When the Women Come Out to Dance: Stories

by Elmore Leonard

  “You don’t want to be with him,” Lourdes said, “but you want to live in this house.”

  “There it is,” the woman who didn’t look at all like a Mrs. Mahmood said.

  Lourdes sipped her daiquiri, put the glass down and reached for the pack of Virginia Slims on the table.

  “May I try one of these?”

  “Help yourself.”

  She lit the cigarette, sucking hard to get a good draw. She said, “I use to smoke. The way you do it made me want to smoke again. Even the way you hold the cigarette.”

  Lourdes believed the woman was very close to telling what she was thinking about. Still, it was not something easy to talk about with another person, even for a woman who danced naked. Lourdes decided this evening to help her.

  She said, “How would you feel if a load of wet concrete fell on your husband?”

  Then wondered, sitting in the silence, not looking at the woman, if she had spoken too soon.

  The redheaded woman said, “The way it happened to Mr. Zimmer? How did you feel?”

  “I accepted it,” Lourdes said, “with a feeling of relief, knowing I wouldn’t be beaten no more.”

  “Were you ever happy with him?”

  “Not for one day.”

  “You picked him, you must’ve had some idea.”

  “He picked me. At the party in Cali? There were seven Colombian girls for each American. I didn’t think I would be chosen. We married . . . In two years I had my green card and was tired of him hitting me.”

  The redheaded Mrs. Mahmood said, “You took a lot of shit, didn’t you?” and paused this time before saying, “How much does a load of concrete cost these days?”

  Lourdes, without pausing, said, “Thirty thousand.”

  Mrs. Mahmood said, “Jesus Christ,” but was composed, sitting back in her yellow cushions. She said, “You were ready. Viviana told you the situation and you decided to go for it.”

  “I think it was you hired me,” Lourdes said, “because of Mr. Zimmer—you so interested in what happen to him. Also I could tell, from the first day we sat here, you don’t care for your husband.”

  “You can understand why, can’t you? I’m scared to death of catching on fire. He lights a cigar, I watch him like a fucking hawk.”

  Giving herself a reason, an excuse.

  “We don’t need to talk about him,” Lourdes said. “You pay the money, all of it before, and we don’t speak of this again. You don’t pay, we still never speak of it.”

  “The Colombian guys have to have it all up front?”

  “The what guys?”

  “The concrete guys.”

  “You don’t know what kind of guys they are. What if it looks like an accident and you say oh, they didn’t do nothing, he fell off his boat.”

  “Woz doesn’t have a boat.”

  “Or his car was hit by a truck. You understand? You not going to know anything before.”

  “I suppose they want cash.”

  “Of course.”

  “I can’t go to the bank and draw that much.”

  “Then we forget it.”

  Lourdes waited while the woman thought about it smoking her Virginia Slim, both of them smoking, until Mrs. Mahmood said, “If I give you close to twenty thousand in cash, today, right now, you still want to forget it?”

  Now Lourdes had to stop and think for a moment.

  “You have that much in the house?”

  “My getaway money,” Mrs. Mahmood said, “in case I ever have to leave in a hurry. What I socked away in tips getting guys to spot their pants and that’s the deal, twenty grand. You want it or not? You don’t, you might as well leave, I don’t need you anymore.”

  So far in the few weeks she was here, Lourdes had met Dr. Mahmood face-to-face with reason to speak to him only twice. The first time, when he came in the kitchen and asked her to prepare his breakfast, the smoked snook, a fish he ate cold with tea and whole wheat toast. He asked her to have some of the snook if she wished, saying it wasn’t as good as kippers but would do. Lourdes tried a piece; it was full of bones but she told him yes, it was good. They spoke of different kinds of fish from the ocean they liked and he seemed to be a pleasant, reasonable man.

  The second time Lourdes was with him face-to-face he startled her, coming out of the swimming pool naked as she was watering the plants on the patio. He called to her to bring him his towel from the chair. When she came with it he said, “You were waiting for me?”

  “No, sir, I didn’t see you.”

  As he dried his face and his head, the hair so short it appeared shaved, she stared at his skin, at his round belly and his strange black penis, Lourdes looking up then as he lowered the towel.

