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“Who you giving it to? All that, huh?”

  “They asked.”

  “And what did you tell them?”

  “I said I wanted a lawyer.”

  “Didn’t let nothing slip?”

  She said to his face, “You’re not asking the right question.”

  Ordell’s hands moved up to rest on her shoulders. He said, “I’m not?” feeling her body there under her jacket and the strap of her bag, thin little bones he rubbed with his fingers.

  She said to him, “Ask why I was picked up.”

  “Dog didn’t sniff your bag?”

  “They didn’t need a dog. They knew about the money, the exact amount.”

  “They tell you how they found out?”

  “They asked if I knew Mr. Walker.”

  “Yeah? . . .”

  “I didn’t tell them anything.”

  “My name come up?”

  He watched her head go side to side but didn’t feel the bones move. His thumbs brushed her collarbone, the tips of his fingers touched her neck, caressed the skin, Ordell seeing how lightly he could touch her, not wanting her to move, try to run, and maybe scream. Her eyes never blinked.

  “Say they know about Mr. Walker. Who else?”

  It made her hesitate before she said, “The Jamaican, Beaumont.”

  “What’d they say about him?”

  “They’d spoken to him in jail.”

  Ordell nodded. He’d had that right. “You know what happen to him?”

  “They told me.”

  “Yeah, somebody musta been mad at Beaumont, or got worried about him facing time. You understand what I’m saying? Somebody knowing what he might tell not to get sent away. I suppose they give you all kind of shit then about what they know. Get you thinking you may as well tell what you know, huh?”

  Her head went just a little bit side to side.

  He brought his thumbs from her collarbone up to her throat and her shoulder with the strap on it moved like she meant to twist away from him, but he held on to her and felt the shoulder ease back. He liked the way she was trying to act cool, staring at him. He liked the way she looked too, her face pure white in the dark, whiter than Melanie’s face or any white face he had been this close to, thinking he could put her down on the floor, or he could take her in the bedroom, and after they were done put the pillow over her face and aim the pistol he had with him into the pillow. . . . Man, it was a shame to have to do it. . . . He said, “You scared of me?”

  Her head went side to side without her eyes leaving his.

  He knew she was scared, man, she had to be, but wasn’t acting like she was and it made him press his thumbs into her soft skin and tighten up on his fingers, wanting to know what she’d told them and knowing he’d have to take her close to the edge to find out. He said, “Baby, you got a reason to be nervous with me?” He saw her eyes close and open. . . .

  And felt what must be her hand down there touch his thigh, brush across it, and move on up and had to admire her using a female way of getting to him, liking it, yeaaah, till something else besides a hand, something hard, dug into him.

  She said, “You feel it.”

  Ordell said, “Yes, I do,” wanting to grin, let her know he wasn’t serious and she shouldn’t be either. He said, “I believe that’s a gun pressing against my bone.”

  Jackie said, “You’re right. You want to lose it or let go of me?”

  If either Max or Winston phoned the other from the office and said, “Get dressed,” it meant come right away, armed.

  This time it was Max who phoned and Winston arrived while the sheriff’s people were still there, blue lights turning on their radio cars. Somebody had shattered the glass in the front door and reached in through the bars to unlock it. Max, in the office with the two uniforms taking notes, looked up at Winston. He said, “These guys were here inside of two minutes from the time the alarm started to blow.” Max seemed impressed.

  Winston said, “They get him?” Knowing they hadn’t. He saw Max motion with his head to the meeting room and went in there to see the gun cabinet broken into, two pieces missing, three still hanging on pegs. Now he watched from the doorway to the office while the uniforms finished their report, left, and Max came over.

  “What’d I get dressed for,” Winston said, “if he’s gone?”

  “ ‘Cause we know who did it,” Max said, moving past him to the gun cabinet.

  “We talking about Louis?”

  Watching as Max chose the Browning 380 auto, took it from its peg, and checked the slide.

  “How you know it’s him?”

