The Big Bounce jr-1

by Elmore Leonard

  Mr. Majestyk sliced off a piece of kielbasa and dipped it in chili sauce. He pushed the fork into his sauerkraut and heaped it over the sausage with his knife. Chewing, he took a piece of bread and buttered the whole slice. Still chewing, he said, “She bakes it herself. At home, bakes two, three times a week and brings it in fresh. I mean fresh.”

  “It’s all right,” Ryan said.

  “She keeps the place clean. Vacuums twice a week.”

  Ryan was eating fast. He had missed breakfast again and he was hungry. The idea had been to get up early and drive over to Ritchie’s hunting lodge and look it over, before anybody was around. But he’d overslept and missed breakfast. He’d have to drive out there after work, but he was too hungry to think about that now. “She can cook,” Ryan said.

  “I wouldn’t let her if she couldn’t,” Mr. Majestyk said.

  “You got something going with her?”

  “With Donna?” Mr. Majestyk glanced toward the doorway into the living room. “Christ, what do you think, I’m hard up or something?”

  “She’s old, but she’s not too bad looking,” Ryan said. “I mean, better than nothing.”

  “You’re young, you got it on the brain.”

  “Well, it’s natural, isn’t it?”

  “Natural doesn’t mean you got to think about it all the time.”

  “Is that right? What do you think about?”

  “I got plenty of things,” Mr. Majestyk said. “For example, should I stay up here year-round? I mean, what’s in Detroit? I might as well live here. I mentioned keeping the place open for hunting season?”

  “You said something about it.”

  “Well, I got another idea. A hunting lodge.”

  “Like Ritchie’s?”

  “Naw, that’s a farmhouse he fixed up. You know what an A-frame is?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Like a Swiss-looking place-a steep roof almost comes down to the ground? For people who ski. They’re building them all over up north. Prefab.”

  “I’ve seen pictures.”

  “Take two of them,” Mr. Majestyk said. “Big ones, each sleeps about ten with the loft upstairs, and join them together with a central heating system.”

  “You already got the cabins,” Ryan said.

  “I’d have to put in new heating units. It gets twenty below, them little units in there would quit. No, I don’t mean here. There’s some property I know a guy wants to sell-off by itself, woods, a lake. You know the road there it goes through the migrant camp and up past Ritchie’s lodge?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Go past it about a half a mile, you see a sign, ROGERS, turn left and follow the road up the hill through the woods.”

  “Out away from everything.”

  “Right. Build the A-frames there, get twenty hunters, twenty-five bucks a day each-three full meals, all the mix and ice and everything included for twenty-five bucks a day.”

  “That’d be all right.”

  “In the heart of deer country. But you see with the lake you got the bird hunters too. These guys-Christ, I know a dozen guys I could call, they wouldn’t hesitate. And they all got friends who hunt.”

  “Why don’t you do it?”

  Mr. Majestyk stared at Ryan, then shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “You’d make five hundred bucks a day.”

  “Gross. Yeah, but I’d need a guy, maybe a couple of guys who could cook, you know, and knew how to handle guns.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “No problem, just finding the right guys. You know anything about guns?”

  “I used to sell them,” Ryan said. “Hunting rifles, shotguns, at this sporting goods store.”

  “I thought you were a cook?”

  “Yeah, I did that too. Fry chef.”

  “Are you a good cook?”

  “Sure. It was mostly these chefburgers, but lunchtime you’d have everything going-filets, fried eggs, pancakes, club sandwiches. The waitresses would call the orders and you had to keep it all going.”

  “For a young guy,” Mr. Majestyk said, “I guess you’ve done a few things.”

  “A few.” He told Mr. Majestyk about working at The Chef and the sporting goods store and at Sears but didn’t mention the carpet cleaning job because that was where he had met Leon Woody.

