Swag

by Elmore Leonard

  Speaking of rules, Stick said maybe there was one more they should add. Number Eleven. Never try and hold up an Armenian.

  They had taken in, so far, close to twenty-five thousand, spent a lot, but still had ninety-six hundred in a safe-deposit box at the Troy branch of Detroit Bank & Trust and about fifteen hundred or so spending money in the Oxydol box under the sink. They didn’t divide the money. Except for major purchases—like the car and an eight-hundred-dollar hi-fi setup Frank picked out for them—the money went from the bank safe deposit to the Oxydol box, usually a thousand at a time, where it was available to both of them for pocket money and personal expenditures. There was no rule as to how much you could take; it was whatever you needed.

  Two months ago, when they’d moved in, Stick had questioned the arrangement. He’d see Frank dipping in every day or so for fifty, a hundred, sometimes as much as two hundred. Finally he’d said, “Don’t you think it’d be better, after a job, we divvied it up?”

  Frank said, “I thought we were partners.”

  “Equal partners,” Stick said. “We divvy it up, then we know it’s equal.”

  “Wait just a minute now. You saying I’m cheating you?”

  “I’m saying it might be better to split it each time, that’s all. Then we know where we stand, individually.”

  “You know where the dough is,” Frank said, “right? Under the sink, that’s where we keep it. And you know you can go in there and take as much as you need, right? So how am I cheating you?”

  “I understand the arrangement,” Stick said. “I’m only asking, you think it would be better if we each took care of our own dough?”

  “What’re you, insecure? You want to hide it?”

  “If half the dough’s mine, why can’t I do anything I want with it?”

  “Jesus,” Frank said, “you sound like a little kid. Nya nya nya, I got my money hidden and I’m not gonna tell you where it is. What is this shit? We partners or not?”

  Stick let it drop.

  From then on, he took two hundred dollars a week out of the Oxydol box, over and above what he needed, and put it away in his suitcase.

  7

  STICK WAS ON THE BALCONY, looking down at the empty patio. It was quiet, the pool area in shadows. He turned when he heard Frank come out of his bedroom and watched him walk over to the bar in one of his new suits and finish a drink he’d made and forgotten about.

  “You taking the car?”

  “No,” Frank said, “we’re going to walk. Broads love to get taken out to dinner and have to walk. You going out?”

  “How?”

  “What do you mean, how? You going out?”

  “I mean how. What am I supposed to do, hitchhike?”

  Frank took his time. He said, “It seems to me I remember I said maybe we better get two cars. You said, Two cars? Christ, what do we need with two cars? You remember that?”

  “How come you figure it’s yours?” Stick said. “Take it anytime you want.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Frank said, “I don’t believe it. You want a car, steal one. You want it bad enough, buy one, for Christ sake. Take it out of the bank thing.”

  “Have a nice time,” Stick said.

  Frank was shaking his head, a little sadly, patiently. “Sometimes, you know what? You sound like a broad. A wife. Poor fucking martyr’s got to sit home while the guy’s out having a good time.”

  “I’ll wait up for you,” Stick said. “Case you come in, you fall and hit your head on the toilet when you’re throwing up.”

  “How long you been saving that?”

  “It just came to me, you throw up a lot.”

  “You’re quite a conversationalist,” Frank said. “I’d like to stay and chat, but I’m running a little late.” He went out.

  There was a junior executive group at the Villa, a few guys with friends who were always coming over. Sometimes in the evening, after they’d changed from their business outfits to Levi’s and Adidas, they’d sit on the patio and drink beer. If Stick was out on the balcony he’d listen to them, see if he could learn anything.

  Usually it was about how stoned one of them got the night before. Or the best source of grass in Ann Arbor. Or why this one guy had switched from a Wilson Jack Kramer to a Bancroft Competition. Or how a friend of one of them had brought back eight cases of Coors from Vail. Then he wouldn’t hear anything for a minute or so—one of them talking low—then loud laughter. The laughter would get louder as they went through the six-packs, and the junior executives would say shit a lot more. That was about all Stick learned.

