Raylan

by Elmore Leonard

  Floy parked on the street and went in the apartment house had a fire escape going this way and the other down the front of the building and pushed a number.

  Cassie came on saying, “What kind a car?”

  “Gray Beamer. Had it washed for y’all.”

  Cassie said, “Be down in five minutes.”

  Delroy had told Floy, “They not down in a half hour, leave. I’ll give them a talkin to.”

  They finally got done dressing and came out to the car looking like fashion-conscious bag ladies in their outfits they got from Goodwill, hip-huggers under their raincoats, sporty little beach hats, brims turned down, Janie wearing a Detroit Tigers baseball cap; the three carrying shiny bags from ladies’ stores.

  They got in the car, Kim saying to Cassie, “You know you’re wearing your fuck-me heels?”

  Cassie said, “They sound cool on marble floors.”

  Kim said, “What if we have to run for the car?”

  “I could have on sneakers,” Cassie said, “we’re still fucked. You think Floy’s gonna wait for us?”

  “I was told,” Floy said to his rearview mirror, “y’all take more than six minutes to come out, I take off. Delroy say to worry about my own young ass.” Floy turned in his seat to look right at the girls. “Nobody say what you doin’s easy but, come on, you walk in cool and walk out your shoppin bags full of green. Delroy told me hisself, you the best chicks robbin banks he ever had. The man loves you.”

  Janie said, “That’s why he hits us?”

  “You don’t listen to him, what you expect? Hey, but you get home he gives you all the Oxy you want, don’t he? You ladies of leisure aren’t you, between jobs?”

  Cassie said, “We get picked up, you know who’s going down with us.”

  Floy said, “Hey, all I am’s your driver.”

  “Not you,” Cassie said, “Delroy. He never goes near the bank.”

  “He tells us what it looks like inside,” Kim said, “and when there aren’t a lot of people.”

  Cassie said, “Floy, what’s that worth?”

  “A pat on the head,” Floy said, “the man’s tall enough. The man might go fifty bucks. He holds on to his dollar, let’s you do it for weed and pills.”

  “And a few hundred,” Kim said, “each time.”

  “He let you out to spend it?”

  “Once in a while.”

  “You his bank-job slaves.”

  Janie said, “I go back to strippin I become a blow job slave. This ain’t so bad, we don’t ever get picked up.”

  “We miss a job,” Cassie said, “we have to do one alone.”

  “You ever did it you weren’t high,” Floy said, “you wouldn’t do it.”

  He pulled up a half block from the bank and waited while they toked, put on shades, fixed their hats and cap down on their head good, and got out with their shopping bags.

  Floy said, “Give you a full ten minutes to do your business. You cool with it? Be cool, I see y’all a little later.”

  They weren’t listening.

  He watched them get out and walk down the street to the bank.

  They stopped at a glass-top table in the middle of the floor and used the backs of bank forms to write the notes they’d give the tellers. Cassie said, “I like, ‘Give me five grand or I’ll kill you.’ ” She looked at her note and added a word.

  Kim said, “How do you spell withdrawal, with an a or an e?”

  Janie said, “I ask for all hunnerts, the girl says she has to go get ’em. I say, ‘All right, a hunnert fifties.’ I end up taking what she gives me.”

  Cassie said, “Tell her how much you want, for Christ sake.”

  Kim said, “Why don’t we write the same thing three times?”

  Cassie handed her note to Kim. “Here, write it the same way, all capitals. ‘GIVE ME FIVE GRAND OR I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU,’ with three exclamation marks, so she knows you mean it.”

  Kim wrote the notes and they walked over to three different tellers.

  In a few minutes Janie came away from the window first with her bag of bills. She felt awful, she had cramps. If they had to do another bank soon she’d stay in bed.

  Now Cassie was coming.

  “It works, doesn’t it? Where’s Kim?”

  She was still at a window.

  “Now she’s coming,” Janie said.

  The bank chicks walked out and got in the BMW.

  Floy listened to the girls on the way home, back to smoking weed now and talkative, relieved to be out of there.

  Cassie saying, “We do that one before?”

