Bandits

by Elmore Leonard

  “They kind of a strange people?”

  “They’re good people. Been there minding their own business since before Columbus till the Sandinistas come along and fucked ’em over. You know what Commonists remind me of? Hard-nosed as they are and can’t see past it? The Klan. I think one’s as bad as the other.”

  “You ever going back?”

  Alvin Cromwell looked out toward the front of his empty store. “My wife don’t want me to. I told her, honey, there’s way more for me to do there’n here. I got two ladies and a fella working for me now I don’t even need. They’re having their lunch. I tell ’em, take as long as you want. Go on home and have a nap afterwards. My daddy always went home, had his noon dinner and a nap. But times are changing, huh?” He looked toward the front again, then at Cullen, then at Jack. “I’ll tell you something if you don’t breathe a word. I have a chance to go down there this weekend and, shit, I’m gonna take it. Do some good in the world.”

  Jack hesitated. “You fly down?”

  “Too expensive. We got a load of gear and supplies and there’s a fleet of banana boats that puts in right here. They’ll take any cargo you got rather than go dead-head.”

  Jack said, “It sounds like you lead an exciting life.”

  Alvin Cromwell said, “When I’m not here I do.”

  When they were outside, squinting in the sunlight, Jack said, “Jesus Christ, you believe that guy?”

  Cullen surprised him. “Jack, you haven’t been to war, so don’t say anything, okay?”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “If you don’t believe there’re people like Alvin Cromwell then you’re dumb, that’s all. They’re the kind of guys become regular army and are right there when the time comes we have to fight a war. They’re the ones save our ass.”

  “What’re you getting mad for?”

  “ ’Cause you think you’re smart. You think a guy like that’s square that believes in his country and is willing to lay down his life for it. Where were you during Vietnam?”

  “I tried to get in, I told you.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I didn’t go to Canada or burn my draft card. I got called and they turned me down.”

  “And you were glad.”

  “Well, of course I was. Cully, what’s the matter with you? All I said was, do you believe him?”

  “I know what you said.”

  They reached the Mercedes parked on the street, opened the doors, and stood there to let the air circulate inside. Jack looked at Cullen, across the sun glare laying hot on the roof.

  “I didn’t know you were in the army. You never mentioned it before today.”

  Cullen didn’t say anything. He was studying the buildings across the street, his gaze inching along.

  “Were you in the whole time?”

  “Three and a half years,” Cullen said, looking up the street now, past the few cars angle-parked along the blocks of storefronts. He turned then, slowly, to look toward the port area, the small-craft harbor and commercial fishing piers. He said with wonder in his voice, “Je-sus Christ.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “The first bank I ever walked in and robbed, all by myself, was right here in Gulfport.”

  “Is that right?”

  “But it’s gone. I don’t see it.”

  “That big new building we passed coming in, that’s a bank.”

  “Naw, this was an old bank.”

  Jack moved out toward the street, shading his eyes with his hand. “Look up there, Cully, this side of the new building. The Hancock Bank.”

  Now Cullen came out to the rear end of the car. He said, “Oh, my Lord, that’s it. We passed right by it.”

  Jack turned to the car, his gaze taking in the wide expanse of Twenty-fifth Avenue. He stopped and looked down that way again: at the man standing in the street about fifty feet away, at the rear end of a black car parked on the same side of the street. It took Jack a moment to realize it was the Creole-looking Indian, staring back at him.

  “Yeah, that’s it all right,” Cullen said. “I remember those pillars in front.”

  Franklin de Dios, in a dark suit and white shirt, his coat open; he stood there without moving, looking this way.

  Jack said, “Cully, let’s go.”

  They got in the car and backed out. There he was through the windshield now. The guy hadn’t moved. He turned as they drove past, watching them. Turned all the way. There he was in the rearview mirror, still watching.

  Jack said, “Cully?”

  Cullen said, “I think back now, the best time of my life was when I was in the service.”

