Rum Punch

by Elmore Leonard

  “I walked right past you.”

  “I know,” Jackie said, “ignoring me. You were looking for someone.”

  Not anymore. He did glance over as he sat down and moved plastic lunch dishes aside to lean over his arms on the table, Max out of Renee’s line of sight if she happened to look this way. He said, “You clean your plate,” and watched her raise her cigarette. “How’re you doing?”

  “Not bad.”

  Moving her shoulders in the light cotton sweater she wore without a blouse, the sleeves pushed up.

  “What’re you, a bag lady?”

  On the bench next to her she had what looked like an assortment of shopping bags folded and stuffed inside a black Saks Fifth Avenue bag.

  She said, “I go back to work tomorrow,” as if that explained the bags.

  It didn’t matter. He said, “You talked them into it.”

  “They seem to like the idea.”

  “Bring the money in and they follow it?”

  “Yeah, but I’m going to dress it up. Put the money in a shopping bag and hand it to someone I meet here.”

  “You don’t actually do it that way?”

  “He always picked it up at my place,” Jackie said. “But now with ATF involved I want to stage it, you know, make it look more intriguing, like we know what we’re doing. Then it’s up to Ray to follow the shopping bag. Nicolet, the ATF guy.”

  “Make the delivery,” Max said, “somewhere in the mall?”

  “I think right around here.”

  “Sit down, leave the bag under the table?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Will Ordell go for it?”

  “I’m helping him bring his money in,” Jackie said. “He loves the idea.”

  With that gleam. Serious business but having fun. It was strange, both of them smiling a little, treating it lightly until Max said, “I heard about Tyler,” and her expression changed. “I saw it in the paper and called a guy I know in the State Attorney’s Office. He said he’s gonna be okay.”

  “Yeah, Tyler’s not a bad guy, I like him,” Jackie said. “Only now I’m dealing strictly with Nicolet. He likes the idea of picking up the money, but says he has to get Ordell with guns.”

  “I won’t say I told you,” Max said.

  “He says he doesn’t care about the money, but I think he likes it more than he lets on—if you know what I mean.”

  He watched Jackie draw on her cigarette and let out a slow stream of smoke. As she raised her coffee cup Max leaned back to check on Renee—still there, nibbling—and came forward again to the table.

  Jackie was watching him.

  “You’re meeting someone.”

  Max shook his head. “My wife’s sitting over there.”

  “You were looking for her.”

  “Yeah, but I hadn’t made plans to meet her.”

  Jackie leaned back against the bench, looking that way.

  “Where is she?”

  “Three tables over, in the blue dress.”

  He watched Jackie looking at his wife.

  “She’s quite petite.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “Don’t you want to talk to her?”

  “It can wait.” Jackie was looking at him again and he said, “I called you last night.”

  “I know, I got your message. Ray wanted to have dinner, to talk about the sting we’re plotting. That’s what he calls it, a sting. He’s being nice to me,” Jackie said, leaning in now to rest her arms on the table. “I can’t help wondering if he’s interested in the money for himself.”

  “Because he’s nice to you?”

  “Setting me up to make a proposition.”

  “Has he hinted around?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then why do you think he might want it?”

  “I knew a narcotics cop one time,” Jackie said. “He told me that in a raid, ‘the whole package never gets back to the station.’ His exact words.”

  “You know some interesting people,” Max said.

  “I believe him, because later on he was suspended and forced to retire.”

  “Has Nicolet told you any stories like that?”

  She shook her head. “He tries to act cool.”

  “There’s no harm in that. He’s a young guy, having fun being a cop. He might cut a few corners to get a conviction—from what I’ve heard about him—but I can’t see him walking off with that kind of money, it’s evidence.”

  She said, “What about you, Max, if you had the chance?”

  “If I was in Nicolet’s place?”

  She might’ve meant that and changed her mind, shaking her head. “No, I mean you, right now. Not if you were someone else.”

