Riding the Rap

four

By the time Raylan got to Joyce’s apartment in Miami Beach it was too late to go out to dinner. He mentioned he’d tried to call her three or four times. Joyce said she forgot to turn her machine on-nothing about where she was all afternoon. She fixed him scrambled eggs and toast and made herself a drink. Finally, sitting at the kitchen table while Raylan ate his supper, Joyce said, “Harry got picked up for drunk driving.”

“Today?”

“A few weeks ago. They took his license away for six months.”

“I told you it would happen.”

“I know. That’s why I haven’t said anything.”

“He still drinking?”

“He’s trying to quit.” She paused and said, “I’ve been sort of driving him around. Harry’s looking for customers who still owe him money.”

“You realize you’re aiding in illegal transactions?”

Joyce said, “Oh, for Christ sake,” and there was a silence.

Raylan got up to get a beer from the refrigerator. Joyce asked him, as she always did, if he wanted a glass. Raylan said no thanks. After another pause, aware of himself and aware of Joyce sitting with her drink, he said, “Why don’t you put that new Roy Orbison on?”

She said, “All right,” but didn’t move, lighting a cigarette now, a new habit she’d picked up being around Harry. The first time she played the new Roy Orbison for him the CD came to “The Only One” and Joyce said if she were still dancing she’d use it in her routine. Joyce had moved her hips to the slow, draggy beat and showed Raylan where she’d throw in the bumps. “’Every one you know’s been through it.’ Bam. ‘You bit the bullet, then you chew it.’ Bam.” Raylan liked it.

When they were first getting to know one another, almost a year ago, he’d told her how he’d worked for different coal operators in Harlan County, Kentucky, where he grew up, and before joining the Marshals Service. He told her, “I’ve worked deep mines, wildcat mines, the ones you go into and scratch for what’s left, and I’ve stripped.”

Joyce said that time, “So have I.”

He said, “Pardon me?”

She hadn’t wanted to tell him too soon about working as a go-go dancer when she was younger-one of the few topless performers, she said, without a drug habit. Like it was okay to dance half-naked in a barroom full of men as long as you weren’t strung out. He told her no, it didn’t bother him-not mentioning it might’ve been different if he’d known her when she was up there showing her breasts to everybody. No, the only thing that bothered him now was her devoting her life to poor Harry.

She’d say she wasn’t devoting her life, she was trying to help him.

Sitting at the kitchen table again Raylan thought of something and began telling about the bust he’d taken part in that morning. Telling it in his quiet way but with a purpose:

How they went to an address out in Canal Point to arrest a fugitive known to be armed and dangerous. Banged on the door and when no one came a strike team officer yelled at the house, “Open up or it’s coming down!” So when still no one came they used a sledgehammer-what the strike team called their master key-busted in and here was a woman standing in the living room no doubt the whole time, not saying a word. One of the strike team, a sheriff’s deputy, told her they had a warrant for the arrest of Russell Robert Lyles and asked was he in the house. The woman said no, he wasn’t, and had no idea where he might be. The deputy said to her, “If Russell’s upstairs, you’re going to jail.” And the woman said, “He’s upstairs.”

Raylan waited for Joyce, saw her nod, but that’s all; she didn’t say anything. She didn’t see the point he was trying to make.

So Raylan said, “You understand it wasn’t like the woman was giving the guy up, telling on him. There was nothing she could do, so she said yeah, he’s upstairs.”

Joyce nodded again, uh-huh. “So did you get him?”

She still didn’t see the point.

“We got him. Even with all the commotion, busting the door down? The guy was still in bed.”

“Did you shoot him?”

Looking right at Raylan as she said it and it stopped him, because he could see she was serious, waiting for him to answer.

“We had to wake him up.”

Nudged the guy with a shotgun-the way it actually happened-the sheriff’s deputy saying, “Rise and shine, sleepyhead.”

But that wasn’t the point either. What he wanted Joyce to see, she had as much chance of helping Harry Arno as this woman had of hiding a fugitive. There was a silence. “I didn’t like to bust into somebody’s house,” Raylan said. “I asked the woman why she didn’t open the door. She said, ‘Invite you in for iced tea?’”

There was another silence until Raylan said, “You know Harry’s an alcoholic,” and saw Joyce look at him as if she might’ve missed something, one minute talking about apprehending a fugitive… “You know that, don’t you?”

“He’s trying to stop.”

“How? Is he in a program? He won’t admit he’s got a problem, so he makes excuses. It’s what alcoholics do. You left him, he’s depressed and that’s why he’s drinking again.”

