Bandits

9

ROY’S KILLER LOOK DIDN’T work on lavatory doors or in creeping traffic, so he’d have to kick something or pound the dashboard of Jack’s VW Scirocco with the edge of his fist. It was a tan ’78 Scirocco, faded but still mean-looking, Jack Delaney had bought used and now had 153,000 miles on the odometer. He wasn’t worried Roy could hurt the car hitting it, but he’d jump when Roy yelled, “Move it, goddamn it,” the man’s impatience coming out unexpectedly, in spurts; then Roy would be quiet for a while. Jack got them out of the narrow streets of the Quarter, across Canal, and through the new downtown that looked like every other big city. They were heading uptown on St. Charles Avenue, once again in New Orleans, before he told Roy about the deal, why the guy was collecting five-million dollars.

Roy would say, “Now hold on a minute,” and ask a question. Jack would answer it or he’d say, “Don’t you know what’s going on in the world, Roy? Christ, don’t you read the paper? You never heard of the Sandinistas, for Christ sake?” Lucy had given Jack a book of color photographs called Nicaragua that showed all these young guys in sport shirts and baseball caps wearing masks, hoods with holes, or scarves tied around their faces, and armed with all kinds of dinky weapons, Saturday Night Specials, .22 rifles… A pickup army fighting well-armed uniformed troops wearing helmets, and it was a kick looking at pictures of these guys in print sport shirts and bandit masks. Jack could see himself one of them if he were Nicaraguan and had been there in ’79. There were pictures of bodies, too, death and destruction, fires, refugees running and crowds of people waving red and black flags. There was a picture of the guy they hated and finally overthrew, ran out of the country, Somoza, wearing a white suit with a sash. Jack could tell by looking at Somoza he was that type of person who was set in his ways and didn’t know shit.

Roy said he had a snitch one time who was a Nicaraguan. When he was working undercover with the felony action squad. He said there were plenty of Nicaraguans in New Orleans.

Jack said, “Yeah, and I think you’re gonna meet a couple of them pretty soon.”

With the windows open they would quit talking as Jack passed a St. Charles Avenue streetcar clanging along the median. It was his favorite street, overgrown with oak and all kinds of shrubbery, palm trees in the yards of old shuttered homes. He rode the streetcar for fun when he was little. The tracks ran all the way to the levee and then up Carrollton Avenue to a point where the motorman would flip the seatbacks, walk to the other end of the car, and drive it downtown to Canal.

Roy said, “I hope some guys I know don’t find out what this Nicaraguan’s up to. They’d be standing in line to take a swipe at him. Is the guy really as bad as you say?”

“Ask Lucy. She’ll tell you.”

“I mean this guy is bad.”

“That’s what’s good about taking his money.”

“But if he’s bad …”

“Yeah?”

“How come he doesn’t keep the money for himself? What is he, just bad in certain areas?”

“I wondered about that, too,” Jack said. “Maybe he’s got all the money he needs.”

“Or why would he want to go back and take a chance getting killed?”

“Why were you a cop?”

“It wasn’t for the money, I’ll tell you that.”

Jack said, “Well then.”

He took the Scirocco rumbling in second gear down Audubon, the street full of trees and the dark shapes of big homes, warm lights in windows here and there, a few porch lights showing through hedges and shrubs. He said, “There, on the left. That’s Lucy’s house, her mother’s.”

Roy said, “Get Lucy to buy you a muffler. I think she can afford it.”

“There’s the car. What should I do?”

“Keep going.”

“It’s the same one, the Chrysler… Jesus, the guy behind the wheel, that’s the one named Franklin. The colored guy, or whatever he is. Creole, I don’t know.”

“Go down the end and turn around.”

“The other guy, I don’t think it’s the colonel.” Jack felt a need to talk. “But Franklin, Christ, he’s the one that was with him and put the gun on me.”

“I love that kind,” Roy said. “Come on, turn around.”

“I have to get down there first, don’t I?”

Near the river end of the street the dark mass of trees opened to show bare telephone poles and vacant lots that extended to the levee, a grassy barrier against the night sky. Jack circled one of the poles and his headlights again probed the aisle of trees.

Roy said, “Ease up behind them.”

“I get out, too?”

“You come up on the curb side. Stand close to the car but a few steps back, so they can feel you but can’t see you. It might confuse ’em otherwise. What is this guy, an undertaker or a cop? Before you get out, write down the license number.”

