Rum Punch

fell or stepped off. He didn’t make a sound.”

It was quiet in the kitchen.

She said, “That’s my history. I’ve logged seven million miles married to two drunks and a junkie.”

Max cleared his throat. “You know, you did-n’t refer to any of them by name.”

“Mike, Davey, and Michael,” Jackie said. “What difference does it make?” But then she said, “They were nice guys, really, most of the time, and yet I wasn’t surprised. . . . You know what I mean? My big mistake, I let myself get into situations I know can be trouble, my eyes wide open, and then have to figure a way out.” She paused, stubbing her cigarette in the ashtray. “But you know what I’m more tired of than anything?”

“Tell me,” Max said.

“Smiling. Acting pleasant.”

“Now you’re talking about your job.”

“ ‘Have a wonderful time in the Bahamas and thank you for flying Islands Air.’ Or thank you for flying Delta, or TWA. ‘Sir, would you like another cup of TWA coffee?’ ”

Max grinned at her, seeing it coming. An old one.

“ ‘Or would you prefer TWAT?’ ”

“You like it though, don’t you? Flying?”

“Not anymore.”

“You get a lot of guys hitting on you?”

“Enough.”

“How about when you were a young girl,” Max said, “were the boys rough with you?”

She looked at him over the coffee mug with that gleam of fun in her eyes.

“How did you know?”

13

Ray Nicolet called at four in the afternoon. By this time she had already tried to get hold of Tyler. The FDLE office told her he was on the street, and when she dialed his beeper number and waited there was no response.

“I’d like you to drop whatever you’re doing and come to Good Samaritan,” Nicolet said, his voice quiet and, she felt, grim. Maybe putting it on. “If you want I’ll send a car for you. What do you say?”

“Why do you want me to come?”

“See what one of Ordell’s guys did to Faron. Then I want you to look at the guy and tell me if you know him.”

“Where are you?”

He told her the third floor, east wing.

And was standing by the nurse’s station when she walked up to him less than forty minutes later, wearing a man’s white shirt with her jeans now, tan bag hanging from her shoulder.

“Thanks for coming,” Nicolet said.

It surprised her.

He stared for a moment not saying a word, then walked off, and she trailed after him along the hallway to where two deputies in dark green stood by the open door to a room. The deputies stepped aside, looking her over as Nicolet gave them a nod and Jackie followed him in, past the first bed, empty, to a young black guy lying in the second bed, his eyes closed. There were tubes in his arms, one coming out of his nose, another from under the sheet to a catheter bag hooked to the side of the bed.

“What happened to him?”

“I shot him,” Nicolet said, “after he shot Faron.” Jackie turned from the young guy in the bed to the ATF agent. “How is he?”

“Which one?”

“Tyler. Is he all right?”

“I want you to look at this guy first. You know him?”

Jackie stepped closer. “No.”

“Have you ever seen him before?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Maybe one time with Ordell?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“I wonder,” Nicolet said, “if this is another one of those times you don’t know him but he knows you. Like with Beaumont.”

“Is he Jamaican?”

“No, this one’s a homey,” Nicolet said. “His street name, according to one of the deputies outside, is Cujo. And Cujo, I find out, is fairly well known in criminal court. His driver’s license says he’s Hulon Miller, Jr., but I doubt if there’s anyone outside of his mother calls him Hulon.” Nicolet put his hand on Cujo’s shoulder and gave it a shake. “Isn’t that right? Open your eyes, I want you to look at somebody here’s come to visit you.”

Jackie watched the young guy scowl as Nicolet shook him again and his eyes opened.

“The fuck you doing to me?”

“You in pain, Cujo? I hope to Christ you are,” Nicolet said. “I want you to look at this lady here, tell me who she is.”

She watched Cujo squint at her saying, “Man, how would I know? You the one brought her.”

Nicolet took a handful of Cujo’s hair and yanked his head back, Cujo saying, “Hey, shit, lemme go,” looking into Nicolet’s face.

Jackie watched them. Nicolet seemed calm. He said, “Somebody could come in here and rip your tubes out. Have you thought of that? People die in hospitals, man.” He gave Cujo a pat on the head and turned to her with his deadpan cop expression. Time to leave. In the hallway, walking back toward the nurse’s station, he took hold of her arm above the elbow.

