Rum Punch Page 17

  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 wasn’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 r
ang the bell and waited, hearing the faint sound of music he gradually identified as vintage Mo-town, the sound familiar, but couldn’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 didn’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, b
ut 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?”