  This evening he didn’t learn anything. They had two beers and decided to go to the show. Stick wondered what Mona was doing. Frank was gone. It’d be a good time if he was going to do it. He liked her looks and could picture her clearly in his mind, but he couldn’t see her making all those sounds.

  He wondered how much she charged.

  He went out past the Formica table at the end of the living room to the kitchen and got a can of Busch Bavarian, came back in, sat down on one of the canvas chairs, and stared at an orange-and-yellow shape on the wall, a mess of colors, like somebody had spilled a dozen eggs and framed them.

  He put the beer on the glass coffee table, went over and got Donna Fargo going on the hi-fi. He listened to her tell how she was the luckiest girl in the U.S.A., how she would wake up and say, “Mornin’ Lord, howdy sun,” and studied himself in the polished aluminum mirror on the wall. He looked dark and gaunt, a little mean-looking with his serious expression. Howdy there. I’m your next-door neighbor. I was wondering—

  Going out the door and along the second-floor walk, he was still wondering.

  I was wondering, if you weren’t busy—

  I was wondering, if you were free—had some free time, I mean.

  He said to himself, Shit, let her do it. She knows what you want.

  He knocked on her door and waited and knocked a couple more times. Still nothing, not a sound from inside the apartment. Stick went back to his own place, picked up the can of Busch, and walked out on the balcony. It was still quiet, with a dull evening sky clouding over. A lifeless expanse of sky, boring.

  But there was somebody down there now. In the swimming pool. A girl doing a sidestroke, trying to keep her head up and barely moving. She was actually in the water, and Stick couldn’t recall any of the career ladies ever actually swimming before. He thought she had on a reddish bathing cap, then realized it was her hair—the redheaded one with the frizzy hair the guy in the silver Mark IV came to visit a couple of times a week. That one.

  Arlene saw him standing there with her purple beach towel as she came out of the pool in her lavender bikini, her beads, and her seven rings. She said, “Hi,” and laughed.

  Stick handed her the towel, asked her how she was doing, and learned, Just fine.

  He said, “Your friend coming over tonight?”

  “He’s tied up,” Arlene said. “Had to go to Lansing.” She began drying her wiry hair, rubbing it hard, and Stick couldn’t see her face for a while. He watched her little boobs jiggling up and down. They were small but well shaped, perky. She had freckles on her chest. Stick figured she was a redhead all the way.

  “What’re you supposed to do when he doesn’t show,” Stick said, “sit around, be a good little girl?”

  She answered him, but he couldn’t hear what she said under the heavy towel.

  “Do what?”

  She peeked out at him through the purple folds. “I said he never told me I had to sit and twiddle my thumbs.”

  Stick gave her a little grin. “Don’t you like to twiddle?”

  Arlene grinned back and giggled. “I don’t know as I ever have, tell you the truth. Is it fun?”

  “You’re from somewhere, aren’t you?” Stick said. “Let me guess. Not Louisville. No, little more this way. Columbus, Ohio.”

  “Uh-unh, Indianapolis,” Arlene said.

  “Close,” Stick said. “You take Interstate 70 ri
ght on over to Indianapolis from Columbus. Used to be old U.S. 40.” He wasn’t going to let go of Columbus that easy.

  “I was Miss NHRA Nationals last year,” Arlene said. “You know, the drag races? I was going to go out to California—a friend of mine lives in Bakersfield—but I was asked to come here instead, to do special promotions for Hi-Performance Products Incorporated. You know them?”

  “I think I’ve heard the name.”

  “They make Hi-Speed Cams. That’s their main thing. Also Hi-Performance Shifters. Pretty soon they’re going into mag wheels and headers.”

  “It must be interesting work,” Stick said.

  “You’d think so. But what it is,” Arlene said, “it’s a pain in the ass. Those drag strips are so dirty. I mean the dust and grease and all. The noise, God. The first thing I do I get back to the motel is dive in the pool. I love to swim.”

