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  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 couldn’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?”

&nbs
p; “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?”r />
  “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 wasn’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.”