Authors: Elmore Leonard
"You want privacy," Armand said to her, "you close the door. But I don't think it's what you want." He could see her thighs where the pink robe was open, pure white thighs. "You know what else I think? You don't have nothing on under your robe."
"That's why I happen to be getting dressed," Donna said, "if you don't mind. What're you, still hungry?"
"Not now. Maybe I will be later."
"I like to see a man enjoy his food. Richie hardly picks at his."
She raised her foot to the edge of the bed, ready to slip her toes into the panty hose she held rolled up. Now he could see the underneath part of her thigh and a dark place that could be only darkness or a dark place that was part of her. He said, "You've been getting dressed for two hours, parading around here. I think you been waiting for Richie to leave."
Donna worked her foot into the panty hose before looking up at him. "Dick comes back, like he might've forgot something? You're in big trouble."
Calling him Dick. Armand almost smiled. "What do you think he'd do, shoot me?" Armand moved into the room toward the bed and Donna raised her face, stretching her skinny white neck, her eyes unfocused and naked-looking without the glasses, eyebrows darker than her hair, that pile of deep gold, all of it sprayed hard as a rock, shining in the light.
Armand said, "I think you like guys that shoot people, guys that pack a gun. I got one. You like to see my gun?"
"What choice do I have," Donna said. Next thing, Armand heard her sigh and saw her shoulders go slack for a moment as she said, "Well, there's nothing I can do, you're way bigger than I am." Next thing, she was taking off the robe, pulling the panty hose from her foot and letting them fall on the floor. Lying back on the peacock spread, looking up at him with those cockeyed naked eyes, Donna said, "I guess you're gonna do whatever you want and there's no way on earth I can stop you." She paused a moment, still looking at him, and said, "You want to turn the light out or leave it on?"
Earlier in the day Carmen had said, "I've probably done things that made you mad. Maybe once or twice in the past twenty years? But you never once have raised your voice to me, ever. I think about it, I say to myself, well, if he can walk a ten-inch beam way up on a structure, he has control of his feelings, he's not the type to get emotional. But then out on the porch yelling at the police you're a completely different person."
Wayne said, "On the porch? The porch is only five feet off the ground. I'll tap-dance on the porch if I feel like it. I'll do any goddamn thing I want on the porch."
Carmen tried to picture that, Wayne taking out his anger on those old gray-painted boards, stomping on them, yelling--that's what it was, his anger and frustration coming out, but it still surprised her. Now every few minutes he'd get up from the sofa and go to the window, keeping track of the police surveillance.
"That was the township cops. They're the ones light up the whole goddamn house." He stood with his back to Carmen, looking out at the night.
She wished he'd sit down.
"You going to work tomorrow?"
"Not till they get those guys."
"We could go away."
"Where?"
"Stay with Mom, she's got plenty of room."
That turned him around.
"I'm kidding," Carmen said, "relax." She watched him, for a moment there on the edge of panic, move to the sofa and slump into it. "Don't you know when I'm kidding?"
"I'd become alcoholic in about two days," Wayne said, "living with her. Maybe one day."
"She loves you too." Carmen rocked back and forth in the Kentucky rocking chair. "You want to turn on the news?"
Wayne glanced at his watch. "It's not on yet."
"You want to know what I don't understand?"
"When you kid," Wayne said, "it's supposed to be funny. That's the whole idea."
Carmen rocked some more, thinking about what she wanted to say. After about a minute she said, "There's a lot I don't understand. But you know what bothers me?"
This time Wayne said, "What?"
"The FBI thinks the Mafia's behind the extortion. Or might be, 'cause it's the kind of thing they do. Or they'd like to believe the Mafia's behind it. I said to the FBI man, 'But Armand's from Toronto. Are we talking about their Mafia or ours?' "
"He thought you were being funny," Wayne said, "calling them ours."
Carmen paused, looking at him, but let it go.
