Maximum Bob

18

Elvin said to his big brother, Dale Senior, “How do I look?”

It didn’t matter Dale Senior couldn’t answer him, metal pins sticking out of his sunken cheeks, wires holding his jaws shut tight like he was gritting his teeth, which he did most of his life anyway.

Elvin had looked at his reflection in the bedroom mirror and had to grin at himself, man, in that bright blue suit from Taiwan China and a bright yellow shirt with the collar spread open, duds that had once belonged to Roland and Elvin had stored in the attic of Dale Senior’s house before going off to prison.

Dale Senior was most likely trying to tell him with his beady eyes he looked like blue shit tied in a bow, this old man big brother sitting at his kitchen table one-legged. Elvin stooped to make sure. No, that’s all was under there, just the one leg and a stump.

“Buddy, where’s your plastic wooden leg at?” No answer. “I hear you got in some trouble over to Clewiston.”

This man had worn nothing but bib overalls or state clothes all his life. Had been up to Starke on a Corrections bus, but never over to Palm Beach, forty miles away. Had thought their brother Roland was leaving this world when all he did was move down to Monroe County. Dale Senior had a jelly-glass jar of Rebel Yell bourbon he was sucking in through a straw, glaring, the booze putting words in his head he was dying to say but couldn’t. All it did was bulge his veins where he was going bald in front.

It reminded Elvin he had to get a haircut. He’d shaved off the week’s worth of beard before putting the suit on. It was driving the Cadillac last night had changed his mind about looking rough and ready. The Cadillac and the go-go whore he picked up at the bar after she was done and took to Dale’s house. He said to Dale Senior, “Bud, I was with a girl last night had her puss shaved near clean. Told me so she wouldn’t look like a female gorilla up there in her G-string. I thought of ones me and you use to take out on the lake? Man, there were some of those old girls had bushes on ‘em-I’d say I ain’t going in there without a gun and a flashlight. Remember? This one last night was like a little girl down there ‘cept she was grown.”

One of Dale Senior’s big ugly hands, all spotted and gnarled up with arthritis, was scratching at the oilcloth cover on the table, putting nicks in it, like a hound pawing on the end of a chain. Cut him loose and look out.

“This here’s a go-go rock whore I’m talking about. Does it to buy crack and get high. That’s the new thing, crack. They can get scrappy on you.”

Insulting too, this one, calling Dale Junior’s house a rat hole. This whore appraiser named Earlene, hand on her hip saying, “Drive a Cadillac and live like a nigger.” He gave her a look at the shank he’d made for Dale, sticking it up under her nose. Oh, is that right? You calling me a nigger? It changed her tune quick, eyes about to pop out of her head. He told her he had already killed a man, was about to get him another one and to watch the newspaper if she thought he was blowing smoke at her.

But she was right in a way, what she said. What was he doing in this dump if he drove a Cadillac Fleetwood only three years old and looked brand-new? Or why dress as he did and look like he stole the car?

It was the reason he came here this bright Sunday morning and pulled Roland’s trunk from the attic where it had laid ten years untouched-not counting his getting the hat and boots out of it. Animals had scratched at the trunk, but none had got in to mess up the clothes. Three suits, a bunch of shirts and ties and undies. All he had to do to complete his changeover, besides get a haircut, was move in with Dr. Tommy and that little puss Hector.

He said to Dale Senior, “You know where Ocean Ridge is at? You go on over to Palm Beach and turn south.” Elvin would catch himself talking loud, as if the man couldn’t hear as good with his jaw wired, and have to lower his voice. “I’m moving into a house over there, big one, right on the ocean. How’s that sound to you?” Dale Senior could at least nod his head. Shit, it was like talking to the wall.

He turned as Mavis came in the back door and walked right past him, looking concerned and heading straight for Dale Senior.

“I’m home,” Mavis told him, in case he didn’t see her standing there. “I come right back like I said. Can I dish you up a nice bowl of soup? It’s split pea with bacon in it, your favorite.”

Elvin watched Dale Senior swipe the jelly glass, empty now, clear off the table with that big ugly hand of his.

“I think he wants another toddy,” Elvin said to Mavis, and looked over at the cast-iron pot of soup on the stove, bubbles popping in it. He said, “I bet, thirty years with the old sweetheart, you’ve thought of adding roach powder with the bacon. Look at him. He’s afraid I’m giving you ideas.” He said to Dale Senior, “You better be careful what you suck into your mouth there, Bud.”

Mavis stopped to get the glass from the floor and came up sniffing, her nose in the air.

“What’s that smell?”

“If you mean me,” Elvin said, “it’s my suit of clothes, from being in mothballs. I think it’ll air though.”

Mavis was getting the bourbon off the sink counter.

