Bandits

by Elmore Leonard

  “That’s the embalming machine.”

  “Porti-Boy? Oh, my God. . . . How does it work?”

  “Come on.” He turned the light off and took her down the hall to his apartment.

  “What’s this?”

  “Where I’ve been living the past three years.”

  “Gee, it’s nice, Jack. Who’s your decorator?”

  He said, “Helene, I was in a bathroom with a guy that thought I was gonna kill him. Try to imagine something like that. He didn’t cry, he didn’t say please don’t. . . . It was the same guy yesterday at the restaurant. You were there.”

  “I must’ve left just before.”

  “Well, it was the same guy. He’s standing there in the bathroom, he thinks I’m gonna shoot him, and he asks me if I want his shoes. Can you tell me what kind of a guy would say that?”

  Helene didn’t answer. She watched him get a bottle of vodka from the refrigerator that stood in the barely furnished room; she sat with him in the old sofa that used to be downstairs and didn’t say anything, not a word, until he had told her everything that had happened from the trip to Carville on Sunday until this Tuesday evening at the St. Louis Hotel.

  She said, “I think you’ve left out a few things.”

  “I might’ve, I don’t know.”

  Helene sat curled in the sofa, facing him. “You stayed at her house last night?”

  “All three of us did.”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “I told you, the guy saw us in the restaurant and he knows where she lives. We thought he might come around.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “No. Then I run into him again, tonight. He knows who I am. This’s the third or fourth time he’s seen me, we’re getting to know each other. But he didn’t tell the colonel or Crispin, Crispeen. He could’ve told them later, but—no, he catches me in the room? Shit, he’d have told them right away. But he didn’t. . . . Why?”

  “Where did you sleep?”

  “What?”

  “Last night, at her house. Where did you sleep?”

  “In a bed, where do you think? That house, there nine, ten bedrooms upstairs.”

  “Who with?”

  “Roy and Cullen had a room and I had a room. . . . What, you think I sneaked in her room during the night?”

  “She could’ve come to yours.”

  Jack took his time. “As a matter of fact, she did. She wanted to talk.”

  “She get in bed with you?”

  “She sat on the edge. You know, on the side.”

  “Hey, Jack? Bullshit.”

  “It isn’t like what you think. She’s a dedicated person.”

  “You mean dedicated people don’t get it on?”

  “I mean I really don’t know, since this’s my first experience with people who give a shit about anything outside of themselves.”

  “She probably calls it going all the way.”

  “Helene, she’s not like a nun that teaches third grade, she spent nine years taking care of lepers. Now she’s got a gun. I asked her if she’d be willing to use it. She said it isn’t something you plan. But if she’d had a gun when the colonel murdered the lepers there’s no doubt in her mind she would’ve tried to kill him. Even knowing his men would shoot her on the spot.”

  “Maybe,” Helene said, “she wants to be a martyr. I mean a real one, go straight to heaven.”

  “You think you’re kidding, she might go for that.”

  “I wasn’t kidding.”

  “But she isn’t a fanatic. She might sound a little strange sometimes, but she knows what’s going on, she’s very aware of things. She says you have to take sides, make a commitment, and then, I don’t know, whatever happens happens. Like the guy in the bathroom, the Indian. He’s on the other side. He’s willing to kill, but he’s also willing to die for whatever it is he believes in. He sees it coming and accepts it, Jesus, didn’t kick or scream or anything.”

  Helene handed him her empty glass. “Why are you telling me all this, Jack? Why haven’t you called Lucy or one of your buddies?”

  “I’ll see ’em tomorrow.”

  “I think you want to hear yourself,” Helene said. “Hear what it sounds like out loud.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’re not telling it to impress me. Like the first time, when we met and you were dying to tell somebody about your secret life. This is a lot different.”

  “You bet it is. These guys are awake.”

  “But you’re in it for more than the money, or the excitement.”