"Anyway, he said it could be either one. What they have for sure is a suspect known to work for the Toronto Mafia driving a car that's registered to a company they know is a front for organized crime. Armand was here last Friday, the same day a man, also known to be a member of the Toronto Mafia, was shot and killed in a Detroit hotel, with a young girl. They don't know who she is but they think Armand did it because . . . I guess because he was here and it's what he does. Or they want to believe he did it. And they want us to realize that if it's the Mafia, then we have more to worry about than just the two guys finding us. Is that the way you see it?"
Wayne nodded. "I guess."
Carmen rocked some more, thinking, then stopped.
"Okay, I asked if it seemed likely the Mafia would come to Algonac to pick on a real estate company. Scallen said it wasn't unlikely. They could come here duck hunting, see a company that's making a lot of money, not much police protection in the area . . . Okay, then he said it was possible Armand worked it out on his own, since he no doubt has the experience. I said, 'But he didn't arrive till last Friday. Someone called Nelson Davies before that, to demand the money.' Scallen says yes, and it was probably Richie Nix. But extortion isn't his kind of crime, so they think he was hired to do it, by Armand. Just as they think Richie was told by Armand to kill Lionel. They found Richie's fingerprints on Lionel's boat, but not Armand's. But killing the girl in the store, they think Richie must've done on his own. Scallen said something about his pattern, he robs, he kills. But Armand--he said the fact that Armand wasn't seen before last Friday doesn't mean he wasn't here."
Carmen paused and Wayne said, "Yeah . . . ?"
"That's the part that bothers me."
"What part?"
"They talked to people on Walpole Island who said Armand came to visit his grandmother. That seems pretty weird, a man who kills for a living comes all the way from Toronto to visit his grandmother?"
"It's not that far."
"That's not what I mean"--Carmen shaking her head--"I'm thinking if he was in Detroit anyway, last Friday . . . He didn't even know the grandmother had died, he stopped by." Carmen made a face, frowning. "I just have a feeling he wasn't around here before Friday, or someone would've seen him, his car. But Richie Nix was here, he's the one who called Nelson. Ten thousand dollars or I'll kill you--and that's who I think started the whole thing. Richie. Why not?"
Wayne shrugged, not appearing to give it much thought. "What difference does it make who started it? We're deep in it either way."
"Well, you think Armand's the one to look out for," Carmen said. "I think Richie's a lot scarier than Armand." After a moment she said, "I can just see his handwriting. I'll bet it's a mess, full of things that show poor mental health."
Richie had crept up on the gas station, let the van coast into the drive with the passenger-side window down, shotgun ready, and found the place closed for the night. Dark except for a low-watt light in the front part. Shit. He was going to do this one for the Bird. Hack off some of the gas-station guy's hair, if he had any under that hunting cap, and bring it back. See, Bird? This's how you do it. He could still mess the place up, blow out the plate-glass window. Or do it on the way back, with the new car. He could see the Bird shaking his head as he told him, recalled the Bird tapping the side of his head with a finger and then his forehead and Richie thought, Hey, shit. All of a sudden having a better idea than shooting up a gas station.
It took him ten minutes to run down the river road almost to Algonac before cutting inland through a residential part, slowed down coming to the 7-Eleven, open and doing business, braked--it was an idea--and took off again grinning. The Bird'd have a shit fit. "You went back there?" The Bird not appreciating spur-of-the-moment moves. No sense of humor, never smiled or nothing.
The road the Colsons lived on was becoming familiar, even in the dark of night with only a half-assed moon, he'd run it enough times. Headlights were coming at him and he slowed to fifty; getting close anyway. It was a cop car. Richie didn't see what kind, either county or township; it wasn't state, all dark blue. And there coming up was the house. There was the ironworker's pickup in the drive, no other cars around, least that he could see. Lights on in a couple of downstairs front windows, probably the living room. Richie drove past, followed a bend in the road, went up about a hundred yards and took his time U-turning, thinking it didn't look like any cops were around. Thinking yeah, but they could be hiding. Thinking, Hey, are you pussy or what? Went back around the bend and stopped in the road in front of the house.