“I don’t have a pen.”

Roy said, “Jesus Christ,” took one out of the inside pocket of his corduroy jacket, pulled out a bunch of folded papers then, looked through them, and handed Jack the pen and an envelope that said The International Lounge Featuring Exotic Dancers from Around the World across the flap. “From now on you carry a pen and a notebook. And you wear a suit or sport coat any time we have to pull this kind of shit.”

Jack said, “What do you think I have on, pajamas?” He was wearing a tan cotton blazer with jeans.

“You look like an undercover fed trying to pass as a fucking yuppie. I get their IDs, I give ’em to you. You come back to the car like you’re gonna call it in, see if they’re felons or they’re wanted for anything, and you write the names down. Then tomorrow I’ll have ’em checked out.”

“Still have friends on South Broad.”

“I still have snitches, too, if I need ’em.”

“You gonna show these guys a badge or what?”

“Why don’t you wait and see what I do? Then you’ll know. Go on, pull up right behind ’em.”

“Should I give ’em a bump?”

“Yeah, whiplash ’em. They’ll be more cooperative.”

Jack could see the two guys inside looking back this way, into his headlights. He said, “Louisiana plate,” stopped close behind the Chrysler’s shiny black rear deck, and wrote down the number as Roy said, “It’s a rental,” and got out. By the time Jack was approaching the curb side of the car Roy was asking the driver to see his operator’s license, the Creole-looking guy. The other one was leaning forward, saying to Roy, “He don’t have to show you no license. We have the permission. Who the fuck are you, you don’t know that?” He was the one who had done all the talking at the Exxon station. The dude in the sunglasses, though not wearing them now.

Jack heard Roy say, “Sir, he may not want to remove it from his person and show it to me himself. But I’m gonna see it, one way or the other. Are we clear on that?”

The Creole-looking guy took out his wallet, saying something to the other guy Jack couldn’t hear. And then Roy said to the other guy, “You too, sir, if you don’t mind. I’m curious to know who you assholes are you think you can sit here any time you want.” The guy on the passenger side began talking about “the permission” again, mad. Jack didn’t catch all the words. Now the two guys were talking to each other in Spanish, Roy waiting. Finally the guy in the passenger seat took a billfold out of his coat and Jack looked up the street toward Lucy’s house.

The idea was, she’d drive off with Amelita while they kept the two guys busy. He had phoned her with the plan after talking to Roy. Lucy said, as long as they left by nine-thirty. It was now about twenty after.

Roy handed him both guys’ driver’s licenses and the rental car envelope across the roof of the Chrysler, the one who’d been talking saying something now about calling the district commander of police and they would see.

Jack walked back to his car and got in, leaving the door open so he’d have light to see what he was doing. He wrote down Crispin Antonio Reyna. This was the dude, not the driver. He was thirty-two and lived in Key Biscayne, Florida.

Something to think about, huh? Why did the colonel bring these guys all the way from Florida?

The National Car Rental agreement was also in his name. It appeared Crispin Antonio was the boss. It made sense, he was the mouth. The Creole-looking guy was Franklin de Dios-the hell kind a name was that?-forty-two. His home address was in South Miami.

Jack got out to approach the Chrysler. He saw Roy look back, then step away from the side of the car and come to meet him at the rear deck.

“They’re from Florida, both guys.”

It didn’t seem to surprise Roy. He said, “They’re trying to tell me it’s an immigration matter and they have police permission to sit there all they want.”

“You believe it?”

“That’s neither here nor there. We’ll go on the assumption they’re full of shit. Don’t say a word if they ask you anything, if you talked to the captain. Okay?”

Roy walked back to the driver’s side as Jack moved between the cars to the curb. He looked toward Lucy’s house, the third one up past dense shrubbery. Not a light showing. He heard Roy telling the driver, “You’re giving me a bunch of shit, aren’t you? I think you better step out of the car.”

Jack heard Roy’s voice, with that easy cop drawl he put on, and was looking at a car all of a sudden popping its lights and coming out of the shrubs where Lucy’s driveway would be, a dark-colored Mercedes. Jack watched it turn into the street going away from them, toward St. Charles, its red taillights becoming tiny dots up there in the dark, almost to the point of disappearing, gone, when Crispin Antonio Reyna began yelling in Spanish. Jack turned to see Franklin de Dios of South Miami hunched over the steering wheel, reaching for the ignition.