“I shot him in the groin area and it messed up his plumbing, but not too bad. He might need more surgery, they don’t know yet, or he could be out in a couple of days. I have mixed feelings about it. I was hoping he’d die.” Jackie glanced at him and he said, “But I want him alive too, so we can use him.”

“He works for Ordell?”

“We’re pretty sure. I know he sells him guns.”

“What if he won’t tell you anything?”

“He will. He’s twenty years old and has been arrested seventeen times. We can do business with a fella like that. His quality of life is based on how much time he can get out of doing.”

“What about Tyler,” Jackie said, “am I going to see him?”

“Right now. His wife’s with him,” Nicolet said. “We’ll take a peek in there, see how he’s doing. . . . Faron was hit twice. One in the thigh fractured the bone, the femur? The other one took a chip out of his ilium.” Nicolet’s hand slid down to touch her hip. “That bone right there. He’s gonna be all right. The slugs went through the door of his car and were slowed down some. One hit his beeper and got deflected.”

“I tried to call him,” Jackie said.

“That’s right, you want to talk to us.”

“I need my job.”

“We all need something,” Nicolet said. “Let’s wait’ll we see Faron.”

He was in a private room. Nicolet approached the bed saying, “Hey, partner, you sleeping?” Jackie watched his eyes open. Head on the pillow, hair mussed, he seemed younger, barely out of his teens.

“Where’s Cheryl?”

“I think she went to get some coffee.”

“They gave you some good dope, huh?”

Tyler closed and opened his eyes, trying to smile.

“Look who I brought to see you.”

Jackie moved closer to the bed. “How’re you doing?”

Now he was looking at her and managed to smile. “I’m okay.”

It gave her a strange feeling, that she was with friends. Nicolet got her seated and brought over another chair, both with plastic cushions and wooden arms. She kept watching Tyler, his face turned to them with a sleepy look, his right leg raised a few inches beneath the sheet, bare toes sticking out at the foot of the bed. An IV tube ran from his arm to a clear plastic bottle hanging from a stand.

Nicolet leaned on the arm of his chair, close to her.

“Where were we?”

“I need my job.”

And a cigarette. She’d love one right now.

“Well, you know what I want.”

“If I can work I can help you.”

“Or you could fly away.”

“It wouldn’t be worth it. What am I looking at, a few months?”

“A lot more’n that if I take you federal, which I can do.”

Maybe it was okay to smoke in a private room.

“How does your working help me?”

“You want Ordell Robbie, don’t you?”

“Oh, now you know him.”

“You never asked if I did or not.”

“We thought you’d want to surprise us.”

“I deliver money for him.”

“No kidding. Where’s he get it?”

“He sells guns.”

“He told you that or you’ve seen him do it?”

“What I have to have,” Jackie said, “if I’m going to help, is permission to leave the country, and immunity.”

“You don’t want much.”

“Yes or no.”

“It’s possible.”

“I show you how to get him and the dope charge is nolle prossed.”

“You’ve been talking to a lawyer.”

She got her cigarettes and lighter out of her bag.

“Yes or no.”

“You haven’t told me what I get.”

She lit a cigarette.

“Him. You get Ordell.”

“You nervous?”

“Of course I am.”

“I get him with guns?”

“With money from the sale of guns.”

She didn’t know what to use for an ashtray.

Nicolet said, “Put it on the floor,” and said, “Where’s my case? I’m not Customs, I don’t give a shit about the money. I need him with guns. In possession of illegal weapons, stolen or unregistered firearms or selling without a license.” He looked over at the bed. “Isn’t that right, partner? We want us a gift-wrapped gun case.”

Tyler said, “Right,” in a voice they could barely hear.

“He’s sailing on the dope they gave him,” Nicolet said, looking at Jackie again. “I don’t give a shit about the forty-two grams either. I can get you nolle prossed on that, but only if you get me Ordell Robbie with guns. You understand?”

“All I can do is tell you what I know,” Jackie said.

“Like what?”

She hesitated and drew on her cigarette.

