Riding the Rap rg-2

by Elmore Leonard

  “You didn’t identify yourself. How do I know who you are? I did; but since you never told me, I had no reason to trust you.” She looked at her hand and said, “The relationship… you try to balance the feelings you have about it with your work and it’s hard, so… Well, you have to face the consequences of your action, whatever you decide.”

  “How old are you? You mind my asking?”

  “I’m twenty-six. You thought I was older. It’s okay, I don’t mind.” She said, “You know Harry had a feeling he should go back to Italy, even though he wasn’t happy there.”

  “Harry isn’t happy anywhere.”

  “I felt that,” Dawn said. “He wants to be a big shot. Someone once said, ‘The personality and the ego scream, while the soul whispers.’ You know that already. I felt that Harry didn’t want to hear what’s good for him or be told what he should do. Still, he needs somebody to take care of him.”

  “You saw him again?”

  “No.”

  “Not since last Friday.”

  “You have a sense of confusion, what to do, because you’re not admitting to yourself what you really feel. You want to get married and have a family, and to do that you need a younger woman who doesn’t mind that you carry a gun and killed a man with it. You want to know if I’ve been checking up on you. I haven’t. I know you’re a federal agent of some kind. You came here Sunday looking for Harry as a friend and you believe now you’re getting close to finding him.”

  “Am I?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “If he’s dead,” Raylan said, “I can’t help you.”

  Dawn turned to look at him, touching her hair.

  “Do I need help?”

  “You know better than I do.” He felt her trying to look into his mind and said, “You want to know if you can trust me. You’re not getting the right vibrations or what?”

  “They’re mixed, different kinds,” Dawn said, and looked down at her knees. “You like my skirt, don’t you? It’s like the one Susan Sarandon wore in Bull Durham. When she was showing Kevin Costner how to bat? I saw it on video and went out and bought this skirt.”

  “I remember it,” Raylan said.

  “The woman in the relationship,” Dawn said, “has it together, she’s a nice person, but she can sometimes be tough. You feel she’s emotionally hardheaded because she doesn’t understand your intuition, why you know things.”

  “How old is she?”

  “You’re testing me,” Dawn said. “I already told you, she’s too old to have babies, something you want, what you miss, having those two boys you hardly ever see.” She paused, looking at her hand, and said, “You’re not hung up on material things, financial security.”

  “What about you?”

  “I get by. I always have.”

  “You’d like to move,” Raylan said.

  “That’s true, I would.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  “How much did Chip pay you?”

  She kept staring at their hands.

  “For setting Harry up.” Raylan could feel her fingers moving. “For getting him to come here.” He reached over to touch her face, raising it, and she was looking at him again.

  “He hasn’t paid me anything.”

  “He still owes you?”

  “You’re trying to find out things without threatening me,” Dawn said, sounding a little surprised.

  “You know where you stand. You’re right in the middle, poised between good and evil,” Raylan said, hearing himself starting to sound like her and knowing he would never have said it to anyone else. “One misstep either way could get you in a lot of trouble.”

  She said, “Now you’re threatening me.”

  “Uh-unh, I’m pointing out what you already know. What I have in mind-you could tell me what you know, using your gift for seeing things, that you haven’t actually seen or been told.”

  “You’re saying, so I won’t be a snitch,” Dawn said. “I understand. Like, do I know if Harry’s dead or alive.”

  Raylan waited.

  “He’s alive.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “I’m positive.”

  “Is he okay?”

  She nodded. “That’s all I’ll say about him. What else? Chip. You want to know where you might run into him when he isn’t home or down in the Keys.”

  “You’re a mind reader,” Raylan said. “Turn your psychic powers on that one, if you would.”

  “It sounds like you’re putting me on,” Dawn said, “except I know you’re not.”

  Raylan watched her look away to stare off and then close her eyes.

  “He’s in a park, walking across the grass to where the Huggers are having one of their gatherings. It’s tomorrow, Saturday. It’s always Saturday or Sunday; he goes just about every week. A sign on a tree says WELCOME HOME. They’re giving each other peace signs, hugging, saying they love each other. Chip’s hugging, even though he hates to. He holds his breath when he hugs, so he won’t smell the person. He goes over to where the heads are hanging out at the dope tree. Chip’s looking to score either pot or acid he’ll use on some poor, unsuspecting teenage girl.”

  Dawn paused again. This time she opened her eyes and looked down and he felt her fingers moving on his.

  She said, “The first time I touched your hand, this one, I knew it had held a gun and you’d killed a man with it. I can feel your hand holding it again.”

  “Am I aiming at somebody?”

  “You have your back to me. There’s another person there…”

  “You see who it is?”

  “It’s not real clear. First I see your back, then another person’s back. It could be two different times I’m seeing at once ‘cause they’re the same kind of situation.”

  “When is this happening?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not clear at all.”

  Raylan waited. He watched her frown and then shake her head. He said, “You see Chip with the Huggers, trying to score either pot or acid to use on some poor teenage girl…”

  Dawn looked off again, closing her eyes. “Some little girl who’s run away from home. They come to gatherings all the time, runaways. Chip will talk to her, kid around; he’ll get her to toke or trip and find out all about her-where’s she from, why she doesn’t get along with her folks… Then he’ll call them and say he’s found their little girl, and if they’ll pay him a certain amount for his trouble, he’ll tell where she is. It’s like one out of four will wire the money to him, under a different name he uses.”

