Not sounding too upset.
"Ramona Williams," Max said, "she dips snuff. I've written her a few times. She has a tendency, she gets mad when she's drinking, to hit people with hammers, baseball bats. . . . You get along okay?"
"She offered to clean my apartment for forty dollars and do the windows on the inside."
Sounding serious now.
Max shifted around in his chair. "She was advising you, huh? ... To do what?"
"I don't know-I guess what I need is a lawyer. Find out what my options are. So far, I can cooperate and get probation, maybe. Or I can stand mute and get as much as five years. Does that sound right?"
"You mean just, or accurate? I'd say if you're tried and found guilty you won't get more than a year and a day. That's state time, prison."
"Great."
"But they won't want to take you to trial. They'll offer you simple possession, a few months county time, and a year or two probation." Max took a sip of his drink, bourbon over crushed ice. "You were brought up once before. Didn't that tell you anything? You ever get hooked on that stuff ... I wrote a woman last year, a crack addict. I saw her again the other day in court. She looked like she'd had a face transplant."
"I don't do drugs," Jackie said. "I haven't even smoked grass in years."
"You were carrying the forty-two grams for somebody else."
"Apparently. I knew I had the money, but not the coke."
"Who packs your suitcase, the maid?"
She said, "You're as much fun as the cops."
In her quiet tone, looking right at him in cocktail lounge half-light with those sparkly green eyes, and he said, "Okay, you don't know how it got in your bag."
It wasn't good enough. She sipped her drink, not seeming to care if he believed her or not.
So he started over. He said, "I figured out the other day I've written something like fifteen thousand bonds since I've been in business. About eighty percent of them for drug offenses or you could say were drug-related. I know how the system works. If you want, I can help you look at your options."
She surprised him.
"You're not tired of it?"
"I am, as a matter of fact." Max let it go at that; he didn't need to hear himself talk. "What about you? You spend half your life up in the air?"
"Even when I'm not flying," Jackie said. "I think I'm having trouble mid-lifing. At this point, with no idea where I'm going." She looked up at him, stubbing her cigarette out. "I know where I don't want to go."
Able to say things like that because he was older than she was by a dozen years. That was the feeling he got. He said, "Let's see if we can figure out what you should do. You want another drink?"
Jackie nodded, lighting a cigarette. One after another. Max gestured to the waitress to do it again. Jackie was looking at the piano player now, a middle-aged guy in a tux and an obvious rug working over the theme from Rocky.
She said, "The poor guy."
Max looked over. "He uses every one of those keys, doesn't he?" And looked at Jackie again. "You know who put the dope in your bag?"
She looked at him for a moment before nodding. "But that's not what this is about. They were waiting for me."
"It wasn't a random search?"
"They knew I was carrying money. They even knew the amount. The one who searched my bag, Tyler, didn't do much more than look at the money. 'Oh, I'd say there's fifty thousand here. What would you say?' Not the least bit surprised. But all they could do was threaten to hand me over to Customs, and I could see they didn't want to do that."
"Get tied up in federal court," Max said. "They were hoping you'd tell them about it."
"What they did was stall, till they lucked out and found the coke." She raised her glass and then held it. "You have to understand, they were as surprised as I was. But now they had something to use as leverage."
"What'd they ask you?"
"If I knew a man named Walker, in Freeport. They mentioned a Jamaican ..."
The waitress came with their drinks.
"Beaumont Livingston," Max said.
Jackie stared at him while the waitress picked up their empty glasses and placed the drinks on fresh napkins, while the waitress asked if they'd care for some mixed nuts, and shook her head when Max looked at her and waited until he told her no thanks and the waitress walked off.
"How do you know Beaumont?"
"I wrote him on Monday," Max said. "Yesterday morning they found him in the trunk of a car."
She said, "Ordell put up his bond?"
"Ten thousand, the same as yours."
She said, "Shit," and picked up her drink. "They told me what happened to him. . . . The federal agent, the way he put it, Beaumont got popped."
Max hunched over the table. "You didn't mention that. One of the guys was federal? What, DEA?"
