Stick

by Elmore Leonard

  She said, “Can I ask you something?”

  Her eyes surprised him. A soft blue. Calm. No gee-whiz expression lurking in there. Ah, but the hands were folded in her lap.

  “Ask anything you want.”

  She said, “What are you doing?”

  Chucky stared, see if she’d look away. But those calm eyes didn’t move. There was a slight bump in her nose. That and the shoulder-length hair cut off abruptly and without any swirls gave her the outdoor look. Her mouth, very yummy, lips slightly parted . . .

  He said, “I think I’m falling in love. No, what was the question? You want to know what I’m doing. You mean right now as of this point in time? I’m interviewing you.”

  She said, “Oh,” and nodded with a thoughtful expression.

  “Aren’t I?”

  She said, “Do you know what I do?”

  “Yeah, you’re like an investment counselor. Right? Tell people what to do with their money.”

  She nodded again. “That’s right. But I specialize, you have to understand, in private placements, growth opportunities, usually going into new companies that need equity capital.”

  Chucky said, “Yeah, but why do I have to understand it as long as you do?”

  “I want to make a point,” Kyle said, “so that we understand one another.”

  Quiet voice to go with the quiet eyes. No girlish tricks. Yes, a first. Chucky was sure of it.

  “I spend most of my time,” she said now, “finding the opportunities. I’ll look into as many as fifty companies to find one or two with what I consider above-average potential.”

  “How do you find ’em?”

  “Leads from people I know. Bankers, lawyers, stockbrokers . . . So you can understand that if I were to show you a limited partnership opportunity that looks promising, or a start-up company that’s about to go public, I’ve already put a lot of time into it. And time is money, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve heard that.”

  “So when you say, at this particular point in time, you’re interviewing me, you have to understand something else.”

  “I do? What?”

  “That the chances of my turning you down as a client are far greater than your not accepting me as your financial advisor.”

  “Jesus,” Chucky said, “and you look like such a nice sweet girl.”

  “I am a nice girl,” Kyle said. “Sweet? I don’t know. If you mean passive, submissive—”

  “No, I understand,” Chucky said. “What you’re saying is you don’t take any shit from anybody, or at least your clients.”

  “There you are,” Kyle said, and gave him a nice-girl smile. “Should we try to be serious, or would you rather not?”

  “What do you do,” Chucky said, “you scare the shit outta your clients? I have to say, I heard a lot of good things about you.”

  “From whom?”

  “Well, Barry Stam, one. Some others at Leucadendra. I get down there to play golf once in awhile.” He paused and said, “I don’t know if I should be telling you that?”

  “Why, because Barry’s a client of mine?”

  “Let me put it this way,” Chucky said, “if you’re going to ask Barry about me, then I might have to open my soul, tell some secrets so as to give you the straight dope”—he grinned, turning it on and off—”so to speak. Yeah, we’re friends, play golf, fool around. But Barry, whether you know it or not, is very impressionable. He likes to—well, he has a certain image of himself and likes to associate with people you don’t ordinarily, you know, find in country club circles. You know what I mean?”

  “Tell me,” Kyle said.

  “He likes to think he’s on the inside, knows where the action is. That’s why he hangs around the Mutiny, Wolfgang’s, places like that. You follow me?” She seemed to nod. “Anyway, I heard a lot of good things about you; though I don’t know if you can help me out any. See, I’ve talked to advisors, financial planners. These guys, they come in here in their dark-blue three-piece suits, the alligator cases, graphs, all kinds of statistics, and you know what they do? They blow smoke at me. That’s bad enough, trying to understand what they’re talking about. Then, when I go to tell them about my particular situation, explain my plight, so to speak—”

  The phone on the coffee table rang, a light showing.

  Chucky got up. “I have to take that.”

  She seemed surprised he didn’t pick up this phone.

  “Would you like me to leave?”

  “No, stay put,” Chucky said, walking away. “I won’t be but a minute.”