  “I don’t know. . . .” Jack got up, went to the refrigerator with their glasses, poured a couple more ice-cold vodkas, and then stood there, holding them. “On the news this evening, I look up, there was Tom Brokaw asking Richard Nixon, for Christ sake, what he thought about our giving the contras a hundred million dollars. Asking Nixon, who used to have this gang of burglars working for him and didn’t do one fucking day of time. Nixon says, sure, they need our help. Brokaw says, but couldn’t that lead to our military involvement down there? Nixon says, no, it will prevent having to send our young men later. And Brokaw says, ‘Thank you, Mr. President.’ He doesn’t say, ‘Are you out of your fucking mind? Why would we send our young men? You want to go, go ahead. And take all those asshole advisers in the White House with you.’ No, Brokaw says, ‘Thank you, Mr. President.’ ”

  “What else’s he gonna say?”

  “I know, but I got mad. Asking that fucking crook his opinion. He didn’t even do trash time in a country-club joint.”

  Helene said, “You know what I think?”

  “What?”

  “I think you’ve taken sides.”

  Jack opened his eyes to a sight that, fantasized, could carry a convict through the day and into the night: Helene coming out of the bathroom in just her tiny little panties. He told her she better get back in bed, quick, before she caught cold.

  “You’re suppose to pick somebody up at ten?”

  “Cullen. We’re going to Gulfport.”

  “I thought you went yesterday.”

  “We did, but the guy wasn’t there. Here.” He raised the sheet.

  “It’s twenty to.” She began doing a twisting exercise, feet apart, hands on her hips, her breasts a half beat behind her shoulders. “You realize we didn’t make love? We fell asleep? I don’t believe it. I think you’re getting old, Jack.”

  “I’m ready—you’re the one got up.”

  “Do you know that’s the first time we ever slept together and didn’t?”

  “I think you’re right.”

  “We may as well be married.”

  “There’s a kitchenette down the hall, next to the embalming room . . .”

  “Oh, God, this place.”

  “If you want to put some coffee on.”

  Jack took a shower and put on a work shirt and cotton pants, picked up his jacket, and walked down the hall. The kitchenette was dark. He saw the doors to the prep room open, the light on, then saw Helene as he heard Leo’s voice.

  “No, that’s arterial, the Permaglo, it takes the place of the blood. What I’m injecting now, through the trocar, is cavity fluid. It’s a chemical you use to firm up the organs.”

  Leo had a body on the embalming table. A man, it looked like. Helene was standing at the head of the table in her black dress, watching.

  “You want to shoot some inside the mouth, too, so you don’t have any sag.”

  “It’s fascinating,” Helene said.

  “See this? It’s a trocar button.”

  “Oh, to fill in the hole.”

  “Right, so you don’t have to suture it as you do incisions and lacerations. Then you cover ’em with a special wax we use.”

  Jack said, “I don’t suppose anybody made coffee.”

  “Hey, there he is,” Leo said. “I was just showing your friend here how we prepare the deceased.”

  “This’s Helene, Leo.”

  “Yeah, we met.”

&
nbsp; “If nobody made coffee,” Jack said, “I have to leave.”

  Helene said, “Oh, nuts. I wanted to see how you do the cosmetics.”

  “Stick around,” Leo said. “I can drop you off later. Sure, no problem.”

  “I’m going to Gulfport,” Jack said. He walked off. Helene was asking, what’re those? And Leo was telling her eye caps, you slip ’em under the lids.

  People were acting weird. Everyone he met.

  Or it’s you, Jack thought. The way you see them.

  Franklin de Dios, watching Lucy Nichols’s house, saw the old car arrive: the light-colored one he believed was a type of Volkswagen and needed repair, something to make it quiet. He knew whose car it was.

  It turned into the driveway. Thirty-five minutes passed. Now the dark-blue Mercedes sedan, two people in it, came out of the driveway and turned toward St. Charles. Franklin de Dios was parked on a beautiful street named Prytania, near the corner where it joined Audubon. He gave the Mercedes the head start of a block before he got after it: up to Claiborne Avenue and then to the interstate, number 10, going toward the east . . . going far out of the city and across the lake on a beautiful day, following the Mercedes in the rented black Chrysler Fifth Avenue. If he could buy any car he wanted it might be one like this. Or the Cadillac he drove for Crispin Reyna in Florida. He had never driven a Mercedes. He had driven a truck and an armored troop carrier after he had learned to drive in 1981. A man who worked for Mr. Wally Scales in Honduras had taught him to drive and said in front of him to Mr. Wally Scales he was a natural-born driver with a respect for the machine, not like those others who became crazy behind the wheel and destroyed whatever they drove.

