Swag

  They owed him something, though.

  He sure hoped Frank was in bed.

  He knew how Frank felt because he felt the same way. You could admire a guy’s method, but you didn’t have to grin and look dumb when the guy was putting it to you. You could act dumb, yes, if it helped the cause. And the cause was him and Frank, nobody else anymore. Except Arlene, but that was different.

  All right, the options.

  Sit tight. Don’t say a word. Hope the larceny charge is dropped and go back to pouring cement and drinking beer and watching TV. Thank God you made it through and promise never to do it again.

  Or, go for the prize. Get the fucker, sitting there blowing his Jamaican smoke.

  Take the Luger P-38 and put it in the guy’s face and say, “Give me the money; man. Be cool, man.” All that man shit. “Be cool or else you’re a dead nigger.”

  That sounded pretty good lying in the dark. Next to him, Arlene moved and he could hear her breathing.

  Make sure Leon Woody was there and give him some of it. See it? The Luger, a good-looking, mean-looking, no-bullshit handgun. “Hey, man, you know what we do down in Oklahoma to guys like you?”

  No, keep it straight. Who gives a shit where you came from or what they do in Oklahoma? He didn’t even know what they did.

  Keep it personal. He liked both of them. Leon Woody, too, with his little girl, he seemed like a nice guy and couldn’t picture him shooting Billy Ruiz in the back.

  He respected them.

  But he also wanted them to respect him. And that was the whole thing. His only option.

  It was about four thirty in the morning by the time he figured out a way to do it that might work.

  At seven thirty he woke up Arlene and said, “Come on, you’re moving to a motel. And this time don’t leave a forwarding address, okay?”

  “They’re sitting there in their swimming trunks taking a sunbath,” Cal said. “These two assholes, it hadn’t even entered their heads something was funny.”

  He was talking to his superior now, Detective Lieutenant Walter Shea, in the lieutenant’s office at 1300.

  “How about the stolen gun?” Walter said. “Somebody’s been doing some thinking.”

  “I’m pretty sure it was for protection,” Cal said. “Stickley’s. In case the blackies came after him. But now things are different, a little more interesting.”

  “You didn’t search his place, then.”

  “What do I want to find the gun for? I’d have to arrest him.”

  “I’m grateful you’re telling me all this,” Walter said, “so I won’t feel my twenty-seven years were wasted.”

  Cal nodded politely. “Yes sir, I can use all the experienced advice I can get.”

  “Emory suggest you go for a deal?”

  “What’s to make a deal about? I think they realize now they don’t have anything to sell. Names, yes. Except that if Frank Ryan starts naming names, somebody’s going to name his name right back. Because I’ll bet you eighty-seven thousand bucks he was in the office when the window washer got it.”

  “So where are we?”

  “Still watching,” Cal said. “But I think the clowns are about ready to come out and put on a show.”

  26

  “YOU TELL HIM MY COURT date’s tomorrow,” Stick said, “so if he’s worried and wants to talk, it’s got to be today.”

  “You were right there, you should’ve picked up two of these.” Frank was sitting hunched over, examining the Walther, hefting it, feeling its weight, looking at its Luger profile in his hand. The box of cartridges was on the coffee table.

  “Why would I get one for you?” Stick said. “I don’t even know what fucking side you’re on. I believe you told me more’n once you knew him a hell of a lot longer than you’d known me.”

  “That’s what we should do,” Frank said, “get in an argument. It just seems like, I don’t know, we need more time to get ready.”

  “If he’s setting up a hit on me, it’s got to be today,” Stick said. “Tomorrow I’m on the stand, you know that.”

  “But he doesn’t know it,” Frank said.

  “Right. That’s why he’s going to have to move fast once you tell him and he finds out, I mean if he still wants me. I’ll tell you something else I’ve been thinking,” Stick said. “If he wants me, I bet he wants you, too. Why not? He’s not going to split with you, he’s already jacked you out of a cut. But if you found it out—he doesn’t know what you’d do. So if he sets me up, why not set you up, too? Two birds. Two dumb fucking dumb white birds. I bet he says he wants you to be there.”

