The Big Bounce Read online

  “What’re you doing? I got to go to the bathroom.”

  “Use the other one.”

  “Hey, who is it?”

  “Look, we’ll . . . get out if you’ll go away.”

  “Who’s we?”

  Silence. Let it sink in, Ryan thought. He wants to say something, but now he’s not sure.

  Ryan waited until he heard steps in the hall and a door close—the other bathroom. Now, Ryan thought, he’ll open it again quietly, the son of a bitch, and wait to see who comes out. How about a guy like that?

  “Time to go,” Ryan said. He moved to the back window that looked out on the porch, unfastened the screen, and motioned Ruiz to get the beer case. They climbed out. Ryan went down on his stomach at the edge of the roof and listened, not moving. After this he did not hesitate again; he rolled over the edge holding the gutter and dropped. Billy Ruiz lowered the beer case to him and followed and they went into the brush and trees at the side of the house, pointing now toward the private drive and Pizarro’s truck. They walked, they didn’t hurry; they walked because Ryan said that’s the way it was done.

  3

  * * *

  FRANK PIZARRO TURNED LEFT on the Shore Road toward Geneva Beach four miles away and was doing forty as he shifted into third gear. Ryan, behind him in the panel compartment, sitting on his canvas suit-pack and opening the beer case, touched Pizarro’s shoulder.

  “Hey, come on.”

  Pizarro glanced at the outside rearview mirror, then at the two-lane road ahead and now he had to slow down because of the Sunday-afternoon traffic. Ryan watched through the windshield. No hurry. Never hurry. He straightened to look out the back window. Nothing. A few cars trailing, creeping along. Billy Ruiz moved in closer on his knees as Ryan emptied the beer case, dumping the wallets and billfolds on the floor, and Billy Ruiz spread them out with his hands, playing with them, enjoying the feel of them.

  “How many do you think?” Ruiz said.

  “I don’t know. Thirty-five.”

  “We missed some.”

  “Some. Some guys didn’t change. Or they changed in another room.”

  Billy Ruiz grinned. “I’d like to see that guy’s face, the one in the bathroom, uh?”

  They cleaned out the wallets one by one, going into the card pockets and the cellophane sections to be sure, but taking only the bills and putting the empty wallets back in the beer case. Billy Ruiz handed Ryan what he had found. Ryan separated the bills by denominations, stacked them again, and began counting.

  “A good day,” Ryan said.

  Over his shoulder Pizarro said, “How much?”

  “A good day,” Ryan said again.

  There was seven hundred and seventy dollars even. They had been lucky. Even with the uneasy feeling before, it had come off all right. Even the amount seemed like a sign of luck. Seven hundred and seventy.

  He counted off two hundred dollars. “For Frank,” Ryan said to Billy Ruiz. But he hesitated, held it. He counted off a hundred and handed him that much. He counted two hundred again. “This is for you.”

  “Hey”—Pizarro was holding the bills open on the steering wheel—“what kind of cut is this?”

  “Your cut,” Ryan said.

  “How much you get?”

  “Seven hundred.”

  “And I get a hunnert, that’s all?”

  “That’s scale for waiting in the truck.”

  “Man, I told you. I owe Camacho four hunnert fifty dollars.”

  “That’s right,” Ryan said. “You told me.”

  Billy Ruiz was staring at him. Ryan felt it and looked at the bony, yellowish face with its stained-looking, wide-open eyes.

  “I didn’t sit in no car,” Billy Ruiz said.

  “Are you complaining, Billy?”

  “I went in with you.”

  “Would you have gone in without me?”

  Ruiz said nothing. He stared out through the windshield now, watching the road and the car ahead of them. Ryan’s eyes dropped to the money, folding it, but he could still see Billy Ruiz. The dumb bastard; the dumb cucumber picker. Ruiz wouldn’t have gone near the house alone. He wouldn’t have walked past it. Dumb skinny blank-eyed little weasel that tells you all the places he’s been and how much he can drink and all the broads he’s had, with his pants too long and sagging in the seat, too dumb to know how dumb he looks, how skinny ugly baggy-assed dumb.

  He peeled two twenties and a ten from the roll of bills and nudged Ruiz’s arm. Ruiz looked at him with the blank look. He looked down at the money and he grinned. He was happy. Fifty bucks. God.

