Riding the Rap rg-2

by Elmore Leonard

  Harry raised his arms as though to protect himself, saying, “I didn’t see you, okay? Honest to God, I didn’t. The other guy said it was okay to take it off when I went to the bathroom or if I was alone, but cover my eyes if anybody came in. I swear I didn’t see you.”

  Chip said, “But you saw the other guy.”

  “No, I didn’t, he was behind me. He told me to put the bathing cap on-it’s tighter’n hell and hot. Pull it down over my eyes I can’t see a goddamn thing.”

  Chip said, “He tell you what you have to do?” and watched Harry lower his arms before he spoke.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Didn’t say anything about getting out of here?”

  Harry hesitated again. “No. Was he suppose to?”

  “Sit down.”

  He watched Harry stoop to pick up the chain and shuffle to the cot, used to moving this way. When he was seated, Ganz walked over and sat down next to him.

  “Have you decided?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “What it’s worth to you to get out.”

  “Name it,” Harry said. “Whatever you want, if I’ve got it.”

  “How about three mil?”

  “You kidding? I don’t have that kind of money.”

  Chip said, “You sure?”

  “I know how much I’ve got put away, about two and a half, two hundred fifty thousand plus some interest.”

  “Where is it?”

  “In the bank. Barnett branch on Collins.”

  “What about in the Bahamas, in the Swiss bank?”

  “The Bahamas?”

  “Freeport. You forgot about that one. What I’m gonna do,” Chip said, “is give you one day, twenty-four hours, to come up with a way of drawing all the funds out of the Bahamas account and giving it to us, in cash. I mean, of course, without anyone else knowing about it. If I don’t like the idea, Harry, you’re dead. You pay up, you go home. So it better be the best fucking idea you ever had in your life.”

  Harry said, “Do I get my car back? It’s brand-new.”

  He heard the guy say, “That’s what you’re worried about?” And felt the guy’s hand on his shoulder, pushing on it as he got up from the cot, the guy saying, “Twenty-four hours, Harry,” and a few seconds later heard the door open and close and the key turn.

  Harry waited. He said, “You still there?” He waited again, a little longer, and said, “You still there, asshole?” and peeled up the edge of the bathing cap.

  He tried now to picture the guy from the glimpse he got of him, no one he’d ever seen before, but a type: Miami Beach, there were hundreds of those skinny middle-aged guys around with tans, retired, nothing to do; they sat on benches in Lummus Park watching the models getting their pictures taken. But this one-in a place right on the ocean, carpeting that had to run seventy, eighty bucks a square yard easy, expensive fixtures in the bathroom, a marble floor… Did the guy live here? He didn’t sound like a wiseguy, he sounded like a guy trying to act cool. Giving him twenty-four hours to come up with an idea-that was bullshit. If they knew he had an account in the Bahamas, all they had to do was get him to transfer the money from his account to their account. Open one-what was hard about that?

  Harry ate an Oreo cream cookie thinking: They start out with this great idea, how to score a bundle. Propose a deal, dress it up. If it works and they get the money they let you go. He believed they would, otherwise why bother with a blindfold? But the black guy had his own proposition, cut the other guys out, and if he did he’d have to kill them. So that’s the kind of people you’re dealing with, Harry thought. Some guys with an idea who most likely never tried it before, felt their way along without knowing shit about what they were doing. So you don’t know either, Harry thought. It could come apart for any number of reasons: not trusting each other, or one of them tells somebody else, the wrong person, the cops enter the picture and these guys panic… Harry thinking, The cops should be on it by now anyway, for Christ sake. What were they doing? Buck Torres, he’d know you’re missing. Joyce would call him first thing. It got Harry excited. But then he thought, No, she wouldn’t call Buck, she’d call Raylan… Well, that was okay, get the cowboy on his trail. But would he have his heart in it? That fucking cowboy might just as soon you stayed missing.

  No, he’d get on it. Wouldn’t he?

