Rum Punch

For Jackie, Carole, and Larry

1

Sunday morning, Ordell took Louis to watch the white-power demonstration in downtown Palm Beach.

“Young skinhead Nazis,” Ordell said. “Look, even little Nazigirls marching down Worth Avenue. You believe it? Coming now you have the Klan, not too many here today. Some in green, must be the coneheads’ new spring shade. Behind them it looks like some Bikers for Racism, better known as the Dixie Knights. We gonna move on ahead, fight through the crowd here,” Ordell said, bringing Louis along.

“There’s a man I want to show you. See who he reminds you of. He told me they’re gonna march up South County and have their show on the steps of the fountain by city hall. You ever see so many police? Yeah, I expect you have. But not all these different uniforms at one time. They mean business too, got their helmets on, their riot ba-tons. Stay on the sidewalk or they liable to hit you over the head. They keeping the street

safe for the Nazis.”

People would turn to look at Ordell.

“Man, all the photographers, TV cameras. This shit is big news, has everybody over here to see it. Otherwise, Sunday, what you have mostly are rich ladies come out with their little doggies to make wee-wee. I mean the doggies, not the ladies.” A girl in front of them smiled over her shoulder and Ordell said, “How you doing, baby? You making it all right?” He looked past her now, glanced at Louis to say, “I think I see him,” and pushed through the crowd to get closer to the street. “Yeah, there he is. Black shirt and tie? A grown-up skinhead Nazi. I call him Big Guy. He likes that.”

“It’s Richard,” Louis said. “Jesus.”

“Looks just like him, huh? Remember how Richard tripped on all that Nazi shit he had in his house? All his guns? Big Guy’s got more of everything.”

Louis said, “He’s serious. Look at him.”

“Wants power. He’s a gun freak,” Ordell said. “You know where you see different ones like him? At the gun shows.”

Ordell let it hang. Louis was supposed to ask Ordell what he was doing at gun shows, but did-n’t bother. He was busy watching the Nazigirls, all of them skinny rednecks, their hair cut short as boys’.

Ordell said, “I got something would straighten them out, make their eyes shine.”

He had people looking at him again. Some of them grinned. Louis moved out of the crowd and Ordell had to hurry to catch him. Louis bigger in the shoulders than he used to be, from working out in prison.

“This way,” Ordell said, and they started up South County ahead of the parade, couple of old buddies: Ordell Robbie and Louis Gara, a light-skinned black guy and a dark-skinned white guy, both from Detroit originally where they met in a bar, started talking, and found out they’d both been to Southern Ohio Correctional and had some attitudes in common. Not long after that Louis went to Texas, where he took another fall. Came home and Ordell had a proposition for him: a million-dollar idea to kidnap the wife of a guy making money illegally and hiding it in the Bahamas. Louis said okay. The scheme blew up in their face and Louis said never again. Thirteen years ago . . .

And now Ordell had another scheme. Louis could feel it. The reason they were here watching skinheads and coneheads marching up the street.

Ordell said, “Remember when you come out of Huntsville and I introduced you to Richard?”

Starting to lay it on him. Louis was positive now.

“That’s what today reminds me of,” Ordell said. “I think it’s fate working. This time you come out of FSP and I show you Big Guy, like Richard back from the dead.”

“What I remember from that time,” Louis said, “is wishing I never met Richard. What is it with you and Nazis?”

“They fun to watch,” Ordell said. “Look at the flag they got, with the boogied-up lightning flash on it. You can’t tell if it’s suppose to be SS or Captain Marvel.”

Louis said, “You got another million-dollar idea to try on me?”

Ordell turned from the parade with a cool look, serious. “You rode in my car. That ain’t just an idea, man, it cost real money.”

“What’re you showing me this Nazi for?”

“Big Guy? His real name’s Gerald. I called him Jerry one time, he about lifted me off the ground, said, ‘That’s not my name, boy.’ I told him I’m for segregation of the races, so he thinks I’m okay. Met him one time, was at a gun show.”

Throwing that one at Louis again.

Louis said, “You didn’t answer my question. What’re we doing here?”

“I told you. See who Big Guy reminds you of. Listen, there’s somebody else you won’t believe who’s down here. This one a woman. Guess who it is.”

Louis shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Ordell grinned. “Melanie.”

“You’re kidding.”

Another one from that time thirteen years ago.

“Yeah, we kep’ in touch. Melanie phone me one day . . . She’s in a place I have up at Palm Beach Shores. You want to see her?”

“She lives with you?”

“I’m there on and off, you might say. We can drop by this afternoon, you want. Melanie’s still a fine big girl, only bigger. Man, I’m telling you, fate’s been working its ass off, getting us all together here. What I’m thinking of doing, introduce Big Guy to Melanie.”

Leading up to something. Louis could feel it.

“For what?”

“Just see what happens. I think it’d be a kick. You know Melanie, she hasn’t changed any. Can you see her with this asshole Nazi?”

Ordell acting like a kid with a secret, dying to tell it, but wanting to be asked.

He said to Louis, “You don’t know where in the fuck you’re at, do you? Keep coming out of prison and starting over. I see you got rid of your mustache, have some gray in your curly hair. You staying in shape, that’s good.”

“What’d you do,” Louis said, “get your hair straightened? You used to have a ’fro.”

“Got to keep in style, man.”

Ordell ran his hand carefully over his hair, feeling the hard set, ran it back to his pigtail braid and curled it between his fingers, fooling with it as he said, “No, I don’t imagine you know what you want.”

Louis said, “You don’t, huh?”

“Giving me the convict stare. Well, you learned something in the joint,” Ordell said. “Otherwise, Louis, that shirt you have on, you look like you pump more gas than iron. Ought to have ‘Lou’ on the pocket there. Clean the windshield, check the oil . . .”

Smiled then to show he was kidding. Ordell in linen and gold, orange crew-neck sweater and white slacks, the gold shining on his neck, his wrist, and two of his fingers.

He said, “Come on, let’s go see the show.”

Louis said, “You’re the show.”

Ordell smiled and moved his shoulders like a fighter. They walked up behind the crowd that was held back by yellow police tape cordoning off the steps in front of the fountain. A young Nazi up there was speaking as the others stood facing the crowd in their supremacy outfits. Ordell started to push through to get closer and Louis took hold of his arm.

“I’m not going in there.”

Ordell turned to look at him. “It ain’t the same as on the yard, man. Nobody has a shank on them.”

“I’m not going in there with you.”

“Well, that’s cool,” Ordell said. “We don’t have to.”

They found a place where they could see enough of the young Nazi. He was shouting, “What do we want?” And his buddies and the Nazigirls and the rest of the cuckoos up there would shout back, “White power!” They kept it up until the young Nazi finished and shouted, “One day the world will know Adolf Hitler was right!” That got voices from the crowd shouting back at him, calling him stupid and a retard. He yelled at the crowd, “We’re going to reclaim this land for our people!” his young Nazi voice cracking. And they yelled back, what people was he talking about, assholes like him? A black woman in the crowd said, “Come on up to Riv’era Beach and say those things, you be dead.” The young skinhead Nazi began screaming “Sieg heil!” as loud as he could, over and over, and the cuckoos joined in with him, giving the Nazi salute. Now young guys in the crowd were calling them racist motherfuckers, telling them to go home, go on, get out of here, and it looked like the show was over.

Ordell said, “Let’s go.”

They walked over to Ocean Boulevard where they’d left his car, a black Mercedes convertible, with the top down. The time on the meter had run out and a parking ticket was stuck beneath the windshield wiper on the driver’s side. Ordell pulled the ticket out and dropped it in the street. Louis was watching but didn’t comment. Didn’t say much of anything until they were on the middle bridge heading back to West Palm. Then he started.

“Why’d you want to show me that guy? He call you a nigger and you want his legs broken?”

“That payback shit,” Ordell said, “ you must get that from hanging out with the Eyetalians. Ain’t nothing they like better than paying back. Swear an oath to it.”

“You want to see where I hang out?” Louis said. “You come to Olive, take a right. Go up to Banyan, used to be First Street, and hang a left.” The next thing Louis was telling him, on Olive now, “That’s the court building up on the right.”

“I know where the courts are at,” Ordell said. He turned onto Banyan and was heading toward Dixie Highway now. Halfway up the block Louis told him to stop.

“Right there, the white building,” Louis said, “that’s where I hang out.”

Ordell turned his head to look across the street at a one-story building, a storefront with max cherry bail bonds printed on the window.

“You work for a bail bondsman? You told me you with some funky insurance company the Eyetalians got hold of.”

“Glades Mutual in Miami,” Louis said. “Max Cherry writes their bonds. I sit in the office— some guy misses his court date, I go get him.”

“Yeah?” That sounded a little better, like Louis was a bounty hunter, went after bad guys on the run.

“What they want me for mainly, see if I can bring in some of those big drug-trafficking bonds, hundred and fifty grand and up.”

Ordell said, “Yeah, I ’magine you made some good contacts in the joint. That why the company hired you?”

“It was my celimate, guy was in for killing his wife. He told me to look up these friends of his when I got out. I go to see them, they ask me if I know any Colombians. I said yeah, a few.

Some guys I met through a con named J.J. I told you about him, the one that got picked up again? I’m staying in his house.” Louis lifted a cigarette from the pocket of his work shirt. “So what I do is look up these Colombians, down in South Beach, and hand out Max Cherry business cards. ‘If you ever go to jail, I’m your bail.’

He’s got another one that says ‘Gentlemen prefer bonds’ with his name under it, phone number, all that.” Louis went into the pocket again for a kitchen match.

Ordell waited. “Yeah?”

“That’s it. Most of the time I sit there.”

“You get along with the Colombians?”

“Why not? They know where I came from.” Louis struck the match with his thumbnail. “They play that cha-cha music so loud you can’t hardly talk anyway.”

Ordell got his own brand out and Louis gave him a light in his cupped hands.

“You don’t sound happy, Louis.”

He said, “Whatever you’re into, I don’t want any part of it, okay? Once was enough.”

Ordell sat back with his cigarette.

“Like you Steady Eddie, huh? I’m the one fucked up that kidnap deal?”

“You’re the one brought Richard in.”

“What’s that have to do with it?”

“You knew he’d try to rape her.”

“Yeah, and you helped her out of that mess. But that ain’t what blew the deal, Louis. You know what it was. We tell the man, pay up or you never see your wife again—’cause that’s how you do it, right? Then find out he don’t want to see her again, even for five minutes? Down there in his Bahama love nest with Melanie? If you can’t negotiate with the man, Louis, or threaten him, then you don’t have even a chance of making a deal.”

“It would’ve come apart anyway,” Louis said. “We didn’t know what we were doing.”

“I see you the expert now. Tell me who’s been in prison three times and who’s been in once? Listen, I got people working for me now. I got brothers do the heavy work. I got a man over in Freeport—you remember Mr. Walker? I got a Jamaican can do figures in his head. Can add up numbers, can multiply what things cost times how many”—Ordell snapped his fingers—”like that.”

“You got an accountant,” Louis said. “I’m happy for you.”

“Have I asked you to come work for me?”

“Not yet you haven’t.”

“You know what a M-60 machine gun is?”

“A big one, a military weapon.”

“I sold three of them for twenty grand each and bought this automobile,” Ordell said. “What do I need you for?”

2

Monday afternoon, Renee called Max at his office to say she needed eight hundred twenty dollars right away and wanted him to bring her a check. Renee was at her gallery in The Gardens Mall on PGA Boulevard. It would take Max a half hour at least to drive up there.

He said, “Renee, even if I wanted to, I can’t. I’m waiting to hear from a guy. I just spoke to the judge about him.” He had to listen then while she told how she had been trying to get hold of him. “That’s where I was, at court. I got your message on the beeper. . . . I just got back, I haven’t had time. . . .Renee, I’m working, for Christ sake.” Max paused, holding the phone to his ear, not able to say anything. He looked up to see a black guy in a yellow sport coat standing in his office. A black guy with shiny hair holding a Miami Dolphins athletic bag. Max said, “Renee, listen a minute, okay? I got a kid’s gonna do ten fucking years if I don’t get hold of him and take him in and you want me to . . . Renee?”

Max replaced the phone.

The black guy said, “Hung up on you, huh? I bet that was your wife.”

The guy smiling at him.

Max came close to saying, yeah, and you know what she said to me? He wanted to. Except that it wouldn’t make sense to tell this guy he didn’t know, had never seen before . . .

The black guy saying, “There was nobody in the front office, so I walked in. I got some business.”

The phone rang. Max picked it up, pointing to a chair with his other hand, and said, “Bail Bonds.”

Ordell heard him say, “It doesn’t matter where you were, Reggie, you missed your hearing. Now I have to . . . Reg, listen to me, okay?” This Max Cherry speaking in a quieter voice than he used on his wife. Talking to her had sounded painful. Ordell placed his athletic bag on an empty desk that faced the one Max Cherry was at and got out a cigarette.

This looked more like the man’s den than a bail bond office: a whole wall of shelves behind where Max Cherry sat with books on it, all kinds of books, some wood-carved birds, some beer mugs. It was too neat and homey for this kind of scummy business. The man himself appeared neat, clean-shaved, had his blue shirt open, no tie, good size shoulders on him. That dark, tough-looking type of guy like Louis, dark hair, only Max Cherry was losing his on top. Up in his fifties somewhere. He could be Eyetalian, except Ordell had never met a bail bondsman wasn’t Jewish. Max was telling the guy now the judge was ready to habitualize him. “That what you want, Reg? Look at ten years instead of six months and probation? I said, ‘Your Honor, Reggie has always been an outstanding client. I know I can find him right now . . .’ ”

Ordell, lighting the cigarette, paused as Max paused.

“ ‘. . . out standing on the corner by his house.’ ”

Listen to him. Doing standup.

“I can have the capias set aside, Reg. . . . The fugitive warrant, they’re gonna be looking for you, man. But it means I’ll have to pick you up.”

Ordell blew out smoke and looked around for an ashtray. He saw the NO SMOKING sign above the door to what looked like a meeting room, a long table in there, what looked like a refrigerator, a coffee maker.

“Stay at your mom’s till I come for you. You’ll have to go back in. . . . Overnight, that’s all.

Tomorrow you’ll be out, I promise.” Ordell watched Max hang up the phone saying, “He’s home when I get there or I have a five-thousanddollar problem. What’s yours?”

“I don’t see an ashtray,” Ordell said, holding up his cigarette. “The other thing, I need a bond for ten thousand.”

“What’ve you got for collateral?”

“Gonna have to put up cash.”

“You have it with you?”

“In my bag.”

“Use that coffee mug on the desk.”

Ordell moved around the desk, clean, nothing on it but his athletic bag, a telephone, and the coffee mug with still some in it. He flicked his ash and sat down in the swivel chair to face Max Cherry again, over behind his desk.

“You have cash,” Max said, “what do you need me for?”

“Come on,” Ordell said, “you know how they do. Want to know where you got it, then keep out a big chunk, say it’s for court costs. Pull all kind of shit on you.”

“It’ll cost you a thousand for the bond.”

“I know that.”

“Who’s it for, a relative?”

“Fella name Beaumont. They have him up at the Gun Club jail.”

Max Cherry kept staring from his desk, hunched over some. He had a computer there and a typewriter and a stack of file folders, one of them open.

“Was sheriff deputies picked him up Saturday night,” Ordell said. “It started out drunk driving, but they wrote it ‘possession of a concealed weapon.’ Had a pistol on him.”

“Ten thousand sounds high.”

“They ran his name and got a hit, saw he’s been in before. Or they don’t like it he’s Jamaican. You know what I’m saying? They afraid he might take off.”

“If he does and I have to go to Jamaica after him, you cover the expenses.”

This was interesting. Ordell said, “You think you could pick him up down there? Put him on a plane, bring him back?”

“I’ve done it. What’s his full name?”

“Beaumont. That’s the only name I know.”

Max Cherry, getting papers out of his drawer, looked over this way again, the man no doubt thinking, You putting that kind of money up and you don’t even know his name? Ordell got a kick out of people wondering about him, this man—look at him— holding back from asking the question. Ordell said, “I have people do favors for me don’t even have names outside of like Zulu, Cujo, one they call Wawa. Street names. You know what they call me sometime? Whitebread, account of my shade. Or they say just ‘Bread’for short. It’s okay, they not dis

respecting me.” See what the man thought of that.

He didn’t say. He picked up his phone.

Ordell smoked his cigarette, watching as the man punched numbers, and heard him ask for the Records Office, then ask somebody if they’d look up the Booking Card and Rough Arrest on a defendant named Beaumont, saying he believed it was the surname but wasn’t sure, check the ones came in Saturday night. He had to wait before getting what he wanted, asking questions and filling out a form on his desk. When he was done and had hung up the phone he said, “Beaumont Livingston.”

“Livingston, huh?”

“On his prior,” Max Cherry said, “he did nine months and is working out four years probation. For possession of unregistered machine guns.”

“You don’t tell me.”

“So he’s violated his probation. He’s looking at ten years plus the concealed weapon.”

“Man, he won’t like that,” Ordell said. He drew on his cigarette and dropped it in the coffee mug. “Beaumont don’t have the disposition for doing time.”

Now Max Cherry was staring again before he said, “You ever been to prison?”

“Long time ago in my youth I did a bit in Ohio. Wasn’t anything, stealing cars.”

“I need your name too, and your address.”

Ordell told him it was Ordell Robbie, spelled it for him when the man asked, and said where he lived.

“That a Jamaican name?”

“Hey, do I sound like one of them? You hear them talking that island potwah to each other, it’s like a different language. No, man, I’m African-American. I used to be Neegro, I was cullud, I was black, but now I’m African-American. What’re you, Jewish, huh?”

“You’re African-American, I guess I’m French-American,” Max Cherry said. “With maybe some New Orleans Creole in there, going way back.” Now he was shuffling through papers on his desk to find the ones he wanted. “You’ll have to fill out an Application for Appearance Bond, an Indemnity Agreement, a Contingent Promissory Note . . . It’s the one, if Beaumont skips and I go after him, you pay the expenses.”

“Beaumont ain’t going nowhere,” Ordell said. “You gonna have to figure out some other way to skim, make more than your ten percent. I’m surprised you don’t try to double the fee account of he’s Jamaican. . . .”

“It’s against the law.”

“Yeah, but it’s done, huh? You people have your ways. Like not refunding the collateral.” Ordell got up, went over to the man’s desk with the athletic bag he bought at the airport souvenir shop, and took a bundle of currency out of it, old bills held together with a rubber band. “Hundred times a hundred,” Ordell said, “and ten more for your cut. You do all right, huh? What I like to know is where you keeping my money till I get it back. In your drawer?”

“Across the street at First Union,” Max Cherry said, taking the bills and working the rubber bands off. “It goes in a trust account.”

“So you gonna make some money extra on the interest, huh? I knew it.”

The man didn’t say yes or no, busy counting hundred-dollar bills now. When he was done and Ordell was signing the different papers, the man asked if he was going out to the jail with him. Ordell straightened up and thought about it before shaking his head.

“Not if I don’t need to. Tell Beaumont I’ll be in touch.” Ordell buttoned his double-breasted sport jacket, his canary one he wore over the black T-shirt and black silk trousers this afternoon. He wondered how tall this Max Cherry was, so he said, “Nice doing business with you,” and stuck out his hand without reaching toward him. Max Cherry rose up to stand six feet and some, a speck taller than Ordell, with a big mitt on him Ordell shook and let go. The man nodded, that was it, and stood waiting for him to leave.

Ordell said, “You know why I come here, not someplace else? Friend of mine I understand does some work for you.”

“You mean Winston?”

“Another fella, Louis Gara. He’s my white friend,” Ordell said, and smiled.

Max Cherry didn’t. He said, “I haven’t seen him today.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll catch him sometime.” Ordell picked up his bag and started for the door. He stopped and looked back. “I got one other question. What if, I was just thinking, what if before the court date gets here Beaumont gets hit by a car or something and dies? I get the money back, don’t I?”