  “What is it?”

  “Cal. I don’t know the last name. I’ve never seen him go to Western Union to pick up the money. He uses a fake I.D.”

  “Why do the parents believe him?”

  “He tells them things he could’ve only learned from their little girl.”

  “How does he get Harry to pay?”

  Dawn said, “You’re sneaky, aren’t you? I don’t know anything about that, or if there’s anything to know. Believe me, I don’t.”

  Raylan watched her look down at their hands.

  “Because you don’t want to know? You can shut it out?”

  She seemed to be concentrating and didn’t answer.

  Raylan said, “You want to hear what I think I know? You can nod your head if I’m right.”

  Dawn said, “I see the person in your relationship, she’s standing with her back to you, looking out at the ocean. I see you touch her. You want her to turn around.”

  Raylan was staring at Dawn’s profile: head slightly lowered, her dark hair, soft-looking and with a nice scent, falling past her shoulder, bare in the sleeveless blouse.

  Dawn saying, “You’re looking at me now wondering… You want to know something about what I’m wearing, or not wearing, but you don’t think it would be right to ask.”

  He watched her head begin to raise.

  Dawn saying, “Someone else I’m thinking of…”
and paused and said, “Someone I’m thinking of because he’s coming… No, because he’s already here.”

  Dawn turned to him, so close she was all eyes and it startled Raylan-he didn’t hear anything, not a sound. She was out of the sofa now, going to the door by the time he’d turned half-around to look toward the window and through the palmetto leaves, see what was out there:

  In the street, a car parked nose to nose with his, a black Cadillac sedan.

  twenty-three

  Bobby knew the dark green Jaguar. Seeing it as he approached the fortune-teller’s house he had to make up his mind in a few seconds: keep going and come back later or stop.

  He stopped. Because he knew from the way the feeling came over him all of a sudden and keyed him up, this was the time. Better than if he’d planned it. His chance to meet the cowboy face-to-face and see what it was like.

  When he was getting ready to leave the house he had told Chip, who didn’t want him to come here, “You like me to scare her? Okay, that’s what I’m gonna do.” Chip asked if he was going to hurt her and he said, “Why would I do that?” Chip asked why was he bringing a gun. In a brown paper sack some food they bought for Harry had come in, a small sack. Bobby demonstrated. “I hold it up, she thinks the money you owe is in here. I say to her, ‘You want it?’ She says yes. I bring out the gun instead of money and she sees, man, she can get paid one way or the other, so she better not talk to nobody. Is like a surprise, so it scares her more than if I hit her a few times and she thinks about it later, when she’s alone, and gets mad. You got to watch out for women that get mad at you.” Louis said yes, that was right, and wanted Chip to tell about the woman who had cut off her husband’s dick while he was sleeping; but Bobby wasn’t going to stand there listening to stories. He folded over the top of the sack telling them, “This is the way to do it, surprise her.”

  The sack with the gun was next to him on the seat.

  Bobby watched the door of the fortune-teller’s house open. Now the United States cowboy marshal, Raylan, appeared. There he was, like it was planned: wearing his suit, his hat, the boots Louis liked-they were okay-and with his coat open. He’s not leaving, Bobby thought, and waited a few moments.

  He’s not coming to you, either. He’s going to stand outside the door like a fucking bodyguard. Meaning the fortune-teller had talked to him, so now he was protecting her. If it was true it gave Bobby another reason to get out of the car and do it. Or he could shoot him from here, not even get out. But it wouldn’t be face-to-face the way the cowboys did it and he wanted to see what it was like.

  He was glad he’d brought the Sig Sauer, his own gun he was used to and knew the feel, and not the Browning. He slipped it out of the sack, racked the slide, cocked it and slipped it back in, careful not to tear the brown paper. Okay, he thought, are you gonna do it? Yes, he was ready now. Then get out of the fucking car and do it. Bobby got out of the car with a smile to greet the cowboy.

  “Man, every time I turn around…”

  The cowboy stood there.

  “You not talking today?”

  It didn’t look like it.

  Bobby came away from the car. “You know this lady, uh? Gonna get your fortune told?” On the front walk now, he held up the paper sack in his right hand. “I got something I want to give her.”

  “She isn’t home,” Raylan said.

  Bobby nodded toward the red Toyota in the drive.

  “Her car’s there.”

  “She still isn’t home,” Raylan said.

  “Maybe she’s asleep, or she’s taking a shower.”

  “When I say she isn’t home,” Raylan said, “it means she isn’t home.”

  With that cop way of talking.

  He had his thumbs in his belt, the same way he had posed before. Bobby could see his shirt, his dark tie, but couldn’t see his gun back in there on his hip. The distance to the cowboy, Bobby believed, was about twenty meters. He wanted to get closer, but not too close.

  “I think she’s home and you don’t want me to see her,” Bobby said, taking a step, then another; one more and now he was where he wanted to be. He held up the sack. “Man, I just want to give her this.”