  Kim saying, “Banks all look alike to me.”

  Cassie: “The teller goes, ‘This is my second robbery in the past month.’ Calm about it. I ask her if it was us. No, it was a guy that time. I asked how much he took. She said only a few hundred and split. Ran out the door.”

  “Mine looks at the note and freaks,” Kim said. “Kept going on about having a child at home. I told her would she please empty her drawer? It wasn’t her money.”

  “I told my girl,” Cassie said, “to keep a couple hundred for yourself. How’s the bank know we didn’t take it? You know what she said? ‘Really . . . ?’ I bet she did too.”

  Floy, looking at the rearview, said, “Y’all did all right, huh?” Watching Cassie count the take.

  “Not bad,” Cassie said, touching Floy’s shoulder with a couple of hundred in her hand.

  Floy took it saying, “Hey, I’ll boost a car for you ladies any time you want. But how come the cops aren’t on to y’all by now? Four banks already, in town or close by.”

  “They think we’re working girls,” Kim said, “having fun on our lunch break.”

  Floy thought they looked like weird females, walk in the bank out of sunshine in their raincoats. How come nobody seemed to notice them? He said to Janie, “Honey, you all right? You not joinin in.”

  “She doesn’t feel much like doing banks,” Cassie said. “She’s got the curse.”

  Raylan believed marshals were more like big-city cops than most kinds of federal agents. It’s why he walked in on the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police knowing he’d feel at home.

  They met in a squad room, the detectives getting to know Raylan, asking about the transplant nurse who stole kidneys and tried to kill him. He told them about the mine-company woman who’d had a man shot in cold blood, Raylan saying he was still thinking about her. “I was to work here, her name would be up there on your board, Carol Conlan, not yet crossed out.” He told the detectives down a long table he wished he could stay here through the month, get to see Peyton Manning and the Colts at home. He might forget about this bookmaker he was looking for. “Reno Nevada?”

  Buzz Hicks, the senior detective in the room, said, “Now we’re getting to it, aren’t we? You’re lookin for Reno’s little girl, aren’t you? Jackie Nevada.”

  Raylan said, “Isn’t Reno her stepdad?”

  “That’s right,” Hicks said. “The name on her birth certificate’s Rachel Nevada, but Reno started callin her Jackie when she was a kid.”

  One of the detectives down the table said, “Her mom was called Jackie. She got knocked up by some loser passin through and took up with Reno. She has the child and acts like a mother till she got tired of home life and hit the road. Was Reno named her Rachel, after his own mother, but started callin her Jackie before too long. Had a soft spot for the broad walked out on him.”

  Hicks said, “Lloyd, how’d you come up with all that?”

  “Talkin to her,” Lloyd said, “while we had her in custody.”

  “So now,” Hicks said, “she’s raised by Reno, this suspected colored guy passin as Latino and runnin a sports book.”

  “They musta got along,” Raylan said.

  “Well, they lived in the same house,” Hicks said, “till she went to Butler. Listen to this, and paid her way through college playin poker at night. The only girl livin in a house with seven guys, all students. You know what they called he
r? ‘Mother.’ She had a poker table, cards and racks of chips. You wanted to play you had to bring your own chair or borrow one. We went over there and talked to ’em. They said you oughta see her shuffle cards.”

  “I understand,” Raylan said, “she won twenty grand betting Duke over her school.”

  “That’s right, but Reno says he covered her for ten, in case Butler managed to pull off a win. We asked Jackie”—Hicks turning to look down the table—“Lloyd, what’d she tell us?”

  “That game,” Lloyd said, “Reno put up nada. He was too busy losin on the spread. Jackie said the students laid down twenty and that’s what she picked up.”

  “You look into it?” Raylan said.

  Hicks said, “What are we, the gaming commission? It was Duke minus seven, the spread BetUs Sportsbook was offerin online and Reno took a bath.”

  “How’d Jackie take gettin busted?”