  A friend of Ryan’s had the job first. The friend wanted to quit and go to electronics school, but he didn’t want to let his boss down, he said, so he told Ryan about it. Good pay, not too hard, these big, beautiful homes you work in, and the women, these rich babes, honest to God you wouldn’t believe it what some of them wear around the house, showing you the goodies, boy, some of them just asking for it. Ryan said, yeah? And his friend said, you know, bending over to do something and no bra on? Or these babes that let their housecoats come undone?

  Ryan never did see anything like that. He seldom saw anyone at all except when they arrived and when they left. He realized after a few weeks that the guy had been pulling his chain about the women, but that was all right. He liked the job. What he liked about it especially was being in a strange house and seeing personal things that belonged to people he didn’t know. It wasn’t the same as being in a friend’s house. It gave him a funny feeling, especially when he was alone in a room, in the silence after he had turned off the machine, or alone going up the stairs to do a bedroom. It was a feeling as if something was going to happen.

  Until this time Ryan hadn’t stolen anything since grade school when they used to steal combs and candy bars from the dime store. The only big things he had ever stolen and ever thought about were a baseball glove, hat, spikes, and a green jersey with yellow sleeves from Sears. It wasn’t too hard. Everybody on the 8th-grade team did it, making about four trips each at different times with raincoats or shopping bags, twelve guys and not one was caught, though two guys got the wrong color jerseys and when they went back, they were out of the green and yellow.

  It was a time Ryan was working in a room alone that he thought of coming back to the house later. The woman happened to mention they were leaving for Florida the next day. Ryan thought about it while he worked, trying to imagine the feeling of being alone in the house at night. He began to wonder then if he had enough nerve to go into a house while the people were sleeping, or not knowing if they were asleep or awake or what. God, you’d have to be good to do that. But if you were sure of the layout of the house, if you were sure there wasn’t a dog, and if you had a good way to get in, it could be done.

  He was working with Leon Woody when he thought of the way to do it. They would move the furniture out to the middle of the floor and shampoo the carpeting around the walls first, then move the furniture back and put aluminum foil pads under the legs. Ryan positioned an end table, reached into the draperies, and unlocked a side window. He pulled his hand out and saw Leon Woody watching him.

  Leon Woody shook his head, grinning. Ryan said, “What’s the matter with you?”

  Leon Woody said, “Nothing,” still grinning.

  He didn’t bring it up until they were in the truck. He said, “Man, why would you want to get the company in trouble? You want to go in, pick a house we haven’t been to.”

  Ryan told him he was crazy or didn’t know what he was talking about. Something like that.

  “You think I don’t know?” Leon Woody said. “I’ve been watching you looking around. Let me tell you something. You go in where they’re home and sometime some hero is going to blast your ass, man. You go in when they’re not home, when you know it and have it in writing they’re not home.”

  “You’ve done it?”

  “Do it, man. I do it.”

  “I’ve only done it once.”

  “And about to do it again.”

  “I wasn’t going to take anything.”

  Leon Woody looked at him. “Then, why do you want to go in?”

  “I don’t know.” It sounded dumb. “Just to see if I can, I guess.” It still sou
nded dumb.

  “Like, man, a game?”

  “Yeah, sort of.”

  “You know what you get if you lose the game?”

  “That’s part of it. The risk. There’s got to be a risk.”

  “What’s the other part?”

  “Seeing if you can do it, I guess.”

  “No baby, that’s not the other part. The other part is a white Mercury convertible and fifteen suits and twelve pairs of shoes and I don’t know how many chicks I can call anytime of the night. Anytime.”

  “If you want money,” Ryan said, “that’s something else.”

  “Man, it’s the whole something else. You going to tell me you don’t want it?”

  “Sure, everybody wants enough to live on. I mean to live well.”

  “Do you live well?”

  “I get along.”

  “Do you live well?”

  “Not that you’d call, you know, comfortably.”

  “Well, man,” Leon Woody said, “let’s make you comfortable.”