What he was saying was, he knew he’d get it back. The kind of guy who worked at being cool, but was dying to tell you things about himself. He knew the system, knew the main county lockup was called the Gun Club jail, after the road it was on. He’d served time, knew Louis Gara, and drove off in a Mercedes convertible. What else you want to know? Ordell Robbie. Max was surprised he’d never heard of him.

He turned away from the front window, went back to his office to type up bail forms.

The first one, the Power of Attorney. Max rolled it into his typewriter and paused, looking at his problem. It would hit him in the eye every time he filled out a form that had GLADES MUTUAL CASUALTY COMPANY printed across the top.

The Power of Attorney verified Max Cherry as the insurance company’s licensed surety-bond representative, here, in the matter of Beaumont Livingston. The way it worked, the insurance company would get one third of the ten percent premium and put a third of it into a buildup fund to cover forfeitures.

If Max wrote fifty thousand dollars’ worth of bail bonds a week, he’d clear five grand less expenses and the one third that went to Glades Mutual in Miami. It was a grind, but good money if you put in the hours.

The problem was that after representing Glades for the past nineteen years, no complaints either way, the company was now under new management, taken over by guys with organized crime connections. Max was sure of it. They’d even placed an excon in his office, Ordell Robbie’s friend Louis Gara. “To help out,” this thug from Glades Mutual said, a guy who didn’t know shit about the business. “Go after some of those big drug-trafficking bonds.”

“What those people do,” Max told the guy, “is skip as soon as they’re bonded.”

The guy said, “So what? We got the premium.”

“I don’t write people who I know are gonna forfeit.”

The guy said, “If they don’t want to show up in court, that’s their business.”

“And it’s my business who I write,” Max told him. The guy from Glades said, “You got an attitude problem,” and gave him Louis to hang around the office, a convicted bank robber just out of prison.

Winston came in while Max was preparing the forms. Winston Willie Powell, a licensed bondsman following a 39 and 10 record as a middleweight. He was light heavy in retirement, short and thick, with a bearded black face so dark it was hard to make out his features. Max watched him, at the other desk now, unlock the right-hand drawer and take out a snub-nosed .38 before he looked over.

“Have to pick up that little Puerto Rican housebreaker thinks he’s Zorro. Has the swords on his wall? Man lies to his probation officer, she violates him, we bond him, and then he don’t show up for his hearing. I called Delray PD, said I might need some backup, depending how it goes. They say to me, ‘He’s your problem, man.’ They don’t want to mess with those women live there. Touch Zorro, they try to scratch your eyes out.”

“You want help? Get Louis.”

Winston said, “I rather do it myself,” shoving the .38 into his waistband and smoothing his ribbed knit T-shirt over it. “Who you writing?”

“Concealed weapon. Ten thousand.”

“That’s high.”

“Not for Beaumont Livingston. They caught him one time with machine guns.”

“Beaumont—he’s Jamaican he’s gone.”

“This African-American gent who put up cash says no.”

“We know him?”

“Ordell Robbie,” Max said and waited. Winston shook his head. “Where’s he live?” “On Thirty-first right off Greenwood. You know that neighborhood? It’s kept up. People have bars on their windows.”

“You want, I’ll check him out.”

“He knows Louis. They’re old buddies.”

“Then you know the man’s dirty,” Winston said. “Where’s Beaumont live?”

“Riviera Beach. He’s hired help but worth ten grand to Mr. Robbie.”

“Wants his man sprung ’fore he gets squeezed and cops to a deal. I can bring him out when I take Zorro.”

“I’m going up anyway. I have to deliver Reggie.”

“Missed his hearing again? They beauties, aren’t they?”

“He says it was his mother’s birthday, he forgot.”

“And you believe that shit. I swear, there times you act like these people are no different than anybody else.”

“I’m glad we’re having this talk,” Max said.

“Yeah, well, I’m enough irritated the way you act,” Winston said, “you better not get smart with me. Like nothing bothers you. Like not even Mr. Louis Gara, the way you let him waste your time. Let him smoke his cigarettes in here.”

“No, Louis bothers me,” Max said.

“Then throw his ass out and lock the door. Then call that crooked insurance company and tell them you’re through. You don’t, they gonna eat you up or get you in trouble with the state commission, and you know it.”

“Right,” Max said. He turned to his typewriter.

“Listen to me. All you got to do is stop writing their bonds.”

“You mean quit the business.”

“For a while. What’s wrong with that?”

“If you haven’t looked at the books lately,” Max said, “we’ve got close to a million bucks out there.”

“It don’t mean you have to work. Ride it out. See, then when it’s all off the books you start over.”

“I got bills to pay, like everybody else.”

“Yeah, but you could do it if you wanted; there ways. What I think is, you tired of the business.”

“You’re right again,” Max said, tired of talking about it.

“But you don’t see a way to get out, so you act like nothing bothers you.”

Max didn’t argue. Nine years together, Winston knew him. It was quiet and then Winston said, “How’s Renee doing?” Coming at him from another direction. “She making it yet?”

“You want to know if I’m still paying her bills?”

“Don’t tell me what you don’t want to.”

“Okay, the latest,” Max said. He turned from his typewriter. “I walk in, I just got back from seeing the judge about Reggie, she calls.”

He paused as Winston sat down and hunched over the desk on his arms, Winston staring at him now, waiting.

“She’s at the mall. Something she ordered, three olive pots, arrived COD and she needs eight twenty right away. That’s eight hundred and twenty.”

“What’s a olive pot?”

“How should I know? What she wanted was for me to drop whatever I was doing and bring her a check.”

Winston sat there staring at him, his head down in those heavy shoulders. “For these olive pots.”

“I said, ‘Renee, I’m working. I’m trying to save a young man from doing ten years and I’m waiting for him to call.’ I try to explain it to her in a nice way. You know what she said? She said, ‘Well, I’m working too.’ ”

Winston seemed to smile. It was hard to tell. He said, “I was out there one time. Renee act like she didn’t see me and I’m the only person in there.”

“That’s what I mean,” Max said. “She says she’s working—doing what? You never see anybody unless she’s got the wine and cheese out. You know what I mean? For a show. Then you have all the freeloaders. You see these guys, they look like they live in cardboard boxes under the freeway, they’re eating everything, drinking the wine . . . You know who they are? The artists and their crowd. I’ve even recognized guys I’ve written. Renee’s playing like she’s Peter Pan, has her hair cut real short, and all these assholes are the Lost Boys. The place clears out, she hasn’t sold one flicking painting.”

“So what you’re telling me,” Winston said, “you’re still supporting her habit.”

“She’s got a Cuban guy now, David, I mean Daveed, she says is gonna be discovered and make it big, any day now. The guy’s a busboy at Chuck and Harold’s.”

“See, what I don’t understand,” Winston said, “you let a woman don’t weigh a hundred pounds beat up on you. It’s the same as how you treat some of these lowlife assholes we dealing with.

They give you all kind of shit and you go along with it. Then I see you pick up a guy that skipped, some mean-drunk motherfucker and you cuff him, no problem, and take him in. You understand what I’m saying? Why don’t you tell the woman to pay her own bills or you gonna divorce her? Or go ahead and divorce her anyway. You don’t live together. What’re you getting out of being married? Nothing. Am I right? ’Less you still going to bed with her.”

“When you’re separated,” Max said, “you don’t get to do that. You don’t want to.”

“Yeah, well, I imagine you do all right with the ladies. But where she getting hers, off the artists? This Cuban busboy, Da-veed? If she is, that’s a good reason to divorce her. Catch her going out on you.”

“You’re getting personal now,” Max said.

Winston looked surprised. “Man, we been getting nothing but personal. It’s your personal life has you messed up, one problem pressing on another. The way Renee has hold of your balls, you don’t have the strength to get the insurance company off your back. All the money you put in her picture store, paying her bills, you could shut down here and live on it till you start up again clean, with a different insurance company. You know I’m right too, so I’m not gonna say another word.”

“Good,” Max said. He turned to the Power of Attorney form in his typewriter.

“You take her the check she wanted?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“She call back?”

“Not yet.”

“She cry and carry on like she does?”

“She hung up on me,” Max said. “Look, I have to finish this and get out of here.”

“Don’t let me disturb you.”

Max started typing again.

He heard Winston say, “Hey, shit—” and looked over to see him standing at the desk now holding his coffee mug.

“That goddamn Louis, you see what he done? Put his cigarette butt in here. I’m gonna punch him right in his smokin’ mouth.”

Max turned back to the form, GLADES MUTUAL CASUALTY printed across the top. He said, “I know how you feel. But when you hit an ex-con who’s done three falls, they say you better kill him.”

3

Ordell asked one of his jackboys to get him a car with keys in it and leave it in the Ocean Mall parking lot over by the beach. The jackboy asked him what kind of car he wanted. Ordell said, “One has a big trunk with a shotgun in it.”

He liked jackboys because they were crazy. They made their living ripping off street dealers for their blow and change and busting into crack houses with assault weapons. Jackboys liked Ordell because he was cool, not some homey everybody knew; the man was big-time from Detroit, had different women he stayed with as it suited him, and could deliver you a full-automatic weapon on two days notice. So now some of the jackboys worked for Ordell, picking up special kinds of guns he needed to fill orders. The one who was getting him the car, Cujo, called him that Tuesday evening where he was staying with one of his women to say it was there waiting, an Olds Ninety-Eight, 12-gauge in the trunk.

Ordell said, “The car, if it’s clean now it won’t be after.”

Cujo said, “It don’t matter, Bread, it’s stole. Was a brother had it that’s dead from the other night. You hear of it? Policeman shot him both in the front and in the back. We try to get him from the house, but he bled out on us so we left him.”

“I saw it in the paper,” Ordell said. “The cop told them yeah, when a man is shot sometimes he’ll spin around on you, it ain’t unusual, and that’s what happened. But where did he shoot him first, in the front or in the back?”

Cujo said, “Yeaaah . . . that’s right, huh?”

You could mess with a jackboy’s head, get him to think what you wanted, their brains cooked from doing crack.

Ordell thanked him for the car and Cujo said, “Bread? They’s a piece underneath with the keys, case you want it. Belonged to the brother was shot dead.”

Ordell had three women he kept in three different homes.

He had Sheronda living in the house on 31st Street off Greenwood Avenue, in West Palm. Sheronda, a young woman he’d picked up coming through Fort Valley, Georgia, one time on his way back from Detroit. There she was, standing at the side of the road, no shoes on, sunlight showing her body in the wornout dress. Sheronda cooked good collards with salt pork, black-eyed peas, chicken-fried steak, cleaned the house, and provided Ordell with grateful pussy, anytime day or night, for taking her out of the peanut fields. There was nothing in this little red-brick ranch that told what Ordell did for a living. About once a week he’d have to explain to Sheronda how to set the alarm system. She was afraid of getting trapped in the house, not able to get out with grillwork covering the windows.

Simone, a cute woman for her age, sixty-three years old, was from Detroit and knew all about alarm systems and liked the bars on her windows. Ordell had her living in a stucco Spanish-looking house on 30th Street near Windsor Avenue, not two blocks from Sheronda’s, but without them knowing about each other. Simone put weaves in her hair and believed she resembled Diana Ross. Her pleasure was to sing along with Motown recordings and do the steps and gestures accompanying the Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Syreeta Wright, all the oldies. Whenever Ordell let Simone take him to bed, it was ten times better than he thought it would be. Simone could write a book on the different ways to please a man. Ordell would store guns temporarily in this house, semiautomatic weapons like TEC-9s purchased legally by “straw buyers” that Simone hired to do it, mostly retired people. Give an old woman the cash plus twenty bucks to buy an assault rifle. None of the straw buyers knew about Ordell, at least not by name.

He had his white woman, Melanie, living in the apartment in Palm Beach Shores, located at the south end of Singer Island, only two blocks from the public beach. Melanie was the fine big girl Ordell had met in the Bahamas when he went there to see the husband of the woman he and Louis had kidnapped. Melanie was only about twenty-one then, making her thirty-four or so now, but had hustled her tail all over the world taking up with rich guys. She had been with the husband of the kidnapped woman, but when Ordell looked for him he was hiding and she wouldn’t tell where he was. So Ordell, what he did was have his friend Mr. Walker take them out in the ocean in his boat and Ordell threw Melanie over the side. They went off a ways, circled around back to where Melanie’s blond head was bobbing in the water, and Ordell asked her, “You want to tell me where the man’s at?” She was a show. Told Ordell after she would help him score off the husband of the kidnapped woman ’cause she liked him, Ordell, better. She said also ’cause she didn’t want to end up in the flicking ocean.

So here was Melanie after keeping in touch, running into her in Miami . . . Melanie still up for a hustle anytime. She didn’t cook or clean too good and, for all her talk and acting sexual, was only average in the bed. (Ordell wondered should he send her over to Simone’s for some lessons.) The fine big girl had in thirteen years become bigger, show tits grown to circus tits but still okay, tan, always tanning her body out on the apartment balcony facing the ocean. Ordell used this place sometimes for business, would have his big blond woman get off her butt and serve drinks while he showed his gun movie to buyers from Detroit and New York City. Mr. Walker, over in Free-port, had a print he showed to buyers from Colombia.

The jackboy, Cujo, had called here a few moments ago to say the Olds Ninety-Eight was waiting. Ordell still had the phone in his hand. He punched a number in Freeport, Grand Bahama.

“Mr. Walker, how you this evening?”

Melanie looked up from Vanity Fair, the magazine she was reading on the sofa. She went around in cutoffs and had her fine brown legs tucked under her.

“I got Beaumont out. Cost me ten thousand. I get it back, but don’t like having it out of my sight.” Ordell listened and said, “Was yesterday. I had to do some thinking, reason I didn’t call you right away.”

Melanie was still watching him. Ordell looked over and she lowered her eyes to the magazine like she wasn’t interested. She’d be listening though, and that was fine. He wanted her to know some things without knowing everything.

“You way ahead of me, Mr. Walker. I had the same thought.” Cedric Walker had been a two-bit fishing guide with a whaler till Ordell showed him where the money was. Now the man had a thirty-sixfoot Carver with all kinds of navigational shit on it. “You understand, the drunk driving alone violates Beaumont’s probation. It wouldn’t matter he had the pistol on him . . . That’s right, they bring up the machine gun charge again. Means he’ll be facing ten years and what he gets for the concealed weapon on top of it. That’s what the bail-bond man said. . . . No, I let him put up the bond. Max Cherry. . . . Yeah, that’s the man’s name. Sounds like one a calypso singer would have, huh? Maximilian Cherry and his Oil Can Boppers . . . What? No, I can’t see it either. They keep him overnight he’s pulling his hair out. I’d send him home to Montego if it didn’t cost me the ten. . . . No, there’s nothing to talk about. Mr. Walker? Melanie says hi.” Ordell listened again and said, “She’ll love you for it, man. I’ll tell her. You be good now, hear?” and hung up the phone.

Melanie, the magazine on her lap, said, “Tell me what?”

“He’s sending you a present. Be in the next delivery.”

“He’s a sweetie. I’d love to see him again.”

“We could fly over sometime. Go out in his boat. Would you like that?”

“No, thanks,” Melanie said. She picked up her magazine.

Ordell watched her. He said, “But you know the boat’s always there.”

Two A.M., Ordell left the apartment and walked up to Ocean Mall, a bar named Casey’s where people went to dance, a restaurant, Portofino, some stores, some fast-food places, not much else in this block-long strip facing the public beach. The parking lot was back of the mall, only a few cars left in the rows, all the places closed. He got in the black Olds Ninety-Eight, found the keys and a .38 snubby under the seat, fooled with the instruments to find the lights and the air, and drove out of there, over the humpback bridge to Riviera Beach, a two-minute trip.

Ordell believed if you didn’t know Beaumont’s house you could ease down these dark streets off Blue Heron till you heard West Indian reggae filling the night, music to get high by, and follow the beat to the little stucco dump where Beaumont lived with a bunch of Jamaicans all packed in there. They’d keep the music on high volume while they maintained their crack binge—only this evening, peeking in, they appeared to be doing reefer, crowded in the room like happy refugees, having some sweet wine and dark rum with the weed. Go in there, start to breathe, and be stoned. It most always smelled of cooking too. A messy place—Ordell had wanted to use the bathroom one time, took one look, and went outside to relieve himself among trash barrels and bright clothes hanging on the line.

From the doorway he caught Beaumont’s eye, Beaumont the one with slicked-down almost regular hair among the beards and dreadlocks, and waved at him in the haze of smoke to step outside.

Ordell said, “Dot ganja, mon, mek everyone smile to show their teet, uh?” bringing Beaumont out through wild fern and a tangle of shrubs to the big Olds parked in the street. “You the most relaxed people I ever met.”

Except now Beaumont was rubbing a hand over his jaw, looking at the car he knew wasn’t Ordell’s.

“There’s a man,” Ordell said, “I never dealt with before, wants to buy some goods. I want to test him out. You understand?” Ordell unlocked the trunk. Raising the lid he said, “When I open this to show my wares, you gonna be inside pointing a gun at him.”

Beaumont frowned. “You want me to shoot him?”

Beaumont was no jackboy. He was Ordell’s front man on some deals, figuring prices in his head, and his backup man other times. Mr. Walker set up deliveries, received the payments, and arranged for getting the funds from Grand Bahama to West Palm Beach. Right now Beaumont was peering into the trunk, dark in there.

“I have to be inside how long?”

“We just going over to the beach, mon.”

Beaumont kept looking in the trunk, his hands flat in the tight pockets of his pants, no shirt, skinny shoulders hunched up some.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t like to be in there.”

“I put up ten thousand,” Ordell said, “to get your skinny ass out of jail. Now you gonna take a stand on me? Man, I don’t believe this shit.” Sounding surprised, hurt. “Nothing’s going to happen, it’s just in case.”

Beaumont took his time to think about it, Ordell listening to the reggae beat coming from the house, moving just a little bit with it, till Beaumont said, “Okay, but I have to dress.”

“You look crisp, mon, you fine. We be right back.”

“What do I use?”

“Look in there. See the trash bag?”

He watched Beaumont hunch in to bring it out unwrapping the brown plastic from a 12-gauge, no stock, the barrel sawed off at the pump.

“No, don’t rack it, man, not yet. Not till we there and I open the trunk. Right then you can rack it, dig? Get the man’s attention.”

Ordell drove back Blue Heron Boulevard to the bridge that humped over Lake Worth and followed the curve north past Ocean Mall, past hotels and high-priced condos with gates, until his headlights showed a solid wall of trees behind a wire fence on his side of the road, MacArthur State Park, and what looked more like jungle on the other side. Ordell picked a sandy place to pull off on the left, all mangrove along here and scraggly palm trees growing wild. No headlights showed in either direction. He got out and unlocked the trunk. A light went on inside as the lid came up, and there was Beaumont hunched on his side with the shotgun, ducking his head to see who was here.

Ordell said, “It’s just me, babe.” He said, “I was wondering did any federal people come visit you in jail and I should be watching my ass.”

Beaumont bent his head some more to see out, frowning.

“You wouldn’t tell me if they did, and I wouldn’t blame you,” Ordell said, unbuttoning his double-breasted sport jacket, the yellow one. He had a Targa on him that fired .22 longs, okay for this kind of close work. Or he could use the one Cujo left him—and decided, yeah, he would.

So now Beaumont was looking at the five-shot .38 snubby Ordell slipped from his waist. Beaumont quick racked the pump shotgun, pulled the trigger, and there was that click you get from an empty weapon. Beaumont had a pitiful look on his face racking the pump again, hard. Click. Racked it again, but didn’t get to click it this time. Ordell shot him in his bare chest. Beaumont seemed to cave in like the air was let out of him and Ordell put one in his head. Loud. Man, but it was a nasty gun the way it jumped and felt like it stung your hand, Ordell wishing he had used the Targa now. He wiped the piece clean with his T-shirt pulled out of his pants, threw it in the trunk with Beaumont, and closed the lid.

