The Switch

by Elmore Leonard

  Ordell chopped Marshall across the head with the .38, grunting unnnh as he hit hard and pushed in against the man, inside the arms going out with the drinks, like a standup body block, jolting the man into the closet among the ten feet of hanging suits and cut him again, hard, across the head with the stub barrel, putting the man on the floor to sit wedged against the wall. Ordell shut the closet door and turned the key to lock it.

  Louis was watching him.

  Ordell shrugged. “I couldn’t make up my mind.”

  “You did a pretty good job. Jesus, he’s big.”

  “He’s gonna have some blood on him, that’s all.”

  Louis looked at the woman sitting rigid with her face raised like a blind person. He motioned Ordell into the hall and kept his voice low. “He’s gonna wipe it off and call the cops. Soon as he gets out.”

  “It’s what I’m saying,” Ordell said. “We got to decide something.”

  Louis was trying to think. “He didn’t see us.”

  “No, he didn’t see much.”

  “We call Dawson tonight,” Louis said, “tell him not to call the cops, this guy’s already been there.”

  “I know all that,” Ordell said.

  “But we leave him dead,” Louis said, “Dawson comes home and finds him, then Dawson—what’s he gonna do with the guy?—He’s got to call the cops then. I don’t know, but I think we should quit talking and get out of here.”

  “Leave her?” Ordell said.

  “No, take her,” Louis said. “We’re this far.”

  Not long ago in the men’s grill they had been talking about clothes and one of the guys said, “Jesus Christ, Frank, how many suits’ve you got?” And Frank said, “I don’t know. Couple dozen, I guess.” Marshall Taylor remembered that.

  Some of those suits were on the floor of the closet now, under him. Some had blood all over them. Marshall held soft cool silk to his head in the darkness, a sleeve. He didn’t know what color it was. He wasn’t sure what had happened. He was bleeding in darkness, his head throbbed like hell and he knew he was badly cut. His hair was sticking together in a hard crust.

  There were no sounds; but that didn’t mean anything. He lay quietly against the back wall of the closet to give his head a chance to stop bleeding and begin thinking.

  Somebody had broken in. At least two guys. Mickey came home and surprised them. They tied her up—no, he wasn’t sure about her hands. She was blindfolded though.

  Did they actually have masks on? He wasn’t sure now. They wouldn’t hang around. They probably took some things and ran. Mickey would call the police—

  They’d come up looking around and find him. Take his name and address, see the martini glasses on the floor—(“We’d like to ask you a few questions, sir.”) He had to get out of here.

  If Mickey had heard his voice and if they were gone, she’d let him out before calling the police. Unless she was too frightened at the time and wasn’t listening. He had only said a few words. Something about martinis. All right, if she didn’t know he was here, where the hell was she?

  Marshall looked at the luminous dial of his watch. He had been here a good fifteen minutes, not moving, his body cramped, stiffening. He had to do something. He could have stayed at Diesel. He could be at the Squire’s Table right now talking about golf and cold-form extrusions, ordering the New York strip. Tyra would be out at the club.

  Marshall kicked at the door with his heel, jarring his head and was afraid it would begin bleeding again. He lay still, waiting, telling himself he had to get out of here. Mickey wasn’t home. He kicked at the forty-year-old door panel again and kept kicking, holding the raw silk to his head, his long leg pumping, smashing the wood, until the panel splintered and he was able to reach through and up and unlock the door. The martini glasses were on the floor. He went into the bathroom, looked at himself in the mirror, at the blood all over him, and felt panic again, hard, rigid fear. He washed some of the blood from his face. There was nothing he could do about his suit. Or about Frank’s suits. He had to get out, but he didn’t want to go downstairs. In the hall he stood listening for several minutes. He thought, A drink. God, that’s what he needed, and that’s what got him downstairs to the kitchen.

  Mickey’s purse was gone. The wallet and car keys were still on the table. The door to the garage was open. He could see Mickey’s Grand Prix. Marshall pulled a bottle of J&B from the cabinet and had half a lowball glass of it, straight.