  “Didn’t make a fuss. I guess thinkin about the hole she was in, broke. This A student who plays poker you might say for a living. I asked the woman runs poker games we busted. Elaine? I said, ‘You musta known those guys’d eat her alive.’ Elaine said, ‘She lost her cool. But you could tell the girl’s a player.’ We set Jackie aside while we’re arm-wrestlin these high-priced lawyers and she walks out.”

  “Didn’t show up in court,” Raylan said.

  “Took off on us,” Hicks said. “Reno swears he hasn’t heard from her. What do you think this girl’s doin now?”

  Raylan said, “Well, I hear she’s sticking up banks to get back on her feet. You got tape on her?”

  “Jackie and two other girls,” Hicks said. “We have ’em in different banks in Lexington. Now take a look at what she’s doing.” Hicks glanced down the table. One of the detectives—it was Lloyd—slid the stack of surveillance prints to him and Hicks passed them on to Raylan, telling him, “We showed Reno. He said his little girl don’t rob banks. These are some girls lost their way. He said, ‘But they’re mellow, riding some kind of high.’ He said, ‘My little girl don’t do drugs either. She keeps her mind on poker.’ ”

  Raylan went through the tapes, seeing the girls with shopping bags at separate tellers.

  Hicks said, “Watch ’em come away, the two looking back at the one still at a window. They’re stoned. Had to get fixed to rob the bank.”

  “I’ve heard of ones have to get ripped before they go in,” Raylan said. “These girls look like they just cashed their paychecks.”

  “What do they get paid in,” Hicks said, “yen? Have to bring store bags to carry it?”

  “I guess what I mean,” Raylan said, “we don’t see that many women stickin up banks. I think it’s maybe five or six out of a hundred. Here you’ve got three at once. Which one you think’s Jackie?”

  “The one wearing the baseball cap,” Hicks said, “down on her eyes. Some of the other tapes you’ll come to, you see her lookin up.” He stood to watch Raylan go through the prints.

  Lloyd said, “Buzz, you recall we had two girls doin banks at the same time?”

  “Not around here,” Hicks said.

  “Was down toward the state line,” Lloyd said, “seven, eight years ago. They’d hit a bank in some dinky town off sixty-four and cross over to Louisville. A guy with the girls was teachin ’em how to rob banks.”

  Hicks said, “How you remember that?”

  “It stuck in my mind,” Lloyd said. “I remember a confidential informant fingered them, but they were released for lack of evidence.”

  Raylan said, “You remember what happened to the snitch?”

  Lloyd was squinting, trying to recall before nodding his head. “A guy blew off his right arm with a shotgun.”

  Raylan said, “Delroy Lewis?”

  “That’s the guy was questioned,” Lloyd said, “about the bank jobs.”

  “You mind,” Hicks said, “if we settle on this job here?” and said to Raylan, “That one, where she’s lookin up. All of us but Lloyd said that’s Jackie Nevada or her twin.”

  “It could be,” Raylan said. “I stopped by Butler and got a look at her picture. I can’t see the girl in the yearbook playing to a surveillance camera.”

  “We like her motive,” Hicks said. “She needs dough.”

  Raylan was shaking his head. “These two comin out, mugging right at the camera.”

  “Doped up and thinks it’s a hoot. It’s your people in Lexington,” Hicks said, “sent us all the bank photos. They picked out Jackie and asked for our confirmation.”

  “The three almost look alike,” Raylan said. “Young, the same size. Three girls having fun.”

  Hicks said, “Robbin banks.”

  “Your fugitive,” Raylan said, “I can see why you want her to be Jackie. I hope you’re right and I’m dead wrong. But I can’t see three girls wanting to rob banks. I can see some guy putting ’em up to it. Gives the girl’s some toot and drops ’em off. I don’t know for sure, but we’ll find out, won’t we?”

  “We respect your opinion,” Buzz Hicks said, “but hope you’re wrong this time. We been followin you since you called out that Zip in Miami, Tommy Bucks? You gave him twenty-four hours to get out of town. He drew on you and you put him down.”

  “And got demoted to Harlan County, Kentucky.”

  “But then shot it out with that transplant nurse.”

  “You’re havin fun with me, aren’t you?”

  “Well,” Hicks said, “you’re doin a job the way we like to see it done.”

