"You got the nerve? Asking have I ever looked death in the face. Shit, you ain't ever seen any combat, have you?"
Melanie's voice said, "What're you waiting for?" Gerald turned enough to look at her. "He's got buckshot in there, honey. How's he gonna get me without hitting his nigger friend?" He said to Louis, "Am I right? Shit, you don't have the nerve anyway."
Louis went for him, raising the Mossberg to lay it across his head, aiming at that crew cut, and caught the man's shoulder. Gerald rose up in his GI T-shirt, all arms, grabbed the barrel and gave it a twist, and Louis, hanging on, was thrown against the chair on top of Ordell. Louis slid off, scrambled out of the man's reach to have room to move. Got to his feet . . . Gerald was standing with his back to him.
Gerald, and now Louis, watching as Melanie's hand came out of her knit bag with a stubby bluesteel automatic. Gerald said, "Now what is that you have, some kind of low-cal pussy gun?"
Melanie was holding it in both hands now, arms extended, aimed at Gerald.
He tossed the shotgun to land on the sofa, looked at Melanie and said, "Okay, now you put that down, honey, and I won't press charges against you." Confident about it, as though it would settle the matter. Melanie didn't say anything. She shot him.
Louis felt himself jump-the sound was so loud in that closed room. He looked at Gerald. The man hadn't moved; he stood there.
Melanie said, "I'm not a whore, you bozo."
Christ, and shot him again.
Louis saw Gerald grab his side this time as if he'd been stung.
She shot him again and his hands went to his chest and his knees started to buckle as he moved toward her and she shot him again: the sound ringing and ringing in this room full of guns and animal heads,
until it faded away and the man was lying on the floor.
Ordell said through his bloody mouth, barely moving it, "Is he dead?"
Melanie said, "You bet he is."
Ordell said to Louis, "They coming?" And to Melanie, "Girl, where'd you get that gun?"
Louis was at the window now.
He saw the two bikers standing in kind of a crouch with their rifles, shoulders hunched, looking this way, nearer the house now than the gun range. He saw them out there in the open, cautious. Saw them both look toward the driveway at the same time and start to turn in that direction, raising their rifles. Louis heard the sound of automatic weapons, not as loud as he heard them in Ordell's gun movie or in any movie he had ever seen, and watched the two bikers drop where they were standing, seem to collapse, fall without firing a shot, the sound of the automatic weapons continuing until finally it stopped. Pretty soon the jackboys appeared, the kids with their Chinese guns, curved banana clips, looking at the men on the ground and then toward the house.
Louis wondered if combat was like that. If you had a seat and could watch it.
He heard Ordell say, "They get 'em?"
Louis nodded. He said, "Yeah."
And heard Ordell say, "Man, my mouth is sore. I think I'm gonna have to go the dentist."
Heard him say, "Now I have to get those boys to load up the van. We going home in Louis's car, if it makes it." Heard him say, "You ever shoot anybody before?"
And heard Melanie say, "Hardly."
He watched the jackboys poke at the bikers with the muzzles of their guns. Now Ordell appeared, walking up to them, and it surprised Louis; he hadn't heard Ordell leave the room. Louis turned from the window to see Melanie on the sofa, still holding the pistol.
She said, "Why didn't you shoot him?"
Louis said, "You did all right."
Melanie looked at Gerald on the floor. She said, "I don't mean him."
Chapter 17
Jackie didn't see Ray Nicolet until she came off the elevator in the airport parking structure, Tuesday afternoon. He said, "We have to stop meeting like this," deadpan, posed against the front fender of a Rolls.
She was supposed to smile, so she did; because he was young, he was having fun being a cop, and because she had to be nice to him. She could smile, too, at his swagger, coming to take the wheels from her in his cowboy boots, a gun beneath that light jacket, stuck in his jeans.
"I thought you'd be waiting in Customs."
"We don't need to bring them in," Nicolet said. "This is ATF business. How was your flight?"
"Smooth, all the way."
"I imagine you're glad to be working again."
"You'll never know," Jackie said, walking with him now along the row of cars.
"We have the money here?"
"Ten thousand."
"Anything else? Weed, coke?"
"No, but I can get you some."
