Rum Punch

by Elmore Leonard

  Jackie came out of the bedroom with his gun in her hand and kind of a sad smile, saying, “Max, I’m sorry,” and he felt his mood begin to swing up again, hope stirring in him. “I was afraid if I asked to borrow it you’d say no, and you’d have every right to. Would you like some coffee?”

  Just like that, back in the game.

  He said, “I wouldn’t mind,” following Jackie to the kitchen. “You get to use it?”

  She gave him the smile again. “I felt a lot safer having it. I hope you don’t take milk. It turned sour while I was in jail.”

  “No, black’s fine.”

  He watched her lay the Airweight on the kitchen table, bare except for an ashtray, and go to the range. She looked even slimmer in the jeans than she did last night. Not slim exactly, just right.

  “You want to hang on to it for a while? It wouldn’t be legal but, you know, if it makes you feel better to have it . . .”

  She said, “Thanks,” pouring their coffee, “but I have my own now.” She came over to the table with two ceramic cups, plain white. “Do you take sugar?”

  Max said, “No, thanks. You went out this morning and bought a gun?” It was possible if she drove up to Martin County; here, there was a three-day wait to buy a handgun, a cooling-off period.

  “Let’s just say I have one,” Jackie said, “okay? I don’t want you to be concerned about it.”

  “Somebody loaned it to you.”

  “Right,” Jackie said, leaving the kitchen.

  Max pulled a chair out from the table and sat down, wondering what kind of gun it was and if she knew how to use it. He thought of asking as Jackie came back in with cigarettes and the tan lighter and sat down across from him.

  She said, “I couldn’t wait last night to get in the shower and wash my hair.”

  And he forgot about the gun.

  “It looks nice.”

  “I called in sick. As far as the airline knows, I’m still available.”

  “Are you?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’m going to see Tyler, and I suppose Nicolet, later on today and ask them.” She paused to light a cigarette. “Do what you suggested. Offer to help and see what happens.”

  “What I meant,” Max said, “was have a lawyer do the negotiating for you. If you can’t afford one there’s a good friend of mine, semiretired, I think would do it as a favor. He doesn’t need the fee as much as you need a lawyer.”

  She was staring at him over her coffee mug and it reminded him of last night.

  She said, “Maybe not. Let me talk to them first, about Ordell’s money.”

  “That’ll interest them, but only up to a point.”

  “All of it in Freeport. I mean a lot. Like a half million in safe-deposit boxes and more coming in.”

  “How’d you find that out?”

  “He told me last night.”

  “Ordell called you?”

  “He was here when I got home.”

  Max said, “Jesus Christ,” and lowered his coffee mug to the table. “He broke in?”

  “He picked the lock.”

  “You call the police?”

  “We talked,” Jackie said. “He had some doubts at first. But he’s always trusted me and wants more than anything to believe he still can. You know why? Because he needs me. Because without me all that money is going to sit in Freeport. There may be other ways to get it out, but I’m the only one he’s ever used, and all the other people he deals with are crooks. Put yourself in his place.”

  Max stared at her. “How do you get it out?”

  “The same way I’ve been doing it. But first they have to let me go back to work.”

  “You’re offering to set him up.”

  “If they let me off. Otherwise no deal.”

  “You understand the risk involved?”

  “I’m not going to prison or do that probation thing again.”

  He watched her studying her cigarette, carefully turning the tip of it in the ashtray. “Well, you said you might have more options than you thought.”

  Jackie was concentrating on the cigarette, bringing the ash to a point. She said, “You know how many miles I’ve flown?” and looked up at him.

  Max shook his head. “How many?”

  “About seven million, jetway to jetway. I’ve been waiting on people for almost twenty years. You know what I make now, starting over? Sixteen thousand, with retirement benefits you can stick in your ear. How do you feel about getting old?”

  “You’re not old—you look great.”

  “I’m asking how you feel. Does it bother you?”