The digital clock on the dash read 2:48 as he pulled into the parking lot behind the mall. He used napkins he found on the ground by a trash bin to wipe off the steering wheel, the door handle, trunk lid, any part of the car he might have touched. Walking home along the beach, dark out in the Atlantic Ocean, quiet, nobody around, he could hear the surf coming in and the wind blowing, that was all. It felt good on his face.

* * *

Ordell got home, all the lights were off in the apartment, Melanie asleep, girlish little snores coming from the bedroom. She was hard to wake up if you wanted anything. Simone snored louder, but would stop if you made any noise and say in her sleepy voice, “Come on in the bed, baby.” Sheronda would hear him unlocking the door, turning off the alarm, and would come out of the bedroom with her big eyes asking what he wanted, wide awake.

Melanie had slowed down some in thirteen years. Had become a blowhead and wasn’t as spunky as she used to be. That was too bad. But she wasn’t as apt to surprise you either. As close as Ordell was to realizing his dream of becoming a wealthy retiree, he didn’t need any surprises.

What he needed was somebody to take Beaumont’s place. Not a jackboy. Somebody smarter, but not too smart. Like Louis. He was the one. You could talk to Louis. You could kid around with him and act foolish if you wanted to. Man, they had laughed picking out masks to wear when they kidnapped the woman. He seemed more serious now. Looked meaner than he used to. He could use some more meanness. Maybe prison had done him some good. Louis said he didn’t want any part of whatever it was. But Louis, you pin him down,

he didn’t know what he wanted. Maybe a way to get him, put Melanie on him. Then put her on Big Guy at the right time.

The Nazi.

4

They watched Jackie Burke come off the Bahamas shuttle in her tan Islands Air uniform, then watched her walk through Customs and Immigration without opening her bag, a brown nylon case she pulled along behind her on wheels, the kind flight attendants used.

It didn’t surprise either of the casual young guys who had Ms. Burke under surveillance: Ray Nicolet and Faron Tyler, in sport coats and neckties with their jeans this Wednesday afternoon at Palm Beach International. Jackie Burke came through here five days a week flying West Palm to Nassau, West Palm to Freeport and back.

“She’s cool,” Nicolet said. “You notice?”

“She ain’t bad either,” Tyler said, “for a woman her age. She’s forty?”

“Forty-four,” Nicolet said. “She’s been flying nineteen years. Some other airlines before this one.”

“Where you want to take her, here or outside?”

“When she gets in her car. It’s upstairs.” They watched her from a glass-partitioned office in this remote wing of the terminal, Ray Nicolet commenting on Jackie Burke’s legs, her neat rear end in the tan skirt, Faron Tyler saying she surely didn’t look forty-four, at least not from here. They watched her bring a pair of sunglasses out of her shoulder bag and lay them in her hair that was dark blond, loose, not too long. It did surprise them when Jackie Burke took the escalator up to the main concourse. They watched her go into the Ladies’ rest room, come out after about five minutes not looking any different, and pull her cart into the snack bar. Now they watched her sit down with a cup of coffee and light a cigarette. What was she doing? Ray Nicolet and Faron Tyler slipped into the souvenir shop, directly across the way, to stand among racks of pastel-colored Palm Beach T-shirts.

Tyler said, “You think she made us?”

Nicolet wondered the same thing without saying it.

“You don’t come off a flight and have a cup of coffee, you go home,” Tyler said. “She does-n’t act nervous though.”

“She’s cool,” Nicolet said.

“Who’s here besides us?”

“Nobody. This one came up in a hurry.” Nicolet fingered the material of a pink T-shirt that had green and white seagulls on it, then raised his gaze to the snack bar again. “You make the bust, okay?”

Tyler looked at him. “It’s your case. I thought I was just helping out.”

“I want to keep it simple. A state charge, she won’t have as much trouble bonding out. I mean if we have to take it that far. You badge her, lay it on— you know. Then I’ll ease into the conversation.”

“Where, here?”

“How about your office? Mine,” Nicolet said, “I don’t have enough chairs. Your place is neater.”

“But if all she’s carrying is money . . .”

“The guy said fifty grand this trip.”

“Yeah, what’s the charge? She didn’t declare it? That’s federal.”

“You can use it if you want, hold Customs over her head. I’d still like it to be a state bust, some kind of trafficking. Otherwise, if I bring her up,” Nicolet said, “and she has to bond out of federal court—man, they make it hard. I don’t want her mad at me, I just want to see her sweat a little.”

Tyler said, “If you know who she’s taking it to . . .”

“I don’t. I said we have an idea. The guy kept holding out, wouldn’t give us the name. He was afraid it could fuck up his life worse than prison.”

“I guess it did,” Tyler said. “So how about if we follow her, see who she gives it to.”

“If we had a few more people. We lose her,” Nicolet said, “we have to come here and start all over. No, I think if we sit her down and give her dirty looks she’ll tell us what we want to know. Whatever that is.”

“She sure looks good for her age,” Tyler said.

They were a couple of South Florida boys, both thirty-one, buddies since meeting at FSU. They liked guns, beer, cowboy boots, air boats, hunting in the Everglades, and chasing bad guys. They’d spent a few years with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office before splitting up: Ray Nicolet going to ATF, the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; Faron Tyler to FDLE, The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Division of Criminal Investigation. Every once in a while they got a chance to work together. Right now the ATF office was busy working a sting operation out of a pawnshop they’d taken over, buying a lot of hot guns on camera. So Nicolet had called FDLE and got his buddy to help out on an investigation. One they believed had to do with the illegal sale of firearms.

“She’s leaving,” Tyler said.

One of the two guys Jackie Burke first noticed in the Customs office got on the elevator with her, the dark-haired one. He asked what floor she wanted. Jackie said, “I’m going all the way.”

He grinned saying, “Me too,” pushed the button, and then touched his hair. The kind of guy who was used to women coming on to him. Almost a hunk, but not quite. Jackie was pretty sure if she asked if his partner was already on the top level he wouldn’t act too surprised. Maybe grin at her again. Both were young, but with that lazy confidence of pro athletes or guys who carried badges and guns. She hoped she was wrong, felt the urge to light a cigarette, and thought of leaving her flight bag on the elevator.

The door opened. The dark-haired one said, “After you,” and Jackie walked off pulling her wheels into the dim parking structure. She moved past rows of cars expecting the other one, more boyish-looking, short brown hair down on his forehead, to step out in front of her. He didn’t though. She had the trunk of her gray Honda open and was lifting the aluminum frame to put it inside before she heard him and looked over her shoulder. He came holding open his ID case.

“Hi, I’m Special Agent Faron Tyler, Florida Department of Law Enforcement?”

Not sounding too sure about it. The case held a badge and an ID that had FDLE printed on it in bold letters.

Jackie said, “Fiddle? I’ve never heard of it.”

“Yeah, but there it is,” Tyler said. “Can I ask what you have in that bag?”

Giving her that official deadpan delivery. His voice soft, though, kind of Southern. Jackie had a good idea what was going to happen, but wanted to be absolutely sure and said, “The usual things, clothes, hair curlers. I’m a flight attendant with Islands Air.”

Tyler said, “And your name’s Jackie Burke?”

It was going to happen.

She felt the urge again to have a cigarette and lowered the frame to rest on its wheels. The dark-haired one appeared behind Tyler, coming out of the row of cars, as she was getting her cigarettes from her shoulder bag.

The dark-haired one said, “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but observe your plight. Can I be of assistance?”

Jackie said, “Gimme a break,” and held her Bic lighter to a cigarette.

Now Tyler, the FDLE guy, was introducing him. “This is Special Agent Ray Nicolet, with Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Would you mind if we looked in that bag?”

“Would I mind? Do I have a choice?”

“You can say no,” Tyler said, “and wait here with him while I go get a warrant. Or we can take you in on suspicion.”

“Of what?”

“All he wants to do is peek in your bag,” Nicolet said. “I’ll watch he doesn’t take anything.”

“It’s just a routine spot check,” Tyler said. “Okay?”

Jackie drew on the cigarette, let her breath out, shrugged. “Go ahead.”

She watched Tyler hunch down to unhook the elastic straps and lay the flight bag on the pavement. Nicolet lifted the cart out of the way, placed it in her trunk. Tyler had the bag open now and was feeling through her things, a soiled blouse, uniform skirt, bringing out a manila envelope, a fat one, nine by twelve. Jackie watched him straighten the clasp, open it, and look inside. Nicolet stepped closer as Tyler pulled out several packets of one-hundred-dollar bills secured with rubber bands, and Nicolet whistled, a sound that was like a sigh. Tyler looked up at her.

“I’d say there’s, oh, fifty thousand dollars in here. What would you say?”

Jackie wasn’t saying anything at the moment. They knew how much was in the envelope. Without counting it.

Tyler said, “This is your money?”

Jackie said, “If I were to tell you, no, it isn’t . . .”

She saw Tyler start to grin.

“That I was supposed to wait in the cafeteria and a man I don’t know would come by and pick it up . . .” Without looking at the other one she knew he was grinning too. It made her mad. “And I saw you cowboys looking at T-shirts and thought one of you might be the person . . . Listen, if it’s yours, take it.” She glanced at Nicolet.

He was grinning. Both of them having fun.

Tyler said, “You should know if you bring in anything over ten thousand you have to declare it. You forgot or what? You could get a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar fine and two years in prison. You want to talk to us about it, or you want to talk to Customs?”

Jackie said, “I’m not saying another fucking word.”

Mad. At these guys, their attitude, and at herself for being so dumb.

Nicolet said to Tyler, “You tried,” and put his hand on her shoulder. He said, “Those Customs guys, all day they see people coming back from their vacations, trips to Europe, the Caribbean, while they have to sit there working. You can understand it makes them hard to get along with. You want to talk to them or a couple of good-natured guys like us? Someplace quiet we can sit down and take it easy.”

“I don’t have to talk to anybody,” Jackie said.

“No, you don’t,” Nicolet said. “But would you extend us the courtesy of listening to what we have to say? Help you get this straightened out?”

Florida Department of Law Enforcement was on the eighth floor of a glassy gray-blue building on Centrepark Boulevard in West Palm. They were in an office Faron Tyler shared with another agent, gone for the day: two clean desks, a wide expanse of windows looking east, a calendar on the wall, and a sign that read: “Bad planning on your part does not automatically constitute an emergency on my part.”

Jackie Burke thought it might be true, but so what? She stood at the windows. With a slight turn of her head to the left she could see Ray Nicolet’s legs extending toward her, his cowboy boots resting on the corner of the desk. He said, “You see that canal right below us? I was up here one time, I saw an osprey circle around, dive down there, and pick up a bass, a pretty good-size one. Faron, you remember that?”

“Last summer.”

Faron Tyler was somewhere behind her.

She heard Nicolet say, “It’s starting to get dark, huh? Rush-hour traffic on the freeway picking up, everybody going home . . .”

“I want a lawyer,” Jackie said. She got her cigarettes out of the shoulder bag, feeling only about four or five left in the pack. She wondered if she should save them.

But then Tyler’s voice said, “There’s no smoking here.”

So Jackie lit the cigarette, using the tan Bic that matched her uniform, and dropped it back in the bag. Without looking at Tyler she said, “Arrest me.”

“It can happen,” Tyler said. His voice closer this time. “Or we can work out what’s called a Substantial Assistance Agreement. That’s if you’re willing to cooperate, tell us who gave you the money and who you’re giving it to.”

There was a silence.

It was a game to them. Nicolet playing the good guy, out of character but having fun. Tyler, though, came off as a decent guy and wasn’t too convincing as the heavy. Jackie was fairly sure they didn’t want to charge her. Cooperate, name a few names, and they’d give her a break. About all she could do was try keeping her mouth shut. Maybe send out for cigarettes.

When Nicolet said, “You have a good lawyer?” she didn’t answer.

“Can she afford a good one,” Tyler’s voice said, “is the question.”

He had a point.

“Otherwise she’ll be in the Stockade three weeks, easy, before a public defender gets around to her. In there with all those bad girls . . . I don’t know, maybe they pay her enough she can afford a high-priced defense.”

“Jackie, you have an apartment in Palm Beach Gardens?” Nicolet said, the ATF agent getting into it now. “That’s a pretty nice neighborhood.”

“Considering,” Tyler said, “she works for a little shuttle airline.”

There was a silence again, Jackie looking at downtown West Palm Beach in the distance, the sky still blue but fading. She heard a drawer open. Nicolet said, “Here,” offering her an ashtray. “I brought this myself, to have when I visit, and I used to smoke.” The good guy again, saying now, “That parking lot you see right there? Behind the hotel? You can sit here and watch drug deals go down. By the time you get over there everybody’s split.”

Jackie placed the ashtray on the windowsill. “Is that what you think I’m into?”

Behind her, Tyler said, “I notice you have a prior. Wasn’t that about drugs?”

“I was carrying money.”

“Four years ago,” Tyler said. “With another airline then and they fired you. But you didn’t answer my question. Wasn’t it money for a drug payoff? Taking it out of the country?”

“I think,” Nicolet said, “Jackie was carrying it for one of the pilots. Guy that happened to be her husband at the time. They found her guilty of conspiring . . .”

“I entered a plea,” Jackie said.

“You mean they offered you a deal and you grabbed it. A year’s probation and your hubby drew five to ten. He must be out by now.”

“I think so,” Jackie said.

“That’s right, you got a divorce. You remarried—what about your present husband?”

“He died last year.”

“You go through ’em,” Nicolet said. “What kind of work did he do?”

“He drank,” Jackie said.

They let it go and she heard Tyler’s voice say, “Now you’re in a different kind of business, coming the other way with a payoff, selling instead of buying. Wasn’t this money given to you by a Bahamian named Walker? I believe it’s Cedric Walker. Lives in Freeport?”

Jackie didn’t answer, watching her reflection in the glass raise the cigarette.

“Name doesn’t ring a bell? How about a guy named Beaumont Livingston?”

Beaumont—she had met him only once, with Mr. Walker. No, she had seen him that time and was told later who he was. She could say she had never

met him; but made up her mind not to say anything.

“You don’t know Beaumont?”

Not a word—staring through her reflection at a dark strip on the horizon she believed was the ocean.

“He knows you,” Nicolet said. “Beaumont’s Jamaican. That is, he was. Beaumont ain’t no more.”

Jackie could feel them waiting. She didn’t move.

“He used to fly over to Freeport a couple of times a month,” Nicolet said. “Maybe you’d recognize him. Faron, we could arrange for Ms. Burke to look at the body, couldn’t we?”

Tyler’s voice said, “No problem.”

She turned her head enough to see Ray Nicolet reaching into his cowboy boot, the left one crossed over the right. He drew out a snub-nosed revolver, laid it on the desk, and slipped his hand into the boot again to rub his ankle.

He said, “They found Beaumont yesterday morning in the trunk of a car, a brand-new Olds registered to a guy in Ocean Ridge. He’d reported it stolen. I had a chance to speak to Beaumont just the day before, about his future. He was in jail at the time, not too sure he wanted to do ten years.” There was a pause before Nicolet said, “Beaumont was bonded out and got popped before I could talk to him again.” There was another pause. Nicolet said, “You may not know Beaumont, but what if

the guy who popped him knows you?”

There was a silence.

Jackie drew on the cigarette. Beaumont—she had listened to him talking to Mr. Walker. He left and Mr. Walker told her Beaumont could do tricks with numbers, add columns of figures in his head.

Tyler’s voice said, “If you don’t want to talk to us, I guess we’ll have to hand you over to Customs.”

She stubbed out the cigarette, intent on it for several moments, staring at the black plastic ashtray before turning now to face Tyler.

She said, “Okay, let’s go.”

He stood by the other desk in the office, where they had placed her flight bag, an open file folder in his hands.

“Now you’re gonna get him mad,” Nicolet said. “You know Faron could bring you up on a RICO violation? That fifty grand suggesting you’re mixed up in some kind of racketeering activity. And if I know Faron he’ll file a Probable Cause affidavit and take it all the way to the wall.”

Tyler was staring at her. She watched him lay the folder on the desk and place his hand on the flight bag. He said, “I’d like your permission to open this again. Is that okay? So we’ll know exactly how much we’re talking about here.”

Jackie walked over to the desk and unzipped the bag. She brought out the manila envelope, dropped it on the desk, and said, “Help yourself.”

“While you’re at it,” Tyler said, “let’s see what else is in there. You mind?”

Jackie looked at him for a moment.

She brought out a leather kit. “My toothbrush and bathroom stuff.” Next, a plastic travel case. “My curlers. You want me to open it?”

“Let’s see what else’s in there first,” Tyler said.

Jackie picked up the flight bag with both hands, turned it upside down, and shook it. A white blouse, a skirt, underwear, a bra, and pantyhose fell to the desk on top of the manila envelope. She set the bag aside. Tyler picked up the envelope and she watched him open it and shake out the packets of currency.

She watched him look in the envelope and then at her and saw his look of surprise become a grin. His hand went into the envelope and he said, “Well, what have we here?”

Jackie said, “Now wait a minute,” as Tyler’s hand came out and she heard Nicolet’s boots hit the floor.

He approached them saying, “Is that Sweet’n Low or what I think it is?”

Tyler was holding a clear cellophane sandwich bag that showed a rounded half inch or so of white powder inside. He raised it toward the overhead light saying, “Is it to sell or get stoned with? That’s the question.”

“It’s not mine,” Jackie said.

It wasn’t.

“Listen, okay? Really . . .”

“It isn’t enough for trafficking,” Nicolet said. “How about possession with intent to distribute?”

“Considering all the cash,” Tyler said, “I think I could go with conspiracy to traffic.”

A couple of happy guys.

Jackie was shaking her head. She said, “I don’t believe this.”

Nicolet pulled the chair out from the desk. He said, “Why don’t we sit down and start over,” giving Jackie a nice smile. “What do you say.”

5

Louis Gara could sound like a decent guy, an excon with possibilities. It came through, Max thought, in the way Louis played down his career as a bank robber.

He said what he’d do was hand the teller a note that read: Take it easy. This is a holdup. Get out your 50s and 100s right now. I will tell you what to do next. Louis said he wrote the note on a typewriter in an office supply store and made copies. Max asked him how many, to see how optimistic the guy was. “Twenty,” Louis said. “I could always have some more run off.” The first seven banks he did okay, making a little over twenty grand, total. He said people thought banks were always big scores. No, the bank robbers he’d met at Starke were amateurs, mostly crackheads. “On the next one I got seventeen hundred loose and five hundred in a strap the teller handed me I should never’ve taken. It was a dye pack. I get out in the street it pops and there’s this red dye on my hands, my arms, all down the front of my clothes. I got away though.” Max asked if the dye washed off. Louis said, “Yeah, it washes off, but some of the bills I didn’t do a good job on and were kinda pink. You try and pass a pink twenty, which I should never’ve done, they have an idea how it got that way. The next thing I know the police are at my door. I got eight years and did forty-six months. Came back to Miami and got picked up for violating my probation on a fraud charge, using somebody else’s credit card I found. See, I did the bank while I was on probation and would’ve done two and a half on the violation, but the judge was a good guy. He counted the time served on the bank conviction and I walked.”

How about that? Told in a quiet manner with what seemed a reasonable attitude, get caught for the crime, you do the time.

He said he worked in auto repair at Florida State Prison—referring to it as Starke or FSP—the food wasn’t too bad, and he got along with his cellmate, an older guy from Miami who had put away his wife. According to the cellmate his wife never shut up, was always nagging him about something until finally he had enough.

Max said, “How did he do it?” Renee had called earlier and he listened to her for twenty minutes before he could get off the phone.

Louis said the guy smothered her with a pillow. “He’d lift it off. ‘You gonna shut up?’ She’d start yapping at him and he’d push the pillow down over her face, hold it, lift it off. ‘You gonna shut up?’ No, she kept yapping until the last time he lifted it off she had shut up.”

