“You have two different flight bags and make a switch.”
“I guess so.”
“You guess?”
“I haven’t worked it out yet.”
“The woman they think has the money but don’t, they gonna come down on.”
“If she doesn’t have it, what’s the problem?”
“Has to be a woman won’t open her mouth.” Ordell paused to look at this idea. “They still know I’m the one it’s coming to.”
“Once you have the money,” Jackie said, “that’s your problem. You’re on your own.”
“You must see a piece of this for yourself.”
“Ten percent. Plus, what we’ve already agreed to. A hundred thousand if I go to jail.”
“But you helping them. They gonna let you off.”
She turned to face the ocean, saying to him, “Maybe.” Her eyes closed now, the breeze blowing her hair. Fine looking.
Ordell said, “If they say they gonna let the first run go through, why don’t we bring the whole load in that time?”
She said, her eyes still closed, “I don’t trust them all that much. Let’s see how it goes.” She pulled her T-shirt off over her head and shook her hair free.
Ordell saw what looked like a swimsuit bra covering her ninnies. Not much showing, but they looked to be fine ones. He said, “I have to do some thinking on this.”
She said, “You should,” and walked out to the hard-packed wet sand. Stood there and then looked around at him. “You know someone named Cujo?”
What was this now? Man, coming out of nowhere.
“What about him?”
“He’s at Good Sam.”
“What you talking about?”
She said, “He was shot yesterday,” and started walking out in the ocean.
“Wait a minute!”
Ordell yelled it at her, but she kept going. He ran down to the hard-packed sand. “Who told you that?” She didn’t hear him, so he moved toward her yelling, “Come back here!” and the surf came in over his alligators before he realized it. Shit. He watched her dive into a wave. Watched her come up and dive into another one, her butt in the white shorts mooning him.
Melanie had the vodka on the coffee table now, close by with a bowl of ice, while Louis finished up a cigar-size joint she’d rolled Jamaica-style, Louis sucking away in a cloud of white smoke. This guy appreciated everything you gave him. Five vodkas so far, with the dope, but very attentive. Head against the sofa cushion, staring at her through deep, dark enlarged pupils as she spoke about their pal Ordell:
How he’d looked at the cocaine business at one time and found it too competitive, all the corners taken; try to move on one you’d get shot. Guns, though, you didn’t need a franchise, you could sell guns wherever there was a demand. She told how Ordell saw himself as an international arms dealer when, come on, the only people he sold to were dopers, Jamaican crazies, and now the cartel guys from Medellín.
“Making out though. He’s doing all right,” Louis said, raising his glass in slow motion.
“Well, so far he is,” Melanie said, with some doubt in her tone. She had washed up and put a shirt on, the romance part over for the time being. She said, “You have to admit he’s not too bright.”
Louis said he wouldn’t go so far as to say that.
Melanie said, “Louis,” in her quietest serious tone, “he puts his fingers on the words when he reads. He moves his lips. Let’s say he’s streetwise. But that doesn’t stop him from being a fuckup.”
Louis said, “If you’re talking about the kidnapping, I was in it too, you know.”
“You weren’t in Freeport,” Melanie said, “were you, when my provider at the time was told to pay up or he’d never see his wife again? And he’d already filed for divorce, and if he didn’t ever see her again it would save him a fortune?” Melanie smiled at Louis. “No, you weren’t. They made a movie that was something like it. I’ve forgotten the title. Danny DeVito’s the husband, Bette Midler gets kidnapped?”
Louis seemed to think about it and shook his head.
“We happened to see it on TV, not more than a month ago. Ordell’s watching, he goes, ‘What is this shit? You believe it?’ I said, ‘Hey, if it doesn’t even work as a movie . . .’ Now he’s talking about it again—I mean the real kidnapping. You know why? Because of this Nazi freak he met.”
“Big Guy,” Louis said. “I saw him.”
“At the white-power rally. That’s why he brought you there,” Melanie said, “to see him.”
Louis nodded. “ ’cause he looks like Richard.”