  “He wouldn’t have time to break in,” Max said, “come in here, bust into the cabinet—all the time the alarm’s making a racket. You know how loud it is? He doesn’t clean us out, he takes only the Python and the Mossberg, and does it all inside of two minutes. I think he broke the glass on the way out, make it look like a B and E.”

  “Then how’d he get in?”

  “Lifted a spare key out of my drawer, had one made, and put it back. Planning something like this. That’s why I think it’s Louis.”

  “You don’t know for sure.”

  “Let’s go ask him. Your arm okay?” Max reached out as if to touch Winston’s sleeve.

  “It’s all right; they put in some stitches. What’s that you got, a new watch?”

  “Rolex,” Max said, turning his arm to let the gold catch the light, the way Ordell had shown it to him. “I took it on a bond till I get the premium.”

  Winston said, “Lemme see,” putting his hand under Max’s arm to look at the watch up close. He said, “I hate to tell you, but it ain’t a Rolex. I know, ’cause I have a real one at home. This decoration here don’t look right.”

  Max took his arm back. “This’s a different model.”

  “I’m talking about this one. How much was the premium it’s for?”

  “Don’t worry about it, okay?”

  “Was gonna say, if it’s over two-fifty . . .”

  Max said, “Let’s get outta here,” sticking the Browning in the waist of his pants. He picked up his jacket from a chair and Winston followed after him.

  “How come you’re taking the Browning? Don’t you have that little Airweight in your car?”

  Max stopped dead at the busted front door and turned around. He said, “I forgot, one of us has to stay here,” still with that short tone of voice, edgy. “I called a guy, he’s gonna come nail up a sheet of plywood. You wait for him, all right?”

  Asking, but actually telling.

  Winston said, “That’s my punishment, huh, for saying it ain’t a Rolex?”

  The pistol Ordell had on him was the little Targa .22 he used for close work. Jackie found it in the side pocket of his coat. Felt him all over with her free hand, the other hand holding the gun pressed against his bone, before she stepped back, shrugged, and let the shoulder bag slip off and drop on the floor. He said, “It looks like we have a misunderstanding here.” Not moving, believing she would shoot him with either hand, this two-gun woman he had somehow misjudged.

  “You were about to strangle me,” Jackie said. “I understood that part.”

  “Baby, I was playing with you. You on the team. Didn’t I get you out of jail?”

  She said, “You got Beaumont out too.”

  Ordell gave her a pained look. “That hurts, what I think you mean to imply there, I could be wrong. . . . Baby, you aren’t wearing a wire, are you?” She didn’t answer on that one.

  “Listen, I didn’t have nothing to do with that dope you brought in, but I’ll get you a lawyer, a good one. I had that fifty gees I’d get you F. Lee Bailey himself.”

  She said, “But you don’t have it.”

  “That’s why we should sit down and talk,” Ordell said. “Work something out here. Put the lights on, maybe have a drink. . . .” He cocked his head to study this woman, kind of mussed but still looking fine. He had to smile. A two-gun woman turning him on. “Baby, you want to talk or shoot m
e?” And when she didn’t answer right away he said, “Hey now, I don’t want to give you ideas. I’m gonna pay you the five hundred too. Even if you didn’t deliver. But if we gonna talk about it, girl, you have to show you trust me.”

  Jackie raised both the guns, putting them dead on him, saying, “I trust you.”

  He had to smile, appreciating her.

  “You felt me,” Ordell said. “Now let me feel you and put my mind at ease. See if you might have a wire running around that fine body.”

  “I’m not wired,” Jackie said. “I haven’t talked to them yet. If I trust you, you have to trust me.”

  “Yeah, but you said something there I didn’t especially like the sound of. Like you threatening me, saying you haven’t talked to them yet.”

  She gave him an easy shrug with her shoulders he liked.

  “Sooner or later,” Jackie said, “they’ll get around to offering me a plea deal if I talk to them. You know that. They might even let me walk. The only thing you and I have to talk about, really, is what you’re willing to do for me.”

