Rum Punch

“It would’ve been pretty weird if you did.” Melanie watched Louis sip his drink and lower the glass to rest on his thigh. “Well, Ordell has something going. He must’ve told you.”

Louis said, “About fate bringing us all together?”

Melanie slid her shoulder along the sofa toward him. “Fate, my ass. He’s bringing you in for one reason. When he goes after the Nazi freak and all his guns, somebody’s gonna have to kill him. He wants you to do it.”

Louis had his head turned, resting against the cushion, close enough to touch. He stared at her forever before he said, “Why?”

“Who does Big Guy look like? Richard. Someone you wanted to kill.”

“I don’t know.”

“Ordell believes it, he told me. He goes, ‘Louis, he get out there and see Big Guy, he gonna see Richard and want to shoot him when I say to.’ ” Louis smiled and she said, “Do I sound like him?”

“Yeah, that was good.”

“If you go, don’t turn your back on him,” Melanie said, moving closer to him, staring into those giant pupils, “or he’ll try to leave you there. I mean dead, Louis, the gun in your hand and he’s off the hook.”

“He told you that?”

“It’s the way he thinks now, he’s changed. The other night he killed a man who worked for him.”

“Why?”

“Ask him.”

“I ought to get out of here. Is that what you’re saying?”

Melanie made a face, for a moment in pain. She said, “Oh, no . . . Baby, I want you to stick around. Use him before he uses you, and take what you want.” She said, “I can’t imagine a guy who robs banks having trouble with that.”

She watched him grin, not sure what it meant until he said, “You’re serious,” and she grinned back at him, close enough to smell the weed on his breath.

“You bet I am. What’s he ever done for us?”

Louis seemed to think about it a moment.

“I guess not much.”

“Oh, man,” Melanie said. “You know how long I’ve been waiting for this?”

15

Gallery Renee was located on the street level of The Gardens Mall, in a dim area between Sears and Bloomingdale’s: a deep rectangular space, high ceiling, white walls and turquoise trim that picked up the mall’s color motif.

Twelve thirty Sunday afternoon Max was looking through showroom glass at the gallery’s bare walls, a few paintings on the floor against the walls, and at three black metal containers spaced down the length of the room. He thought of Grecian urns, then realized what they were: the eight hundred twenty dollars’ worth of olive pots Renee had called about last Monday, wanting him to drop everything and bring a check. There they were, COD, so she’d paid for them. Black rusted metal jars about three feet high. One near the entrance. He moved that way and saw the sign on the glass, SORRY, CLOSED TODAY. Renee’s work, the ornate capital letters, the words underlined three times. Closed—but when he pushed on the brass handle the door opened. Max entered, pausing to look in the olive pot standing close by. Cigarette butts, gum wrappers, a Styrofoam cup . . . A skinny young Latin-looking guy with hair to his shoulders was coming out from the back with a painting, a big one. He lowered it to lean against a library table in the middle of the floor and looked at Max.

“Can you read? We close today.”

Now he was going back, through a hall at the rear to a door that was open and showed daylight.

Max walked up to the painting: six or seven feet by five and greenish, different shades of thick green paint with touches of red, yellowish tan, black . . . He had no idea what it was. Maybe a jungle and those were green figures coming out, emerging from the growth; it was hard to tell. More paintings were propped against the other side of the table. Paintings coming down, the ones on the floor, the new ones going up, Renee getting ready for one of her cheese-and-wine shows. She could be in back, in her office. Max looked that way and saw the young Latin guy coming with another canvas.

He said to Max, “I told you we close,” and placed the canvas against the first one he’d brought out. Rising, he tossed his hair from his face. Stringy, still more than he needed. He looked familiar . . .

Saying to Max standing there, “What’s your problem?”

And Max almost smiled. “I’m Renee’s husband.”

The guy said, “Yeah? . . .” and waited.

“Where is she, in back?”

“She getting me something to eat.”

“You work here?”

Max could see the little asshole didn’t like that. He said, “No, I don’t work here.” Turned and went back to the rear of the gallery.

Max walked around the table to find more green paintings. He stooped to look at the signature, a black scrawl.

David de la Villa.

The guy had to be Da-veed, the Cuban busboy from Chuck and Harold’s Renee had said weeks ago was about to be discovered. Coming back now with another canvas . . .

About five nine and weighed maybe one thirty in his black T-shirt and skinny black jeans.

Max said, “You’re David, huh?” with the right pronunciation. “I was wondering what this’s supposed to be.” Looking at the painting in front of him.

The Cuban busboy said, “It’s what it is, not what it’s supposed to be.” He opened a drawer in the table, brought out sheets of paper with DAVID DE LA VILLA bold across the top, and handed one to Max. A press release. Name, born 1965 in Hialeah . . . He said, “If you don’t know anything, read the part what the newspaper says, The Post.”

Max found it, a quote underlined. He read aloud, “ ‘. . . de la Villa has rendered a vivid collage of his life, albeit in metaphor . . . he paints with a wry and youthful gallantry.’ ” Max looked at the painting again. “Yeah, now I see the youthful gallantry. I wouldn’t say it’s especially wry though. What do you paint with, a shovel?”

“I see you don’t know shit,” the Cuban busboy said.

Max might admit that, but not today, pretty sure now why the busboy looked familiar. The diamond stud in his ear, his hair, his attitude, his little pussy mustache. Max said, “Those are people in there?”

“From my life,” the busboy said, “looking for ways to escape.”

Max moved in closer. “You have something pasted on there, huh? I thought it was all paint, it looks like leaves.”

“From the sugar cane. I show life as a cane field that has trapped us and we have to break out.”

“There’s no cane in Hialeah I know of. If this is your life,” Max said, looking from the canvas to the busboy, “how come I don’t see anything about breaking in? Didn’t I write you a bond a few years ago? You were up on a burglary charge?”

“You crazy.”

“Aren’t you David Ortega?”

“You see my name there, read it.”

“What, de la Villa? That’s your artsy name. You were David Ortega when I knew you. You copped to possession of stolen property and did about six months.”

David Ortega de la Villa turned, started walking away.

Max said after him, “You sell any of this shit?”

The busboy stopped and turned around.

“Now I see why she leave you.”

“You selling or not? I’d like to know how my wife’s doing, if anything.”

“Now I see why she don’t talk to you. Already she sell five in like two weeks. Treinta—thirtyfive hundred each one.”

“You’re kidding. What’s Renee get?”

“That’s her business, not yours.”

Max kept his mouth shut. Her business but his money going into it to pay the rent, the phone—at least he hadn’t paid for the olive jars, three-foot iron ashtrays it would take two guys to lift and empty. He wanted her to walk in right now with Da-veed’s lunch—he’d march her into the office and tell her that was it, no more, she was on her own. He was quitting the bail-bond business and filing for divorce.

He looked at the painting in front of him.

Maybe not spring the divorce on her just yet.

But definitely tell her he wasn’t paying any more of her bills.

Da-veed, the home-invading artist, said, “You see this one?” coming over to a canvas. “Look at it good. Tell me is someone in there you know.”

“I don’t see anybody in there.”

“In this part, right here.”

Max stared and a figure began to appear. A boy? He moved closer, squinting. A boy’s short hair but a woman, dots to indicate her exposed breasts, a tiny dark smudge that might be her bush. A pale-green woman in the dark-green leaves pasted down and painted over.

“Is that supposed to be Renee?”

“Man, you don’t reco’nize your own wife? Yeah, she pose for me naked like that all the time.”

It was hard to imagine. Renee used to go in the closet to put her nightgown on. How could this little asshole get her to take her clothes off? But wait a minute . . . Max said, “What’s Renee doing in a cane field?”

“The field is a symbol of her oppression, what she desires to escape,” the busboy said. “Her years of bondage to you. No life of her own.”

Max said, “Bondage?”

And stopped. What was he going to do, rehash twenty-seven years of married life with this kid? He had a better idea and said, “Do me a favor, will you?”

The busboy said, “What?” suspicious.

“Put me in there, coming out of the cane.”

Ordell loved this mall, the biggest, jazziest one he’d ever been in, done all modern with trees, with fountains, skylight domes way up there, the best stores . . . They had Saks Fifth Avenue, where Ordell liked to buy his clothes; Macy’s; Bloomie’s; Burdine’s; Sears, where Louis should go. They had up on the second level all different ethnic café counters where you ordered your food and brought it out to an area where you could sit down if you could find a place. Crowded every day now in the season. Jackie said it might be the place to make the delivery. Maybe even make the switch and the delivery right there; it was busy and confusing enough the way the area was laid out, Jackie said like a maze.

She was still at the table having some kind of Greek shit in that pita bread. He hadn’t seen anything he wanted to eat and they’d finished their business, so he was leaving—once he called the hospital, learn how Cujo was doing. The boy didn’t have a phone in his room, you had to ask about him and get somebody to tell you. The man that came on the phone yesterday kept wanting to know who this was calling; so he’d tried again last night and the nurse said Hulon was doing fine—who?—and going home, it looked like, in a few days. She said “home” but meant jail, or else didn’t know any better. In the paper it said Hulon Miller, Jr., had “gunned down” the FDLE officer before he was “shot and apprehended” by a federal agent. The time and location told Ordell they were on his ass and now he’d have another one could be telling stories on him, Cujo looking to cop. What he needed to do was speak to Cujo before they rode him out to Gun Club. Make a visit to the hospital.

Ordell had a mall guide with a map in it that showed telephones on the lower level, back in a corner by Burdine’s. He started across the big open area in the center of the mall, where you had a view of the fountain and the pools, headed for the down escalator, and stopped. Ordell turned around quick and crossed back to duck inside Barnie’s Coffee & Tea Company.

Who was that coming off the up escalator but the bail bondsman, Max Cherry, Max heading toward the food counters now.

Ordell, watching from Barnie’s, began to think: Wait now. Why had he ducked in here to hide from Max? It wasn’t until this moment, stopping to look at what he was doing, he thought of the Rolex watch—that was it—and the possibility Max had found out what it was worth. It was instinct had made him duck in here. Something watching over his ass while his head was someplace else. He said to himself, You see that? Man, you have a gift.

Max walked past the food counters lined with customers: Olympus, Café Manet, Nate’s Deli, China Town, the Italian Eatery, wondering which one would appeal to Renee, always a finicky eater. Didn’t like anything to touch on her plate, not even peas and mashed potatoes. Chick-fil-A, Gourmet Grill, Nacos Tacos . . . that could be it, something spicy for the busboy. But she wasn’t at Nacos Tacos or at Stuff ‘N Turkey, not at any of the counters. Max turned to the eating area in the semicircle of cafés: rings of tables around and beneath an eight-pillared gazebo the size of a house with a fountain in the center. Areas were sectioned off by dividers and planters; aisles seemed to go around in circles. He moved a few steps in and began looking at one section at a time, his gaze inching along, thinking it was too crowded to pick anyone out. . . .

And saw her within a few seconds.

Renee sitting by herself: that skullcap of dark hair, turquoise loop earrings, a dark blue dress off one shoulder, Renee picking at a salad, taking dainty bites, a carryout container on the table . . .

Close by, almost next to him, a woman’s voice said, “Max?” and he knew it was Jackie before he turned and saw her looking up at him, Jackie with her cigarette and a cup of coffee, finished with her lunch. She said, “What’re you up to?” with that kind of shy smile.

“I walked right past you.”

“I know,” Jackie said, “ignoring me. You were looking for someone.”

Not anymore. He did glance over as he sat down and moved plastic lunch dishes aside to lean over his arms on the table, Max out of Renee’s line of sight if she happened to look this way. He said, “You clean your plate,” and watched her raise her cigarette. “How’re you doing?”

“Not bad.”

Moving her shoulders in the light cotton sweater she wore without a blouse, the sleeves pushed up.

“What’re you, a bag lady?”

On the bench next to her she had what looked like an assortment of shopping bags folded and stuffed inside a black Saks Fifth Avenue bag.

She said, “I go back to work tomorrow,” as if that explained the bags.

It didn’t matter. He said, “You talked them into it.”

“They seem to like the idea.”

“Bring the money in and they follow it?”

“Yeah, but I’m going to dress it up. Put the money in a shopping bag and hand it to someone I meet here.”

“You don’t actually do it that way?”

“He always picked it up at my place,” Jackie said. “But now with ATF involved I want to stage it, you know, make it look more intriguing, like we know what we’re doing. Then it’s up to Ray to follow the shopping bag. Nicolet, the ATF guy.”

“Make the delivery,” Max said, “somewhere in the mall?”

“I think right around here.”

“Sit down, leave the bag under the table?”

“Something like that.”

“Will Ordell go for it?”

“I’m helping him bring his money in,” Jackie said. “He loves the idea.”

With that gleam. Serious business but having fun. It was strange, both of them smiling a little, treating it lightly until Max said, “I heard about Tyler,” and her expression changed. “I saw it in the paper and called a guy I know in the State Attorney’s Office. He said he’s gonna be okay.”

“Yeah, Tyler’s not a bad guy, I like him,” Jackie said. “Only now I’m dealing strictly with Nicolet. He likes the idea of picking up the money, but says he has to get Ordell with guns.”

“I won’t say I told you,” Max said.

“He says he doesn’t care about the money, but I think he likes it more than he lets on—if you know what I mean.”

He watched Jackie draw on her cigarette and let out a slow stream of smoke. As she raised her coffee cup Max leaned back to check on Renee—still there, nibbling—and came forward again to the table.

Jackie was watching him.

“You’re meeting someone.”

Max shook his head. “My wife’s sitting over there.”

“You were looking for her.”

“Yeah, but I hadn’t made plans to meet her.”

Jackie leaned back against the bench, looking that way.

“Where is she?”

“Three tables over, in the blue dress.”

He watched Jackie looking at his wife.

“She’s quite petite.”

“Yes, she is.”

“Don’t you want to talk to her?”

“It can wait.” Jackie was looking at him again and he said, “I called you last night.”

“I know, I got your message. Ray wanted to have dinner, to talk about the sting we’re plotting. That’s what he calls it, a sting. He’s being nice to me,” Jackie said, leaning in now to rest her arms on the table. “I can’t help wondering if he’s interested in the money for himself.”

“Because he’s nice to you?”

“Setting me up to make a proposition.”

“Has he hinted around?”

“Not really.”

“Then why do you think he might want it?”

“I knew a narcotics cop one time,” Jackie said. “He told me that in a raid, ‘the whole package never gets back to the station.’ His exact words.”

“You know some interesting people,” Max said.

“I believe him, because later on he was suspended and forced to retire.”

“Has Nicolet told you any stories like that?”

She shook her head. “He tries to act cool.”

“There’s no harm in that. He’s a young guy, having fun being a cop. He might cut a few corners to get a conviction—from what I’ve heard about him—but I can’t see him walking off with that kind of money, it’s evidence.”

She said, “What about you, Max, if you had the chance?”

“If I was in Nicolet’s place?”

She might’ve meant that and changed her mind, shaking her head. “No, I mean you, right now. Not if you were someone else.”

“If I saw a way to walk off with a shopping bag full of money, would I take it?”

She said, “You know where it came from. It’s not like it’s someone’s life savings. It wouldn’t even be missed.”

Watching him, waiting for an answer.

She was serious.

“I might be tempted,” Max said. “Especially now, since I’m getting out of the bail-bond business.”

That stopped her, no question about it.

“I have to stand behind all my active bonds, but I’m not writing any new ones.”

She eased back against the bench. “Why?”

“I’m tired of doing it. . . . I’m in a bad situation with the insurance company I represent. The only way to get out of it is quit the business.”

“When did you decide?”

“It’s been coming. I finally made up my mind—I guess it was Thursday.”

“The day you got me out of jail.”

“That night I went to pick up a guy. Sat there in the dark with a stun gun, the place smelling of mildew . . .”

“After we were together,” Jackie said.

Max paused. “Yeah . . . I thought, What am I doing here? Nineteen years of this. I made up my mind to quit the business. And while I was at it, file for divorce.”

She was staring at him but didn’t seem surprised now.

“All of a sudden, after twenty-seven years?”

“You look back,” Max said, “you can’t believe that much time went by. You look ahead and you think, shit, if it goes that fast I better do something with it.”

“Have you told Renee?”

“That’s why I came here.”

Jackie looked over that way. “She’s leaving.”

“I’ll get to it,” Max said. He saw Renee in her off-one-shoulder dark blue gown that reached almost to the floor standing by the table, picking up her bag and the carryout container for the busboy.

“She looks good,” Jackie said. “How old is she?”

“Fifty-three.”

“Stays in shape.”

“She’s her main concern,” Max said.

“Seems very confident. The way she walks, holds her head.”

“Is she gone?”

Jackie turned to him again, nodding. “You’re afraid of her, aren’t you?”

“I think it’s more, I never really got to know her. We didn’t talk much, all those years. You know when you’re with someone and you have to try and think of something to say?” Jackie was nodding. “That’s how it was. What she’s doing now, age fifty-three, Renee poses nude for a Cuban busboy who paints cane fields and she sells them for thirty-five hundred a copy. So she’s all set.”

“Which bothers you more,” Jackie said, “her posing nude or making money?”

“The guy bothers me, the painter,” Max said. “He irritates the hell out of me, but so what? I outweigh him fifty pounds, I hit him it’s assault with intent, a three-thousand-dollar bond. Renee, what she’s doing I think is great. She’s finally got something going and I don’t have to feel guilty trying to understand her.”

“You don’t have to support her either,” Jackie said.

“There’s that too. She’s working and I’m not.”

“Then why don’t you sound happy about it?”

“Right now I’m relieved, that’s enough.”

Jackie lit a cigarette before she looked at him again. “I’m not sure you answered my question.”

“Which one?”

“If you had the chance, unemployed now, to walk off with a half million plus, would you do it?”

“I said I’d be tempted.” She kept staring at him and he said, “You know I was kidding.”

“Were you?”

Max said, “Don’t even think about it, okay? You could get killed, you could get sent to prison. . . .”

He stopped because she had that look in her eyes again, that gleam with the smile in it that turned him on.

She said, “But what if there was a way to do it?”

They had told Ordell on the phone, third floor east wing and the room number. Half-past eleven Sunday night, all he had to do was wait in the stairwell for the deputy to get tired sitting by himself in the hall and go up to the nurse’s counter to stretch his legs and visit. That’s how easy it was to get to see Cujo. Ordell walked into the semidark room wearing a dark suit and necktie, carrying a box of peanut brittle he set on the bedside stand. He pulled the pillow out from under Cujo’s head, not wasting any time.

Cujo said, “Hey, shit,” coming awake cranky and with bad breath.

Ordell said, “Hey, my man,” laying the pillow on Cujo’s chest, “how you doing? You making it? They treating you all right?”

Cujo said, “What you want?” squinting and scowling at him, mean and grouchy waking up from his sleep.

Ordell said, “Man, they ought to give you something for your breath,” moving the pillow up to Cujo’s chin. “Close your eyes, I be out of here in a minute.” Ordell took a good hold on the pillow with both hands, started to lift it, and the overhead light came on in the room.

Now a fat nurse helper was right there at the foot of the bed saying, “What’re you doing in here?”

Ordell glanced around to see the deputy in here too, an older guy but big, with a belly on him.

“I was fixing his pillow,” Ordell said, “fluf-fin’ it for him so he be comfortable. Turning it to the cool side.”

The fat nurse helper said, “You’re not supposed to be in here. It’s way past visiting hours.” The fat deputy next to her now, watching him with that dumb-eyed no-shit deputy look.

Ordell held his hands out to the sides, resigned.

“I told his mama I’d come visit. She use to keep house for my mama ’fore my mama passed on. But see, I’m Seven-Day Adventis’ and I was out door-to-door collecting for the church all day. You know, for the poor people ain’t got nothing to eat?”

The fat nurse helper said, “Well, you’re not suppose to be in here.”

And the fat deputy said, “Get your ass out, now.”

So Ordell wasn’t able to settle his mind about Cujo. Shit. He left knowing he had a problem on his hands.