  They drove down to the port area and turned right looking at empty semitrailers parked in the yard of the banana truck depot and drove past the Standard Fruit pier and then the small-craft and shrimp boat harbor. Pretty soon they were looking at the clean white sand that stretched along the Gulf of Mexico and Jack began to glance at his rearview mirror: from the mirror to a wind-surfer in the gulf, a blue-and-orange sail skimming along out there, and back to the mirror.

  Cullen saying, “I saw fellas that were my buddies get killed on that island. Shit, it was only about seven miles long, I don’t know what we needed it for, little piss-ass island. But we were all in that war together. There was a feeling there I’ve never experienced again, ’cause we knew we were doing something, I mean that was important. It didn’t matter how big that fucking island was, not at all.”

  “We’re into something now,” Jack said.

  “I have my doubts it’ll ever come off. But you know what? I don’t even think I care.”

  “I mean right now we’ve got something to think about. There’s a tail on us.”

  “A cop? You haven’t done nothing.”

  “Not a cop, the Indian. The one . . . you know.”

  Cullen said, “Yeah?” But didn’t seem interested enough to turn around and look. He asked though, “What’re you gonna do about it?”

  “We’ll get just the other side of Pass Christian . . .” Jack paused, looking at the mirror again.

  “I used to admire those big homes along there,” Cullen said. “I thought, yeah, boy, that’d be the place to live.”

  “Then I’m gonna punch it,” Jack said, “get up to about a hundred and twenty miles an hour . . .”

  “Around that curve?” Cullen said. “There’s a big curve ‘fore you come to the bay.”

  “Shit,” Jack said, “you’re right. Okay, I’m gonna get around the curve and then punch it. We’re gonna fly across the bridge and then make a quick right on North Beach and lose his ass.”

  That’s what they did.

  20

  * * *

  JACK CAME TO TREE SHADE and rickety piers and coasted along the empty shore road: old frame houses under mossy oaks on one side, the worn cement steps of a seawall on the other—where they dropped crab nets into the shallow water. He saw the long plank walk reaching out into the bay. They were approaching the house that had weathered more than a hundred years of hurricanes. “Camille took off the front porch,” he told Cullen, “left four feet of mud inside.” He turned into the side street—noticing the name for the first time, Leopold—and parked at the back of the house behind Raejeanne’s Chevette and some kind of sparkly blue car, brand new, that showed numbers instead of a name and the word Turbo. A woman was watching them from the back screened porch. Then another woman, a bigger shape in the dim area, moved past her to push open the screen door. His sister, Raejeanne. She said, “Who’s that? Friend or enema?” Getting out of the car he heard her say, “Mama, it’s Jack.”

  They stood on the back porch by the long dining table set for five, Jack introducing Cullen, Jack taking his mother in his arms, his mom frail and getting smaller, her quiet voice saying, “How’s my fine big boy?” as he patted her and got a sound of keen interest in his voice to ask her how she’d been. “Just fine.” Everything was just fine with her at seventy-five, her hair done in b
lond-gray waves, her glasses shining, wearing white earrings that matched her beads; but she was an old-timey seventy-five and now she seemed alarmed and he asked her what was wrong. She said, “We haven’t set enough places at the table.” He said, hey, tell me what you’ve been doing, how you’ve been. His mom said, “I been fine till last week, I was in bed a while with artha-ritis.” Jack asked her, “Who’s Arthur Itis?” She grinned, trying not to show her dentures, and said he sounded just like his dad, her Irishman. Close by Cullen was sniffing, making mmmmmm sounds as Raejeanne said they were having a mess of boiled shrimp and there was gumbo left over. She said, “We have company. Guess who’s here, Jack?” He knew, when she said it that way. His mom didn’t have to tell him, giving him a sad look as she said, “Maureen and her husband.” Raejeanne said, “Let’s fix you all a drink and go out on the porch.” His mom said, “Maureen was asking about you. I told her you were working hard as ever with Leo; Maureen said, Oh, that was nice. Her husband’s with her, that doctor.” Jack said, Harby. His mom said, “She’s the sweetest girl. . . .” Raejeanne said Leo was gonna try to get away early. She said to Jack, “Leo mentioned you ran into Helene. You seeing her again?”