"Ray Nicolet, he's with Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. I thought I told you." Jackie's gaze moved to the piano player. "Now it's 'The Sound of Music.' He likes big production numbers."
"When he starts to do 'Climb Every Mountain,'' Max said, "we're going someplace else." He felt animated and could have smiled, beginning to understand what this was about. He said, "Ray Nicolet-I don't know him, but I've seen his name on arrest reports. He's the one who wants you. He uses you to get a line on Ordell, makes a case, and takes him federal."
Max was pleased with himself.
Until Jackie said, "They never mentioned his name."
And it stopped him. "You're kidding."
"I don't think they know anything about him."
"They talked to Beaumont."
"Yeah, and what did he tell them?"
"Well, you know what Ordell's into, don't you?"
"I have a pretty good idea," Jackie said. "If it isn't alcohol or tobacco, what's left that would get an ATF guy after me?"
Max said, "He never told you he sells guns?"
"I never asked."
"That wouldn't stop him."
She said, "You want to argue about it?"
Max shook his head and watched as she leaned in closer, over her arms on the edge of the table, that gleam in her eyes.
"What kind of guns are we talking about?"
It gave him the feeling they were into something together here and he liked it and if she was putting him on, using him, so what.
He said, "You name it. We're living in the arms capital of America, South Florida. You can buy an assault rifle here in less time than it takes to get a library card. Last summer I wrote a guy on a dope charge. While he's out on bond they get him trying to move thirty AK-47s, the Chinese version, through Miami International going to Bolivia. You know what gun I'm talking about?" She shrugged, maybe nodding, and Max said, "It's a copy of the Russian military weapon. Couple of weeks ago there was a story in the paper, how the cops pulled a sting on a guy who was buying TEC-9s in Martin County, no waiting, and selling them to drug dealers in West Palm, Lake Worth, all convicted felons. There's a guy in Coral Springs sold cluster bombs to the Iraqis, he says before we went to war in the Gulf. I don't see Ordell into military hardware, but you never know. What amazes me about him, he's a bad guy, there's no doubt in my mind, but he's only had one conviction and that was twenty years ago."
"He told you that?"
"A friend of mine at the Sheriff's office ran his name. And Ordell's the kind of guy loves to talk about himself."
"Not to me," Jackie said. "When I first met him he was flying over to Freeport a lot, he said to gamble. He'd tell me how much he won, or lost. How much he paid for clothes ..."
"He hints around," Max said, "wants you to guess what he does. Tell him you think he deals in guns and watch his face, he'll give it away. Gets paid in the Bahamas, so he's dealing out of the country. You bring the payoff here on one of your flights ..." Max waited.
So did Jackie.
After a moment she said, "I used to bring over ten thousand at a time. Never more than that or any of my own money. I'd have to keep enough in my car fo
r parking, to get out of the airport."
"How many trips did you make?"
"Nine, with ten thousand."
"He's got that kind of money?"
"He wanted me to start bringing over a hundred thousand at a time."
Max said, "Jesus," in a whisper.
"He kept after me until I said okay, I'll bring whatever fits in a nine-by-twelve manila envelope and I want five hundred dollars. He said fine and arranged it. His friend Mr. Walker in Freeport gave me the envelope. ..."
"You didn't look inside to check?"
"For what? Walker said he put in fifty thousand. Fine. It could've been any amount. What he didn't mention was the baggie with forty-two grams in it."
Max said, "If you knew bringing in anything over ten thousand was risky, why not pack a hundred grand? What's the difference?"
"Whatever the amount, it had to fit in my flight bag and not hit you in the face if the bag was opened. That was the idea."
"Even ten thousand at a time," Max said, "you don't have to ask what he does to know he came by it illegally."
"You're right," Jackie said, "I don't have to ask, since I'm not with the IRS." She paused, still looking at him. "Every once in a while you sound like one of them. Not so much Tyler as Nicolet."
"I have trouble being myself with you," Max said. "At the Stockade you weren't sure I was a bail bondsman. You thought I might be a cop, didn't you? Trying to pull something sneaky."
"It crossed my mind," Jackie said.