“He already has more than a half million dollars sitting in Freeport.”

“He does pretty good.”

“And more coming in, as soon as he makes another delivery.”

“He told you that?”

“He trusts me.”

“That’s good. It can keep you from getting shot.”

“He wants me to help him get the money here.”

“Doesn’t he know you can’t leave the country?”

“I told him I could get permission.”

Nicolet said, “Jesus Christ,” with a grin. “So if we let you, we’ll be helping too, won’t we?”

“You follow the money.”

“I understand that. We’d mark it before you ever left the airport. Tag along and watch you hand it to him. But where’s my gun case?”

“If he’s planning a delivery, you know he has guns.”

“Where?”

“Right here.”

“If I let them go—otherwise he doesn’t get paid—we have some more money, but my evidence is gone.”

Jackie said, “Excuse me a minute,” holding up what was left of her cigarette. “I have to get rid of this.” She crossed the room to the lavatory and dropped the cigarette in the toilet. It gave her less than a minute. She was back in the chair before asking, “What if you let him ship out most of the guns, but kept enough to have a case. Would that work?”

“He doesn’t make the delivery himself?”

“He hasn’t been to Freeport in months.”

Nicolet said, “Well, some more money would come in—”

Jackie cut him off. “It’s not your main interest, I know. But why let the Bahamian government have it? As soon as he’s arrested, won’t they confiscate his funds?”

“If they know where they are.”

“Your getting the money would be like a bonus,” Jackie said. She gave him a weak smile. “I’ll admit I’m trying to make it sound as attractive as I can. . . .”

Nicolet smiled back at her. “You aren’t doing bad either.”

“I just don’t want you to think, you know, all that money and no one to claim it, I’m trying to buy you off. . . .”

“Not for a minute,” Nicolet said.

“To get you to drop the charge against me.”

“I want to,” Nicolet said, “honest. But where’re the guns? I hate to keep coming back to that.”

She thought of having another cigarette, picked up her bag from the floor, then decided to wait.

“Don’t you guys ever work undercover?”

“All the time.”

“What if you approached him as a buyer, looking for some kind of gun you can’t buy in a shop?”

Nicolet glanced at Tyler. “Hey, partner, you hear that?” He said to Jackie, “We’ve been playing with the same idea, only work the sting the other way. Offer him military hardware, something exotic.”

She said, “How do you do that? Just walk up to him?”

“You have to be introduced. And till now we haven’t been able to get next to anybody who knows him.”

She said, “You don’t mean me, do you?”

Nicolet shook his head.

But smiling, she noticed, just a little. Secretive about it. Something in mind that he wasn’t going to tell her.

“It’s your business,” Jackie said. “What do I know.”

14

Saturday morning, lying in the sun in her cutoffs and a stringy bra top, Melanie was thinking that for the past seventeen years she had been lying in the sun just about full time, making a living at it as the tan blond California girl. She was thinking that not many of the guys she stayed with spent time lying in the sun. Frank, the one from Detroit she was with when she met Ordell in the Bahamas, almost fourteen years ago, did. He was an asshole but loved the sun. Film-production guys never did. Or Japanese industrialists or Mideast types on Greek islands. She read about movie stars and beautiful people while lying in the sun, about all these young girls no one had ever heard of suddenly making it. But never read anything about what happened to girls who made a living lying in the sun once the sun had fucking ruined their skin and they were down to living with a colored guy who saw no point in ever lying in the sun. This is where Melanie was at thirty-four, in a lounge chair stained with tanning lotion, out on the balcony. She didn’t hear them come in.

She didn’t know they were in the living room until Ordell said, “Girl? Look who’s here.”

She turned her head to see Ordell and a guy in a light-blue sport coat and yellow shirt holding a fat shopping bag from Burdine’s. Kind of a rough-looking guy, his jacket new, right off the rack. She didn’t recognize him until Ordell said, “It’s Louis, baby.” That got her off the lounge and into the living room, Melanie pinching the sides of the bra top between her fingers to keep it from slipping off her nips. Ordell saying, “She still a fine big girl?”

“Holy shit, it’s true,” Melanie said, “you’re really here. Louis, the last time I saw you . . .”