"I'll toke once in a while if it's there," Nicolet said. "You know, like at a party. But I won't buy it, it's against the law."
He placed the wheels in the trunk of the Honda and brought the flight bag in the front seat with him. Jackie slipped in behind the wheel. Opening the bag he said, "Three-ten PM," and gave the date and location, where they were. "I'm now taking a manila envelope from the subject's flight bag. The envelope contains currency . . . all the same denomination, one-hundred-dollar bills. Now I'm counting it." Jackie said, "What're you doing?"
He showed her the mike hooked to his lapel, then pressed the palm of his hand over it. "I'm recording."
"You said you were letting this one go through." "I am. Don't worry about it."
"Then why're you being so official?"
"I don't want any surprises. Every step of this goes in my report."
She watched him count the bills, dab each one with a green felt-tipped pen, and describe where he was putting the mark, ". . . on the first zero of the numeral one hundred in the upper left corner." He finished and said, "I'm putting the currency back in the envelope, ten thousand dollars. The subject will deliver the money in . . ."
Jackie said, "A Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bag," smoking a cigarette now.
"A Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bag."
She gestured to several bags on the back seat.
"A large black bag with handles and red lettering," Nicolet said, took the recorder from his coat pocket, and turned it off. "Okay, we can go."
"You're not coming with me, are you?"
"I'll be along," Nicolet said.
"What time you have to be there?"
"Four thirty. I'm meeting a woman."
"What's her name?"
"He wouldn't tell me. Will you be alone?"
"Don't worry about it. The woman leaves, somebody'll be on her."
"But you're not going to stop her," Jackie said. Nicolet had the door open and was getting out.
"Are you?"
He stuck his head back in. "Why would I do that?"
Max got to the mall at four, parked by Sears, and went in through the store. He'd stop and see Renee, talk to her, get that over with. Tell her he had to leave if she started one of her monologues. All that time he could never think of anything to say to her, she never had trouble talking to him. Always about herself.
Jackie had said four thirty. Watch the way it works. A woman would come up to her table or sit at the one next to it. There would be lots of people, she said, the cafe area busy from noon on. If he came early, look for her at Saks.
The sign on the showroom glass said DAVID DE LA VILLA in dark green, with dates.
A white cloth covered the library table in the center of the gallery, the walls hung with green paintings, the busboy's cane fields, Renee peering naked from one. . . .
Too small to see from the entrance, through the showroom glass, but that's where she was-on the wall to the right, the third canvas. Max entered. The olive pot just inside seemed to hold the same cigarette butts, gum wrappers, the Styrofoam cup-no more, no less. He saw Renee.
Coming out from the back with a tray full of cheese and crackers. She looked up and saw him and looked down again.
He said, "Renee?"
She said, "Oh, it's you," placing the tray on the table, centering it.
He wondered how he could be anyone else standing here.
"It's nice to see you too."
She avoided looking at him now. "I have an exhibit opening at five." Getting that tray exactly in the center, an inch this way.
"I know," Max said, "but I'd like to talk to you."
"You can't see I'm busy?"
"With the cheese and crackers," Max said. "I know they're an important part of your life."
"What do you want?"
He hesitated. The busboy was coming with a silver tray and a coat over his arm. Max waited, looking at Renee waiting for the busboy. Renee wearing a gauzy white gown to the floor he thought of as a flowerchild dress, or the kind women dancing around Stonehenge in the moonlight wore. Renee making up for lost time. Max thinking, Like all of us. Now David de la Villa arrived with a tray of raw vegetables surrounding some kind of creamy dip. He placed the tray on the table and put on the coat, a tux jacket, an old one, over a yellow tank top he was wearing with jeans frayed at the knees. He said to Renee, "Is he bothering you?"
Nothing here made sense. What if he was bothering her? What could this guy do about it?
"We're talking," Max said.
Renee shook her head. "No, we're not." And her pert little cap of black hair moved, a sprig of earthmother green in it, no strands of gray showing, they were gone. She turned to leave, green loop earrings swinging. "I told him we're busy."
"You heard her," the busboy said.
Max stood there puzzled, staring at this freak in the tux staring back at him, but aware of Renee leaving them and he said after her, "It's important."