Richie aimed the shotgun out his side of the van, fired at one of the lit-up windows and heard glass shatter as he pumped, aimed, fired at the other one, blew it out, threw the shotgun behind him inside the van and took off, tires screaming. He might not've hit anybody, but at least they'd know the truth of that old saying, shit happens. When you least expect, too.
Chapter
10
THE WALKING BOSS on the One-Fifty Jefferson project was reading blueprints in the front part of the steel-company trailer. He didn't move or look up when the raising-gang foreman came in and said, "We got a man froze-up."
The walking boss, still bent over the print board, said, "Shit. Who is it?"
"Colson."
Now the walking boss straightened in a hurry, turned to the raising-gang foreman standing there in his tan coveralls and hard hat on backward, said, "You're kidding me," and went over to the big window facing the job.
"Where is he?"
"Up on top. That far section toward the river. See?"
They both gazed up at the structure, at the network of columns and beams and girders, a tower crane rising out of the center, the building skeleton exposed, no outside curtain walls up yet, but dark in there with every other level floored to ten, open iron above that.
"I see him," the walking boss said.
A figure on the crossbar of a goalpost, that's what it looked like. Way up on the highest section, standing on a girder between two columns that stuck up against the sky.
"He's not moving."
"That's what I'm telling you," the raising-gang foreman said. "He's froze-up."
"Wayne never froze in his life."
"Well, he's been sitting there, I don't know how long."
"He's standing now."
"He was sitting before, like he was paralyzed."
"You yell at him?"
"Sure, I yelled at him. He heard me."
"He look down?"
"Yeah, he looked down. Maybe he's trying to move is why he stood up."
"Shit," the walking boss said. "There's something wrong with him. He was off a few days, he come back--Wayne ordinarily connects, you know that."
"I know it."
"He come back I had to put him on bolting up."
"I know it, but he didn't seem to mind. He didn't say nothing."
"No, that's what I mean, there's something wrong with him."
"Maybe it's that girl was shot he's having some trouble with."
"I heard guys talking about it," the walking boss said. "I didn't see it in the paper."
"Yeah, it was in, but way in the back. It didn't mention Wayne. I guess it was in the paper up where he lives one of the guys saw, had more about it."
"You think he's eating his lunch?"
"You can see he isn't doing nothing but standing there," the raising-gang foreman said. "He's froze-up. He wouldn't stand there like that if he wasn't froze-up. Would he?"
"I don't know, it never happened to me."
"It never happened to me either, but I've seen it enough. We got to talk him down."
"Who was he working with?"
"I think Kenny. Yeah, Wayne had the yo-yo, so Kenny was holding the roll for him. I saw Kenny come down. I think he went someplace to eat."
The raising-gang foreman followed the walking boss through a doorway to the back half of the trailer where some of the crew were eating their lunch at a wooden table. The walking boss was a young guy about thirty-five. His hard hat was cleaner than most, but he wore it backward like everybody else. He said to the guys at the table, "Anybody talk to Kenny?" They were all looking up at him, but didn't know what he meant.
"Wayne hasn't come down. He's up there like he might've froze." The walking boss raised both hands. "Wait a minute now, sit still. Did Kenny mention to anybody Wayne was acting strange?"
"He didn't say nothing 'cause he wouldn't, not to anybody else," one of the ironworkers said, "but he almost got pitched off. Kenny did."
"You saw it?"