  “What is it?”

  “A gift-what do you think?”

  “If it’s money, she doesn’t want it.”

  Bobby was holding the sack in his left hand now, underneath. All he had to do was unfold the top-take one second-and slip his hand in.

  He said, “Money? What do I want to give her money for? I don’t owe her no money.”

  He believed he was ready.

  But now the cowboy was coming down the walk toward him, saying, “I’ll tell you what. You can give it to me and I’ll see she gets it.”

  This was the moment, right now. But Bobby hesitated, because this wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen, the guy so close, standing only a few feet away now. He had shot guys as close as you can get, but not standing up facing like this. He had never seen it done in the movies this close. It wasn’t the way to do it. If the cowboy knew what was going to happen he would’ve stayed by the door, giving them some room-but he didn’t know. He’d know when he saw the gun come out of the sack and he’d try for his-that was the idea, how it was supposed to work-but he didn’t know that yet.

  Saying now, close, “What’s in there?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  “I’ll tell you what you do,” Raylan said. “Keep it. She doesn’t want any surprises and I don’t either. You aren’t to come around here anymore or phone Reverend Dawn or bother her in any way. Tell your friends Louis and Chip they’re to leave her alone.”

  With the cop way of talking, but calling her Reverend. Was he serious?

  Bobby looked at the eyes in the dark of the hat brim looking back at him and thought, Yes, he’s serious; and wondered if maybe this guy did know what he was doing and had done it before, even this close, even with his gun on his hip, or wherever he had it today.

  “Was there something else?” Raylan said.

  Bobby’s fingers were on the folded opening of the sack.

  “You gonna show me what you have…” Raylan said.

  Bobby hesitated.

  “Or back off and get out of here?”

  The guy knew.

  Bobby was sure of it. He hesitated again, wanting so bad to do it, but the moment passed and he knew it and let his breath out, giving the cowboy a shrug. He said, “You don’t want her to have this gift, okay, forget it.”

  At his car, opening the door, Bobby looked back wanting to say something, but knew it was too late. Raylan the Cowboy hadn’t moved. He stood there watching like all the fucking cops who’d ever told him to go on, get moving, had stood watching until he was gone.

  Raylan closed the door and turned to Dawn, still at the window. He said, “Are you having a vision?” Her expression-she looked like she was off somewhere, maybe doing some astral traveling.

  “When you die,” Dawn said, “you see your whole life all at once, like in a flash.”

  “I’ve heard that,” Raylan said.

  “Did you know he had a gun?”

  “It crossed my mind.”

  “In the paper bag.” She sounded amazed, awed. “He was gonna kill me.”

  Or scare you, Raylan thought. But he liked this frame of mind she was in and said, “It seemed his intention. They haven’t paid you yet, have they?” When she hesitated, he said, “Just say yes or no without giving me a reading, okay?”

  “They haven’t paid me anything.” She seemed to be still in her mind, or someone else’s, until she looked at Raylan and said, “He could’ve shot you dead.”

  “He’d have had to pull his weapon to do it,” Raylan said.

  “He had it in his hands.”

  “Yeah, but you need your mind set on it, too, pull on a man you know is armed. I doubt Bobby’s ever done that. What I’d like to know,” Raylan said, “is why they had Harry come here. They could’ve picked him up off the street. What
’d they want you to do, get him relaxed and talking? Harry’s a talker, he’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

  “All they told me to do,” Dawn said, taking her time, “was find out a few personal things about him.”

  “Like how much money he has? See if he’s worth taking?”

  “I wasn’t in any position to ask why they wanted to know. I had no choice.”

  “Harry tell you where his money is?”

  “A bank in the Bahamas.”

  “What else?”

  “That’s all really.”

  “Where did they take him?”

  “I don’t know. They left, I was in the bedroom.”

  “But you know where he is,” Raylan said. “If you know anything reading minds you know that.”

  “They said if I told anyone about this I’d be sorry. I was put in the bedroom with the door closed and when I came out they were gone.” Sounding now like she was reciting.

  “You’re waiting to see how it turns out,” Raylan said, “before you say too much. But what about Harry? Chip told you nothing would happen to him. Isn’t that right? They’d work some kind of scheme to get Harry’s money and then let him go.”

  She looked out the window again, not saying anything.

  “You believe Chip so you won’t have Harry on your conscience,” Raylan said. “Or you believe him because he can turn on the charm when he wants to. Remember telling him that?”

  It got her looking at him again.

  “You told Chip he could talk people into doing things they’d rather not. You said, at least some people.”

  She was staring at him now, her eyes holding tight to his. Raylan imagined her trying to look into his mind, see what else was in there.

  “So you had a drink with Chip, got to know each other; you thought he had a lot of money. It looked like a pretty nice connection, so you helped him duck a murder conviction.”

  Dawn said, “Oh, I did? If you know anything about it at all you’d know I helped the detectives, not Chip.”

  “I know about the bookends, the brass bulls,” Raylan said. “I know you saw only one on the shelf in the woman’s apartment, where there should’ve been two. You decided, nothing to lose, the missing one must be the murder weapon.”