  “It’s not something I think about. I look in the mirror, I’m the same person I was thirty years ago. I see a photograph of myself—that’s different. But who’s taking my picture?”

  She said, “It’s different with guys. Women get older at an earlier age.”

  He said, “I guess they worry about it more. Some women, all they have is their looks. They lose that . . . But you’ve got way more than looks.”

  “I have? What?”

  “You want to argue about getting old? What’s the point?”

  “I feel like I’m always starting over,” Jackie said, “and before I know it I won’t have any options left. I’ll be stuck with whatever I can get.” She said, “I told you last night I’ve been married twice? Actually I’ve had three husbands, but two of them I think of as the same guy, at age twenty, and then a much older version. Their names were even the same. So I say I’ve been married twice. I was nineteen with the first one, going to school in Miami, U of M. He raced dirt bikes, did the hill climb?”

  “That’s pretty young to get married.”

  “I wouldn’t live with him otherwise. That’s how smart I was then.”

  “Times change,” Max said, “but that’s generally the custom.”

  “We were married five months . . . he was killed racing a drawbridge going up, trying to jump his bike across the opening. Like in the movies. Only he was drunk and didn’t make it.”

  Max kept his mouth shut.

  “My second husband was hooked on drugs, started dealing to pay for his habit and went to prison. Before he got the airline job he was a fighter pilot in Vietnam. Are you getting the picture? The last one was fifteen years older than I am, about your age. I thought, Ah, here’s one with some maturity. Not knowing he was the dirt biker come back to life.”

  Max said, “I’m only twelve years older than you are.”

  She seemed to smile—for whatever reason, he wasn’t sure—and then was serious again.

  “It bothered him being older, or getting old. So he’d run I don’t know how many miles every day. He’d swim out into the ocean alone, until you couldn’t see him. He drove too fast, got drunk every night. . . . He was funny, he was very bright, but, boy, did he drink. One evening we were sitting out on the balcony, he hopped up on the cement railing and started walking it, his arms out, one foot in front of the other. . . . We were on the sixth floor. I said, ‘You don’t have to prove anything to me.’ I remember I said, ‘I’m not watching, so you might as well get down.’ I turned my head, I couldn’t watch.” Jackie stopped for a moment. “When I looked up again he was gone. I don’t know if he fell or stepped off. He didn’t make a sound.”

  It was quiet in the kitchen.

  She said, “That’s my history. I’ve logged seven million miles married to two drunks and a junkie.”

  Max cleared his throat. “You know, you didn’t refer to any of them by name.”

  “Mike, Davey, and Michael,” Jackie said. “What difference does it make?” But then she said, “They were nice guys, really, most of the time, and yet I wasn’t surprised. . . . You know what I mean? My big mistake, I let myself get into situations I know can be trouble, my eyes wide open, and then have to figure a way out.” She paused, stubbing her cigarette in the ashtray. “But you know what I’m more tired of than anything?”

  “Tell me,” Max said.

  “Smiling. A
cting pleasant.”

  “Now you’re talking about your job.”

  “ ‘Have a wonderful time in the Bahamas and thank you for flying Islands Air.’ Or thank you for flying Delta, or TWA. ‘Sir, would you like another cup of TWA coffee?’ ”

  Max grinned at her, seeing it coming. An old one.

  “ ‘Or would you prefer TWAT?’ ”

  “You like it though, don’t you? Flying?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “You get a lot of guys hitting on you?”

  “Enough.”

  “How about when you were a young girl,” Max said, “were the boys rough with you?”

  She looked at him over the coffee mug with that gleam of fun in her eyes.

  “How did you know?”

  13

  Ray Nicolet called at four in the afternoon. By this time she had already tried to get hold of Tyler. The FDLE office told her he was on the street, and when she dialed his beeper number and waited there was no response.

  “I’d like you to drop whatever you’re doing and come to Good Samaritan,” Nicolet said, his voice quiet and, she felt, grim. Maybe putting it on. “If you want I’ll send a car for you. What do you say?”