“He knows,” Ordell said. “Louis don’t want to talk about that time.”

Melanie said, “I can understand why.” She released the bra top, let it slip if it wanted to, going up to Louis to give him a kiss on the mouth and didn’t back away after.

“At the time, I thought you two guys were the biggest fuckups I’d ever met.”

“I just told you,” Ordell said, “he don’t want to talk about it.”

She kept looking at Louis. “You were having fun though, weren’t you? With your box of masks? You would’ve kidnapped me, if you thought anyone’d pay the ransom.”

He smiled, finally.

“Yeah, it was an idea.”

“He told me you were here, I couldn’t wait to see you.”

Ordell said, “What Louis wants to see is my gun movie.”

Melanie made them a vodka tonic and sat down to watch Louis while Ordell showed his movie on TV, a video he’d bought at a gun show, Ordell talking on top of the voice in the movie.

“He gives you mostly a lot of technical shit. Yeah, the Beretta—I think he said PM-12S. It don’t matter, I don’t see too many of those. Listen to it though. Tat-tat-tat-tat. Huh?

“Here the dude is shooting a M-16. You understand you buy these weapons semiautomatic, anybody can. Then I have them converted to full auto and you have a submachine gun. Nothing to it, but costs me a C-note a gun, ’cause it’s the man’s ass he gets caught. Like the man use to make my suppressors? .

“Here, you see one on the MAC-10. Same thing as a silencer. Bup-bup-bup-bup, spittin’ ’em out.

The man was caught with eighty-seven of ’em in his van, the suppressors. He’s looking at thirty years, no bail. I got another guy in Lantana makes ’em for me now. Next trip I deliver an even hundred for thirty grand, my man, three bills apiece.” He said, “Baby, I could use some more ice.”

Melanie picked up his glass and went into the kitchen.

“MAC-10’s the one you see in all the movies. Here, this’s the famous Uzi, beautiful weapon. I can get fifteen hundred apiece for the real thing. Jews over in Israel make them.

“Styer AUG, one of the best. Listen to it. Man, that’s doing the job. Very expensive, comes from Austria. My customers don’t know shit about it so there’s no demand.”

Melanie came back with his drink as Ordell was going “Bop-bop-bop” and swung into “Oubop-bada, ba-diddly-a,” from guns to the Diz. He did it every time he showed the movie, working his ass off being cool. Louis hadn’t said a word since it started. She liked his type, his rough-cut bony features, big hands. . . . Big hands, big schlong.

“AK-47 the best there is. This’s the Chinese one. I pay eight fifty and double my money. Comes with three banana clips and a bayonet, man, for stickin’.”

The phone rang and Ordell said, “Get that for me, will you, baby?”

Melanie said, “You know it’s for you.”

Ordell stared at her because she always got up and did what she was told. She might take her time or kid around sounding grouchy, but never gave it to him straight. This was a first.

He said, “What? I didn’t catch that.”

Louis kept staring at the screen.

Melanie got up, went to the counter that separated the living room from the kitchen, and picked up the phone. She said hello, put the phone down, and said, “It’s for you.” Ordell stared at her a moment before stopping the video and getting up. Melanie sat down on the sofa with Louis.

“It’s boring, isn’t it?”

“I can sit through it once,” Louis said.

“He thinks he knows what he’s talking about.”

Louis said, “Where’s he keep all these guns?”

“He has a place . . .” She stopped.

Ordell came back saying, “Man in New York wants a Bren-10. Gun’s a piece of shit, but it’s the one Sonny Crockett used and that makes it worth twelve fifty. Big piece of iron, ten millimeter.”

Louis said, “You have one?”

“Not yet. I make one phone call and have it the next day, give the boy two hundred.” Ordell pushed a button on his remote box. “Man’s firing a TEC-9 here, cheap spray gun made in South Miami. Cost three eighty retail. I get them for two hundred and sell them for eight. Louis, you adding up these numbers? . . . This TEC-9? They advertise it as being ‘as tough as your toughest customer.’ Say it’s the ‘most popular gun in American crime.’ No lie, they actually say that.”

The phone rang again.

“I know they love it down in Medellín.”