Max believed it could happen, you lose control for a minute and it’s done. What bothered him about Louis, the guy was a repeat offender. Grand theft auto in Ohio, felonious assault in Texas, fraud and bank robbery here in Florida. Louis was forty-seven with a hard, weathered look to him, dark curly hair showing some gray; he had a pretty good build from working out with weights at FSP. The three falls had only taken seven years out of his life, which Louis said didn’t set him back too much. Actually six years and ten months. That sounded like a positive-thinking guy, didn’t it? Louis never complained or acted resentful.

It was his eyes that gave him away.

Max saw it. Those dull eyes that didn’t seem to have life in them but didn’t miss anything. Three falls, you don’t come out, put on a new suit of clothes, and become a normal person again. That life changed you. Max said to Winston, “Watch him.”

Winston said, “I know who he is.” Winston asked Louis had he ever boxed in the slam.

Louis said, a little; but would never put the

gloves on with Winston.

Max said, “He isn’t stupid.”

Winston said, “One round, I could bust him up good. We wouldn’t see him for a while.”

Max said, “But he’d get you if you did. Don’t you know how that works? Don’t you see that in his eyes?”

He had told Glades Mutual Casualty he didn’t need Louis or want him; a convicted felon, Louis would never be able to apply for a surety license. The guy at Glades Mutual told Max to “use him for heavy work,” like picking up guys that failed to appear. So Max had Louis helping out with some of the more violent FTAs, guys that were likely to give them trouble. Louis could carry a pair of cuffs, that’s all. They’d never let him pack a gun or even touch the ones they had in the office: revolvers and a nickel-plated Mossberg 500 12-gauge, a short-barreled shotgun with a pistol grip and a laser scope. They kept the guns locked in a cabinet in the meeting room. They didn’t give Louis even a key to the office.

Thursday, right after Max got back from lunch, he let Louis go with Winston to pick up Zorro, the Puerto Rican burglar with the swords and hyper women. The other day when Winston had gone to get him, Zorro wasn’t home.

Ten past three they were back.

Winston came in shaking his head at Max, Winston followed by Louis Gara and Ordell Robbie, Ordell with a grin saying, “I’m coming to see you, I run into Louis out front. Let me talk to my friend a minute, then I want to collect the money you owe and have you write me another bond.”

Max, sitting at his desk, didn’t say a word.

Neither did Louis Gara. He didn’t speak or look at Max as he picked up the coffee mug from Max’s desk. Louis motioned with a nod of his head and Ordell followed him into the meeting room, Ordell saying, “Man, I been calling and calling you . . .” Winston followed them to the door and slammed it closed.

He turned to Max saying, “What’d you send him with me for?”

Max said, “What?” preoccupied, trying to make sense of Louis taking his coffee mug, not asking if it was okay. He said to Winston, “They just happen to run into each other outside?”

Now Winston had to shift gears in his head. “Who? You mean those two? I guess so.”

Max said, “It was Louis’s idea to go with you.”

“Well, he ain’t ever again.”

“He’s a different guy today,” Max said.

Winston stood close to the desk. He touched his face saying, “Lookit here. You see these scratches?” He held his arm out to show the sleeve of his sport shirt torn and bloodstained. “You see this?”

Max straightened in his chair. “Jesus, what happened?”

“I told Louis I’d do the talking, he was along to back me up was all. I reminded him how you never ever try to handcuff a Cuban, a Puerto Rican, any those Latin people, in front of their women. They won’t allow it, their manhood won’t, have women see them submit like that. You have to bring the man outside first, get him by the car. I asked Louis, you understand that? Yeah, he knows, says he does. We get to the house, Zorro lets us in. The man knows he’s going in but has to wave his arms around first, make a speech how somebody snitched him out and it ain’t his fault, the situation he’s in. Louis is standing there—you say you think he’s different? He looks at me, says, ‘Fuck this,’and takes Zorro by the arm, goes to cuff him. Zorro’s woman, his two sisters, they all come at us hitting and scratching, screaming their heads off. His mother come out of the kitchen with a butcher knife. . . . Lookit here.” Winston pushed up his torn sleeve to show a bloody handkerchief wrapped around his forearm. “You know how Zorro’s got the swords on the wall? He tries to get one and Louis hits him with his fist, hard, kept hitting him while I’m defending myself from this old woman with the butcher knife. We get outside I say to Louis, ‘You pretty good with a little PR stoned on acid. How ‘bout trying me?’I mean I was mad how he fucked it up. Louis gives me that sleepy look, says he’ll think about it and let me know. The first time he ever said anything like that, like he might put on the gloves with me. You think the man’s different, I think it could be his real self coming out.”

Max watched Winston unwrap the handkerchief to look at his wound. “Zorro’s still home?”

“I saw I wasn’t gonna take him without killing somebody. Yeah, so we left.”

“I’ll get him,” Max said. “You take care of your arm.”

“It’ll be all right, I get some stitches.” Winston raised his arm to his face and sniffed. “I think that old woman was chopping onions.”

* * *

“I got another one for you,” Ordell said to Max, “friend of mine, she’s an airline stewardess. Got caught coming back from Freeport with some blow. See, I’m thinking what you could do is use the ten you owe me left over from Beaumont. It’s what they set the stew’s bond at this afternoon, ten thousand, for possession. They say Jackie had forty-two grams on her. Not even two ounces. Shit.”

“The bond for possession’s only a thousand,” Max said.

“They calling it possession with intent.”

“It’s still high.”

“She had, I believe it was, fifty grand on her too,” Ordell said. “There was a cop at the hearing, young guy with FDLE, wanted the bond set at twenty-five saying there was risk of flight here, Jackie could get on a airplane and take off anytime she wanted. Being, you understand, a stewardess.”

They were alone in the office. Winston had gone to Good Samaritan; Louis had told Ordell he’d see him later and left, not saying where he was going. Ordell, sitting against Winston’s desk, wore that same yellow sport jacket with a silky rust-colored shirt today. Max noticed he didn’t have his Dolphins athletic bag with him, his money sack. He said, “Let’s get Beaumont out of the way first,” and saw Ordell’s expression change to almost a grin.

“Somebody already did. Police came to see me about it. Must’ve found out was me put up his bond. They speak to you?”

Max shook his head. “What police?”

“Riv’era Beach, some detectives, look like they got dressed from the Salvation Army. They scared my woman, Sheronda. She thought they was gonna take me away. I told them I didn’t even know Beaumont’s last name till the other day. They want to know then why did I pay his bail? I told them his mama use to take care of my mama when I brought her down here to live? Took care of her till she passed on. Nice woman name Rosemary, Beaumont’s mama. You know it’s funny, I never knew Rosemary’s last name either. She went back to Jamaica, I think lives in the country. So now, you keep the money you owe me and use it to get Jackie out of the Stockade. Jackie Burke’s her name, fine-looking woman, has kinda blond hair.”

Max said, “What did her mother do for you?”

Ordell let his grin come this time. “Man, Jackie’s a friend of mine, met her flying. My friends get in trouble, I like to help them out.”

“Didn’t Beaumont work for you?”

Ordell shook his head. “That’s what the police thought. I told them I’m unemployed, how could I have anybody working for me? Now I bail out Jackie, I’m liable to have the police on me again, huh? Wanting to know was she doing things for me, was she bringing me that money . . .”

Max said, “Was she?”

Ordell looked one way and then the other, a gesture. He said, “Is this, me and you, like a lawyer-client relationship? The lawyer can’t tell nothing he hears?”

Max shook his head. “You’re not my client until you get busted and I bond you out.”

“You sound like you think it could happen.”

Max gave him a shrug.

“If there’s no—what do you call it—confidentiality between us? Why would I tell you anything?”

“Because you want me to know what a slick guy you are,” Max said, “have a stewardess bringing you fifty grand.”

“Why would she?”

“Now you want me to speculate on what you do. I’d say you’re in the drug business, Ordell, except the money’s moving in the wrong direction. I could call the Sheriff’s office, have you checked out . . .”

“Go ahead. They look me up on the computer they won’t find nothing but that bust in Ohio I mentioned to you and that was a long time ago, man. It might not even still be on the screen.”

Max said, “Ordell, you’re a shifty guy. You must be getting away with whatever you’re into. Okay, you want another bond and you want to move the ten thousand you put down on Beaumont over to the stewardess. That means paperwork. I have to get a death certificate, present it to the court, fill out a Receipt for Return of Bond Collateral, then type up another application, an Indemnity Agreement . . .”

“You know it’s there,” Ordell said. “You have my cash.”

“I’m telling you what I have to do,” Max said.

“What you have to do, in case you forgot, is come up with the premium, a thousand bucks.”

“Yeah, well, I won’t have that for a couple of days,” Ordell said, “but you can go ahead, write the bond.”

Max sat back in his chair. “Couple of days? I can wait.”

“Man, you know I’m good for it.”

“Something happens to you before you pay me . . .”

“Ain’t nothing could happen. Man, I lead a clean life.”

“You could get shot. Beaumont did.”

Ordell was shaking his head. “I got money. I don’t have any with me’s all. Thousand bucks is nothing.”

“You’re right there, if I don’t see it in front of me.”

“Look,” Ordell said, coming over to plant his hands on the desk, putting himself square in Max’s face. “This fine-looking woman is out at the Stockade among all those bitches they have in there. Jackie spent the night with ’em and was at First Appearance this afternoon, that courtroom by the Gun Club jail? She didn’t see me, had her head down—I was in the back. But, man, she looked bad. Couple more days, it could kill her.”

“If she can’t hack the Stockade,” Max said to the face close in front of him, “how’s she going to do state time?”

Ordell stared. He raised one hand from the desk, reached into the open neck of his silky shirt and came out with a gold chain hooked on his thumb. “I paid twenty-five hundred for it.”

“I don’t wear jewelry,” Max said.

Ordell let go of the chain and thrust his arm in Max’s face. “Rolex watch. Look at it. Worth five thousand, easy. Come on, write the fucking bond.”

Max said, “I don’t run a pawnshop. Hock the watch if you want, come back when you have the thousand bucks. That’s all I can tell you.”

“Look at it again,” Ordell said, turning his wrist, gold flashing in the overhead light. “She a beauty?”

6

Max sat talking to Zorro in a living room done in a mix of scarred oak furniture from another time, bright plastic patio chairs, framed holy pictures, and swords. They both had drinks, rum and Pepsi Cola. Zorro sat in a lounge chair holding ice cubes wrapped in a dish towel to the side of his face. The women were in the kitchen. Max could hear them, voices in Spanish blending with voices from the television in English. There were four sets in the living room; only the one in the kitchen was playing. He said to Zorro, “This hits the spot,” raised his glass, and was looking at bullfight swords in leather scabbards crossed beneath the Sacred Heart of Jesus. There were other mail-order swords on the walls, sabers, a cutlass, a scimitar, several pictures of the Blessed Mother, St. Joseph, different saints; Max recognized one as St. Sebastian, pierced with arrows.

He said to Zorro, “If we leave now you can be there in time for supper. Don’t they eat around five? Or you can have your dinner here, that’s fine. I’ll wait in the car, give you some time with your family.”

“You should fire that guy,” Zorro said, his mouth against the ice pack, “for what he did to me.”

Max nodded. “I’m thinking about it. I don’t know what happened to him.”

“He went crazy.”

Max nodded again, serious about getting rid of Louis. He said, “Listen, tomorrow I’ll talk to your probation officer. Karen’s a good kid, but she’s mad at you because you lied to her. That business about going to your grandmother’s funeral.”

Zorro took the ice pack away from his face to nod his head, Max looking at all that thick black hair, Christ, more than he needed.

“I went, I did. I took my mother and my sisters.”

“But you didn’t ask permission. You broke a trust. If you had asked, Karen probably would have let you. In fact I’m sure she would.”

“I know,” Zorro said, “that’s why I went.”

“But then you told her you were home.”

“Sure, ’cause I didn’t ask her could I go.”

Maybe it was a language problem. Max let it go. He said, “Anyway, if Karen’s willing to reinstate you, the judge might go along. But you have to show up at the hearing for it to happen.”

Max sipped his drink, comfortable in the plastic chair. “What was the original charge?”

“Burglary from a dwelling,” Zorro said. “I got a year and a day and the probation.”

“You did what, about three months?”

“A little more.”

“You’re lucky, you know it? How many burglaries have you done?”

“I don’t know.” He glanced toward the kitchen. “Maybe two hundred.”

“I would think you’d be tired,” Max said. He looked over to see Zorro’s mother in the kitchen doorway, a squat woman in an apron; she would be about his age but looked a lot older. He said, “It smells good, whatever you’re doing in there.”

They drove toward a red wash of sky, west on Southern Boulevard toward Gun Club in Max’s ’89 Seville. He had put away a big soup plate of asopao de pollo, chicken fixed with salt pork and ham, with peas, onions, peppers, pimientos in a spicy tomato sauce and served over rice. The woman could be a threat with a butcher knife but cooked like a saint. He’d start his diet again tomorrow, take off ten pounds, most of it around his middle. Lay off beer for a while. He said to Zorro, in the front seat next to him, “Are you clean?”

Zorro, wearing sunglasses, stared straight ahead. Zorro, with his two hundred burglaries and all that hair, being cool. After a moment he reached into his pants, dug all the way to his crotch, and brought out several cellophane squares of blotter acid.

“This is all.”

“Get rid of it.”

Zorro let them blow from his hand out the window.

“Are you clean now?”

“I think so.”

“Come on, are you clean?”

Zorro raised his knee. He reached into his boot and brought out the handle of a toothbrush with a single-edge razor blade fixed to one end, the plastic melted to hold the strip of metal.

“Get rid of it.”

“Man, I have to have a weapon in there.”

“Get rid of it.”

Zorro tossed it out the window.

“You clean now?”

“I’m clean.”

“You better be,” Max said. “They find anything on you, we’re through. You understand? I’ll never write you again. I won’t speak to you, I won’t speak to your mother or your girlfriend when they call. . . .”

What a business. Sit down to dinner with a burglar and his family and then take him to jail. Max moved his hand on the steering wheel to glance at the gold Rolex he was holding for Ordell. Half past six. He’d drop Zorro off and drive out to the Stockade for the stewardess, Jackie Burke. See what she was all about.

The house where Louis was staying, down in the south end of West Palm, might’ve been somebody’s dream thirty years ago. Now it belonged to a guy named J.J. who had gotten his release the same time Louis did and offered to let him stay if he wanted. J.J. had lasted less than a month on the street and was back in for conspiring to traffic. So Louis had the house to himself—still a mess from when the police banged in and tossed it. He’d replaced the front door with one he’d pried off an abandoned house and put J.J.’s clothes back in the drawers they’d dumped on the floor and cleaned up the kitchen, coffee, sugar, Rice Krispies all over the place. Louis hadn’t been home at the time of the raid and was lucky the cops didn’t know he was living here, or he’d be up at Gun Club with J.J. waiting on an arraignment. There was no way Max Cherry would have bonded him out. Max kept him at arm’s length, didn’t want him there, so they hardly ever spoke. Louis could understand how he felt. What was he doing for Max? Once in a while pick up a guy who’d FTAed. He was doing even less for the insurance company. Nothing.

Sunday, when Ordell dropped him off after the white-power demonstration, Ordell sat in his sixty-thousand-dollar car looking at the house. He said, “Louis, you on food stamps?”

Louis said, “It’s small, but I don’t need a lot of room.”

Ordell said, “Size ain’t what I’m talking about.

This house is the next thing to being condemned. I ’magine it smells bad in there, huh? Any place a junkie lived. You have bugs?”

“Some.”

“Some—shit. Nighttime, I bet you can’t walk in the kitchen without the roaches crunching under your feet. Turn on the light you see ’em split, gone. That’s your car, huh?”

The ‘85 Toyota Louis was making payments on sat in the carport attached to the house. (The insurance company paid him fifteen hundred a month in cash. They were giving him one more week to bring in some business or he was through.) There was a mattress in the yard the cops had torn up and trash barrels of junk Louis hadn’t set out by the street to be picked up.

He said to Ordell, “What do you want—I just got out of the can.”

Ordell said, “It ain’t what I want, Louis. It’s what you want.”

The next time they spoke, Wednesday evening, Ordell had come by while it was still light. Louis asked him in the house. Ordell said he was fine sitting in his car; his car was clean, had it washed and vacuumed.

He said, “You know what your trouble is, Louis? Why you ain’t ever going to make it less you change?”

Like his father speaking to him from the car, Louis standing there.

“You think you’re a good guy,” Ordell said, “and it messes you up.”

Not like anybody’s father after that. Louis relaxed and got out a cigarette.

“You get into a deal, you don’t see yourself taking it all the way,” Ordell said, “doing whatever has to be done to make the score. You go in looking for a way out. Not ’cause you scared. It’s ‘cause you think you’re a good guy and there things a good guy won’t do. What’s the most you ever took robbing a bank? Maybe twenty-five hundred? Was me, I decided to do banks? Man, I’d go in and clean the fucking place out. Plan it and do it right. What you stole each time, you couldn’t even buy a good used car with it, could you?”

Ordell said, “Listen to what I’m saying to you. Once you decide what you’re going after you ride it out, no stops, no getting off. You need to use a gun you use it. Look at the situation. If it’s him or you, or if it’s him doing time or you doing time? There’s nothing to think about, man, you take him out.” Ordell said, “Once I pick up the goods and make one more delivery? I won’t ever have to work again till I’ve spent something like a million bucks. You think some dude gets in my way I won’t remove him?”

He said, “Listen, I already have so much money in lockboxes, man, in a Freeport bank, it’s spilling out. I’m bringing some over a little bit at a time as I need to buy goods and pay different ones work for me. Finding the right kind of help these days is the problem. I have an airline stewardess doing it for me I believe I can trust. She don’t ask where the money comes from. I think she don’t want to know and that’s fine with me, I don’t tell her. I could bring it myself, ten grand at a time, but they ever look in my bag once, they be looking in it every time after that. Ask me all kind of questions, get the IRS on my ass. They don’t even look in hers. But she only does it when she feels like it. I said, ‘Girl, we have to step it up.’ I don’t like my funds sitting over there where I can’t get at them. I said, ‘Bring me like a hundred thousand at a time. How would that be?’ She don’t want to. Then says okay, but she’ll only bring what can fit in a big envelope or she won’t do it. It don’t make any difference, they catch you with even one buck over the ten-grand limit they got you by the ass. No, has to fit in this manila envelope. You understand? She can live with thinking she’s delivering the envelope Mr. Walker gives her. But if it’s a big package, like I ask her to bring, say, five hundred thousand at one time? She couldn’t do it. It wouldn’t be just a manila envelope then. She’s afraid her hands would sweat and the Customs people would see it.” He said, “You understand how this woman thinks? You do, huh? It even makes sense to you.”

Ordell in his Mercedes making a speech, telling how to be bad and become successful. Throwing these numbers around to impress him. One more delivery and he’d be a millionaire.

Ordell was ready to leave when Louis said, “Okay, you’re talking about guns. What kind?”

Ordell said, “What do you need? A fifteen-shot Beretta, Colt .45? Shit, name it. You want a MAC-11 converted to full automatic, with a suppressor on it? I’ll show you my demo movie, you can take your pick.”

“Where do you get them?”

“Buy some, steal the hard-to-get stuff. This is big-time, man. Got brothers working for me love to smash and grab. Jackboys, home-invasion experts.

Learned their trade ripping off dope houses. They fearless ’cause they crazy. We got a jump coming up could interest you—seeing how you’re asking me my business. It’s up to you, you want to look at some real money. I ain’t talking you into anything.”

Louis said, “What kind of jump?” Feeling himself being drawn in.

“I showed you Big Guy?” Ordell said. “The grownup skinhead Nazi looks like our old friend Richard? We gonna jump his place and clean him out, all his military type of shit, and sell it. Big Guy ain’t as stupid as Richard, but you saw how serious the man is. I know he’ll try to protect his property.”

Louis said, “You’re gonna kill him?”