  It was hard, when he thought about it, not to think of it as a game. A kick. He was breaking the law and knew he was breaking it, but he never thought of it that way. It was funny, he just didn’t. It was wrong to break into somebody’s house, okay, but he wasn’t taking anything they really needed. A TV set, a mink jacket, a couple of watches, all insured; maybe they’d get two-fifty, three hundred for the load. The insurance company pays off and the guy buys another TV set, another fur for his wife, and a couple of watches, everything at a discount because he’s a big shot and has all kinds of ins. The guy probably got the money to buy the stuff in the first place by screwing somebody in business. It was all right in business, but it wasn’t all right going through a basement window. Why not?

  Maybe that didn’t follow. Maybe you couldn’t justify going through the window, but how many things in your life did you bother to justify? If you got caught, you got caught. No excuses. No trying to skinny out. Right? That was the only way to think about it. Though the best way was not to think about it at all. Just do it and don’t make a big thing out of it.

  In spite of Leon Woody, he still had to go into a place not knowing whether the people were home or not, and finally he did it. The first time he stayed downstairs, felt his way around, and left in a couple of minutes, not taking anything. The next time he went up to the second floor, keeping to the side of the steps, putting his weight gradually on each step, until he was in the upstairs hall. He walked into a bedroom where a man and a woman were sleeping and took seventy-eight dollars out of a billfold on the dresser. He was going to tell Leon Woody about it, but at the last second, ready to tell him, he decided to keep it to himself. Leon Woody might think he was nuts.

  Finally, though, he didn’t have to worry about Leon Woody or what he thought. Twice Leon Woody was picked up on suspicion. Somehow the police got onto him. They went into his place with warrants and wanted to know how he could afford the car and all the expensive clothes. Leon Woody told them gambling-horses, man. The third time Ryan and Leon were both picked up. They had gone into a house and, on the way home, stopped for a couple of beers. They weren’t in the bar a half hour, but when they came out, two plainclothesmen were waiting at Leon’s car with a warrant. Ryan was arraigned with Leon on a charge of breaking and entering and was given a suspended sentence. Leon drew six months for possession of stolen property. He also lost his job with the carpet cleaner. After his release he was arrested again, this time for possession of narcotics, and was sent to the Federal Correction Institution at Milan. Ryan wrote to him for a while, but Leon Woody hardly ever answered. He probably had something going at Milan and was too busy.

  In eight months of part-time breaking and entering Ryan made about four thousand dollars. He didn’t buy expensive clothes or move out of the apartment because he knew his mother would suspect something and ask questions. Though one time he brought home a stolen TV set when the one at home had blown a picture tube, and no one-not his mother or his sister or Frank, his brother-in-law-asked him where he got it.

  In June, Ryan took a Greyhound to Texas for another try at Class C ball.

  “It’s being inside all the time that gets you,” Mr. Majestyk said. “That’s why I sold the tavern. You got to get out and do what you want to do and feel you own yourself. You know what I mean?”

  “When I quit the job at Sears,” Ryan said, “that’s the way I felt.”

  “Sure, I know what you mean. What about the baseball?”

  “I told you, I got this bad back.”

  “I mean when did you play Class C?”

  “It was just three summers, I thought I told you,” Ryan said. “I’d work at these jobs the rest of the year. Then two summers I didn’t play because of my back. Then it felt okay and I tried out again this June, figuring I could make it.”

  “Yeah?” Mr. Majestyk was interested.

  “But my back-I don’t know, it gave me a hitch in my swing. A guy would curve me and I’d get all out of shape. So I come home, figure forget it.”

  “You drove up with the migrants, uh?”

  “That’s right. This crew leader offered me a job, so I figured why not?”

  “Christ, you sure belted him.”

  “Well, he had it coming. If it wasn’t me, it would be somebody else.”

  Mr. Majestyk finished his beer and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “What have you got to do?”

  “I’m still clearing that frontage, all the driftwood and crap.”

  “Hey, we never figured your day off.”

  “I thought Saturday,” Ryan said.

  “Saturday’s out. That’s our busy day, people leaving, new people coming in. Tomorrow or Friday.”

  “Tomorrow’s all right. I don’t care.”