  Mr. Wally Scales had said to forget about Lucy Nichols, but the colonel had insisted. Watch her house. If the car leaves, follow it.

  Crossing the state line at this moment into Mississippi.

  Franklin had lost confidence in Mr. Wally Scales, in his ability to see into people; but he did trust him and could talk to him. He could not talk to Colonel Godoy or Crispin Reyna. The reason was simple. They didn’t listen when he said something to them. He was beneath their social class, far beneath them with his mixed black and Indian blood.

  But it was Mr. Wally Scales, the CIA man, who had brought him to Miami; they were in a way friends, or they could be friends. Mr. Wally Scales listened when he said something to him. He listened this morning when Franklin de Dios told him he no longer trusted the word of the colonel or Crispin Reyna. Mr. Wally Scales said, “Why is that, Franklin?”

  “They talk always of Miami, Florida, but not the war.”

  “Oh, is that right?” Mr. Wally Scales said, trying to act as though he was concerned. “Well, then you better keep an eye on them.”

  See? He was kind and he listened, but didn’t have feelings that told him about people. Or he didn’t care.

  When Franklin de Dios asked him about Lucy Nichols, the CIA man said, “Oh, she’s a peace marcher. One of those bleeding-heart types. Had it in for the colonel, so she got his girl friend out of town most likely. No big deal.”

  When he asked about the guy at the funeral place, Mr. Wally Scales said, “Jack Delaney? She must’ve suckered him, that’s all. Used him. Hard-up ex-con with no brains.”

  That was when Franklin de Dios realized he could trust the CIA man as a friend but not rely on his judgment. He decided not to ask any more questions or tell Wally about meeting the guy with no brains five times in the past week.

  Maybe the sixth time coming up.

  The guy, Jack Delaney, and another guy were in the car he was following, the dark-blue Mercedes turning off the highway now at the second exit sign to Gulfport.

  Anything else he wanted to know, he would have to talk to the funeral guy himself.

  Ask him why he didn’t kill you.

  Ask him what he was doing.

  Ask him what side he was on.

  He followed the Mercedes for five miles. As the road became the main street, Twenty-fifth Avenue, four lanes wide and with a tall building down there against the sky, Franklin de Dios was wondering if he was certain about the sides. If there were more than two sides. If he was on the side he thought he was on or on a different side. He was getting a feeling, more and more, that he was alone.

  19

  * * *

  THE SIGN OVER THE SIDEWALK said Cromwell’s, straight up and down. Across the lower part and much smaller it said Men’s Wear * Sporting Goods * Military Surplus New and Used.

  Alvin Cromwell asked Jack and Cullen as they looked around, “You fellas want a suit of clothes? You need some resort wear? Tell me how I can fix you up.”

  Jack kept looking around as they moved toward the back of the store. They seemed to be the only customers. For something to say he asked if they carried Hollandia Sportswear, the outfits with the little tulips on them.

  Alvin Cromwell had to stop and think. “I have these shirts with different little animals on ’em. Let’s see . . .” He had a beard and looked like a weight lifter in his black T-shirt with white lettering that said Never mind the dog, Beware of owner. He seemed like a nice guy though. He told Jack, “No, I don’t think I have any with tulips.”

  “You sure have guns. I’ll say that.”

  “You know guns?”

  Cullen said, “I bet I can still strip an M-1 in the dark and put it back together.”

  It surprised Jack, but he was looking off toward the guns now, racks of them across the knotty-pine wall in the rear of the store: rifles, shotguns, and what appeared to be submachine guns, all with red tags attached to them.

  To get there they walked past pipe racks of camouflage fatigues, jackets and trousers On Sale! Reduced from $29.95 to $24.95. There were new and used Genuine USAF flight jackets. Ranger vests, Good-looking and functional. Camouflage T-shirts for kids, stiff-brim drill instructor hats, Ranger boonie hats and combat caps, holsters, binoculars, canteens, knives, and bayonets with sawtooth blades . . .