“Did you listen to what I told you a minute ago? I don’t premeditate that kind of business,” Ordell said. “I’m gonna get what I need to make a sale. Whatever happens to Big Guy in the process of it, man, it happens.”

Louis shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“What’s that?”

“About going with you.”

“You don’t think you will or you know it?”

Louis shrugged and drew on his cigarette.

“I said before I ain’t talking you into anything. But just answer me this, Louis. What does a three-time loser have to lose?” He started to back out of the drive and stopped. He said, “Louis? You only think you’re a good guy. You’re just like me, only you turned out white.”

7

They had booked Jackie at the admitting desk, removed the handcuffs, and brought her to a counter at the end of a narrow hallway where she was searched, photographed, and fingerprinted on six separate cards. She studied a list of bail bondsmen displayed on the wall while they inventoried her property, taking her bag, her watch, jewelry, the gold wings pinned to her uniform jacket. They took her heels and pantyhose and gave her a pair of “slides” to put on that were like shower slippers. They took the razor and mirror from her bathroom kit. They let her keep the rest, her cigarettes—the two she had left— and the change in her purse. They snapped a blue plastic ID bracelet around her wrist and said she was lucky to get processed through early, before they brought in a hooker sweep. The deputies wore dark green. Their holsters were empty. They said she could make her phone call now.

Jackie dialed a number. A young black woman’s voice said, “He ain’t home,” and the line went dead. Jackie dialed the number again. The woman’s voice said, “He ain’t home,” in the same tone. Jackie said, “Wait.” But not in time. They told her she could try later, once she was in the dorm.

The dorm. She thought of college.

But it wasn’t like college or a fort either, imagining the Stockade on the way here as a stockade fence, pointed logs planted upright. The fences were wire, the one-story buildings seemed to be either cement block or siding. In the dark, driving in, she saw construction equipment, piles of building materials.

They brought her from Administration across the street to Medical where they gave her a questionnaire to fill out, took her temperature, her blood pressure, and examined her for vermin. Outside again walking along the street, the deputy with sergeant stripes said, “That’s ‘F’ Dorm, where you’ll be,” nodding toward a building enclosed in double fencing: Spotlights reflected on rolls of razor wire strung along the top. Unlocking the gate he smiled at her and said, “Fuels your apprehension, doesn’t it?” Jackie looked at him, a young guy, clean-shaved, his hair carefully combed. He said, “After you,” and she walked in expecting to see cells with bars.

What she saw were doors to six dormitory rooms, each with an expanse of wire-covered windows across the front, three on one side of a guard post in the open area, three on the other. She saw faces at the windows watching her and heard faint sounds, voices. A woman deputy stood inside the waist-high enclosure, the guard post: a tall, broad-shouldered woman with pale-blond hair combed up in a pile. She was smoking a cigarillo, the pack stuck in her empty holster. The sergeant said, “Miss Kay, take care of this lady, would you, please?” and handed her a three-by-five inmate status card. Miss Kay said, “Why certainly, Terry,” looked at the card for a moment and then at Jackie. “Would you believe you’re my first flight attendant in about, I’d say, three years?”

Jackie didn’t say anything, wondering if they were putting her on. She caught the aroma of Miss Kay’s cigarillo. That was real.

With two bed sheets under her arm she scuffed along in the slides to the first room on the left, the holding dorm, Miss Kay told her, for prisoners awaiting court appearances. Faces moved away from the wire-mesh windows as Miss Kay unlocked the door and stood holding it open. Jackie stepped inside to see women at two of the four picnic tables in the front part of the dorm. Black women, one or two Hispanic. All watching her, paying no attention to the television set that was on.

The double bunks in the rear area all looked empty. Miss Kay told Jackie she could have any bunk that wasn’t occupied. She said, “If anyone asks you to pay for a bunk, tell me.” Toilets and showers were back there. The two phones on the wall-one was a hot line to the Public Defender’s office, the other a pay phone, but you could only make collect calls out of the area. You were allowed to have six dollars in change. The television set was showing a movie, Mel Gibson . . . And the women were still watching her, waiting. Miss Kay let them. She said the dorm held sixteen, but there were only seven in here now. Two dorms were for misdemeanants, two for drug offenders, one for violent prisoners. Miss Kay turned to the women at the picnic tables, all wearing street clothes, slacks, a few in dresses, and said, “This is Jackie.”

A black woman wearing a shiny black wig said, “What is she, a general? Got her uniform on?”

The other women laughed, some with screams of appreciation, to please the woman in the wig or to let go and hear the sound of their own voices, loud inside the cement-block walls, until Miss Kay said, “Zip it,” and they shut up. Now she looked at the black woman who had spoken and said, “Ramona, I’m only going to tell you once. Stay away from her.”

Jackie dialed the number she’d tried before. The young woman’s voice said, “He ain’t—” and Jackie said over it, “Tell him Jackie called.” There was a silence. “Tell him I’m in jail, the Stockade. Have you got that?” There was a silence again before the line went dead.

She picked up her bed sheets from the picnic table, the women still watching her, and scuffed her way back to the eight double bunks in two rows. There were no overhead lights here but the ones in front, Jackie imagined, would be left on all night. So take a lower bunk. Five already had sheets on them. A radio was playing now along with the television set, the movie. She chose a bunk wondering if she’d be able to sleep and bent over, one hand on the rail of the upper bunk, to look at the mattress. Something behind her moved in front of the light. Jackie knew who it would be as she straightened and turned to look over her shoulder at Ramona.

Heavyset, her skin dark, her black wig highlighted from behind. She said, “You gonna talk to me?”

“If you want,” Jackie said. “Just don’t give me a hard time, okay? I’ve got enough problems.”

“You a stewardess, huh? Work for the airlines?” Jackie nodded and Ramona said, “What I was wondering, they pay pretty good?”

She would sleep and wake up to stare at crisscrossed springs and the mattress close above her in faint light and would hear voices and a radio playing. She would feel the plastic ID bracelet, turning it on her wrist. She would hear the sergeant saying, “Fuels your apprehension, doesn’t it?” and remember looking at him, not sure it was what he said.

A few times she thought of crying.

But changed her mind, replaying parts of her conversation with Ramona, here pending a charge of felonious assault for, Ramona said, busting a man’s head open when he wouldn’t leave her house. Assault, or it could be some kind of manslaughter if he didn’t come out of Good Samaritan. But, hey, what about working for the airlines? . . . Jackie told her you could make thirty-five to forty thousand after ten years, never fly more than seventy hours a month, and choose the runs you wanted out of your home base. Her own experience, she was three years with TWA, fourteen with Delta and got fired. With Islands Air she was making less than half what she used to. Getting personal now. It didn’t begin to cover rent, clothes, car payments, insurance, and now Islands Air would drop her as soon as they found out she was in jail. Ramona said, “If you not happy there, what do you care if they fire you?” She said she cleaned houses for fifty dollars a day when she could get it, but only three, four days a week, all the people there was doing it now, the Haitians taking work from the regular people. She asked Jackie if she had someone doing her apartment.

Before long Jackie was describing her situation to Ramona, seeking the advice of a cleaning woman in a forty-nine-dollar wig who didn’t smoke.

Ramona said, “Possession with what, intent? I don’t see you have a problem. The way you look? The kind of hair you got? If I done it I’d go to jail, see, but you won’t. They slap your hand and say, ‘Girl, don’t do it again.’ No, if the man you work for has money to pay a good lawyer, you have nothing to worry about. If he don’t choose to, that’s when you think about making a deal with the law, get your charge dismissed if you help them, not just reduced. Hear what I’m saying?”

They got mad, Jackie told her, when she would-n’t talk to them, cooperate. Ramona said, “They ain’t your worry. What you need to think about is if you put it on the man, you want to know he don’t have friends he can set after you. That’s the tricky part. You have to put it on him without him knowing it. The worse thing that can happen, say you don’t tell on the man or cop to the deal? You might do, oh, three months county time, something like that. Six at the most and that’s nothing.”

Jackie said, “Terrific. I’ll be starting my life over at forty-five.”

She remembered Ramona, who she thought was old enough to be her mother, smiling at her with gold crowns, saying that’s how old she was and asking, “When’s your birthday, dear?”

She would sleep and wake up and remember looking out Tyler’s office window at West Palm fading in the dusk and remember Nicolet’s boots on the desk and the sound of his voice, Nicolet telling about the Jamaican found in the trunk of an Oldsmobile.

At noon the next day, Thursday, Jackie was handcuffed to a chain with Ramona and four other women from the holding dorm. They were brought outside and marched past a crew of male prisoners on a cleanup detail to board the Corrections bus. Jackie stared at the pavement, at bare heels in front of her. A prisoner leaning on his push broom said, “The ladies from the slut hut.” Jackie looked up as Ramona said, “Watch your mouth, boy.” The prisoner with the broom said, “Come over here, I let you sit on it.” Ramona said, “Now you talking.” They laughed and the women on the chain with Jackie came to life, moving their hips with the shuffle step, turning to grin at the men watching them. One of them cupped his crotch and said, “Check this out.” Jackie glanced at him—a white guy, shirt off sweating in the sun, twenty years younger than she was, at least—and looked away. She heard him say, “Gimme that blond-haired one, I’ll stay here forever,” and Ramona, next to her, say, “Listen to that sweet boy, he’s talking about you.”

The First Appearance courtroom reminded her of a church with its wide center aisle and benches that were like pews. Male prisoners in dark blue outfits like scrubs, brought over from the county jail, sat in the first few rows. The women were unshackled, directed to sit behind them, and the men turned to look and make remarks until a deputy told them to shut up and face the front. When the judge entered they rose and sat down again. Still nothing happened. Court personnel and police officers would approach the judge and exchange words with him, hand him papers to be signed. Jackie said, “How long do we have to wait?”

Ramona said, “Long as they want us to. It’s what you do in jail, dear, you wait.”

From the time the bailiff began calling defendants, an hour and a half went by before Jackie was brought up to the public defender’s table. He turned to her looking at a case file and asked how she wanted to plead.

“What are my choices?”

“Guilty, not guilty, or stand mute.”

Nicolet and Tyler were here, off to one side. They lounged against the wall watching her.

Jackie said to the public defender, “I’m not sure what I should do.”

He was young, in his early thirties, clean-cut, moderately attractive, wearing a pleasant after shave . . . For some reason it gave her hope, a guy who appeared to have it together.

He said, “I can get it down to simple possession if you’re willing to tell FDLE what they want to know.”

And hope vanished.

Jackie said, “My cleaning woman can get me a better deal than that,” and saw her public defender’s startled look. Not a good sign. “Tell those guys they’ll have to do a lot better before I’ll even say hi to them.”

Nicolet and Tyler, over there acting like innocent bystanders.

“Well, that’s the state’s offer,” the public defender said. “If you plead to possession your bond will be set at one thousand dollars. If you don’t, FDLE will request one at twenty-five thousand, based on your prior record and risk of flight. If you don’t post it or you don’t know anyone who can, you’ll spend six to eight weeks in the Stockade before your arraignment comes up.”

She said, “Whose side are you on?”

He said, “I beg your pardon?”

“What happens if I plead guilty?”

“And cooperate? You might get probation.”

“If I don’t cooperate.”

“With the prior? You could get anywhere from a year to five, depending on the judge.” He said, “You want to think about it? You’ve got about two minutes before we’re up.”

It was his attitude that hooked her, the bored tone of voice. And the way Nicolet and Tyler posed against the wall with their innocent, deadpan expressions. Jackie said, “I’m standing mute. After that I’m not saying another word.”

Her public defender said, “If that’s what you want.”

Jackie said, “What I want is a fucking lawyer.”

That got his startled expression again.

“I didn’t mean that,” Jackie said. She paused to glance around before saying to him, “You wouldn’t happen to have a pack of cigarettes you could let me have.”

He said, “I don’t smoke.”

She said, “I didn’t think so.”

8

Thursday night, Max waited at the admitting desk while deputies went to get Jackie Burke. He had read her Booking Card and Rough Arrest report and produced the forms required for her release, Appearance Bond and Power of Attorney. Now he was making small talk with the sergeant, a young guy named Terry Boland. Max had worked under his dad, Harry Boland, when Harry ran the Detective Bureau at the Sheriff’s office. He was a colonel now, head of the Tactical Unit, Max’s buddy and his source of information.

“I see they’ve finally started on the new dorms.”

Terry said yeah, and by the time they were finished they’d need a few more.

“It’s too bad,” Max said, “you can’t invest money in jails, like land development. It’s the one business that keeps growing.” Terry didn’t seem to know if he should agree with that or not, and Max said, “How’d Ms. Burke do? She get along okay?”

“She wasn’t any trouble.”

“You didn’t expect her to cause any, did you?”

“I mean she didn’t break down,” Terry said. “Some of them, you know, it’s a shock coming in here from the civilized world.”

“She’s done it before,” Max said. “That helps.”

What surprised him, reading the Booking Card, was Jackie Burke’s age. He had been picturing a fairly young airline stewardess. Now, the revised image was a forty-four-year-old woman who showed some wear and tear. But then, when the two deputies brought her in the front entrance, from outside dark into fluorescent light, Max saw he was still way off.

This was a good-looking woman. If he didn’t know her age he’d say she was somewhere in her mid-thirties. Nice figure in the uniform skirt, five five, one fifteen—he liked her type, the way she moved, scuffing the slides on the vinyl floor, the way she raised her hand to brush her hair from her face. . . . Max said, “Ms. Burke?” and handed her his business card as he introduced himself. She nodded, glancing at the card. There were women who sobbed with relief. Some men too. There were women who came up and kissed him. This one nodded. They brought out her personal property and inventoried it back to her. As she was signing for it Max said, “I can give you a lift home if you’d like.”

She looked up and nodded again saying, “Okay,” and then, “No, wait. My car’s at the airport.”

“I can drop you off there.”

She said, “Would you?” and seemed to look at him for the first time.

Right at him, not the least self-conscious, smiling a little with her eyes, a warm green that showed glints of light. He watched her step out of the slides and turn to press her hip against the wall, one and then the other, to slip her heels on. When she straightened, brushing her hair aside with the tips of her fingers, she smiled for the first time, a tired one, and seemed to shrug. Neither of them spoke again until they were outside and he asked if she was okay. Jackie Burke said, “I’m not sure,” in no hurry walking to the car. Usually they were anxious to get out of here.

Now they were in the car ready to go and he felt her staring at him.

She said, “Are you really a bail bondsman?”

He looked at her. “What do you think I am?”

She didn’t answer.

“I gave you my card in there.”

She said, “Can I see your ID?”

“You serious?”

She waited.

Max dug the case out of his pocket, handed it to her, and opened the door so the inside light would go on. He watched her read every word from SURETY AGENT LICENSED BY STATE OF FLORIDA down to his date of birth and the color of his eyes.

She handed it back to him saying, “Who put up my bond, Ordell?”

“In cash,” Max said, “the whole ten thousand.”

She turned to look straight ahead.

Now they were both silent until the car reached the front gate and Max lowered his window. A deputy came out of the gatehouse with Max’s .38 revolver, the cylinder open. Max handed the deputy his pass in exchange for the gun, thanked him, and snapped the cylinder closed before reaching over to put the revolver in the glove box. The gate opened. He said, “Ordinarily you have to go inside, but they know me. I’m out here a lot.” Leaving the Stockade he turned on his brights and headed in the direction of Southern Boulevard, telling Ms. Burke for something to say that no one entered with a weapon, not even the deputies; telling her the office trailer next to the gate-house was full of guns. He looked over as she flicked her lighter on and saw her face, cheeks drawn to inhale a thin cigarillo in the glow of the flame.

“You smoke cigars?”

“If I have to. Can we stop for cigarettes?”

He tried to picture a store out this way on Southern.

“The closest place I can think of,” Max said “would be the Polo Lounge. You ever been there?”

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s okay, it’s a cop hangout.”

“I’d just as soon wait.”

“I thought you might want a drink.”

“I’d love one, but not there.”

“We could stop at the Hilton.”

“Is it dark?”

“Yeah, it’s nice.”

“We need a lounge that’s dark.”

He glanced at her, surprised.

She said, “I look like I just got out of jail,” and blew a stream of cigar smoke at the windshield.

Dinner with a burglar, drinks with a flight attendant who did coke and delivered large sums of money. Cocktail piano in the background.

She looked different now, her eyes seemed more alive. Green eyes that moved and gleamed, reflecting the room’s rose-colored light. Max watched her open a pack of cigarettes and light one before taking a sip of Scotch and glancing toward the cocktail piano.

“He shouldn’t be allowed to do ‘Light My Fire.’ ”

“Not here,” Max said, “in a tux.”

“Not anywhere.” She pushed the pack toward him.

Max shook his head. “I quit three years ago.”

“You gain weight?”

“Ten pounds. I lose it and put it back on.”

“That’s why I don’t quit. One of the reasons. I was locked up yesterday with two cigarettes. And spent half the night getting advice from a cleaning woman named Ramona, who doesn’t smoke.”

Not sounding too upset.

“Ramona Williams,” Max said, “she dips snuff. I’ve written her a few times. She has a tendency, she gets mad when she’s drinking, to hit people with hammers, baseball bats. . . . You get along okay?”

“She offered to clean my apartment for forty dollars and do the windows on the inside.”

Sounding serious now.

Max shifted around in his chair. “She was advising you, huh? . . . To do what?”

“I don’t know—I guess what I need is a lawyer. Find out what my options are. So far, I can cooperate and get probation, maybe. Or I can stand mute and get as much as five years. Does that sound right?”

“You mean just, or accurate? I’d say if you’re tried and found guilty you won’t get more than a year and a day. That’s state time, prison.”

“Great.”

“But they won’t want to take you to trial. They’ll offer you simple possession, a few months county time, and a year or two probation.” Max took a sip of his drink, bourbon over crushed ice. “You were brought up once before. Didn’t that tell you anything? You ever get hooked on that stuff . . . I wrote a woman last year, a crack addict. I saw her again the other day in court. She looked like she’d had a face transplant.”

“I don’t do drugs,” Jackie said. “I haven’t even smoked grass in years.”

“You were carrying the forty-two grams for somebody else.”

“Apparently. I knew I had the money, but not the coke.”

“Who packs your suitcase, the maid?”

She said, “You’re as much fun as the cops.”

In her quiet tone, looking right at him in cocktail lounge half-light with those sparkly green eyes, and he said, “Okay, you don’t know how it got in your bag.”

It wasn’t good enough. She sipped her drink, not seeming to care if he believed her or not.

So he started over. He said, “I figured out the other day I’ve written something like fifteen thousand bonds since I’ve been in business. About eighty percent of them for drug offenses or you could say were drug-related. I know how the system works. If you want, I can help you look at your options.”

She surprised him.

“You’re not tired of it?”

“I am, as a matter of fact.” Max let it go at that; he didn’t need to hear himself talk. “What about you? You spend half your life up in the air?”

“Even when I’m not flying,” Jackie said. “I think I’m having trouble mid-lifing. At this point, with no idea where I’m going.” She looked up at him, stubbing her cigarette out. “I know where I don‘t want to go.

Able to say things like that because he was older than she was by a dozen years. That was the feeling he got. He said, “Let’s see if we can figure out what you should do. You want another drink?”

Jackie nodded, lighting a cigarette. One after another. Max gestured to the waitress to do it again. Jackie was looking at the piano player now, a middle-aged guy in a tux and an obvious rug working over the theme from Rocky.

She said, “The poor guy.”

Max looked over. “He uses every one of those keys, doesn’t he?” And looked at Jackie again. “You know who put the dope in your bag?”

She looked at him for a moment before nodding. “But that’s not what this is about. They were waiting for me.”

“It wasn’t a random search?”

“They knew I was carrying money. They even knew the amount. The one who searched my bag, Tyler, didn’t do much more than look at the money. ‘Oh, I’d say there’s fifty thousand here. What would you say?’ Not the least bit surprised. But all they could do was threaten to hand me over to Customs, and I could see they didn’t want to do that.”

“Get tied up in federal court,” Max said. “They were hoping you’d tell them about it.”