  “If I saw a way to walk off with a shopping bag full of money, would I take it?”

  She said, “You know where it came from. It’s not like it’s someone’s life savings. It wouldn’t even be missed.”

  Watching him, waiting for an answer.

  She was serious.

  “I might be tempted,” Max said. “Especially now, since I’m getting out of the bail-bond business.”

  That stopped her, no question about it.

  “I have to stand behind all my active bonds, but I’m not writing any new ones.”

  She eased back against the bench. “Why?”

  “I’m tired of doing it. . . . I’m in a bad situation with the insurance company I represent. The only way to get out of it is quit the business.”

  “When did you decide?”

  “It’s been coming. I finally made up my mind—I guess it was Thursday.”

  “The day you got me out of jail.”

  “That night I went to pick up a guy. Sat there in the dark with a stun gun, the place smelling of mildew . . .”

  “After we were together,” Jackie said.

  Max paused. “Yeah . . . I thought, What am I doing here? Nineteen years of this. I made up my mind to quit the business. And while I was at it, file for divorce.”

  She was staring at him but didn’t seem surprised now.

  “All of a sudden, after twenty-seven years?”

  “You look back,” Max said, “you can’t believe that much time went by. You look ahead and you think, shit, if it goes that fast I better do something with it.”

  “Have you told Renee?”

  “That’s why I came here.”

  Jackie looked over that way. “She’s leaving.”

  “I’ll get to it,” Max said. He saw Renee in her off-one-shoulder dark blue gown that reached almost to the floor standing by the table, picking up her bag and the carryout container for the busboy.

  “She looks good,” Jackie said. “How old is she?”

  “Fifty-three.”

  “Stays in shape.”

  “She’s her main concern,” Max said.

  “Seems very confident. The way she walks, holds her head.”

  “Is she gone?”

  Jackie turned to him again, nodding. “You’re afraid of her, aren’t you?”

  “I think it’s more, I never really got to know her. We didn’t talk much, all those years. You know when you’re with someone and you have to try and think of something to say?” Jackie was nodding. “That’s how it was. What she’s doing now, age fifty-three, Renee poses nude for a Cuban busboy who paints cane fields and she sells them for thirty-five hundred a copy. So she’s all set.”

  “Which bothers you more,” Jackie said, “her posing nude or making money?”

  “The guy bothers me, the painter,” Max said. “He irritates the hell out of me, but so what? I outweigh him fifty pounds, I hit him it’s assault with intent, a three-thousand-dollar bond. Renee, what she’s doing I think is great. She’s finally got something going and I don’t have to feel guilty trying to understand her.”

  “You don’t have to support her either,” Jackie said.

  “There’s that too. She’s working and I’m not.”

  “Then why don’t you
sound happy about it?”

  “Right now I’m relieved, that’s enough.”

  Jackie lit a cigarette before she looked at him again. “I’m not sure you answered my question.”

  “Which one?”

  “If you had the chance, unemployed now, to walk off with a half million plus, would you do it?”

  “I said I’d be tempted.” She kept staring at him and he said, “You know I was kidding.”

  “Were you?”

  Max said, “Don’t even think about it, okay? You could get killed, you could get sent to prison. . . .”

  He stopped because she had that look in her eyes again, that gleam with the smile in it that turned him on.

  She said, “But what if there was a way to do it?”

  They had told Ordell on the phone, third floor east wing and the room number. Half-past eleven Sunday night, all he had to do was wait in the stairwell for the deputy to get tired sitting by himself in the hall and go up to the nurse’s counter to stretch his legs and visit. That’s how easy it was to get to see Cujo. Ordell walked into the semidark room wearing a dark suit and necktie, carrying a box of peanut brittle he set on the bedside stand. He pulled the pillow out from under Cujo’s head, not wasting any time.

  Cujo said, “Hey, shit,” coming awake cranky and with bad breath.

  Ordell said, “Hey, my man,” laying the pillow on Cujo’s chest, “how you doing? You making it? They treating you all right?”

