack heard Roy say, “Sir, he may not want to remove it from his person and show it to me himself. But I’m gonna see it, one way or the other. Are we clear on that?”
The Creole-looking guy took out his wallet, saying something to the other guy Jack couldn’t hear. And then Roy said to the other guy, “You too, sir, if you don’t mind. I’m curious to know who you assholes are you think you can sit here any time you want.” The guy on the passenger side began talking about “the permission” again, mad. Jack didn’t catch all the words. Now the two guys were talking to each other in Spanish, Roy waiting. Finally the guy in the passenger seat took a billfold out of his coat and Jack looked up the street toward Lucy’s house.
The idea was, she’d drive off with Amelita while they kept the two guys busy. He had phoned her with the plan after talking to Roy. Lucy said, as long as they left by nine-thirty. It was now about twenty after.
Roy handed him both guys’ driver’s licenses and the rental car envelope across the roof of the Chrysler, the one who’d been talking saying something now about calling the district commander of police and they would see.
Jack walked back to his car and got in, leaving the door open so he’d have light to see what he was doing. He wrote down Crispin Antonio Reyna. This was the dude, not the driver. He was thirty-two and lived in Key Biscayne, Florida.
Something to think about, huh? Why did the colonel bring these guys all the way from Florida?
The National Car Rental agreement was also in his name. It appeared Crispin Antonio was the boss. It made sense, he was the mouth. The Creole-looking guy was Franklin de Dios—the hell kind a name was that?—forty-two. His home address was in South Miami.
Jack got out to approach the Chrysler. He saw Roy look back, then step away from the side of the car and come to meet him at the rear deck.
“They’re from Florida, both guys.”
It didn’t seem to surprise Roy. He said, “They’re trying to tell me it’s an immigration matter and they have police permission to sit there all they want.”
“You believe it?”
“That’s neither here nor there. We’ll go on the assumption they’re full of shit. Don’t say a word if they ask you anything, if you talked to the captain. Okay?”
Roy walked back to the driver’s side as Jack moved between the cars to the curb. He looked toward Lucy’s house, the third one up past dense shrubbery. Not a light showing. He heard Roy telling the driver, “You’re giving me a bunch of shit, aren’t you? I think you better step out of the car.”
Jack heard Roy’s voice, with that easy cop drawl he put on, and was looking at a car all of a sudden popping its lights and coming out of the shrubs where Lucy’s driveway would be, a dark-colored Mercedes. Jack watched it turn into the street going away from them, toward St. Charles, its red taillights becoming tiny dots up there in the dark, almost to the point of disappearing, gone, when Crispin Antonio Reyna began yelling in Spanish. Jack turned to see Franklin de Dios of South Miami hunched over the steering wheel, reaching for the ignition.
There was no doubt they were leaving, with nothing in front of the car to keep it there. Until Jack saw Roy reach in, grab a
handful of nappy hair, and pull Franklin de Dios’s head out to lay it on the windowsill, Roy saying, “You trying to run on me?” Roy was reaching in again, now with his left hand, and came out holding a pistol, Roy saying, “Uh-oh, what have we here?”
Jack was moving toward the other one now, Crispin Reyna, having seen how it was done. He heard Roy telling Franklin de Dios he could step out of the car or get pulled clear through the window, heard that and saw Crispin Reyna’s hand on the glove box, punching the button to open it. Jack reached in and grabbed a handful of Crispin Reyna’s hair and yanked him back against the seat, hard. He changed hands then, learning how to do this as he went along, pressed the palm of his left hand against the guy’s face, to hold him there, while he felt inside the glove box with his other hand. Jack stepped back from the car with a bluesteel automatic, holding it lightly, looking at its dull sheen in the streetlight. He liked the feel of it. He stepped back in when he saw Crispin Reyna turn to look at him. Jack motioned for him to face straight ahead and touched the barrel to the guy’s right ear.
Roy had Franklin de Dios out of the car now, telling him to lean against it and spread his legs apart, “Come on, spread ’em,” the guy doing what he was told without expression, his Creole-looking face with its pointy cheekbones carved from some kind of smooth, hard wood.
“Should we take these fuckers to Central Lockup and then have to do all that paperwork, or what?”
Jack said, “I hate paperwork.”
Roy said, “It perturbs me off, too. What do you think? The river’s right there.”
Bandits Page 10