16

Sunday evening, early, Ordell had brought Louis to his house on 30th Street in West Palm, introduced him to Simone, telling her to take good care of Louis, he would be staying here a few days. Ordell showed Louis the guest room, the Beretta nine in the bureau drawer he was to bring along tomorrow, and left saying he had to visit a friend in the hospital, “See you in the morning.”

That Sunday evening was an experience.

Louis thought the colored woman might be Ordell’s aunt. Simone asked could she fix him something to eat. Louis said no thanks. She went in her room and Louis sat down to watch Murder, She Wrote thinking Simone was in there for the night, older people generally going to bed early. A Movie of the Week came on next.

About half-past nine a different woman came out of the bedroom. The one who’d gone in looked like Aunt Jemima in an old housecoat and a scarf tied around her head. The one that came out was twenty years younger, had shiny black hair done in a swirl, dangle earrings, blue around her eyes and big fake lashes, a skintight silver dress and backless heels to match. She said to Louis she understood he was from Detroit. She said she used to know plenty of white boys there she’d meet at the Flame Showbar, at Sportrees, later on at the Watts Club Mozambique, and take them to after-hours places after. She said to Louis, “You do any of that?” He said sometimes he did, he had met Ordell at the Watts Club. Simone said, “Baby, I’m gonna take you home.” The Movie of the Week went off and Motown came on.

Monday morning Louis left the house early, before Simone was up, and had his breakfast at a Denny’s. They were meeting in the parking lot of the Hilton on Southern Boulevard just off the Interstate. Louis arrived to see Ordell in blue coveralls standing by a van parked next to his Mercedes, having a smoke. Melanie was in there listening to the radio, moving her head to the beat. Ordell came over to Louis’s car saying, “Lemme see what you have you so proud of.”

Louis opened the trunk and showed Ordell his shiny guns, the Colt Python and the Mossberg 500 with the laser scope. The Beretta from the bureau drawer was in there too. Ordell

said, “Bring it.” Louis took the Beretta and stuck it in his waist, under his sport shirt hanging out. “And that Star Trek shotgun,” Ordell said. “Big Guy gets a kick out of that kind of shit.”

Louis brought it out in a fold of newspaper, closed the trunk, and followed Ordell over to the back of the van. Ordell turned to him saying, “Simone get you to bone her?”

Innocent, then starting to grin, and Louis knew he’d been waiting all that time looking at guns to ask the question.

“She put on a show,” Louis said. “Yes, she does.” “Did ‘Baby Love’ with all the gestures.” “The choreography,” Ordell said. “You swear

it’s the Supremes, huh?” “It was the Supremes, on the record.” “I mean the way the woman moves.” “She did ‘Stop! In the Name of Love.’ ” “ ‘Before you break my heart,’ ” Ordell said. “She did Gladys Knight.” “With the Pips or without? She does it both ways.” “With the Pips.” “She do Syreeta Wright?” “I don’t know. She did some I never heard of.” “Syreeta was married to Stevie Wonder.” “She was great,” Louis said. “I mean she had

every little move down.”

“She get you to bone her?”

“She wanted me to come in her room.”

“Yeah?”

“Said she needed her back rubbed, from all that moving around.”

“She like her feet rubbed too.”

“I told her, man, I was worn out and had a headache.”

“Yeah?”

“Middle of the night I wake up? Simone’s in bed with me. She says, ‘How’s your headache, baby? Is it gone?’ ”

Ordell said, “You boned her, didn’t you?”

The rear door of the van came open and a black kid wearing a black bandanna stuck his head out saying, “Bread, we sitting here—man, we going or not?”

“Right now,” Ordell said. “Get back in there,” and opened the door enough for Louis to see three black kids crouched in there with guns—AK-47s, they looked like—staring back at him. Ordell said, “This is Louis, the famous bank robber from Detroit I mention to you? Louis, these two cats are Sweatman and Snow, and the mean-looking motherfucker that can’t wait is Zulu. They call me Bread, huh? Short for Whitebread. Hey, you all think up a name for my man Louis here,” Ordell said and slammed the door closed. He said to Louis, “They love me. You know why? ‘cause I’m from Dee-troit and that is a no-shit recommendation, man. You from there with these homeboys, you it.”

Melanie came out of the Mercedes in her cutoffs and a halter top, a frayed knit bag hanging from her shoulder. She said, “Hi, Louis,” without making eye contact and stood with her arms folded while Ordell said he and Louis would go in the van with the jack-boys and Melanie would follow them in Louis’s Toyota. Louis asked why his car? Ordell said, for coming back. Like that explained it. Louis said, “Whatever you say.”

On the way out Southern Boulevard toward Loxahatchee, Ordell talked about the jackboys loud enough for them to hear him in back, calling them crazy motherfuckers and asking if they had ever heard of pistolocos? They were the jackboys of Colombia. Ordell looked at the rearview mirror telling them, “You get two million pesos to shoot a government man down there in Medellín, the drug capital of the world. That’s two hundred grand American the druggies pay you. Get you high on some mean shit they call basuco, made from coke but takes hold of you worse. You think two hundred thousand, man, you can buy your mother a condo on the fucking beach. Do another government man and buy yourself a car like mine and all the clothes you want. Only you know what you got down there besides the druggies and the pistolocos? You got all kind of hoods and punks shooting each other. You got terrorists—you know what I’m saying, terrorists? You got them and the others I mentioned and you got death-squad guys too, all going around killing each other. You know how many got shot dead or died of a violent death in that one town last year, Medellín? Over five thousand and most of them guys your age, just starting their young life. You hear what I’m saying? That’s ten times more even than get taken out in Detroit any given year— tell you the kind of place it is. You see how lucky you are to live here in the U.S.A.?”

Louis would glance over his shoulder at the jack-boys, three big kids, their heads and shoulders moving with the motion of the van. Quiet, serious in the gloom back there. Like migrants being taken to work, except for the Chinese machine guns they held.

Ordell didn’t say a word about their business this morning until, a few miles past the Loxahatchee Road Prison, he turned off Southern to head through open scrub and they were by themselves out here. A dark line way off marked the beginning of the cane fields, a half million acres from here down into the Everglades. Ordell looked at his rearview mirror.

“We getting close now. Turn on this dirt road. . . . The man don’t make it easy to get to his place.”

A road lined with shaggy Australian pines on the other side of a worn-out canal. A few miles of dust and stones hitting the underside of the van and Louis could see a farm layout through the trees: neat-looking red-brick ranch, barn with pens and a tractor shed to one side, a Quonset hut off on the other side of the house. Louis hung on tight as Ordell cranked the wheel hard and the van bounced in and out of the ruts.

“You see that turtle? Shit, I missed him,” Ordell said and glanced at his mirror. “You all take a look right now quick, see what we coming to. We cross the bridge we on the man’s property.”

The van rumbled over loose planks spanning the canal and Ordell looked at the mirror again.

“See that big tin building? That’s call a Quonset, where the man keeps all his guns and military shit. Has a M-60 machine gun in there mounted on a jeep we gonna tear off. Has hand grenades. Has what they call a L-AW rocket launcher, has a bunch of them. It stands for Light Antitank Weapon. Has the rocket already inside and the instructions printed on how to shoot it and then throw it away, it’s a disposable weapon. Government man comes driving along in his car down in Medellín—bam, he’s gone.”

Ordell said, “I expect we gonna find the man by hisself. His wife, I heard she got tired standing inspection, dusting all his guns and shit, and left him.” Turning into a gravel drive then, Ordell said, “No, it looks like the man’s got company this morning. Couple of bikes . . .”

Parked behind a pickup truck in the drive, the bikes becoming Harleys as the van crept up behind them.

“They over at the gun range,” Ordell said. “See? Up back of the tin building?”

A long counter with a flat roof over it, about fifty yards from the house. Two men stood there. Off beyond them were targets on posts and a high ridge of earth, like a levee.

“Couple of Bikers for Racism,” Ordell said, “practicing up to shoot us African-Americans when we go to move in their neighborhood and take our pleasure with their women. You all get down now. Me and Louis, once we get out you gonna be quiet as mice, you dig? No looking out the window. You hear us in the house commence to shoot, that’s your signal. You go take out the bikers straightaway. That’s your assignment on this operation, the Turkey Shoot, huh? Listen.”

They could hear gunfire now coming from the range, thin popping sounds in the open, shots spaced apart.

“Firing pistols,” Ordell said. “They have these targets with ugly-looking Neegroes painted on them they shoot at. Nigger coming at them with a machete—you know this brother’s gonna get shot. Don’t have a gun on him, he deserves to, being that dumb.”

Louis looked over his shoulder again. The jackboys were doing coke now, digging it from a baggie with teaspoons, each one with his own, sniffing and wiping their noses on their sleeves.

“Got our own pistolocos,” Ordell said, glancing at the mirror again, then reached over to take what looked like an Army Colt .45 automatic from the glove box. He racked the slide and stuck the gun inside his coveralls, saying to Louis, “You ready? Let’s shake and bake.”

Louis got out with the Mossberg in the fold of newspaper. He adjusted the Beretta, digging into his groin, then pulled it out of his waist—the hell with it—laid it on the seat, and closed the door. Louis walked around the front of the van to join Ordell. He glanced back to see Melanie getting out of the Toyota parked behind them, hanging the knit bag from her shoulder. Melanie coming up to them now, not looking too happy.

“There he is,” Ordell said.

He raised his hand to wave and Louis looked toward the house.

“How you doing, Big Guy?”

Still grinning, Ordell lowered his voice to say, “Look at the motherfucker. Thinks he’s Adolf Hitler.”

The man stood on his stoop across half the front yard from them, dressed in tan Desert Storm camouflage pants and a GI khaki T-shirt, paratrooper boots planted two feet apart, hands on his hips.

Melanie said, “If you think I’m gonna fuck that bozo, you’re out of your mind.”

Ordell turned his head. “Be cool. Just bring the man on’s all you have to do.”

Then turned his head back saying, “Look who I brought to see you, Gerald. ‘Member I told you about Melanie? Here she is, man.”

Gerald had animal heads with horns and antlers mounted on his knotty pine walls. He had framed color prints of different fish. He had brown leather furniture, a wagon-wheel chandelier, crossed muskets over his fireplace, trophies sitting on glass-front gun cabinets, a rack of shotguns . . . Nothing in the room with a woman’s touch.

Ordell was telling Gerald how anxious his friends were to see his place, hoping he didn’t mind their dropping in like this, while Melanie poked around looking at things, bending over, sticking her butt out, and Gerald’s eyes would follow her cutoffs.

Louis stood holding the Mossberg in the fold of newspaper, looking around, then moved to a window to check on the two bikers. Still out there making popping sounds.

Gerald got rid of the cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth, dropping it in an ashtray made from a shell casing, sucked in his gut, and strolled over to tell Melanie about the fish prints. All the different kinds you could take out of Lake Okeechobee. Bullhead, bluegill, channel cat . . . Gerald taking peeks at Melanie’s bare shoulder and down the front of her halter, his hands shoved into his back pockets, as if to keep them from touching her. Timid, Louis thought, for a man his size. Gerald turned to Ordell saying they were going out to the kitchen. “You and him make yourselves at home.”

Ordell picked up a hand grenade that was now a cigarette lighter and came over to Louis flicking it at him.

“Big Guy’s something, huh?”

Louis turned from the window. “What’d you tell him about Melanie?”

“I said she gets off looking at guns. It’s the truth.”

“So he’ll try and nail her.”

“I ‘magine. You want to protect her, go in there and shoot him.”

They were eye to eye.

Louis said, “You know you’re gonna have to.”

Ordell said, “Somebody is.”

They came back in the room, Melanie holding a mug of coffee, the knit bag still hanging from her shoulder. Gerald said, “Why don’t you boys go out to the range? I’ll loan you a couple pistols.”

Ordell said to Louis, “Show Big Guy your piece.” Louis took the Mossberg from the fold of newspaper and held it out. He watched Gerald looking at it, not too impressed.

“It’s got a laser scope on it,” Ordell said. Gerald came over to take the gun from Louis and walked back with it to where Melanie stood with her coffee. He said to her, “Can I be frank? I wouldn’t hang this in my toilet,” checking it out now, racking the pump. He aimed, squeezed the grip, and put the red laser dot between the eyes of a white-tailed buck on his wall. “You still have to hold your weapon against recoil. That red dot don’t mean shit, if you’ll pardon my French,” he said to Melanie. “I’ll go against him with an old single-shot Remington I got as a kid and outscore him any time he wants. Put some cash on the line, make it interesting.” He tossed the Mossberg back to Louis saying, “Careful now, you got a load in the chamber.” Shaking his head then to say, “What’s a weapon like that for, all chromed up? I sure as hell wouldn’t take it into combat.”

Louis said, “It ain’t bad for holding up liquor stores.”

Melanie rolled her eyes at him.

Gerald shrugged. “That’s about its speed.”

Louis, at first, had thought the guy was suspicious, even the way he looked at Melanie. What were these people doing here? Or he was annoyed for the same reason and because of it barely opened his mouth. The way Louis saw him now, the guy liked being on the muscle; he had to be challenged in some way to get his head to work. Gerald was about fifty or so; he could suck in his stomach but not that big butt on him. He believed no doubt he looked slick in his Desert Storm camies and was too confident to know he had a narrow brain in his crewcut head. This type pissed Louis off. The convict in him liked the feeling of heat he got looking at the guy, knowing he could control it and mess with him.

Louis, figuring the guy’s age, said, “Gerald, you ever been to war?”

“I been to tactical encampments,” Gerald said, “in Georgia and here in Florida. Going way back, I trained for the Bay of Pigs and just missed it.”

“Have you ever looked death in the face?”

“Meaning what?”

“Combat—what did you think?”

“I’ve taken part in combat exercises with live ammo,” Gerald said, “put on by former recon marines. Don’t kid yourself, I know what a fire fight is like.”

Louis had never been in combat either. No, but he’d seen two men shot—one running from a work gang at Huntsville, another climbing the fence at Starke—and had seen a man stabbed to death, a man set on fire, a man right after he had been strangled with a coat hanger, and believed these counted for something. So he said to Gerald, “Bullshit. That ain’t looking death in the face, that’s playing. That’s what kids do.” Louis taking it to this asshole standing there in his combat boots in a roomful of guns. Louis working himself up for what he knew was coming.

Ordell moved away from the window as he started in, saying, “Big Guy’s been training, getting ready for the black revolution.” Ordell playing with the zipper tab on his coveralls, zipping it up, zipping it down. “He hears us saying we shall overcome and knows it’s gonna happen.”

Louis had looked over his shoulder at the window. He heard Ordell, but not that popping sound outside. It had stopped. He saw the two bikers by the gun-range counter, maybe reloading.

Ordell saying, “It won’t be like the A-rab war out in the desert. Unh-unh, the nigger war’s gonna be in the streets. Gonna be a job stopping us natives, huh, man?” Ordell provoking the guy, saying, “You think you and your racist brothers can handle it?”

Gerald said, “You talking to me like that in my home?” Lines in his face drawn tight. Fired up now. “Why’d you come here, bringing your whore? To get your black ass whipped? I’ll do it for you, you want.”

Ordell had his coveralls zipped down to his waist, his hand going inside. It was about to happen. Ordell was going to shoot the guy. Louis felt it and wanted him to come on, hurry up if he was going to do it. Louis anxious—he had to look out the window again, quick, check on the bikers.

They were leaving the gun range: two heavyset guys coming with pistols and rifles.

Louis turned from the window. He said, “Those guys are coming,” trying to be cool about it, wanting Ordell to know without throwing him off.

But it did, it stopped Ordell and he looked over, his hand still inside his coveralls.

In that moment Melanie yelled, “Shoot him!”

Louis saw her pulling the knit bag from her shoulder, that much, before he swung the Mossberg at Gerald, putting it on him as the man got to Ordell and slammed a fist into him. It drove Ordell back to land hard in a leather chair, the Colt auto cleared, in his hand, and Gerald took it away from him: punched him in the mouth, twisted the gun from his hand, and threw it over on the sofa, out of the way. He got into a crouch then and hooked his fist into Ordell’s face, then threw the other hand, bouncing Ordell’s head against the brown leather cushion.

Melanie yelled it again, “Shoot him!” and Gerald paused, sinking to one knee as if to rest, then to look over his shoulder.

At Melanie, Louis thought. But the man was looking this way, right at him, staring. Louis squeezed the grip and saw the red laser dot appear on Gerald’s forehead. Gerald grinned at him.

“You got the nerve? Asking have I ever looked death in the face. Shit, you ain’t ever seen any combat, have you?”

Melanie’s voice said, “What’re you waiting for?”

Gerald turned enough to look at her. “He’s got buckshot in there, honey. How’s he gonna get me without hitting his nigger friend?” He said to Louis, “Am I right? Shit, you don’t have the nerve anyway.”

Louis went for him, raising the Mossberg to lay it across his head, aiming at that crew cut, and caught the man’s shoulder. Gerald rose up in his GI T-shirt, all arms, grabbed the barrel and gave it a twist, and Louis, hanging on, was thrown against the chair on top of Ordell. Louis slid off, scrambled out of the man’s reach to have room to move. Got to his feet . . . Gerald was standing with his back to him.

Gerald, and now Louis, watching as Melanie’s hand came out of her knit bag with a stubby bluesteel automatic. Gerald said, “Now what is that you have, some kind of low-cal pussy gun?”

Melanie was holding it in both hands now, arms extended, aimed at Gerald.

He tossed the shotgun to land on the sofa, looked at Melanie and said, “Okay, now you put that down, honey, and I won’t press charges against you.” Confident about it, as though it would settle the matter.

Melanie didn’t say anything. She shot him.

Louis felt himself jump—the sound was so loud in that closed room. He looked at Gerald. The man hadn’t moved; he stood there.

Melanie said, “I’m not a whore, you bozo.”

Christ, and shot him again.

Louis saw Gerald grab his side this time as if he’d been stung.

She shot him again and his hands went to his chest and his knees started to buckle as he moved toward her and she shot him again: the sound ringing and ringing in this room full of guns and animal heads, until it faded away and the man was lying on the floor.

Ordell said through his bloody mouth, barely moving it, “Is he dead?”

Melanie said, “You bet he is.”

Ordell said to Louis, “They coming?” And to Melanie, “Girl, where’d you get that gun?”

Louis was at the window now.

He saw the two bikers standing in kind of a crouch with their rifles, shoulders hunched, looking this way, nearer the house now than the gun range. He saw them out there in the open, cautious. Saw them both look toward the driveway at the same time and start to turn in that direction, raising their rifles. Louis heard the sound of automatic weapons, not as loud as he heard them in Ordell’s gun movie or in any movie he had ever seen, and watched the two bikers drop where they were standing, seem to collapse, fall without firing a shot, the sound of the automatic weapons continuing until finally it stopped. Pretty soon the jackboys appeared, the kids with their Chinese guns, curved banana clips, looking at the men on the ground and then toward the house.

Louis wondered if combat was like that. If you had a seat and could watch it.

He heard Ordell say, “They get ’em?”

Louis nodded. He said, “Yeah.”

And heard Ordell say, “Man, my mouth is sore. I think I’m gonna have to go the dentist.”

Heard him say, “Now I have to get those boys to load up the van. We going home in Louis’s car, if it makes it.” Heard him say, “You ever shoot anybody before?”

And heard Melanie say, “Hardly.”

He watched the jackboys poke at the bikers with the muzzles of their guns. Now Ordell appeared, walking up to them, and it surprised Louis; he hadn’t heard Ordell leave the room. Louis turned from the window to see Melanie on the sofa, still holding the pistol.

She said, “Why didn’t you shoot him?”

Louis said, “You did all right.”

Melanie looked at Gerald on the floor. She said, “I don’t mean him.”

17

Jackie didn’t see Ray Nicolet until she came off the elevator in the airport parking structure, Tuesday afternoon. He said, “We have to stop meeting like this,” deadpan, posed against the front fender of a Rolls.