"I was below. I saw him and Wayne moving positions. I think Wayne had just put another fifty feet of hose on his yo-yo. What must've happened, he throws it out to get some slack, not looking what he's doing, and the rubber trips Kenny coming along behind him. I heard Kenny yell--that's when I looked up, I see him grab hold of the beam, he's okay, but he lets go of the beater he's carrying. I'm looking up, shit, I see this ten-pound sledge coming at me. It hits the deck plate, bang, missed me by only about a foot. I see Kenny, he's down flat on the beam now, the rubber hanging over it right there--you could see it must've tripped him. And here's Wayne looking at him like, the hell are you doing hugging that beam? He doesn't even know he almost killed his partner. I wasn't gonna say nothing," the ironworker said to the walking boss, "but you asked."
* * *
Last summer when they came downtown to one of the P'Jazz concerts at the Pontchartrain Hotel, it was to see Lonnie Liston Smith, this whole block was a parking lot. They drove past a month ago, it was excavated and the piers laid, the foundation. A big sign said it would become One-Fifty Jefferson West.
Now here he was sitting a hundred and something feet above it on a ten-inch girder. Sitting again, straddling it, feet resting on the girder's lower flange. Get tired of sitting he'd stand up, still looking out at the Detroit River, feeling the sun and a breeze that would become wind as the job rose higher. If he looked at the city skyline he'd think of work. The same if he looked down, he'd see the iron they'd shaken out, ready to hook on to the crane, and he'd be distracted by the job, all the equipment down there, the stacks of floor deck, the compressors, kegs of bolts on pallets, the steel-company trailer, knowing the guys were in there eating their lunch . . .
This was what he needed, to be by himself high up on the iron, after two days of cops everywhere he looked, different police groups coming and going, their presence bringing people out from Algonac to creep their cars past the house. He'd watched cops digging buckshot out of theliving-room wall, cops poking around in the bushes along the road and in the woods. Their neighbor across the street, the sod farmer, called to ask if there was some kind of problem. Wayne said, "If I find out what they're looking for I'll let you know." He hung up and Carmen said, "Evidence," gritting her teeth, irritated because he made remarks loud enough to be overheard.
Like when he said, "A glass eye in a duck's ass can see they don't know what they're doing," and a couple of cops gave him their deadpan don't-fuck-with-me cop look.
One thing led to another. Carmen mentioned the framed duck prints that had been shot off the living-room wall and wrecked, saying that was one way to get rid of them.
"If you didn't like the duck prints," Wayne asked her, "what'd you put them up for?"
"If I didn't, who would? Think about it. What do you do around here?"
"I brush-hog the field."
"So you can watch for deer. That's like saying you clean your shotgun."
"I thought you liked those duck prints. They been hanging there for five years."
"Don't tell me."
"You should've said something."
"Who swept up the broken glass?"
Getting picky. He should've told her he didn't give a shit about the duck prints. The only reason they were up, her mom had given them as a present. He was more irritated than ever by then, though not at Carmen. This had nothing to do with the goddamn duck prints. Carmen knew it too.
She said, "This is dumb."
So he eased back saying, "Okay, I won't make any more observations or remarks."
She said, "How much you want to bet?"
He tried, he kept quiet, made coffee for the cops and referred to them as Deputy or Officer when they came up on the side porch for a cup. He even tried to be cordial to the tight-assed county deputy who had asked him in the real estate office if he had an attitude problem. Wayne said to him on the porch, "Well, at least we know those two guys are still around."
"How do we know that?" the deputy said.
"They shot our windows out, didn't they?"
"We don't know it was the same guys," the deputy said.
"If you don't, then I was right," Wayne said, "you don't know shit."
Carmen got him upstairs, faced him with her arms folded and said, "You having fun? Why do you like to antagonize them?"
He shook his head and frowned, wanting her to believe he couldn't help it. "I don't know what it is. There's just something about those guys that irritates me. Cops and insurance salesmen."
Now he saw Carmen join him in a frown, sympathetic, he was pretty sure. If she didn't understand him it would be the first time in their married life. She said, "Why don't you get away from here for a while? Go somewhere. Go back to work tomorrow."