  “He tell you everything he knows?”

  “I hope so,” Raejeanne said.

  His mother said, “You ran into somebody in the car?”

  They followed a linoleum hall to the front porch. Maureen and Harby Soulé came up out of their chairs, Maureen smiling, putting out her hand to Jack. “I don’t know why but I knew it was you in that nice car.” He held her familiar hand and kissed her on the cheek as Harby stood by in his starched seersucker suit and little bow tie and eyebrow-pencil mustache, Jack feeling the man should have menus under his arm—my God, but he did look like the colonel—Jack feeling alive, glad to be here, feeling confident. There was a Creole Indian who killed people turning through streets in Bay St. Louis right now, looking for him, as Raejeanne handed him a vodka collins with a cherry in it and his mom asked if he felt the breeze. She said there was always a nice breeze in the afternoon. She said, “Remember how you and Maureen loved to go sailing? They don’t have that boat no more. Raejeanne, what happened to that sailboat Jack and Maureen use to love so much?”

  “It sunk, Mama.”

  Maureen said, “How’s work, Jack?”

  He looked at her slender body in the neat blue sundress, her slender arms, her slender legs crossed, her strong hands holding the drink in her lap; one hand or the other that used to sooner or later grip his when they were lying in the hammock that hung folded against the wall behind him and he would draw his hand out of her clothes.

  “The same. It doesn’t change.”

  Harby said, “Least you don’t have to buy malpractice insurance.”

  Jack said, “No, we never get a complaint.” He said things here he never said anywhere else—Maureen watching him, knowing it. If one time he had not taken his hand out of her clothes and they had made love . . . He couldn’t imagine her making love to Harby Soulé.

  Harby saying he worked two months a year for the darn insurance company. Cullen asked him what he did. Harby said he was a urologist. Cullen frowned and Raejeanne said he was a pecker checker. Cullen said, Oh, was that right? He said he had a question but had better save it, huh?

  If they had made love . . . they could be sitting here right now, except Harby wouldn’t be here, or Cullen, and there wouldn’t be a Creole Indian named Franklin de Dios cruising around, or Nicaraguans. . . . He still could have met Lucy Nichols.

  “Have you ever heard of the Sisters of Saint Francis?”

  “I’m not sure,” Maureen said. “Why?”

  “I met one. They take care of lepers.”

  Maureen said, “Oh,” nodding.

  “Could you imagine doing that?”

  “I doubt it. Where did you meet her?”

  “Carville. Have you ever been there?” He felt himself pressing and he wasn’t sure why.

  “I’ve never had a desire to go.”

  “It’s quite a place. Looks more like a college campus than a hospital.”

  “Harby, you’ve been there, haven’t you?”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Carville.”

  “No, I’ve never been there. Several of my colleagues have though. Why?”

  Colleagues, Jack thought. Harby Soulé the urologist has colleagues . . .

  “Jack was just asking.”

  “Yeah, if he wants to go there,” Harby said. “I can’t imagine why, but I suppose I could arrange it.”

  The phone rang in the house. Raejeanne got up, left the porch.

  “I think Jack’s already been there,” Maureen said. “You had to pick up a body?”

  Jack said, “Yeah, last Sunday.” Wanting to tell them, But she was alive. See, there’s a Nicaraguan guy who wants to kill her, so we sneaked her out in a hearse and got stopped by another Nicaraguan who’s really Cuban and a Miskito Indian who later on shot that guy you might’ve read about at Ralph & Kacoo’s, thinking he’s up here fighting the war that these guys are raising money so they can keep it going and we’re trying to steal. Jesus Christ. Try to tell them even a little bit of that, just the first part . . .

  His mom said, “I don’t recall that boat ever sunk. That was such a nice boat. You use to sail it all over the bay, didn’t you? You and Maureen.”

  Raejeanne appeared in the doorway. “That was Leo. He said go on and eat, he won’t be able to make it till later on.” She said, “Mama, you want to help me in the kitchen?”