She was supposed to smile, so she did; because he was young, he was having fun being a cop, and because she had to be nice to him. She could smile, too, at his swagger, coming to take the wheels from her in his cowboy boots, a gun beneath that light jacket, stuck in his jeans.

“I thought you’d be waiting in Customs.”

“We don’t need to bring them in,” Nicolet said. “This is ATF business. How was your flight?”

“Smooth, all the way.”

“I imagine you’re glad to be working again.”

“You’ll never know,” Jackie said, walking with him now along the row of cars.

“We have the money here?”

“Ten thousand.”

“Anything else? Weed, coke?”

“No, but I can get you some.”

“I’ll toke once in a while if it’s there,” Nicolet said. “You know, like at a party. But I won’t buy it, it’s against the law.”

He placed the wheels in the trunk of the Honda and brought the flight bag in the front seat with him. Jackie slipped in behind the wheel. Opening the bag he said, “Three-ten PM,” and gave the date and location, where they were. “I’m now taking a manila envelope from the subject’s flight bag. The envelope contains currency . . . all the same denomination, one-hundred-dollar bills. Now I’m counting it.”

Jackie said, “What’re you doing?”

He showed her the mike hooked to his lapel, then pressed the palm of his hand over it. “I’m recording.

“You said you were letting this one go through.”

“I am. Don’t worry about it.”

“Then why’re you being so official?”

“I don’t want any surprises. Every step of this goes in my report.”

She watched him count the bills, dab each one with a green felt-tipped pen, and describe where he was putting the mark, “. . . on the first zero of the numeral one hundred in the upper left corner.” He finished and said, “I’m putting the currency back in the envelope, ten thousand dollars. The subject will deliver the money in . . .”

Jackie said, “A Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bag,” smoking a cigarette now.

“A Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bag.”

She gestured to several bags on the back seat.

“A large black bag with handles and red lettering,” Nicolet said, took the recorder from his coat pocket, and turned it off. “Okay, we can go.”

“You’re not coming with me, are you?”

“I’ll be along,” Nicolet said. “What time you have to be there?”

“Four thirty. I’m meeting a woman.”

“What’s her name?”

“He wouldn’t tell me. Will you be alone?”

“Don’t worry about it. The woman leaves, somebody’ll be on her.”

“But you’re not going to stop her,” Jackie said. Nicolet had the door open and was getting out. “Are you?”

He stuck his head back in. “Why would I do that?”

Max got to the mall at four, parked by Sears, and went in through the store. He’d stop and see Renee, talk to her, get that over with. Tell her he had to leave if she started one of her monologues. All that time he could never think of anything to say to her, she never had trouble talking to him. Always about herself.

Jackie had said four thirty. Watch the way it works. A woman would come up to her table or sit at the one next to it. There would be lots of people, she said, the café area busy from noon on. If he came early, look for her at Saks.

The sign on the showroom glass said DAVID DE LA VILLA in dark green, with dates.

A white cloth covered the library table in the center of the gallery, the walls hung with green paintings, the busboy’s cane fields, Renee peering naked from one. . . .

Too small to see from the entrance, through the showroom glass, but that’s where she was— on the wall to the right, the third canvas. Max entered. The olive pot just inside seemed to hold the same cigarette butts, gum wrappers, the Styrofoam cup—no more, no less. He saw Renee.

Coming out from the back with a tray full of cheese and crackers. She looked up and saw him and looked down again.

He said, “Renee?”

She said, “Oh, it’s you,” placing the tray on the table, centering it.

He wondered how he could be anyone else standing here.

“It’s nice to see you too.”

She avoided looking at him now. “I have an exhibit opening at five.” Getting that tray exactly in the center, an inch this way.

“I know,” Max said, “but I’d like to talk to you.”

“You can’t see I’m busy?”

“With the cheese and crackers,” Max said. “I know they’re an important part of your life.”

“What do you want?”

He hesitated. The busboy was coming with a silver tray and a coat over his arm. Max waited, looking at Renee waiting for the busboy. Renee wearing a gauzy white gown to the floor he thought of as a flower-child dress, or the kind women dancing around Stonehenge in the moonlight wore. Renee making up for lost time. Max thinking, Like all of us. Now David de la Villa arrived with a tray of raw vegetables surrounding some kind of creamy dip. He placed the tray on the table and put on the coat, a tux jacket, an old one, over a yellow tank top he was wearing with jeans frayed at the knees. He said to Renee, “Is he bothering you?”

Nothing here made sense. What if he was bothering her? What could this guy do about it?

“We’re talking,” Max said.

Renee shook her head. “No, we’re not.” And her pert little cap of black hair moved, a sprig of earth-mother green in it, no strands of gray showing, they were gone. She turned to leave, green loop earrings swinging. “I told him we’re busy.”

“You heard her,” the busboy said.

Max stood there puzzled, staring at this freak in the tux staring back at him, but aware of Renee leaving them and he said after her, “It’s important.”

She paused long enough to look back and tell him, “So is my show.”

Familiar? I’m working. Well, I’m working too. I’d like to talk to you. I’m busy. I’m filing for divorce. . . .That might get her attention. He turned to the busboy, who irritated him more than anyone he could think of in recent memory.

“You know what you look like?”

“Yeah, what?”

The guy standing hip cocked, waiting.

Max hesitated. Because the guy could look whatever way he wanted, he was the show, he was putting the art lovers on and making out. . . . Or, the guy had talent, he knew how to paint, and Max, in his seersucker jacket and wing-tips, did-n’t know shit. That was a possibility Max could look at like a big boy and admit. Even somewhat proud of himself. So he said, “Never mind,” and turned to leave.

“I see you around here again I’m gonna call security,” Max heard that irritating fucking busboy say and almost stopped. “Have them throw you out.” But he kept going. The bond for first-degree murder, if you could get one, was fifty thousand.

Four thirty on the dot, Jackie picked up a couple of egg rolls and an iced tea at China Town and walked past the semicircle of café counters with her Saks bag, on display in her Islands Air uniform. Next, she moved through the maze of aisles in the center area, beneath the giant gazebo, before choosing a table and slipped in behind it to sit against a planter, able to see what was going on around her. She thought she might spot Nicolet; Max, if he was able to make it; but didn’t count on picking out any ATF agents, assuming Nicolet had people with him. She didn’t put a lot of trust in anything he told her. He did say someone would follow whoever picked up the money. But that did-n’t mean another ATF agent. Jackie had a hunch Ordell would send the woman he lived with, the one who answered the phone, said he wasn’t there, and hung up. Fifteen minutes passed. Jackie finished her egg rolls and lit a cigarette.

A slender young black woman holding a full tray and a Saks bag hanging from her hand said, “This seat taken?”

Jackie told her no, sit down, and watched her unload the tray. Tacos, enchiladas, refried beans, a large-size Coke, napkins, plastic utensils . . . “You’re hungry,” Jackie said.

The slender young woman, dark and quite pretty, said, “Yes’m.” She couldn’t be more than twenty.

Jackie said, “Put your bag on the floor, okay? Under the table. We might as well make it look good.” She watched the young woman, who hadn’t looked right at her since sitting down, bend sideways to glance under the table.

“Right next to mine. Then when I leave,” Jackie said, “well, you know. What’s your name?”

She did look up saying, “Sheronda?” and down again at her tray.

“Go ahead and start. I think I spoke to you on the phone one time,” Jackie said, “when I was in jail and called Ordell. Wasn’t that you?”

She said, “I think it was.”

“I told you my name? Jackie?”

Sheronda said, “Yes’m,” and sat waiting.

“Really, start eating. I won’t bother you anymore.”

Jackie watched her begin, Sheronda hunching close to the tray. “I just want to ask you one question. Are you and Ordell married?”

“He say we like the same thing as married,” Sheronda said, without raising her head.

“Did you drive here?”

“Yes’m, he got a car for me to use.”

“You do live together,” Jackie said.

Sheronda hesitated and Jackie didn’t think she was going to answer. When she did, she said, “Most of the times,” still not raising her head.

Jackie said, “Not every day?”

“Sometime every day, for a while.”

“Then you don’t see him for a few days.”

“Yes’m.”

“You know what’s in the bag you’re taking?”

“He say is a surprise.”

Jackie stubbed out her cigarette. She said, “Well, it was nice talking to you,” picked up Sheronda’s bag, and left.

Max could see them from the Cappuccino Bar. He watched Jackie coming away from the table and told the girl behind the counter not to take his coffee, he’d be right back. Jackie didn’t see him, heading out with a certain amount of purpose. Max’s idea was to tag along, not catch up with her until they were well away from here. That plan changed as he saw the guy step out of Barnie’s Coffee & Tea Company and Jackie stopped. Max did too. He watched the young guy in a sport coat and jeans, cowboy boots, take the Saks bag from her and reach into it, looking at her as he did. The guy would be Ray Nicolet, Max decided, making sure she wasn’t walking off with the ten thousand. Max, the former cop, thinking for Nicolet: You can’t trust anyone, can you? Especially a confidential informant. They talked for a minute. Not, it would seem, about anything too serious. Jackie nodded, listened to Nicolet, nodded again, turned and walked off. A few strides and she was around the corner, gone, and Nicolet was looking toward the seating area talking to himself now, or into a radio mike he had on him. Max returned to the Cappuccino Bar to finish his coffee.

He had recognized the young black woman with Jackie, the same one who lived in the house on 31st Street and he had spoken to Friday morning looking for Ordell. Still trying to find him, five days now with the fake Rolex that was-n’t bad-looking, kept the right time, but still wasn’t worth a thousand bucks. He’d had it appraised at a jewelry store and Winston was right, the watch sold for about two fifty.

The young woman was still working her way through that pile of Mexican food, not looking up. Now she did. Turning her head to a woman

at the next table. An older black woman.

Max watched.

The older woman said something. Now the younger woman picked up the ashtray Jackie had used and handed it to the older woman. They exchanged a few words. Then didn’t say anything for a minute or so, the older woman smoking a cigarette now. Jackie had talked to the younger woman the whole time they were together, not at all sly about it, right out in front. The older woman had a cup of coffee in front of her, nothing to eat. Now she said something again to the younger woman, only this time without looking at her. The younger woman paused, then began eating again in a hurry.

Max’s cappuccino was cold.

As he finished it the younger woman was getting up from the table. He watched her stoop to get the Saks shopping bag, straighten her slim body, look around, and come out of the seating area. He watched her walk past the Café Manet, past Barnie’s Coffee & Tea, and turn the corner before the cowboy stepped out. He watched Nicolet allow the young woman to get some distance on him before he spoke to his radio mike and followed after her, around the corner. Max turned to see the older woman putting out her cigarette.

She sat there another couple of minutes before picking up—how about that—a Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bag and walking away from the table, toward the café counters on the other side of the seating area.

This one was not in the scenario Jackie had described. It didn’t matter. Even if she was carrying some other store’s shopping bag Max would have still followed her: down the escalator and along the lower level of the mall to Burdine’s, through the store, outside and down an aisle in the parking area to a Mercury sedan, a big tan one, an older model. He knew who the younger woman was and where she lived. But nothing about this one, getting in the car with her shopping bag and driving off.

Max wrote the license number in his notebook and went back inside to find a pay phone. His old pal from the Sheriff’s office, Harry Boland, head of the TAC unit, would be home now having a bourbon. They’d talk—Max would ask him to have someone call him at the office, later, with the name and address.

Ordell said, “It was like that monster in the movie Alien, the one ate people? He’s looking at Sigourney Weaver in her underwear and it don’t mean shit to him. You want to yell at him, ‘That’s Sigourney Weaver in her underwear, man.

What’s wrong with you?’

Louis said, “Gerald reminded you of that?”

“The way he didn’t take Melanie out and jump on her. They go in the kitchen, he fixes her a cup of coffee.”

“It worked out,” Louis said, committed now, no getting off.

“Yeah, old Melanie.”

“Would you have shot him?”

“If I had to.”

“If you had to—the guy’s beating the shit out of you. . . . You mean if you got mad?”

Talking the way they used to a long time ago. Ordell grinning at him. In the Mercedes on the way to Simone’s house, early Tuesday evening. Louis knowing why Ordell had him staying there now. Not to be entertained. The main reason, to keep an eye on the cash Simone was bringing home. Ordell getting him more and more involved in his business.

Monday night, late, Ordell had taken him to the self-service storage place off Australian Avenue in a warehouse district, rows of garage doors, one after another: Ordell careful, making sure they weren’t followed and there was no one around who might see them. He removed the padlock, raised the door of the space he’d rented, and there they were in his flashlight beam: all

kinds of assault weapons converted to full automatic, boxes of silencers that reminded Louis of parts in a factory bin, the M-60 machine gun and LAW rocket launchers they’d taken from Gerald’s place that day. Ordell said tomorrow night or the next, all this shit would be packed, loaded in the van, and driven down to Islamorada in the Keys, put on Mr. Walker’s boat and taken over to the Bahamas. Mr. Walker would make the delivery to the middleman who bought the stuff for the Colombian druggies and get paid. A good two hundred thousand worth of weapons here, less expenses, would bring his total up close to a million in the bank over there. Telling all this to Louis in the dark, confiding.

Even giving him the key to the padlock, so he could bring over a few guns, TEC-9s, still at Simone’s house.

Louis hearing the familiar voice of his old buddy, certain now it wasn’t Ordell trying to use him, it was Melanie.

Ordell saying, “You appreciate this kind of situation, Louis. It can make you rich, yeah, but you see some fun in the idea too, huh? You see funny kind of things that happen nobody else sees. You know what I’m saying? You the only white guy I ever met understands what the fuck I’m ever talking about. Melanie don’t. Melanie can say funny things without knowing it. But when she thinks she’s funny, she ain’t. Like we in the car coming home from Gerald’s? You hear her? She says, ‘You two guys are still a couple of fuckups.’ See, she thinks she can say that after shooting the man. Like she’s kidding and I’m not gonna say nothing.”

“You didn’t,” Louis said.

“No, but I remember it. See, she disses you and thinks it’s funny. I don’t like to be dissed in a kidding way less it’s somebody I respect.”

Louis said, “You trust her?”

“I never have,” Ordell said, “from the minute I first met her laying in the sun. I keep an eye on her, she can still surprise me, like having that gun. Little Waither .32—you believe how loud it was? She must’ve stole it off me and I didn’t even know she had it. Where else she gonna get a pistol like that cost eight hundred? She ain’t gonna buy it.”

Louis said, “I’d keep both eyes on her.”

Ordell’s gaze moved from the road, Windsor Avenue, to Louis. “She trying to work you against me? . . . You don’t have to say, I know the woman.

She gonna look at every angle, make sure she lands on her feet. She shot Big Guy five times, didn’t she?”

“Four,” Louis said.

“Okay, four. The piece holds seven loads. How come if she wants me out of this, she didn’t do it when she had the chance? You know why? ’Cause she ain’t sure you can take it all the way. You could’ve shot me and Big Guy at the same time, but you didn’t do it. Melanie’s thinking hey, shit, ’cause he don’t have the nerve? She’s the kind, wants to know who’s gonna win ’fore she puts her money down.”

“Why do you keep her around?”

Ordell grinned at him. “She’s my fine big girl, man. Now I got you watching my back. . . .”

“You take too many chances,” Louis said. “You expose yourself. Too many people know what you’re doing.”

“High profit,” Ordell said, “high risk. I need the people till this’s done. I know who I can trust and who I can’t. The only one worries me right now is Cujo, I mentioned to you. They got him up at Gun Club. I called, they don’t have a bond set on him yet. I’d like to get him out of there and send him on his way, only I’m afraid the bond’s gonna be too high to get him one without the cash, and I don’t have it right now. I don’t think they’ll get him to talk about me right away. He’ll act tough for a while, and all I need is a couple more days. Get my ass out of here.”

They turned off Windsor onto 30th Street and pulled up in front of Simone’s stucco Spanish-looking house, Ordell saying, “You take those TEC-9s over to storage?”

“I’ll do it tonight.”

Ordell saying, “You never told me, you bone that old woman or not?”

18

Nicolet stopped in during prime time Tuesday evening, showed his ID, shook hands with Max, shook hands with Winston, and said, “Winston Willie Powell—I was a kid my dad used to take me to the fights at the Convention Center in Miami? I saw you beat up on Tommy Laglesia and a guy named Jesus Diaz, Hey-soos. I remember thinking, A name like that, he’ll never make it. You won thirty-nine professional fights, lost only a couple on decisions?”

“Something like that,” Winston said.

“It’s a pleasure to shake your hand,” Nicolet said and sat down next to Max’s desk, his back to Winston. “It’s a pleasure meeting you too,” he said to Max. “All the stories I’ve heard about you, I mean when you were with PBSO, closing homicides in two, three days.”

“You better,” Max said, “or you’re in trouble.”

“I know what you mean,” Nicolet said. “The longer a case sits there, nothing happening . . .”

The phone rang and he paused until Winston picked it up. “I have kind of a problem I think you could help me with, Max. Having been in law enforcement, you know the airtight case we have to have to get a conviction.”

“All I know about Ordell Robbie,” Max said, “is where he lives, and I’m not absolutely sure of that.”

Nicolet grinned. “How’d you know it was about him?”

“I’ve been waiting for you to stop by.”

“It’s about him indirectly,” Nicolet said. “You know the guy that shot the FDLE agent, Tyler? We’re convinced he works for Ordell.”

“Hulon Miller, Jr.,” Max said. “I’ve written him several times going back to when he was sixteen years old.”

Nicolet said, “Is that right?” squinting at Max to show how interested he was, laying it on.

This had to be a big favor the guy wanted.

“Seventeen arrests, I think nine or ten convictions,” Nicolet said, “this is a tough kid, knows the system intimately. We got him with a stolen gun, a stolen car. . . . We saw him at Ordell’s house. In fact it was right after we saw you stop by there.”

“Last Friday,” Max said. “You also have him for attempted murder, assaulting a federal officer, concealed weapon, discharging a firearm . . .” The phone rang. Max looked over as Winston picked it up again. “What else?”

“He knows he’s in deep shit,” Nicolet said, “but now he’s a star ’cause he shot a cop. I mean out at the jail. Limps around there—I put a nine through him that almost took his dick off, I wish it had. It was those fucking smoke-glass windows in the car, I had to fire at him blind.”

“So he won’t talk to you,” Max said.

“He gives me dirty looks.”

“You have enough to threaten him with.”

“He knows all that. I try a different approach, I tell him, ‘Cujo, my man, I could’ve killed you; you owe me one. Let’s talk about Ordell Robbie.’ He goes, ‘Who?’ ‘Tell me what you know about him.’ ‘Who?’ I go, ‘Man, you sound like a fucking owl.’ So he’s in there, no bond . . . I get an idea, go see him. ‘How about if I get you bonded out, man? Would you like that?’ Now I’ve gotten his attention. I tell him, ‘You only have to do one thing for me. No snitching, only this one thing. Introduce me to Ordell. Tell him I came to you before, weeks ago, looking for guns. That’s all you have to do, I take it from there.’ ”

Max waited. He said, “Yeah?”

“That’s it. I get next to Ordell, smile a lot, kiss his ass, and he shows me his machine guns.”

“You just said there’s no bond.”

“That’s right, but I can get the federal magistrate to set one.”

“How much?”

“Twenty-five thousand. But, see, it’s only if you’ll write it, to help us out.”

“Who puts up the collateral?”

“There isn’t any. No money changes hands. That’s why I say you’d be helping us out.”

Max smiled. He looked over at Winston, off the phone now. “You have to hear this. He wants us to write a twenty-five-thousand-dollar bond with no premium, no collateral, on a guy who’s been arrested seventeen times and shot a cop.”

Now Winston was smiling.

Nicolet glanced over his shoulder at him.

“As a favor. What’s wrong with that?”

“You’re talking about a guy,” Max said, “who’s the highest kind of risk that he’ll take off, who’s a threat to the community . . . He shoots somebody, another cop, he runs and we’re holding his paper.”

