Jackie Brown

by Elmore Leonard

  Jackie dialed a number. A young black woman's voice said, "He ain't home," and the line went dead. Jackie dialed the number again. The woman's voice said, "He ain't home," in the same tone. Jackie said, "Wait." But not in time. They told her she could try later, once she was in the dorm.

  The dorm. She thought of college.

  But it wasn't like college or a fort either, imagining the Stockade on the way here as a stockade fence, pointed logs planted upright. The fences were wire, the one-story buildings seemed to be either cement block or siding. In the dark, driving in, she saw construction equipment, piles of building materials.

  They brought her from Administration across the street to Medical where they gave her a questionnaire to fill out, took her temperature, her blood pressure, and examined her for vermin. Outside again walking along the street, the deputy with sergeant stripes said, "That's 'F' Dorm, where you'll be," nodding toward a building enclosed in double fencing: Spotlights reflected on rolls of razor wire strung along the top. Unlocking the gate he smiled at her and said, "Fuels your apprehension, doesn't it?" Jackie looked at him, a young guy, clean-shaved, his hair carefully combed. He said, "After you," and she walked in expecting to see cells with bars.

  What she saw were doors to six dormitory rooms, each with an expanse of wire-covered windows across the front, three on one side of a guard post in the open area, three on the other. She saw faces at the windows watching her and heard faint sounds, voices. A woman deputy stood inside the waist-high enclosure, the guard post: a tall, broad-shouldered woman with pale-blond hair combed up in a pile. She was smoking a cigarillo, the pack stuck in her empty holster. The sergeant said, "Miss Kay, take care of this lady, would you, please?" and handed her a three-by-five inmate status card. Miss Kay said, "Why certainly, Terry," looked at the card for a moment and then at Jackie. "Would you believe you're my first flight attendant in about, I'd say, three years?"

  Jackie didn't say anything, wondering if they were putting her on. She caught the aroma of Miss Kay's cigarillo. That was real.

  With two bed sheets under her arm she scuffed along in the slides to the first room on the left, the holding dorm, Miss Kay told her, for prisoners awaiting court appearances. Faces moved away from the wire-mesh windows as Miss Kay unlocked the door and stood holding it open. Jackie stepped inside to see women at two of the four picnic tables in the front part of the dorm. Black women, one or two Hispanic. All watching her, paying no attention to the television set that was on. The double bunks in the rear area all looked empty. Miss Kay told Jackie she could have any bunk that wasn't occupied. She said, "If anyone asks you to pay for a bunk, tell me." Toilets and showers were back there. The two phones on the wall-one was a hot line to the Public Defender's office, the other a pay phone, but you could only make collect calls out of the area. You were allowed to have six dollars in change. The television set was showing a movie, Mel Gibson . . . And the women were still watching her, waiting. Miss Kay let them. She said the dorm held sixteen, but there were only seven in here now. Two dorms were for misdemeanants, two for drug offenders, one for violent prisoners. Miss Kay turned to the women at the picnic tables, all wearing street clothes, slacks, a few in dresses, and said, "This is Jackie."

  A black woman wearing a shiny black wig said, "What is she, a general? Got her uniform on?"

  The other women laughed, some with screams of appreciation, to please the woman in the wig or to let go and hear the sound of their own voices, loud inside the cement-block walls, until Miss Kay said, "Zip it," and they shut up. Now she looked at the black woman who had spoken and said, "Ramona, I'm only going to tell you once. Stay away from her."

  Jackie dialed the number she'd tried before. The young woman's voice said, "He ain't-" and Jackie said over it, "Tell him Jackie called." There was a silence. "Tell him I'm in jail, the Stockade. Have you got that?" There was a silence again before the line went dead.

  She picked up her bed sheets from the picnic table, the women still watching her, and scuffed her way back to the eight double bunks in two rows. There were no overhead lights here but the ones in front.