She paused long enough to look back and tell him, "So is my show."
Familiar? I'm working. Well, I'm working too. I'd like to talk to you. I'm busy. I'm filing for divorce. . . . That might get her attention. He turned to the
busboy, who irritated him more than anyone he could think of in recent memory.
"You know what you look like?"
"Yeah, what?"
The guy standing hip cocked, waiting.
Max hesitated. Because the guy could look whatever way he wanted, he was the show, he was putting the art lovers on and making out. . . . Or, the guy had talent, he knew how to paint, and Max, in his seersucker jacket and wing-tips, didn't know shit. That was a possibility Max could look at like a big boy and admit. Even somewhat proud of himself. So he said, "Never mind," and turned to leave.
"I see you around here again I'm gonna call security," Max heard that irritating fucking busboy say and almost stopped. "Have them throw you out." But he kept going. The bond for first-degree murder, if you could get one, was fifty thousand.
Four thirty on the dot, Jackie picked up a couple of egg rolls and an iced tea at China Town and walked past the semicircle of cafe counters with her Saks bag, on display in her Islands Air uniform. Next, she moved through the maze of aisles in the center area, beneath the giant gazebo, before choosing a table and slipped in behind it to sit against a planter, able to see what was going on around her. She thought she might spot Nicolet; Max, if he was able to make it; but didn't count on picking out any ATF agents, assuming Nicolet had people with him. She didn't put a lot of trust in anything he told her. He did say someone would follow whoever picked up the money. But that didn't mean another ATF agent. Jackie had a hunch Ordell would send the woman he lived with, the one who answered the phone, said he wasn't there, and hung up. Fifteen minutes passed. Jackie finished her egg rolls and lit a cigarette.
A slender young black woman holding a full tray and a Saks bag hanging from her hand said, "This seat taken?"
Jackie told her no, sit down, and watched her unload the tray. Tacos, enchiladas, refried beans, a large-size Coke, napkins, plastic utensils . . . "You're hungry," Jackie said.
The slender young woman, dark and quite pretty, said, "Yes'm." She couldn't be more than twenty. Jackie said, "Put your bag on the floor, okay? Under the table. We might as well make it look good." She watched the young woman, who hadn't looked right at her since sitting down, bend sideways to glance under the table.
"Right next to mine. Then when I leave," Jackie said, "well, you know. What's your name?"
She did look up saying, "Sheronda?" and down again at her tray.
"Go ahead and start. I think I spoke to you on the phone one time," Jackie said, "when I was in jail and called Ordell. Wasn't that you?"
She said, "I think it was."
"I told you my name? Jackie?"
Sheronda said, "Yes'm," and sat waiting. "Really, start eating. I won't bother you anymore."
Jackie watched her begin, Sheronda hunching close to the tray. "I just want to ask you one question. Are you and Ordell married?"
"He say we like the same thing as married," Sheronda said, without raising her head.
"Did you drive here?"
"Yes'm, he got a car for me to use."
"You do live together," Jackie said.
Sheronda hesitated and Jackie didn't think she was going to answer. When she did, she said, "Most of the times," still not raising her head.
Jackie said, "Not every day?"
"Sometime every day, for a while."
"Then you don't see him for a few days."
"Yes'm."
"You know what's in the bag you're taking?"
"He say is a surprise."
Jackie stubbed out her cigarette. She said, "Well, it was nice talking to you," picked up Sheronda's bag, and left.
Max could see them from the Cappuccino Bar. He watched Jackie coming away from the table and told the girl behind the counter not to take his coffee, he'd be right back. Jackie didn't see him, heading out with a certain amount of purpose. Max's idea was to tag along, not catch up with her until they were well away from here. That plan changed as he saw the guy step out of Barnie's Coffee & Tea Company and Jackie stopped. Max did too. He watched the young guy in a sport coat and jeans, cowboy boots, take the Saks bag from her and reach into it, looking at her as he did. The guy would be Ray Nicolet, Max decided, making sure she wasn't walking off with the ten thousand. Max, the former cop, thinking for Nicolet: You can't trust anyone, can you? Especially a confidential informant. They talked for a minute. Not, it would seem, about anything too serious. Jackie nodded, listened to Nicolet, nodded again, turned and walked off. A few strides and she was around the corner, gone, and Nicolet was looking toward the seating area talking to himself now, or into a radio mike he had on him. Max returned to the Cappuccino Bar to finish his coffee.