Nicolet was shaking his head. “Wait, okay? I guarantee the guy won’t be out of my sight. But even if he does run, you won’t be out the twenty-five, I promise. I got the magistrate’s word on it. She knows exactly what we’re doing, that it’s not the ordinary kind of bond situation.”

“What if she dies, retires, gets transferred, hit by lightning—come on,” Max said, “you think I’m crazy? I’m gonna sign my name to a promissory note for twenty-five grand on your word that it’ll never be called for payment?” He looked over at Winston. “You ever hear of anything like this?”

“Yeah, I have. I know a bondsman in Miami done it,” Winston said. “Was ten grand. The case got shifted to another court after the guy ran? The new judge says he’d never approve this kind of bulishit in the first place, made the bondsman pay up.”

“I’ll get it in writing,” Nicolet said.

Winston shook his head.

Max said, “Have the magistrate sign a statement saying it’s a phony bond? It’s hard enough getting them to sign warrants.” Max paused. “Against my better judgment I’ll go along with you partway. We won’t charge the ten percent fee if you can get someone to put up the collateral. How about yourself? You have a house?”

“My ex-wife’s got it,” Nicolet said.

“It’s just as well,” Max said. “Another reason it won’t work, everybody on the street will know Hulon cut a deal. He might as well wear a sign, ‘I fink for ATF.’ Most likely if he doesn’t run, he’s dead.”

Nicolet had that squinty look again. “I thought you’d go for this.”

“Why?”

“You were a cop, you know what it’s like. You’d see it as worth a try.”

“You have my sympathy,” Max said. “How’s that?”

“I guess you have your problems too,” Nicolet said. “Like you write a bond on a guy and he disappears? . . .”

“We go get him,” Max said.

“But you can’t find this one ’cause he’s hidden away in the Federal Witness Security program? You have any high-bond defendants might disappear on you like that?”

Max looked at Winston. “Now he’s threatening us.

“Ask him,” Winston said, “he’s ever had his head punched off his shoulders?”

Nicolet looked around to give Winston a grin. “Hey, I was putting you on. We’re on the same side, man.”

Winston said, “Long as you don’t step over the line.”

Nicolet looked at Max and raised his eyebrows, innocent. “I was kidding, okay?”

Max nodded. Maybe he was, maybe he was-n’t. The guy was young, aggressive, dying to make a collar, put Ordell Robbie away. Max was all for that. He said, “Check out a guy named Louis Gara, released from Starke, I don’t know, a couple of months ago. Check with Glades Mutual in Miami. Get next to him, I think he can take you to Ordell.”

They talked about Louis Gara for a few minutes and Nicolet left.

Winston said, “One of the calls was for you. Gave me a name . . .” Winston looked at his notepad. “Simone Harrison, lives on 30th Street?”

Max shook his head. “Never heard of her.”

“Drives a ‘85 Mercury?”

Simone did Martha and the Vandellas doing “Heat Wave” and then “Quicksand” for Louis, Louis nodding his head almost in time, drinking rum this evening, her drink. He started clapping his hands and Simone had to tell him, “No, baby, like this,” show him where the beat was. The rum helped loosen him. She did Mary Wells doing “My Guy.” Did Mary Wells and Marvin Gaye doing “What’s the Matter with You, Baby,” and held her hands out for Louis to join her, do the Marvin Gaye part. Louis said he didn’t know the words. Actually he didn’t know shit but was a big fella with muscle on him, big hard bones, a lot of black hair on his white body. She said, “Listen to the words, sugar. It’s how you learn them.” Told him, “Here, do this,” showing him how to hold his hands limp and move his hips sloooow, see? Simone giving him a dreamy look to quiet him down and quit watching his feet, saying, “It’s up here, baby, in the center of you,” hand on her tummy, “not down there on the floor.”

He took hold of her, still moving.

“Let’s go in the bedroom.”

“We can’t dance in there, baby.”

When he started moving his hands over her and got one up underneath her skirt Simone said, “What you looking for in there?”

“I found it.”

“Yeah, I think you have.”

“Let’s go in the bedroom.”

“Baby, don’t tear my underwear. They brand new today.”

“I could, easy.”

The new undies reminded her of the mall, meeting the girl she was supposed to meet, and she said, “We have to put the money away. Can’t leave it sitting out.”

“I will.”

“Have to hide it.”

“I’m gonna hide the weenie.”

They said cute things like that, white boys did. Even big middle-age jailbirds.

“You are, huh? You feeling good, baby? Yeaaaah . . . But don’t tear my underwear, okay, sugar? You like to tear underwear, lemme put on an old pair for you.”

Max rang the bell and waited, hearing the faint sound of music he gradually identified as vintage Mo-town, the sound familiar, but could-n’t name the vocal group or the number they were doing. He rang the bell and waited again, close to a minute, before a woman’s voice said, “What you want?”

“Ordell,” Max said, staring at the peephole. Too dark for the woman to see him unless she turned the porch light on.

“He ain’t here.”

“I’m supposed to meet him.”

“Where?”

“Here. He said nine o’clock.” It was about ten to.

“Wait a minute.”

He could hear children playing across the street, little black kids, Max thinking it was past their bedtime, they should be inside.

A man’s voice said, “What do you want?”

“I already told the lady, I’m meeting Ordell.”

There was a silence.

“Are you a cop?”

“I’m a bail bondsman. Turn the porch light on, I’ll show you my ID.”

The man’s voice said, “I thought it was you.”

Sounding confident now.

The door opened. Max saw Louis Gara standing there in a pair of pants, no shirt, fingering the thick mat of hair on his chest. Max took a moment to make the connection: both friends of Ordell’s, it could explain Louis being here but not what he was doing with the woman.

Louis said, “You aren’t meeting Ordell. He would’ve told me.”

“So you’re working for him,” Max said. “Well, I’m looking for both of you, so it’s not like I’m wasting my time.”

He walked in brushing Louis with a shoulder that turned him off balance to hit the door, banging it against the wall. Max glanced at him.

“You okay?”

The woman said, “I don’t want no rough stuff.” She stood holding her housecoat closed, barefoot but wearing makeup, her face highlighted blue and red, her hair done up for a party. What was going on here? Both of them half undressed, Puerto Rican rum and Coke bottles on the coffee table but no glasses, the Motown sound filling the room. Max said, “Ms. Harrison, what group is that?”

“The Marvelettes,” Simone said, “ ‘Too Many Fish in the Sea.’ Like it’s getting in here.” She walked over to the stereo and turned it off.

Max watched her. “Does this guy live here?”

Louis was standing by the coffee table now. The woman walked past him, touching his bare arm, to sit down in a deep-cushioned rocker and cross her legs, showing Max some thigh. She said, “You want to know anything about Louis, why don’t you ask him? He standing right there.”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Max said. “He and I can step outside to talk.”

“No, it’s all right.” Simone leaned over to pick up a Coca-Cola bottle, some left in it. “Long as you behave yourselves.”

This woman was going to watch.

It was hard to tell her age with all that makeup and the way her hair was piled on her head and what looked like a strand of pearls running through the hairdo.

“Louis used to work for me.”

The woman said, “Oh, is that right?”

“When he left he busted the front door of my office and took a couple of guns.”

Louis said, “What ones?” with a straight face.

“You mean the Mossberg and the Python?”

Max saw four years of state prison in Louis’s pose, hands on his hips showing his muscle. What he didn’t see was the dead stare, that convict look in Louis’s eyes, more glazed now than threatening, Louis too drunk to pull it off.

Max said, “Louis, you’re never gonna make it.” The guy didn’t know what he was doing. “Where’re the guns?”

Louis shrugged his shoulders, or flexed them.

“In your car?”

“He loan it to somebody,” Simone said. “His car ain’t here, or any guns. You gonna search my house, see if I’m lying?”

“He can’t,” Louis said.

Max turned to him. “You want to call the cops?”

“You try looking around, I’ll stop you,” Louis said. Max wished he had his stun gun with him. He brought the Browning auto out of his jacket, the inside pocket, and put it on Louis. “Sit down, okay? If you come at me, I’ll shoot you. It won’t kill you but it’ll hurt like hell and you’ll limp for the rest of your life.” He glanced at the woman. “It might even save his life.”

She nodded, sitting in her rocker. “It might.”

“Guy gets out of prison, he does everything he can to go back.”

“He can’t help it,” Simone said. “You know the story, the scorpion ast the turtle could he ride on him acrost a stream?”

“I don’t think so.”

“This scorpion ast a turtle could he ride on him acrost a stream. The turtle says, ‘No way, and let you sting me?’ The scorpion says, ‘I do that we both’d drown. You think I want to kill myself?’ Turtle says okay. They get out in the middle of the stream? The scorpion stings him. Now they drowning and the turtle says, ‘You crazy? Why’d you do that?’ The scorpion says, ‘I can’t help it, man, it’s my nature. It’s the way I am.’ ”

Max nodded. “That’s a good story.”

“Scorpion says, ‘It’s the way I am,’ ” Simone said.

“It’s the way he is too, and every one of them I ever met that come out. They can’t wait to go back.”

“I’m going to look around your house,” Max said.

“You ain’t asking, are you?”

Max shook his head.

“You know what your guns look like? You can identify them?”

“Shotgun and a revolver.”

“All right, go ahead,” Simone said. “You find any other guns, or you find something else and you take it? The man’s gonna come after you. Understand? Man that has more guns’n you ever saw in your life.”

Louis sat erect gripping the arms of his chair, looking at it step by step, thinking, Wait a minute, what happened here? The woman’s riding him on the bed, he’s about to let go and bounce her off the ceiling, and now this guy’s going around searching the house?

The doorbell rings. She gets up saying it must be Ordell wanting something, rings the bell ’stead of walking in on them. Comes back in the room, it ain’t Ordell, some man. Puts his pants on, goes to the door. Jesus Christ, it’s Max Cherry. So, what’s the problem? How does Max know about this place if Ordell did-n’t tell him? Lying about meeting Ordell, but maybe he isn’t. So let him in. You can take him. He mentions the guns, shove it in his face. Oh, you mean the Mossberg and the Python? Deadpan, no expression. If he doesn’t think it’s funny, fuck him. What can he do? He can’t prove anything.

But it wasn’t like that. It happened too fast and he wasn’t ready. He should have thought about it some more before letting him in. Comes in and he’s in, he takes over.

He said to Simone, “I’m not in shape.”

“You look fine to me, baby.”

“I thought I was yesterday, but I’m not. I don’t feel that edge. You know, ready.”

“You talking crazy now. You have the man’s guns?”

“Not here.”

“Then what you worried about? He ain’t the police.”

“What if he was?”

“Well, you wouldn’t have let him in, would you? Baby, you just messed up in the head a little from being in stir. I seen it do that to people.”

“That’s what I’m saying. Inside, I was in shape. I come out—you can lose the edge fast, your sense of . . . you know.”

She sighed. “Yeah, I know, baby.” Looked up to see Max and said, “Uh-oh.”

Max coming out of the hallway with a Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bag, the pistol stuck in his waist.

“That’s the something else I mentioned you best not take,” Simone said, and looked over at Louis. “You see what’s happening? You my witness I didn’t take it. Was this man here you used to work for.”

Louis waited for Max to say something about his guns, but he was speaking to Simone.

“Tell Ordell we’re even. I left something in the bedroom for him.”

“What,” Simone said, “a receipt?”

Max gave her a smile and Louis wondered if he’d missed something, if the two of them knew each other. Max was speaking to her again saying, “I’d have Ordell pick up those machine guns you have in your closet, tonight, or as soon as possible. The police find them here, you could lose your house.”

Max was leaving now. Simone raised her hand and waved it at him, like waving him off.

Louis watched her, thinking about the TEC-9s in the closet he was supposed to take out to the storage place. He turned his head to see Max open the door and walk out with the shopping bag. Louis continued to stare at the door.

Simone got up and headed for the bedroom.

Louis was thinking he should not drink rum. Or he should find a glass and have another one. “Rum and Coca-Cola,” the Andrew Sisters. He had started this afternoon in the bar at Ocean Mall, Casey’s, hiding out from Melanie, thinking of her as a female cannibal. Bourbon this afternoon, rum this evening, nothing to eat in between . . . You had to be in shape for this, the same as you had to be at Starke to get through each day. It took a lot of effort.

Simone came in the living room holding a wad of bills in one hand and a gold wristwatch in the other.

She said, “That man works? Has a job?”

Louis watched her sit down at the coffee table and begin counting hundred-dollar bills.

“He’s a bail bondsman.”

“I wondered,” Simone said, “ ‘cause he don’t know shit about robbing people.”

19

“You brought me a present.”

That was the first thing Jackie said, looking at the shopping bag: taking a guess but not too happy about it, no gleam of fun in those green eyes. Max shook his head, holding the bag out to her.

“Take it.”

She wouldn’t, she slipped her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and he had to smile.

“It’s yours. The same one you gave the young girl and she turned around and gave to a woman, I bet anything, wasn’t part of your plan. It turns out she’s a friend of a guy named Louis Gara, an ex-con who used to work for me and now, it looks like, works for Ordell. You going to ask me in for a drink or not?”

He watched her stare at the Saks bag another few moments, trying to figure it out for herself, then turned and went into the kitchen. Max closed the door and followed her; he set the shopping bag on the kitchen table. She didn’t ask him one question getting ice from the refrigerator, making drinks, so he started telling her about it: how he got the woman’s name and address and went there, ran into Louis Gara, who had stolen guns from the office. . . . Jackie handed him his drink. She listened, but didn’t look that interested. He took a sip and told her about searching the woman’s house for his guns and finding the Saks bag in the bedroom closet, ten thousand dollars in it. Jackie was watching him now. He reached into the bag, brought out ten one hundred-dollar bills, and spread them on the table saying all of them were marked, right there.

Now she was interested.

“You took his money.”

That was the second thing Jackie said.

Max said, “He owed it to me,” and explained that part of it, the thousand representing the premium on her bond, as a matter of fact, and how he left the watch and the rest of the money, nine thousand, with the woman.

“But you took a thousand.”

“I knew it was his. . . .”

“Was it easy?”

“You mean did they give me any trouble?”

She motioned, tilting her head to the side, and he followed her white T-shirt, her hips moving in the jeans, through the living room in lamplight and out onto the balcony to stand in the dark by the metal rail.

“I mean, was it easy to pick up his money and walk out with it?”

“I took what he owed me, that’s all.”

“You’re sure it’s his money.”

“I know it’s what you delivered, it’s marked.”

“So it was okay to take it from the woman’s house.”

Jackie quietly playing with him three floors above dark shapes down in the yard, trees, shrubs, dots of orange light lining a walk, high enough for Max to feel alone with her in the night. He knew what she was doing.

“Ordinarily I wouldn’t.”

“This was different.”

“Considering the kind of guy he is.”

“And how he came by the money?”

“Not so much that.”

“You know he won’t call the police.”

“That occurred to me.”

“It made it easier.”

“In a way.”

“So it didn’t bother you, to take it.”

She was close enough to touch. He said, “There’s a difference.” She waited and he said, “I don’t see what I did anything at all like walking off with a half million.”

“You could if you tried,” Jackie said. “We know he won’t call the police. . . .”

“No, he’ll come after you himself.”

“He’ll be in jail.”

Max watched her raise her glass and then glance into the living room and saw light reflected in her eyes for a moment. He wanted to touch her face.

She said, “Think of it as money that shouldn’t even be here, the way it was made. I mean, does anyone have a legal right to it?”

“The feds,” Max said, “it’s evidence.”

“It may be evidence if they get their hands on it,” Jackie said, “but right now it’s just money. They want Ordell. They’re not interested in the money, because they don’t need it to convict him. They’ll look for it— it’s gone, misplaced? . . . What is it they say, the whole package never gets to the station?”

“You’re rationalizing.”

“It’s what you do, Max, to go through with it once you start. Not have any lingering doubts that might trip you up. You’re looking for work, aren’t you?” In her quiet tone. “I know you’re looking for something you don’t seem to have.”

He touched her face. Saw her expression, waiting.

He kissed her, moving his hand over her hair, and had to look at her face again, pale in the dark, her eyes not leaving his as she reached out and dropped her glass over the rail. There was no sound. He felt her hands slip inside his jacket and around him, her fingers on his body. Now Max reached out over the rail and let his glass fall.

* * *

In the moment she looked at him and said, “You took his money,” he knew they would be in this bed before too long and that his life was about to change.

They made love in the dark, on the sheets with the spread pulled down. Took off their clothes and made love. She left and returned still naked with cigarettes and drinks. There were so many things he wanted to say to her, but she was quiet now, so he was quiet. He would tell her later to give them Louis Gara; it would get her points. She reached over and put her hand on him.

They made love again with the lamp on and this time he knew his life had already changed.

She said, “We’re alike. We weren’t before, you were holding back, but now we are. You and I.” She said, “Could you pass out complimentary tropical punch in little plastic cups? That’s my alternative and it’s unacceptable.”

He looked at her lying naked against the headboard with her drink and a cigarette.

“So the money’s a way out.”

She looked at him with that gleam in her eyes.

“I’m not saying it wouldn’t be fun to have.”

He thought about it and said, “Or, we’re taking it so the bad guys won’t get it.”

“If you like that one,” Jackie said, “use it.”

He nodded, giving it some more thought.

“Hold on to the money and see what happens. It’s not worth going to prison over. But if the feds, as you say, don’t care about it . . . I mean if it’s not there and they don’t see it as that big a deal . . . Or they don’t have time to count it at the airport, when you come in, and they get some of it . . .”

“But not the whole package,” Jackie said. Those eyes smiling at him as she drew on her cigarette and he said, “Let me try one of those.”

20

Ordell asked Jackie to come to the apartment in Palm Beach Shores Wednesday, after her flight was in, for what he called the Pay Day meeting.

Tonight, the weapons would be taken down to Islamorada and put on Mr. Walker’s boat. He’d make delivery tomorrow and get paid and the next day, Friday, Jackie would bring all his cash over from Freeport.

Louis arrived. He said Simone was getting dressed still; told him to say she’d be a little late. Ordell said you can’t enter that woman’s house and not get taken to bed, can you? Louis wasn’t saying. Ordell asked had he moved the TEC-9s to the storage place. Louis said early this morning and gave Ordell the padlock key. Outside of that Louis wasn’t saying much; acting strange.

Jackie arrived. He introduced her to Louis, his old buddy, said, “This is Melanie,” and was surprised the two women looked about the same age and wore the same kind of blue jeans. The difference in them, Melanie’s were cut off at her butt, she was messier-looking and had those huge titties. Jackie had that fine slim body on her and Melanie, you could tell the way she looked at Jackie, wished she had one like it.

The first thing Jackie did, she took him out on the balcony and said, “I don’t want any more surprises. We do it the way I lay it out or no Pay Day.”

Ordell said he didn’t know what she was talking about. What kind of surprises?

“The woman I gave the money to passing it on to someone else.” Her saying it surprised Ordell.

“How you know she did that?”

“I was there, I saw it.”

“Well, you weren’t suppose to be there.”

“I hung around,” Jackie said, “thinking you might pull something like that.”

Ordell told her it was his money, he could do what he wanted with it. And Jackie said not if she was going to stick her neck out; it had to be done her way or not at all. So then Ordell explained how he’d wanted Simone there to see how it worked, account of Simone would be the one receiving the money from her on Pay Day. Simone, he said, ought to be here any minute. Nice woman, Jackie would like her.

They went in the living room and he said for Louis to call Simone, tell her to get her tail over here, they were waiting on her. Louis didn’t know the number, the place he was staying, and it irritated Ordell. He picked up the phone from the counter and called her himself. Let it ring and ring. No answer.

“She’s on her way,” Ordell said and looked at Melanie, now that she’d served drinks, resting her big butt on the sofa. He said, “Leave us now, would you please?” in a nice tone of voice.