  He said, “You are a widow?” She nodded yes and he said, “When you married, you were a virgin?”

  She hesitated, but then answered because she was telling a doctor, “No, sir.”

  “It wasn’t important to your husband.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Would you see an advantage in again being a virgin?”

  She had to think—it wasn’t something ever in her mind before—but didn’t want to make the doctor wait, so she said, “No, not at my age.”

  The doctor said, “I can restore it if you wish.”

  “Make me a virgin?”

  “Surgically, a few sutures down there in the tender dark. It’s becoming popular in the Orient with girls entering marriage. Also for prostitutes. They can charge much more, often thousands of dollars for that one night.” He said, “I’m thinking of offering the procedure. Should you change your mind, wish me to examine you, I could do it in your room.”

  Dr. Mahmood’s manner, and the way he looked at her that time, made Lourdes feel like taking her clothes off.

  He didn’t come home the night Lourdes and Mrs. Mahmood got down to business. Or the next night. The morning of the following day, two men from the Palm Beach County sheriff’s office came to the house. They showed Lourdes their identification and asked to see Mrs. Mahmood.

  She was upstairs in her bedroom trying on a black dress, looking at herself in the full-length mirror and then at Lourdes’ reflection appearing behind her.

  “The police are here,” Lourdes said.

  Mrs. Mahmood nodded and said, “What do you think?” turning to pose in the dress, the skirt quite short.

  Lourdes read the story in the newspaper that said Dr. Wasim Mahmood, prominent etc., etc., had suffered gunshot wounds during an apparent carjacking on Flagler near Currie Park and was pronounced dead on arrival at Good Samaritan. His Mercedes was found abandoned on the street in Delray Beach.

  Mrs. Mahmood left the house in her black dress. Later, she phoned to tell Lourdes she had identified the body, spent time with the police, who had no clues, nothing at all to go on, then stopped by a funeral home and arranged to have Woz cremated without delay. She said, “What do you think?”

  “About what?” Lourdes said.

  “Having the fucker burned.”

  She said she was stopping to see friends and wouldn’t be home until late.

  One A.M., following an informal evening of drinks with old friends, Mrs. Mahmood came into the kitchen from the garage and began to lose her glow.

  What was going on here?

  Rum and mixes on the counter, limes, a bowl of ice. A Latin beat coming from the patio. She followed the sound to a ring of burning candles, to Lourdes in a green swimsuit moving in one place to the beat, hands raised, Lourdes grinding her hips in a subtle way.

  The two guys at the table smoking cigarettes saw Mrs. Mahmood, but made no move to get up.

  Now Lourdes turned from them and saw her, Lourdes smiling a little as she said, “How you doing? You look like you feeling no pain.”

  “You have my suit on,” Mrs. Mahmood said.

  “I put on my yellow one,” Lourdes said, still moving in that subtle way, “and took it off. I don’t wear yellow no more, so I borrow one of yours. Is okay, isn�
� it?”

  Mrs. Mahmood said, “What’s going on?”

  “This is cumbia, Colombian music for when you want to celebrate. For a wedding, a funeral, anything you want. The candles are part of it. Cumbia, you should always light candles.”

  Mrs. Mahmood said, “Yeah, but what is going on?”

  “We having a party for you, Ginger. The Colombian guys come to see you dance.”

  FIRE IN THE HOLE

  I.

  They had dug coal together as young men and then lost touch over the years. Now it looked like they’d be meeting again, this time as lawman and felon, Raylan Givens and Boyd Crowder.

  Boyd did six years in a federal penitentiary for refusing to pay his income tax, came out and found religion. He received his ordination by mail order from a Bible college in South Carolina and formed a sect he called Christian Aggression. The next thing he did, Boyd formed the East Kentucky Militia with a cadre of neo-Nazi skinheads, a bunch of boys wearing Doc Martens and swastika tattoos. They were all natural-born racists and haters of authority, but still had to be taught what Boyd called “the laws of White Supremacy as laid down by the Lord,” which he took from Christian Identity doctrines. Next thing, he trained these boys in the use of explosives and automatic weapons. He told them they were now members of Crowder’s Commandos, sworn to take up the fight for freedom against the coming Mongrel World Order and the govermint’s illegal tax laws.