  Okay. Say they had hit Mickey too. She hadn’t heard his voice. She was dazed. She called a friend, somebody, a neighbor, to take her to the hospital. That’s why she hadn’t called the police right away. Go to Beaumont Emergency, that’s where she’d be.

  A head laceration could leave a lot of blood. All the blood in the closet—she’d tell the police yes, it must be hers. She was dazed, knocked out for awhile. They would assume it was her blood. No reason to check the type.

  Marshall had another Scotch. That would be it; he’d have to be careful in case he was in some sort of mild shock. But he felt pretty good in spite of everything. Mickey’d go to Beaumont. He’d go to St. Joe’s in Pontiac.

  Questions then. How did it happen? He hit a tree. Or a light pole. His brakes didn’t work. Where?

  No. Some guy sideswiped him. Where? On Deep Run, right off Telegraph. He was on his way to the club; had a golf date with a customer. The guy sideswiped him, put him in the ditch and kept going.

  Did he report the accident? Report it? He couldn’t see. Christ, he had blood all over him, didn’t he?

  Marshall took a shovel from the Dawson garage. On the way to Pontiac he turned off Woodward into a deserted side road, got out with the shovel and, swinging it like a baseball bat, smashed in the left-front headlights and fender of his Cadillac DeVille, threw the shovel into the high brush and continued on to St. Joseph Mercy Hospital.

  “Did somebody say they wanted—”

  Wanted what?

  She remembered the words and the sound of Marshall’s voice because she had been waiting in silence, knowing it was coming, something, though expecting to hear him call out from downstairs first.

  She remembered the awful sounds then. Grunts, hitting, the sound of Marshall’s voice again choked off. She remembered one of them saying, “I couldn’t make up my mind,” and something else. The voices were fainter then, away from her.

  Then close again, another voice, the white voice, saying, “Bring that.” And the other voice saying, “You kidding?” A white voice and a black voice. A glimpse, in the kitchen, of a white man and a black man, though there was not that much difference in their color. Masks. A cap. The other one with a beard.

  They took her by the arm, helped her into a truck or something. She thought of a funeral parlor, a hearse, with the heavy odor of flowers. She had to lie on the hard floor, on cardboard, feeling the bumps and jolts go through her, feeling to see if Marshall was with her and trying to brace herself. They didn’t tie her hands. They didn’t bring Marshall.

  The black voice had said, “I couldn’t make up my mind.”

  About what? Before that, just before that, a door had closed, a lock turned. Which would have to be the closet. They didn’t know what to do with Marshall, couldn’t make up their minds; so they had left him there.

  Marshall would get out—if he wasn’t hurt. Just some blood on him, one of them said. He’d get out and call the police. Look for two men in a—Marshall came after they did, so he would have seen the truck or whatever it was—

  Going down a ramp now, into some kind of an enclosed place.

  They opened the door. She was helped out and into another truck, feeling carpeting beneath her bare feet . . . placed in a contoured, cushioned chair, music suddenly blaring out next to her. She didn’t hear their voices during the ride, only the music. Instrumental jazz. It reminded her of WJZZ-FM and some of the music seemed familiar. They were on a busy street. Woodward? Unless they were going east and west, across one of the mile roads.
/>   The police would be sending out a description—

  She wasn’t sure of time; maybe a half hour had passed since they left her house, until the truck turned off the busy street. In less than a minute it made another turn and came to a stop.

  When she was taken out, a hand holding her arm firmly, the white voice said, “There’s a step. Then three more.”

  She was in a house that smelled old, but not musty. It was a kitchen smell, old grease, and it reminded her of something from the past. She was in a small house. Through the kitchen, a short hall, to a stairway: fourteen steps to the top, a cold bare floor, a hall, then into a carpeted room. She bumped against a bed and put her hand out to feel it, a bedspread with a deep-pile border or design.

  Others were in the room, close, bumping things. She smelled stale sweat she had not smelled before. Someone else besides the black one and the white one was in the room. She turned her head and smelled cologne; no, a softer scent, a sachet. She was in a woman’s room and again a memory stirred, something from the past.

  The white voice said, “When you hear the door close, you can take off the mask.”