  “You got nothing to do, take a run up and see that property. rogers, the sign says.” Mr. Majestyk paused; he made a decision, and looked right at Ryan and said, “I see you got a car.”

  “It’s just borrowed.”

  “I didn’t think she gave it to you.”

  When Mr. Majestyk paused again, Ryan waited; he wasn’t going to help him; if the guy wanted to stick his nose in, he’d have to think of a way to do it.

  Finally Mr. Majestyk said, “That’s the car she run the two guys off the road with.”

  “I figured,” Ryan said, “from the dings in the front end.”

  “The one kid has got two broken legs and internal injuries.”

  “You told me.”

  “Long as you remember,” Mr. Majestyk said. He dropped it there.

  Ryan had a cigarette and stretched out in the sun for a half hour, then got going on the frontage again, raking out the tangled brush and crap and dragging it into a pile. He was burning it when Mr. Majestyk came grinding across the uneven ground in his bulldozer, a stubby yellow machine that Ryan figured must be the smallest one made, though, God, the diesel engine made a racket. Mr. Majestyk showed him the gears and how to raise and lower the blade and for the next couple of hours Ryan played with the bulldozer, gradually digging out a hollow to bury the junk in that wouldn’t burn.

  When the beer drinkers from No. 11 came down with the Scotch-Kooler, he knew it was after four, time to knock off. He’d bury the junk tomorrow. No, Friday. He was hot and sweaty from two and a half hours in the field; he was wearing just his cut-off khakis, so he walked out into the lake and swam to the raft and back. He wasn’t a good swimmer; he had no endurance, but his form was good and it wasn’t any harder than swimming out to the boat last night. That was funny, he hadn’t thought about her all day. He thought about a beer and walked across the beach within ten feet of the beer drinkers ready to say “hi” if they looked at him, but they were laughing at something and didn’t seem to notice him.

  “Hey, you got a phone call!” Mr. Majestyk was crossing in front of No. 1 from his house.

  “Where?”

  “No, a message. I told her you were working. She says to tell you six o’clock.”<
br />
  “She give you her name?”

  Mr. Majestyk’s solemn expression held on Ryan. “Maybe you’re crazy, she isn’t.”

  Ryan moved off. The hell with him and what he thought.

  He was near the swimming pool when Virginia Murray came out of No. 5. He saw her waiting for him and there was nothing he could do about it.

  “Hi-I thought you were going to fix my window.”

  She was in her aqua bathing suit. She had come in from the pool, had seen Ryan, had wiped the oil from her face, and gone out again.

  “Hey, I forgot-no, I didn’t forget, I just couldn’t get to it today.”

  “Could you look at it now?”

  Her figure was all right. Pretty good, in fact: nice bazooms, good legs, not too fat, but sunburned and sore-looking; over a week here and still sunburned.

  “Listen, I would but I got to run. This person is waiting for me.” He was moving away. “Tomorrow for sure, okay?” She was nodding as he turned and that was the end of it.

  * * *

  He turned off the Shore Road and followed the winding drive through the trees to Old Pointe Road, then crept along until he saw the new-looking white two-story house with the attached garage and well-kept shrubbery. The name on the mailbox, R. J. Ritchie, made him hesitate. He hadn’t got a good look at this side of the house last night. They had come around through the trees and he had waited by the garage while Nancy went in for the wire. He turned into Ritchie’s drive slowly.

  “You’re late, Jackie.”

  Her voice came from above. From one of the second-floor windows. He saw her now, leaning on the windowsill, looking down at him. “Walk in,” she said. “The door’s open.” She was holding something in her hand. Ryan pulled close to the garage and stopped. Looking straight up now, he saw the gun. Nancy was pointing it at him.

  11

  RYAN WENT FROM THE KITCHEN into the living room, taking his time as he looked around, the appraiser getting the feel of the place: the white walls and the dark wood in the quiet of early evening, the hardwood floor and the Oriental rug and the iron stairway that came up out of the living room floor and curved once into the ceiling. The dining room, too, through the open doorway was white and dark with a heavy table and wrought iron things on the wall.