Melanie looked at Ordell as he stopped the tape and they stared at each other a few moments before she got up and went over to the phone. She said hello, put the phone down, and said, “It’s for you.”

Ordell was telling Louis how he’d bought all kinds of military shit a man had picked up after the war in Panama and brought over to the Keys in his boat. Ordell saying it was where he got the M-60 machine guns he’s told Louis about. Saying it was like a garage sale with hand grenades and rockets and shit.

“It’s a woman,” Melanie said.

That shut him up. Ordell went over to the phone.

She said to Louis, “Can I get you anything?”

He raised his empty glass.

She said, “It’s not too early?”

“I’m not working,” Louis said.

“So you went shopping.” She felt the lapel of his jacket between her fingers. Part rayon and something else. “Who picked this out, Ordell?”

“We don’t have the same taste,” Louis said.

“In clothes.”

“Yeah, in clothes.”

She went into the kitchen with his glass. Ordell, a few feet away, was saying into the phone, “They might be watching your place. Lemme think a minute. . . . Yeah, go to the public beach. . . . The one over the Blue Heron bridge. Walk up toward Howard Johnson and I’ll see you around there. . . . Right now if you want. Get in your car.” He hung up and looked across the counter at Melanie.

“I have to go out for a while. Will you be nice to my friend? Try not to assault him? Tear his clothes off? They brand new.”

“I wouldn’t mind sitting out on the balcony,” Louis said. “I could use some sun.”

Melanie said, “You aren’t kidding.”

“You’re nice and brown.”

She said, “You want to see my tan lines?” and sat up straight on the sofa with her back arched, hooked the bra top with her thumbs, and pushed it down from her breasts.

“You’re tan, all right,” Louis said. “You don’t ever let them out in the sun, huh?”

“I used to. I think they look better natural, though, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I think you’re right.” They were big ones. He kept staring at them, seeing little blue veins like rivers on a map. When he raised his glass to take a sip he found there was only ice left.

Melanie said, “Let me fix you up.”

Looking him right in the face rather than at the glass. When she did take it from his hand and went to the kitchen, Louis got up and walked out on the balcony.

The building was kind of tacky, faded light-green paint peeling from the concrete, but had all the view you needed of the Atlantic Ocean, right there out the back door, and a white sandy beach that went clear up to Jacksonville. Tiny people down there. Not too many till he looked toward the public beach, to the left, and saw rows of blue wind shelters, or whatever they were called, more people out of them than in. It was a perfect kind of day, enough wind to raise the surf and blow in a cloud every once in a while to relieve the sun heat. Melanie, next to him now at the concrete rail, said, “Keep watching over that way. You’ll see Ordell walking out to the beach.”

“He’s meeting a woman?”

“That’s what he said.”

“You don’t mind?”

“You’re kidding.”

“I mean if you’re living with him.”

“He doesn’t live here, he stops in. You know Ordell, he does whatever he wants.”

It seemed Melanie did too, still exposing herself handing him the fresh drink.

“You don’t want to burn those babies.”

“I’ll keep my back to the sun,” Melanie said. “Why don’t you stretch out on the lounge, take your shirt off. Your pants too, if you want.”

She held the drink while he got out of the shirt, folded it, laid it on a low metal table, and sat down in the lounge. Melanie saying, “Boy, you really need sun. Where’ve you been?”

“In jail. Two months shy of four years.”

It seemed to brighten her eyes, talking to a convict.

“Really? He didn’t tell me that. What did you do?”

“I robbed a bank.”

That got her moving, throwing her head to the side to get her blond hair out of her face. She had an awful lot of hair. She said, “I’ve thought about you a lot, wondering what you’ve been doing. . . .”

“We only met that one time. Thirteen years ago?”

“Almost fourteen. I know, and when I saw you come in I couldn’t believe it. I recognized you right away.” She glanced over her shoulder

toward the public beach.

He said to her, “What’ve you been up to?”

Now she was looking at him again, the sun hitting him from directly above her head. He had to squint.

“I lie in the sun.”

“That’s all?”

“I read.”

“You get bored?”

“A lot. You want to fuck?”