She kept staring at Louis until he said, “What?”
“I understand you and Richard didn’t get along,” Melanie said. “You wanted to kill him.” She watched Louis shrug, it seemed with an effort. “Richard raped the woman you were holding. . . .”
“He tried to.”
“You liked her, didn’t you?”
“She was nice.”
“You got her out before the cops landed on Richard. Took her to your apartment?” She waited but he didn’t confirm or deny. “Ordell thought you had something going there.”
Louis shook his head.
“It would’ve been pretty weird if you did.” Melanie watched Louis sip his drink and lower the glass to rest on his thigh. “Well, Ordell has something going. He must’ve told you.”
Louis said, “About fate bringing us all together?”
Melanie slid her shoulder along the sofa toward him. “Fate, my ass. He’s bringing you in for one reason. When he goes after the Nazi freak and all his guns, somebody’s gonna have to kill him. He wants you to do it.”
Louis had his head turned, resting against the cushion, close enough to touch. He stared at her forever before he said, “Why?”
“Who does Big Guy look like? Richard. Someone you wanted to kill.”
“I don’t know.”
“Ordell believes it, he told me. He goes, ‘Louis, he get out there and see Big Guy, he gonna see Richard and want to shoot him when I say to.’ ” Louis smiled and she said, “Do I sound like him?”
“Yeah, that was good.”
“If you go, don’t turn your back on him,” Melanie said, moving closer to him, staring into those giant pupils, “or he’ll try to leave you there. I mean dead, Louis, the gun in your hand and he’s off the hook.”
“He told you that?”
“It’s the way he thinks now, he’s changed. The other night he killed a man who worked for him.”
“Why?”
“Ask him.”
“I ought to get out of here. Is that what you’re saying?”
Melanie made a face, for a moment in pain. She said, “Oh, no . . . Baby, I want you to stick around. Use him before he uses you, and take what you want.” She said, “I can’t imagine a guy who robs banks having trouble with that.”
She watched him grin, not sure what it meant until he said, “You’re serious,” and she grinned back at him, close enough to smell the weed on his breath.
“You bet I am. What’s he ever done for us?”
Louis seemed to think about it a moment.
“I guess not much.”
“Oh, man,” Melanie said. “You know how long I’ve been waiting for this?”
15
Gallery Renee was located on the street level of The Gardens Mall, in a dim area between Sears and Bloomingdale’s: a deep rectangular space, high ceiling, white walls and turquoise trim that picked up the mall’s color motif.
Twelve thirty Sunday afternoon Max was looking through showroom glass at the gallery’s bare walls, a few paintings on the floor against the walls, and at three black metal containers spaced down the length of the room. He thought of Grecian urns, then realized what they were: the eight hundred twenty dollars’ worth of olive pots Renee had called about last Monday, wanting him to drop everything and bring a check. There they were, COD, so she’d paid for them. Black rusted metal jars about three feet high. One near the entrance. He moved
that way and saw the sign on the glass, SORRY, CLOSED TODAY. Renee’s work, the ornate capital letters, the words underlined three times. Closed—but when he pushed on the brass handle the door opened. Max entered, pausing to look in the olive pot standing close by. Cigarette butts, gum wrappers, a Styrofoam cup . . . A skinny young Latin-looking guy with hair to his shoulders was coming out from the back with a painting, a big one. He lowered it to lean against a library table in the middle of the floor and looked at Max.
“Can you read? We close today.”
Now he was going back, through a hall at the rear to a door that was open and showed daylight.
Max walked up to the painting: six or seven feet by five and greenish, different shades of thick green paint with touches of red, yellowish tan, black . . . He had no idea what it was. Maybe a jungle and those were green figures coming out, emerging from the growth; it was hard to tell. More paintings were propped against the other side of the table. Paintings coming down, the ones on the floor, the new ones going up, Renee getting ready for one of her cheese-and-wine shows. She could be in back, in her office. Max looked that way and saw the young Latin guy coming with another canvas.
