That's okay, hon. Long as I know you're coming. Kathy put on jeans and a polo shirt, opened a can of beer and made herself a tunafish sandwich. Now she was hon. What was she supposed to call him, Big?
Dale's junkyard pickup was in front of the house when Kathy returned, almost six-thirty, starting to get dark. But it was Elvin in his cowboy hat and boots who opened the door.
Well, look it who's here. You come to check my wee-wee?
I want to talk to Dale.
Come on in. She moved past him into the dim living room and Elvin called out, Dale? Where are you, boy? He paused, listening, and said, I guess he ain't home. I just got back myself from a business deal.
Sounding like the judge. Both with that country-boy way of talking.
You have a job?
One's been offered me. A good'n too.
What kind of work?
That got a smile.
One that gives you peace a mind. Makes you feel good.
What does that mean?
Oh, nothing.
Playing with her. If he had a job he'd tell her.
You know where Dale might be?
I magine he's in town hunting beaver. Get himself some of the real thing fore he goes away.
Kathy turned to leave. He reached out to take her arm and she pulled it away saying, Don't touch me, Elvin. You try it again you're in trouble.
That got another smile. Elvin holding his hands up, innocent. I saved your butt the other night and you act like we're strangers. He moved past her, hands still raised. Come on, sit down a minute. Remember I said I'd tell you about this dink I wanted to shoot? Elvin eased his big frame into the sofa. The time I got the wrong guy?
Kathy said, Will it take long? Interested, but not wanting to show it.
Lemme ask you one. How many people you take care of ever killed anybody?
She came over to sit at the opposite end, not answering, on the edge of the sofa that smelled of mildew, aware of the stained walls, the bare light bulb in the lamp without a shade. It was behind Elvin's cowboy hat as she looked at him, waiting.
I'm the only one, huh? I'm your star you get for five years, if you make it. How long you been with Probation?
You want to tell me about someone you didn't shoot or someone you did, or what?
Both, Elvin said, smiling just a little. You heard of my brother Roland?
Is he in prison?
Elvin took his hat off saying, He's dead, and put it back on. Roland was working for the Eyetalians down in Miami when a woman shot him, said he broke into her house. See, the woman was married to an Eyetalian guy that died. Good-looking woman, wore sunglasses all the time, this hat with a big wide brim on it. Roland was taking care of her needs and this dink come along and edged his way in with her. On account of, see, she's got all kinds of money. It was her pulled the trigger, yeah, but was this dink set it up. He knew it was Roland in the house and told the woman it was somebody broke in. Cause he didn't have the nerve to do it hisself. Understand?
Kathy moved to get up. I have to go.
I'll cut it short, get to the good part where I find him tending bar and living in a two-bit motel on Dixie, up in Lake Park. That's all Niggerville there now and wasn't much better then. You know where I mean?
She said, Elvin, listen
He held up his hand. I'm there now, wait. I'm watching him, I know it's the guy. I'm deciding when to hit him when he takes off on me. I follow him, before I know it we're out on the Turnpike heading north and I'm thinking, shit, I could end up touring the country after this boy. Well, he turns in at the first plaza, you know, the rest stop? There wasn't hardly anybody there, it was late at night. I spot him going in the men's room, so I take a minute to check this .38 revolver I got on me. Now there's two doors to the men's, so I go in the one he did that takes you in where the toilets are Wait, I forgot to mention, there was a Greyhound bus pulling up as I come inside, so I know I don't have more than a half a minute.
Elvin squinted now, acting surprised, adjusting his hat.
I look around, there's nobody in the men's. I'm thinking, What's going on here? Till I notice, looking at the doors to the toilets, I see feet under one of em. So I walk over and bang on his door, start yelling, Come on out of there quick. The place is on fire.' I hear him, this voice saying, What? What?' and then I hear the toilet flush. Elvin grinning now. Far as he knows the place is burning up and he's in there flushing the toilet. I step back. Soon as the door starts to open I'm squeezing that trigger, wham, wham. See, I want him standing, but I want him to fall in there, not out in the open. I shot him four times in the heart.