  What Raylan did was drive along Ocean Boulevard looking for vacant property, someplace he could park and cut through to the beach. As a last resort he could go up to the shopping center by the Lantana bridge and park there; he didn’t think it was too far, maybe a mile. He watched his odometer. At six-tenths of a mile he came up on a bunch of Australian pines, big and scraggly, bent from years of wind off the ocean, the trees lining an empty lot of scrub growth. It looked good. He’d leave the Jag here and approach Ganz’s place from the ocean side. Take his boots off to walk along the beach.

  Chip was back in the study keeping watch, the hostage room still showing on the TV screen: Harry Arno, without the bathing cap, sitting on his cot eating a cookie… eating another one, digging into the package of Oreos again, Jesus, biting into another one. It made Chip hungry to watch. Not for cookies, though, popcorn. Nothing hit the spot after smoking weed like hot buttered popcorn laced with garlic salt. Thinking about it he had to swallow. Sit here and shove handfuls of popcorn into his mouth while he kept watch. He remembered there was a big jar of Newman’s Own popcorn, unopened, in the kitchen and it gave him a good feeling. He preferred Paul Newman’s to Orville Redenbacher’s, though Orville’s wasn’t bad. It was nice to be a little stoned and know the situation was in hand. Watching Harry the bookmaker eating Oreo creams. Chip grinning now-hey, shit, look at him, still eating. An Oreo wouldn’t be bad… Or peanut brittle-there was a box of it in Harry’s room, right there, on the floor. Jesus, peanut brittle, he could taste it. That’s what he needed, something sweet. First scan the grounds, then go upstairs and get the peanut brittle. Fuck Harry, he had his cookies. Chip pushed a button on the remote. Nothing going on out front. Now the back of the property…

  And Chip felt himself jump, the same way he’d jumped ten minutes ago when he looked at the room upstairs and didn’t see Harry. What he saw this time, out beyond the patio, was the guy in the hat again, the U.S. marshal, by the trees at the edge of the yard, the guy pulling on his boots, looking toward the house and now coming this way past the pool, coming across the patio, the guy in the hat and dark suit in full view now, close, filling the screen, looking up as he approached and now he was out of the picture, beneath the video camera mounted above the French doors.

  The phone rang and Chip reached for it.

  It was in his mind he didn’t want the guy to hear any sounds from inside the house and had the phone in his hand before he realized his mistake. What he should’ve done, let the guy hear the phone ring and no one answer… It wasn’t too late to hang up. He started to when he heard, “Chip?” and thought he recognized the voice but wasn’t sure.

  “Who is this?”

  “Who do you think?” Dawn said.

  “Listen, I can’t talk to you right now.”

  “Someone’s there?”

  Chip watched the TV screen, the empty patio, wanting the guy to appear again, see him walk away. All the doors were locked; he’d made sure of that after Louis and Bobby left. The guy wouldn’t break in-he couldn’t, he was a federal officer, for Christ sake.

  “Chip? I’m at Chuck and Harold’s…”

  “I know-something came up, I couldn’t make it.”

  “You don’t have my money, do you?”

  “Tomorrow, how’s that?”

  “You’re stringing me along…”

  “No, I called, you’d already left,” Ganz said.

  “I’ll check my machine.”

  “I didn’t leave a message. Listen, I wondered, has that guy been back?”

  “What guy?”

  “With the hat.”

  “No.”

 
; “You said he was a fed, some kind of federal cop.”

  “Yeah?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “I guess the same way I know he’s looking for you now. He hasn’t found you yet, but he’s getting close.” Dawn paused and Chip waited. She said, “He isn’t by any chance there right now, is he? Outside, looking around…?”

  “I haven’t seen him.”

  “You mean you haven’t spoken to him,” Dawn said.

  The front door chimes rang in the hall.

  Chip switched the picture on the screen from the patio to the front entrance and there he was, waiting, touching his hat as he looked up at the video camera, Dawn’s voice saying, “But you have seen him. Chip? Tell me the truth, aren’t you looking at him right now?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Chip?”