  Boyd said he would kill the next man tried to make him pay income tax.

  The skinheads accepted Boyd as the real thing, his having seen combat. Boyd had caught the tail end of Vietnam, came back with three pairs of Charlie’s ears on silver chains and an Air CAV insignia on his arm, the tat faded from having been there now some twenty-five years.

  Raylan Givens, a few years younger than Boyd, was now a deputy United States marshal. Raylan was known as the one who’d shot it out with a Miami gangster named Tommy Bucks—also known as the Zip—both men seated at the same table in the dining area of the Cardozo Hotel, South Beach, when they drew their pistols. Raylan had told the Zip he had twenty-four hours to get out of Dade County or he would shoot him on sight. When the Zip failed to comply, Raylan kept his word, shot him through china and glassware from no more than six feet away.

  The day the Marshals Service assigned Raylan to a Special Operations Group and transferred him from Florida to Harlan County, Kentucky, Boyd Crowder was on his way to Cincinnati to blow up the IRS office in the federal building.

  II.

  Boyd was making the run in a new Chevy Blazer, all mud from wheels to roof after coming out of the hollows and forks of East Kentucky. The Blazer belonged to his skinhead driver, a new boy named Jared who’d just finished his sixty-day basic training and indoctrination, a skinhead from Oklahoma. Boyd said to him, “You see where out’n Oregon a militia group threw a stink bomb in their IRS office?”

  “A stink bomb,” Jared said, his eyes holding on the road, the view all trees, sky and semis. He said, “Shit, throw a pipe bomb in there, a grenade, you want to get their attention.”

  It sounded good, but did he mean it? Boyd had his doubts about this Jared from Oklahoma.

  They had come out of deep woods five hours ago and were now following 75 on its approach to Covington and the Ohio River. Riding with them in back, covered in plastic wrap, were a pair of Chinese AKs, ammo and an RPG-7 antitank grenade launcher, another Chink weapon Boyd had used in the Nam, a little honey that fired a 40-millimeter hollow-charge rocket grenade.

  He said to Jared, “I want you to tell me if there’s something you don’t understand about what you been learning.”

  Jared moved his shoulders in kind of a shrug, eyes straight ahead as they came up on a line of big diesel haulers. He had that lazy manner skinheads put on to show they were cool. He said, “Well, a couple of things. I don’t understand all that Christian Identity stuff, their calling Jews the progeny of Satan and niggers subhuman.”

  Boyd said, “Hell, it’s right in the Bible, I’ll show it to you we get back. Okay, what’re the Jews behind?”

  “They control the Federal Reserve.”

  “What else?”

  Jared said, “ZOG?” not sounding too sure.

  “You betcha ZOG, the Zionist Occupational Government,” Boyd said, “the ones set to rule us we let the govermint take away our guns. You see Chuck Heston on TV? Chuck said they’d have to take his out of his cold dead hand.”

  “Yeah, I saw him,” Jared said, not sounding moved or inspired. Then saying, “There’s Cincinnati up ahead. You see it before you get to the bridge.”

  This Jared had come recommended from an Oklahoma group, the Aryan Knights of Freedom, Jared saying he heard of Crowder’s Commandos he couldn’t wait to drive his new SUV over to Kentucky and join up. Saying he was anxious to get into high explosives ‘stead of chasing niggers down alleys and spray-painting synagogues; shit. He said he was in Oklahoma City for the Murrah Federal Building, got there just a few minutes after she blew. He said it had inspired him to get in the fight. Sometimes talking about the Murrah Building it would sound like he had taken part in that mission with Tim and Terry.

  No, Boyd and others weren’t all that sold on this Jared from Oklahoma. How come he didn’t have any Aryan tattoos? How come he was always touching his head? Like wondering if his hair would ever grow in again. Boyd didn’t personally care for that bare-skull look, but allowed it since it was what they were known as. He preferred an inch on top and shaved sidewalls like his own regulation grunt cut, now mostly gray at fifty, steel bristles crowning his lean leathery face.