Someone you never saw before, Kathy said.
Wait now. I didn't see him good then was the trouble. I run out, here's all these people coming off the bus. Five of em ID'd me.
They caught you right away?
Still on the Turnpike. Florida Highway Patrol ran me down. They take me in, want to know what I got against Ignacio Nieves. I said, Who's Ignacio Nieves?' Anyway that was the guy's name. The only thing I can figure, Elvin said, this dink knew I was on him. I follow him in that one men's room door to the toilets and he come out the other side from the washroom, giving me the slip. Don't matter killing the guy was an accident. I pled to second-degree, best deal I could make with a semi-smoking gun and this judge, the son of a bitch, gives me ten to twenty-five with probation. You like my story?
I'm not sure, Kathy said, why you told me.
He looked surprised. I want you to see I'm not some ordinary two-bit fuckup you got on your list.
What do you call shooting the wrong guy?
Anybody could've made that mistake. I'm talking about now. If we're gonna be seeing each other the next five years
Once a month, Kathy said, getting up from the sofa. We're not going steady.
Elvin was next to her by the time she reached the door. Yeah, but there's no reason we can't get along. He put his hand on the door as she started to open it.
Touch me, Elvin, you're back doing the twenty-five.
Listen, okay? I just want to mention, I had a girl write me when I was in the joint? One I never met in my life but seen my picture in the paper and read about me. She'd send these letters, say she knows in her heart I'm the kind of fella, all I need to straighten me out is some tender loving care. Elvin grinned. My cellmate sure liked to smell those letters. But what I was wondering, if that's how little girl probation officers see us bad boys.
Yeah, what I do, Kathy said, is devote my life to making fuckups and losers happy. I'll see you. She pulled the door open and went out.
You saying I'm a loser? Sounding surprised to hear it. Hey, there things I could tell you
Next month, at the office.
Going down the front steps to the walk she heard him say from the doorway, How bout tomorrow? You still need to see Dale, don't you?
He watched her drive off in her little Volkswagen. Ms. Touchy, that was a good name for her, asking did he have a job. He had felt like saying he was leaving for work directly and she'd read about it in the paper the next day or so. That would've been good. See her face after calling him a loser. Losers didn't make ten thousand dollars for a night's work.
The gun Dr. Tommy had given him was in the fridge, in a box a pizza had come in Elvin recalled as being piss-poor. The idea he had was to go up to the judge's house with the pizza box, knock on the door If there was cops around he'd say he must have the wrong address and do it another time.
Dr. Tommy's boy Hector was a sketch coming out with the rifle first, this little pump-action .22. Elvin had looked at it and said, Doc, I ain't going after flamingos. I'm gonna shoot a full-size judge.
Dr. Tommy thought he meant he wanted a heavier rifle. Well, let's see, he had a Savage, a Remington, both thirty-ought-sixes.
Elvin said, Doc, I ain't gonna sit in a blind neither, waiting on a buck to come past. What I want is a gun I can stick in my pants and walk up to the man. When Dr. Tommy looked like he had to think that one
over, Elvin said, I know a person like you, one time in the dope business, wouldn't go to bed without a pistol in the drawer next to it. I bet chrome plate with a pearl grip.
The one Hector brought out, once Dr. Tommy gave him the sign, was stainless but with a walnut grip, a Ruger Speed-Six .357. Not the gun he'd pick if he had a choice, but she'd do the job.
Okay, and where's my half down?
This was where he ran into a wall.
How do I know, Dr. Tommy said, you won't take the five thousand and I never see you again?
Cause this is my kind of work, Elvin said. Why would I settle for half?
Dr. Tommy's offer was Two grand when you tell me how you're going to do it. The rest if you do it.
Elvin didn't like that if. He said, I'm gonna knock on his door and shoot him when he opens it.
That's your plan?
It's how I do it.
I want to know when and where.
Tonight. How's that? Out to his house.
Yes, but how do you know he'll be home?
Dr. Tommy dragging his feet. It got Elvin mad.
You want this done or not?
I want to be sure.