  “Why do you want me to come?”

  “See what one of Ordell’s guys did to Faron. Then I want you to look at the guy and tell me if you know him.”

  “Where are you?”

  He told her the third floor, east wing.

  And was standing by the nurse’s station when she walked up to him less than forty minutes later, wearing a man’s white shirt with her jeans now, tan bag hanging from her shoulder.

  “Thanks for coming,” Nicolet said.

  It surprised her.

  He stared for a moment not saying a word, then walked off, and she trailed after him along the hallway to where two deputies in dark green stood by the open door to a room. The deputies stepped aside, looking her over as Nicolet gave them a nod and Jackie followed him in, past the first bed, empty, to a young black guy lying in the second bed, his eyes closed. There were tubes in his arms, one coming out of his nose, another from under the sheet to a catheter bag hooked to the side of the bed.

  “What happened to him?”

  “I shot him,” Nicolet said, “after he shot Faron.” Jackie turned from the young guy in the bed to the ATF agent. “How is he?”

  “Which one?”

  “Tyler. Is he all right?”

  “I want you to look at this guy first. You know him?”

  Jackie stepped closer. “No.”

  “Have you ever seen him before?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Maybe one time with Ordell?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “I wonder,” Nicolet said, “if this is another one of those times you don’t know him but he knows you. Like with Beaumont.”

  “Is he Jamaican?”

  “No, this one’s a homey,” Nicolet said. “His street name, according to one of the deputies outside, is Cujo. And Cujo, I find out, is fairly well known in criminal court. His driver’s license says he’s Hulon Miller, Jr., but I doubt if there’s anyone outside of his mother calls him Hulon.” Nicolet put his hand on Cujo’s shoulder and gave it a shake. “Isn’t that right? Open your eyes, I want you to look at somebody here’s come to visit you.”

  Jackie watched the young guy scowl as Nicolet shook him again and his eyes opened.

  “The fuck you doing to me?”

  “You in pain, Cujo? I hope to Christ you are,” Nicolet said. “I want you to look at this lady here, tell me who she is.”

  She watched Cujo squint at her saying, “Man, how would I know? You the one brought her.”

  Nicolet took a handful of Cujo’s hair and yanked his head back, Cujo saying, “Hey, shit, lemme go,” looking into Nicolet’s face.

  Jackie watched them. Nicolet seemed calm. He said, “Somebody could come in here and rip your tubes out. Have you thought of that? People die in hospitals, man.” He gave Cujo a pat on the head and turned to her with his deadpan cop expression. Time to leave. In the hallway, walking back toward the nurse’s station, he took hold of her arm above the elbow.

  “I shot him in the groin area and it messed up his plumbing, but not too bad. He might need more surgery, they don’t know yet, or he could be out in a couple of days. I have mixed feelings about it. I was hoping he’d die.” Jackie glanced at him and he said, “But I want him alive too, so we can use him.”

  “He works for Ordell?”

  “We’re pretty sure. I know he sells him guns.”

  “What if he won’t tell you anything?”

  “He will. He’s twenty years old and has been arrested seventeen times. We can do business with a fella like that. His quality of life is based on how much time he can get out of doing.”

  “What about Tyler,” Jackie said, “am I going to see him?”

  “Right now. His wife’s with him,” Nicolet said. “We’ll take a peek in there, see how he’s doing. . . . Faron was hit twice. One in the thigh fractured the bone, the femur? The other one took a chip out of his ilium.” Nicolet’s hand slid down to touch her hip. “That bone right there. He’s gonna be all right. The slugs went through the door of his car and were slowed down some. One hit his beeper and got deflected.”

  “I tried to call him,” Jackie said.

  “That’s right, you want to talk to us.”

  “I need my job.”

  “We all need something,” Nicolet said. “Let’s wait’ll we see Faron.”

  He was in a private room. Nicolet approached the bed saying, “Hey, partner, you sleeping?” Jackie watched his eyes open. Head on the pillow, hair mussed, he seemed younger, barely out of his teens.