  Jackie imagined, would be left on all night. So take a lower bunk. Five already had sheets on them. A radio was playing now along with the television set, the movie. She chose a bunk wondering if she'd be able to sleep and bent over, one hand on the rail of the upper bunk, to look at the mattress. Something behind her moved in front of the light. Jackie knew who it would be as she straightened and turned to look over her shoulder at Ramona.

  Heavyset, her skin dark, her black wig highlighted from behind. She said, "You gonna talk to me?"

  "If you want," Jackie said. "Just don't give me a hard time, okay? I've got enough problems."

  "You a stewardess, huh? Work for the airlines?" Jackie nodded and Ramona said, "What I was wondering, they pay pretty good?"

  She would sleep and wake up to stare at crisscrossed springs and the mattress close above her in faint light and would hear voices and a radio playing. She would feel the plastic ID bracelet, turning it on her wrist. She would hear the sergeant saying, "Fuels your apprehension, doesn't it?" and remember looking at him, not sure it was what he said.

  A few times she thought of crying.

  But changed her mind, replaying parts of her conversation with Ramona, here pending a charge of felonious assault for, Ramona said, busting a man's head open when he wouldn't leave her house. Assault, or it could be some kind of manslaughter if he didn't come out of Good Samaritan. But, hey, what about working for the airlines? . . . Jackie told her you could make thirty-five to forty thousand after ten years, never fly more than seventy hours a month, and choose the runs you wanted out of your home base. Her own experience, she was three years with TWA, fourteen with Delta and got fired. With Islands Air she was making less than half what she used to. Getting personal now. It didn't begin to cover rent, clothes, car payments, insurance, and now Islands Air would drop her as soon as they found out she was in jail. Ramona said, "If you not happy there, what do you care if they fire you?" She said she cleaned houses for fifty dollars a day when she could get it, but only three, four days a week, all the people there was doing it now, the Haitians taking work from the regular people. She asked Jackie if she had someone doing her apartment.

  Before long Jackie was describing her situation to Ramona, seeking the advice of a cleaning woman in a forty-nine-dollar wig who didn't smoke.

  Ramona said, "Possession with what, intent? I don't see you have a problem. The way you look? The kind of hair you got? If I done it I'd go to jail, see, but you won't. They slap your hand and say, 'Girl, don't do it again.' No, if the man you work for has money to pay a good lawyer, you have nothing to worry about. If he don't choose to, that's when you think about making a deal with the law, get your charge dismissed if you help them, not just reduced. Hear what I'm saying?"

  They got mad, Jackie told her, when she wouldn't talk to them, cooperate. Ramona said, "They ain't your worry. What you need to think about is if you put it on the man, you want to know he don't have friends he can set after you. That's the tricky part. You have to put it on him without him knowing it. The worse thing that can happen, say you don't tell on the man or cop to the deal? You might do, oh, three months county time, something like that. Six at the most and that's nothing."

  Jackie said, "Terrific. I'll be starting my life over at forty-five."

  She remembered Ramona, who she thought was old enough to be her mother, smiling at her with gold crowns, saying that's how old she was and asking, "When's your birthday, dear?"

  She would sleep and wake up and remember looking out Tyler's office window at West Palm fading in the dusk and remember Nicolet's boots on the desk and the sound of his voice, Nicolet telling about the Jamaican found in the trunk of an Oldsmobile.

  At noon the next day, Thursday, Jackie was handcuffed to a chain with Ramona and four other women from the holding dorm. They were brought outside and marched past a crew of male prisoners on a c
leanup detail to board the Corrections bus. Jackie stared at the pavement, at bare heels in front of her. A prisoner leaning on his push broom said, "The ladies from the slut hut." Jackie looked up as Ramona said, "Watch your mouth, boy." The prisoner with the broom said, "Come over here, I let you sit on it." Ramona said, "Now you talking." They laughed and the women on the chain with Jackie came to life, moving their hips with the shuffle step, turning to grin at the men watching them. One of them cupped his crotch and said, "Check this out." Jackie glanced at him-a white guy, shirt off sweating in the sun, twenty years younger than she was, at least-and looked away. She heard him say, "Gimme that blond-haired one, I'll stay here forever," and Ramona, next to her, say, "Listen to that sweet boy, he's talking about you."