“Where’s his leg at?”

She said, “Shhh,” putting her hand up by her mouth. “Don’t mention it.” Now she was pouring Dale Senior another three inches of whiskey and setting fresh straws in the glass, telling him, “Honey? You know I brought some soup over to Inez’s for Dale Junior? He’s still there, doing just fine.”

Elvin said, “That’s where Dale’s at?”

Mavis gave him a scared look, the kind, when you’re caught saying something maybe you shouldn’t have. Then seemed to decide it was all right and told him, “Since yesterday. They been looking all over for him, deputies have.”

“That ain’t a problem,” Elvin said. “What is, he’s going to prison tomorrow. Man, I know if I was I wouldn’t be staying over at Inez and Dicky’s, Jesus. I’d be in every bar in West Palm. No, I wouldn’t either, I’d find that little girl I was with last night.”

“I don’t know as he’s decided he’s going or not,” Mavis said.

Elvin had to grin at the woman thinking you had a choice. Just then Dale Senior began making growling sounds in his throat and blinking his drunk eyes, his way of trying to speak.

“Too bad he never learned to write,” Elvin said, watching his big brother, this old man of fifty-six struggling with himself, spit coming from between his sealed lips. Elvin raised his hand. “Buddy? Let’s see you wave bye-bye. Like this, move your fingers.” All he got were those beady eyes staring at him and veins turning blue. Elvin said to Mavis, “I think I’ll stop over and see Dale. Show him my new car.”

They were in Michelle’s office eleven o’clock Sunday morning, her desk piled with case folders left over from the meeting yesterday. She said to Kathy, “How would you like to open one of these and see it’s a guy you used to go with?” Michelle picked up a folder. “This one.” And dropped it. “At the time I thought he was a sweet guy. He threw his girlfriend’s TV set out the window. His ex-girlfriend, her apartment’s on the fifth floor.”

“The sweet guy discovered crack,” Kathy said.

“He has to pay almost five thousand in restitution.”

“That must’ve been some TV set.”

“It hit a car.”

“You’re not taking him, are you?”

“Hardly. If you want him, he’s yours.”

“I wouldn’t mind that doctor in Ocean Ridge.”

“Dr. Vasco, another sweetie,” Michelle said, looking for his case folder. “Why do you want him?”

“Something different.”

“But you don’t do Community Control.”

“I could. I’ve been here long enough.”

“And you must love it,” Michelle said, looking up. “I got here at eight this morning and there’s your car in front. I thought you were up in your office.” Michelle acting, her expression going from innocent to puzzled. “No, wait a minute. Gary picked you up here yesterday…”

“You want to know if I left my car and spent the night with him.”

“Listen, I wouldn’t blame you, he’s a neat guy, very clean-cut, polite… I love his hair. He doesn’t come on like most cops, does he? He seems… you know, gentle.”

Michelle was waiting now to have this verified.

“He’s nice,” Kathy said, “he’s smart, likes to read. Majored in sociology at U of M. Spent eight years with Palm Beach PD, likes to work homicide… What else do you want to know? His folks live in Boca, he goes there for dinner every other Sunday. He has a younger sister, she’s there sometimes. His dad’s retired.”

Michelle said, “Really?”

Kathy said, “I know how Community Control works and you need help, right? You could let me have Dr. Vasco on a temporary basis, thirty days?”

“Yeah, I suppose, if you really want him.” Michelle had the case folder open and was glancing through it. “He’s on twenty-four-hour house arrest. Allowed two AA meetings a week. Has a houseman, Hector, who does the shopping. The doctor goes in swimming with his anklet on. It’s supposed to be waterproof but they had to replace three the first year. He bitches constantly about his phone bill, even though he’s loaded. You know an anklet adds about a hundred and twenty bucks a month.” Michelle closed the file. Handing it across the desk she said, “I like that dress. Is it new?”

“This?” Kathy pinched the front of her beige cotton knit that was like a long T-shirt with a belt. “It isn’t new and I didn’t have it on last night, but we did go to his apartment.”

That seemed to make Michelle happy. “Was it nice?”

“The apartment? It was neat, nothing lying around. He rents movies, listens to music. He likes Neil Young, The Band, Bob Dylan…”

“No new stuff?”

“Dire Straits.”

“They’re not new.”

Kathy said, “He has ten years of National Geographic magazines,” looking Michelle in the eye, “he keeps in chronological order in a bookcase. He has about four hundred books, all kinds, in alphabetical order by authors.”

Michelle took a moment. “He does?”

“He’s reading one about Siberia he says is a honey.”

“Siberia,” Michelle said.