There was no doubt they were leaving, with nothing in front of the car to keep it there. Until Jack saw Roy reach in, grab a handful of nappy hair, and pull Franklin de Dios’s head out to lay it on the windowsill, Roy saying, “You trying to run on me?” Roy was reaching in again, now with his left hand, and came out holding a pistol, Roy saying, “Uh-oh, what have we here?”

Jack was moving toward the other one now, Crispin Reyna, having seen how it was done. He heard Roy telling Franklin de Dios he could step out of the car or get pulled clear through the window, heard that and saw Crispin Reyna’s hand on the glove box, punching the button to open it. Jack reached in and grabbed a handful of Crispin Reyna’s hair and yanked him back against the seat, hard. He changed hands then, learning how to do this as he went along, pressed the palm of his left hand against the guy’s face, to hold him there, while he felt inside the glove box with his other hand. Jack stepped back from the car with a bluesteel automatic, holding it lightly, looking at its dull sheen in the streetlight. He liked the feel of it. He stepped back in when he saw Crispin Reyna turn to look at him. Jack motioned for him to face straight ahead and touched the barrel to the guy’s right ear.

Roy had Franklin de Dios out of the car now, telling him to lean against it and spread his legs apart, “Come on, spread ’em,” the guy doing what he was told without expression, his Creole-looking face with its pointy cheekbones carved from some kind of smooth, hard wood.

“Should we take these fuckers to Central Lockup and then have to do all that paperwork, or what?”

Jack said, “I hate paperwork.”

Roy said, “It perturbs me off, too. What do you think? The river’s right there.”

Jack saw Franklin de Dios’s calm eyes staring at him and he put his hand to his face, elbow on the roof of the car. “The mighty Mississippi, that’s a thought. The current’d take ’em clear down to Pilot Town. If they can swim.”

“You wouldn’t want to weight ’em down none?”

“I thought we might give ’em a chance.”

Now Crispin Reyna was speaking, saying they were fucking dumb cops and they had better call their superior right now. “I tell you we have the permission to be here.”

“On second thought,” Jack said, “how about drop ’em in the Outlet Canal? They’ll be in the Gulf before morning.” He saw Roy, taller than Franklin de Dios, nodding.

“Less you want to take ’em to the graveyard of strangers.”

“Where’s that?”

“John the Baptist Parish, in the swamp. They say if all the bodies dumped there ever stood up, man, you’d have a crowd could fill the Superdome.”

“It’s hard,” Jack said, “isn’t it?”

What they couldn’t do was let them go just yet. Lucy would need an hour or so free of worry and looking over her shoulder. So they put Franklin de Dios and Crispin Reyna in the trunk of the Chrysler, Crispin bilingual in his protests, but finally got them spooned against each other like a couple of Angola sweethearts in the Big Stripe dorm, Roy telling them to mind and he’d let them out after while.

They discussed the guns for a minute, both 9-millimeter Berettas. Beauties, Roy said, better than those six-shooter Smiths cops had to pack when he was on the force. They stuck the guns under the front seat of Jack’s car, then had a discussion on the best place to leave the Chrysler, with the key in the ignition. Jack mentioned City Park, West End. Roy mentioned out toward Chalmette in St. Bernard Parish there were a lot of good places. Jack said, Yeah, and nobody would ever find them either. Roy said, Well, where we going after? Jack said he thought they may as well get the show on the road; stop by the St. Louis Hotel, find out what room the fundraiser was in and what the setup looked like. Roy said, Well, shit, we’ll drop these dudes off on the way.

That’s what they did. Roy drove the Chrysler with Jack following behind and left it on Tchoupitoulas near Calliope, where they used to park cars for the World’s Fair. As Roy got in the Scirocco Jack was grinning, waiting to tell him, “It’s too bad we can’t stay and watch. Some guy’s gonna come along and take off with that Chrysler. Be driving down the street and wonder what in the hell that noise is, coming from the trunk. Like somebody pounding to get out. Or he hears a voice calling to him like it’s from far away, ‘Help, señor, help.’ ”

Roy said, “Delaney, you’re a weird fucker, you know it?”

Jack didn’t say anything. He felt pretty good, the way things were going.