"I spent ten years in law enforcement," Max said, "with the Sheriff's office. Maybe it still shows. Or the business I'm in, you tend to speak the same language."
She said, "You aren't by any chance hiring? I haven't missed work yet, I was off today. But if I can't leave the country I'm out of a job. And if I can't work I won't be able to hire a lawyer."
"Ask, they might give you permission."
"If I cooperate."
"Well, you have to give them something. You want to stay out of jail, don't you?"
"Yeah, but not as much as I want to stay out of the trunk of a car."
"I'm pretty sure," Max said, "whether you give them anything or not, they're gonna be watching you."
She hunched over the table again, intent. "I've been thinking, if all I can give them is a name, nothing about what he does, I don't have much to bargain with, do I?"
"Offer to help," Max said, "short of wearing a wire. That's all you have to do, show a willingness. Once they get him, and that's all they really care about, they're not gonna say, well, you didn't do enough, too bad. No, once they have Ordell, they'll get the state attorney to nolle pros your case and you'll be off the hook. That means they can refile in thirty to sixty days, but they won't. If they get him before you're arraigned, they'll let you off on an A-99, a no-file."
She said, "You're sure?"
"I can't guarantee it, no. But what else have you got?"
"Walk in and offer to help."
"Tell them who gives you the money, who you take it to, how much you get paid, all that."
"Name names."
"Your Mr. Walker, you'll have to give him up."
"Act contrite?"
"Play it straight."
He watched her now, Jackie staring at her cigarette as she rolled the tip of it in the ashtray, and he kept quiet, giving her time. But moments passed, Max felt himself running out of patience and said, "Where are you?"
She raised her head and he saw her eyes, that gleam, that look that could change his life if he let it.
She said, "You know something?" The gleam becoming a smile. "I might have more options than I thought."
Chapter 9
Louis walked into a liquor store on Dixie Highway in Lake Worth that Thursday evening. They had vodka now that was imported from Russia, from Poland, Sweden, fifteen to twenty bucks a fifth. They might've had it before he did his forty-six months at Starke, but Louis couldn't recall having seen any. He had always drunk the cheaper stuff.
Not anymore.
An older guy behind the counter came over to him saying, "What can I do you for?" Older but bigger than Louis, with a gray brush cut. The guy looked like a boozer; he hadn't shaved in a few days and was wearing a T-shirt with GOD BLESS AMERICA on it, the kind that was popular during the Persian Gulf War. The guy's belly had AMERICA stretched out of shape.
Louis said, "Let me have two fifths of that Absolut."
The guy reached to get them from the shelf and Louis stuck his right hand in the pocket of the dark blue suit coat he'd found in the closet and was wearing as a sporty jacket with his white T-shirt and khakis. As the guy turned with the bottles and placed them on the counter, Louis said, "And all the money you have in the till."
Now the guy was looking at Louis holding the pocket of the suit coat pointed at him. He didn't seem surprised by it. He rubbed a hand over the salt-and-pepper beard stubble on his jaw and said, "Why don't you take your finger out of there and stick it in your ass while I go get my shotgun." Shaking his head as he started for the back of the store. Louis got out of there.
So much for his new start.
He drove to Max Cherry's office and let himself in with the key he'd taken from Max's desk this morning. Optimistic then, feeling close to making his move. What he had to do now was put his mind to it, get serious. Ordell was right, he had nothing to lose. Louis went out to his car and got the tire iron from the trunk.
This afternoon he had driven all the way down to South Miami Beach, two and a half hours, to the Santa Marta on Ocean Drive near Sixth. The hotel was owned by Colombians and some of them hung out in the bar off the lobby. Louis walked in, saw four of them down the bar, one guy showing the others a dance step, shoulders hunched, hips moving to Latin riffs screaming out of hidden speakers. They looked up to see Louis and back to the guy dancing. That was it. Louis could put on a grin and walk up to them, hand out Max Cherry bail-bond cards. . . . He had come to make sure he was right, that he couldn't fake it with these people.