  “I noticed, I was out on the balcony there,” Stick said, glancing up at the apartment. “You’re like a fish in the water.”

  “I love it, the feeling, like I don’t even have a body.”

  “I guarantee you got a body,” Stick said.

  Arlene laughed, raised closed eyes to the dull sky, and shook her wiry hair. It barely moved.

  Stick was looking at her mouth, slightly open, her slender little nose and the trace of something greenish on her eyelids.

  “I was thinking,” he said, “after all that swimming how’d you like a nice cool drink now to wet your insides?”

  Arlene loved the apartment. She said it was cool, it looked like it would be in California. Stick thought Arlene looked pretty cool, too, on the bamboo barstool in her little swimming suit, bare feet hooked on the rung and her legs sloping apart. He fixed her Salty Dogs, once she told him how, kept the vodka bottle handy, and sipped a bourbon over ice while she told him what it was like to put on a little metallic silver outfit with white boots and pose for camshaft promotion shots, with the hot lights and all. She said it wasn’t any picnic and Stick said he bet it wasn’t. He watched her rubbing her eyes and blinking, but didn’t say anything about it until she’d put away three Salty Dogs and was working on number four.

  He said, “It’s that chlorine in the pool. What you ought to do is go in and take a shower.”

  “You mean here?”

  “What’s the matter with here?”

  “But I don’t have anything to put on after,” Arlene said, “except this wet swimming suit.”

  If that was all she was worried about, Stick knew he was home. He said, “I’ll get you a robe or something. How’ll that be?”

  That was how he got her in the shower. He put her drink on the top of the toilet tank, adjusted the spray to nice and warm, and went out, closing the door.

  Stick didn’t own a robe. Maybe Frank had one, but he didn’t bother to look. He went into his bedroom and got undressed, put his shoes and socks in the closet, hung up his new pants and shirt, got down to his striped boxer shorts, thinking he could have taken her to dinner, spent twenty bucks. He could have taken her to a movie and then to a bar, hear some music, then coming home ask her if she wanted a nightcap at his place. He could have gone through all that and then have her say thanks anyway, she was tired. Find out first, then take her out after; that was the way to do it. He couldn’t figure out why he had hesitated going to Mona’s, trying to get the words right. Mona was a pro, whether she looked like one or not. Arlene was a—what? Hot-rod queen. A flake. Part-time camshaft model and kept lady. But he really didn’t know her or how she’d react.

  She might scream. She might say, Now wait a minute, or, Get the hell out of here, or threaten to call the police, or be so scared she couldn’t say anything.

  What Arlene did say, when he pulled the curtain back and stepped naked into the shower with her, was, “Hon, get me another Salty Dog first, will you?”

  They were in bed, dried off and smelling of Mennen’s talcum powder, when Mona started.

  That faint sound through the wall, a caressing sound without words.

  Stick hadn’t heard her come in. Probably while they were in the shower. He was on an elbow right now, half over Arlene with a leg between hers, giving her a little knee, feeling strong with his gut sucked in, giving her nice tender kisses and feeling her hands moving over the muscles in his back.

  Arlene opened her eyes.

  “What’s that?”

  “What?” He put his mouth on hers to keep her from talking.

  “Like somebody’s in pain.”

  “I doubt it’s pain,” Stick said. He got back to it and Arlene began to squirm and press hard against him.

  Mona, in another bed in another room, said, “Oh Jesus. Oh God. Oh Jesus.”

  Arlene’s eyes opened again. “Listen.”

  “Oh please—”

  Arlene slid around him and sat up. “Where’s it coming from, next door?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Who lives there?”

  “The one—I don’t know her name.”

  Arlene frowned. “The mousy one with the straight hair?”

  “I don’t know as she’s mousy. A little plain maybe. Not what you’d expect—”

  Arlene stopped him. “Listen.”

