The Big Bounce jr-1

by Elmore Leonard

  She was on the empty porch. She had a bottle in her hand and two glasses, trying to pick up something else. Finally she put the bottle under her arm. Then with the two glasses in one hand and an ice bucket in the other and the bottle under her arm she pushed open the screen door with her fanny and walked across the lawn toward Ryan at the edge of the trees. See, Leon, you don’t just bust the windows. You bust them and then you go in and steal a bottle of whiskey and some ice. And Leon Woody would say, “Uh-huh, sure, man, you got to have the ice.”

  9

  “I LIKE CRACKED LIPS.”

  “From the sun,” Ryan said. “Out in the sun all day.”

  “They’re more fun. I think kissing hard and sliding around is nothing.”

  “Yeah, well some people think it gets you up there quicker.”

  “Up where?” Close to him in the sand Nancy leaned in, nuzzling in, brushing the side of his face with her mouth and gently biting his lower lip.

  “I’ll go your way,” Ryan said.

  “All the way?”

  He was taking his time; he wasn’t going to rush it and look like some hick, but it wasn’t easy to do. He said, “Do you want another drink?” Nancy shook her head. He pushed up on one elbow and put his hand in the ice bucket. “Water,” he said. “How about bourbon and cold water?”

  “I thought I was taking Scotch.”

  “You did all right.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The walking away from the porch was good. I’ve got a friend would have liked that.”

  “Someone you worked with?”

  “Cleaning carpets.”

  “I mean the other thing. B and E. I like B and E, the sound of it. Isn’t that funny? I mean it sounds so simple, two little letters.”

  “Why don’t we get some ice at your place?” They were a little way down the beach from the orange post lamp on the bluff. Sitting up, Ryan could see the point of light against the sky.

  “I feel like something else,” Nancy said.

  “Like what?”

  “Cold Ducks. But there aren’t any in the house.” She pushed up next to him then. “I know where there are some though. Come on.”

  Like that. Ryan collected the bottle and ice bucket and glasses and followed her down the beach, aware that he was following her, and hurried to catch up. She was looking out at the lake, at the deep dark of the water and the lighter dark of the sky.

  “There it is,” Nancy said.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “The boat.”

  He saw the white shape that must be a cabin cruiser lying about fifty or sixty yards out. At the same time he realized they were opposite Nancy’s house, with the orange glow of the light high on the bluff above them.

  “That’s Ray’s, uh?”

  “Somebody from the club was supposed to pick it up,” Nancy said, “but they haven’t.” She looked at Ryan. “We won’t need any of that.”

  “What do I do with it?”

  “How about putting it down?”

  “And somebody finds it in front of your house?”

  “So?”

  “I’ll bury it.”

  At the foot of the bluff he dug away enough sand to cover the ice bucket and glasses and the bottle. Coming back across the beach to the water, he saw Nancy was nowhere in sight. Her clothes were in a pile.

  He took off his shirt and pants, folded them, and put them on the ground next to Nancy’s sweater-and shorts that were dropped there; he went into the water wearing only his shorts, making himself go right in without fooling around touching the water with his toes. It wasn’t deep; he was halfway to the boat before the water was up to his waist, but God, it was cold without the sun. He had to go in and get wet all the way and dove out, swimming under water to get used to it. Coming up, he swam sidestroke, reaching the stern of the boat on the starboard side, pulling himself up on the side rail and ducking under the canvas top of the afterdeck.

  “Where are you?”

  “In here.”

  He followed the sound of her voice through the open hatch, down three steps into sleeping quarters, through a short passage into the lamplight of the galley. She stood in the narrow aisle opening a bottle that looked like champagne, her wet hair straight and pressed to her face. She was wearing a sweater, a black ribbed V-neck sweater that hung to her thighs.

  “I like it,” Ryan said.

  “My party dress.” Looking right at him.