“The gulags, slave-labor camps. Twenty-five million people were sent there during Stalin’s time, anybody he didn’t like. Russian soldiers captured during the war, they came home they were sent to Siberia. They shouldn’t have let themselves get captured. A man was overheard saying to an American his boots were better than Soviet boots. He got ten years. In one camp they shot thirty people a day to keep the rest of them in line.”

“That’s what you talked about, Siberia?”

“They call the convicts over there zeks. No, we talked about different things. Gary opened a bottle of wine.”

“Yeah?”

“I didn’t spend the night.”

“You didn’t?”

“It got late, he took me home.”

“Yeah?”

“Picked me up this morning and dropped me off, that’s all. We’re going to meet later.”

“Nothing happened last night?”

“You mean did we go to bed? No. What do you want? We just met. You go to bed with every guy you meet and happen to like?”

Michelle paused. “No, not every guy.”

“Just the ones throw TV sets out the window.”

“Why’re you upset?”

“I’m not. You want to know what happened, I told you. Nothing.”

Now Michelle seemed to be appraising her, eyes narrowed. “Are you saying he didn’t try anything or you didn’t let him?”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Like what? You’re alone in his apartment…”

“That doesn’t mean he has to jump me, does it?”

“No wonder you’re upset. What’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing. He’s a nice guy. He wants me to go with him next Sunday, meet his folks.”

“Well, I guess if you hang in there long enough… I really like his hair. He’ll never get bald.”

“And he’s clean-cut, he’s polite,” Kathy said, “and you think he’s a little weird, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say weird.”

“What he does with his National Geographics.”

“Well, that. No, but I think he is different. You know, maybe he’s shy. I mean with women.”

“He might be.”

“Self-conscious, afraid of being turned down. When they’re like that you have to let them know it’s okay. Bring them out, so to speak.”

“Like unzip their fly?”

“That would work. You know the old saying,” Michelle said, “once you have their balls in your hand, their minds are far from Siberia.”

Inez came around from the side of the house where she was hanging wash and yelled at Dale to get back inside, what was wrong with him? Elvin waved at her and brushed through the opening in the hedge that hid the street and his black Cadillac sedan. He was only going to show it to Dale, how it told you all kinds of stuff on the dash panel when you pressed buttons; but when Inez started yelling he said, “Shit, get in the car.”

Dale was in the front seat before Elvin was even around to the other side. He yelled at Inez, “We going for a ride. Be back directly.”

Driving off he saw Inez in his rearview mirror standing out in the street, the size of her, like a man wearing a housedress. All you could say about Inez Campau, there was a big ugly woman. He said to Dale, “You don’t want to stay there no more, do you?”

“She’s making me leave by tomorrow anyways,” Dale said, “once I’m a fugitive.”

“You run, you know what they’ll do.”

“I don’t care, I’m not going to prison.”

“They’ll add on five to the five you already got.”

“If they catch me.”

Sounding like the boy had made up his mind.

Elvin said, “Prison ain’t that bad, you get the hang of it… find yourself some buddies, a little housekeeper to take care of your wants…”

Dale wasn’t talking.

They drove out of this back-end part of Belle Glade where people like the Crowes and Campaus lived in old frame houses, their pickups and boat trailers in the yard alongside rusted washing machines, car parts, skiffs past use. Old boys sitting on porches drinking beer waved at the Cadillac driving past.

Now it crept down the main drag of storefronts, Elvin always amazed at the sight of cane cutters, hundreds of black faces on the street buying Walkman radios and little TVs to take back to Jamaica, their season almost done. Elvin said, “I ain’t gonna say nothing but, Jesus Christ, how come we bring all these people here when our own niggers could be doing the work? I know it’s a filthy dirty job and you can get hurt swinging them machetes, but they could at least try it, shit. Don’t let me get off on that, the invasion of the boogers. You think they’re gonna be happy staying only six months? Pretty soon they’ll be living here, as the Cuban and different other kinds are, taking our jobs.”

“Excuse me,” Dale said, “but when did you ever work?”

Elvin didn’t like Dale’s snippy tone of voice, but let it go, the boy scared and angry at the same time.

“I took folks for airboat rides,” Elvin said. “I even took rich boogers for airboat rides and it like to killed me. I had a mind to dump ‘em in the swamp. I got a deal on right now with a rich booger. He’s paying I mean top dollar for me to do a special kind of job. If it was only for pay, shit, I wouldn’t do it. But it turns out it’s for me and you mostly. You know the guy, Dr. Tommy, the one in Ocean Ridge. You want to guess what the job is?”

The boy didn’t answer. Not interested or too busy feeling sorry for himself.

“I understand where you’re at,” Elvin said, “facing up to a system known for not being fair.”

Dale said, “Shit, all I did was hit a cop. Why’re they any different?”