  Frank called Sportree and told him about Stick’s court date.

  Sportree said, “Yeah? Hey, yeah, I’d like to talk to him, as I told you. Let me get back to you.”

  Frank hung up.

  Stick said, “He calls back, then we wait, then we call him back.”

  Frank said, “Jesus, I hope it works.”

  Stick said, “You hope it works? If it doesn’t work, we’re fucking dead.”

  “He didn’t say anything about me being there.”

  “Wait,” Stick said.

  Sportree called back in twenty minutes. He said, “How about I meet both of you—”

  Holding the phone, Frank looked over at Stick.

  “—but I prefer you didn’t come here, your friend going to court and everything, you understand?”

  “Where?” Frank asked.

  “How about—I mean you sure you can do it, nobody following you—how about this motel, call the Ritz Motel, out Woodward near that hospital, almost to Pontiac. Look for Leon’s car, light-blue ’74 Continental. Make it nine o’clock.”

  “Just a minute.” Frank put his hand over the mouthpiece and looked at Stick. “He wants to meet at a motel out by Pontiac, tonight.”

  “We walk in and Leon or some jig steps out of the can shooting,” Stick said, “while Sportree’s home watching Redd Foxx. I thought he was going to say some back alley, or an empty building. Tell him we’ll meet him in front of the police station, talk in the car.”

  “Come on,” Frank said. He was nervous holding the phone with Sportree on the other end.

  “Tell him we’ll think it over and get back to him. That’s good enough.”

  Frank told him.

  Sportree said, “Hey, don’t be too long. I send somebody to pick you up.”

  Frank hung up. “He says he’ll send somebody for us.”

  “I bet he will. One thing we know,” Stick said, “no, two things. He can’t take a chance doing it at his place. He’s got too much going on there. And we’re not going to get in with a gun. So you see any other way?”

  “No, I don’t guess so.”

  “Let’s get going, then.”

  “Okay,” Frank said. He laid the Luger on the coffee table and got up. “What’re you going to wear?”

  A half hour later Frank called him again from the Graeco-Roman lobby of the Vic Tanny on Eight Mile Road, almost directly across from Sportree’s Royal Lounge.

  “We decided it’d be better if we came to your place,” Frank said.

  “I told you,” Sportree said. “Man could be followed, he bring ’em here. You want to get me in the shit? Frank, hey, use your head.”

  “No, we decided,” Frank said. “Get Leon there so he can listen. We’ll leave now and be very careful of tails and be there in about a half hour.”

  “Frank, listen to me—”

  Frank hung up. He reached into the big pocket of his safari jacket for a pack of Marlboros.

  “He doesn’t like it.”

  “I bet he doesn’t,” Stick said. Stick was wearing his light-green sport coat he’d bought in Florida. The right side hung straight, tight over his shoulder, with the Luger filling the inside pocket. They lighted cigarettes and stood by the showcase window, looking out across the parking lot and the flow of traffic on the wide, parkway-divided lanes of Eight Mile. It was a long way over there to Sportree’s and the traffic
was getting heavier. They concentrated on the cars that, every once in a while, pulled into Sportree’s side lot.

  A young guy with a build came over from the counter in his tight Vic Tanny T-shirt and tight black pants and asked them if they were members. Frank said they were thinking about joining but were waiting for a friend. The Vic Tanny guy invited them to make themselves comfortable and when their friend came he’d be happy to show them around and describe the different membership plans.

  “It might not be a bad idea,” Frank said. “Work out two, three times a week, get some steam or a sauna.”

  “I could never do pushups and all that shit,” Stick said. “I don’t know, it sounds good, but it’s so fucking boring. The thing to do, just don’t eat so much.”

  “I don’t eat much,” Frank said.

  “You drink too much. You know how many calories are in a shot? What you put away, those doubles, it’s a couple of full meals.”