  She got out of bed, carefully climbing over him, and followed the faint murmuring sound to the wall where the dresser stood. Stick watched her crouch there—a naked redhead who looked especially naked to him because her skin was white and didn’t show tan lines—her face alert, pressed to the wall, her perky little boobs hanging free.

  “You want to learn how it’s done. Is that it?”

  “Shhhhhhhh.”

  “I thought you knew. You seemed to be doing all right.”

  Arlene didn’t look over or change her expression. The room was silent. Stick could hear the sound again.

  After a moment Arlene said, “Oh . . . now, please. Oh please, please, please,” keeping her voice low.

  “I’d be glad to oblige,” Stick said.

  Arlene was fascinated, glued to the wall, her eyes alive and mouth slightly open.

  “Give it to me. Give me everything, oh please. Oh God, Jesus.”

  “Maybe what she’s doing,” Stick said, “she’s saying her prayers.”

  “Uh-unh. She just said the word.”

  “What word?”

  “I can’t say it out loud. God, now she’s saying it over and over.”

  “Spell it,” Stick said.

  He got a Marlboro off the night table with the Chinese figurine lamp and sat up in bed to smoke and watch Arlene and tried to imagine what was going on in the bed on the other side of the wall. He could picture Mona’s face, her eyes closed; but he couldn’t picture her saying anything or picture the guy with her. He didn’t want to picture the guy. Arlene’s eyes opened a little wider. It wouldn’t be long now. Arlene looked good. He wondered if he could like her seriously. Studying her he realized she was very pretty. Delicate features. Slim body. Flat little tummy. Not at all self-conscious about standing there naked. But she couldn’t say the word.

  Arlene must have been thinking about it, too. When she came back to bed and crawled over him she said, “I could never say that. I can do it, God, no trouble at all. But I can’t say it. Isn’t that strange?”

  Stick said, “I was thinking, why don’t you take your rings off? So nobody’ll get hurt.”

  8

  THE BAR IN HAZEL PARK was on Dequindre, only a few blocks from the racetrack. They had been in once before and watched a couple of big winners buy rounds for the house. They weren’t sure if bars were worth it and picked this one as a good place to find out.

  When they went in at 1:30 A.M., a half hour before closing, it was filled with the sound of voices and country music playing on the jukebox. The bar section was still very much alive, though the tables were empty now and the waitress was standing by the service station counting her tips.

  Once they pulled their guns, Stick would cover the people at the bar and put them down on
the floor while Frank concentrated on the bartender, a woman, and got her to empty the cash register. Before Frank could get his Python out, Stick touched him on the arm.

  “Let’s sit down.”

  They got a table. The waitress brought them a couple of draft beers and left.

  “The guy with the hair,” Stick said, “at the end of the bar.”

  The guy was at the curved end nearer the door, facing the length of the bar: thick hair over his ears, big arms and shoulders in a dull yellow-satin athletic jacket. Frank drank some of his beer as the guy’s head turned toward them.

  “What about him?”

  “He eyed us when we came in. Watch him, keeps looking around.”

  “Maybe he’s waiting for somebody.”

  “Or maybe he’s a cop, staking the place out. You read about it? They been doing that.”

  “A cop,” Frank said. “He looks like a bush leaguer never made it.”

  “Cops put on these outfits now, play dress-up,” Stick said. “You never know anymore.”

  “If you don’t feel right about it,” Frank said, “let’s go. Maybe it’s not a good idea anyway. Six, seven, nine with the waitress, that’s a lot of people to keep track of.”

  “Wait,” Stick said. “I think he’s leaving.”

  They watched the guy in the yellow-satin jacket slide off the stool and pick up a leather case that must have been leaning against the bar on the other side of him.

  “He’s got pool cues,” Frank said. “I thought he was a jock. He’s a poolhall cowboy.”

  “Going to the can,” Stick said.

  There was an inscription on the back of his jacket. They watched it go into the men’s room.

  “Port Huron Bullets,” Stick said. “He’s one of the famous Port Huron Bullets. You ever heard of them?”