Bandits

by Elmore Leonard

  Franklin de Dios, standing inside the entrance of the restaurant, watched Boylan push through the door to the Men’s room.

  He had followed Boylan here from the hotel, watched him sit down at a table, and watched the man and woman he remembered from the funeral coach at the gasoline station in St. Gabriel come in and sit with him at the table. The man in the dark suit he remembered well, talking to him in the funeral place, the man offering him beer. He had wondered if this was the same man that night, one of the police, who put them in the trunk of the car and left them until two more police in uniforms let them out, listened with patience to Crispin and then told him to have a nice evening. But how could this one be a police the same night? No—except he had a feeling he was one of those first two police, who were like the police of Miami, Florida. Or, as Crispin now believed, those first two weren’t police at all. Then the one could be the man from the funeral place. He had said to Crispin he didn’t understand any of this, who was who. Crispin had said to him, “You don’t have to think or know everything. Do what you’re told.”

  Okay. But he would continue to think.

  Franklin de Dios unbuttoned his jacket as he walked toward the Men’s room in Ralph & Kacoo’s.

  Lucy was hunched over the table. She said, “When you robbed hotel rooms, did you carry a gun?”

  Jack was about to get up, his hands on the edge of the table. “Never, ever. Somebody happened to wake up, you don’t think I was gonna shoot ’em.”

  She was nodding, thoughtful. “But this is different. We’ll need guns.”

  “It’s a much higher-class criminal offense, armed robbery. If you want to look at it that way. And if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to the bathroom.”

  He saw her startled expression as he got up.

  She said, “We’re not planning a robbery, Jack.” Sounding honestly surprised.

  “What do you call it?”

  “We’re not bandits.”

  “Tell me what we are. When I come back.”

  Franklin de Dios walked up behind Jerry Boylan standing at the urinal. He extended the Beretta to place the muzzle in the center of the gray herringbone tweed, pushed it in to feel the man’s spine, the man’s head turning to look over his shoulder, the man saying, “What? . . .” and shot him. As the man’s body jerked and then became loose and began to sag against the urinal, Franklin de Dios raised the pistol to the base of the man’s skull, placed the muzzle in that hollow spot, and shot him again and stepped away now, turning away, with no desire to look at the wall smeared red or the man falling dead to the floor.

  Franklin de Dios worked the Beretta into the waist of his pants close to his left hip, buttoned his jacket and pulled it down straight. He could hear a ringing in his ears but no sounds from beyond the door, in the restaurant. In the war they searched the ones they killed, if there was time; find a few cordobas if they were lucky. This one could have money or not, it was hard to tell from his appearance; but there wasn’t time to see. Crispin had said to kill him because “He wants to steal money that’s for your people, the contras.” Franklin de Dios had said, “They’re not my people.” And Crispin had said, “Do it or we’ll send you back.” There was no way to leave the war.

  He said to himself, Now walk.

  He pulled open the door. He stepped out of the Men’s room. He saw the man in the dark suit from the funeral home coming toward him, the man’s eyes on him. So he touched the front of his jacket to unbutton it and the man from the funeral home stopped, two strides from him.

  Franklin de Dios said, “How you doing?” The man didn’t answer him or move. So Franklin de Dios walked away from the man, out of the restaurant to join the tourists on their way to see Jackson Square and the Cabildo and the St. Louis Cathedral.

  16

  * * *

  JACK INTRODUCED ROY HICKS, expecting some kind of reaction from Lucy. Finally, the man she was so anxious to meet. But she seemed to hold back, cautious, quieter than times before. A different Lucy this evening—with Boylan shot dead that afternoon. Boylan had touched her.

  All four of them were quiet at first.

  Jack watched Roy sit down with a drink and in silence, without comment, look over the sun parlor; he’d save his remarks for later. Cullen eased into a deep-cushioned chair, stretched his legs over a matching ottoman, and picked up a magazine. Vogue. He’d told Jack the maid had left. No, not because of him. Gone to Algiers for the rest of the week, to visit her sister.