  Kyle watched him slide open the glass door, step out on the balcony. There was another phone on the metal patio table. He picked it up and turned to the railing as he began to speak, hunching over now in the privacy of the fifteen-story drop, his shape clearly defined now against the sky. A very strange-looking guy. Big all over, high waisted, narrow through the shoulders, the broad hips of a woman . . . and a sagging crotch. Chucky was a picture.

  She could imagine this Christmas sitting around the table with her dad and her two older brothers—”I’ve got to tell you about Chucky. You won’t believe it”—her mom and her brothers’ wives in the living room while Kyle and the boys talked about stock gambits, swindles, high rollers, placed bets on the Super Bowl, raked over Reagan, David Stockman, the Federal Reserve Board, made fun of dogmas and people in high places and would laugh until her mom stuck her head in the door with her look of quiet amazement. Her dad had been on Wall Street since she was a baby and remained, he said, because he didn’t know how to do anything else. She would never tell him she made more money than he did, with her snobby Gucci-Cartier approach to investment counseling; though it was her dad who’d told her rich people loved to be pushed around—as long as they believed they were being pushed exclusively. Her dad was dry, the cynic who’d never cheered, screamed or cried until her brother Jim moved up to the Red Sox from Pawtucket, had a 12-2 record by the All Star break his first year, pitched three scoreless innings and finished the season 18-8. Jim was a stockbroker, now, still in Boston. Her brother Mike had made it through Columbia Law and was now an agent in the New York office of the FBI.

  She pictured telling Chucky about “my brother the Fed” and had to smile. He could be tiresome, but at least he was different. She might go with Chucky.

  4

  STICK TRIED THE LEATHER CHAIR behind the giant desk, swiveling slowly from side to side as he stared at the phone system, at the dull orange glow in one of the extension buttons.

  He said, “I bet what’s his name, Chucky’s talking to somebody. You want to listen in?”

  It brought Rainy away from the glass doors, coming over with his shoulders hunched like he was tiptoeing, not wanting to make any noise.

  “Come on, man, don’t fool around.”

  “I haven’t touched it.”

  “He’s got phones all over this place,” Rainy said. “You know how many phones he’s got?”

  “Four,” Stick said. “Five?”

  “Five, shit. He’s got . . . I think he’s got one, two, three, four . . . five, six, seven”—Rainy seemed to be picturing them as he counted, punching the air with one finger, giving it short jabs—”eight, nine, he’s got like twelve phones up here.”

  “That’s a lot of phones,” Stick said. “He must like phones, huh?”

  “He has to have them,” Rainy said. “Chucky owns the whole top floor up here, the apartments like connected together. Cost him, I hear, a million dollars. Shit, that’s nothing to him. Some of his guys stay here. That one, Lionel Oliva, he’s like his bodyguard. Chucky has an apartment he keeps a broad in when he’s got a broad here, you know, staying. I don’t know if he’s got one staying here now or not. Chucky goes through broads, man. They don’t stay too long. He gets rid of them or they get nervous being with him and have to leave. Some guys—did I tell you that? They say he’s a switch-hitter, but I never seen him with anything but a broad.”

  Stick said, “No chicks, h
uh?”

  Rainy said, “What?”

  “Nothing,” Stick said. He’d think about it, see if there was a distinction between a chick and a broad. Or ask Rainy about it sometime. He got up from the desk where he was making Rainy nervous and looked around the paneled den. The wood walls and floor made the room seem bare.

  Stick went over to a row of framed color photographs of groups of men in sporty attire. A group with golf clubs. A group standing by a row of sailfish hanging by their tails. A group having drinks on the fantail of a yacht. The name, lettered in gold on the stern, was Seaweed. This one interested Stick because there were two girls in string bikinis standing among the soft-looking guys in their Easter-egg outfits, the girls acting coy, trying to appear surprised, their mouths saying Ohhh to whatever the guys were doing or saying to them. Stick looked a little closer. One of the girls wore a gold slave chain around her bare middle—yeah, and the comedian next to her with the wide-eyed who-me? look had his hand behind the girl and was pulling the chain tight so that it dug into her nice flat belly.

  “The one in the pink shirt on the boat?” Rainy came over and pointed. “That one. That’s Chucky.”