Melanie hauled herself off the sofa and came past him into the kitchen. Ordell turned at the counter.

“Girl, I said leave us. Go on outside and play in the sand.” His tone cool now.

She didn’t say a word, went past everybody into the bedroom. “Now she gonna pout,” Ordell said. “Fix her hair, have to find her sandals, find her bag, her sunglasses . . .” They waited. When she came out Ordell said, “You have a nice time, hear? . . . And don’t slam the door.”

She did, though, slammed it hard.

Ordell shook his head. Louis was giving him a look. So was Jackie. Neither of them saying anything till Jackie glanced at her watch and said she had to go in a minute.

“Where?”

“I have to meet the ATF guy.”

“That works on my nerves, you talking to him.”

“If I didn’t, this wouldn’t work,” Jackie said. “I’ll tell him Friday’s the day. He’ll stop me at the airport, mark the bills . . .”

Ordell shook his head. “Man, I don’t like that part.”

“It washes off,” Louis said.

“I’ll tell him we’re doing it the same way as before,” Jackie said. “They’ll follow Sheronda. . . . I hate to leave her holding the bag, so to speak.”

“She come home that time and look in the bag?” Ordell said. “Love the underwear Simone gave her. Sheronda don’t know nothing about the money. She thinks it’s some kind of game we rich folks play, exchanging gifts.”

“I got potholders,” Jackie said.

“See, that’s how the woman thinks.”

“Tell her I could use a blouse,” Jackie said, “size six, something simple.”

Ordell said, “You giving her a Macy bag this time?”

“The one Simone gives me. Right, we’ll make the switch at Macy’s,” Jackie said. “Simone knows what I look like, doesn’t she?”

“She saw you with Sheronda.”

“So if she doesn’t come soon . . .”

“Lemme be sure of this,” Ordell said. “Simone goes to the dress department with her Macy bag. . . .”

“Designer clothes.”

“She waits for you to go in the place where you try things on.”

“The fitting room. There’s a sign over the door.”

“Why we doing it in there?”

“I have a hunch they’ll be watching me. We can’t risk switching bags out in the open, or even in the dining area. You’re sure about Simone? You can trust her?”

“She like a big sister to me.”

“It has to be a woman who comes in.”

“She’ll do fine,” Ordell said. “You come out with her Macy bag and go meet Sheronda. Simone peeks out, waits for Louis to give her the sign nobody’s watching. She leaves the store, gets in her car, and I follow her here. Make sure nothing happens to her.”

Jackie was anxious now to leave, not wanting the ATF man upset with her. Ordell walked her down the hall to the elevator and pressed the button. She said to him, “Once I deliver, I’ll have to trust you.”

“Meaning the deal we have,” Ordell said. “I been trusting you all this time, haven’t I? We agreed on ten percent of what you bring in and that’s what you gonna get.”

“And a hundred thousand if I go to jail.”

“Yeah, that too. But you haven’t told me where I put it for you.”

The elevator came and the door slid open. She held it, looking at him. “Give it to the bail bondsman, Max Cherry. He’ll take care of it.”

Ordell squinted his eyes saying, “Max Cherry?” Surprised and wanting to think about this. “You and him friends now? You told him the deal?”

She got on the elevator still holding the door and turned to him shaking her head. “He won’t know where it came from, only that it’s my money.”

Ordell said, “Max Cherry? You know what you doing?” The door slid closed as he was saying, “Don’t you know bail bondsmen are crooks?”

Ordell stood there a few moments. He knew he wasn’t ever going to pay Jackie her cut or for going to jail. That didn’t bother him. What did was her being tight with Max Cherry. That might be something to think about.

Back in the apartment, he and Louis alone now, Ordell said, “Tell me what’s bothering you.”

Louis said, “Max Cherry.”

And there he was again, springing up. Max Cherry.

“You ran into him?”

“He ran into me,” Louis said. “He knew where to find me.”

Jackie stopped at Ocean Mall to try Ray Nicolet again, to tell him about Louis. Show what a good girl she was, cooperating. Max had said last night not to waste time; he’d already called Nicolet and told him where Louis was staying. This morning she had tried Ray’s beeper number before flying out and again when she got back. She would use the phone in Casey’s, check her messages before trying his beeper again; it was too late to get him at the office. Jackie walked in the entrance off the mall.

There was a crowd in here already. The phone in use. A fat guy lounged against the wall with the receiver wedged between his shoulder and his chins, nearly hidden. She turned away and saw Melanie sitting near the end of the bar, Melanie swiveled around on her stool watching her, motioning now to come over. She raised her glass.

“Have a drink.”

“I’m waiting for the phone.”

“Good luck, that guy’s been on it a half hour.”

Jackie said, “I’ll find another one. See you.”

Turned to leave and Melanie said, “I know what this gig’s about, the whole thing, what you’ve been doing for him. Have one with me, I’ll tell you a secret.”

Melanie was drinking rum and Coke, she said for the past hour with guys hitting on her, creeps in tourist outfits. Jackie ordered a beer, took a sip, and a guy put his hands on their shoulders. Would they like to come over to the table, “join me and my buddy for a refreshment?” Without looking at him Melanie told him to fuck off, and rolled her eyes at Jackie.

“That’s what we need, some bright conversation. Where you from? . . . Oh, really? Where are you from? . . . Ohio, huh? No shit.”

Jackie said, “How long have you been with Ordell?”

“This time? Almost a year. I’ve known him forever.”

“Why did he make you leave?”

“So you wouldn’t be nervous. He wants you to think I’m only there to give him blow jobs, obviously not a security risk.” Melanie laid her arms on the curved edge of the bar and her cheek against her shoulder, looking at Jackie on the stool next to her. “The day before yesterday I saved his fucking life. This Nazi was about to beat him to death and I shot the guy four times, in the heart. Today he tells me to go play in the fucking sand.”

Jackie sipped her beer. “You shot a Nazi.”

“One of those white-supremacy geeks. We were out there to rip off all this military stuff he’s got. You know, army weapons? I was supposed to get Gerald naked so Ordell’d be sure the guy wasn’t armed when he shot him. Once in a while Ordell gets into the rough stuff, but usually he plays it safe, has these crazy black kids that work for him do the heavy shit. They killed two other guys that happened to be there.”

Jackie said, “Where was this?”

“At Gerald’s. Out by Loxahatchee. You know Mr. Walker?”

Jackie nodded.

“Ask him about Ordell, he’ll tell you. Mr. Walker’s my buddy, he sends me good stuff.”

“That was your coke,” Jackie said.

Melanie made a face to show pain. “Oh, man, listen, I’m sorry about that. I hope they don’t come down on you, Jesus, on my account. Ordell should’ve told you it was in your bag. You know, or at least asked if you’d mind bringing it. That wasn’t right.”

“He said he didn’t know about it.”

“You believe that? Yeah, well, I guess you have to trust him. If you’re in it, well, what’re you gonna do, you’re fucking in it, you just have to hope for the best. I’d have second thoughts, but then I know him. You get busted, they’ll come down on you a lot harder than on the dope thing. I mean, forty-two grams compared to all those fucking machine guns and rockets? Come on . . . And all that cash?” Melanie raised her head enough to sip her drink, then laid her cheek against her shoulder again, her eyes not leaving Jackie’s. “Having that money in your flight bag, even ten thousand, must be tempting. Fifty thousand the time you were busted?”

Jackie nodded.

“He fucks up, which he’s been known to do,” Melanie said, “and they get the cash, they get my dope, and they’ve got you hanging. It’s a shame, you know it? Your next trip, you’re gonna have over half a million in your flight bag.” Melanie’s eyes softened and so did her voice. “If you’ve thought of cutting Ordell out of this one, I sure wouldn’t blame you.”

Jackie smiled.

“You think I’m kidding,” Melanie said.

“Dreaming,” Jackie said.

“You know how easy it would be? Because he trusts you,” Melanie said, “and won’t be anywhere near that mall? Pull one more switch, up front. That’s it. Listen, if you’re interested and you need help . . .”

“Keep it between us girls?” Jackie said.

“Why not? What’s that son of a bitch ever done for us?”

“But he’ll know.”

“By the time he figures it out, you’re gone, on your way to California, Mexico, shit, anywhere, Alaska, just go. Get someplace and then decide what to do. You don’t want to think too much first and talk yourself out of it. You know, allow it to work on your nerves.”

“You’ve done this before,” Jackie said.

Melanie turned her head, as if to check if anyone was listening, and looked at Jackie again. “I’ve scored cash, dope, jewelry, a painting once that was supposed to be priceless and turned out to be a fake. Cars now and then—ninety miles an hour out of there one time in this asshole’s Mercedes I dropped at the airport in Key West. Get clear and then take off, like to Spain. No backpacks, they’ll check you for drugs. You’re too old for a backpack anyway. Wear a dress, good shoes, you’ll walk through Customs in almost any civilized country except here and Israel. You don’t want to go to Israel anyway, it isn’t safe.”

Jackie said, “That’s it?”

“How it’s done,” Melanie said.

Jackie said, “Thanks,” and slid off the stool.

Melanie’s head came up in a hurry. “Where you going?”

“Find a telephone,” Jackie said.

It was close to seven by the time she got the message Nicolet had left on her machine, ran home to change, and arrived at Good Samaritan in a print dress and earrings. Nicolet brought a chair over as she spoke to Tyler, smiling, working up to touching his hair and giving him a pat on the head. Not exactly in a motherly way, though he looked about seventeen sitting up in bed with a can of beer. There were flowers on every surface that would hold them and getwell cards upright on the windowsill. Nicolet got her seated. She brought out a cigarette and lit it.

“I have something to report,” Jackie said. “Two things. I deliver the money the day after tomorrow. Same arrangement, four thirty at The Gardens Mall. I’ll be meeting Sheronda.”

“The one lives on Thirty-first Street,” Nicolet said to Tyler.

Tyler nodded. “She married to Ordell?”

“They live together,” Jackie said, “but he’s not there all the time. Sheronda has no idea what’s going on. She’s nice, I hope you don’t have to arrest her.”

Nicolet said, “What kind of deal can she offer?”

“She was too scared to open the door,” Tyler said. “She gives you Ordell as the man the money’s for, that ought to get her off.” He said to Jackie, “What’s the other thing you have for us?”

“Ordell has a guy working for him named Louis Gara.”

She saw Tyler look at Nicolet and she turned to him, next to her, as he said, “Have you met him?”

“This afternoon, at an apartment in Palm Beach Shores. I don’t think Gara lives there, but I can probably find out.”

Nicolet reached down to lift a grocery sack from the floor to his lap. “You talk to him?”

“Not really.”

“What’s he do for Ordell?”

“I don’t know yet. I suppose I could ask.”

“You want a beer?”

“I’d love one.”

Nicolet reached in the sack, twisted a can from a six-pack, popped it open, and handed Jackie the can, wet, ice-cold. She took a sip.

“I know he just got out of prison. They seem to be pretty close for a white guy and a black guy.”

Tyler was grinning at her. “You’re doing all right.”

“Enough to get me off?”

“We know about Louis Gara,” Nicolet said, “he’s a bank robber. Late last night we put the house where he’s staying on Thirtieth Street, West Palm, under surveillance. This morning about five thirty he comes out, walks over to a house on Thirty-first where Sheronda lives, gets car keys from her, and takes off in a Toyota parked in the drive. The car’s registered to him. He’s followed to a self-service storage place off Australian Avenue in Riviera Beach. You’ve seen them, they look like rows of garages?” Nicolet looked at Tyler. “That must’ve been where Cujo was going.”

Tyler, nodding, said, “I know, to drop off the piece. And we thought it was the bump shop.”

That went by Jackie; she let it go.

“He opened one of the doors,” Nicolet said to her, “brought a cardboard box out of the trunk of his car, and put it inside. He comes out and returns to the house on Thirtieth. Three thirty this afternoon he drove to the apartment you mentioned in Palm Beach Shores.”

It surprised her. “Then you must’ve seen me go in.

“I wasn’t there,” Nicolet said. “I was at the storage place with a search warrant and a locksmith. We enter—it’s full of guns, all kinds, even military weapons. . . . Some of the stuff we know was taken from that farm out by Loxahatchee, where the triple homicide took place on Monday.”

“One of them,” Jackie said, “a white supremacist named Gerald something?”

“Yeah, it was on the news yesterday, front page of the paper. This morning too.”

“I didn’t see it,” Jackie said. “A woman named Melanie, Ordell’s girlfriend, told me she shot Gerald four times in the heart. Is that right?”

They were both staring at her. Nicolet said, “Four, yeah, but not in the heart.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“She told you she did it? When was this?”

“About an hour and a half ago at Casey’s, right after I left the apartment. That’s where she lives. She said some, quote, ‘crazy young black kids’ who work for Ordell killed the other two.”

Tyler and Nicolet looked at each other again and Nicolet said, “She tell you their names?”

Jackie shook her head, drawing on her cigarette. She said, “I don’t even know Melanie’s last name,” and saw Nicolet look at Tyler again.

“You know a Melanie?”

“I don’t think so,” Tyler said. “What’s she look like?”

Jackie said, “Well, she has very large tits. . . .”

Tyler said, “Yeah?”

“A lot of blond hair. She’s about thirty but looks much older.”

Nicolet said, “Why’d she tell you about it?”

“Because she’s pissed at Ordell. She shoots a guy who’s beating him up and he won’t let her sit in on the Pay Day meeting,” Jackie said. “Pay Day is what happens Friday. He likes to use code names. Rum Punch is his deal with the Colombians.”

Nicolet said, “We used that once, Rumpunch, one word, rounding up Jamaican posses. So we can put Ordell at the scene. What about Louis, was he there?”

“She didn’t say.”

Nicolet was quiet for a moment.

“If Melanie’s pissed off enough at Ordell . . .”

“She won’t leave,” Jackie said. “I’m sure of it.”

Nicolet looked at Tyler. “You know what they say, once they’ve had a black guy. . . . But I want him more than I bet she does. There’s gonna be a fistfight,” Nicolet said to Jackie, “over who gets him now, ATF or Faron’s people and the Sheriff’s office. You said there’s one more arms delivery coming up?”

Jackie nodded. “That’s what he told me.”

“They’ve got enough there, it could go down anytime. My beeper goes off, man, I’m out of here.”

Jackie said, “What if Ordell’s not with them?”

“I don’t care if he is or not, I know it’s his dump,” Nicolet said. “We can show weapons there were lifted from Gerald’s place and take Ordell on the homicides and the guns. It’s better than what we had going before, I love it. Get him sent to Marion, that would be beautiful. You’re in lockdown there twenty-two hours a day.”

Jackie put her beer can on the floor; got up, crossed to the lavatory, and dropped her cigarette in the toilet. She came out and stood by the door to the hall.

“When am I off the hook?”

“When it’s over,” Nicolet said.

She looked at Tyler. “I’m your case, not his.”

“That’s right,” Tyler said, “and I’m calling the state attorney tomorrow, get him to agree on a no-file.”

Jackie said, “An A-99?”

Tyler smiled at her. “Why don’t you stay a while? We’ll get rid of Ray . . .”

Louis turned off Windsor Avenue to Thirtieth Street and Ordell, riding with him, said, “Keep going. I don’t like that Chevy back there. Guy sitting in it.”

“I didn’t notice him,” Louis said, looking at his mirror. “Was he black or white?”

“How do I know he’s black or white in the dark?”

“It’s a black neighborhood,” Louis said.

“I know that. But they got brothers are cops too, if you never heard of it. Look, no lights on. Too early for her to be in bed. Go ’round the block.”

Louis turned on South Terrace and then on 29th and came around again to Simone’s street.

Now they came past the Chevy and Ordell looked back at it.

“Shit, I can’t tell. Go on to Sheronda’s, see what it looks like over there, Thirty-first Street.”

“I know where it is.”

“Man, they make it hard for you. No, forget going over there. Turn around up here at the corner and go back. Man, I have to find out right now. The house’s dark . . . Guy in the Chevy could be staking out anybody. Or it’s some man thinks his woman’s running around on him. The cops don’t know you, so how could they know you staying there?”

“Max Cherry knows.”

“Hey, fuck him. We going in the house.”

They parked in the drive and entered through the side door. “Not one light on in here. This ain’t like her,” Ordell said in the kitchen. “Well, we only have to look one place, where she keeps her Motown records. If they gone, she’s gone.”

Louis said from the living room in the dark, “They’re gone.”

Ordell said, “Shit. Well, let’s look for the money.” Louis said, “You know if she’s gone the money’s gone. It’s why she’s gone.”

“What? You saying nine thousand dollars gonna make her run off, leave her home? Man, that hurts me. I was gonna give her two for helping me out.”

“She left your watch,” Louis said.

“It has something to do with Max Cherry,” Ordell said. “Comes in her house, it scared her.”

“It scared me,” Louis said. “How’d he find out I was here?”

“Man, this shit works on my nerves,” Ordell said. “Tells me I should change the plans around. First thing, I have to find somebody to take Simone’s place.”

“Don’t look at me,” Louis said.

“I’m not looking at you, I’m thinking who I can use.”

“You’re looking at me,” Louis said in the dark.

“You could do it.”

“Walk in the women’s fitting room? How would I work that?”

“Shit,” Ordell said. “Lemme think.”

Max didn’t touch the phone: on the table with the lamp and digital clock, next to Jackie’s side of the queen-size bed. It rang while she was in the kitchen, three times and stopped. She would have picked it up standing by the counter in a man’s dress shirt she put on leaving the bedroom, nothing under it, lighting a cigarette now, talking to Ordell or Ray Nicolet about Friday, the clock reading 10:37, while she finished making their drinks. Max got a cigarette from the table on his side.

Five left in the pack he’d bought this morning before seeing the lawyer about filing, the lawyer suggesting he and Renee sell the house, divide their assets, and that should do it. Then in the kitchen before coming to bed Jackie saying, “This is all you have to do,” describing his part in making off with a half million or so. “Okay?”

Nothing to it. If changing your life was this simple, why was he ever concerned about the everyday stuff, writing fifteen thousand criminal offenders? He said to Jackie, “Okay,” and was committed, more certain of his part in this than hers. Until she stood close to him in the kitchen and he lifted the skirt up over her thighs, looking at this girl in a summer dress, fun in her eyes, and knew they were in it together. He did. And was sure of it when they made love, again looking at her eyes.

The times he had doubts, he was alone. Wondering if she was using him and he would never see her again once it was done.

It was 10:45.

He used to think that with the name Max Cherry he should be a character. Max the legendary bail bondsman who told wild stories about skip-tracing, collaring felons on the run, to the patrons of the Helen Wilkes bar. He did tell one—how he drove all the way to Van Horn, Texas, to return a defendant who’d skipped on a five-hundred-dollar bond—and they didn’t get it, failed to understand the street value of what that kind of dedication meant. He settled for being a man of his word instead of a character, and that could be why he was here.

Jackie came in with their drinks, the man’s dress shirt hanging open. “That was Faron.” She handed Max his glass and moved around to her side of the bed. It was 10:5 1.

“You have a nice chat?”

“Ray just got word they’re moving the guns, three guys, and left. So I called Ordell hoping to God he wasn’t one of them. We don’t want to lose him now, after all this.”

Max watched her place her drink on the night table and light a cigarette before slipping into bed, propping her pillows against the headboard.

“He must’ve been home,” Max said.

“At the apartment. I told him he was about to go out of business and he carried on for a while. That’s what took so long, getting him calmed down. I told him we’d better bring the money in tomorrow. He said Mr. Walker was in Islamorada, he’d have to get in touch with him. I said, drive down and get him. Take him to Miami and put him on a plane to Freeport, he has to be there to meet my flight. I told him if he wanted his money he’d better get it out of there quick. He said okay, Mr. Walker would take his cut and put exactly five hundred and fifty thousand in my bag. Now I have to get in touch with Ray before I leave in the morning.”