  The First Appearance courtroom reminded her of a church with its wide center aisle and benches that were like pews. Male prisoners in dark blue outfits like scrubs, brought over from the county jail, sat in the first few rows. The women were unshackled, directed to sit behind them, and the men turned to look and make remarks until a deputy told them to shut up and face the front. When the judge entered they rose and sat down again. Still nothing happened. Court personnel and police officers would approach the judge and exchange words with him, hand him papers to be signed. Jackie said, "How long do we have to wait?"

  Ramona said, "Long as they want us to. It's what you do in jail, dear, you wait."

  From the time the bailiff began calling defendants, an hour and a half went by before Jackie was brought up to the public defender's table. He turned to her

  looking at a case file and asked how she wanted to plead.

  "What are my choices?"

  "Guilty, not guilty, or stand mute."

  Nicolet and Tyler were here, off to one side. They lounged against the wall watching her.

  Jackie said to the public defender, "I'm not sure what I should do."

  He was young, in his early thirties, clean-cut, moderately attractive, wearing a pleasant after shave. . . . For some reason it gave her hope, a guy who appeared to have it together.

  He said, "I can get it down to simple possession if you're willing to tell FDLE what they want to know."

  And hope vanished.

  Jackie said, "My cleaning woman can get me a better deal than that," and saw her public defender's startled look. Not a good sign. "Tell those guys they'll have to do a lot better before I'll even say hi to them."

  Nicolet and Tyler, over there acting like innocent bystanders.

  "Well, that's the state's offer," the public defender said. "If you plead to possession your bond will be set at one thousand dollars. If you don't, FDLE will request one at twenty-five thousand, based on your prior record and risk of flight. If you don't post it or you don't know anyone who can, you'll spend six to eight weeks in the Stockade before your arraignment comes up."

  She said, "Whose side are you on?"

  He said, "I beg your pardon?"

  "What happens if I plead guilty?"

  "And cooperate? You might get probation."

  "If I don't cooperate."

  "With the prior? You could get anywhere from a year to five, depending on the judge." He said, "You want to think about it? You've got about two minutes before we're up."

  It was his attitude that hooked her, the bored tone of voice. And the way Nicolet and Tyler posed against the wall with their innocent, deadpan expressions. Jackie said, "I'm standing mute. After that I'm not saying another word."

  Her public defender said, "If that's what you want."

  Jackie said, "What I want is a fucking lawyer."

  That got his startled expression again.

  "I didn't mean that," Jackie said. She paused to glance around before saying to him, "You wouldn't happen to have a pack of cigarettes you could let me have."

  He said, "I don't smoke."

  She said, "I didn't think so."

  Chapter 8

  Thursday night, Max waited at the admitting desk while deputies went to get Jackie Burke. He had read her Booking Card and Rough Arrest report and produced the forms required for her release, Appearance Bond and Power of Attorney. Now he was making small talk with the sergeant, a young guy named Terry Boland. Max had worked under his dad, Harry Boland, when Harry ran the Detective Bureau at the Sheriff's office. He was a colonel now, head of the Tactical Unit, Max's buddy and his source of information.

  "I see they've finally started on the new dorms."

  Terry said yeah, and by the time they were finished they'd need a few more.

  "It's too bad," Max said, "you can't invest money in jails, like land development. It's the one business that keeps growing." Terry didn't seem to know if he should agree with that or not, and Max said, "How'd Ms. Burke do? She get along okay?" "She wasn't any trouble." "You didn't expect her to cause any, did you?" "I mean she didn't break down," Terry said. "Some of them, you know, it's a shock coming in here from the civilized world."