He said to Max, “I told you we close,” and placed the canvas against the first one he’d brought out. Rising, he tossed his hair from his face. Stringy, still more than he needed. He looked familiar . . .
Saying to Max standing there, “What’s your problem?”
And Max almost smiled. “I’m Renee’s husband.”
The guy said, “Yeah? . . .” and waited.
“Where is she, in back?”
“She getting me something to eat.”
“You work here?”
Max could see the little asshole didn’t like that. He said, “No, I don’t work here.” Turned and went back to the rear of the gallery.
Max walked around the table to find more green paintings. He stooped to look at the signature, a black scrawl.
David de la Villa.
The guy had to be Da-veed, the Cuban busboy from Chuck and Harold’s Renee had said weeks ago was about to be discovered. Coming back now with another canvas . . .
About five nine and weighed maybe one thirty in his black T-shirt and skinny black jeans.
Max said, “You’re David, huh?” with the right pronunciation. “I was wondering what this’s supposed to be.” Looking at the painting in front of him.
The Cuban busboy said, “It’s what it is, not what it’s supposed to be.” He opened a drawer in the table, brought out sheets of paper with DAVID DE LA VILLA bold across the top, and handed one to Max. A press release. Name, born 1965 in Hialeah . . . He said, “If you don’t know anything, read the part what the newspaper says, The Post.”
Max found it, a quote underlined. He read aloud, “ ‘. . . de la Villa has rendered a vivid collage of his life, albeit in metaphor . . . he paints with a wry and youthful gallantry.’ ” Max looked at the painting again. “Yeah, now I see the youthful gallantry. I wouldn’t say it’s especially wry though. What do you paint with, a shovel?”
“I see you don’t know shit,” the Cuban busboy said.
Max might admit that, but not today, pretty sure now why the busboy looked familiar. The diamond stud in his ear, his hair, his attitude, his little pussy mustache. Max said, “Those are people in there?”
“From my life,” the busboy said, “looking for ways to escape.”
Max moved in closer. “You have something pasted on there, huh? I thought it was all paint, it looks like leaves.”
“From the sugar cane. I show life as a cane field that has trapped us and we have to break out.”
“There’s no cane in Hialeah I know of. If this is your life,” Max said, looking from the canvas to the busboy, “how come I don’t see anything about breaking in? Didn’t I write you a bond a few years ago? You were up on a burglary charge?”
“You crazy.”
“Aren’t you David Ortega?”
“You see my name there, read it.”
“What, de la Villa? That’s your artsy name. You were David Ortega when I knew you. You copped to possession of stolen property and did about six months.”
David Ortega de la Villa turned, started walking away.
Max said after him, “You sell any of this shit?”
The busboy stopped and turned around.
“Now I see why she leave you.”
“You selling or not? I’d like to know how my wife’s doing, if anything.”
“Now I see why she don’t talk to you. Already she sell five in like two weeks. Treinta—thirty-five hundred each one.”
“You’re kidding. What’s Renee get?”
“That’s her business, not yours.”
Max kept his mouth shut. Her business but his money going into it to pay the rent, the phone—at least he hadn’t paid for the olive jars, three-foot iron ashtrays it would take two guys to lift and empty. He wanted her to walk in right now with Da-veed’s lunch—he’d march her into the office and tell her that was it, no more, she was on her own. He was quitting the bail-bond business and filing for divorce.
He looked at the painting in front of him.
Maybe not spring the divorce on her just yet.
But definitely tell her he wasn’t paying any more of her bills.
Da-veed, the home-invading artist, said, “You see this one?” coming over to a canvas. “Look at it good. Tell me is someone in there you know.”
“I don’t see anybody in there.”
“In this part, right here.”
Max stared and a figure began to appear. A boy? He moved closer, squinting. A boy’s short hair but a woman, dots to indicate her exposed breasts, a tiny dark smudge that might be her bush. A pale-green woman in the dark-green leaves pasted down and painted over.
“Is that supposed to be Renee?”
“Man, you don’t reco’nize your own wife? Yeah, she pose for me naked like that all the time.”