So do I, Elvin said. What I'll do is shoot him and you pay up after, the whole thing, or I shoot you too. How's that sound?
The doctor gave him a shrug. You kill him and I read it in the paper, we have no problem.
Nothing to it, since he wasn't doing a goddamn thing. Elvin hated a person talking to him like that. Little booger sitting there on his patio If he had ten thousand cash to pay out he'd have more where it came from, in the house. Something to look into after.
Not two minutes, from when Ms. Touchy had left, Elvin was in Dale's pickup heading out, the pizza box on the seat next to him. He took 95 up to West Palm and turned left on Southern Boulevard, following Dr. Tommy's directions. He'd said it would take about a half hour. Elvin said, If you're a pokey driver it might. He knew this road, repaved since he used to travel it, lined with reflectors that popped in his headlights. Keep going, it took you out to the Stockade and the Loxahatchee Road Prison for dinks, drunks and short-timers. Either place you could walk out the front gate. Beyond there you were heading for the Glades. This trip he was going only as far as the first stoplight past the Florida Turnpike.
It turned red as Elvin approached and he had to pull up behind cars in the inside lane. The directions said you turned left here, followed the road to a dead end, turned left and then left again on a dirt road that went along a canal before it veered through woods and took you up to the house. One-story red brick, sitting by itself. Fine. He'd drive up fairly close and make his delivery.
The light turned green. Elvin got ready.
He watched the first car in the lane ease out and then wait for a car to pass from the other direction. The next two cars in front of him continued straight ahead. Elvin didn't move, still watching the first car as it made its turn. A light-colored Volkswagen. He said, Jesus Christ, out loud. If that car wasn't Ms. Touchy's it was one just like it.
Chapter 13
Bob Gibbs was outside waiting for her, standing in the beam of a spotlight mounted on the house. He motioned her to nose in toward the open garage and stop right there in the drive, behind the blue Ford pickup that had a cap with windows mounted on the bed.
You have any trouble finding the place?
Not a bit, Kathy said. She almost told Gibbs, helping her out of the car, to take his hands off her. A reflex, or not seeing that much difference between this judge and a criminal offender.
He brought her into the kitchen through the garage, told her to make herself at home while he fixed her a Jim Beam and water, not asking if she wanted one, and freshened his own. Both of their glasses were enclosed in orangey red holders to keep the drinks cold or your hand dry the word Gators printed on them. In honor of the University of Florida football team, Gibbs said, not that visitation the other night. He took Kathy out to the porch to show where the alligator had entered, the screen back in place but torn and sprung, held down with a length of two-by-four. Smashed the glass door; I had it replaced, but I'm still waiting on the screen man. Look in there at the sofa how it's all chewed up.
Your wife saw the alligator?
She pretty near stepped on it.
No wonder it scared her. She went up to Orlando, uh?
For a while. Come on outside. He picked up a flashlight from the metal table.
They went out to a yard full of dark shapes, the judge stopping to sniff the air. You smell it? Night-blooming jasmine. Kathy sniffed, looking at Australian pines, a scraggly mahogany tree against the sky.
You like tropical plants and flowers?
When I can see them.
Look it here. The judge flashed his light over foliage, vines, identifying bird's-nest fern, staghorn, Vanda orchids. See the bloom spikes? Here, a white Cattleya with a yellow throat. The lavender orchid was Dendrobium. He had orchids climbing trees and hanging from moss pots. I deal with ugliness all day long and come home to beauty.
Why was he telling her this? Or why had Elvin told her about killing a man? The judge and the ex-convict both trying to impress her. The judge showing what a sensitive guy he really was.
Your wife work in the garden?
She plays with rocks.
She does? What kind of rocks?
Quartz crystals. She buries them in the dirt to clean them, restore their whatever magic they're suppose to have. This is called African Shield. My wife thinks those two petticoat palms were once women who were turned into trees. See what I mean? Look up there. Bougainvillea growing out of that cabbage palm.
Where do you think it came from? The alligator.
Canal over there, the other side of the house. Here, take this in your hand, crush it up good and smell it. Wild bayleaf.
What if someone brought the alligator?