So calm about it. Max said, “Why?” “Tell him it’s tomorrow.” “If he’s not at the mall, so much the better.” “I want him to be there, that’s part of it. Let

him search me and see I’m clean.” “You’re starting to sound like people I know.” Jackie said, “I’m going to tell Ray that Ordell

changed his mind. With what’s happened he’s afraid to bring in all of his money, but will need about fifty thousand for bail, in case he’s picked up.”

“He’ll need more than that.” “Don’t be so literal. This is what I tell Ray.” “But you show him the money at the airport.” “Well, you know I’m not going to show him

the whole amount. He’ll see fifty thousand.” “Where’s the rest of it?” “In the bag, underneath.” “What if he looks through it?” “He won’t. He’ll be expecting fifty thousand

and there it is, on top. He didn’t search my bag

the last time.” “You’re taking an awful chance.” “If he finds it, I say Mr. Walker put the money

in and I didn’t know it was there, like the coke.”

“Then you’re out, you get nothing.” “Right, but I tried and I’m not in jail.” “Keep it simple, huh?” “Exactly.” She said, “Oh,” thinking of some

thing else. “Is tomorrow okay?” He had to smile. “I’ll try to be there.” Jackie was quiet for several moments smok

ing her cigarette, staring off. “It’s pretty much the same plan. Your part

doesn’t change.” “You’re gonna have surveillance all over you.” “I know. That’s why you don’t make a move

till I come out of the fitting room.” “In a dress.” “Well, a suit, an Isani I’ve had my eye on. The

only thing I don’t like about it now,” Jackie said, “Simone’s disappeared, and guess who’s taking her place. Melanie.”

21

The three jackboys in the self-service storage unit, Sweatman, Snow, and Zulu wearing his black bandanna and sunglasses, had brought cardboard boxes to load the different weapons in, wrapping each piece in newspaper. The guns didn’t have to be packed too good going from here in the van to halfway down in the Keys and put on a boat. It got so hot with the door closed using flashlights, Zulu turned the van around, drove it partway in, and put on the headlights. There wasn’t anybody outside from here to Australian Avenue so what was the difference? When they finished packing the boxes he’d turn the van around again and they’d load it through the rear. When they heard the voice outside they thought it was somebody’s radio. When they stopped to listen and heard the voice again they knew what it was, shit, a bullhorn, police telling them, “Come out with your hands up!”

The voice said something about they were federal officers and to lay their guns down and come out one at a time with their hands in the air.

Sweatman said, “How they gonna shoot us, they down the street? They have to be right there in front to do it.”

Snow said, “Shit, we got all the guns we need.”

Zulu said, “Sweat, get in the van and take a look out the back. See where they at.”

He had pulled the van far enough into the unit that they could open the doors and get in without being seen. Zulu started looking through boxes, saying to Snow, “Where those throwaway rocket shooters we got out at Big Guy’s?”

Sweatman came back and said they had both ends of this street blocked with green and whites and were some of them up on the roof too, laying down up there right across the street. Zulu turned to him with an olive-colored LAW rocket launcher in his hands, a tube twenty-four inches long with a grip, a trigger, sights, and writing on it with pictographs. “How to fire the motherfucker,” Zulu said. “Each of us take one and get in the van.”

Snow said, “I want my AK.”

Zulu said, “We bringing AKs, but this the motherflicker gonna set us free. See, here the instructions.”

They all wore flak jackets with identifying letters on the back. Nicolet, ATF, huddled behind the radio cars with an agent from FDLE and an older guy named Boland who commanded the Sheriff’s Office TAC unit. They stared at the lighted street of garage doors on both sides to the back end of a van sticking out of one of the units. The surveillance team said there were three of them, young black guys. Two jumped out when the van arrived; the driver backed it in first, then turned it around. Beyond the van, at the opposite end of the street, sets of blue gum balls were flashing. There were about fifty law enforcement officers on the scene.

“If they’re all young guys,” Nicolet said, “the one I want isn’t there, so I’ll need to take prisoners. The only problem I see, they have about a hundred and fifty machine guns, a big M-60, grenades, and half a dozen rocket launchers. It could drag on. These guys have more firepower than we do.”

The TAC guy said, “But can they shoot?”

“I don’t want to find out,” Nicolet said. “Before they start firing rockets at us, I thought I’d go up there and toss in a flash-bang.”

“The van’s in the way,” the TAC guy said.

“It’s my cover,” Nicolet said. “Bounce it in there off the roof of the van. The concussion knocks them on their ass and we’d have about seven seconds to get the drop on them. I need those guys alive.”

Zulu had his sunglasses off to read the pictographs printed on the side of the LAW rocket launcher, holding the weapon in the van’s headlight beam. “ ‘Pull pin,’ ” Zulu said. “ ‘Re-move . . . rear . . . cov-er and . . .’”

“ ‘Strap,’ “ Snow said. “Say remove the rear cover and that strap there.”

Zulu said, “Yeah, this thing,” and began reading again. “Now. ‘Pull o-pen un-til . . .’ Shit.”

“Say to pull the motherfucker open,” Sweatman said.

“It’s what I’m doing,” Zulu said. “You pull open your own one. Hey, like this.”

His LAW rocket launcher was now thirty-six inches long.

Zulu said, “ ‘Re- . . .’ The fuck is that word there?”

Snow said, “ ‘Re- . . . lease.’ Yeah, it say to release the . . . something. ‘Release the safe-ty.’ Yeah, that thing right there. Release it.”

Zulu said, “Push it?”

Snow said, “Release the motherfucker however you suppose to release it. I think, yeah, you push it. Then the next word it say to aim. You ready to shoot.”

Zulu said, “I am? What’s this next one say?”

Snow said, “ ‘Squee- . . .’ I think it say ‘Squeeze.’ ”

Sweatman said, “What’s it say on top there? That ‘Danger’?”

Snow said, “Lemme see. Yeah, it say ‘Danger . . . rear blast . . .’”

Something hit the top of the van. They heard it and then saw it, a round kind of long thing like a stick of dynamite, bounce past over their heads to land among cardboard boxes. They heard a sound like poof. For maybe two seconds they stood frozen before the concussion grenade exploded with a flash of blinding light and a bang so loud it slammed all three of them against the front of the van.

They were on the pavement now with their rocket launchers and machine guns, dazed, blinking their eyes in the dust clouding the headlight beam, looking up at flak jackets and shotguns.

Nicolet hunched down next to Zulu. He picked up a rocket launcher, glanced at the instructions, and laid the weapon across the jackboy’s chest.

“Couldn’t read it, could you? You dumb fuck—we wondered what you were doing. See?” Nicolet said, “You should never’ve dropped out of school.”

Ordell had Louis meet him at a bar on Broadway in Riviera Beach, all black in here, Louis looking over his shoulder sitting at the bar, Ordell telling him, “You all right, you with me.” Ordell was edgy too, in his mind, anxious and smoking cigarettes with his rum drink: wanting to drive by the storage place, see what it looked like, and having to drive down to Islamorada tonight, pick up Mr. Walker, and get him on a plane to Freeport. Everything at once. It would be good, though, to get out of town this evening and not show himself too much tomorrow either.

He said to Louis, “The main thing I want to tell you: Melanie goes in the place where they try on clothes.”

“The fitting room,” Louis said. “I make sure no suits are around before she comes out.”

“Do that,” Ordell said. “But then don’t leave. You do, she gonna walk with the Macy bag. You know what I’m saying? Take the bag from her and split, don’t wait. She give you any trouble, punch her in the mouth. What I mean, you have to take it from her, dig? Else Melanie’s gone and it’s gone. All of it. Five hundred and fifty thousand, man.”

22

Thursday, on the Freeport to West Palm flight, Jackie spent fifteen minutes in the lavatory rearranging her bag. The five hundred thousand she put in first took nearly half the space. She tucked lingerie around the edges, covered the money with blouses and two skirts and tied it all down, tight. The remaining fifty thousand went in last, across the top.

When she came out, a guy who’d been to Freeport to gamble said, “I’m waiting for a drink and you spend half the flight in the can. Soon as we land I’m making a formal complaint.”

Jackie said, “Because I was airsick?”

“How can you be a stew if you get airsick?”

“That’s why I’m quitting.”

“I’m still gonna make the complaint.”

“Because I was airsick,” Jackie said, “or because I called you an asshole?”

It confused him. He said, “You didn’t call me that.”

Jackie said, “I didn’t? Okay, you’re an asshole.”

It was her last flight.

Ray Nicolet was waiting on the top floor of the parking structure. He took the wheels from her saying, “We have to stop meeting like this.”

“You said that the last time.”

“So? It’s true, isn’t it? We could meet someplace else when this’s buttoned up. What do you think?”

“We could, if I’m not in jail.”

“Faron called the State Attorney’s Office. You were no-filed this morning in circuit court.”

Like that—hearing it in a dim parking structure among empty cars. She stopped and waited for Nicolet to look back and pause. “Are you saying I’m off the hook?”

“Free as a bird. I expect you to deliver the goods though, finish the job. How much you have this time?”

“What I told you,” Jackie said, “fifty thousand. He’s pretty sure he’s going to need bail money.”

“If a bond is set, which I doubt,” Nicolet said. They reached Jackie’s Honda. As she unlocked the trunk he said, “Last night we scored what would bring him another two hundred grand, easy, and took three of his boys without firing a shot.”

Jackie raised the trunk lid. “But you didn’t get Ordell.”

“Not yet. One of ’em will give him up. Or the guy you met in the hospital, he’s ready to flip.” Nicolet placed the wheels in Jackie’s trunk and got in the car with the flight bag. It was on his lap unzipped and open by the time Jackie slid in behind the wheel.

He said, “That’s fifty thousand, huh?” looking at the packets of hundred-dollar bills, each bound with a rubber band. “It doesn’t look like that much.”

“I was told ten thousand in each pack.”

“You didn’t count it?”

“I never have. It’s not my money.”

“He might’ve slipped some coke in here. Did you check?”

She watched Nicolet’s hand feel through the packets of currency and into the folds of a skirt.

“Mr. Walker promised he’d never do that again.”

“Where your curlers?”

“I didn’t bring them.”

She watched his hand move to a pair of black heels wedged into one side. His fingers touched the shoes, then moved again to pick up one of the packets. He held it close to his ear and riffled the bills with his thumb.

“Ten thousand, right.”

Nicolet rubbed the bills between his fingers and handed the packet to Jackie. “There’s coke dust on it. You feel it? Half the money in Florida, I think if you tested it you’d find dust.”

Jackie fingered the bills. Ten thousand in her hand. She smiled, saying, “Are you tempted?”

Nicolet looked at her. “What, to put one of these in my pocket? If I did, I’d have to let you have one too, wouldn’t I? Or we could take what we want, there’s no receipt with it. Nobody knows how much is here but us.” He took the packet from her and dropped it in the flight bag. “I’ve seen more money sitting on tables in dope houses, in cardboard boxes in property rooms. I’ve seen all kinds of dirty money lying around, and I’ve never been tempted to take any. How about you?”

Jackie said, “You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Try to skim off Ordell?”

“Or me,” Nicolet said. “Once I mark it, this fifty grand belongs to ATF.”

“How would I take any of it,” Jackie said, “if I’m being watched every second?”

“That’s what I want you to understand, you’d be dumb to try. You put this fifty in your shopping bag, it’s what I expect to find when I look in Sheronda’s. You going with Saks bags again?”

“Macy’s this time.”

“Why?”

“Ask Ordell.”

“I can hardly wait,” Nicolet said.

What do you wear to walk off with a half million bucks? Go casual, with running shoes, or dress up? Max gave it some thought and put on his tan poplin suit with a blue shirt and navy tie. His instructions were to hang around the Anne Klein display on Macy’s second level, women’s clothes, and watch for Jackie to walk out of the fitting room at approximately four thirty. Give whatever surveillance they had on her time to clear out. Then approach a salesclerk and tell her his wife thinks she left a shopping bag in one of the dressing rooms. With beach towels in it.

He had read that a prompt man was a lonely man, and it seemed to be true: now a few minutes past four standing outside Gallery Renee, a newspaper under his arm, looking in at green paintings, no sign of Renee—until he heard her voice.

“Max?”

Sad, or maybe uncertain. She was behind him, standing in the middle of the concourse, Renee holding one of the busboy’s paintings upright on the floor.

“It came this morning,” Renee said. “A process server delivered it, like a court summons.”

“That’s what it is,” Max said.

She seemed so small holding on to that big canvas, unaware of shoppers walking around her. It was a trait of hers, being unaware: stopping to talk in the middle of traffic, in doorways of public places, in a parking lot, a car waiting to take the space where she stood.

“I was sadly disappointed,” Renee said. “I thought you might show more class than have a stranger inform me. After twenty-seven years, Max, do you think that’s fair?”

He said, “Why don’t you come over here out of the way?” Shoppers were looking at Renee, then turning as they went by to glance at him. “Here, let me help you.”

She walked into her gallery, Renee wearing a baggy, Arab-looking outfit, layers of material in tan and white, black stripes running through it. Max followed, stopping to catch the glass door swinging at him. He got the painting inside and leaned it against the table in the center, ready for more of Renee, her tiny head with its cap of dark hair sticking out of the Arab outfit, eyes brightly made up. Renee looking at the canvas now.

“I was positive Ralph Lauren would buy one, after I schlepped it all the way over there. I said, ‘Hang something that has some life in it, energy, instead of those stupid English horse prints.’ ”

“What do they know,” Max said, for some reason sympathizing with her. She was looking at him now, her expression telling him she was still sadly disappointed.

“You could have come to me, Max, told me what you planned to do.”

“I did come to you. You were busy with your cheese and crackers.”

“I sold three of David’s paintings at the reception. Another one yesterday.”

“You’re doing all right.”

“Twenty-seven years,” Renee said, “as if they never happened.”

He was thinking, No, they happened, they must have. But didn’t say anything. Why start? Get her to accept the fact and leave. It was ten after.

Renee was looking at the painting again, the cane field, with kind of a lost expression, or vacant. She said, “We’ve had our differences. We’ve grown apart, there’s no getting around that. I have my art. You have . . . I suppose your business.” She looked at him now. “But we had some good times too, didn’t we, Max?”

Was that from a song?

Good times too, didn’t we?

He tried to think of one in particular. There was that period in the beginning when he could-n’t keep his hands off of her and he thought she would get to like it, way back, before he had given up trying to think of things to talk about. Maybe there weren’t any, at least not memorable ones, the entire twenty-seven years but not counting the periods of separation. Those weren’t bad. The times with Cricket singing country to him, Cricket in what passed for moonlight . . . It was funny, he liked waitresses. Jackie was different. Intelligent but horny, in a quiet, unhurried way—reaching into his pants on the balcony and dropping her glass over the side, taking hold of him. He would never get tired of being with her. . . . He said to Renee, “Yeah, there were times,” and saw her chin quiver.

She could do that, make it quiver anytime she wanted, and it seemed to always work; he’d feel guilty or sorry for her without knowing why.

She looked at the cane field again saying, “What’s the use talking about it, you’ve made up your mind.” Renee sighed. “If this is what you want . . .”

“Don’t you think it makes sense?”

“I suppose.” She raised her head to look at him again, the chin no longer quivering. “But that doesn’t mean it isn’t going to cost you.”

Max said, “Renee, you never came cheap.”

Frieda, the saleswoman in the fitting room with Jackie, stood in a fashion-model slouch, hand on her kidney with fingers pointing to her spine. She said, “The Isani’s absolutely darling on you.”

Jackie looked over her shoulder at the mirror. “I’m used to a narrower skirt.”

“Your figure,” Frieda said, “you can go straight or fluid and swingy. You’re traveling abroad?”

“I thought I’d start out in Paris, drive through the wine country.”

“Oh, you’re going by yourself?”

“I may,” Jackie said. “I’m not sure.”

“Mix and match with separates, that silk jersey I showed you? It travels beautifully.” Frieda picked up several dresses from the back of a chair. “You like a narrow skirt, why don’t you try on that Zang Toi, with the off-center slit?”

Jackie glanced at her watch. “Okay. I know I want the suit. In fact I think I’ll wear it—get out of this uniform.”

“The black silk, it’s a knockout on you,” Frieda said, and walked out.

Louis and Melanie were by the Donna Karan New York display, Louis watching the opening in the paneled wall that said FITTING ROOM over it, down at the far end of the designer section. Jackie had said at the meeting to wait here and not come in before twenty-five after. It was getting onto that now. He was pretty sure he’d have a better view of the fitting room over by the Dana Buchman display. Once Melanie went in, he wanted to be sure he saw her when she came out. Women shoppers would creep by and he’d feel them looking at him. Like what was he doing here? Melanie kept busy. She’d hold up a blouse to look it over and then throw it back on the shelf. She never folded anything up again. She was all butt in her white tube skirt and denim jacket, but didn’t look too bad. He was surprised she was interested in clothes, because she didn’t seem to have many, always wearing those cutoffs. Louis was holding the Macy’s shopping bag they’d exchange for the one Jackie had. He was afraid if Melanie carried it she’d be shoplifting, stuffing things in the bag. They didn’t need mall security on them, guys in green sport coats and peach-colored ties. At least they didn’t pack. Louis had on his new light-blue sport coat. He wished this was over. Melanie made him nervous.

He said, “Come on,” motioning to her, and crossed the aisle to the Dana Buchman display. He looked back, motioning to her again, and bumped into a woman as he turned to look toward the fitting room. Louis said, “I beg your pardon,” saw the woman’s lifeless eyes, and realized, Christ, it was a mannequin. Melanie came up to him saying, “You talking to yourself, Louis?”

He thought this would give them a straight-on view of the fitting room, but there was another display between it and them, mannequins standing around in poses. They did look real. Louis nudged Melanie and said, “Come on.”

She said, “What’re we waiting for? Why don’t I just do it?”

“She said four twenty-five.”

“It’s almost that now.”

Louis motioned to her and she followed him to a section that said MICHI MOON on a display board. Melanie, looking at the clothes, said, “Far out.”

“Get ready,” Louis said, handing her the Macy’s bag, beach towels in it Jackie had told him to buy. Now he saw a woman with dresses over her arm come out of the fitting room and start hanging the dresses on different racks. There were a few women in the area prowling through the racks, only one guy; he was sitting in a chair over by Ellen Tracy reading a newspaper. He looked up, toward the rear area, and Louis said, “Jesus Christ, it’s Max.”

Melanie turned from Michi Moon saying, “Who?”

“That’s the guy I used to work for, Max Cherry. What’s he doing here?”

“I don’t know,” Melanie said. “Is he a cross-dresser? Ask him.”

“He’s married, he could be here with his wife,” Louis said, and remembered that Max didn’t live with his wife, they were separated. Or he was here with his girlfriend, that could be. Louis glanced toward Melanie. She was gone, walking toward the fitting room. He looked at Max again, about fifty feet away, Max strolling off too, over to the Anne Klein section. Dressed up in a suit and tie, he had to be with some woman. Louis stepped to one end of the Michi Moon display. Melanie was already in the fitting room.

“That’s cute. What’s the top, cotton?”

“Linen,” Jackie said. “The skirt’s sand-washed silk.”

“It’s nice, and I don’t usually go for a full skirt.”

“This’s the look,” Jackie said, “fluid and swingy.”

“It’s okay on you. How much?”

“Five fifty for the jacket . . .”

“Christ.”

“Two sixty-eight for the skirt.”

“I guess you can afford it,” Melanie said, handing Jackie her shopping bag. “We could’ve worked this. You know that, don’t you? You would’ve made out a lot better than you’re going to, believe me.”

Jackie pushed open the louvered door to a dressing room, went in with Melanie’s shopping bag, and came out with her own.

“That’s the same one,” Melanie said, “the same towel? Are you putting me on or what?”

Jackie’s hand went inside the bag, dug beneath the towels, and came out with a packet of hundred-dollar bills she held in Melanie’s face, letting her stare for a moment before shoving the money down in the bag again. Jackie did-n’t say a word.

Neither did Melanie. She took the bag and left.