  Maureen wiggled to get up. “Tell me what I can do.”

  Jack watched her take his mother’s arm, the three women going off to cook.

  “Raejeanne, what’d Leo say?”

  She turned to look at him. “I just told you. I guess a body came in.”

  “He had one come in this morning.”

  “Well, I guess he got another one. I hate to say it, but I hope so. We need new drapes desperately.” She started to turn and looked back at him. “Hey, how come you’re not helping him?”

  “It’s my day off.”

  She said, walking out, “Poor Leo, alone with his dead while we’re having fun.”

  Jack stood up. He felt an urge to leave, right now, and looked at Cullen.

  Cullen, arms on his knees, was leaning toward Harby Soulé. “You don’t see the cordee much anymore, do you?”

  Harby said, “The what?”

  “The cordee. It’s when your dick curls up in a knot. They say there’s only one way to bust it loose. Guy told me one time he had it. He said what you do, the best way was to lay your dick on a windowsill, close your eyes, and slam the goddamn window on it. Guy said it hurts like a son of a bitch, but it’s the only way to break it loose once you have that cordee.”

  Harby said, “I never heard of such a thing.”

  Cullen said, “No, it’s a fact, you don’t hear about it so much anymore. The guy that told me, it was when we were in the service during WW Two. But I don’t know anybody at Angola had it and there was a bunch of guys there. I suppose they have drugs now do the job. They have drugs for near everything, they must have something for the cordee. I wonder if—no, they couldn’t. I was wondering if women ever got some form of it. You treat women too, don’t you?”

  Harby said, “Well, of course I do.”

  “Boy, you must see a lot of pussy, huh? You won’t believe it when I tell you I haven’t seen the old hair pie in twenty-seven years. I’m ready, it’s just—I ‘magine you heard the saying that if you don’t use it you lose it?”

  The way Jack saw Harby, he looked like a man who’d been embalmed and they forgot to close his eyes and glue his mouth shut.

  Cullen was telling him, see, he was about to get back into action after all these years, a friend was fixing him up; but now his prostate was giving him trouble and he wondered if before they sat down to their dinner the doctor would check it out for him . . .

  Jack, walking into the house
with his glass, heard Cullen say, “. . . give it the old finger wave,” but didn’t hear what Harby thought about it. Jack was in the hall now that ran through the middle of the house. He stopped as Maureen came out of a bedroom, Maureen looking up as she snapped her white purse closed. It was dim and quiet here.

  “How’ve you been, Maureen?”

  “Fine.” Perking up as she said it, throwing her shoulders back. She had fixed her makeup, done something to her eyes.

  “You look great.”

  “Well, thank you.”

  “You haven’t changed one bit.”

  “Really? Well, I have to confess we work at it. Harby and I jog four miles every morning, rain or shine, before he goes to Oschner.”

  “You and Harby? . . .”

  “And we watch what we eat. You know, stay away from all those rich sauces. It’s a kick, I’ve had to learn how to cook all over again. I don’t dare use a roux. If you can imagine that, a New Orleans girl.”

  “It must be hard.”

  “We don’t dare eat a bit of red meat, either. No more grillades, spaghetti and meatballs . . .” She gave him a faint smile. “You look good, Jack. Life treating you okay?”

  He hesitated. “Yeah, I think it is.” He caught a glimpse of Maureen and Harby in bed together, serious, doing it by the number, one two, one two . . .

  Maureen wrinkled her nose, staring at him. “What’re you smiling about?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I just feel like it.”

  “You haven’t changed one bit yourself, you know it? You still seem kind a, well, different. If that’s the word.”

  He said, “It’s as good as any,” still smiling a little.

  * * *

  They had evening sun in their eyes coming off the freeway. Cullen said, “The days are getting longer, but I’m not getting any younger. I hope to hell Roy lined me up with something.”

  Jack said, “You know the kind of women he knows?”

  “You betcha I do.”

  “You could catch something awful.”

  “Who cares.”

  “Have to go see Harby. Did he check your prostate?”