“What they did was stall, till they lucked out and found the coke.” She raised her glass and then held it. “You have to understand, they were as surprised as I was. But now they had something to use as leverage.”

“What’d they ask you?”

“If I knew a man named Walker, in Freeport. They mentioned a Jamaican . . .”

The waitress came with their drinks.

“Beaumont Livingston,” Max said.

Jackie stared at him while the waitress picked up their empty glasses and placed the drinks on fresh napkins, while the waitress asked if they’d care for some mixed nuts, and shook her head when Max looked at her and waited until he told her no thanks and the waitress walked off.

“How do you know Beaumont?”

“I wrote him on Monday,” Max said. “Yesterday morning they found him in the trunk of a car.”

She said, “Ordell put up his bond?”

“Ten thousand, the same as yours.”

She said, “Shit,” and picked up her drink. “They told me what happened to him. . . . The federal agent, the way he put it, Beaumont got popped.”

Max hunched over the table. “You didn’t mention that. One of the guys was federal? What, DEA?”

“Ray Nicolet, he’s with Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. I thought I told you.” Jackie’s gaze moved to the piano player. “Now it’s ‘The Sound of Music.’ He likes big production numbers.”

“When he starts to do ‘Climb Every Mountain,’ ” Max said, “we’re going someplace else.” He felt animated and could have smiled, beginning to understand what this was about. He said, “Ray Nicolet—I don’t know him, but I’ve seen his name on arrest reports. He’s the one who wants you. He uses you to get a line on Ordell, makes a case, and takes him federal.”

Max was pleased with himself.

Until Jackie said, “They never mentioned his name.”

And it stopped him. “You’re kidding.”

“I don’t think they know anything about him.”

“They talked to Beaumont.”

“Yeah, and what did he tell them?”

“Well, you know what Ordell’s into, don’t you?”

“I have a pretty good idea,” Jackie said. “If it isn’t alcohol or tobacco, what’s left that would get an ATF guy after me?”

Max said, “He never told you he sells guns?”

“I never asked.”

“That wouldn’t stop him.”

She said, “You want to argue about it?”

Max shook his head and watched as she leaned in closer, over her arms on the edge of the table, that gleam in her eyes.

“What kind of guns are we talking about?”

It gave him the feeling they were into something together here and he liked it and if she was putting him on, using him, so what.

He said, “You name it. We’re living in the arms capital of America, South Florida. You can buy an assault rifle here in less time than it takes to get a library card. Last summer I wrote a guy on a dope charge. While he’s out on bond they get him trying to move thirty AK-47s, the Chinese version, through Miami International going to Bolivia. You know what gun I’m talking about?” She shrugged, maybe nodding, and Max said, “It’s a copy of the Russian military weapon. Couple of weeks ago there was a story in the paper, how the cops pulled a sting on a guy who was buying TEC-9s in Martin County, no waiting, and selling them to drug dealers in West Palm, Lake Worth, all convicted felons. There’s a guy in Coral Springs sold cluster bombs to the Iraqis, he says before we went to war in the Gulf. I don’t see Ordell into military hardware, but you never know. What amazes me about him, he’s a bad guy, there’s no doubt in my mind, but he’s only had one conviction and that was twenty years ago.”

“He told you that?”

“A friend of mine at the Sheriff’s office ran his name. And Ordell’s the kind of guy loves to talk about himself.”

“Not to me,” Jackie said. “When I first met him he was flying over to Freeport a lot, he said to gamble. He’d tell me how much he won, or lost. How much he paid for clothes . . .”

“He hints around,” Max said, “wants you to guess what he does. Tell him you think he deals in guns and watch his face, he’ll give it away. Gets paid in the Bahamas, so he’s dealing out of the country. You bring the payoff here on one of your flights . . .” Max waited.

So did Jackie.

After a moment she said, “I used to bring over ten thousand at a time. Never more than that or any of my own money. I’d have to keep enough in my car for parking, to get out of the airport.”

“How many trips did you make?”

“Nine, with ten thousand.”

“He’s got that kind of money?”

“He wanted me to start bringing over a hundred thousand at a time.”

Max said, “Jesus,” in a whisper.

“He kept after me until I said okay, I’ll bring whatever fits in a nine-by-twelve manila envelope and I want five hundred dollars. He said fine and arranged it. His friend Mr. Walker in Freeport gave me the envelope. . . .”

“You didn’t look inside to check?”

“For what? Walker said he put in fifty thousand. Fine. It could’ve been any amount. What he didn’t mention was the baggie with forty-two grams in it.”

Max said, “If you knew bringing in anything over ten thousand was risky, why not pack a hundred grand? What’s the difference?”

“Whatever the amount, it had to fit in my flight bag and not hit you in the face if the bag was opened. That was the idea.”

“Even ten thousand at a time,” Max said, “you don’t have to ask what he does to know he came by it illegally.”

“You’re right,” Jackie said, “I don’t have to ask, since I’m not with the IRS.” She paused, still looking at him. “Every once in a while you sound like one of them. Not so much Tyler as Nicolet.”

“I have trouble being myself with you,” Max said. “At the Stockade you weren’t sure I was a bail bondsman. You thought I might be a cop, didn’t you? Trying to pull something sneaky.”

“It crossed my mind,” Jackie said.

“I spent ten years in law enforcement,” Max said, “with the Sheriff’s office. Maybe it still shows. Or the business I’m in, you tend to speak the same language.”

She said, “You aren’t by any chance hiring? I haven’t missed work yet, I was off today. But if I can’t leave the country I’m out of a job. And if I can’t work I won’t be able to hire a lawyer.”

“Ask, they might give you permission.”

“If I cooperate.”

“Well, you have to give them something. You want to stay out of jail, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but not as much as I want to stay out of the trunk of a car.”

“I’m pretty sure,” Max said, “whether you give them anything or not, they’re gonna be watching you.”

She hunched over the table again, intent. “I’ve been thinking, if all I can give them is a name, nothing about what he does, I don’t have much to bargain with, do I?”

“Offer to help,” Max said, “short of wearing a wire. That’s all you have to do, show a willingness. Once they get him, and that’s all they really care about, they’re not gonna say, well, you didn’t do enough, too bad. No, once they have Ordell, they’ll get the state attorney to nolle pros your case and you’ll be off the hook. That means they can refile in thirty to sixty days, but they won’t. If they get him before you’re arraigned, they’ll let you off on an A-99, a no-file.”

She said, “You’re sure?”

“I can’t guarantee it, no. But what else have you got?”

“Walk in and offer to help.”

“Tell them who gives you the money, who you take it to, how much you get paid, all that.”

“Name names.”

“Your Mr. Walker, you’ll have to give him up.”

“Act contrite?”

“Play it straight.”

He watched her now, Jackie staring at her cigarette as she rolled the tip of it in the ashtray, and he kept quiet, giving her time. But moments passed, Max felt himself running out of patience and said, “Where are you?”

She raised her head and he saw her eyes, that gleam, that look that could change his life if he let it.

She said, “You know something?” The gleam becoming a smile. “I might have more options than I thought.”

9

Louis walked into a liquor store on Dixie Highway in Lake Worth that Thursday evening. They had vodka now that was imported from Russia, from Poland, Sweden, fifteen to twenty bucks a fifth. They might’ve had it before he did his forty-six months at Starke, but Louis could-n’t recall having seen any. He had always drunk the cheaper stuff.

Not anymore.

An older guy behind the counter came over to him saying, “What can I do you for?” Older but bigger than Louis, with a gray brush cut. The guy looked like a boozer; he hadn’t shaved in a few days and was wearing a T-shirt with GOD BLESS AMERICA on it, the kind that was popular during the Persian Gulf War. The guy’s belly had AMERICA stretched out of shape.

Louis said, “Let me have two fifths of that Absolut.”

The guy reached to get them from the shelf and Louis stuck his right hand in the pocket of the dark blue suit coat he’d found in the closet and was wearing as a sporty jacket with his white T-shirt and khakis. As the guy turned with the bottles and placed them on the counter, Louis said, “And all the money you have in the till.”

Now the guy was looking at Louis holding the pocket of the suit coat pointed at him. He didn’t seem surprised by it. He rubbed a hand over the salt-and-pepper beard stubble on his jaw and said, “Why don’t you take your finger out of there and stick it in your ass while I go get my shotgun.” Shaking his head as he started for the back of the store. Louis got out of there.

So much for his new start.

He drove to Max Cherry’s office and let himself in with the key he’d taken from Max’s desk this morning. Optimistic then, feeling close to making his move. What he had to do now was put his mind to it, get serious. Ordell was right, he had nothing to lose. Louis went out to his car and got the tire iron from the trunk.

This afternoon he had driven all the way down to South Miami Beach, two and a half hours, to the Santa Marta on Ocean Drive near Sixth. The hotel was owned by Colombians and some of them hung out in the bar off the lobby. Louis walked in, saw four of them down the bar, one guy showing the others a dance step, shoulders hunched, hips moving to Latin riffs screaming out of hidden speakers. They looked up to see Louis and back to the guy dancing. That was it. Louis could put on a grin and walk up to them, hand out Max Cherry bail-bond cards. . . . He had come to make sure he was right, that he couldn’t fake it with these people.

What he did, he turned around and walked up the street of art deco hotels, Miami Vice country, to the Cardozo and sat at a table on the sidewalk to have a vodka tonic. It was no more Louis’s scene than the hotel where the Colombians hung out, but the show was better: all the tank tops and hundred-dollar pump-up basketball shoes. Louis had lived here ten years ago when old retired people from New York sat on the hotel porches wearing hats, their noses painted white, and boat-lift Cubans worked their hustles down the street. Five years ago when it was beginning to change he had returned to rob a bank not ten blocks from here, up by Wolfie’s Deli. Now it was the hip place to be in South Florida. Guys with sunglasses in their hair posed skinny girls on the beach and photographed them. There was no place to park anymore on Ocean Drive. Louis had a couple more vodka tonics. He watched a dark-haired girl in leotards and heels coming along the sidewalk, a winner, and was about to put his hand out, ask if she wanted a drink, when he realized she was a guy wearing makeup and tits. That’s how trendy it was now. What was he doing here? He wasn’t a salesman who handed out bail-bond cards. If anyone asked him what he did he would have to say he robbed banks, even though the last one was almost five years ago.

What if, while he was in the neighborhood, he stopped by that bank on Collins again? It was the one where the girl handed him the dye pack.

Louis had another vodka tonic and wrote a note on a cocktail napkin. This is a stickup. Do not panic. . . . He used another napkin to write or press a button . . . He saw he would have to write much smaller to get in or I will blow your head off and something about the money, wanting only hundred-dollar bills and fifties. He started over with a clean napkin opened up and put down what he wanted to say. Perfect.

But by the time he paid his check, walked several blocks to his car, and drove up Collins Avenue to the bank, it was closed.

Last week he might have given up. Not today; he was making his move. Looking stupid to the guy in the liquor store didn’t even set him back. It told him to, goddamn it, do it right. Liquor stores, he knew, were never as easy as banks.

Louis used the tire iron to pry the lock off Max’s gun cabinet in the meeting room with the office refrigerator and the coffee maker. Inside were four handguns and the nickel-plated Mossberg 500, the pistol-grip shotgun with the battery-operated laser scope. Louis felt his image changing as he got serious and chose the chromed Colt Python he knew was Winston’s, a 357 Mag with an eight-inch barrel, big and showy. That should do it, and a couple of boxes of hollow points. But then thought, if he was going for show he might as well go all the way and took the Mossberg 500 too. Even with the laser scope the shotgun would fit under the coat he was wearing as a sporty jacket. Buttoned, the coat was snug on him and had the widest lapels Louis had ever seen. All J.J.’s clothes were like new but out of style, hanging twenty years in closets or packed in trunks while J.J. was in and out of the system. Ordell would never see this coat. Tomorrow he’d go to Burdine’s or Macy’s and get some new outfits. Nothing too bright, like Ordell’s yellow sport coat, he wasn’t feeling that showy. Something in light blue might be nice.

When Louis walked in the liquor store the second time, the guy with GOD BLESS AMERICA on his T-shirt rubbed his hand over his jaw and said, “Jesus Christ, don’t tell me you’re back.”

Louis said, “Let me have two fifths of that Absolut,” this time bringing the Mossberg out of the coat from under his left arm, the nickel plate gleaming in the overhead light, the red dot of the laser scope showing the bottles he wanted as he squeezed the grip.

The liquor store guy said, “You swipe that toy gun offa some kid?”

Louis said, “See the red dot?” He moved it off the Absolut, squeezed the trigger, and blew out three rows of the cheap stuff. Louis said, “It’s real,” Christ, with his ears ringing. “That’s two fifths of Absolut, whatever you have in the till, and that wad in your hip pocket.”

He felt good and had some vodka out of the bottle driving up Dixie, on his way to finding a motel, through living at J.J.’s, through hanging around the bail-bond office. . . . And realized, Christ, he had to go back there right now. Put the key in Max’s desk and make it look like a break-in, or Max would know he did it. He should’ve taken all the guns. Max still might figure it out. Four years locked up, he was rusty, that’s all. At least he knew what he had to do. Then keep going, ride it out. No stopping or getting off once you start. Wasn’t that how Ordell said it?

Something like that.

Ordell had tried showing his jackboys how to use a tension tool with a feeler pick or what was called a rake—none of these gadgets more than five inches long, they fit right in your pocket— to open most any locked door to a house. See? It was easy once you practiced and got the feel. No, jackboys liked to bust into places. They liked to smash windows or blow the lock out with a shotgun. Their trip was driving a big pickup truck through the front door of a pawnshop or a hardware store: drive in, load up, and drive out again in the stolen truck with some company name on the side. Gun shops put iron posts in the concrete outside the door so you couldn’t drive in. What they would do juiced up was walk in when the gun shop was open, pull their pieces, and go for the assault weapons they loved. It did-n’t matter they could get shot doing it, they were crazy motherfuckers. Ordell gave up on teaching them subtle ways to gain entry.

He brought out his tools only when he needed to use them himself.

Like this evening, getting into Jackie Burke’s apartment.

Max drove home seeing her across the table in barroom light, Jackie looking at him the way she did with those sparkly green eyes, looking off at the piano and saying he shouldn’t be allowed to play “Light My Fire.” Saying “Great,” in that same dry tone of voice when he told her she might do a year and a day. Saying “You’re as much fun as the cops,” when he didn’t believe her at first. But pretty soon she was confiding in him and he could feel them getting closer, like they were in this together and she needed him. It was a good feeling. He had watched her eyes to sense her mood. Watched the way she smoked cigarettes and wanted one for the first time in a couple of years. Before they’d left the cocktail lounge he knew something could happen between them if he wanted it to.

He hadn’t had this feeling in a long time. Never with a defendant.

Once, during the past two years living alone, he had almost told a woman he loved her. A waitress named Cricket with a Georgia accent. Got that tender feeling one night lying in bed with her, stirred by the way the light from the window softened her hollow cheeks and lay across her small pale breasts. Except the shine was from a streetlight outside, not the moonlight of “Moonlight Becomes You” or “That Old Devil Moon,” and realizing this might have stopped him if good sense didn’t. Cricket sang Reba McEntire numbers with gestures. She sang that old Tammy Wynette song “D.I.V.O.R.C.E.,” would give him a look and say, “Hint, hint.” Cricket made him feel good. The trouble was finding something to talk about. It was the same way with Renee. All those years of not talking. He had tried reading poetry to her when they were first married. If she said anything at all after it was, “What’s that suppose to mean?”

He hadn’t told Renee he loved her in about ten years. He told her a few times when he knew he didn’t love her and then quit. What was the point? She never told him. Not even that much in the beginning when he told her all the time, because he did. She was tiny, she was cute as a bug, and he wanted to eat her up. She never said a word making love. She was afraid of getting pregnant; she said a doctor had told her she was too small and it would kill her, or her uterus was tipped or she was afraid of hydrogen bombs; take your pick. It was okay if she didn’t appreciate his reading to her. It wasn’t romantic poetry anyway, it was mostly Ginsberg and Corso, those guys. He liked them even though he had to face demonstrators in those days with a riot baton, out in the streets being called a pig, and he’d wonder, Wait a minute. What am I doing here? This was before he made detective and liked Homicide so much he was willing to die there. One time he finished reading a poem and Renee said, “You should see yourself.” Meaning a uniformed deputy in dark green reciting poetry, but missing the point entirely that it was one of the Beats.

He remembered a poem more recently by a guy named Gifford called “To Terry Moore” that ended with the lines,

Tell me, Terry when you were young were your lovers ever gentle?

He remembered it because he had been in love with Terry Moore in the fifties, right after being in love with Jane Greer and just before he fell in love with Diane Baker. This year he had passed on Jodie Foster, only because he was old enough to be her dad, and fallen in love with Annette Bening. He didn’t care how old Annette was.

Jackie Burke had made him think of the poem to Terry Moore. The last part, “were your lovers ever gentle?” On the way to dropping her off to get her car. Jackie telling him she had been flying nearly twenty years and married twice. Once to an airline pilot “who went to prison with a two hundred-dollar-a-day habit.” And once to a Brit in Freeport, floorman at a hotel casino, “who decided one evening it was time to die.” And that was all she said about them. He thought of the poem because he could imagine guys coming on to her as a matter of course, before those marriages and in between and maybe during, thirty thousand feet in the air.

She asked in the car as they were coming to the airport if he was married. He told her yes and how long and she said, “Twenty-seven years?”

Almost raising her voice. He remembered that. Making it an unimaginable period of time.

He said, “It seems longer,” and in the dark, staring at his headlight beams, tried to explain his situation.

“We started out, I was already with the Sheriff’s Office, but Renee didn’t like being married to a cop. She said she was worried sick all the time something would happen to me. Also, she said, I put the job first.”

“Did you?”

“You have to. So I quit. She didn’t like being married to a cop—she hates being married to a bail bondsman. Nineteen years she’s been telling people I sell insurance.”

Jackie said, “You don’t look like a bail bondsman.”

Meaning it, he assumed, as a compliment. She didn’t say what a bail bondsman was supposed to look like. He imagined she meant a sleazy type, fat little guy in a rumpled suit who chewed his cigar. A lot of people had that picture.

“Renee moved out of the house. She opened an art gallery and has these guys, they look like gay heroin addicts, hanging around her. Twice before, we separated. This time it’s been almost

two years.”

Jackie said, “Why haven’t you gotten a divorce?”

“I’m seriously thinking about it.”

“I mean before this. If you don’t get along.”

“It always seemed like too much trouble.”

It didn’t now, driving home, putting up pictures of Jackie Burke in his mind. The ones where she had that gleam in her eyes, the look saying, We could have fun.

Unless she was appraising him with the look, making a judgment, and what it said was, I could use you.

Maybe.

Either way it was a turn-on.

Max pulled into the drive of the house he and Renee had bought twenty-two years ago, when she was coming out of her decoupage period and getting into macramé, or the other way around. The house was an old-Florida frame bungalow being eaten by termites and almost obscured from the street by cabbage palms and banana trees. Renee had moved to an apartment in Palm Beach Gardens, not far from where Jackie Burke lived—according to her Rough Arrest report. He’d leave the car in the drive while he went in the house, planning to go back to the office later. He was surprised his beeper hadn’t gone off while he was with Jackie. Prime time for a bail bondsman was six to nine.

He opened the glove box to get his .38 Airweight. Whenever it was out of his hands for a period of time he liked to check it; this evening, make sure it was his gun the guard at the Stockade had handed him. He felt inside, then leaned across the seat to take a look. The gun wasn’t there. No one had touched the car while they were in the hotel cocktail lounge or the alarm would have gone off. They came out, he opened the door for Jackie. She got in, he closed the door and walked around to the other side. . . .

Maybe the look said, I can take care of myself.

10

It was the kind of building had all outside doors on balconies and at night you’d see these orange lights on every floor up and across the front of the building. Jackie’s apartment was on the fourth level you got to by elevator, then into using the thin little tension tool and feeling around with the feeler pick until you heard the click. Nothing to it. Ordell had checked the kind of lock it was the first time he came here. . . .