In the dressing room again with the door closed, Jackie transferred the five hundred thousand from her flight bag to the shopping bag Melanie had brought. Packed her uniform in the flight bag. Put on the nifty black silk. . . . She’d have to pass on the Zang Toi with the off-center slit; no time to try it on. Pay for the suit and the Isani separates, which she’d take with her. But ask to leave her flight bag at the cashier’s counter, pick it up later.

Okay, then as she’s walking out say to Frieda, “Oh. Someone left a shopping bag in there. Looks like beach towels.” She exits. A minute or so later Max enters, he’s looking for a shopping bag his wife thinks she left in a dressing room. Beach towels in it.

Once she was out on the floor in plain sight she would have to appear anxious, helpless, and run off looking for Nicolet, someone, to tell what happened. How Melanie, just a minute ago, barged into the fitting room, grabbed the money, and took off. Melanie, the one who shot the guy—Jackie sounding a little frantic by then. Nicolet would go into action, do whatever they did, and when he got back to her with or without Melanie there would be questions, all kinds, but none, Jackie believed, she couldn’t handle. The only real problem she saw down the road was Max.

Melanie had come out of the fitting room and moved through racks of clothes heading for the aisle. She caught a glimpse of Louis still at the Michi Moon display. He saw her and she saw him cutting across the floor now past Dana Buchman to head her off. They met in the aisle at Donna Karan New York.

“What’re you doing?”

He said it with kind of a strung-out, spacy look that scared her for a moment.

“I’m getting out of here. What do you think?”

“Lemme have the bag.”

“Fuck you. I can carry it.”

She tried to push past him and he caught her by the arm to pull her around.

“Goddamn it, gimme the bag.”

“What’re you gonna do, hit me?”

“If I have to.”

He was ready, his fist cocked close to his shoulder. He grabbed the open edge of the bag and when she tried to pull it away, holding on to the loop handles, the bag started to tear open at the seam—not much, but enough that she let go saying, “Okay, okay, take it, Jesus, what’s wrong with you?”

He said, “I’m carrying it.”

She said, “All right. You’ve got it. What’d you think I was gonna do, run off with it?”

He said, “If you had half a chance,” holding the bag in his arm now, all that money crushed against his cheap sport coat. He turned and walked off. She followed him down the down escalator staring at his hair, at his scalp beginning to show through at the crown; followed him off on the main floor past girls offering perfume samples and out into the mall. Louis stopped.

Melanie said, “Remember where we came in?”

He looked up at palm trees, at turquoise structural beams and the skylight ceiling way up there. He started off in the direction of Sears.

Melanie said, “The other way, Louis,” and he stopped. “We came in through Burdine’s, remember? Where you do your shopping?”

Louis didn’t say anything. He wasn’t strung out; maybe hung over. Definitely scared, Melanie decided, out of his element, the ex-con in a crowd of civilians he didn’t know or trust, holding the shopping bag against his body.

She said, “Let’s try to act like we’re just plain folks, Louis. What do you say? Turn around. That’s it, now put one foot in front of the other and we’ll stroll down to Burdine’s. Pick up a snappy straw hat to go with your snappy jacket. Would you like that?”

Max watched the fitting room from the Anne Klein display. He saw a woman who had to be Melanie, a lot of hair and a big can, duck in and come out again, gone, as he concentrated on the fitting room. The salesclerk went in, stayed a few minutes, and came out to the cashier’s counter with clothes over her arm. No sign of Jackie yet. The clerk was ringing up the sale now, folding the clothes in boxes, two of them, and slipping the boxes into a shopping bag. There she was, finally. Jackie in a neat, short-sleeved black suit. With her flight bag. She placed it on the floor behind the counter, came up, and began looking around then, going into her act: agitated, distracted as she spoke to the clerk, paid for the clothes with cash and took the shopping bag from the counter. Max had spotted a young woman earlier who seemed to be hanging around and could be working surveillance, but didn’t see her now; and none of the women shoppers poking through the racks would qualify for law enforcement. Jackie was walking away now, still looking around, anxious, the clerk saying something after her. Jackie kept going. Max watched her until she was out of sight down the aisle, heading for the mall. He waited. No one followed her. The salesclerk was alone now by the cashier’s counter.

It was Max’s turn.

Nineteen years dealing with people who took incredible risks. If he walked over to that counter he’d find out what it was like.

After, he was to go home and wait for Jackie’s call. She’d come to the house or he’d meet her somewhere. Or he might not hear from her right away. Nicolet could be into it and she’d have to face him, tell her story, and stick to it. She said, “If you come through, I can handle it.” And after that they would sort of drift away, disappear.

Apart or together. She didn’t say and he did-n’t ask. And then what? She said, “Let’s see what happens.”

The one thing Max was sure of, standing by Anne Klein designs, he was in love with her and wanted to be with her, and if he had to suspend his judgment to do it, he would, with his eyes wide open. If he saw she was using him . . . He didn’t think so, but if she was . . . Well, he would have to handle that, wouldn’t he?

At the moment, walking away from Anne Klein toward the salesclerk at the cashier’s counter, he was changing his life for good.

“You don’t want a snappy straw? Hey, a pair of jams. Or what about a Hawaiian shirt? Louis, look.”

Driving him nuts.

Melanie right behind him all the way through Burdine’s poking at his arm, telling him to look at hats, shirts, bathing suits. He pushed through the door and was outside, for a few moments with a sense of relief, facing the aisles of empty cars in late sunlight. Shit, but then he couldn’t remember where they’d parked. Melanie would pick up on it any second now. It wasn’t this aisle right in front of the entrance, it was two or three over, he was pretty sure. To the left. When they came in the mall Louis was thinking of why they were here, not memorizing where they’d parked. Come out the wrong door you were in trouble. People lost their cars at malls all the time. It was why they had security guys driving around in those white utility cars, GMC Jimmys, to help you out. He could wait for Melanie to walk off.

But she didn’t, she was waiting for him. She said, “You have no idea where we parked, do you? Jesus, but if you two aren’t the biggest fuckups I’ve ever met in my life . . . How did you ever rob a bank? You come out and have to look for your car? You better give me the bag, Louis, before you lose it.”

He didn’t say anything.

“I’ll hold it and you go get the car.” She said, “No, that won’t work. You don’t know where it is.”

He thought of hitting her.

“Or I get the car,” Melanie said, running the words together, “we drive off, split the money, and each go our separate way. Fuck Ordell.”

Punch her right in the mouth.

She said, “Okay, come on. It’s this way, Louis. Here, give me your hand.”

She stuck hers out, waiting. When he didn’t take it she walked off and he followed after her, over to the second aisle and then cut between cars to the next one. She walked along the parked cars a little way and stopped.

“Is it in this aisle?”

“Yeah, down the end.”

“You sure?”

He started off that way.

She said, “Lou-is,” turned, and cut between cars to the next aisle.

He followed her. Sometimes when he was living in South Beach and drinking a lot he’d forget where he parked and have to roam up and down the streets. He’d had a few pops this afternoon before he picked her up. Melanie stopped.

She said, “Louis, I feel sorry for you, I really do.” She said, “You need somebody to take care of you,” and walked off swinging her can at him in that tight white tube skirt. She stopped, about to cut between the cars again, and turned to look at him.

“Is it this aisle or the next one over?”

He said, “This one,” not caring if it was or not. He wasn’t taking any more of this.

She said, “You sure?”

He said, “Don’t say anything else, okay? I’m telling you, keep your mouth shut.”

She seemed surprised, but then got her smirky look back, was about to speak, and Louis put his hand up, quick.

“I mean it. Don’t say one fucking word.”

Melanie said, “Okay, Lou-is . . .”

And told him he’d be walking around here all night looking for his car—got to say all that while he was reaching inside his jacket for the Beretta Ordell had given him. Once she saw it she shut up. Her face went blank. But then, Christ, she started talking again. Louis didn’t hear what she said because right then he shot her. Bam. And saw her bounce off one of the cars. Bam. Shot her again to make sure and because it felt good. And that was that. He went down the aisle to his Toyota, where he’d said it was, got in with the shopping bag, and drove back this way. Coming to Melanie’s tan legs sticking out from between the cars, Louis rolled his window down. He said to her, “Hey, look, I found it,” and got out of there. One of those white Jimmys was coming up the next aisle.

Jackie hurried along the mall’s upper level, breathless for the benefit of surveillance. (In actual fact anxious to put it on Melanie. That change in the plan, Melanie for Simone, was working out better than she’d expected.) Jackie headed straight for Barnie’s Coffee & Tea Company on the edge of the café area, where Nicolet had hung out the time before.

He wasn’t there.

She came out and two mall security guys in their green blazers almost ran her down, both with hand radios, dodged around her, and kept going. Coming away from Macy’s she had noticed another security guy running toward Burdine’s.

Jackie imagined Nicolet and his people, in contact by radio, were passing her along, telling one another: Standing in front of Barnie’s looking around. Moving into the table area now, she’s all yours. Ten four, over and out. Or whatever they said on police radios. Jackie still had her concerned look in place, a puzzled frown, when her gaze came to Sheronda with a tray from Stuff ‘N Turkey and stopped.

Sheronda’s eyes, above a large-size Coca Cola, watched as Jackie came over to the table and sat down, shoving her Macy’s bag underneath.

“How’re you doing?”

Sheronda put her Coke down and sat up straight, saying she was just fine. Jackie lit a cigarette.

She said, “The last time we exchanged gifts, a woman came by after I left and you swapped with her?”

“Simone,” Sheronda said. “Nice lady, say she was Ordell’s aunty. Yeah, she took the bag you put here and gave me the one she had.”

“You know why we’re doing this?”

“He say is like a game, you get surprises. Like the other time was nice underwear.”

“The potholders are great,” Jackie said.

“I didn’t know what to get.”

“I needed them—thanks.”

“Ordell say this time we all bringing the same thing?”

“Towels,” Jackie said.

Sheronda nodded. She smiled at Jackie watching her and lowered her eyes, innocent, no idea she was being used.

“But, you might be surprised,” Jackie said and stubbed out her cigarette. “I have to go.”

“Simone coming this time?”

“I don’t know,” Jackie said, “maybe. Take your time. Have something else if you want, there’s no hurry.” She took Sheronda’s shopping bag from under the table and left.

Max came out of Macy’s lower level to the mall’s center-court pools and palm trees and headed off toward Sears, where he was parked outside. He passed the entrance to Bloomingdale’s and came to the Gallery Renee.

There she was, standing by the table with the busboy, Da-veed showing her something in a magazine. The busboy looked up, saw Max, and paused. He said something to Renee and she was looking this way now. Max shifted the Macy’s bag holding a half-million dollars to his right hand, away from the showroom window, and gave them a friendly wave as he passed. The busboy raised his hand, no finger, just a fist: a tough kid making out. Renee turned away.

The woman had no imagination.

A living mannequin stood posed in front of a ladies’ apparel shop: a young woman with blond hair in gray jeans, a sequined cowboy shirt, and white fringed boots. She seemed poised to run. Or the way her hands were raised, to fend off something coming at her; though she would never see it with that blank stare, head cocked slightly to one side. A little girl stopped to touch the mannequin’s fingers, touched, and pulled her hand back and ran to catch up to her mother.

Jackie, coming away from the café area, had paused to watch, waiting for the living mannequin to move. There was something familiar about the girl. Jackie, with her shopping bag, walked up to her and said, “How long do you have to do this?”

The girl didn’t answer, her gaze leveled at Jackie’s shoulder without expression, unblinking. For several moments Jackie stared at her with the feeling she was looking at herself. Blond hair and green eyes in a much younger version, but there she was, poised, ready to run or somehow defend herself. The one big difference, Jackie’s eyes were focused. She saw rough times ahead she would have to feel and talk her way through. Face Nicolet, there was no chance of avoiding that.

Maybe see Ordell again, it was possible. And finally come to a decision about Max.

That would be a tough one, because they were alike, she felt good with him and knew he was doing this for her, not the money. She saw it in his eyes when she brought him along with her own eyes and could tell he knew she was playing with him, so it was okay. And yet he was his own person, a very decent guy, even if he was a bail bondsman—and had to smile thinking that, wondering if she sounded like his arty little wife. He was tender and he was rough too, in a good way that left her sore after. She said to him, “I don’t think I can walk,” and he said, “Then come back to bed.” She would have to decide in the next day or so and she hadn’t been that good at picking guys. When she told him, “Let’s see what happens,” she meant it. She liked him a lot. Maybe loved him. But didn’t want to run off with him and learn too late it was a mistake. But how else did you find out? She needed to have the money in her hands to make an honest decision. And at the moment Max had it. She hoped.

The living mannequin changed her pose: came around to stand with her back to Jackie, fringed boots planted wide, fists on her hips, head cocked to stare dull-eyed over her shoulder, defiant. Without moving her mouth she said, “Will you get out of here?”

The poor girl trying to make a living. There were all kinds of ways. Jackie said, “You can do better than this,” and walked away.

She didn’t get far.

A guy with a hand radio was coming along the concourse toward her, noticeable in his suit among vacation outfits, casual wear. Jackie saw two more suits now and a young woman in a skirt and jacket carrying a shoulder bag, the suits spreading out as they approached, and now she saw Nicolet coming with a radio. Jackie waited.

When he was close enough she said, “Try to find a cop when you need one,” and got ready for a rough time.

23

All Ordell wanted to know was, “Did you get it?”

No, Louis had to tell him how he’s driving up to the apartment and sees two guys sitting in a car on Atlantic he’s sure are watching the building and thinks they saw him go by. So he kept going around the block and now he was at Casey’s, calling from there.

Ordell believed having a few pops, too, for his nerves. He tried to be patient with the man, saying, “I felt they was watching me, Louis; that’s why I said to check. Now did you get it or didn’t you?”

“I got it,” Louis said. “Listen, there’s something else I have to tell you.”

“After I see the money,” Ordell said, and told Louis how they’d work it. He’d get in his Mercedes like he was going out for cigarettes or a six-pack, just in his shirt-sleeves, an old pair of pants. Drive up to Ocean Mall with the two guys following him. Park in back. Walk through Casey’s and Louis would be waiting in his car, in front. They’d go someplace. . . . Ordell said he’d think of where and let him know. He asked Louis, “You count the money?”

Louis said he hadn’t even looked at it yet; it was still in the shopping bag.

Ordell said, “Melanie must be dying to see it.”

There was a silence on the line.

Ordell said, “Louis?”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” Louis said. “Melanie was giving me a hard time . . .”

“Not now,” Ordell said. “I’ll meet you in five minutes. Have your motor running.”

As soon as he was in the car, Ordell reached around and got the Macy’s bag from the back seat and held it on his lap with his arms around it, going “Hee hee hee,” like a kid. When they were still on the Riviera bridge he said, “Go on up to Northlake, where all the car dealers are? We gonna leave this heap in a parking lot and get us one the police don’t know about.” When they were turning north on Broadway he said, “Hey, where’s Melanie?” and looked around, like she might’ve been in back and he’d missed seeing her. “Where’s my big girl at?”

“She bugged me,” Louis said, “the whole time. Got nasty on me ’cause I wouldn’t let her carry the bag. Started mouthing off . . . I could-n’t remember right away when we came out where the car was parked, so then she got on me about that. ‘Is it in this aisle, Lou-is? Is it in that one?’ Man, she drove me fucking crazy the way she kept on.”

“So you left her there,” Ordell said.

“I shot her,” Louis said.

Ordell turned his head to look at him.

Louis could feel it. “I expect she’s dead.”

Ordell didn’t say anything.

It was quiet in the car going up Broadway, Louis looking at black people on the sidewalks hanging out. He didn’t know what Ordell was going to do.

“She wanted to split the money right there,” Louis said. “Each of us go our separate ways and never come back.”

Ordell didn’t say anything.

Louis kept quiet, letting him think about it. Everything he’d said was true and he wasn’t going to apologize for it. He had never shot anyone before and had thought about it all the way from The Gardens Mall down to Palm Beach Shores where he saw the two guys in the unmarked car. He would think of something else for a moment or so and then it would come into his mind all of a sudden—seeing her can in the tight skirt, seeing the look on her face, seeing her legs on the pavement—and for a second there he couldn’t believe he had done it; but he had. He knew guys at Starke who’d shot people during arguments over practically nothing. A guy looking at another guy’s girlfriend. Just looking. Maybe listening to their stories it had come to seem common to him. Being among bad influences.

He didn’t feel too good.

Ordell said, “You shot her?”

“Twice,” Louis said. “In the parking lot.”

“Couldn’t talk to her.”

“You know how she is.”

“You could’ve hit her.”

“I thought of that.”

Ordell was quiet for a minute.

“You expect she’s dead, huh?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

“Well, if you had to do it then you had to,” Ordell said. “What we don’t want is her surviving on us. Man, anybody else but that woman.”

They were on Northlake Boulevard now, a big busy street full of car dealers and strip malls. Ordell said, “Pull over at that Ford place. On the street, don’t drive in.” He wanted to look at the money without taking it out of the Macy’s bag.

Give Louis ten grand to get a good used car for the time being, nothing that would attract attention.

Louis asked what kind. He was acting strange. Like coming out of being in shock.

“Just get a regular car,” Ordell said. “You understand? Like the common folk drive. We have to do some slipping around here before we pull out tonight. I need my car. See if I can get a jackboy to pick it up and put a different plate on it. I left the keys. I want to see about getting some of my clothes too, at Sheronda’s. Send somebody over there. I should’ve dressed when I come, ’stead of running out. I might have to sell the car—I don’t know. But right now, my man, let’s see what we have here.”

Ordell pulled out a beach towel and threw it on the back seat. Pulled out another one saying, “They pretty, huh?” He threw it in back and looked in the bag. “All that money, it sure don’t take up much space.” Man, another towel inside. Ordell felt under it with his hand. Counted one, two, three packets with rubber bands, four, five . . . He ripped that next towel out of there, looked in the bag and felt his stomach drop, felt panic about to set in, and had to hold on tight and take a breath and let it out, telling himself to be cool, find out what was going on here, instead of taking Louis’s

head and putting it through the fucking windshield. He said, “Louis?” If Louis did the rip-off he’d be ready for this

moment, wouldn’t he? Louis said, “What?” “Where’s the rest of it?” Louis had a surprised look on his face now, or

was acting dumb. He said, “How much is in there?” “Maybe fifty,” Ordell said. “Maybe not that much.” “You said five hundred and fifty.” “I did, didn’t I? So we light, huh, a half million.” “She came out with that bag,” Louis said.

“Never even put her hand in it and I didn’t either.” “Came out of where?” “The fitting room. It went down exactly the

way it was suppose to.” “How long was Melanie in there?” “Maybe a minute. She came right out.” “Louis, you telling me the truth?” “Swear to God, she came out with the bag and

I took it from her.” “Then what?” “We left. Went out to the parking lot.” “Where you shot her.” “That’s right.” “She ain’t waiting somewhere with the half

million I worked my ass off to earn?” Louis said, “Jesus Christ.” “And you giving me this as my cut?”

Louis was shaking his head now, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“What’d you shoot her with?”

“It’s in there,” Louis said.

Ordell opened the glove box and brought out the Beretta. He smelled the barrel. It didn’t tell him anything. He released the magazine and emptied it, one hollow point at a time, counting them, as they dropped into the Macy’s bag. Two were gone out of a full load.

“Maybe I took two out,” Louis said. “You fuck, I thought you trusted me. Now you’ll have to wait, see if it’s on the news.”

Ordell kept looking at him, thinking as he stared. He said, “Okay, so it was Jackie Burke. I trusted her too.”

“If she’s got it,” Louis said, “why didn’t she take it all?”

Ordell nodded. “I have to think about that one. Then, I suppose, have to ask her.” He reached into the bag, brought out a few hollow points, and began snapping them into the magazine. “See, if there was nothing in here but towels, then maybe she didn’t have a chance to take it from her suitcase and ATF got it, or she hid it someplace in that mall. See, she had to show ATF the money at the airport. Okay, then the idea is it disappears and nobody knows where it went. Jackie, nobody. But her giving me this fifty— it’s like she’s telling me she took the rest of it. You know what I’m saying? Like she wants me to know it and is rubbing it in my face.”