  “I told you, baby, I’m gonna get you a lawyer.”

  Now she was shaking her head at him, still cool, saying, “I don’t think that’s going to do it. Let’s say if I tell on you, I get off. And if I don’t, I go to jail.”

  “Yeah? . . .”

  “What’s it worth to you if I don’t say a word?”

  Max opened the trunk of his car, parked down the street from the house where Louis was staying, the place dark. He’d need a flashlight, he got that out. And his stun gun, the best way to throw a punch without hurting your hand. He didn’t want to shoot Louis. He wanted to knock him down, handcuff him, and turn him over to the police. The house appeared empty, deserted, trash laying around. Walking up to the side entrance by the carport, he was surprised there weren’t broken panes in the windows. Max tried the door, gave it a shoulder, then stepped back and kicked it open.

  The place smelled of mildew.

  He sat in the living room in the dark, an expert at waiting, a nineteen-year veteran of it, waiting for people who failed to appear, missed court dates because they forgot or didn’t care, and took off. Nineteen years of losers, repeat offenders in and out of the system. Another one, that’s all Louis was, slipping back into the life.

  Is this what you do?

  He knew why he was here. Still, he began to wonder about it, thinking not so much of waiting other times in the nineteen years but aware of right now, the mildew smell, seeing himself sitting in the dark with a plastic tube that fired a beanbag full of buckshot.

  Really? This is what you do?

  Max pointed the stun gun at a window, pushed in the plunger and saw a pane of glass explode.

  In the car, driving back to the office, he saw Jackie again and was anxious to tell her something.

  He said to Winston, waiting in the front office, “He’ll never come back.”

  Winston said, “That’s right.”

  “So we’re out a couple of guns. It’s worth it.” Winston said, “You didn’t see him.”

  “I think he’s cleared out.”

  “The man didn’t come fix the door.”

  Max turned to look at it, not saying anything. “You want me to keep waiting on him?”

  Max said, “I’m getting out of the business.” Still looking at the door.

  Winston began to nod. He said, “That’s a good idea.”

  The way Ordell heard what Jackie was saying: If she kept quiet and did time on his account, she wanted to be paid for it. He asked her was this a threat. She said that would be extortion. It might be, but wasn’t an answer to the question. Was she saying if he didn’t pay her she’d go talk to the police?

  Wait a minute.

  He said, “Baby, you don’t know any more what my business is than they do.”

  She said, “Are you sure?”

  “You run some money you say is mine. What am I suppose to get convicted of?” Asking what sounded like the key question . . .

  She came back saying, “The illegal sale of firearms.” Like that. “It’s true, isn’t it? You sell guns?”

  Sounding innocent saying it that way, naïve, nice-looking airline stewardess sitting across the room on her white sofa. Except she had the two guns resting on cushions to either side of her, little guns to look at but nothing naïve about them. She had watched him fix drinks—hers on the coffee table in front of her now. From where he sat holding his Scotch it would take him two, three, almost four strides to get to her once he jumped up and if he didn’t trip over the coffee table. He believed he would get only about halfway, even with her smoking and drinking, before she picked up most likely the Airweight she’d got hold of somewhere between the Stockade and here and blew him back in the chair. So Ordell was more interested now in their conversation than estimating space and his chance of getting to her. Jackie telling him now:

  “Whatever they know, they got from Beaumont, not me. Why did ATF pick me up if it’s not about guns? Even if they didn’t know you before, they do now. You got us out of jail.”

  “You don’t get convicted for putting up bonds.”

  “No, but I think you took a chance.”

  Man, she had that right.

  Telling him now, “If they think you’re selling guns, they’ll keep an eye on you. Won’t they? Then what? You’re out of business.”

  “I’m trying to hear what you’re saying,” Ordell said. “If I pay you to keep quiet and they ask you about guns, then you say you don’t know nothing about any. Is that right?”

  “I don’t, really. You’re right, you’ve never told me.”