  “Where am I?”

  “No talking allowed,” the black voice said. “When you have to go pee-pee knock on the door and put your mask on.”

  She heard them moving again, the floor creaking beneath their weight. None of them touched her or said anything else. The door closed and there was silence.

  After a moment Mickey raised the mask from her eyes.

  10

  * * *

  ORDELL HAD SAID, “For sure, he’s a creepy guy. Lives here by hisself; nobody bothers him, wants to come near him. Can you think of a better place?” No, Louis couldn’t. But he wished they were some place else.

  Richard was standing in the doorway to the hall, looking into the living room at them. He said, “You want me to take the first watch?”

  “Yeah, you take the first watch, Richard,” Ordell said. “Hey, Richard—” He pulled the Frankenstein Monster mask out of the shopping bag on the floor by his chair and threw it over. “Put that on, man, you go in there. Or she comes out to go to the toilet.” He said to Louis, when Richard left, “I believe it’s a good place. Can you think of a better one?”

  “I told you, it’s fine,” Louis said. “What would he go in the room for?”

  “It’s his house,” Ordell said.

  “He doesn’t have anything to say to her. What would he go in there for?”

  “I mean if he happen to be face to face with her,” Ordell said. “That’s all I meant. I’m not saying for him to go in there and do anything he wants. That what you thinking about?”

  “We don’t have any reason to hurt her,” Louis said, backing off a little.

  Ordell seemed to grin—Louis wasn’t sure—looking over at Louis sitting on the couch with the parts of the newspaper spread out next to him. “No, we don’t have to hurt her none. She gonna be up there by herself prob’ly a few days. Maybe she get bored, want a little something to do. You see Richard making it with her?”

  “I’d like to see his wife,” Louis said. “I can’t see Richard making it if he paid for it. No, what I’m saying, we get her upset—we got enough to handle without her going whacko on us. You don’t know what a person, they get upset’s liable to do. You keep the person reasonably scared, yeah, but you keep the person quiet, man, easy to manage.”

  “You don’t want nothing to happen to the lady,” Ordell said.

  “Why should I? Do you? She’s pretty cool about it so far, you know? You want to make problems we don’t have?”

  “I haven’t said nothing. Man, I’m with you,” Ordell said. “We’re in this deal partners, man. Richard works for us. He does what we tell him.”

  Louis was going to say, Yeah, but just before you said, It’s his house. Like he can do whatever he wants. But he didn’t say it. He kept quiet now, deciding to wait and see. Whatever you were into, it didn’t always work the way it was supposed to or the way the other guy said it would. You could have an understanding, thinking you both saw it exactly the same, and later on the other guy would say, “What’re you talking about? I didn’t say that. When did I say that?” Ordell said how it was going to work, what each of them, including Richard, was supposed to do; okay, he’d take Ordell’s word for it. Otherwise he’d be worrying about things that might never happen. The way to play it, just don’t be surprised if the other guy did something that wasn’t in the agreement, because it wasn’t a written contract or the kind of agreement you could point to and take the other guy to court and sue his ass over. You had to get along. It was good when two of the guys were close and there was a third guy they trusted but didn’t give a shit about; it strengthened the closeness and lessened the chance of the two close guys fucking each other over; though it wasn’t a guarantee. You did not want to be alone in something like this, naturally, it was too fucking scary. But if it meant saving your own ass—as Ordell had said, “If there’s somebody standing between me and forty years in Jackson—” And Louis had said, “I know. It’s not a choice.”

  That morning, Monday, Ordell had called his friend Cedric Walker in Freeport, Grand Bahama, and gave him Richard’s phone number. Mr. Walker had called back collect: yes, the man had arrived on the early flight from Fort Lauderdale. He’d see what he could find out.

  In the late afternoon, Mr. Walker called again. Yes, the man was on the island. No, a boy wasn’t with him, he came alone. He hadn’t gone to the bank, but Lisabeth Cooper was watching for him if he did. The man was at Fairway Manor where he had an apartment and always stayed and looked to be entertaining his lady friend who lived over in Lucaya. Ordell said what lady friend? He sat listening to Mr. Walker on the phone while Louis went out to the kitchen for a couple more bottles of O’Keefe Lager.