Louis said, “Sure,” and put his drink on the floor. She was the kind who liked to be on top. She would moan and say Oh God throwing her head back and rubbing her hands in the hair on his chest like it was a washboard, back and forth, or a surface she was scrubbing clean. She had long red nails that scratched him but felt good too. He wanted to get on top and do it right, but the sun got brighter against his closed eyes, red-hot, and it was over before he could get around to it. She hopped off and got into her cutoffs, not wearing any underwear. Louis pulled his pants up, got his drink off the floor, and estimated maybe five minutes had passed.

Melanie said, “Whew, I feel a lot better. How about you?”

Louis nodded. “Yeah, that hit the spot.”

“We can relax now,” she said, “and get caught up.

Ordell said to Jackie, “I can’t hear what you’re saying. Come up here and talk to me.”

She was facing away from him, standing on wet sand, and letting the surf wash up over her bare feet, the wind blowing her hair. Irritating, this woman could bug you; but still fine to look at this morning in her T-shirt, her long brown legs coming out of those white shorts.

She said over her shoulder at him, “Take your shoes off.”

“What do I do with them?” Four-hundreddollar oxblood-colored alligator loafers with tassels. “I put my shoes down, somebody gonna walk off with them.” He had sand inside his shoes and should’ve known better than to say meet him here. Every time he walked out on the beach he got sand in his shoes. Ordell would never go barefoot, though, like Melanie and Sheronda. He didn’t have a reason other than something in his head telling him to keep his shoes on except when he went to bed. He didn’t swim, never went in the water. . . . He said, “Girl, you want to be drug over by the hair?”

Look at her. Wasn’t mad, wasn’t nervous being here. Coming over to him now, hair blowing in her face. Bathers walked by looking at the ground for seashells.

“You think anybody followed you?”

“I don’t know,” Jackie said, “I don’t do this too often.”

Smelling of some kind of powder. Clean and healthy.

“You act like it, you cool.”

“I don’t think it matters if they followed me or not. They know what we’re doing.”

Ordell said, “How’s that again?”

“I told them we’d be meeting.”

“Wait a minute. You told them it’s me?”

“They already know that. They know more about you than I do. The ATF guy kept talking about guns. I said I can’t help you there. . . .”

“But you’d see what you could find out?”

She moved right up on him saying, “Look, the only way I can get permission to fly is if I agree to help them. I have to give them something. Or appear to. But it has to be something they can check, otherwise I could be blowing smoke. So the first thing I give them is what they already know. Do you understand that?”

“What was the next thing?”

“I told them you have money in Freeport and you want me to bring it here. A half million put away and more coming in.”

“You told them all that?”

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Is it true or not?”

“I said around that amount.”

“They know I was delivering for you,” Jackie said. “I mentioned the half million—they’re not that interested in the money, they want you with guns. I said, well, if you want proof he’s getting paid for selling them, let me bring the money in. I’ll make two deliveries, the first one with ten thousand, like a dry run. I said, you watch, see how it works. Then you set up for the next delivery, when I bring in the half million plus.”

“How it works,” Ordell said. “I come by your place and pick it up.”

“I told them you’re very careful. You send someone to meet me, and I never know who it is.”

Ordell said, “That’s an idea. You know it?”

“If you’ll listen,” Jackie said, “you’ll see it’s the whole idea. The first time I do it they’re lurking about, they see me hand the ten thousand to someone.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know, one of your friends.”

“A woman?”

“If you want.”

“Yeah, I think a woman.”

“The next trip, when I come with all the money, it’ll look like I hand it to the same one I did before. . . .”

“But you don’t.”

“No, I give it to someone else, first.”

“And they follow the wrong one,” Ordell said, “thinking she’s bringing it to me, huh?”

“That’s the idea.”

“So we need two people, two women.” Jackie nodded, looking as though she was thinking about it, or remembering what else she’d told them. The woman was cool.

“Where does this happen?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“You have two different flight bags and make a switch.”

“I guess so.”

“You guess?”

“I haven’t worked it out yet.”

“The woman they think has the money but don’t, they gonna come down on.”

“If she doesn’t have it, what’s the problem?”

“Has to be a woman won’t open her mouth.” Ordell paused to look at this idea. “They still know I’m the one it’s coming to.”