  Pizarro could shove it. He was through with them now and everybody was paid.

  But it stayed in his mind. You never should have let them into this, he thought, then told himself to forget it. In time this would be past him and he wouldn’t worry about it or think about it again. Look at all the things you’ve done that you never think about anymore, he said to himself.

  “Hey, this is the place,” Billy Ruiz said. He was kneeling up against the front seat, his head lowered and pointing to the left side of the road. “See, the golf course along here. Then”—he waited as they moved past the fairways and scattered greens—“up there, see? The road goes in. See the sign?” It was an Old English–looking board sign hanging from a chain between two posts and painted green. On it in white letters were the words THE PONTE, and below them, smaller, PRIVATE.

  “Remember, I was telling you?” Billy Ruiz said. “This is the place. All along here where the rich ones live. Man, they got homes back in there—big, big—Christ, make that brown one look like a goddamn chicken house.”

  Ryan looked out the back window as they passed the entrance road and continued along another stretch of fairways. He noticed the same cars following them.

  “You’ve been back in there?”

  “I tole you,” Billy Ruiz answered. “Last year we go in take a look around, they kick us out.”

  “Who kicked you out?”

  “I don’t know. Some guy.”

  “Police?”

  “No, no. Like a gatekeeper. There used to be a little house there where the road go in? He come after us.”

  “I don’t know,” Ryan said. “I’d have to see it.”

  “I tole you, it’s perfect.”

  “If you say so.” Let it die, Ryan thought. He hunched forward and watched the road ahead. In a couple of minutes it would be over; he’d pile out with his bag and that would be it. But there was one more thing to make sure of.

  He waited until they were passing the motels on the outskirts of Geneva Beach, passing the Putt-Putt Golf now and the Dairy Queen, and could see the stores and the signal light a couple of blocks ahead. The IGA supermarket was on the right.

  “There,” Ryan said. “You see the IGA?”

  “It’s closed,” Pizarro said.

  “Remember it.” Ryan watched as they covered another block. Now he could see the PIER BAR sign on the left, the white building and the boat docks beyond it. Maybe a couple of beers, he thought. And something to eat. He’d still be in Detroit by nine.

  “Right here,” he said to Pizarro.

  “What?”

  “I’m leaving you,” Ryan said.

  “Man,” Billy Ruiz said, “how can you go? We got things to do.”

  They were approaching the Shore Road—Main Street intersection and Pizarro was slowing down now for the traffic signal. “You go around the block to the back of the IGA store,” Ryan told him. “You’ll see a lot of boxes and junk piled up. That’s where you dump the beer case. You got that? Nowhere else.”

  “Listen,” Pizarro said, “I tole you, I got to make some more money.” He was stopping now behind a car at the intersection.

  Billy Ruiz was frowning. “What do you go for? We can make this every week.”

  “You and Frank do it,” Ryan said. As the panel truck came to a full stop he had the rear door open and was out, dragging his canvas bag after him.

  Billy Ruiz
was close behind him, crouched in the open doorway now. “Wait a minute. Man, we should go somewhere and talk.”

  Ryan said, “Watch your fingers, Billy,” and slammed the door. Walking across the street to the Pier Bar, he heard Pizarro call something and heard a car blowing its horn and then another one, but he didn’t look back. No, sir, that was over.

  Bob Jr. said, “What do you mean he took your keys?”

  “I mean he took the keys,” the girl said. “So I can’t drive the Mustang.”

  “Well, sure, because of last week.”

  “The creep,” the girl said.

  “He doesn’t want you getting in any more trouble.”

  “I like the way you stick up for him.”

  “Well,” Bob Jr. said. “It’s his car.”

  “It is not. It’s in my name. I made sure of that, Charlie.”

  “Well, he gave it to you.”

  “Big deal.”

  “When do you go to court?”

  “I don’t know. Next month.”

  “I understand one of the boys is really hurt.”

  “That’s too bad,” the girl said.

  “I guess it’s his own fault.”

  “You bet it is,” the girl said.

  Bob Jr. eased lower in the white lounge chair. “Listen, why don’t you come on over here?” he said to the girl, whose name was Nancy and who had been living in Mr. Ritchie’s house since early June. “Why don’t you sit down and relax a while?”