  “I meant the boat,” Ryan said. Very good. Don’t give her anything. She was waiting for him to move in, leading him along with the sweater and the look. She was playing with him and he was standing there with his cold wet shorts sticking to him.

  “There’s a towel in the biffy.”

  He came back in drying himself, looking at the polished overhead and the brass lamp. Past the refrigerator and the stainless steel sink there was another sleeping compartment forward. It was good, the brass and the polished wood, the table hinged to the wall. Snug quarters. You didn’t need champagne-or Cold Ducks. He could see the label as Nancy filled two glasses.

  He sat down at the table, aware of a creaking sound and the motion of the boat pulling against its anchor. It was good, all right. You could live on a boat like this and go anywhere you wanted.

  “How much does a boat like this cost?”

  “About twenty-five.”

  “Twenty-five what?”

  “Thousand.” She was watching him.

  “Let’s go for a cruise,” Ryan said. “Down to Nassau.”

  “I’ve been there,” Nancy said.

  “On a boat like this?”

  “No, a ketch, a sailboat. There were nine with the crew. Friends of mother’s.”

  “You’d sleep right on it?”

  “Most of the time.”

  “That’d be something,” Ryan said.

  “Uh-huh, sitting around all day while everybody got stoned. By five o’clock they’d be freaked out of their minds.”

  “You were with your mother and dad?”

  “I was between dads. My mother would say, ‘Darling, why don’t you go below and take a rest?’ Or, ‘Why don’t you go swimming or look for interesting shells.’ Or slash your wrists-that’s what she wanted to say. Everything was interesting at that time. ‘Why don’t you go talk to that interesting-looking boy. He’s about your age, dear.’ “

  “How old were you?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Do you get along with her now?”

  “I don’t see her now.”

  “Does she know what you’re doing-I mean, where you are?”

  “Did you tell your mother you stole things?”

  “I don’t do that anymore,” Ryan said.

  “When you were B and E-ing, or whatever you call it? Did you tell her?”

  “No.”

  “I told old Mom I was shacked up with Ray Ritchie,” Nancy said. “But she won’t think about it. She likes everything nice.” Nancy stretched the word out sweetly.

  “Well, what do you expect?”

  “I don’t expect anything. She’s not real. I mean on the surface she’s not.” Nancy felt the cigarette package and squeezed it in her fist. “Damn it, we’re out.”

  “What do you mean she’s not real?”

  Nancy was thoughtful, curled on the bench across from him in the oversized sweater. “She pretends to be the perfect lady. She is Perfect Lady on the outside, leading a perfectly normal perfect life. But the real person is inside the perfect lady looking out and she’s as screwed up as anybody, with three screwed-up marriages to prove it.”

  Ryan said, “She’s inside this person, uh?”

  “She won’t admit she’s in there, but she is. You can see her looking out.” Nancy smiled. “That’s fun, to get her to look out. She does that a lot, and sometimes she’ll even stick her head out a little. But I’ve never been able to get her out all the way.”

  “I don’t get it,” Ryan said.

  “It doesn’t
matter. I wish we had cigarettes,” she said then. She sipped her Cold Duck and filled their glasses again. “You like?”

  “It’s all right.”

  “But you’d rather have a shot and a beer.”

  “One or the other.”

  “Good old Bob Junior is strictly beer. Ray is martinis.”

  Ryan hunched forward, resting his arms on the table edge. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “What am I doing here,” Nancy said.

  “Something like that.”

  “Just letting it happen, I guess,” Nancy said. “Looking for the bounce, like everybody else.”

  “Why Ray Ritchie-a guy twenty years older than you are?”

  “Twenty-five, Charlie.”

  “All right, but why?”

  “Why do you steal?”

  “I told you, I don’t anymore.”

  “Did you ever steal money?”

  Ryan hesitated. “Sometimes, if there was some laying around.”

  “What was the most you ever got?”

  “Seventy-eight bucks.”