  All the way to Reno’s betting office, Raylan thought of the Jackie he saw in the yearbook photo and had copied. She could be a Miss Nevada but would rather play poker.

  Raylan came to the barbershop, a few blocks from Lucas Oil Stadium. Went in and walked past three empty chairs to a door that had to be Reno’s office. He knocked twice and said, “Raylan Givens. I called you about twenty minutes ago . . . ?” The door buzzed open and he went in.

  Raylan thought Reno looked Cuban, cell phones and a computer on his desk in lamplight, stacks of betting-sheet printouts and handwritten notes.

  Lions and Niners 20 times reverse. Bears a nickel, New England ten.

  Raylan said, “You have to speak the language to lay down a bet?”

  “My regulars, yeah, they do. Guy calls, says he wants the Saints minus seven thirty times. What’s he betting?”

  “Beats me,” Raylan said. “But what if the guy loses and says he never made the bet?”

  “I got him taped. I got miles of it. I ask the guy, does he want to hear himself putting it down?”

  “You say you gave Jackie backup money. She says you didn’t.”

  “Come on—nobody coverin for her? She don’t have enough to pay a win, she calls me. The ones bet with her know she’s in the business; she loses, she pays. They know me. Listen to what I’m tellin you, all right? Jackie don’t lift the twenty and takes off with it. She borrows my eighty percent to play big-time and loses it. Gets picked up in a raid and walks away. Somethin she oughtn’ve done. Now she’s workin to recover what she lost so she can pay me back, and that’s all I know.”

  “She gets square with you,” Raylan said, “then what? She gives herself up?”

  “She be picked up before too long, way before she gets to Vegas. Understand, Jackie wants to play her way to the Poker World Series. See, but once you spot Jackie at a table anywhere, you look twice. You might even watch her play for a while, wonderin who she is. Jackie won’t get anywhere near Vegas.”

  Raylan said, “She’s not one of the girls in the bank tapes, I know that.”

  “I bet they chicks can’t pay the rent,” Reno said, “and will die for some blow. I think a dude’s usin them for his needs. They not chicks’d think of banks, they too loose. Any time now they gonna walk out and see policemen waitin behind cars holding guns. See, not one of those girls has Jackie’s way of movin. The cops find out they don’t have her and act surprised. ‘Man, the girl sure looked like her.’ All the time Jackie’s at a table someplace pee
kin at her hole cards.”

  “You don’t think she’ll give herself up.”

  “She won’t have to,” Reno said, “she’ll get picked up on the warrant and brought back here. I get one of my lawyer buddies, I doubt she does any time. Jackie don’t have a record of any kind, knows how to act polite.”

  “You don’t walk on a fugitive warrant,” Raylan said. “They got the stuff on you. What you have to do is find her, get her to come in before she’s picked up. She tells her story and might only get a year or so probation.”

  “You want you could help me out,” Reno said. “You the one knows how to find people.”

  “I’m giving you a break,” Raylan said. “I find her before you do, she’s under arrest.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Harry took her to the races at Keeneland and sat at his table in the Blue Grass Room: Jackie having crab legs and a Guinness, Harry, a pair of lobster tails and a double whiskey collins, while they watched the races on a rainy day, staring at the giant screen. Harry had won close to five thousand betting across the board on most races. Jackie wasn’t that interested in picking horses. She made side bets with Harry and took him for half of what he’d won. Harry said, “I’m getting an idea how you win at poker. You don’t bet your hand, you bet on the serious guys at the table folding.”

  Jackie said, “What’s the difference?”

  She was looking past Harry, seeing a woman with teased blond hair, cool in dark shades of designer sportswear, and a guy following her through the dining room, trying to keep up in his tan suit that looked like a uniform. Closing in, the woman was looking at Jackie, not smiling until she turned to Harry and said, “Carol Conlan, Harry,” placing a hand on his shoulder, a wide porcelain bracelet slipping on her wrist, “how’re you doing?”

  Holding his drink Harry took time to come around enough to look up at Carol telling him, “The last time I saw you was the day you won the Maker’s Mark. Remember?”