  They were coming on to Cincy now, its downtown standing over there against a sky losing its light. A few minutes later they were on the northbound span of the Ohio River bridge. Boyd said, “Get off on Fifth Street.”

  “Another thing I don’t understand,” Jared said, “there’s all these white power outfits around but nothing holding ’em together, no kind of plan I ever heard of.”

  “Except purpose,” Boyd said. “Militias, the Klan, your pissed-off Libertarians and tax protesters, your various Aryan brotherhoods, we’re all part of the same patriot movement.”

  They were on Fifth now passing hotels and that big fountain there.

  “Also you have your millions who don’t even realize yet they’re part of the revolution. I’m talking about all the people caught up in white flight. You know what that is?”

  “Yes sir, people moving out of town.”

  “White people moving to the suburbs. You think it’s ’cause they’re dying to cut grass and have barbecues in the backyard? Shit no, it’s to get away from the niggers and greasers. And Asiatics, Christ, we got ’em all. Anybody wants in, sure, come on. Look at all the fuckin’ Mexicans . . .”

  He paused to give directions, but Jared was already turning left onto Main—without being told where they were going, now or anytime before.

  Boyd gave him a look, but then had to hunch down as they passed the John Weld Peck Federal Building, Boyd trying to see up to the seventh floor of the nine-story building, where the IRS office was located. All he saw was a wall of tall rectangular windows up no more than a few floors. Sitting up again Boyd said, “Take a left on Sixth and come around the block.”

  They passed the Subway sandwich shop on Sixth his recon man Devil Ellis had told him about. Boyd didn’t mention it or say a word the rest of the way around the block, not until they were coming up on the federal building again.

  “Lemme off on the corner over there and make your circle. I’ll be waiting.”

  Jared turned left, pulled up in front of the yellow Subway awning, and Boyd got out. He went inside the shop—no one here but the woman behind the counter—and stood at the plate-glass window smelling onions. The view showed most of the John Weld Peck Building diagonally across the way. From here, Devil Ellis said, he’d have a clear shot at the corner windows up there. Which was how much Devil—what they called him—knew about firing a grenade rocket at a tar
get this close and high up. It was the kind of stunt Devil would try, stoned or just crazy, stand here chewing on a roast beef sub dripping onions and decide, yeah, shoot through this big window.

  Devil was the one drove down to the Tennessee line one night and set off a charge in the Jellico post office, and all the pissed-off retirees had to wait and wait to get their social security checks, which didn’t help the cause. Got the post office bombing listed with the abortion clinic Boyd was supposed to have blown up—the dumbest thing he ever heard of. What did you gain by it? Rob a bank and spray-paint White Power on the wall, you make your point and get away with a bag or two of cash.

  It was Devil told him to keep an eye on Jared—both Devil and Boyd’s baby brother, Bowman, suspecting Jared had been planted among them by the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Imperialism, or was an agent himself, although pretty dumb.

  Boyd walked out to the corner and stood watching for unmarked cars creeping around, vans parked where they shouldn’t be, spotters inside. It was getting dark already. The muddy Blazer rolled up. Boyd got in and Jared said, “Which way?”

  “Straight ahead.”

  Boyd sat there and didn’t speak again until they were up Main Street a ways, crossing East Central Parkway now, and Boyd said, “We coming to it, Niggaville,” Boyd looking at dingy old buildings, run-down storefronts, people he saw as winos on the street. Another couple of blocks and he spotted the place Devil told him to look for. Sure enough, up on the right. “There it is,” Boyd said. “Go past slow.” He could read the sign now sticking out from the front of the building:

  TEMPLE OF THE COOL

  AND BEAUTIFUL J.C.

  A thin coat of whitewash covered the front, the place a dump, the sign blasphemous, calling Jesus cool and beautiful, for Christ sake.

  “Turn left that next street and stop. I believe I can take ‘er from over there.” Boyd stuck his butt in Jared’s face pushing his way between the seats to get in the back. Jared raising his voice now: