Riding the Rap rg-2

by Elmore Leonard

  He went upstairs to the bedroom Bobby was using that used to be Chip’s mama’s room, dark in here with the dark furniture and the heavy rose-colored drapes almost closed. Sunlight came through the narrow opening, across the rose bedspread and the rose carpeting to where Bobby stood at the dresser looking at himself in the mirror. He had on his black silk pants and lizard shoes, no shirt, and was gazing at himself with his arms raised, muscles popped, twisting his ponytail into a knot.

  Louis said, “You getting ready?”

  “We have time,” Bobby said to himself in the mirror. “What’s going on?”

  “The man thinks we’re planning shit against him.”

  Bobby said, “Who knows, huh?”

  He watched Louis, in the mirror, open the door to the closet and begin pawing through the woman’s clothes.

  “You looking for something to wear?”

  “I won’t know what I’m looking for,” Louis said, “till I find it.”

  The phone rang.

  On the table next to the sofa where Chip was sitting on his spine staring at the television screen: the front drive on, the hidden driveway. He had made up his mind to go out, give Louis the watch and get away for a while. He thought of Palm Beach and the Au Bar, where he used to hang out, back in the days when his credit cards were good.

  The phone rang.

  They were spending the money Harry had on him for food. Guy with all his dough, a hundred and seventy-six bucks in his wallet. But now the credit cards… Why hadn’t he thought of them before? They weren’t doing Harry any good. The credit cards could come in handy.

  The phone rang.

  He pushed a button on the remote and was looking at the patio now, the pool and the sweep of weeds that used to be a lawn extending to palm trees and sky, clear blue. A path through the bushes beneath the trees led to the beach. At one time he thought of the ocean here as part of his property.

  The phone rang.

  He had to get out for a while. Not go to a bar-take his clothes off and walk down to the beach and look at the ocean, smoke another joint to clear his mind, see everything enlarged…

  He didn’t answer the phone because he wasn’t supposed to be here, but then, without thinking, as it was ringing again, he picked it up.

  Dawn’s voice said, “Chip?”

  “Hey, I was about to call you.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Really, I have your money.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  “Don’t get pouty on me. Meet you in Delray?”

  “Why don’t I stop by?”

  “Honey, you don’t want to come here, not just yet. If you get my drift.” He liked that. And liked the silence on the line, Dawn pulling in, reconsidering, seeing she’d better not be so fucking aggressive. He said, “I’m gonna be out and around. Why don’t we meet at Chuck and Harold’s for lunch? Twelve-thirty?”

  She said, “Chip? You’d better be there.”

  Threatening, with nothing to back it up.

  He told himself to be nice and said, “I’ll be counting the minutes,” and hung up. He wouldn’t show and tomorrow he’d put her off again, think of an excuse. Busy for the next few days doing something, he’d tell her, she would definitely not want to know about. He said out loud, “Okay? You told me you didn’t want to know anything, and if I tell you then you’re involved in whatever it is, right? Hey, you’re already involved. So quit your bitching.”

  Send Bobby to see her…

  Saturday go to a Huggers Gathering and try to scrounge up the fifteen hundred. Find a runaway whose daddy misses her.

  He should’ve asked Dawn about the guy, the dude in the hat, what he was like, what they talked about.

  He pushed a button and was looking at the front drive again, Christ, thinking about the guy and there he was, in his suit, the hat, coming through the trees toward the house.

  Ganz hurried out of the study to the front hall, started up the stairs and yelled as loud as he could, “He’s back! The guy’s back!”

  seventeen

  Raylan saw them as soon as he came around the side of the house past the garage: Bobby the gardener and a black guy sitting at the table on the patio, their shirts off, getting some sun and reading the newspaper. Both of them holding open sections of the paper, reading away.

  It took Raylan all of a moment to realize they knew he’d come back and were putting on this show for him.

  There were sections of the paper and a white shirt on the glass-top table; but not lying flat, Raylan noticed, something under there. Maybe their gardening shears, or the machete the guy had the other day.

  “I see you got yourself some help,” Raylan said to Bobby Deo. “What you need for this job is a crew.”

  Both of them had looked up and were watching him now, coming across the patio.

  “I noticed your car in the garage, figured you were around somewhere. You taking a break?”

  The one he knew was Bobby Deo had on his good pants again and his reptile wing tips, shiny clean. The other guy was wearing cream-colored pants and sandals.

  Bobby Deo said, “Yeah, we resting.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Raylan said, taking time to squint at the sky and reset his hat on his eyes. Looking out at the scraggly date palms and sea grape lining the property he said, “What I don’t understand is why you’re doing this instead of your collection work.”

  He turned now to face them.

  “There’s a lot more money in getting deadbeats to pay up, isn’t there?”

  Bobby didn’t answer. The two of them sat there staring at him.

  Raylan said, “You’d like me to get to the point here, wouldn’t you?”

  The guy still didn’t answer.

  “Okay, maybe you can help me out. I understand you do collection work for a friend of mine, Harry Arno. Is that right?” Raylan waited, watching the guy making up his mind.

  Finally Bobby said, “Sometimes.”

  “I’m told you worked for him last week.”

  “Where you hear that?”

  “From another friend of Harry’s. He told this friend you made a collection for him and he was suppose to meet you in Delray Beach. Harry waited and called this friend when you didn’t show up.”

  Bobby said, “You heard that, huh? Who told you I was here?”

  “Your buddy Santo.”

  “Yeah? How do you know to ask him?”

  Time to identify himself.

  Raylan held open a leather case to show his star and I.D. “It’s what I do, find people, fugitives on the run. I’m United States Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens, Bobby. I do the same thing you used to do, only, I bet, for a lot less money.” Raylan put on a slight grin, showing he thought it was funny they had this in common.

  Bobby didn’t grin back.

  “Let me ask you something,” Raylan said. “When you track down a guy who skipped, he ever offer you money to leave him alone?”

  “That what you want?”

  “Wait now,” Raylan said. “You think I’m looking for a payoff?”

  “What it sounds like.”

  “For what? Not ask you questions?”

  “Forget it.”

  “All I asked was if a fugitive ever offered you money.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “More than you’d make bringing him in.”

  “Always.”

  “You ever take it?”

  Bobby shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  “I wouldn’t do it.”

  “You mean it would get around and you’d be out of business,” Raylan said, “which you are now anyway. No more skip tracing since that fall you took. Or, you’re saying you wouldn’t do it ‘cause you’re a straight shooter. I believe that, Bobby. So tell me how come you didn’t meet Harry in Delray last Friday, one o’clock?”

  “Something came up, I couldn’t be there.”

  “But you’d made the collection.”

  “No, I tol
d Harry the guy can’t pay him.”

  “The guy,” Raylan said. “You mean Warren Ganz.”

  Bobby shrugged and Louis spoke up.

  “You see that sign out front where you drive in, say ‘keep out’? That means you, man. This is private property, so leave.”

  Raylan turned to him. “Who am I talking to?”

  “You talking to me. Who you think you talking to?”

  Raylan said, “You want to get in this? Tell me who you are and what you’re doing here with this guy. Couple of gardeners-you put your good clothes on to clear brush. Sit here for my benefit like you’re taking a break? If you’re not working here then you must be trespassing. So I’ll have to cuff you and take you in.”

  “I live here,” Louis said.

  “Maybe I’ll take you in anyway.”

  “For what?” Louis sounding surprised now. “Man, I’m the caretaker. He’s staying while he does the work and I help him out some.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Louis Lewis.”

  “You putting me on?”

  “It’s my name. You want me to spell it for you?”

  “Where’s Warren Ganz?”

  “Down in the Keys someplace, been gone all week.”

  “When’s he coming back?”

  “Didn’t tell me.”

  Now Bobby said, “When I came here to collect, he was leaving. He said go see his mother, she’d pay me. So I go see her at the home-”

  “They’re talking,” Louis said, “Bobby tells her he’s a gardener and she hires him to clean the place up.”

  “Yes, but first,” Bobby said, “she tell me no, she won’t pay the debt, even for her own son. So I call Harry, I say maybe if you try-you the one her son owes-you can get her to pay you. He say to meet him and we can talk about it. But I never went there.”

  Like they were getting their stories straight.

  Raylan said, “You told Harry about the mother?”

  “I did. Told him how she is, how you don’t know what she’s talking about sometime. Like when I go to get paid for my work.”

  Bobby shook his head, resigned, before looking up at Raylan with sort of a frown, interested.

  “You went to see her the other night, didn’t you?”

  “I spoke to her,” Raylan said.

  “Yeah? How was she?”

  “Older than she looks,” Raylan said. “We talked.”

  “About what, her piano? Then you talk to a nurse and she tell you the old woman don’t have a piano? You ask about her son, the nurse tells you he never comes to visit? Then you come back here and sneak around look in the windows?”

  “Woke me up,” Louis said. “I almost call the police, tell ‘em there’s a prowler, man could be armed and dangerous, so shoot the motherfucker on sight. You mean that was you?”

  Louis waited until Raylan, giving them a look but no last words, walked off around the corner, back the way he’d come, before Louis said to Bobby, “Hold up your hand.”

  “What?”

  “Man, put your hand up in the air.”

  Bobby raised his right hand above his head and Louis came out of his chair to reach over and slap the hand saying, “Yeaaah, we done it, man. The dude’s gone off scratching his head wondering what happen to him.”

  Bobby smiled, not giving it much.

  Still, it was the first time Louis could recall ever seeing the man smile, Louis smiling with him, sitting down again. He said, “There’s no way the dude can say any different than what we told him. You see a way?” He pushed the newspapers off the table and picked up the shotgun he’d laid there underneath, with the machete. Then looked at Bobby again. “Do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “See how the man can believe anything but what we told him?”

  “I don’t know what he believes,” Bobby said. “I have to think about it. The first time, he act like a cop trying to be a nice guy. Now we know he’s a cop, so he don’t have to act nice.” Bobby speaking with a thoughtful tone. “Comes here looking for Harry… Why would they send a U.S. marshal, a federal cop?”

  “Nobody sent him,” Louis said. “Didn’t you hear the man say he’s a friend of Harry’s? Hasn’t seen him in a few days, so he ask around, follows some leads, decides to check on people owe Harry money. See if they’ve seen him, that’s all.” Louis looked toward the house and raised his voice to say, “Hey, you suppose to be down in the Keys.”

  Bobby turned to see Chip in the sunroom, watching them through a pane of glass. He said, “Leave him in there.”

  “Scared to come out,” Louis said. “Look at him,” and said, “Come on, man, the coast is clear.”

  “I told you leave him in there,” Bobby said, his tone getting Louis’s attention. “We have to think about this guy-what’s his name?”

  “Raylan something,” Louis said, “believes he’s a cowboy. Got the hat, the boots. I wouldn’t mind a pair like that, black with the tan wing tips?”

  “Had his coat open, thumbs in his belt,” Bobby said. “You see that? Ready to draw his gun. I always wonder what that would be like, two guys facing each other with guns.”

  “Like in the movies,” Louis said.

  “Yeah, but it could happen,” Bobby said. “This guy isn’t going away.”

  eighteen

  Whenever Raylan thought of Reverend Dawn he’d see her facing him from across the table with her eyes closed, her long hair parted in the middle. He’d see her eyes open then to look at him with her calm expression. He’d see her hand come up to move her hair away from her face, using the tips of her fingers in a delicate kind of gesture, and he’d notice the way she bit her nails down.

  Raylan was anxious to have his fortune told again, see how he was doing, and was on his way from Warren Ganz’s home to Reverend Dawn’s when the beeper message stopped him. He followed up to hear a female voice in the Sheriffs Office detective bureau asking if he’d meet Sergeant Lou Falco in the parking lot of a funeral home on Federal Highway in West Palm. As soon as possible.

  Shit. He knew Falco, Falco was okay, but how long would this take? It sounded like a stakeout.

  Raylan found the funeral home, 1940s moderne painted white with round corners and glass-brick inserts. He got out of the Jaguar and into an unmarked Crown Vic, a gray one, saying, “How do you work surveillance when everybody knows this’s a police car?”

  “I’m waiting for a guy,” Falco said, “who’s coming to see what his brother looks like with embalming fluid in him. The brother is sitting on his front steps, a guy gets out of a car, pops him three times, gets back in the car and drives off. Maurice has to know who did it, but won’t talk to us. So maybe, you know, when he sees his brother laid out…”

  “Maurice,” Raylan said. “That’s the name of one of the guys tried to jack my car that time.” He saw Falco nodding.

  “Maurice Woody. You see them once you know you’ll see them again. Maurice is why I asked you to come. The other one’s Faron, the dead one.”

  “Wears his hair in cornrows?”

  “Yeah, that’s Faron.”

  “They must’ve made bond.”

  “Ten thousand each. They promised their grandma they’d never get in trouble again and she put her house up as collateral. The brothers were out five days when Faron got popped.”

  “Maurice was there?”

  “In the house.”

  Through the tinted windshield they watched a car coming along Federal toward the funeral home. As it passed Falco said, “You know Maurice. I was thinking when he gets here if you went in with me… You heard about Faron so you stopped by…”

  “Offer Maurice my sympathy?”

  “Talk to him in his bereavement, shoot the shit.”

  “Offer a plea deal on the car-jacking?”

  “You could mention it. See if he’d like to trade, give us who did his brother.”

  “There isn’t a state attorney in Florida,” Raylan said, “would go for a deal on car-jacki
ng. You know that.”

  “Yeah, but Maurice doesn’t.”

  “He’d have to be awful dumb. The guy’s in and out of the system.”

  “So? We don’t know his I.Q. He might go for it. We were hoping,” Falco said, “to put them at a robbery in Delray, a mom-and-pop grocery store, right after they got out. Use it to leverage Maurice into cooperating. We showed their pictures, the woman said no, it wasn’t them, so…” Falco was silent, watching the street, before saying, “It was like these two guys spur of the moment decide to rob the place. They go through the store picking out what they want and put it on the checkout counter-snacks like pretzels, potato chips, a couple of six-packs, and Jell-O.”

  Raylan said, “Jell-O?”

  “Yeah, all the party stuff and a half-dozen boxes of Jell-O. The store owner pulls a gun and gets creamed with it, thirty stitches in his head. The one guy wants a ring the woman’s wearing but can’t get it off her finger. So-listen to this-the guy takes out a pair of snippers and is gonna cut her finger off. The woman begs him, please let her try, and luckily she gets it off. The guy looks at the ring up close like he’s appraising it and gives it back to her, doesn’t want it. But if she hadn’t gotten it off… They left with their groceries and about eighty bucks. Early Saturday, before noon.”

  “The guy had snippers on him? Like tin snips?”

  “I think more like the ones you use for gardening.”

  “Pruners.”

  “Yeah, for trimming bushes.”

  “Both guys were black?”

  “The woman thought so but wasn’t sure. They’re Lebanese, the couple, only been here three years.”

  They sat there not saying anything for a while, watching cars go by on Federal, Raylan seeing Bobby Deo with the pruners on his belt that first time, in the front yard with the machete, Bobby the gardener. You wouldn’t call him black, though he could be and the woman wasn’t sure. But if it was Bobby and the other guy, Louis, what would they be doing holding up a grocery store for snacks and six boxes of Jell-O? Raylan tried to remember the last time he’d had Jell-O. At lunch in Miami Beach. With Harry?… He thought of Harry and right away began thinking of Dawn again, Dawn with her eyes closed, her eyes opening, looking at him, and he said, “I’ve been meaning to ask around, I wondered if anybody in Crimes Persons knows a Dawn Navarro. She’s a medium, like a fortune-teller.”