It was hard to imagine. Renee used to go in the closet to put her nightgown on. How could this little asshole get her to take her clothes off? But wait a minute . . . Max said, “What’s Renee doing in a cane field?”
“The field is a symbol of her oppression, what she desires to escape,” the busboy said. “Her years of bondage to you. No life of her own.”
Max said, “Bondage?”
And stopped. What was he going to do, rehash twenty-seven years of married life with this kid? He had a better idea and said, “Do me a favor, will you?”
The busboy said, “What?” suspicious.
“Put me in there, coming out of the cane.”
Ordell loved this mall, the biggest, jazziest one he’d ever been in, done all modern with trees, with fountains, skylight domes way up there, the best stores . . . They had Saks Fifth Avenue, where Ordell liked to buy his clothes; Macy’s; Bloomie’s; Burdine’s; Sears, where Louis should go. They had up on the second level all different ethnic café counters where you ordered your food and brought it out to an area where you could sit down if you could find a place. Crowded every day now in the season. Jackie said it might be the place to make the delivery. Maybe even make the switch and the delivery right there; it was busy and confusing enough the way the area was laid out, Jackie said like a maze.
She was still at the table having some kind of Greek shit in that pita bread. He hadn’t seen anything he wanted to eat and they’d finished their business, so he was leaving—once he called the hospital, learn how Cujo was doing. The boy didn’t have a phone in his room, you had to ask about him and get somebody to tell you. The man that came on the phone yesterday kept wanting to know who this was calling; so he’d tried again last night and the nurse said Hulon was doing fine—who?—and going home, it looked like, in a few days. She said “home” but meant jail, or else didn’t know any better. In the paper it said Hulon Miller, Jr., had “gunned down” the FDLE officer before he was “shot and apprehended” by a federal agent. The time and location told Ordell
they were on his ass and now he’d have another one could be telling stories on him, Cujo looking to cop. What he needed to do was speak to Cujo before they rode him out to Gun Club. Make a visit to the hospital.
Ordell had a mall guide with a map in it that showed telephones on the lower level, back in a corner by Burdine’s. He started across the big open area in the center of the mall, where you had a view of the fountain and the pools, headed for the down escalator, and stopped. Ordell turned around quick and crossed back to duck inside Barnie’s Coffee & Tea Company.
Who was that coming off the up escalator but the bail bondsman, Max Cherry, Max heading toward the food counters now.
Ordell, watching from Barnie’s, began to think: Wait now. Why had he ducked in here to hide from Max? It wasn’t until this moment, stopping to look at what he was doing, he thought of the Rolex watch—that was it—and the possibility Max had found out what it was worth. It was instinct had made him duck in here. Something watching over his ass while his head was someplace else. He said to himself, You see that? Man, you have a gift.
Max walked past the food counters lined with customers: Olympus, Café Manet, Nate’s Deli, China Town, the Italian Eatery, wondering which one would appeal to Renee, always a finicky eater. Didn’t like anything to touch on her plate, not even peas and mashed potatoes. Chick-fil-A, Gourmet Grill, Nacos Tacos . . . that could be it, something spicy for the busboy. But she wasn’t at Nacos Tacos or at Stuff ‘N Turkey, not at any of the counters. Max turned to the eating area in the semicircle of cafés: rings of tables around and beneath an eight-pillared gazebo the size of a house with a fountain in the center. Areas were sectioned off by dividers and planters; aisles seemed to go around in circles. He moved a few steps in and began looking at one section at a time, his gaze inching along, thinking it was too crowded to pick anyone out. . . .
And saw her within a few seconds.
Renee sitting by herself: that skullcap of dark hair, turquoise loop earrings, a dark blue dress off one shoulder, Renee picking at a salad, taking dainty bites, a carryout container on the table . . .
Close by, almost next to him, a woman’s voice said, “Max?” and he knew it was Jackie before he turned and saw her looking up at him, Jackie with her cigarette and a cup of coffee, finished with her lunch. She said, “What’re you up to?” with that kind of shy smile.
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