  Jack placed his drink and a sherry for Lucy on the coffee table and sat down with her on the sofa. He put his hand over hers and asked her if she was okay. He could feel Roy watching. She nodded, smoking a cigarette, staying within herself. He could feel Roy waiting to take charge, ask questions, become once again a cop interrogating witnesses.

  Jack said, “I looked in, that’s all. I didn’t go in all the way.”

  “But you were the first one.”

  “I was standing there holding the door open, a waiter went in past me. He took one look and turned around.”

  “He say anything to you?”

  “Not to me. But people were coming over and I heard him say, ‘Don’t go in there. A man’s been killed.’ ”

  “How’d he know Boylan was dead if he went in and turned right around?”

  “I guess all the blood.”

  “What else did he say?”

  “I didn’t hang around to hear any more. We left.”

  “You talk to anybody?”

  “Not a soul.”

  “The waiter know you?”

  “I don’t think so, not that particular one.”

  “You hope not.”

  “Nobody was interested in me, I’ll tell you.” Jack picked up his drink. He’d need another one in about two and a half minutes.

  Roy sat facing them across the coffee table. In front of Lucy, on the table, were pages torn from news magazines, a pad of writing paper, a pen, several letters in envelopes, and the glass of sherry, untouched. Roy said to Lucy, “You hear the shots?”

  She shook her head.

  Jack heard her say no; it was almost a whisper. He said to Roy, “By the time I got back to the table people were standing up, everybody looking toward the front. We got up, we walked out. No one paid any attention to us.”

  Roy said, “You could pick the guy out of a show-up? This Nicaraguan?”

  “I told you who it was. Franklin de Dios, the one suppose to be an Indian but looks like a colored guy.”

  “What I’m getting at,” Roy said, “he could pick you out, too. Isn’t that right? You were fairly close?”

  “Of course he could pick me out. He knows me, for Christ sake. We talked, at the funeral home. I asked him what he carried the gun for. Well, now I know. He said, if he has to use it, and the guy wasn’t kidding. He’d know you, Roy, from the other night, the way you pulled him out of the car. Man, I’m telling you, this guy . . . He came out of the Men’s, as soon as he saw me he made a move like he was gonna put his hand inside his coat. We stood there . . . You know what he said? He said, ‘How you doing?’ ”

  Cullen looked up from his magazine. “The guy said that? No kidding.”

  “Then he walked out. By the time we got outside he was gone. Not that we were looking for him.”

  Roy said, “He came there to do Boylan, so he must’ve made the three of you at the table, before. Have you thought, if Boylan hadn’t gone to the can the guy might’ve come over to the table?” Roy said, “I want to know if you feel you should identify the guy. For your own protection. But once you become a star witness this deal here is out the window. You understand that? Homicide gets you into it they’ll bring her in, too.” Roy was looking at Lucy now. When she didn’t say anything he asked her directly, “You feel you should go to the police?”

  Lucy said, “No, I don’t.”

  “Since you know Boylan? Since you know the nigger Indin and the nigger Indin knows you?”

  Lucy was lighting another cigarette.
She stared at him, then shook her head.

  Roy stared back at her and Jack said to him, “Roy, what’re you doing?”

  “Don’t worry about what I’m doing,” Roy said. “What’s the Indin doing? Has he run? I don’t think so. You can place him at the scene, but not with a smoking gun. The Indin could say he walked in, Boylan was laying there dead as another guy ran out nobody saw but him. Okay, they did Boylan ’cause they knew who he was and what he was after. They’d have no idea you’re after it, too. But you’re getting in their way and they may want to take you out of it. You understand? Now I’d like to know if she has a problem with that. She does, we can forget the whole thing.”

  Lucy said, “You want to know if I have a problem?”

  The phone rang. One that Lucy had brought in and plugged into a jack on the front wall of the room, away from where they were seated. She got up and walked around the sofa.

  Jack hunched closer to the coffee table, looking at Roy. He waited until the ringing stopped and knew she had picked up the phone.

  “Roy? . . . When I went back to the table to get her . . . Cully, listen to this. I said, ‘We have to get out of here.’ That’s all. She didn’t say a word. Everybody’s looking toward the Men’s room—what’s going on? She got up, didn’t say a word till we’re outside, in fact till we’re walking up Chartres toward Canal and I told her what happened. She said, ‘Who was it?’ And didn’t say another word after that till we were in the car. You want to know if she can handle this? Roy, she’s seen more people shot and killed than you have—people in her hospital hacked to death with machetes, people she was taking care of . . .”

  He saw Roy look up. Lucy came around to the front of the sofa and sat down again.

  “That was my mother. She can’t decide whether to go with Claude Montana or de la Renta. I said, ‘That’s a tough one, Mom. Let me think about it and call you back.’ ”

  Jack kept his eyes on Roy. Do you get it, you dick? You see it? He could tell Roy wanted to say something, stay in control, not wanting to be outclassed by some girl who used to be a nun. Roy took a big sip of his drink, rattled the ice, and took another sip, giving himself time. Jack said to Lucy, “I guess everybody’s got problems, huh?” And looked at Roy again. “How about you, Roy?”

  Roy said, “You mean outside of how we’re gonna pull this off? Outside of they know who you are, but I still don’t know who in the hell they are, or what side we’re on?”

  Lucy leaned over the coffee table, began to go through her papers and clippings as Cullen said, “The money don’t care, Roy, what side it’s on. You want to know how much the colonel’s got so far?”

  Roy said, “I want to know, for my own information, which are the good guys and which are the bad guys.”

  Lucy pushed the pile of pages torn from magazines toward Roy. “Read the quote from the contra’s chief military strategist, Enrique Bermúdez. ‘We’ve learned the hard way that good guys do not win wars.’ Alfonso Robelo, another of their leaders, says, Well, atrocities always occur in a civil war. Look at the photo in there of a man lying in a grave, alive, his eyes open, while a contra rams a knife into his throat. Look at it.” She opened one of the letters then. “From a sister I worked with in Nicaragua. Listen to this.” Her eyes moved down the page, stopped. “ ‘The contras ambushed a truck with thirty people going to pick coffee. Those who weren’t killed by grenades were shot or burned alive on the truck. Including a five-year-old boy and four women. . . . And we are to give thanks they’re fighting for democracy, fighting the antireligious Communists. . . . They kill coffee pickers, telephone line workers, farmers on cooperatives. Who pays them? It comes from our government. Now I hear it’s from private corporations in the U.S. There is so much death. I have never seen so much death in my life.’ “ Lucy continued to read in silence. When she looked up from the page she said to Roy, “Would you like to hear more? Concepcion Sanchez was four months pregnant. They put a gun in her mouth and shot her, then used a bayonet to slice open her stomach. Paco Sevilla was tortured in front of his wife and seven children. They cut off his ears and tongue and made him eat them. They cut off his penis and finally they killed him. . . . More?”

  Roy said, “So if these dudes are fighting the Communists, then there aren’t any good guys. They’re both dirty.”

  “If that satisfies you,” Lucy said, “fine. We’ll count you in.”

  She was lighting a cigarette when the phone rang.

  Roy waited until Lucy got up and went to answer it. “Tell you the truth, I don’t see you doing it without me. Shit, a cat burglar and an old-time bank robber.” He pushed up out of his chair and looked over at the bar. “I may as well help myself, huh?”

  “You’re running the show,” Jack said, “I guess you can do what you want.”

  Roy said, “If I didn’t, who would? You?” He walked over to the bar.

  Cullen said, “Jesus, they cut the guy’s yang off.” He looked across the room toward Lucy, on the phone, then held up Vogue, open, and said, “Hey, Jack?”

  He turned and was looking at five bathing-suit models in a fashion spread, a full-color shot, coming out of the surf smiling, having a wonderful time.

  “Which one would you pick?”

  “For what?”

  “You mean for what? To go to bed with.”

  “Cully, you’re out, you don’t have to do that anymore.”

  “I think the dark-haired one. Jesus.”

  Roy said, “Lemme see.” Cullen turned the magazine toward him. Roy said, “None of ’em. They don’t have enough tit between ’em to make one good set.” Roy sat down with his drink. “But old Cully now, he’d fuck a chicken if one flew in the window.”

  Jack glanced over his shoulder at Lucy, across the room. When he turned back Roy was staring at him.

  “You nervous, Jack? She can’t hear me. . . . You chase her upstairs yet, show her what she’s been missing? . . . Not saying, huh? You want her, I won’t mess you up. She’s not my type.”

  Jack said, “Thanks, Roy,” got up and went over to the bar. Lucy was about twenty feet away, leaning against the wall in her jeans and a black sweater, smoking her cigarette, concentrating, saying a few words into the phone, Lucy in profile against the green banana leaves. Jack watched her move her hand through her short, dark hair.

  Roy waited for him to come back with his drink. “I spoke to Homicide, told ’em I’d heard about it. They have a victim was shot through the spine and the back of the head while thirty-seven people were having their lunch and they didn’t learn a goddamn thing. Hey, but I got you something.” Roy brought a notebook out of the inside pocket of his corduroy jacket. He said, “Alvin Cromwell,” leafing through pages.

  Jack took one of Lucy’s cigarettes, his first one this evening. Alvin Cromwell was the name he’d copied off the memo pad in the fundraiser’s bedroom. Phone number with a Mississippi area code.

  “Here it is. Cromwell Men’s Wear and Sporting Goods. Gulfport. Tell me why a Nicaraguan would go to Gulfport to buy his clothes.”

  Jack said, “Why would anybody?”

  “There you are. I got you the name, you go on over and find out who the guy is.”

  “Maybe Alvin sells guns.”

  “That could be.”

  “Or he has a lot of money and he hates communism.”

  Jack half turned as Lucy appeared. He watched her pick up the sherry and take a good sip. “That was my dad. He had dinner with the colonel last night.” She took another sip and sat down on the edge of the sofa, placing the glass on the coffee table.

  Jack watched her. Composed, staying inside herself, hard to reach. He said, “What happened?”

  “Nothing, yet. It’s what might happen. My dad said if he could stop payment on his check he probably would. He thinks it’s quite possible the colonel’s going to run off with all the money. And then he said—this is good—‘Of course, it’s still a tax deduction.’ He said even though it’s just a feeling he has, he’s goi
ng to tell his friends who haven’t contributed yet to think twice about it. He said it’s only a hunch. . . . But my dad got rich playing his hunches.”

  Jack said, “Is that why he called you?”

  “He wanted to tell me I’m probably right about the guy and he shouldn’t have given him a dime. Then covers himself by saying the colonel does have credentials, a letter from the president, and the fund’s legitimate. They have an account, he said, at Hibernia.”

  “At Hibernia and Whitney,” Cullen said, “four different branches, so far.”

  Roy said, “Honey, how much did your dad give this guy?”

  “Sixty-five thousand.”

  Roy said, “Jesus Christ, I work two years to make that.”

  Or even three, Jack was thinking, as Lucy said, “The colonel starts out, he suggests at least a hundred thousand. Then, if he has to come down, he tells about the woman in Austin, Texas, who gave sixty-five thousand and they named a helicopter after her. Lady Ellen. Well, a big oilman from Louisiana should be able to match that, at least.”

  Jack said, “It’s like playing blackjack against a woman dealer. We’ll have to give this some thought. But if it’s true, it might even be better. You know it? This guy Bertie, if he’s honest he could have the CIA or even the military fly the money down there. But if he’s gonna sneak off with it, that’s something else. He’s on his own. Or, as far as we know, it’s Bertie and the other two guys.” He thought about it a moment. “It would even make sense why he brought in the guy from Miami, what’s his name? Crispin Antonio Reyna, if you see what I’m getting at. The guy was into dope, has a sheet . . .” He looked at Roy. “What was it, kiting checks?”

  “Uttering fraudulent checks,” Roy said. “Did nine months. Then was brought up on transporting narcotics from Florida to here, but that one fell through.”

  “And the guy that killed Boylan,” Jack said, “Franklin de Dios, who didn’t look like any Franklin of God, I’ll tell you, coming out of that Men’s room. He was picked up on a homicide in Miami, a triple.”