“I don’t know,” Louis said. “Either she has it or the feds.”

“Or . . .” Ordell paused. “She gave it to somebody else first, before Melanie went in the dressing room.”

It was quiet in the car.

Maybe a minute went by before Louis said, “Jesus Christ,” in a quiet tone of voice.

Ordell, loading bullets in the magazine, looked up at him. “What?”

The man thinking of something that must’ve slipped his mind.

“You know who I saw there in the dress department?”

“Tell me,” Ordell said.

“Sitting there reading a newspaper? I didn’t think anything of it.”

The man making excuses first, putting off saying it. Not wanting to sound dumb. Ordell waited.

“No—I did wonder what he was doing there, but didn’t think it had anything to do with us. You know, like maybe he was there with his wife or his girlfriend.”

The man had to be out of excuses now. Ordell said, “You gonna tell me who it was?”

“Max Cherry,” Louis said.

Ordell looked out the windshield at traffic going by, let his gaze move to look at the cars lining the Ford dealer’s lot, before turning to Louis again.

Louis was still there.

Something must’ve happened to him in prison. Four years staring at the walls and drinking shine, the man was burnt out, useless. Ordell said, “You see Max Cherry in the dress department. We’re about to be handed half a million dollars—man, look at me when I’m talking to you. And you don’t think nothing of him being there. Every time I ask you what’s wrong or what happened here, what would you tell me?”

Louis frowned at him.

“Answer the question.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Ordell shoved the magazine into the pistol, racked the slide, and pressed the muzzle against Louis’s side.

“I said what would you tell me?”

Louis’s eyes were wide open now.

“Yesterday I ask you, what’s wrong, Louis? You say it was Max Cherry knowing where you’re staying. I ask you what happened to Simone? You say Max Cherry must’ve scared her. Say he scared you too. Every time I turn around there’s this Max Cherry the bail bondsman. You worked for the man, you know he’s a crook just like all of ’em. Money hungry, do anything to get it. You saw him, knowing what he is, and you let him take my fucking money right under your nose. Man, what happened to you?” Ordell pressed the barrel of the pistol as hard as he could into Louis’s side, squeezed the trigger, and saw Louis jump with the blunt sound it made. Saw Louis’s eyes open staring at him. He worked the barrel up higher on Louis’s side, getting it under his arm, and shot him again, Louis pressed against the door. This time his head bounced off the window, fell forward with his chin against his chest, eyes open, and stayed that way.

Ordell said, “What’s wrong with you, Louis?” He said, “Shit, you use to be a beautiful guy, you know it?”

Ordell left him there. He walked along Northlake Boulevard looking for the last car in the world anybody would expect to see him driving. He bought an ‘89 VW Golf with less than thirty thousand miles on it, maroon; paid fifty-two hundred for it out of the Macy bag.

Now he had to find a place to stay.

There was a woman in Riv’era Beach he used to see now and then. From the old school, did heroin ’stead of crack, hooked now and then. Yeah, saw her last night in the bar when he was talking to Louis and she kept looking at him. If he could remember her name . . .

24

They brought Jackie to the ATF office on South Dixie in West Palm. Nicolet removed a satchel charge from the chair by his desk so she could sit down. She asked him what it was. He said a bag of explosives and left her alone for about twenty minutes. To talk to his surveillance people, Jackie believed, and see if they had something to throw at her. While they were still at the mall she had told about Melanie coming into the fitting room and grabbing the money. They had her flight bag, so they must have spoken to Frieda, the saleswoman.

In the car coming here they told her Melanie was dead, shot twice, but no details. Nicolet, in the front seat of the ATF car, said, “You see what can happen?” Which meant he wasn’t buying her story, or not all of it. The girl with the shoulder bag sitting next to her in back said, “That Unitel body mike isn’t worth shit in a mall. I couldn’t hear anything but Muzak.” Nicolet glanced at her and the girl didn’t say another word. Jackie caught it. They had a hole in their surveillance.

While Nicolet was away from the office Jackie looked at photographs of weapons taken inside a storage facility and thumbed through a copy of Shotgun News. No ashtrays, so she used someone’s coffee mug from this morning. The office, with two desks pushed together, was smaller than Tyler’s at FDLE, messier, looking more lived in. There was a tagged submachine gun on the other desk Jackie assumed wasn’t loaded.

Nicolet brought her a mug of coffee without asking if she wanted one. A good sign. He had his coat and tie off and didn’t appear to be armed. Sitting down at the desk he said, “You didn’t tell me you’re gonna do some shopping.”

“I thought I did, at the airport.”

Nicolet shook his head. “I would think, this delivery on your mind, you’d wait till after.”

“I’ve had my eye on this suit,” Jackie said, “and I was afraid it might be gone.”

“Why’d you leave your flight bag?”

“Well, first of all, I brought it to put my uniform in and whatever else I bought I wasn’t going to wear.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No, because when I came out . . . Wait, let’s start over. The idea was, I’d leave whatever I bought in the flight bag, not have to carry it around, and meet Sheronda with the bag that had the fifty thousand in it.”

He said it again, staring at her, “But you didn’t.”

“Because I didn’t have it. Ray, I swear, Melanie came in and grabbed it.” Subdued then: “And someone killed her for it?”

He took a few moments to stare.

“Where’s the bag she gave you?”

“She didn’t give me one. I tried to tell you before,” Jackie said, “Melanie wasn’t part of the plan. Ordell must’ve told her to do it. She comes in, grabs the shopping bag, and runs. I’m standing there in my underwear. What am I supposed to do, go after her? I had to get dressed. And by the time I came out, the saleswoman already had the things I’d bought in boxes, putting them in a bag.”

“You took time to pay her.”

“I had to.”

“You could’ve left your purchases.”

“Weren’t you or someone there watching me?”

Nicolet didn’t answer.

“I was frantic. I didn’t know what to do.”

“So you took the shopping bag with your purchases and went to meet Sheronda.”

“After I looked for you. I went straight to Barnie’s, you weren’t there. Was I being watched or not?”

“You were under surveillance, yeah.”

“Ray, how am I supposed to get anyone’s attention, let them know what happened? You didn’t tell me how to do that, did you?”

Nicolet paused, but didn’t answer. He said, “You took Sheronda’s bag and left the one with the new clothes.”

“A skirt and jacket.”

“You bought ’em for yourself, didn’t you?”

“I felt sorry for her. I told you, she has no idea what this is about. You looked in the boxes—did you take the clothes?”

“We’ll hold them for the time being.”

“Did she tell you about the other time? The woman who came and switched bags with her after I left the ten thousand?”

Nicolet said, “Wait a minute.”

“Ask her about it.”

“You tell me.”

“I just did.”

“What’s the woman’s name?”

“I don’t know. Sheronda said Ordell’s aunty. He changed the plan that time and he did it again, or else Melanie was on her own.”

“There was a guy with her.”

“Not in the fitting room.”

“Melanie was seen coming out,” Nicolet said. “Our agent doesn’t know who this is, but the bag’s identical to the one you had. Our agent sees this guy tussle with her and take the shopping bag. He holds on to it like it’s pretty valuable. So our agent follows them to see where they’re going and make contact with other agents, alert them. . . .”

Jackie said, “This is the one who had trouble with her body mike?”

Nicolet stared, not saying a word.

“Got Muzak playing in her ear?”

“There was some interference, yeah. Soon as she located another agent he radioed a description. . . .”

“So she wasn’t around when I came out of the fitting room,” Jackie said, “looking all over for you.”

“By the time you got to Barnie’s we were on you again. Saw you come out and go meet Sheronda.” He paused. “The guy with Melanie, that was Louis Gara?”

“I didn’t see him,” Jackie said. “I was in my underwear.”

“A white guy.”

“Probably Louis. He killed Melanie?”

“It’s possible.”

“And ran off with the money, or took it to

Ordell?” Nicolet waited, giving her the stare again. “I don’t want to find out you were working something with Louis.” “Don’t worry.”

“You’re saying you don’t know what happened to that fifty thousand.”

“I have no idea.”

“You’ll take a polygraph on it?”

“If it’ll make you happy.”

She watched him staring again in silence. It wasn’t his best pose, the deadpan cop; it lacked confidence.

He said, “I hope you haven’t done anything dumb. If Louis took the money, Ordell could come after you to find out what happened.”

“Aren’t you watching him?”

“I have those four kids ready to point him out in federal court, but I want him with the marked bills too.”

He hadn’t answered the question. Jackie said, “I have a feeling you don’t know where he is.”

“He isn’t going anywhere,” Nicolet said, “if he doesn’t have the money.”

“You do know that much,” Jackie said, “it was-n’t delivered to him. Or you don’t think it was.”

Nicolet’s intercom buzzed.

He picked up his phone, said “Yeah,” in a quiet tone, listened for a minute, hung up, and said to Jackie, “Excuse me.” He put his hand on her shoulder as he walked out past her.

That was nice. Telling her they were still friends; nothing personal, just doing his job. Or he simply wanted to touch her. Either way, she took it as a good sign. He wanted to believe her story.

She wondered what Max was doing at this moment; if he’d already taken care of the money. When she asked where he was going to hide it Max said, “You don’t hide a half million dollars, you put it in the bank. First Union, in a lockbox.” She told him, “Don’t have a heart attack, okay? I won’t be able to get it out.” Be honest with Max and he smiled.

Nicolet came back in the office. He sat down at the desk again to face her before he said, “Louis Gara’s dead. Lake Park Police found him in his car, shot twice by someone who had to’ve been, in the consensus of opinion, a friend, huh?—who jammed the gun against his body and blew him away.”

Jackie kept quiet.

“Ordell left his apartment at five twenty,” Nicolet said. “He drove a few blocks up to the beach mall there, parked in back, and went in the bar. He never came out.”

“You mean you lost him,” Jackie said.

Nicolet’s set expression didn’t change. “Louis could’ve picked him up, he had time. They drive up to Northlake Boulevard together, where Louis was found. . . .”

Jackie waited.

“What would Louis be doing around there?” “I have no idea,” Jackie said. “A bar, some joint Ordell liked to frequent?” “I never met him in a bar.” “If he calls, you’ll let me know?” “Yeah, but I don’t know why he would.” Nicolet said, “He still has money in Freeport,

doesn’t he? Or is it all here now? Maybe not half

a million, but more than fifty grand?” Jackie said, “Ray, you saw what I had.” “What you showed me.” “You think I took some of it?” “I have no evidence of your taking anything.

You didn’t pay for your new duds with marked bills; I was glad to see that. You’ve been helping us out, you gave us Melanie, Louis, so I have to believe your story. That is, as much as what you told me.”

Jackie waited.

“I’ll settle for Ordell with the marked bills. If you have something else going you haven’t told me about, it’s between you and him. All I’m gonna say is, I hope we find him before he finds you.”

25

“You won’t believe this,” Ordell said to Mr. Walker on the phone.

“I just seen a palmetta bug walk up Raynelle’s leg. She kind of lying on the sofa. The palmetta bug went up her leg, went under her dress, and she never moved. In her nod, today and all day yesterday. I got her a package of needles and enough shit for a week. Now she moved her knee, touched herself . . . Wait now. I hear the palmetta bug saying something. Yeah, saying, ‘Ouuu, it’s nice here. I don’t believe this woman washes herself, yeah.’ You see palmetta bugs on the stove. They climb up there, break their teeth, man, on the grease been there for years. Mr. Walker? You have to get me out of here, man. When you come get your boat, drive up to the Lake Worth Inlet.”

Ordell waited, listening.

“No, not today. I won’t be ready. I told you, I have to see Jackie. Night before last I went in her apartment, she never came home. Watched her place all day yesterday—I’m gonna have to call this Max Cherry, I think that’s where she’s at, or in a motel someplace. See, I don’t think she’d run this soon, get the feds suspicious of her.”

Ordell listened again and said, “Maybe tomorrow, or Monday . . . I can’t do it today. I ain’t leaving here without my money. . . . Man, you hear yourself? Think about it. You wouldn’t have the fucking boat it wasn’t for me. Man, I am finding out real fast who my friends are. . . . Wait a minute now. I already told you, I didn’t shoot her, Louis did and I done Louis, didn’t I? What can I tell you? . . . Mr. Walker? . . .”

Ordell looked at the glassy-eyed woman on the sofa.

“You believe it? Hung up on me. Do things for people and that’s how they treat you. Man has a boat thirty-six feet long and I’m stuck in this privy.” He said, “Girl, how can you live like this?”

Raynelle said, “Like what?”

Ordell had Max Cherry’s business card, GENTLEMEN PREFER BONDS written on it. He dialed the number. The voice that answered sounded like Winston’s, telling him Max wasn’t there.

“He leave town?”

“He’s around.”

“Give me his home number.”

“I’ll give you his beeper.”

Ordell left the little stucco house that looked like it was rusting out, the screens broken, walked two blocks east and around the corner to the bar on Broadway where he dialed Max Cherry’s beeper number and left the number in the phone booth for him to call. Ordell had a rum collins while he waited. The bartender was the one he’d asked Thursday night what was the name of the woman came in here did heroin and tricks on the side. Was it Danielle? The bartender said heroin was the dope of choice again with many. This one, Ordell said, was kind of redheaded, tall, had real skinny legs. The bartender said, Raynelle? That was it, Raynelle. Ordell found her that same night, bought her rum collinses till 1:00 A.M.—the woman a disappointment, losing it fast, had that same rusted-out look as her house.

The phone rang in the booth.

Ordell went in and closed the door.

Max Cherry’s voice said, “I’ve been looking for you.”

The first thing Max did, after he looked at the number on his beeper, he called the Sheriff’s office and spoke to a buddy of his named Wendy, who ran the Communications Section. Wendy put him on hold and was back in less than a minute. She told him the number belonged to Cecil’s Bar, on Broadway in Riviera Beach.

The next thing Max did, at his desk in the office now, was ask Winston if he’d ever been to Cecil’s. Winston said he’d picked up FTAs there; it was lowlife but sociable, they knew him. Why? Max asked him to wait.

He dialed the number, fairly sure it was Ordell who’d called. So when his voice came on the line Max said, “I’ve been looking for you.”

“You know who this is?”

“Mr. Robbie, isn’t it? I have that ten thousand you put up. Isn’t that why you called?”

There was a silence on the line.

“The bond collateral on Beaumont Livingston you moved over to cover Ms. Burke. Remember?”

“She got off, huh?”

“They decided not to file. Tell me where you are and I’ll bring you your money.”

Silence again.

Max waited.

“You still there?”

“Let’s cut to it,” Ordell said. “I know you helped her and you know what I want. Jackie can tell me a story, why she had to hang on to the money. Understand? I’ll listen. I’ll tell her yeah, that’s cool, now please hand it over while we still friends. That’s all has to happen. Understand? She don’t want to be friends—tell her to think of Louis, where he’s at right now. Tell her, she turns me in, I’ll put it on her she’s my accessory and we’ll go upstate, man, hand in hand cuffed together. Understand? That’s how it is. Tell her that and I’ll call you after a while.”

Max sat back in his chair, Winston, hunched over his desk, watching him. “That was Ordell,” Max said, “calling from Cecil’s. You have time, you think you could find out for me where he’s staying?”

“Cops can’t locate him, huh?”

“They don’t have your personality.”

“If it’s what you want,” Winston said. “I don’t have to know what you’re doing, long as you know.”

“I think I do,” Max said. “Is that good enough?”

“You quit the business or not?”

“I’m giving that second thoughts.”

Winston pushed up from his desk. Walking out he said, “You make up your mind, let me know.”

Jackie said, “You know how to make a girl happy, don’t you, Max?” slipping her arms around him and kissing him. He handed her the bottle of Scotch he’d brought and watched her walk over to the low dresser, where there were opened cans of Diet Coke and a plastic ice bucket, to make their drinks. He had felt her body in the T-shirt that hung loose covering her hips and a pair of white panties: nearly forty-eight hours in this room in a Holiday Inn, clothes and a towel on the double bed closer to the bathroom. On the phone a little while ago she’d said, “I’m going nuts,” sounding tired, bored, until he told her Ordell had called and he’d be over.

Taking the chair by the window Max said, “I know where he is.” She turned to look at him and he said, “All Winston had to do was ask around. Ordell’s living in Riviera Beach with a woman, a junkie. He has a maroon Volkswagen parked in front of the house. It’s his disguise.” Max was seated in late afternoon light, the draperies open enough to show the room. Jackie came over with their drinks to sit on the edge of the bed next to his chair, her bare legs in light. She reached over to put her drink on the table and took a cigarette from the pack lying there.

“How does Winston find him if ATF and all the local police around here aren’t able to?”

“People talk to Winston,” Max said. “He’s street, the same as they are and they trust him. They get busted, they know a guy who can bond them out.”

“You haven’t told anyone, have you, where he is?”

“The police? Not yet. I thought we should talk about it first. What I might do is drop in on him,” Max said. “He’ll no doubt be surprised to see me. . . .”

“He’s liable to shoot you.”

“On the phone I told him I owe him the ten he put up for your bond. He’d forgotten about it, or had something else on his mind. I could bring the money and the papers for him to sign. . . .”

“Why do that?”

“I doubt if he’d come to the office.”

“He might,” Jackie said, and seemed to like the idea.

Max wasn’t sure why. He said, “The simplest way to work it, I go see him with the bond refund. To make sure he’s there, that’s the main reason. Come out and call the Sheriff’s Office. Or the TAC unit’s already standing by and they go in.”

Jackie was shaking her head. “Ray wants him.”

“Everybody wants him, he’s a homicide suspect. What you have to think about,” Max said, “it doesn’t matter who takes him, you could have a problem. As soon as he’s brought up he’s liable to name you as an accessory.”

“I know that,” Jackie said, “that’s why I want ATF to make the case. I’m their witness, I’ve been helping them. They wouldn’t have a case without me. If it’s his word against mine, who’re they going to believe?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It never was, so I’m not going to start worrying about it now. Look, Ray’s dying to be a hero. He’ll do anything.”

Max took one of her cigarettes and lit it, Jackie watching him, waiting.

“Okay, you want Nicolet to make the collar. How?”

“Get Ordell to come to your office.”

“Set him up,” Max said. “I tell him you want to see him?”

He saw that gleam in her eyes.

“I want to give him his money.”

“Why?”

“I’ve chickened out. I’m afraid of him. He’ll like that.”

Max thought about it, smoking his cigarette.

“What do you tell Nicolet, why you’re meeting Ordell?”

“I don’t know—something to do with the bond refund.” Jackie was quiet for several moments. She picked up her drink and took a sip. “That’s why Ordell’s there, for the refund. I’ll say he called me and said I have to sign something.”

“You don’t.”

“But I don’t know that. It’s why I call an ATF agent. I’m suspicious—what does he want? And I’m scared.”

“You think Ordell’s gonna come out of hiding? Every cop in South Florida looking for him?”

“Max, he has to if he wants his money. If he didn’t, he’d be gone by now.”

“If he wants it that bad he’s desperate.”

“Of course he is.”

“What if he wants to meet someplace else?”

“The money’s in your office, in the safe. It’s the only place I’ll see him.”

“What if you can’t get hold of Nicolet?”

“I’ll get him.”

“What if he’s out of town?”

“If you don’t want to do it, Max, just tell me.”

He let that go, looking at her without saying anything, thinking he could make sure Winston was there. “Let’s say Ordell goes for it,” Max said. “He’ll decide when you meet, you know that.”

“It’ll be tonight,” Jackie said, “he’s not going to sit around wasting time. He’ll have to let you call me. He’ll probably want to talk. I can handle that. I’ll tell him I wasn’t holding out on him, I didn’t trust Melanie. So I gave her towels. We have to have our stories straight if he asks me. And I didn’t know how to get in touch with him till you helped me out.”