  “Where’s Cheryl?”

  “I think she went to get some coffee.”

  “They gave you some good dope, huh?”

  Tyler closed and opened his eyes, trying to smile.

  “Look who I brought to see you.”

  Jackie moved closer to the bed. “How’re you doing?”

  Now he was looking at her and managed to smile. “I’m okay.”

  It gave her a strange feeling, that she was with friends. Nicolet got her seated and brought over another chair, both with plastic cushions and wooden arms. She kept watching Tyler, his face turned to them with a sleepy look, his right leg raised a few inches beneath the sheet, bare toes sticking out at the foot of the bed. An IV tube ran from his arm to a clear plastic bottle hanging from a stand.

  Nicolet leaned on the arm of his chair, close to her.

  “Where were we?”

  “I need my job.”

  And a cigarette. She’d love one right now.

  “Well, you know what I want.”

  “If I can work I can help you.”

  “Or you could fly away.”

  “It wouldn’t be worth it. What am I looking at, a few months?”

  “A lot more’n that if I take you federal, which I can do.”

  Maybe it was okay to smoke in a private room.

  “How does your working help me?”

  “You want Ordell Robbie, don’t you?”

  “Oh, now you know him.”

  “You never asked if I did or not.”

  “We thought you’d want to surprise us.”

  “I deliver money for him.”

  “No kidding. Where’s he get it?”

  “He sells guns.”

  “He told you that or you’ve seen him do it?”

  “What I have to have,” Jackie said, “if I’m going to help, is permission to leave the country, and immunity.”

  “You don’t want much.”

  “Yes or no.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “I show you how to get him and the dope charge is nolle prossed.”

  “You’ve been talking to a lawyer.”

  She got her cigarettes and lighter out of her bag.

  “Yes or no.”

  “You
haven’t told me what I get.”

  She lit a cigarette.

  “Him. You get Ordell.”

  “You nervous?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “I get him with guns?”

  “With money from the sale of guns.”

  She didn’t know what to use for an ashtray.

  Nicolet said, “Put it on the floor,” and said, “Where’s my case? I’m not Customs, I don’t give a shit about the money. I need him with guns. In possession of illegal weapons, stolen or unregistered firearms or selling without a license.” He looked over at the bed. “Isn’t that right, partner? We want us a gift-wrapped gun case.”

  Tyler said, “Right,” in a voice they could barely hear.

  “He’s sailing on the dope they gave him,” Nicolet said, looking at Jackie again. “I don’t give a shit about the forty-two grams either. I can get you nolle prossed on that, but only if you get me Ordell Robbie with guns. You understand?”

  “All I can do is tell you what I know,” Jackie said.

  “Like what?”

  She hesitated and drew on her cigarette.

  “He already has more than a half million dollars sitting in Freeport.”

  “He does pretty good.”

  “And more coming in, as soon as he makes another delivery.”

  “He told you that?”

  “He trusts me.”

  “That’s good. It can keep you from getting shot.”

  “He wants me to help him get the money here.”

  “Doesn’t he know you can’t leave the country?”

  “I told him I could get permission.”

  Nicolet said, “Jesus Christ,” with a grin. “So if we let you, we’ll be helping too, won’t we?”

  “You follow the money.”

  “I understand that. We’d mark it before you ever left the airport. Tag along and watch you hand it to him. But where’s my gun case?”

  “If he’s planning a delivery, you know he has guns.”

  “Where?”

  “Right here.”

  “If I let them go—otherwise he doesn’t get paid—we have some more money, but my evidence is gone.”

  Jackie said, “Excuse me a minute,” holding up what was left of her cigarette. “I have to get rid of this.” She crossed the room to the lavatory and dropped the cigarette in the toilet. It gave her less than a minute. She was back in the chair before asking, “What if you let him ship out most of the guns, but kept enough to have a case. Would that work?”