  Stick didn’t say anything right away. His first impression, Chucky was one of those poor miserable slobs everybody picked on when they were kids, washed his face with snow, and he’d slink off rubbing his tears and snot, to go eat some candy.

  “Is that Chucky’s boat?”

  “I don’t think so. If it’s his he never ask me to go for a ride.”

  “Nice-looking broads.”

  He said it to see if Rainy would correct him, tell him no, they were chicks. But Rainy didn’t say anything and Stick turned away from the photographs.

  There was a dartboard hanging on the wall, the paneling around it gorged with tiny holes.

  There was a TV set. At first Stick thought there were two standing side by side but then saw the smaller one was a home computer. Seven years ago he remembered computers as big metal boxes. Now little kids were playing with them. He had not played any of those games yet himself; they looked complicated.

  He picked up from the floor a straw cowboy hat with a big scoop brim and looked inside it. The “Crested Beaut” model, with the initials CLG engraved in the sweatband. Stick placed it on the hat-tree that was piled with hats and caps of all kinds. Different-colored golf caps, a yachting cap, an orange hardhat, a straw boater, a red military beret, a long-billed fisherman hat, a New York Yankee baseball cap, a tennis hat. The guy seemed to like hats and telephones.

  Stick walked over to the glass doors, slid one open and Rainy said, “Lionel told us to wait here, man.”

  “I won’t go too far,” Stick said.

  It was warmer outside than in and felt good. He’d have to get used to air conditioning again. The sun was going fast now, laying off beyond where the Everglades would be, just the top part of it showing now, fiery red, but you could look right at it. You could almost see it going down.

  Directly below, on the waterway, it seemed hours later, already getting dark down there, the boats showing their running lights, and there was a string of dull amber bulbs along the awning of Wolfgang’s outside terrace. Stick was looking almost straight down at it and could hear the music, a faint pulsing beat he would swear was disco. They’d have to remember to go back after and pay the tab. He could picture Bobbi, the friendly bartender, the easy way she had with the young guys coming in high-fiving each other, making loud remarks. Rainy was right, he had to lay back and get with the rhythm of it again. Loud remarks that could get you stabbed in Jackson didn’t mean a thing outside. Just guys showing off, trying to act like studs. That Bobbi was sure nice looking . . .

  Stick straightened from the metal railing, looking down the length of the balcony, and saw a heavyset guy with his shirt hanging out, maybe thirty feet away, and it took him by surprise. At first he thought the guy was throwing up, the way he was leaning over the rail; but now he straightened and did a little pivot and Stick saw he was talking on the phone. It had to be Chucky. Even without the pink shirt he had on in the boat picture, yeah, that would be Chucky. He didn’t look like the type of guy who owned the whole top floor of a condominium. He looked to Stick like a guy, if he was ever in Jackson, would be somebody’s live-in old lady before he ever got out of R and G.

  Chucky was saying into the phone, “I’m not holding out on you, don’t say that. You and I been doing business . . . Come on, you know goddamn well I would never . . . What? . . . No. Why would I want to cut off my source, for Christ sake? Look, we been all over that. I goofed, okay? I got taken in same as you. Listen, I even had his plates run on the computer, they didn’t show . . . What? . . . Okay, yeah, you’re right . . . Nestor? . . . Hey, Nestor, come on, it’s done, it’s over with . . . Yeah, I’m sorry. I told you that, Christ, how many times? All I want to know—and I appreciate your calling—I was wondering now you’ve had a chance to think it over, you know, calm down some, how about I pay you the two hundred and we call it square?” Chucky leaned over the rail again, concentrating as he listened to the heavily accented voice. Finally he said, “Hey, if it’s that big a deal with you . . . No, but I got to tell you it’s weird.” Chucky straightened again, looking out at the very top curve of the sun, all that was left. “Am I arguing with you? I’m saying it’s weird, that’s all, but how you see it, amigo, that’s up to you . . . What? No, as far as I’m concerned it’s out of my hands once I send the man with the cash. Like any other drop . . . No, I don’t want to hear any more about it. How you tip the boy is up to you . . .”