He said, "I don't know if I should leave you alone."
Carmen said, "If you call four different police departments hanging around here being alone."
Having your windows shot out by gunfire was a hair-raising experience. Carmen yelled his name as it happened, but she didn't scream or lose control. After, when he said, "They're just trying to scare us," she said, well, they were doing a pretty good job, in that dry tone of hers. She said if they were that dumb, to drive by and shoot at the house, the police shouldn't have any trouble finding them. Wayne didn't comment on that.
The State Police investigator arrived as he was leaving this morning in the pickup. Wayne had to wait while the guy thought about it, saying he wasn't sure he liked the idea; he'd have to send a man along. Wayne said, "Up on the iron with me?"
* * *
He stared out at the river and Canada from the top of the structure thinking:
Okay, after a while nothing happens, the cops get tired and clear out. Now it's between him and them. He knows they're coming, but doesn't let on to Carmen. Except he'd have to stay home and she'd ask him what was wrong.
"Nothing."
"Then how come you aren't going to work?"
She would know, yeah, but that was all right, it wouldn't change anything, except she'd be scared and want to call the cops again. Anyway . . .
Okay, it's early morning, first light, Carmen reaches over and touches him. "Wayne . . . ?"
And he says, "I heard it, honey. Lie still, okay? Stay right here."
"They're in the house."
"I know they are."
He picks up the Remington from the side of the bed and slips into Matthew's room so that when they come up out of the stairwell he's behind them. The stairs squeak, here they come. Their head and shoulders appear. They're careful, not making a sound as they reach the top, and then stop dead as they hear him rack a slug into the breach. "Morning, fellas." Wham . . . wham. Fires and pumps fast as they're turning with their guns.
The cops accuse him of shooting them in the back. No, that would get too complicated. He'd think of another situation. Okay . . .
The two guys are still outside when he hears them. That's it--he slips downstairs to the kitchen door, opens it a little. Pretty soon two shapes appear out of the woods. As they get behind the chickenhouse he walks out on the porch . . .
Wayne stopped it there. He liked the idea of getting behind them and saying something, taking them by surprise.
Okay, he sees them in the woods and runs out to the chickenhouse, yeah, and is waiting for them inside as they come past it, heading for the house. All the first part would be the same, telling Carmen to stay in bed. Or now he tells her to stay in the house. They go by, he lets them get about ten yards and then steps out of the chickenhouse behind them, that's it, and goes, "You boys looking for somebody?"
"You boys looking for me?"
"You guys looking for me?"
"Can I help you?"
Something like that. They come around with their guns and he's got the Remington on them hip high, wham, hits one, the Indian, pumps and fires, wham, knocks the other one on his ass, those mag slugs blowing them right off their feet. Or he waits till they get the ten yards, steps out, all he says is . . .
"Looking for somebody?"
He's inside having bacon and eggs as the squad cars arrive flashing their lights. They come because Carmen calls 911 while he's in the chickenhouse. That would work. He steps out on the porch . . .
"You're a little late, fellas."
The cops are looking around. "Where are they?"
"Right over there, where I shot them."
The star asshole sheriff's deputy is standing there. Say to him, "You gonna take me in?"
Or maybe something about doing their work for them, without sounding too much like a smartass.
From his perch Wayne looked east along the riverfront to the glass towers of the Renaissance Center, a job that took them seven hundred feet up when he was an apprentice. Get through that one you could work anywhere. The worst winter of his life, scraping ice off the iron before you dared walk upright. He began to think:
Okay, it's winter, time has passed, the cops are long gone, but you're still hanging around the house, making excuses there's work you want to do, well, or you don't feel good, something. Anyway time passes, Carmen wants to know what's going on. Nothing. Oh, yeah? You're up to something. No, I'm not. Yes, you are, what is it?
And you say, "I'm gonna find them."
She can't believe it. "But they're gone."
"No, they aren't."