  He was watching the guy, watching him turn finally and walk off the front stoop, gone, out of camera range, and Chip switched the picture to the driveway. Nothing. No sign of him. Chip thinking, He’s gone around back. And Dawn’s voice came on again.

  “Chip? He knows we know each other.”

  “How could he?”

  “It’s what he does. He finds out things.”

  “All right, let’s say he’s on it. But you haven’t seen me. Listen, I’m not even here. Louis told him I’m down in the Keys, doesn’t know when I’ll be back.”

  “He’s talked to Louis,” Dawn said, “but not to you. Is he still there?”

  “He left.”

  “But you saw him.”

  “For a minute,” Chip said. “Not even that.” He felt alert but was thinking in slow motion, trying to hold a conversation and make sense, sound convincing without saying too much, Christ, with a federal U.S. marshal creeping around outside. It was hard, it required nerves of fucking steel. He put the patio on the screen-empty in a glare of sunlight-and said, “Look, you don’t know anything, so there’s nothing you can tell him, is there?”

  “You mean what I might’ve gotten from you.”

  “Exactly, since I haven’t told you anything.”

  “But what about what I know,” Dawn said, “without anyone telling me? I’m not going to prison, Chip, for fifteen hundred dollars I don’t even have.”

  Chip said, “Jesus Christ.” He said, “Wait.” But she’d already hung up.

  He sat listening now, staring at the empty patio. He wanted to smoke another joint and wanted something sweet, hungry again, and wanted to go to the bathroom. He thought of going through the house, the living room, the library, to look outside, all around, but didn’t want to leave the study and be in rooms with windows. He didn’t know how long he could sit here. Or what to do when he heard the sound coming from the sunroom-a rapping sound, four times on a pane of glass-and felt his neck become rigid.

  Raylan had taken another walk around the house. He pressed close to the French doors now, hands at his face to block out his reflection looking in at the white-covered furniture and the door across the sunroom that was closed, but showed a line of light beneath it. He reached up and rapped his knuckles against glass, hard, watching the door inside the room, wanting to see it open. He waited a minute before stepping back, and now thought of taking off his hat, putting his fist inside and punching it through a pane of glass. Reach in then and open the French doors, walk over to the door with the light showing underneath and yank it open.

  He thought of doing it knowing he wouldn’t. He could cut official corners to call a man out, give him twenty-four hours to leave the county, but couldn’t a walk in a man’s house unless invited, or else with a warrant and bust down the door.

  It was the way he was raised, to have good manners. Though a situation one time in particular had set it in his mind as something more than etiquette, back when they were living in a coal camp and the miners struck Duke Power: Raylan walking a picket line most of the year, his dad in the house dying of black lung, and company gun thugs came looking for Raylan’s uncle, his mom’s younger brother, living with them at the time. They came across the street, five of them, a couple with pick handles, and up the walk to where his mother stood on the porch. He remembered she was having trouble with her teeth and they ached her that day. The gun thugs said they wanted to speak to her brother the agitator, set his thinking cap on straight for him. She told them he wasn’t home. They said they intended to look in the house, and if she didn’t move out of the way they would help her. Raylan came out the screen door to stand with his mother and remembered her eyes, the way she looked at him like she’d given up hope. Though it was not in her voice when she told them, “You don’t walk in a person’s home ‘less you’re invited. Even you people must believe that. You have homes, don’t you? Wives and mothers keeping house? This is our home and I’m not inviting you in.” They shoved her aside and hit Raylan with the pick handles to put him down; they went through the house and out the back, empty-handed.

  Her words hadn’t stopped them. No, what they did was stick in Raylan’s mind-her words, her quiet tone of voice-and stop him, more than twenty years later, from breaking into this man’s house.

  Walking away he had a strange thought. What if he wrote Harry a letter and sent it to this address?

  twenty

  “How can this guy be a crook,” Louis said, “he does everything the same always.”

  “They no different than other people,” Bobby said. “I learn that skip tracing. Get to know the guy’s habits, he’s yours.”