  "She's done it before," Max said. "That helps." What surprised him, reading the Booking Card, was Jackie Burke's age. He had been picturing a fairly young airline stewardess. Now, the revised image was a forty-four-year-old woman who showed some wear and tear. But then, when the two deputies brought her in the front entrance, from outside dark into fluorescent light. Max saw he was still way off. This was a good-looking woman. If he didn't know her age he'd say she was somewhere in her mid-thirties. Nice figure in the uniform skirt, five five, one fifteen-he liked her type, the way she moved, scuffing the slides on the vinyl floor, the way she raised her hand to brush her hair from her face. . . . Max said, "Ms. Burke?" and handed her his business card as he introduced himself. She nodded, glancing at the card. There were women who sobbed with relief. Some men too. There were women who came up and kissed him. This one nodded. They brought out her personal property and inventoried it back to her. As she was signing for it Max said, "I can give you a lift home if you'd like."

  She looked up and nodded again saying, "Okay," and then, "No, wait. My car's at the airport."

  "I can drop you off there."

  She said, "Would you?" and seemed to look at him for the first time.

  Right at him, not the least self-conscious, smiling a little with her eyes, a warm green that showed glints of light. He watched her step out of the slides and turn to press her hip against the wall, one and then the other, to slip her heels on. When she straightened, brushing her hair aside with the tips of her fingers, she smiled for the first time, a tired one, and seemed to shrug. Neither of them spoke again until they were outside and he asked if she was okay. Jackie Burke said, "I'm not sure," in no hurry walking to the car. Usually they were anxious to get out of here.

  Now they were in the car ready to go and he felt her staring at him.

  She said, "Are you really a bail bondsman?"

  He looked at her. "What do you think I am?"

  She didn't answer.

  "I gave you my card in there."

  She said, "Can I see your ID?"

  "You serious?"

  She waited.

  Max dug the case out of his pocket, handed it to her, and opened the door so the inside light would go on. He watched her read every word from SURETY

  AGENT LICENSED BY STATE OF FLORIDA down to his date of birth and the color of his eyes.

  She handed it back to him saying, "Who put up my bond, Ordell?"

  "In cash," Max said, "the whole ten thousand." She turned to look straight ahead. Now they were both silent until the car reached the front gate and Max lowered his window. A deputy came out of the gatehouse with Max's .38 revolver, the cylinder open. Max handed the deputy his pass in exchange for the gun, thanked him, and snapped the cylinder closed before reaching over to put the revolver in the glove box. The gate opened. He said, "Ordinarily you have to go inside, but they know me. I'm out here a lot." Leaving the Stockade he turned on his brights and headed in the direction of Southern Boulevard, telling Ms. Burke for something to say that no one entered with a weapon, not e
ven the deputies; telling her the office trailer next to the gatehouse was full of guns. He looked over as she flicked her lighter on and saw her face, cheeks drawn to inhale a thin cigarillo in the glow of the flame.

  "You smoke cigars?"

  "If I have to. Can we stop for cigarettes?"

  He tried to picture a store out this way on Southern.

  "The closest place I can think of," Max said, "would be the Polo Lounge. You ever been there?"

  "I don't think so."

  "It's okay, it's a cop hangout."

  "I'd just as soon wait."

  "I thought you might want a drink."

  "I'd love one, but not there."

  "We could stop at the Hilton."

  "Is it dark?"

  "Yeah, it's nice." "We need a lounge that's dark." He glanced at her, surprised. She said, "I look like I just got out of jail," and blew a stream of cigar smoke at the windshield.

  Dinner with a burglar, drinks with a flight attendant who did coke and delivered large sums of money. Cocktail piano in the background.

  She looked different now, her eyes seemed more alive. Green eyes that moved and gleamed, reflecting the room's rose-colored light. Max watched her open a pack of cigarettes and light one before taking a sip of Scotch and glancing toward the cocktail piano.

  "He shouldn't be allowed to do 'Light My Fire.''

  "Not here," Max said, "in a tux."

  "Not anywhere." She pushed the pack toward him.

  Max shook his head. "I quit three years ago."

  "You gain weight?"

  "Ten pounds. I lose it and put it back on."

  "That's why I don't quit. One of the reasons. I was locked up yesterday with two cigarettes. And spent half the night getting advice from a cleaning woman named Ramona, who doesn't smoke."