Through a little hallway that went past the kitchen into the living room and dining-L. The bedroom and bath were to the left. He remembered she had it fixed up nice but kind of bare-looking, mostly white, drapes over the glass door to the balcony. Ordell pulled the drapes open and could see better, light coming from outside. He sat down on the sofa to wait. Sat there in the dark calculating how long it would take Max Cherry to drive out to the Stockade and bond her out, give her a ride home. . . . Unless she had to get her car.

He felt like smiling at the way Max Cherry had accepted the watch as his take for the bond. This place looked cold. Fixed nice, but like she could move out in about ten minutes. Not like a place you called home, with all kinds of shit laying around. He reached over and turned the lamp on.

No sense frightening the woman, come in and see a man sitting in the dark, maybe scream. Best to keep her calm, not expecting harm. See how she behaves first, if she was nervous talking to him. Man, who could you trust these days? Outside of Louis. See? Thinking of Louis right away coming to mind. Knowing him twenty years as a man would never tell nothing on you. Had that old-time pro sense of keeping his mouth shut. Even thinking of himself as a good guy basically, Louis would never snitch you out. Louis could be worth a cut of the score. Not a big cut, more like a nick.

Ordell waited.

Got tired of it and went to the kitchen, found the Scotch, and put some in a glass with ice from the refrigerator. Hardly any food in there, the woman getting by day to day. Orange juice, Perrier, half a loaf of bread. Some cheese turning green. Some of those little cups of nonfat yogurt with fruit in it, the woman watching her weight. He didn’t see she needed to worry about getting fat, she had a fine body on her. One he’d wanted to see but couldn’t ever get her in a mood to show to him. He’d touch her, tell her, man, she was fine and she’d look at him like . . . not stuck-up exactly, more like it was too much trouble to get it on and she had her laundry to do. Maybe tonight if she came in scared and saw she had to please him . . .

Yeah, it should be dark. Ordell turned the light out in the kitchen, took his drink to the living room to sit down on the sofa again, and switched off the lamp.

He waited.

Finished the drink and waited some more.

At least it was comfortable. He felt himself starting to doze off, eyelids getting heavy . . . eyes opening then, quick, Ordell full awake hearing her key in the lock, Jackie home at last. There she was now in the light coming through from the balcony, her bag hanging from her shoulders, trying to remember—look at her—if she had closed the drapes or left them open. Slipping her keys in the bag now . . .

Ordell said, “How you doing, Ms. Jackie?”

She didn’t move, so he got up and went over to her, seeing her face now, no color to it in this light. He came up close and put his hands on the round part of her arms below her shoulders.

“You looking fine this evening. You gonna thank

me?”

“For what?”

“Who you think got you out of jail?”

“The same guy who put me in. Thanks a lot.”

“Hey, you get caught with blow, that’s your business.”

“It wasn’t mine.”

Not sounding mean, looking straight in his eyes, like to say it was his fault. Ordell had to stop and think. He said, “Hey, shit, I bet it was the present Mr. Walker was sending Melanie. Yeaaah, he’s the one musta put it in there if you didn’t. Hey, I’m sorry that happened. I ’magine they asked you all kind of questions about it, huh? And about all that money? Want to know where you got it?”

She didn’t answer him.

“Who you giving it to? All that, huh?”

“They asked.”

“And what did you tell them?”

“I said I wanted a lawyer.”

“Didn’t let nothing slip?”

She said to his face, “You’re not asking the right question.”

Ordell’s hands moved up to rest on her shoulders. He said, “I’m not?” feeling her body there under her jacket and the strap of her bag, thin little bones he rubbed with his fingers.

She said to him, “Ask why I was picked up.”

“Dog didn’t sniff your bag?”

“They didn’t need a dog. They knew about the money, the exact amount.”

“They tell you how they found out?”

“They asked if I knew Mr. Walker.”

“Yeah? . . .”

“I didn’t tell them anything.”

“My name come up?”

He watched her head go side to side but didn’t feel the bones move. His thumbs brushed her collarbone, the tips of his fingers touched her neck, caressed the skin, Ordell seeing how lightly he could touch her, not wanting her to move, try to run, and maybe scream. Her eyes never blinked.

“Say they know about Mr. Walker. Who else?”

It made her hesitate before she said, “The Jamaican, Beaumont.”

“What’d they say about him?”

“They’d spoken to him in jail.”

Ordell nodded. He’d had that right. “You know what happen to him?”

“They told me.”

“Yeah, somebody musta been mad at Beaumont, or got worried about him facing time. You understand what I’m saying? Somebody knowing what he might tell not to get sent away. I suppose they give you all kind of shit then about what they know. Get you think

ing you may as well tell what you know, huh?”

Her head went just a little bit side to side.

He brought his thumbs from her collarbone up to her throat and her shoulder with the strap on it moved like she meant to twist away from him, but he held on to her and felt the shoulder ease back. He liked the way she was trying to act cool, staring at him. He liked the way she looked too, her face pure white in the dark, whiter than Melanie’s face or any white face he had been this close to, thinking he could put her down on the floor, or he could take her in the bedroom, and after they were done put the pillow over her face and aim the pistol he had with him into the pillow. . . . Man, it was a shame to have to do it. . . . He said, “You scared of me?”

Her head went side to side without her eyes leaving his.

He knew she was scared, man, she had to be, but wasn’t acting like she was and it made him press his thumbs into her soft skin and tighten up on his fingers, wanting to know what she’d told them and knowing he’d have to take her close to the edge to find out. He said, “Baby, you got a reason to be nervous with me?” He saw her eyes close and open. . . .

And felt what must be her hand down there touch his thigh, brush across it, and move on up and had to admire her using a female way of getting to him, liking it, yeaaah, till something else besides a hand, something hard, dug into him.

She said, “You feel it.”

Ordell said, “Yes, I do,” wanting to grin, let her know he wasn’t serious and she shouldn’t be either. He said, “I believe that’s a gun pressing against my bone.”

Jackie said, “You’re right. You want to lose it or let go of me?”

If either Max or Winston phoned the other from the office and said, “Get dressed,” it meant come right away, armed.

This time it was Max who phoned and Winston arrived while the sheriff’s people were still there, blue lights turning on their radio cars. Somebody had shattered the glass in the front door and reached in through the bars to unlock it. Max, in the office with the two uniforms taking notes, looked up at Winston. He said, “These guys were here inside of two minutes from the time the alarm started to blow.” Max seemed impressed.

Winston said, “They get him?” Knowing they hadn’t. He saw Max motion with his head to the meeting room and went in there to see the gun cabinet broken into, two pieces missing, three still hanging on pegs. Now he watched from the doorway to the office while the uniforms finished their report, left, and Max came over.

“What’d I get dressed for,” Winston said, “if he’s gone?”

“ ‘Cause we know who did it,” Max said, moving past him to the gun cabinet.

“We talking about Louis?”

Watching as Max chose the Browning 380 auto, took it from its peg, and checked the slide.

“How you know it’s him?”

“He wouldn’t have time to break in,” Max said, “come in here, bust into the cabinet—all the time the alarm’s making a racket. You know how loud it is? He doesn’t clean us out, he takes only the Python and the Mossberg, and does it all inside of two minutes. I think he broke the glass on the way out, make it look like a B and E.”

“Then how’d he get in?”

“Lifted a spare key out of my drawer, had one made, and put it back. Planning something like this. That’s why I think it’s Louis.”

“You don’t know for sure.”

“Let’s go ask him. Your arm okay?” Max reached out as if to touch Winston’s sleeve.

“It’s all right; they put in some stitches. What’s that you got, a new watch?”

“Rolex,” Max said, turning his arm to let the gold catch the light, the way Ordell had shown it to him. “I took it on a bond till I get the premium.”

Winston said, “Lemme see,” putting his hand under Max’s arm to look at the watch up close. He said, “I hate to tell you, but it ain’t a Rolex. I know, ’cause I have a real one at home. This decoration here don’t look right.”

Max took his arm back. “This’s a different model.”

“I’m talking about this one. How much was the premium it’s for?”

“Don’t worry about it, okay?”

“Was gonna say, if it’s over two-fifty . . .”

Max said, “Let’s get outta here,” sticking the Browning in the waist of his pants. He picked up his jacket from a chair and Winston followed after him.

“How come you’re taking the Browning? Don’t you have that little Airweight in your car?”

Max stopped dead at the busted front door and turned around. He said, “I forgot, one of us has to stay here,” still with that short tone of voice, edgy. “I called a guy, he’s gonna come nail up a sheet of plywood. You wait for him, all right?”

Asking, but actually telling.

Winston said, “That’s my punishment, huh, for saying it ain’t a Rolex?”

* * *

The pistol Ordell had on him was the little Targa .22 he used for close work. Jackie found it in the side pocket of his coat. Felt him all over with her free hand, the other hand holding the gun pressed against his bone, before she stepped back, shrugged, and let the shoulder bag slip off and drop on the floor. He said, “It looks like we have a misunderstanding here.” Not moving, believing she would shoot him with either hand, this two-gun woman he had somehow misjudged.

“You were about to strangle me,” Jackie said. “I understood that part.”

“Baby, I was playing with you. You on the team. Didn’t I get you out of jail?”

She said, “You got Beaumont out too.”

Ordell gave her a pained look. “That hurts, what I think you mean to imply there, I could be wrong. . . . Baby, you aren’t wearing a wire, are you?” She didn’t answer on that one.

“Listen, I didn’t have nothing to do with that dope you brought in, but I’ll get you a lawyer, a good one. I had that fifty gees I’d get you F. Lee Bailey himself.”

She said, “But you don’t have it.”

“That’s why we should sit down and talk,” Ordell said. “Work something out here. Put the lights on, maybe have a drink. . . .” He cocked his head to study this woman, kind of mussed but still looking fine. He had to smile. A two-gun woman turning him on. “Baby, you want to talk or shoot me?” And when she didn’t answer right away he said, “Hey now, I don’t want to give you ideas. I’m gonna pay you the five hundred too. Even if you didn’t deliver. But if we gonna talk about it, girl, you have to show you trust me.”

Jackie raised both the guns, putting them dead on him, saying, “I trust you.”

He had to smile, appreciating her.

“You felt me,” Ordell said. “Now let me feel you and put my mind at ease. See if you might have a wire running around that fine body.”

“I’m not wired,” Jackie said. “I haven’t talked to them yet. If I trust you, you have to trust me.”

“Yeah, but you said something there I did-n’t especially like the sound of. Like you threatening me, saying you haven’t talked to them yet.”

She gave him an easy shrug with her shoulders he liked.

“Sooner or later,” Jackie said, “they’ll get around to offering me a plea deal if I talk to them. You know that. They might even let me walk. The only thing you and I have to talk about, really, is what you’re willing to do for me.”

“I told you, baby, I’m gonna get you a lawyer.”

Now she was shaking her head at him, still cool, saying, “I don’t think that’s going to do it. Let’s say if I tell on you, I get off. And if I don’t, I go to jail.”

“Yeah? . . .”

“What’s it worth to you if I don’t say a word?”

Max opened the trunk of his car, parked down the street from the house where Louis was staying, the place dark. He’d need a flashlight, he got that out. And his stun gun, the best way to throw a punch without hurting your hand. He didn’t want to shoot Louis. He wanted to knock him down, handcuff him, and turn him over to the police. The house appeared empty, deserted, trash laying around. Walking up to the side entrance by the carport, he was surprised there weren’t broken panes in the windows. Max tried the door, gave it a shoulder, then stepped back and kicked it open.

The place smelled of mildew.

He sat in the living room in the dark, an expert at waiting, a nineteen-year veteran of it, waiting for people who failed to appear, missed court dates because they forgot or didn’t care, and took off. Nineteen years of losers, repeat offenders in and out of the system. Another one, that’s all Louis was, slipping back into the life.

Is this what you do?

He knew why he was here. Still, he began to wonder about it, thinking not so much of waiting other times in the nineteen years but aware of right now, the mildew smell, seeing himself sitting in the dark with a plastic tube that fired a beanbag full of buckshot.

Really? This is what you do?

Max pointed the stun gun at a window, pushed in the plunger and saw a pane of glass explode.

In the car, driving back to the office, he saw Jackie again and was anxious to tell her something.

He said to Winston, waiting in the front office, “He’ll never come back.”

Winston said, “That’s right.”

“So we’re out a couple of guns. It’s worth it.” Winston said, “You didn’t see him.”

“I think he’s cleared out.”

“The man didn’t come fix the door.”

Max turned to look at it, not saying anything. “You want me to keep waiting on him?”

Max said, “I’m getting out of the business.” Still looking at the door.

Winston began to nod. He said, “That’s a good idea.”

The way Ordell heard what Jackie was saying: If she kept quiet and did time on his account, she wanted to be paid for it. He asked her was this a threat. She said that would be extortion. It might be, but wasn’t an answer to the question. Was she saying if he didn’t pay her she’d go talk to the police?

Wait a minute.

He said, “Baby, you don’t know any more what my business is than they do.”

She said, “Are you sure?”

“You run some money you say is mine. What am I suppose to get convicted of?” Asking what sounded like the key question . . .

She came back saying, “The illegal sale of firearms.” Like that. “It’s true, isn’t it? You sell guns?”

Sounding innocent saying it that way, naïve, nice-looking airline stewardess sitting across the room on her white sofa. Except she had the two guns resting on cushions to either side of her, little guns to look at but nothing naïve about them. She had watched him fix drinks— hers on the coffee table in front of her now. From where he sat holding his Scotch it would take him two, three, almost four strides to get to her once he jumped up and if he didn’t trip over the coffee table. He believed he would get only about halfway, even with her smoking and drinking, before she picked up most likely the Airweight she’d got hold of somewhere between the Stockade and here and blew him back in the chair. So Ordell was more interested now in their conversation than estimating space and his chance of getting to her. Jackie telling him now:

“Whatever they know, they got from Beaumont, not me. Why did ATF pick me up if it’s not about guns? Even if they didn’t know you before, they do now. You got us out of jail.”

“You don’t get convicted for putting up bonds.”

“No, but I think you took a chance.”

Man, she had that right.

Telling him now, “If they think you’re selling guns, they’ll keep an eye on you. Won’t they? Then what? You’re out of business.”

“I’m trying to hear what you’re saying,” Ordell said. “If I pay you to keep quiet and they ask you about guns, then you say you don’t know nothing about any. Is that right?”

“I don’t, really. You’re right, you’ve never told me.”

“Then what do I have to worry about? You saying you will tell them if we don’t agree on a price here?”

“If I say I won’t,” Jackie said, “will you take my word for it?”

“You getting me confused now.”

“All I’m saying is we have to trust each other.”

“Yeah, but what’s it gonna cost me?”

She said, “How about a hundred thousand if I’m convicted. That would be for jail time up to a year or if I’m put on probation. If I have to do more than a year, you pay another hundred thousand.”

“You be making more in than out, huh?”

She said, “You’d have to put the money in some kind of escrow account in my name. If I get off, you get it back.”

“Just like that, huh?”

“It’s up to you.”

“Even if I agree,” Ordell said, “I think you’re high. But say I agree. I see two problems. One, you put a hundred grand in cash in the bank, anything over ten, the U.S. government gets told and they want to know where it came from.”

She said, “I think we can find a way around that. What’s the other problem? I bet I know what it is.”

Listen to the woman.

“All my money,” Ordell said, “is over in Freeport.”

Watched her nod and take a sip of her drink.

“What’s there now and what will be coming in.”

Watched her raise her eyebrows at that.

“If ATF’s on my ass like you say, how do I get money here to pay you?”

She said, “You’re right, it’s a problem. I’m pretty sure, though, I can work it out.”

“Now that we talking big money it’s worth the risk?”

She smiled at him.

“Okay, how you gonna do it if you out on bond and can’t go nowhere?”

“There’s a way,” Jackie said. “Trust me.”

11

Friday morning, half-past eight, Tyler and Nicolet had Ordell Robbie’s house under surveillance. They were in Tyler’s Chevy Caprice parked on Greenwood Avenue, close enough to the corner of 31st to give them a clear view of the third house down on the south side of the street.

At ten to eight they had checked the garage and knocked on the front door. Nothing happened until Tyler held his ID case open to the peephole. That got the sound of locks snapping open and the face of a young black woman peering at them over the chain. She said, “He ain’t here,” and closed the door. Tyler had to keep knocking and ringing the bell to get the door open again and the woman to tell them no, he hadn’t been there all night, and no, she didn’t know where he was at. Big eyes in the space that narrowed gradually until the door closed again. They drove around the block and parked on Greenwood to watch the house: a neat little red brick ranch with bursts of pink and white impatiens in the flower beds and bars on the windows. Tyler thought he saw the drapes move and checked with his binoculars. Yeah, the woman was there looking out.

“Waiting for hubby,” Nicolet said. “He gets home she’s gonna kill him.”

Tyler said, “We don’t even know it’s his wife, or if he’s got one.”

“We don’t know shit,” Nicolet said, “except he’s into guns, that I’m positive of. Doing big business too, or he wouldn’t have stuck his neck out putting up their bonds. He was desperate, had to get them out before either one of them finked on him.”

“Or he’s stupid,” Tyler said.

“He’s got one fall that goes back twenty years,” Nicolet said. “That’s not a guy that fucks up.”

“Maybe he’s been clean.”

“No way—he’s into guns big-time. Got Beaumont out as fast as he could and popped him, or had it done. Riviera Beach said they questioned Ordell. Yeah, but they didn’t know what to ask. That was the problem there. Same thing with Jackie Burke, he got her out right away. . . . You better call her again.”

Tyler picked up the phone and punched her number.

Nicolet saying, “Try and scare her a little.”

Tyler waited and then said, “Ms. Burke, how you doing? This is Faron Tyler. . . . Oh, I’m sorry. I was just checking to see if you’re okay. We have a man outside your building. . . . Well, just in case. You never know. You have my number. . . .” He listened for several moments and said, “Oh?” And said, “We can do that any time you want, your place or ours. . . . Okay, sounds good. We’ll call later and you tell us. So long.” He replaced the phone saying to Nicolet, “She wants to talk.”

“One night all alone,” Nicolet said, “can do that. When?”

“Later sometime today. I woke her up again.”

“Man, I like that type,” Nicolet said. “Can’t get ’em out of bed. They give you that sleepy look, a little puffy, hair all mussed up. Like the broad in that beer ad on TV. She works in this joint out in the desert? You’ve seen it. The guy comes in, right away she’s interested, but you don’t see him. You never see him. He asks for the kind of beer they’re advertising, I forgot what it is, and she says, ‘I was hoping you’d say that,’ like he’s her kind of guy. She even looks a little sweaty but, man, you know she’s ready. That type. Jackie Burke reminds me of her a little.”

Tyler said, “So you’re gonna look into that?”

“I might, if I can get her to flip, and it sounds like she’s ready, huh? Otherwise, no, sir, that can get you in serious trouble.”

Ray Nicolet was divorced; he went after women assuming they would be attracted to him and enough of them were to keep him happy. Faron Tyler was married to a girl named Cheryl he met at FSU; they had two little boys, four and six. Faron only fooled around once in a while, if he was with Ray and couldn’t get out of it. Like if during deer season they were out and happened to run into a couple of friendly girls in a bar. Once Ray started making the moves on the one he wanted, Faron always felt he had to move on the other one so she wouldn’t be hurt, feel rejected.

Right now Nicolet was watching a white Cadillac Seville turn onto 31st Street from Greenwood. It crept along like the driver was looking at house numbers, stopped, backed up, and pulled into Ordell Robbie’s driveway. Nicolet said, “Well, who have we here?” taking the glasses from Tyler to put them on the guy getting out of the car, a big guy in a short-sleeved shirt. “You want to call it in?”

Tyler said, “Gimme the number,” picking up the phone.