  Kyle watched him replace the phone and straighten very slowly to pause and look out at the sky. Different now—he’d been animated during the phone conversation, shoulders hunching, arm extending, gesturing, his big rear end swaying as he leaned over the rail. For several moments he stood noticeably still.

  Now he was moving again, wound up, coming back in with a painted-on smile, shaking his head.

  “How about stock in a bulletproof vest company? Jesus, the way things are getting around here . . .”

  He seemed to want a response to that, waiting, the grin turning to a little-boy sly look.

  Kyle said, “There’s a U.S. affiliate of an Israeli company that makes bulletproof ski jackets, jumpsuits, mostly casual wear. They come in nylon or corduroy with removable panels of a DuPont protective fiber. I think Kevlar Twenty-nine.” And waited to see if that impressed him.

  Chucky stared back at her. “Guy I was just talking to, he’s looking for U.S. investments, loaded, wants me to find him something. But you know what I get from stockbrokers, the investment experts?”

  “Tell me,” Kyle said.

  “They say things like—you ask ’em about the market, they say, ‘Well, it’s due to take a fairly dynamic upturn if prevailing uncertainties related to interest rates and the price of bullshit futures can be resolved during the coming quarter. . . .’ I don’t like uncertainty,” Chucky said, moving again. “It upsets my tummy-tum and when I eat I get constipated, I get cramps. But you know where I’m coming from, don’t you? I don’t have to spell it out.”

  “No, I would just as soon you didn’t,” Kyle said. “An interest in bulletproof vests and—how did you put it?—’the way things are getting around here,’ and by that I take it you mean down in action-packed Miami.”

  “See?” Chucky said. “You know.”

  Kyle hunched forward, leaning on her knees. No, it wasn’t going to work with Chucky standing up. She sat back again, brushing at her bangs with the tips of her fingers.

  “You see, Chucky, when a client comes to me with nervous disorders, popping Gelusils and so forth, I tell him first of all I’m not a doctor. And second, if the deals I suggest are keeping him awake nights, then he should be in treasury bills or money-market funds. Beyond that . . .” Kyle shrugged.

  “No, my problem . . .” Chucky said and hesitated.

  Kyle came forward again, slowly. “ . . . Is getting someone to symp
athize with your problem. Isn’t it?”

  “There,” Chucky said, “you know exactly where I’m at. They come in here in their dark-blue three-piece outfits, the black wingtips, guys they look like they shower and shave about four times a day. I tell them I got a very special problem . . .”

  Behind Chucky, on the balcony, a man in a white shirt looked in as he walked past the open sliding door. Kyle saw him briefly, there and then gone.

  “No, that’s not true,” Chucky said. “I don’t say anything about a problem. It becomes a problem when they start fooling with their glasses and these tight little knots they’ve got in their prep ties like they never heard of dealing in cash before. It’s like, I go in Holy Cross over there for a few days, see if I got ulcers, gastritis, whatever. Have the upper and lower GIs, the barium enema . . . You know you get to look at your insides on TV now? The doctor goes, ‘Go ahead, take a look.’ I tell him, ‘You outta your mind? I want to see my bowels, for Christ sake?’ . . . I go to pay, the cashier, she doesn’t see any hospitalization written down on my papers, she goes, ‘Don’t you have Blue Cross?’ No, I tell her I’m paying cash. Her mouth drops open down to here. ‘But you owe four thousand three-hundred and eighty-two,’ something like that, ‘dollars and fifty-three cents.’ I go, ‘Yeah? What’s the problem?’ She doesn’t know how to handle it if you pay in cash. Same with these guys in the dark blue suits . . .” Chucky was moving, turning.

  Just as the man in the white shirt, on the balcony, was passing the doorway again, glancing in as he went back the other way.

  “Hey!”

  Chucky stopped him as Kyle watched, surprised.

  “You mind telling me what you’re doing here?”

  “I’m with Rainy,” Stick said.

  “You don’t look like you’re with Rainy to me,” Chucky said. “You look like you’re walking around my home taking in the sights. What’re you, an appraiser?”