  When Louis came back in, Ordell had hung up but was still sitting in the straight chair by the telephone table fooling with his beard. Louis handed him a bottle on his way to the couch. The end of the couch by the lamp with the cellophane-covered shade and the Little Bo-Peep base looked like it was going to be Louis’ seat. It was the first place he had sat down in Richard’s living room and, for some reason, he kept going back to it, looking at the lamp sometimes when they weren’t talking and wondering what the Nazi was doing with Little Bo-Peep. There was something wrong with the guy. His wife or his mother probably had bought the lamp or won it across the street at the State Fair, throwing balls at wooden milk bottles, but there was still something wrong with the guy.

  Ordell moved over to one of the deep maroon chairs, still thinking.

  Louis said, “You gonna tell me or keep it to yourself?”

  “The man’s there,” Ordell said, “staying at this apartment he’s got on a golf course.”

  “Yeah, what else?”

  “He got a lady with him. See, I knew he like the ladies, but I didn’t know it was this same lady he’s been seeing all the time when he goes there. I thought he had all kinds of ladies. Mr. Walker say no, it’s the same one, good-looking young woman name Melody . . . Mel something . . . Melanie. That’s it, he say Melanie. Young foxy-looking chick; Mr. Walker say she lays by the swimming pool without her top on, these gentlemen come chipping onto number seventeen, that’s right by the place, like the front yard. Man, they looking over there at Melanie, waiting for her to turn over, they lucky to five-putt the hole.”

  “That’s an interesting story,” Louis said. “What’s the rest?”

  “She don’t work that Mr. Walker knows of,” Ordell said. “But Lisabeth Cooper say she got four thousand seven hundred and two dollars in the Providence Bank and Trust.”

  “Say she’s been saving her money,” Louis said.

  “Say shit. She spends it in the casino, but she’s always got some in the bank.”

  “I don’t see the problem,” Louis said. “So the man’s got something on the side.”

  “I don’t say it’s a problem,” Ordell said. “But I like to know a
ll the shit that’s going on. I don’t like surprises, man. I like to know, what’s he doing there? What’s she doing? Who is she? You understand what I’m saying?”

  “Why don’t you call him and ask him?” Louis said. He studied the clean, streamlined O’Keefe label. He liked the old one better. The new one gave him the feeling the beer was weak, watery. He said, “Why don’t we call him? I’m serious. Get it done.”

  “Ask him about the foxy chick?” Ordell didn’t see it yet.

  “No, I mean tell him the deal. Why do you have to wait till he gets back?”

  He could see Ordell hadn’t thought about it, the possibility. Maybe there were some other things he hadn’t thought about.

  Ordell said, “I don’t have his number.”

  Now he was stalling, giving himself time to think.

  “Call information. Or get it from Mr. Walker,” Louis said. “The man’s right there. All he’s got to do is go to the bank.”

  Ordell was frowning, thinking hard. “See, he comes home, he finds out she ain’t there. He knows something’s happened to her.”

  “He calls home tonight,” Louis said. “No, hey—we let her talk to him on the phone. ‘Honey, these men—I’ve been kidnapped—‘ “ Louis stopped, realizing something. It was the first time he had said the word or had even thought the word and heard it in his mind. Kidnap. Christ, they had kidnapped a woman. It wasn’t simple extortion, leaning on the man, prying money out of somebody who was making it illegally and cheating the government, they had kidnapped the man’s wife. Ordell hadn’t used the word either. Talking it over it was always about the man, how they were going to jive the man into giving them a million dollars. Pay off Richard, pay off a few people in the Bahamas, they’d split, say, $960,000. You believe it? $480,000 apiece and the man couldn’t say anything about it, couldn’t call the police, couldn’t do anything. See, always the man. The man thinking he was so smart. They were gonna skin the man. And to make him jump right now and not get in a long conversation and give him time to lie or confuse them or move the money someplace else, they’d tell the man he’d never see his wife again unless he did what he was told. Nothing about kidnapping.