“Once you have the money,” Jackie said, “that’s your problem. You’re on your own.”

“You must see a piece of this for yourself.”

“Ten percent. Plus, what we’ve already agreed to. A hundred thousand if I go to jail.”

“But you helping them. They gonna let you off.”

She turned to face the ocean, saying to him, “Maybe.” Her eyes closed now, the breeze blowing her hair. Fine looking.

Ordell said, “If they say they gonna let the first run go through, why don’t we bring the whole load in that time?”

She said, her eyes still closed, “I don’t trust them all that much. Let’s see how it goes.” She pulled her T-shirt off over her head and shook her hair free.

Ordell saw what looked like a swimsuit bra covering her ninnies. Not much showing, but they looked to be fine ones. He said, “I have to do some thinking on this.”

She said, “You should,” and walked out to the hard-packed wet sand. Stood there and then looked around at him. “You know someone named Cujo?”

What was this now? Man, coming out of nowhere.

“What about him?”

“He’s at Good Sam.”

“What you talking about?”

She said, “He was shot yesterday,” and started walking out in the ocean.

“Wait a minute!”

Ordell yelled it at her, but she kept going. He ran down to the hard-packed sand. “Who told you that?” She didn’t hear him, so he moved toward her yelling, “Come back here!” and the surf came in over his alligators before he realized it. Shit. He watched her dive into a wave. Watched her come up and dive into another one, her butt in the white shorts mooning him.

Melanie had the vodka on the coffee table now, close by with a bowl of ice, while Louis finished up a cigar-size joint she’d rolled Jamaica-style, Louis sucking away in a cloud of white smoke. This guy appreciated everything you gave him. Five vodkas so far, with the dope, but very attentive. Head against the sofa cushion, staring at her through deep, dark enlarged pupils as she spoke about their pal Ordell:

How he’d looked at the cocaine business at one time and found it too competitive, all the corners taken; try to move on one you’d get shot. Guns, though, you didn’t need a franchise, you could sell guns wherever there was a demand. She told how Ordell saw himself as an international arms dealer when, come on, the only people he sold to were dopers, Jamaican crazies, and now the cartel guys from Medellín.

“Making out though. He’s doing all right,” Louis said, raising his glass in slow motion.

“Well, so far he is,” Melanie said, with some doubt in her tone. She had washed up and put a shirt on, the romance part over for the time being. She said, “You have to admit he’s not too bright.”

Louis said he wouldn’t go so far as to say that.

Melanie said, “Louis,” in her quietest serious tone, “he puts his fingers on the words when he reads. He moves his lips. Let’s say he’s streetwise. But that doesn’t stop him from being a fuckup.”

Louis said, “If you’re talking about the kidnapping, I was in it too, you know.”

“You weren’t in Freeport,” Melanie said, “were you, when my provider at the time was told to pay up or he’d never see his wife again? And he’d already filed for divorce, and if he did-n’t ever see her again it would save him a fortune?” Melanie smiled at Louis. “No, you weren’t. They made a movie that was something like it. I’ve forgotten the title. Danny DeVito’s the husband, Bette Midler gets kidnapped?”

Louis seemed to think about it and shook his head.

“We happened to see it on TV, not more than a month ago. Ordell’s watching, he goes, ‘What is this shit? You believe it?’I said, ‘Hey, if it does-n’t even work as a movie . . .’ Now he’s talking about it again—I mean the real kidnapping. You know why? Because of this Nazi freak he met.”

“Big Guy,” Louis said. “I saw him.”

“At the white-power rally. That’s why he brought you there,” Melanie said, “to see him.”

Louis nodded. “ ’cause he looks like Richard.”

She kept staring at Louis until he said, “What?”

“I understand you and Richard didn’t get along,” Melanie said. “You wanted to kill him.” She watched Louis shrug, it seemed with an effort. “Richard raped the woman you were holding. . . .”

“He tried to.”

“You liked her, didn’t you?”

“She was nice.”

“You got her out before the cops landed on Richard. Took her to your apartment?” She waited but he didn’t confirm or deny. “Ordell thought you had something going there.”

Louis shook his head.