  “What do you do, count my drinks?”

  “I can’t,” Stick said. “I can’t count that fast.”

  “Jesus—” Frank said and stopped, looking out the window. “There we are. Light-blue ’74 Continental. Son of a bitch, how does he afford a car like that?”

  “Maybe he lives in it,” Stick said.

  They watched the car pull off Eight Mile into Sportree’s parking lot. A half minute later Leon Woody appeared, coming around front to the upstairs entrance, and went in.

  Frank said, “What if there’s a guy in the lot parks the cars?”

  “I haven’t seen anybody,” Stick said, “but if there is, we go home and think of something else quick—”

  “Maybe we should give it a little more time. I told him a half hour.” Frank looked over at the Vic Tanny guy behind the counter, talking on the phone now. “Let’s let him give us the tour. Maybe there’s some broads in the sauna.”

  No parking-lot attendant, no one coming in behind them or going out. There was nothing to it. Frank pulled the T-bird into an empty space next to Leon’s light-blue Continental. They got out. Frank waited, standing by the rear deck of the T-bird.

  Stick walked around to the right side of Leon’s car and opened the front door. He looked at Frank.

  Frank nodded.

  Stick took the Luger out of his coat pocket, felt under the seat to make sure it was clear and there was enough room, and slipped the Luger under there, carefully, and closed the door. He opened the rear door and reached in to feel under the front seat, closed the door and nodded as he walked out to where Frank was waiting.

  “You’re sure?” Frank said.

  “You can reach it from both sides.”

  “I mean that we’ll take his car. Shit, or if we’re going anywhere.”

  “I can’t see Sportree driving, exposing his plates,” Stick said, “I can’t see him letting us drive, meet them. What if we made a stop at the hardware store?”

  “If we go anywhere,” Frank said. “That’s the big if.”

  “No, we’re going somewhere,” Stick said. “That’s the only thing I’m sure of. Probably after it gets dark. And we’re going to make it easy for him by acting as dumb as he thinks we are, playing into his hands and giving him a reason for taking us out, so he won’t have to use force.”

  They were walking out of the lot toward the front.

  “There’s an old Indian saying,” Stick said: “You can’t judge a guy until you’ve walked a mile in his moccasins. I haven’t been able to do that, but last night, all night long. I imagined being in that fucker’s red patent-leather highheel shoes, remembering everything I could about him—the way he talked, the way he moved, how he’s kept himself out of the whole deal. He’s not going to have a lot of noise in his place and get blood on his carpeting. We’re going somewhere.”

  “And I’m supposed to offer to drive,” Frank said.

  “Don’t forget that.”

  “And what if they say okay?”

  “We’re fucked,” Stick said.

  Leon Woody opened the door. He said, “How you doing?” and stepped aside. Sportree was in the doorway leading to the kitchen, pointing a pump-action shotgun at them.

  Frank said, “What’re you doing?” getting fear and amazement in his voice and not having to fake much of it.

  “I want to make sure we still friends,” Sportree said. “Leon’s going to check you out, if that’d be all right.”

  “I don’t get it,” Frank said. Stick liked the dumb look on his face.

  Leon did a good job. He felt every part of them where a gun or a knife could be hidden, and felt their coats, under the arms and the lining as well as the pockets. They let him, not saying anything, Frank staring at Sportree.

  “Look like they still friends,” Leon said.

  Sportree turned with the shotgun and went into the kitchen. He came back out with two bottles, glasses, and a bowl of ice, saying, “Since you all’re here.” When they were sitting down and had their drinks, Sportree looked over at Stick.

  “What kind of deal they make you?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Stick said, “they haven’t said a word about a deal. They haven’t made an attempt, physically, to get anything out of me either. The way it stands, I’m going to the exam tomorrow with no reason to say a word about anything that’s not any of their business. All they got on me, I lifted a doll box off a shelf. If I was conspiring to walk out with it, they have to prove it.”

  Sportree got a Jamaican out of a gold-leaf box and lit it, looking at Stick.