  Cujo said, “What you want?” squinting and scowling at him, mean and grouchy waking up from his sleep.

  Ordell said, “Man, they ought to give you something for your breath,” moving the pillow up to Cujo’s chin. “Close your eyes, I be out of here in a minute.” Ordell took a good hold on the pillow with both hands, started to lift it, and the overhead light came on in the room.

  Now a fat nurse helper was right there at the foot of the bed saying, “What’re you doing in here?”

  Ordell glanced around to see the deputy in here too, an older guy but big, with a belly on him.

  “I was fixing his pillow,” Ordell said, “fluffin’ it for him so he be comfortable. Turning it to the cool side.”

  The fat nurse helper said, “You’re not supposed to be in here. It’s way past visiting hours.” The fat deputy next to her now, watching him with that dumb-eyed no-shit deputy look.

  Ordell held his hands out to the sides, resigned.

  “I told his mama I’d come visit. She use to keep house for my mama ‘fore my mama passed on. But see, I’m Seven-Day Adventis’ and I was out door-to-door collecting for the church all day. You know, for the poor people ain’t got nothing to eat?”

  The fat nurse helper said, “Well, you’re not suppose to be in here.”

  And the fat deputy said, “Get your ass out, now.”

  So Ordell wasn’t able to settle his mind about Cujo. Shit. He left knowing he had a problem on his hands.

  16

  Sunday evening, early, Ordell had brought Louis to his house on 30th Street in West Palm, introduced him to Simone, telling her to take good care of Louis, he would be staying here a few days. Ordell showed Louis the guest room, the Beretta nine in the bureau drawer he was to bring along tomorrow, and left saying he had to visit a friend in the hospital, “See you in the morning.”

  That Sunday evening was an experience.

  Louis thought the colored woman might be Ordell’s aunt. Simone asked could she fix him something to eat. Louis said no thanks. She went in her room and Louis sat down to watch Murder, She Wrote thinking Simone was in there for the night, older people generally going to bed early. A Movie of the Week came on next.

  About half-past nine a different woman came out of the bedroom. The one who’d gone in looked like Aunt Jemima in an old housecoat and a scarf tied around her head. The one that came out was twenty years younger, had shiny black hair done in a swirl, dangle earrings, blue around her eyes and big fake lashes, a skintight silver dress and backless heels to match. She said to Louis she understood he was from Detroit. She said she used to know plenty of white boys there she’d meet at the Flame Showbar, at Sportrees, later on at the Watts Club Mozambique, and take them to after-hours places after. She said to Louis, “You do any of that?” He said sometimes he did, he had met Ordell at the Watts Club. Simone said, “Baby, I’m gonna take you home.” The Movie of the Week went off and Motown came on.

  Monday morning Louis left the house early, before Simone was up, and had his breakfast at a Denny’s. They were meeting in the parking lot of the Hilton on Southern Boulevard just off the Interstate. Louis arrived to see Ordell in blue coveralls standing by a van parked next to his Mercedes, having a smoke. Melanie was in there listening to the radio, moving her head to the beat. Ordell came over to Louis’s car saying, “Lemme see what you have you so proud of.”

  Louis opened the trunk and showed Ordell his shiny guns, the Colt Python and the Mossberg 500 with the laser scope. The Beretta from the bureau drawer was in there too. Ordell said, “Bring it.” Louis took the Beretta and stuck it in his waist, under his sport shirt hanging out.

  “And that Star Trek shotgun,” Ordell said. “Big Guy gets a kick out of that kind of shit.”

  Louis brought it out in a fold of newspaper, closed the trunk, and followed Ordell over to the back of the van. Ordell turned to him saying, “Simone get you to bone her?”

  Innocent, then starting to grin, and Louis knew he’d been waiting all that time looking at guns to ask the question.

  “She put on a show,” Louis said.

  “Yes, she does.”