Joyce said, “As far as he’s concerned…”

“You dumped him. After how many years you’ve been going with him on and off? How serious were you?”

She didn’t answer that.

“Honey, alcoholics never blame themselves when they mess up. It’s your fault he was drinking and lost his license, so he gets you to feel sorry for him and drive him around, drop whatever you’re doing.”

She said, “Well, I’m not working.” Meaning she hadn’t gotten any calls to do catalog modeling.

“Come on. The man’s sixty-seven years old acting like a spoiled kid.”

“He’s sixty-nine,” Joyce said, “the same age as Paul Newman. Ask him.”

They picked at each other using Harry as the reason, not nearly as lovey-dovey as they used to be, that time right before he shot Tommy Bucks and was temporarily assigned out of the Miami marshals office.

A situation Raylan blamed on the assistant U.S. attorney who reviewed the shooting:

This very serious young guy all buttoned-up in his seersucker suit, but acting bored to indicate his self-confidence. He wanted to know why Raylan was sitting in a crowded restaurant with a man known to be a member of organized crime when he shot him. Raylan told him the Cardozo Hotel lunch crowd was out on the porch and Tommy Bucks had his back to a wall, a precaution the man had no doubt been taking since his childhood in Sicily.

The assistant U.S. attorney asked if they’d had some kind of disagreement. Raylan said he believed it was his job as a marshal to disagree with that type of person, a known gangster. The assistant U.S. attorney said he couldn’t help but wonder if the shooting might not have been triggered, so to speak, over a busted deal, an argument over some aspect of an arrangement Raylan had with this individual. Not flat accusing Raylan of being on the take, but coming close.

He said then he’d heard a rumor that, sometime earlier, Raylan had given Tommy Bucks twenty-four hours to get out of town or he would shoot him on sight. That wasn’t exactly true was it? The assistant U.S. attorney sounding as though he saw humor in this without believing a word of it.

“I gave him twenty-four hours to get out of Dade County,” Raylan said. “Tommy Bucks was sitting at that table when his time ran out. Armed. A witness saw it and called out, ‘He’s got a gun!’ It was confirmed and put in the police report. What happened then, Tommy Bucks drew on me and I shot him.”

The assistant U.S. attorney said if this was true, it sounded as though Raylan had forced Tommy Bucks to draw his gun so he would have an excuse to shoot him.

Raylan said, “No, he had a choice. He could’ve left. He had, he might still be alive; though I doubt it.”

Raylan’s boss, the Miami marshal, thought it best to get him out of that U.S. attorney’s sight for a while, pulled him off warrants and assigned Raylan to the Fugitive Apprehension Strike Team in Palm Beach County, working out of the Sheriffs Office. It was the type of duty Raylan liked best, enforcement, way better than standing around in a courtroom or shuffling papers in Assets and Forfeitures. Except that in a way it was like being exiled: have to drive two hours up to West Palm in the morning, two hours back at night to Joyce’s place or the house he’d rented in North Miami, that freeway traffic wearing him out. It was another reason things weren’t as lovey-dovey with Joyce-they didn’t see each other as much.

Or maybe the distance, the drive, arguing about Harry, maybe none of that had anything to do with the way things were between them.

He wondered about it, sitting at the kitchen table with Joyce, thinking of something she’d said a minute ago. He’d told her about apprehending the fugitive and she asked if he’d shot him. Serious, wanting to know.

She asked now if he wanted another beer.

Raylan said, “Did you think I had shot that guy today?”

“I wondered, that’s all.”

“Really? A guy lying in bed asleep?”

“I saw you shoot and kill a man,” Joyce said. Not twenty feet from the table when he shot Tommy Bucks three times, Joyce watching it happen.

She said, “But we’ve never talked about it, have we? How you felt?”

He wasn’t sure how he felt. Relieved? It was hard to explain. He said, “It scares you, after, thinking about it. I don’t feel sorry for him or wish I hadn’t done it. I didn’t see any other way to stop him.”

“It was a personal matter?”

“In a way.”

“Man to man. You have an image of yourself, the lawman.”

“It’s what I am.”

She said, “You want to know what I wonder about? What if he wasn’t armed?”

“But he was.”

“You know that?”

“He wouldn’t have been there without a gun.”

She said, “Let me put it another way. If you knew he didn’t have a gun, would you have shot him anyway?”

“But he did. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

She said, “Well, then think about it.”

“I’d like to know what you think,” Raylan said. “Would I have shot him knowing he was unarmed?”

Joyce said, “I don’t know.” She waited a few moments and said, “You want another beer or not?”