Jackie Brown Read online

  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 jackboys 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 Medellin, 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, Medellin? 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 jackboys, 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 but 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-A-W 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 Medellin-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 A-dolf 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 crew-cut 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 gunrange 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.