  “Did ‘Baby Love’ with all the gestures.”

  “The choreography,” Ordell said. “You swear it’s the Supremes, huh?”

  “It was the Supremes, on the record.”

  “I mean the way the woman moves.”

  “She did ‘Stop! In the Name of Love.’ ”

  “ ‘Before you break my heart,’ ” Ordell said.

  “She did Gladys Knight.”

  “With the Pips or without? She does it both ways.”

  “With the Pips.”

  “She do Syreeta Wright?”

  “I don’t know. She did some I never heard of.”

  “Syreeta was married to Stevie Wonder.”

  “She was great,” Louis said. “I mean she had every little move down.”

  “She get you to bone her?”

  “She wanted me to come in her room.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Said she needed her back rubbed, from all that moving around.”

  “She like her feet rubbed too.”

  “I told her, man, I was worn out and had a headache.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Middle of the night I wake up? Simone’s in bed with me. She says, ‘How’s your headache, baby? Is it gone?’ ”

  Ordell said, “You boned her, didn’t you?”

  The rear door of the van came open and a black kid wearing a black bandanna stuck his head out saying, “Bread, we sitting here—man, we going or not?”

  “Right now,” Ordell said. “Get back in there,” and opened the door enough for Louis to see three black kids crouched in there with guns—AK-47s, they looked like—staring back at him. Ordell said, “This is Louis, the famous bank robber from Detroit I mention to you? Louis, these two cats are Sweatman and Snow, and the mean-looking motherfucker that can’t wait is Zulu. They call me Bread, huh? Short for Whitebread. Hey, you all think up a name for my man Louis here,” Ordell said and slammed the door closed. He said to Louis, “They love me. You know why? ’cause I’m from Dee-troit and that is a no-shit recommendation, man. You from there with these homeboys, you it.”

  Melanie came out of the Mercedes in her cutoffs and a halter top, a frayed knit bag hanging from her shoulder. She said, “Hi, Louis,” without making eye contact and stood with her arms folded while Ordell said he and Louis would go in the van with the jack-boys and Melanie would follow them in Louis’s Toyota. Louis asked why his
car? Ordell said, for coming back. Like that explained it. Louis said, “Whatever you say.”

  On the way out Southern Boulevard toward Loxahatchee, Ordell talked about the jackboys loud enough for them to hear him in back, calling them crazy motherfuckers and asking if they had ever heard of pistolocos? They were the jackboys of Colombia. Ordell looked at the rearview mirror telling them, “You get two million pesos to shoot a government man down there in Medellín, the drug capital of the world. That’s two hundred grand American the druggies pay you. Get you high on some mean shit they call basuco, made from coke but takes hold of you worse. You think two hundred thousand, man, you can buy your mother a condo on the fucking beach. Do another government man and buy yourself a car like mine and all the clothes you want. Only you know what you got down there besides the druggies and the pistolocos? You got all kind of hoods and punks shooting each other. You got terrorists—you know what I’m saying, terrorists? You got them and the others I mentioned and you got death-squad guys too, all going around killing each other. You know how many got shot dead or died of a violent death in that one town last year, Medellín? Over five thousand and most of them guys your age, just starting their young life. You hear what I’m saying? That’s ten times more even than get taken out in Detroit any given year—tell you the kind of place it is. You see how lucky you are to live here in the U.S.A.?”

  Louis would glance over his shoulder at the jack-boys, three big kids, their heads and shoulders moving with the motion of the van. Quiet, serious in the gloom back there. Like migrants being taken to work, except for the Chinese machine guns they held.

  Ordell didn’t say a word about their business this morning until, a few miles past the Loxahatchee Road Prison, he turned off Southern to head through open scrub and they were by themselves out here. A dark line way off marked the beginning of the cane fields, a half million acres from here down into the Everglades. Ordell looked at his rearview mirror.

  “We getting close now. Turn on this dirt road. . . . The man don’t make it easy to get to his place.”