As a joke? That's a lot of trouble to go to.
I was thinking, Kathy said, more as a threat to your life.
Bob Gibbs said, Why? and sounded surprised. Because I hand out tough sentences? I never exceed the guidelines, I can't. My rulings are fair, my convictions are appealed and sometimes reversed, but not too often. Look it up.
Kathy said, Yeah, but if some guy doesn't see it as fair There're some crazy people in the world. Thinking of Elvin again. Or sociopaths, with no respect for human life
You're not kidding, honey, and there's plenty of them. This is the vanilla orchid, the only one I know of with food value.
Elvin came out of the dark with his pizza box into the spotlight shine looking at the Volkswagen parked there by the open garage. She was here, no doubt about it, and that was too bad. Ms. Touchy, she was a salty little thing for being as cute as she was. Spoke right up to you. He reached the front door thinking if she was in the toilet or someplace away from the judge he could do the job and she might never see him. Man, but it would have to be her birthday to get that lucky. He rang the doorbell. If she saw him he wouldn't have any choice in the matter. He rang it again. Get right down to it, there was no way he could take a chance on her not seeing him, even if he didn't see her when he shot the judge. No, he'd have to find her. Tell her, well, it's too bad, but you shouldn't have been here. He pressed the doorbell again, held it and could hear it buzzing inside the house. He let go and tried the door. It was locked. He walked along the house looking in windows at dark bedrooms till he came to the attached garage, saw a door in there, stepped in and tried it. The door opened in his hand. Now he had to quick put the pizza box under his arm and pull the Speed-Six revolver from his belt, underneath his shirt hanging out, before stepping inside.
The ceiling light was on in the kitchen. Elvin stood listening for sounds, voices, till he noticed the bottle of Jim Beam there by the sink. He stepped over to it, laid the pizza box on the counter and had himself a taste of the bourbon. Mmmmm, for pleasure only, not the least nervous. Okay, they weren't in the bedrooms he'd looked in the windows at. They weren't in the dinin
g area, dark in there. A lamp was on in the living room, but it was about all Elvin could see from the kitchen. He held the Speed-Six in front of him moving from bright light to dark to soft light in the living room, nobody here either. But, hey, the glass door to the porch was slid open and a lamp was on out there. He saw a round metal table, some chairs. He saw where the screen was ripped and pushed in and felt himself jump as a beam of light came on outside and flashed around in the trees. That's where they were, out in the yard. He saw the light beam move and touch the little girl, saw her face white in the dark He'd been looking to have some fun with her, but that was not going to work out. The judge had the flashlight. The hell was he showing her? Elvin watched for a minute. It made sense to wait for them to come inside, be able to see them good. He might even have time, sure, for another taste of that Jim Beam.
The judge showed her a plant called monstera deliciosa saying, It looks like a big green weenie, huh? It turns ripe you can eat it. This guy was too much. She was pretty sure he winked at her in the dark.
They walked back toward the house, the judge holding on to her arm now above the elbow, fingering her bare skin, telling how he liked to go down around Immokalee in the Everglades every once in a while, wade in the swamp with an onion sack and a hunting knife looking for wild orchids. Plenty of them down there. He asked if she liked to camp out, but didn't wait for an answer. He said she ought to go with him sometime, it was an experience. You could not get closer to nature than in the Everglades.
Kathy said she didn't care too much for snakes.
Or alligators. She wanted to get back to the alligator on the porch, ask if it might have been meant for his wife. Find out if she was coming back or not.
They were near the house, walking past the kitchen toward the screened porch. The judge said he had two prize orchids in there he wanted to show her. He'd freshen their drinks and they'd sit down, get comfortable the judge speaking when the pane of glass in the kitchen window shattered with the hard sound of a gunshot. Kathy turned toward the window, saw the light on inside, white cupboards, saw something else as the second pane shattered and again heard that hard crack of sound out in the dark she knew was rifle fire. She dropped to the ground dragging the judge with her as another pane shattered and another and heard a final gunshot without glass breaking, the report echoing, coming from somewhere in the back part of the yard.