  As they approached the knotty-pine shelves and racks, Alvin Cromwell said, “If you men have been to war or know your assault weapons, this here ought to turn you on.”

  “I was with the First Cav in the big one,” Cullen said, “WW Two. The first time in the history of the First was when we got off our horses and took an island in the Admiralty group, Los Negros.”

  Jack looked at him. This was the first he knew of Cullen being in the army. Now Alvin Cromwell was shaking Cullen’s hand. So Jack said, “I wanted to go to Nam in the worst way but, damn it, I got turned down.” Alvin Cromwell nodded, but didn’t shake his hand. He said, “You the two fellas in here yesterday asking for me?”

  “We happened by,” Jack said. “My friend here misplaced his car keys. We stopped back wondering if it might’ve been here.”

  Alvin Cromwell said, “Guys from Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are always losing something in here too and come looking around. I point out to ’em I deal only in legal sport and recreational weapons, semiautomatic at best.”

  Jack said, “If you think we’re government we’ll leave right now and sue you for slander. We’re just looking, is all, and don’t even know what we’re looking at.”

  Alvin Cromwell said, “There’s no harm in that. What you see up there, left to right . . . There’s your Ruger Mini-14, your Uzi, your Tech-9. Next, your H and K 91, fires the 672 nato round or a 308 Winchester. You recognize your Thompson? Popular with World War Two guys willing to pay the price. Next, your handy-dandy AR-15 Armalite. With a conversion kit you can turn it into an M-16, if that’s what you want. I’ll tell you, in Nam it had the attrition rate of about a C-ration can. We got ’em, everybody thought, oh, man, this here’s a gas on full automatic. But see, it was the gas, tapped at the front sight and sent to the rear to run the gun, that fucked it up. The mechanism’d get filled with debris and then she’d malfunction on you. So what we had to do then was kill us a VC and appropriate his AK-47 ’cause, man, that’s a gun, second only to your FN-FAL, made by the Be
lgians. I don’t know how they know how to do it, but shit, they’re good. That FN-FAL. The Brits use it, and just about anybody else can get their hands on it, like those crazy assholes over in Lebanon. We’ve managed some for the contras, but not a lot.”

  “Down in Nicaragua,” Jack said.

  “Yeah, shit. Man, they need all the help they can get. The contras don’t cut it, man, we’re gonna be down there.”

  “You think so?”

  “I already been,” Alvin Cromwell said. “I’ll tell you what made me go. I’d think of Nam I could cry of embarrassment how we let those little suckers run us out. I came back I didn’t know which way to turn. I tried the Klan, but they’re a bunch of negative thinkers is all. You name it, niggers, Jews, Catholics, they’re against it. I told ’em, ‘Don’t you know what the only evil in the whole world is we have to stop? It’s commonism.’ I hate Commonists, always have. But hate doesn’t do you a bit of good less you can direct it. It was through a gun-club convention I joined the CVP, the Civilian Volunteer Program, and got a new lease on life. What we do is assist the freedom fighters down there. Take them in supplies, food and gear, see, and train them in field tactics. Over in Vietnam I was a gunner on a Cobra—got blown out of the sky during Tet and I was six months in the hospital getting my legs to work again. Anyway, I went down there . . . Listen, I’ve spent over twenty-five hundred of my own money showing Miskito Indians how to fire an M-60 machine gun, a piss-poor weapon but all we got. I’ve taken them into Nicaragua from Honduras on what we call, quote, a practical application exercise, if you know what I mean. But don’t ever say I told you that. Like I’ve never mentioned the CIA in this deal, have I? Well, seven weeks with the Miskitos I lost thirty pounds eating beans and rice, what they had of it. But, man, I come home feeling gooood. I know what’s shaking and what it’s gonna take for us to win down there. See, it’s way different than over in Nam. It’s the bad guys have the firepower and the fucking gunships.”

  Jack said, “You were with the Indians.”

  “Yes, sir, and learned I wasn’t twenty-one no more. Those people have got a hard life, what the Sandinistas done to ’em.”