He had recognized the young black woman with Jackie, the same one who lived in the house on 31st Street and he had spoken to Friday morning looking for Ordell. Still trying to find him, five days now with the fake Rolex that wasn't bad-looking, kept the right time, but still wasn't worth a thousand bucks. He'd had it appraised at a jewelry store and Winston was right, the watch sold for about two fifty.
The young woman was still working her way through that pile of Mexican food, not looking up. Now she did. Turning her head to a woman at the next table. An older black woman.
Max watched.
The older woman said something. Now the younger woman picked up the ashtray Jackie had used and handed it to the older woman. They exchanged a few words. Then didn't say anything for a minute or so, the older woman smoking a cigarette
now. Jackie had talked to the younger woman the whole time they were together, not at all sly about it, right out in front. The older woman had a cup of coffee in front of her, nothing to eat. Now she said something again to the younger woman, only this time without looking at her. The younger woman paused, then began eating again in a hurry.
Max's cappuccino was cold.
As he finished it the younger woman was getting up from the table. He watched her stoop to get the Saks shopping bag, straighten her slim body, look around, and come out of the seating area. He watched her walk past the Cafe Manet, past Barnie's Coffee & Tea, and turn the corner before the cowboy stepped out. He watched Nicolet allow the young woma
n to get some distance on him before he spoke to his radio mike and followed after her, around the corner. Max turned to see the older woman putting out her cigarette.
She sat there another couple of minutes before picking up-how about that-a Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bag and walking away from the table, toward the cafe counters on the other side of the seating area.
This one was not in the scenario Jackie had described. It didn't matter. Even if she was carrying some other store's shopping bag Max would have still followed her: down the escalator and along the lower level of the mall to Burdine's, through the store, outside and down an aisle in the parking area to a Mercury sedan, a big tan one, an older model. He knew who the younger woman was and where she lived. But nothing about this one, getting in the car with her shopping bag and driving off.
Max wrote the license number in his notebook and went back inside to find a pay phone. His old pal from the Sheriff's office, Harry Boland, head of the TAC unit, would be home now having a bourbon. They'd talk-Max would ask him to have someone call him at the office, later, with the name and address.
Ordell said, "It was like that monster in the movie Alien, the one ate people? He's looking at Sigourney Weaver in her underwear and it don't mean shit to him. You want to yell at him, 'That's Sigourney Weaver in her underwear, man. What's wrong with you?' "
Louis said, "Gerald reminded you of that?"
"The way he didn't take Melanie out and jump on her. They go in the kitchen, he fixes her a cup of coffee."
"It worked out," Louis said, committed now, no getting off.
"Yeah, old Melanie."
"Would you have shot him?"
"If I had to."
"If you had to-the guy's beating the shit out of you. . . . You mean if you got mad?"
Talking the way they used to a long time ago. Ordell grinning at him. In the Mercedes on the way to Simone's house, early Tuesday evening. Louis knowing why Ordell had him staying there now. Not to be entertained. The main reason, to keep an eye on the cash Simone was bringing home. Ordell getting him more and more involved in his business.
Monday night, late, Ordell had taken him to the self-service storage place off Australian Avenue in a warehouse district, rows of garage doors, one after another: Ordell careful, making sure they weren't followed and there was no one around who might see them. He removed the padlock, raised the door of the space he'd rented, and there they were in his flashlight beam: all kinds of assault weapons converted to full automatic, boxes of silencers that reminded Louis of parts in a factory bin, the M-60 machine gun and LAW rocket launchers they'd taken from Gerald's place that day. Ordell said tomorrow night or the next, all this shit would be packed, loaded in the van, and driven down to Islamorada in the Keys, put on Mr. Walker's boat and taken over to the Bahamas. Mr. Walker would make the delivery to the middleman who bought the stuff for the Colombian druggies and get paid. A good two hundred thousand worth of weapons here, less expenses, would bring his total up close to a million in the bank over there. Telling all this to Louis in the dark, confiding.