Nicolet read it to him off the plate. The guy was at the front door now. Nicolet saw him as a white male in a mostly black neighborhood, mid to late fifties, a little over six foot, and about one eighty. The door opened for a moment and closed. The guy stood there. The door opened again and now the guy was talking to the woman.

Tyler said, “Thanks,” and said to Nicolet, “I know him, that’s Max Cherry, he’s a bail bondsman. You see him eating lunch at Helen Wilkes.”

“He must’ve written them,” Nicolet said. “But what’s he doing here?”

Tyler took the glasses from him. “Yeah, that’s Max. It could be Ordell put his house up as collateral and Max is checking it out. They do that.”

“He’s still talking to her,” Nicolet said. “Now she’s talking, look. She’s opening the door. . . . She’s asking him to come in?”

“No, he’s leaving,” Tyler said.

The woman stood in the doorway as Max got in his car. Now she was closing the door, but not all the way, not until the Cadillac backed into the street. It came up to Greenwood and turned south, going away from them.

“That was business,” Tyler said. “Max is one of the good ones. He was with the Sheriff’s office before we got there. You remember some of the older guys would mention him? Max Cherry?”

“Vaguely,” Nicolet said.

“He was in Crimes Persons and worked mostly homicides. One time at Helen Wilkes—Max knew the state attorney I was having lunch with and joined us. We happened to be talking about drive-by shootings, gang stuff, jackboys. . . . I remember Max said, ‘Get to know the friends of the victim, talk to them. It could be one of them did the guy and it only looks like a drive-by.’ I asked him questions . . .”

Tyler stopped talking. A car shining hot in the sunlight was coming toward them on Greenwood, turned onto 31st Street: a bright red Firebird with dark-tinted windows and chrome duals sticking out of its rear end. It eased to a stop in front of Ordell’s house, engine grumbling in idle. Tyler got the plate number and handed over the glasses.

“Trans Am GTA, the expensive one,” Nicolet said. Tyler was on the phone now. Through the glasses Nicolet watched a young black male, eighteen to twenty, five ten, slim build, not much more than one forty, wearing an Atlanta Braves warm-up jacket and clean white pump-up basketball shoes that looked too big for him, walk up the drive to Ordell’s garage and look in the window. Nicolet said, “Tell me where this kid got twenty-five grand to buy a car like that?” thinking he knew the answer, drugs. He expected the kid to cross now to the front of the house. No, he was coming back down the drive. .

As Tyler replaced the phone saying, “It’s not his, it’s stolen. The plate was lifted off a Dodge last night in Boca.” He took the glasses, wanting to get a look at the guy.

Nicolet said, “You boost a car like that, park it in your fucking neighborhood and nobody’s suppose to notice.”

“He doesn’t give a shit who sees him,” Tyler said, lowering the glasses and turning the key to start the Chevy. “He’s living dangerously.”

Nicolet held up his hand. “Wait. What’s he doing?”

“Nothing. He’s standing there.”

On the sidewalk in front of the house. But looking the other way, staring. Tyler raised the glasses to see the car coming up 31st toward the house.

Nicolet said, “Tell me it’s a black Mercedes.”

“It sure is,” Tyler said. “I believe this’s our guy. Mercedes convertible . . .”

The top up, slowing down now, coming past the Firebird and turning into the drive. Now the kid in the Atlanta Braves jacket was approaching the Mercedes, taking his time, as Mr. Ordell Robbie got out and was seen by Tyler and Nicolet for the first time: black male, mid to late forties, six foot maybe, about one seventy, sunglasses, patterned tan silk shirt and tan slacks. Stylish and fairly dressed up, compared to the two law enforcement officers in their Sears sport shirts and Levi’s this morning, Nicolet in his cowboy boots, Tyler wearing gray-and-blue jogging shoes. They kept quiet now watching Ordell and the kid standing by the rear deck of the Mercedes talking, couple of cool guys, except for Ordell’s gaze moving up and down the street now and again. Tyler took a look through the glasses, saw four, five kids at the far end of the block, all black kids, like they might be waiting for a school bus.

“He just showed him something,” Nicolet said. “You see that? Under his jacket.”

“I missed it,” Tyler said.

“Held the jacket open to give him a peek.”

“You think a gun?”

“I’d like to believe it is,” Nicolet said. “Felon with a firearm, he’s my kind of guy.” Ordell was talking now. The kid laughed, shuffling around, and Nicolet said, “Rapping. They love that rap shit. Now they high-five each other. Have these rituals they have to go through.”

They watched Ordell walk toward the house, saying something else to the kid who nodded a few times and gave him a lazy wave. The front door opened and they caught a glimpse of the woman. Ordell was inside, the door closed again, by the time the kid reached the Firebird and got in.

“Let’s take him,” Nicolet said, reaching around to get his attaché case off the back seat. “But I want to see where he goes first.”

Tyler had the Chevy in drive. “What for? We got him with the car.”

“He’s into more than boosting cars. He came here to sell a gun.”

“You don’t know what he showed him.”

“It was a gun,” Nicolet said.

They followed the Firebird west on 31st toward Windsor Avenue, Nicolet with the attaché case on his lap. He snapped it open, brought out a Sig Sauer nine-millimeter auto and returned the case to the back seat. He said, “I bet yours’s in the trunk, with all that shit you haul around.”

“It’s in there,” Tyler said, looking at the glove box.

Nicolet opened it, drew a Beretta nine from a black holster, and handed it to Tyler. “I don’t see your flak jacket in there.”

Tyler said, “Fuck you,” wedging the pistol between his thighs.

They drove north on Windsor, over 36th Street west to Australian Avenue and north again, still in a low-income residential area, light traffic in this direction, trailing a red Firebird on a nice spring morning. No problem.

“You mentioned jackboys before,” Nicolet said and then paused and seemed to start over. “Where was Beaumont Livingston found? In a stolen car, a new Olds. The gun in the trunk with him, a five-shot .38 wiped clean. That is, clean on the outside. They found latents on the three bullets still in the cylinder and on the casings of the two that killed him. They check the registration number, the piece belongs to a guy ran a crack house who right now is facing federal prosecution and no doubt some hard time. This guy will tell you anything you want to know, so you have to be selective in what you ask. He says the gun was stolen last month along with all his cash, his dope, a few other guns. . . . Jackboys, he says, came in shooting and cleaned him out. One of them he identifies, a kid named Bug Eye he used to know in Delray. The latents on the gun that did Beaumont, they find out, belong to a convicted felon named Aurelius Miller. And what’s Aurelius’s street name, as if he needed one? Bug Eye.”

“The crack-house guy,” Tyler said, “I don’t see he gave you all that much. I mean it’s not like he stuck his neck out and finked on anybody.”

“The point I was making there, he’s anxious to please,” Nicolet said, “and we’re not through yet, are we? Okay, ten days ago Bug Eye was shot dead by a West Palm police officer. It was in the paper. . . .”

“I saw it,” Tyler said. “There was some question about the guy being shot both in the chest and the back?”

Nicolet, his gaze on the red car a half block ahead of them, said, “That’s the one. There was a shootout.”

“He got hit in the chest and spun around,” Tyler said, “while the officer was still firing.”

“We know that can happen,” Nicolet said, the red car now getting bigger. “He’s slowing down.”

They had reached an industrial area of warehouses and loading docks, a few small businesses, in Riviera Beach now.

“He’s pulling off,” Tyler said.

Nicolet looked around, saw no cars behind them.

“Keep going.”

Now he stared straight ahead as they drove past the Firebird parked off the road in an open area, a trucking company freight yard.

“What’s around here?”

“Nothing,” Tyler said. “I think he made us.” Nicolet was looking back now. “Place they make patio furniture, a bump and paint shop . . . That could be it.”

“A rental storage place,” Tyler said, “down the side street.”

“What’re we coming to?”

“Blue Heron.”

“Turn around and go back. You see him?”

Tyler looked at the mirror. “He’s still there.”

“He’s gonna sell the Firebird for parts,” Nicolet said. “Drives in the chop shop and you never see it again. You understand why I thought of Bug Eye?”

Tyler nodded. “I’ll go through the light and come back.”

Nicolet turned to look over his shoulder at the Firebird, way back there now. “Here’s a kid in a stolen car who looks like he could be a jackboy, right? He goes to see a gun dealer named Ordell Robbie to sell him a piece. The same Ordell Robbie who bailed out a guy who was popped by somebody using a piece that was ripped off a crack dealer by a known jackboy named Bug Eye, now deceased.”

“So you want to talk to this guy,” Tyler said, anxious now, making an abrupt U-turn and starting back.

“See what he has to say,” Nicolet said, holding the chunky Sig Sauer auto in his lap. “Citizen cooperation can sure make our work a lot easier, can’t it?”

“I’ll come around behind him,” Tyler said. “You think he has a gun, huh?”

Nicolet raised his pistol enough to rack the slide.

“Bet your life on it.”

What Cujo showed Bread in his driveway was the big stainless .44 Mag Bread had him get for one of his customers. How it worked was once Bread found out who owned such a weapon and where the man lived, Cujo or one of the others would break in the house and get it, take the weapon and whatever he saw he liked or could sell. In the driveway Bread wanted to know was it the right gun, asking him how long was the barrel. Cujo told him looong, man, they go in the house he could show him. Unh-unh, Bread never let people in this house, having, Cujo believed, a woman in there he didn’t want nobody to see. Or it was where he kept the million dollars he must have made by now on guns. Bread said the Mag his customer wanted had a seven and a half-inch full lug barrel on it, whatever the fuck that meant. Was this the one? Cujo asked was he suppose to bring a ruler with him breaking in a house to measure the weapon with? Bread said, “No, man, you don’t need a ruler.” He said, “You know how long your bone is, don’t you? You take it out, lay the piece alongside your bone, and figure the difference.” He’d crack you up saying things like that with his serious look he put on. Man could be on TV, funny, but had his rules. Wouldn’t put the gun in his trunk, right there, or take it in the house. Said it had to go out to where the guns were kept. No bullshit about that. Then lightened up saying be ready in a few days for the Turkey Shoot. Meaning when they’d go jump the Nazi had all the guns at his place. There was a name he gave for everything they did. Rum Punch was the deal he had going in the Bahamas, Open House was what he called the places he lined up for them to break in. When they jumped the Nazi it would be like a combination Open House, Bread said, and a Turkey Shoot. Jump him early in the morning. . . .

When he stopped here to make sure nobody was on him, Cujo had taken the big hunk of .44 Mag out of his pants and laid it on the floor under him. He’d watched this one car come up behind him when there was no other traffic, the car easing along. It became a white Chev Caprice going past. Two white guys in the white car. Cujo waited some more to make sure, watching cars in the mirror come up on him and through the smoked windshield as they went past, on up to Blue Heron. When he saw the white Chev coming back from there, going past the other way and then U-turning to come back toward him, it became an unmarked police car and not a couple of guys looking for a street they might have missed. See, coming off the road now to ease up behind him. He watched both front doors open in his mirror and thought of taking off soon as they were out of the car.

Except that high-speed shit could kill you. He’d tried it one time and got pulled from the wreck, a big cut in his head.

Be better to look the motherfuckers in the eye. Call the play.

“He’s getting out,” Tyler said.

Nicolet thought the kid was going to come back to their car with some kind of bullshit story. The kid knew who they were. But what he did was stand by the Firebird showing how cool he was, right arm on the open door, his left arm on the roof of the car. Waiting for them. About thirty feet away.

“Keep your door in front of you,” Nicolet said, “till I cover him.”

“You sure he has a gun?”

“I’m positive.”

“What if he doesn’t?”

“Then don’t fucking shoot him.”

He watched Tyler slide out of the car to stand behind the door and lay his Beretta on the sill of the open window. Nicolet got out and started toward the right side of the Firebird, moving a few steps away from the cars to get a cross-fire angle, his pistol held against his leg.

The kid looked over the low roof at them.

Tyler said, “Keep your hands up where I can see em.

The kid, posed against the door, turned his palms up. Too cool. Maybe high.

Tyler said, “Step away from the car.”

The kid said, “You police? What’d I do?”

“I said step away from the car.”

Nicolet saw the kid glance this way and then back to Tyler, saying, “You want to look at my driver’s license? Lemme get it for you,” and ducked his head into the Firebird.

Nicolet was moving. Heard Tyler yelling again to get away from the car. Saw the kid’s head and shoulders come up and saw bright metal flash in the sunlight, the kid firing what looked like a Magnum at Tyler, firing again, coming around now to put the gun on the car roof, and Nicolet brought up the Sig and squeezed off three at him fast. Saw the kid duck down maybe hit, maybe not. Nicolet moved. Got to the off side of the Firebird crouched, looking straight at that fucking smoked glass you could-n’t see through, and blew it out firing three quick ones and three more, catching a glimpse of the kid through the shattered window and heard him scream. Nicolet went over the hood, rolled over it, and hit the door as the kid was getting to his knees and he screamed again, wedged against the front seat, his shiny .44 Mag on the ground. Nicolet kicked it under the car and put the barrel of the Sig Sauer against the kid’s head, the kid’s eyes dazed looking up at him, the kid saying, “Man, I’m shot.”

Nicolet turned his head to look toward the Chevy. He saw two bullet holes in the door and Tyler lying on the ground on his side, holding himself.

12

Max had that effortless feeling of a natural high. He couldn’t wait to see her. But the moment Jackie opened the door, looked at him and said, “Oh,” he felt his high begin to nose over.

All right, she was surprised, no question about it. He said, “You’re expecting someone.”

She said, “No . . .” not sounding too sure. She said, “Well, yes and no, but come on in.”

At this point there was still hope. She looked great.

“It’s okay?”

“Yeah, really.”

But then closing the door she said, “You want your gun, don’t you?” and the good feeling sunk all the way to hit bottom as she went to the bedroom in her loose T-shirt and tight jeans saying, “Let me get it.”

Like going to get change for the paper boy.

No apology or acting sheepish about it, wanting to explain. No—you want your gun? And goes to get it. He had come here prepared to treat it lightly. “You get a chance to use that gun you stole on anybody?” Like that, with a straight face. Well, no fun and games now. It pissed him off, this act she put on, so fucking casual about it. Ask her how she’d like to go back to the Stockade, since Ordell hadn’t paid the bond premium. See how casual she was then.

Jackie came out of the bedroom with his gun in her hand and kind of a sad smile, saying, “Max, I’m sorry,” and he felt his mood begin to swing up again, hope stirring in him. “I was afraid if I asked to borrow it you’d say no, and you’d have every right to. Would you like some coffee?”

Just like that, back in the game.

He said, “I wouldn’t mind,” following Jackie to the kitchen. “You get to use it?”

She gave him the smile again. “I felt a lot safer having it. I hope you don’t take milk. It turned sour while I was in jail.”

“No, black’s fine.”

He watched her lay the Airweight on the kitchen table, bare except for an ashtray, and go to the range. She looked even slimmer in the jeans than she did last night. Not slim exactly, just right.

“You want to hang on to it for a while? It wouldn’t be legal but, you know, if it makes you feel better to have it . . .”

She said, “Thanks,” pouring their coffee, “but I have my own now.” She came over to the table with two ceramic cups, plain white. “Do you take sugar?”

Max said, “No, thanks. You went out this morning and bought a gun?” It was possible if she drove up to Martin County; here, there was a three-day wait to buy a handgun, a cooling-off period.

“Let’s just say I have one,” Jackie said, “okay? I don’t want you to be concerned about it.”

“Somebody loaned it to you.”

“Right,” Jackie said, leaving the kitchen.

Max pulled a chair out from the table and sat down, wondering what kind of gun it was and if she knew how to use it. He thought of asking as Jackie came back in with cigarettes and the tan lighter and sat down across from him.

She said, “I couldn’t wait last night to get in the shower and wash my hair.”

And he forgot about the gun.

“It looks nice.”

“I called in sick. As far as the airline knows, I’m still available.”

“Are you?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m going to see Tyler, and I suppose Nicolet, later on today and ask them.” She paused to light a cigarette. “Do what you suggested. Offer to help and see what happens.”

“What I meant,” Max said, “was have a lawyer do the negotiating for you. If you can’t afford one there’s a good friend of mine, semiretired, I think would do it as a favor. He does-n’t need the fee as much as you need a lawyer.”

She was staring at him over her coffee mug and it reminded him of last night.

She said, “Maybe not. Let me talk to them first, about Ordell’s money.”

“That’ll interest them, but only up to a point.”

“All of it in Freeport. I mean a lot. Like a half million in safe-deposit boxes and more coming in.”

“How’d you find that out?”

“He told me last night.”

“Ordell called you?”

“He was here when I got home.”

Max said, “Jesus Christ,” and lowered his coffee mug to the table. “He broke in?”

“He picked the lock.”

“You call the police?”

“We talked,” Jackie said. “He had some doubts at first. But he’s always trusted me and wants more than anything to believe he still can. You know why? Because he needs me. Because without me all that money is going to sit in Freeport. There may be other ways to get it out, but I’m the only one he’s ever used, and all the other people he deals with are crooks. Put your

self in his place.”

Max stared at her. “How do you get it out?”

“The same way I’ve been doing it. But first they have to let me go back to work.”

“You’re offering to set him up.”

“If they let me off. Otherwise no deal.”

“You understand the risk involved?”

“I’m not going to prison or do that probation thing again.”

He watched her studying her cigarette, carefully turning the tip of it in the ashtray. “Well, you said you might have more options than you thought.”

Jackie was concentrating on the cigarette, bringing the ash to a point. She said, “You know how many miles I’ve flown?” and looked up at him.

Max shook his head. “How many?”

“About seven million, jetway to jetway. I’ve been waiting on people for almost twenty years. You know what I make now, starting over? Sixteen thousand, with retirement benefits you can stick in your ear. How do you feel about getting old?”

“You’re not old—you look great.”

“I’m asking how you feel. Does it bother you?”

“It’s not something I think about. I look in the mirror, I’m the same person I was thirty years ago. I see a photograph of myself—that’s different. But who’s taking my picture?”

She said, “It’s different with guys. Women get older at an earlier age.”

He said, “I guess they worry about it more. Some women, all they have is their looks. They lose that . . . But you’ve got way more than looks.”

“I have? What?”

“You want to argue about getting old? What’s the point?”

“I feel like I’m always starting over,” Jackie said, “and before I know it I won’t have any options left. I’ll be stuck with whatever I can get.” She said, “I told you last night I’ve been married twice? Actually I’ve had three husbands, but two of them I think of as the same guy, at age twenty, and then a much older version. Their names were even the same. So I say I’ve been married twice. I was nineteen with the first one, going to school in Miami, U of M. He raced dirt bikes, did the hill climb?”

“That’s pretty young to get married.”

“I wouldn’t live with him otherwise. That’s how smart I was then.”

“Times change,” Max said, “but that’s generally the custom.”

“We were married five months . . . he was killed racing a drawbridge going up, trying to jump his bike across the opening. Like in the

movies. Only he was drunk and didn’t make it.”

Max kept his mouth shut.

“My second husband was hooked on drugs, started dealing to pay for his habit and went to prison. Before he got the airline job he was a fighter pilot in Vietnam. Are you getting the picture? The last one was fifteen years older than I am, about your age. I thought, Ah, here’s one with some maturity. Not knowing he was the dirt biker come back to life.”

Max said, “I’m only twelve years older than you are.”

She seemed to smile—for whatever reason, he wasn’t sure—and then was serious again.

“It bothered him being older, or getting old. So he’d run I don’t know how many miles every day. He’d swim out into the ocean alone, until you couldn’t see him. He drove too fast, got drunk every night. . . . He was funny, he was very bright, but, boy, did he drink. One evening we were sitting out on the balcony, he hopped up on the cement railing and started walking it, his arms out, one foot in front of the other. . . . We were on the sixth floor. I said, ‘You don’t have to prove anything to me.’ I remember I said, ‘I’m not watching, so you might as well get down.’ I turned my head, I could-n’t watch.” Jackie stopped for a moment. “When I looked up again he was gone. I don’t know if he