Elvin said, “I know, I’ve done it and paid. I’ve learned if you’re ever angry enough to hit somebody, don’t do it. Cool down and get yourself a pistol. There’s a cop pulled my hair I was dying to hit. Unh-unh, I’m waiting till the right time.” Elvin hunched close to the steering wheel, turning his head as he gazed up through the windshield. “Look it how they live.”

They were passing migrant housing now, two-story concrete barracks, wash hanging to dry on the upstairs rails.

“Day off, they drink rum and chew sugarcane. You go inside there, everyone of ‘em’s playing a radio. I never saw people liked radios so much.”

Dale said, “When’d you ever go in there?”

Looking for an argument in his frame of mind.

“I worked one time for a guy ran the bolita. You know, the numbers? I’d have to go in those places they lived, be the only white person in there, boogers looking at me like they wanted to cut my balls off with a cane knife. Ugly people but, man, did they love to play the bolita. They’d love this car too, wouldn’t they? They’d keep house in it.”

Out on the highway the sky to the south was full of black smoke where they were burning off the last of the fields. Trucks whipped past hauling cane stalks to the sugar house for processing. They drove their Ford tractors fast, dumped the loads off the trailers and headed back for more. It was a job Dale used to have and Elvin thought he would brag on it now, but he didn’t. That’s how mean his disposition was.

“Oh my, what to do,” Elvin said. “All right, I’m gonna make you a proposition.”

Dale didn’t even ask what it was. Didn’t say one word till they’d driven the forty miles back to civilization, took the freeway down to Boynton Beach and turned into the parking lot of the cocktail bar on S.E. 15th.

Dale said, “That’s my truck.” Not snippy at all now, more surprised than anything.

Elvin checked, didn’t see any surveillance, before saying, “Why yes it is.” The pickup still sitting where he’d left it yesterday. “And the keys are in it.”

They sat in a booth with their drinks, Jim Beam and 7-Up, dark in here this Sunday afternoon, Elvin relaxed with something he was anxious to tell, but irritated the drinks were served in skimpy glasses. He’d wave to the waitress for two more. She’d bring them and he’d quit talking and tell her to take it from the change on the table. The waitress would poke through the pile there, car keys, bills and silver, Dale’s cigarettes and matches, and pick out what she needed.

Elvin spoke of prison for a while, about sports and movies, making it sound not too bad. Though advised Dale to get laid tonight; be his last shot at some front-door lovin’. Dale wouldn’t talk about it. So Elvin said, “All right, you made up your mind.” On their third drink by this time. “Go on get in your truck and take off. By tomorrow they’ll have detainers on you clear across the country. But if that’s what you want to do…”

On their fourth round Elvin was telling him about the deal with Dr. Tommy. Top wages to shoot the judge and he’d give Dale, let’s see, two thousand to drive for him. How did that sound? “Take off in your old beat up truck or drive a Fleetwood Cadillac while we set up the judge.”

It got Dale to fidget around some in the booth.

“I’m thinking we’ll move in with Dr. Tommy,” Elvin said. “Have a party out there tonight, huh? Get some girls. I’ll tell you one I’m thinking of having sometime, that little probation lady. I’ve had Cuban puss and it ain’t too bad. We could have us some tonight, you want. Or this go-go whore I had over to your house last night.”

“You want to kill the judge?”

The boy finally waking up.

“I call it paying back. How about you?”

“They already think it was me tried.”

“Listen, that dink, whoever it was, he’s an amateur. You’re working with a pro here. I’ve done it.”

“And you went to prison.”

“Hey, that’s something else entirely. We set this one up right, it’ll work slick. You take off after with some cash on you.”

Dale was quiet, looking at his drink.

“Come on, what do you say?”

“I’m thinking.”

“While you’re doing that,” Elvin said, “I’m gonna go shake the dew off my lily.”

He got up and walked to the men’s room, all the way in back. Elvin was gone maybe five minutes. He washed his hands after, for no reason, then had to hold them under one of those goddamn machines you pushed the button and it blew hot air as you were supposed to briskly, it said, rub your hands together. That’s what took the time. Then after that drying his hands on his shirttail and having to stick his goddamn shirttail in his pants again. When he got back to the table Dale was gone.

The waitress said, “He didn’t leave but a minute ago.” Elvin ran outside hoping to catch him driving off. Beat some sense into the boy if he had to. He stopped short in the parking lot, around on the side of the building. Dale’s pickup was still there, nosed against the cinder-block wall.

It was the space where he’d parked the Cadillac that was empty.

They must have seen him drive up in the taxicab. Hector opened the door and Dr. Tommy was standing in the hall waiting for him.

Elvin said, “You know what happened?”

Dr. Tommy said, “Tell me.”

Elvin said, “Somebody stole your car.”