  Nancy was turning the stem of her glass between her fingers slowly. “What if you came across fifty thousand laying around?” She looked up at Ryan. “Between fifty and fifty-five thousand. Would you have the nerve to take it?”

  Ryan sat relaxed, keeping his eyes on her eyes, aware of the faint creaking sound again and, for what it was worth, waiting for her to make something out of the silence and the way he was looking at her. He didn’t smile or make a remark or try to be funny; he didn’t have to ask her if she was serious. He knew as soon as she said it that this is what it was all about: why she was here and why he was here.

  Nancy said, “If you’d rather not talk about it-”

  “Whose fifty thousand, Ray’s?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Where?”

  “In his hunting lodge.”

  “He keeps fifty thousand in his hunting lodge. Sitting there.”

  “He does the night before he pays the migrants.” Nancy watched him. “Multiply three hundred and fifty workers by a hundred and fifty dollars each. Isn’t that the average?”

  “About.”

  “It comes to fifty-two thousand, five hundred. Not checks, money. In pay envelopes. Three hundred and fifty envelopes in two cardboard boxes.”

  “How do you know?”

  “From last year, and when they were paid this year after planting, or whatever they did.”

  “Ray brings the money? How does it get here?”

  “I’m not sure,” Nancy said. “Last year we were at the lodge, a police car drove up and Bob Junior got out with the boxes and put them in Ray’s office, in the den.”

  “The money’s already in the pay envelopes?”

  “Uh-huh. Then the next day Bob Junior sits at a card table and they line up and he pays them.”

  “How do you know they always bring it the day before?”

  “Bob Junior told me.”

  “You asked him?”

  “Making conversation. He said it’s the way they always do it.”

  “And they leave the money there, forget about it all night.”

  “Not exactly.” Nancy paused. “Bob Junior said he stays with it. I don’t know if in the same room but in the lodge.”

  “Well, if he’s sitting on the boxes, how’re we supposed to get them?”

  Nancy shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe you wait till he goes to the bathroom.”

  “There’d have to be a way to get in,” Ryan said. “If you have only a minute, you can’t fool around breaking something to get in.”

  “What if we went in the day before and arranged it?”

  Ryan finished the Cold Duck in his glass. “You sure there aren’t any cigarettes?”

  “I looked before.”

  “How long have you been thinking about this?”

  “It didn’t come to me until after I saw you Sunday.”

  “Why me?”

  “Don’t be modest. Because it’s your bag.”

  “Fifty thousand isn’t a TV set.”

  “It’s lighter,” Nancy said. “Think of it that way.”

  “I mean, why think about it at all? You’ve got about everything you want.”

  “And things I don’t want.” Nancy leaned in, letting her hair fall close to her face. “Let’s not go into all the whys, all right?”

  Ryan put his mind back on the fifty thousand. “Are you talking about splitting?”

  “Of course. I’m not greedy.”

  “What if I take the whole thing?”

  “Because you know I know and you wouldn’t sleep at night until you were arrested.”

  “After we get it, then what? How do we get away?”

  “We don’t,” Nancy said. “We hide the money.”

  “Where?”

  “In the beach house.”

  “Come on.”

  “Really. It’s the best place; right under Ray’s nose. You stay in Geneva Beach until Ray closes the place for the summer, then break in and get it. I’ll stay with him for about two weeks after we’re back in Detroit, then we’ll have a fight and I’ll leave him.”

  “We meet in Detroit,” Ryan said. “Then what?”

  Nancy smiled, hunching her shoulders like a little girl. “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

  “I think I’d want to rest awhile.”

  “Or take a cruise. The kind I was telling you about?”

  “I could get my own boat.”

  “And a car and new clothes. Anything you want.”

  Ryan nodded, thinking about it. “Just about anything.” He looked at her. “What about you? What do you want?”

  Nancy took a sip of Cold Duck. “Do you really want to know?”

  “Sure, tell me.”

  “I might go out to Hollywood. I think twenty-five thousand would be just enough of a stake.”