  “Then what do I have to worry about? You saying you will tell them if we don’t agree on a price here?”

  “If I say I won’t,” Jackie said, “will you take my word for it?”

  “You getting me confused now.”

  “All I’m saying is we have to trust each other.”

  “Yeah, but what’s it gonna cost me?”

  She said, “How about a hundred thousand if I’m convicted. That would be for jail time up to a year or if I’m put on probation. If I have to do more than a year, you pay another hundred thousand.”

  “You be making more in than out, huh?”

  She said, “You’d have to put the money in some kind of escrow account in my name. If I get off, you get it back.”

  “Just like that, huh?”

  “It’s up to you.”

  “Even if I agree,” Ordell said, “I think you’re high. But say I agree. I see two problems. One, you put a hundred grand in cash in the bank, anything over ten, the U.S. government gets told and they want to know where it came from.”

  She said, “I think we can find a way around that. What’s the other problem? I bet I know what it is.”

  Listen to the woman.

  “All my money,” Ordell said, “is over in Freeport.”

  Watched her nod and take a sip of her drink.

  “What’s there now and what will be coming in.”

  Watched her raise her eyebrows at that.

  “If ATF’s on my ass like you say, how do I get money here to pay you?”

  She said, “You’re right, it’s a problem. I’m pretty sure, though, I can work it out.”

  “Now that we talking big money it’s worth the risk?”

  She smiled at him.

  “Okay, how you gonna do it if you out on bond and can’t go nowhere?”

  “There’s a way,” Jackie said. “Trust me.”

  11

  Friday morning, half-past eight, Tyler and Nicolet had Ordell Robbie’s house under surveillance. They were in Tyler’s Chevy Caprice parked on Greenwood Avenue, close enough to the corner of 31st to give them a clear view of the third house down on the south side of the street.

  At ten to eight they had checked the garage and knocked on the front door. Nothing happened until Tyler held his ID case open to the peephole. That got the sound of locks snapping open and the
face of a young black woman peering at them over the chain. She said, “He ain’t here,” and closed the door. Tyler had to keep knocking and ringing the bell to get the door open again and the woman to tell them no, he hadn’t been there all night, and no, she didn’t know where he was at. Big eyes in the space that narrowed gradually until the door closed again. They drove around the block and parked on Greenwood to watch the house: a neat little red brick ranch with bursts of pink and white impatiens in the flower beds and bars on the windows. Tyler thought he saw the drapes move and checked with his binoculars. Yeah, the woman was there looking out.

  “Waiting for hubby,” Nicolet said. “He gets home she’s gonna kill him.”

  Tyler said, “We don’t even know it’s his wife, or if he’s got one.”

  “We don’t know shit,” Nicolet said, “except he’s into guns, that I’m positive of. Doing big business too, or he wouldn’t have stuck his neck out putting up their bonds. He was desperate, had to get them out before either one of them finked on him.”

  “Or he’s stupid,” Tyler said.

  “He’s got one fall that goes back twenty years,” Nicolet said. “That’s not a guy that fucks up.”

  “Maybe he’s been clean.”

  “No way—he’s into guns big-time. Got Beaumont out as fast as he could and popped him, or had it done. Riviera Beach said they questioned Ordell. Yeah, but they didn’t know what to ask. That was the problem there. Same thing with Jackie Burke, he got her out right away. . . . You better call her again.”

  Tyler picked up the phone and punched her number.

  Nicolet saying, “Try and scare her a little.”

  Tyler waited and then said, “Ms. Burke, how you doing? This is Faron Tyler. . . . Oh, I’m sorry. I was just checking to see if you’re okay. We have a man outside your building. . . . Well, just in case. You never know. You have my number. . . .” He listened for several moments and said, “Oh?” And said, “We can do that any time you want, your place or ours. . . . Okay, sounds good. We’ll call later and you tell us. So long.” He replaced the phone saying to Nicolet, “She wants to talk.”

  “One night all alone,” Nicolet said, “can do that. When?”