  “I’m going to go in and get a sweater.”

  “Bring me one.”

  “None of Ray’s would fit you.”

  “I was just kidding. I don’t need any sweater.”

  He turned, shifting his weight, to watch Nancy walk toward the house. She could stand about ten pounds but, damn, that was a nice little compact can in the white shorts and the striped top you could see down, and she knew it too, whenever she bent over. He watched her slide open the glass door that led into the activities room. That’s where the bar was. Maybe she’d bring out some drinks.

  That’d be something. Get her to loosen up and relax. It was quiet now except for once in a while the faint, faraway sound of a boat motor; quiet and nice with the patio and swimming pool and most of the lawn in the shade; quiet and private with the stockade fence on both sides of the yard and, out in front, against the sky, the edge of the steep slope that dropped down to the beach: forty-eight steps and two landings. He ought to know because he had put the new stairway in the end of June with the two pickers helping him and Nancy lying around in the little two-piece outfit with her belly button showing. He had been coming back ever since.

  Today he had waited until 5:30, giving Mr. Ritchie plenty of time to start back to Detroit. If Mr. Ritchie had still been here, Bob Jr. figured he could always say he’d come to check on the boat. Mr. Ritchie did that a lot on Sunday: he and Nancy would go out and fool around a couple of hours then tie up at the house instead of the yacht club so Mr. Ritchie could change, get right in his car, and head for Detroit. Then Bob Jr. would have to call the yacht club for somebody to come over and pick up the boat—a beauty sitting out there now, a thirty-eight footer, white with dark green trim, white and pickle green, like everything Mr. Ritchie owned: white house with a green sun deck over the lower level, green shrubs, green tile around the pool, green Mustang, green Lincoln, all the farm equipment green, a green and white Swiss-looking hunting lodge up back of the farm property. It was all right, Bob Jr. had decided, if you liked green and white, but his favorite colors, personally, were blue and gold, the colors of the uniforms they had worn at Holden Consolidated.

  She came out in a light blue crew-neck sweater that looked nice with her dark hair, taking her time and not carrying a bottle or glasses, damn it. It was strange she walked so slow, a girl as itchy-bitchy as she generally was.

  “I thought I had another set of keys,” Nancy said, “but I don’t.”

  “I’ll tell you what. I’ll let you use the pickup.”

  “That son of a bitch. He expects me to sit here all week waiting for him.”

  Bob Jr.’s head was turned to watch her. “Isn’t that part of the deal?”

  “The deal, Charlie, is none of your business.”

  “Why don’t you get us some drinks?”

  “I want to do something.”

  “Well, let’s see,” Bob Jr. said. “We could go out in the boat.”

  “I’ve been out in the boat.”

  “What do you do out there?”

  Nancy stood with her arms folded, looking out past the edge of the bluff, at the lake that reached to the horizon. She didn’t bother to answer him.

  “You do some fishing?”

  She gave him a look.

  “I know what. You go swimming bare-ass and then he chases you around the boat.”

  “Right,” Nancy said. “How did you know?”

  “Come on, let’s go out. Just till dark.”

  “Your wife will be wondering about you.”

  “She went down to Bad Axe to visit her mother.”

  “With all the little kiddies? While Daddy—what do you tell her Daddy’s doing?”

  “Come on, let’s go out in the boat.”

  “I don’t want to go out in the boat.”

  “Then, get us something to drink. Hey, some Cold Ducks.”

  “I want to do something.”

  “That’s something.”

  “I want to go out.”

  “And ride some boys off the road?”

  She was looking at him now. “You wouldn’t have enough nerve.”

  “I know something better to do.”

  “You wouldn’t have the nerve to take me out,” she said then. “Would you? You’ll sneak in here when Ray’s gone, but you wouldn’t take me out, would you?”

  “Like where?”

  “Out. I don’t know.”

  “There’s no reason. You got everything you want right here.”

  “I want to go out,” Nancy said. “Do you want to go out with me or do you want to go home?”

  It was almost seven by the time they reached Geneva Beach. Bob Jr. said well, tell me what you want to do, you want to do something so bad. Nancy told him she’d let him know.