  They sat in Bobby’s black Cadillac on South County in Palm Beach, the golf course where Ben King played every afternoon on both sides of the road. They were waiting for the S&L crook to finish the first hole and cross the road in his golf cart to play number two, the guy always alone. “Thoughtful of him, huh?” Louis said. Nobody wanting to play with him now, associate with a man up on charges to defraud, embezzle, and maybe a few other things, out on a half-million dollars’ worth of bail put up by three different bondsmen.

  They had parked by the clubhouse to watch him tee off. “Still having trouble with that slice,” Louis said. “But he’s all right. First three holes, you any good at all, they no such thing as a bad lie.”

  Bobby said, “You telling me you play this course?” his tone saying bullshit.

  “I caddied here when I first come over, skinny little boy, the golf bags bigger than I was.”

  They pulled around to South County to watch Mr. King approach the green and putt out the first hole.

  “There he is,” Louis said now, “marking his card. I bet you the man cheats.”

  They watched him get into a green golf cart and cross South County in front of them.

  “Man’s big,” Louis said. “You notice? Must go two hundred and I bet thirty pounds. What do you say?”

  “About what?”

  “How much he weighs.”

  “I don’t give a fuck what he weighs.”

  “Man takes up the whole cart,” Louis said, “going with pink and white today. The cigar, the sun visor-wants you to know he’s a big important motherfucker, why he smokes the cigar all the time. Chip say he stole money right out of his own company, put it in land deals, put it in offshore banks in the Caymans. Sold mortgages he didn’t even hold to different banks. How you expect to get away with shit like that? Stole money out of trust accounts, like old retired people had their money in? Wiped them out. Chip say, ‘I think of my poor mother, if it ever happened to her.’ What he’s thinking, there wouldn’t be no money for her to leave him. It’s why he wants this S&L man,” Louis said, his gaze following the green cart. “And off he goes.”

  Once King was across South County, Bobby put the Cadillac in drive, crept up to the next intersection and turned left into a private road, this one narrow and shaded dark with tall pines lining both sides. “Hole’s a three-hundred and fifty-six yard par four,” Louis said, looking at it right there on their left. “Go up about halfway. You see those bushes out there, with the red flowers?”

  “Hibi
scus,” Bobby said.

  “They put them every hundred and fifty yards so the gentlemen know where they at, what club to use.”

  “Here he comes,” Bobby said, looking at his outside mirror, the green cart approaching along a path close to them, on the other side of the pines.

  “Sliced it again,” Louis said. “I been counting on his slice, keep him over on this side of the fairway. See, but he underclubbed it. The shot plays longer’n you think. The man oughta know better.”

  “How far was his drive?”

  “About one-eighty. He won’t be on in two, and that’s good, how we want it. Let’s see where his second shot goes.” Louis turned to look back through an opening in the trees. “He’s lining it up. Slice the motherfucker, will you, please, so we don’t have to go out on the fairway?” Louis waited, still turned in the seat to watch. And smiled. “Man is stuck with that vicious slice. You see it?”

  “It’s right up there,” Bobby said, “in the trees. I didn’t see it go through.”

  Louis had turned to look ahead, not smiling now, but pleased and anxious. He said, “Thank you, Jesus, for delivering this big-ass millionaire to us. Where is he… he coming?”

  “Pretty soon,” Bobby said. “He’s in his cart.”

  “I love it,” Louis said. “You ready? Soon as he gets up to the ball.”

  Bobby had his hand on the door handle. He said, “Anytime.”

  And Louis frowned at him. “You not ready. Wait.” Louis hunched over to open the glove box. He brought out two Browning .380 autos and handed one to Bobby, who racked the slide while Louis went back into the glove box for the ski masks Chip had bought out of a catalog. The pistols Louis had bought off jackboys in Riviera Beach, cheap, the jackboys dealing in arms they stole and had plenty. The idea originally, one for Louis and one for Chip, but now Bobby had the man’s while the man smoked weed and watched TV. Now Louis was ready.

  “Man, put your ski mask on.”