Rum Punch Page 10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “No, he’s leaving,” Tyler said.

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

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

  “Vaguely,” Nicolet said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Nothing. He’s standing there.”

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

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

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

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

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

  “I missed it,” Tyler said.

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

  “You think a gun?”

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

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

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

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

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

  “You don’t know what he showed him.”

  “It was a gun,” Nicolet said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “He’s pulling off,” Tyler said.

  Nicolet looked around, saw no cars behind them.

  “Keep going.”

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

  “What’s around here?”

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

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

  “What’re we coming to?”

  “Blue Heron.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Nicolet raised his pistol enough to rack the slide.

  “Bet your life on it.”

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

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

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

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

  “He’s getting out,” Tyler said.

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

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

  “You sure he has a gun?”

  “I’m positive.”

  “What if he doesn’t?”

  “Then don’t fucking shoot him.”

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

  The kid looked over the low roof at them.

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

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

  Tyler said, “Step away from the car.”

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

  “I said step away from the car.”

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

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

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

  12

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

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

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

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

  “It’s okay?”

  “Yeah, really.”

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

  Like going to get change for the paper boy.

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