  “Well, if we’re going driving, I got to get some cigarettes.” Bob Jr. angled-parked near the drugstore and went inside.

  Nancy waited in the pickup truck, her gaze moving slowly over the people who idled past on the sidewalk. After a minute or so she sat up on the seat and began combing her hair in the rearview mirror. When she stopped, the comb still in her hair, she edged to the side, looking past her own reflection. For a moment she sat still. Then she turned so she could look at them directly: Jack Ryan and the heavyset man standing by the restaurant across the street. They moved along the sidewalk, waited for the Shore Road light, and crossed over toward the Pier Bar.

  When Bob Jr. came out of the drugstore, her hair was combed and she said to him, “I know where I want to go.”

  4

  * * *

  WHEN NANCY HAYES was sixteen she liked to babysit. She didn’t have to babysit, she could have had a date almost any night of the week. She didn’t need the money, either; her father sent her a check for $100 every month in an envelope marked PERSONAL that came the same day her mother received her alimony check. Nancy babysat because she liked to.

  It was while she and her mother were living in Fort Lauderdale in a white $30,000 house with jalousy windows and terrazzo floors and a small curved swimming pool in the yard, not quite seven miles from the ocean. Not far from them, on the other side of the Ocean Mile Shopping Center, the houses were larger, on canals, some with cruisers moored to the dock. The people who lived here were not year-round residents but stayed usually from January through Easter. They went to several parties a week and those with young children, if they were lucky, got Nancy Hayes to babysit for them. They liked Nancy: really a cute kid with the dark hair and brown eyes and cute little figure in her T-
shirt and hip-huggers. She was also polite. She stayed awake. And she usually brought a book.

  The book was a good touch. She would bring one of the Russians or an autobiography and leave it on the coffee table by the couch until it was time to go, moving her bookmark thirty or forty pages before the people came home. What Nancy liked to do the first few times she sat for someone was look through the house. She would wait until the children were asleep, then she would begin, usually in the living room, and work toward the master bedroom. Desks were good if they had letters in them or a checkbook to look through. Kitchens and dining rooms were boring. Florida or family rooms had possibilities only. But bedrooms were always fun.

  Nancy never found anything really startling, like letters from a married man under the woman’s underwear or dirty pictures in her husband’s drawer. The closest she came to that was a copy of a nudist magazine beneath three layers of starched white shirts and—one other time—a revolver in with the socks and handkerchiefs. But the revolver wasn’t loaded and there weren’t any bullets in the drawer. It was usually that kind of letdown, expecting to find something and not finding it. Still, the actual looking was fun, the anticipation that she might, one of these evenings, discover something good.

  Another thing Nancy liked to do was break things. She would drop a glass or a plate in the kitchen every once in a while, but the real bounce was breaking something expensive, a lamp or figurine or mirror. Though it couldn’t be two houses in the same neighborhood or more than once in the same house—or at all if the child she was taking care of was old enough to talk. The best way was to sit on the living room floor rolling a ball to the two- or three-year-old, then pick the ball up and throw it at a lamp. If she missed, she would keep trying. Eventually she would shatter the lamp and little Greg would be blamed. (“I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Peterson, he was pulling on the cord and before I could get to him—“) Gosh, she was sorry.

  Another thing that was fun she did with the fathers when they drove her home. She didn’t always do it, or with all the fathers. To qualify, the father had to be in his thirties or early forties, a sharp dresser, good-looking in a middle-aged way and at least half in the bag each time he drove her home. To do it right required care and patience over a period of months, during a dozen or so rides home. The first time she would be very nice, her book in her lap, and not speak unless asked a direct question. If asked a question, it was usually about the book or how’s school. Somehow, then, in answering—telling her grade in school or describing the book, which seemed pretty deep for a young girl—she would let him know she was going on seventeen. During the next several rides home she would be increasingly more at ease, friendly, outgoing, sincere; she would come off as a serious reader, a bright girl interested in what was going on in the world, especially the teenage world with its changing fads and attitudes. Sometimes the discussion was so interesting they would arrive at Nancy’s house and, parked in the drive, continue talking for another ten or fifteen minutes. Sooner or later then, usually between the fifth and eighth ride home, talking as they pulled into the drive, she would zap him.