  “You mean it?”

  “Why not? Hook myself a producer. A nice rich producer.”

  “Just like that.”

  “I think I could fake most of them out of their socks in about four minutes.”

  “You mean out of their jocks.”

  She shrugged. “I bet I could.”

  “Do you know how to act?”

  “Fake that too,” Nancy said. “That’s what acting is, isn’t it?”

  “You’re not planning on us staying together, then.”

  Nancy shrugged again. “I don’t know. Right now I don’t need a lover, Jackie, I need a breaking and entering man.”

  Jackie again. He didn’t say anything.

  “I want the money,” Nancy said. “If I have to justify wanting it, then it’s because I think Ray owes it to me. You can do it for whatever reason you like. I’m not your conscience.”

  “All right, you want me to think about it?”

  “If you can’t say yes or no right now.”

  “You’ve been thinking about it awhile, I haven’t.”

  “It’s fairly simple,” Nancy said. “You either want it or you don’t.”

  “I have to look at the lodge first,” Ryan said. “Then I’ll let you know.”

  “Tomorrow’s Wednesday. If they’re bringing the money Friday, you won’t have much time.”

  “Maybe I can borrow this guy’s car I work for. Go over there sometime tomorrow. Tell him I got to get something in town.”

  “Creepy Ray,” Nancy said. “He took my keys or you could use mine.”

  Ryan nodded. “I heard you had a car.” He tried to picture her running the two guys off the road and he wanted to ask her about it, but he said, “What if I could start your car?”

  “Without a key?”

  “If you can get me some wire, it’s done.”

  It was a friend of Ryan’s, Bud Long, who had taught him how to jump wires: how to short out the starter and run a wire from the battery to the coil making sure to hook it on the right side of the coil so it wouldn’t burn out the points. Bud Long worked
for a loan company in Detroit, on Livernois, up among the miles of used car lots, and most of the paper the company carried was for car loans. When a customer got behind in his payments and wouldn’t acknowledge receiving the payment notices, Bud Long would go out at night and repossess the car with a jump wire. Sometimes Ryan and one or two others would go with him for something to do and Bud Long would let them jump the car. Usually they drove off and that was it. But a couple of times, when somebody saw them, they had to leave the car fast with the hood up and the wire hanging, cutting between houses to Bud Long’s car parked on the next street. Once they took a 16-gauge shotgun blast in the rear quarter panel, but they got away. (Bud Long said the son of a bitch probably owed money on the shotgun too.)

  That was all right, jumping cars with Bud Long; it was legal, or at least it seemed legal, and Bud knew what he was doing. But then a couple of the other guys started jumping cars when they wanted to go somewhere and didn’t have a ride and it was dumb to get involved in that. Ryan rode with them a few times when they came by for him. They’d drive the car downtown or wherever they were going and leave it. But one time-two thirty in the morning on East Jefferson near the Uniroyal plant-the dumb son of a bitch he was with, Billy Morrison, threw an empty beer bottle out the window with a cop car a half block behind them. They were pulled over, checked, and taken to the station on Beaubien and charged with car theft. Ryan called the older of his two sisters, Marion, whose husband was a lawyer, and told him what happened, and his brother-in-law, Carl, a sweetheart, told him to stay in jail, maybe it would teach him a goddamn lesson. He was arraigned on the warrant the next day, pleading not guilty; his bond was set at $500. But because he couldn’t afford the bond without his brother-in-law’s help, he spent eight days in the Wayne County Jail. At the Examination, Carl talked to Billy Morrison’s lawyer, the two of them standing, nodding at each other with the briefcases under their arms, and before he knew it, he and Billy Morrison had copped a plea of guilty to the charge of Unlawfully Driving Away an Automobile, UDAA, and were sent to Morning Sessions Court. Because it was their first offense, they were both placed on a year’s probation and his brother-in-law took him out to lunch so they could “have a little talk.”