What he did, he turned around and walked up the street of art deco hotels, Miami Vice country, to the Cardozo and sat at a table on the sidewalk to have a vodka tonic. It was no more Louis's scene than the hotel where the Colombians hung out, but the show was better: all the tank tops and hundred-dollar pump-up basketball shoes. Louis had lived here ten years ago when old retired people from New York sat on the hotel porches wearing hats, their noses painted white, and boat-lift Cubans worked their hustles down the street. Five years ago when it was beginning to change he had returned to rob a bank not ten blocks from here, up by Wolfie's Deli. Now it was the hip place to be in South Florida. Guys with sunglasses in their hair posed skinny girls on the beach and photographed them. There was no place to park anymore on Ocean Drive. Louis had a couple more vodka tonics. He watched a dark-haired girl in leotards and heels coming along the sidewalk, a winner, and was about to put his hand out, ask if she wanted a drink, when he realized she was a guy wearing makeup and tits. That's how trendy it was now. What was he doing here? He wasn't a salesman who handed out bail-bond cards. If anyone asked him what he did he would have to say he robbed banks, even though the last one was almost five years ago.
What if, while he was in the neighborhood, he stopped by that bank on Collins again? It was the one where the girl handed him the dye pack.
Louis had another vodka tonic and wrote a note on a cocktail napkin. This is a stickup. Do not panic. ... He used another napkin to write or press a button ... He saw he would have to write much smaller to get in or I will blow your head off and something about the money, wanting only hundred-dollar bills and fifties. He started over with a clean napkin opened up and put down what he wanted to say. Perfect.
But by the time he paid his check, walked several blocks to his car, and drove up Collins Avenue to the bank, it was closed.
Last week he might have given up. Not today; he was making his move. Looking stupid to the guy in the liquor store didn't even set him back. It told him to, goddam
n it, do it right. Liquor stores, he knew, were never as easy as banks.
Louis used the tire iron to pry the lock off Max's gun cabinet in the meeting room with the office refrigerator and the coffee maker. Inside were four handguns and the nickel-plated Mossberg 500, the pistol-grip shotgun with the battery-operated laser scope. Louis felt his image changing as he got serious and chose the chromed Colt Python he knew was Winston's, a 357 Mag with an eight-inch barrel, big and showy. That should do it, and a couple of boxes of hollow points. But then thought, if he was going for show he might as well go all the way and took the Mossberg 500 too. Even with the laser scope the shotgun would fit under the coat he was wearing as a sporty jacket. Buttoned, the coat was snug on him and had the widest lapels Louis had ever seen. All JJ.'s clothes were like new but out of style, hanging twenty years in closets or packed in trunks while J.J. was in and out of the system. Ordell would never see this coat. Tomorrow he'd go to Burdine's or Macy's and get some new outfits. Nothing too bright, like Ordell's yellow sport coat, he wasn't feeling that showy. Something in light blue might be nice.
When Louis walked in the liquor store the second time, the guy with GOD BLESS AMERICA on his T-shirt rubbed his hand over his jaw and said, "Jesus Christ, don't tell me you're back."
Louis said, "Let me have two fifths of that Absolut," this time bringing the Mossberg out of the coat from under his left arm, the nickel plate gleaming in the overhead light, the red dot of the laser scope showing the bottles he wanted as he squeezed the grip.
The liquor store guy said, "You swipe that toy gun offa some kid?"
Louis said, "See the red dot?" He moved it off the Absolut, squeezed the trigger, and blew out three rows of the cheap stuff. Louis said, "It's real," Christ, with his ears ringing. "That's two fifths of Absolut, whatever you have in the till, and that wad in your hip pocket."
He felt good and had some vodka out of the bottle driving up Dixie, on his way to finding a motel, through living at JJ.'s, through hanging around the bail-bond office. . . . And realized, Christ, he had to go back there right now. Put the key in Max's desk and make it look like a break-in, or Max would know he did it. He should've taken all the guns. Max still might figure it out. Four years locked up, he was rusty, that's all. At least he knew what he had to do. Then keep going, ride it out. No stopping or getting off once you start. Wasn't that how Ordell said it?