  Leon Woody said, “They know you part of something else.”

  “They got to prove that, too,” Stick said.

  “They ain’t going to let you go.”

  “Then they’ll have to make up something, and they’d still have to prove it.”

  “You saying you pure and they ain’t nothing to worry about?”

  “I’m saying I’ve played this straight so far,” Stick said, “but I’m not saying you don’t have anything to worry about. There seems to be a discrepancy in how many Brink’s sacks were in the doll box originally and how many were there when I picked it up.”

  “Say what?” Leon Woody sounded a little surprised without changing his bearded African expression.

  “Five went in,” Stick said. “Three came out sometime before I got there.”

  “How you know that?” Sportree asked him.

  “Because I can add and subtract,” Stick said. “I think two from five is three. There were two sacks in the box when I looked in it, right before they stuck the gun in my face.”

  “This comes as something new,” Sportree said, at ease with his cigarette. “You never mention it before.”

  “I wasn’t there,” Stick said. “I didn’t know how many sacks went in. Frank and I are talking yesterday, not till yesterday he mentions five. I said, ‘Five? There were only two.’ ”

  Sportree smiled and shook his head, his gaze moving to Frank.

  “What’d you think, Frank, he said that?”

  “What’d I think?” He had a good on-the-muscle edge to his tone. “First I couldn’t believe it. Then I thought, Shit, somebody’s fucking somebody. Guy I thought was a friend of mine.”

  “Oh my,” Sportree said, shaking his head again. “It can get complicated, huh? People get the wrong idea.” He looked at Stick. “What the police think?”

  “I don’t know what they think,” Stick said. “They didn’t discuss it with me. Maybe they think it’s still in the store somewhere, I don’t know. The thing is, we know it isn’t.” He kept his gaze on Sportree.

  “Yeah, maybe they think it is,” Sportree said, squinting in the smoke, thoughtful. “But I doubt it. See, that’s why we have to be so careful—you coming here—man, they could be watching every move you make.”

  Frank said, still on the muscle, “I think we’re getting off the subject, how we got fucked by a guy I thought was a friend.”

  “Frank, did we know Stick was going to get arrested?” Sportree waited
, patient, like he was speaking to a child.

  “No.”

  “So he’d come up here with two sacks, wouldn’t he?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you think I was going to do?”

  “I don’t know—shit, I don’t get it at all. But you took the three sacks.”

  “As a precaution,” Sportree said. “Marlys walked out with them in a box the next day. This was something I thought of after. If she can do it, fine. If they too many cops around, we wait to do it like we planned it. But see, then we have two chances and two’s better than one.”

  “How come,” Frank said, “you didn’t call us after, say you had it?”

  “Frank, you never give us your number till the other day. Unlisted, right? Marlys went out there to look for you. Said she couldn’t find you. Probably out with those chicks.”

  “Shit.”

  “Come on, Frank, ain’t no scam. We get it, man, we busy counting. Shit, you want to know what eighty-seven thousand look like? You and him supposed to come by the next day. Only he get arrested.”

  “I came by,” Frank said, “the day after. You never mention it. Shit, we’re sitting here talking, you already got it.”

  “Hey, man, listen to me. I’m telling you now, ain’t I? Because I know I can trust him. But he’s in jail, good friend of yours, I don’t know what he’s going to say. I don’t know you two been talking or not. So I keep quiet till the smoke begin to settle and I see where I’m at, see where you and him are at. Okay, now everything’s cool. He don’t say a word tomorrow, he walk out and we split the kitty.”

  “Not tomorrow,” Stick said, “right now. I can still go to trial. I could get ninety days, shit, a year, I don’t know. I don’t want to come out and not find anybody around.”

  “We be here,” Sportree said. “Man, nobody’s going nowhere.”

  “Today,” Stick said. “Right now. I take care of mine, you take care of yours.”

  “I’d just as soon do it now,” Frank said. “I get nervous thinking about that much money sitting someplace, not making any interest.”