“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 café 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 flower-child 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 earth-mother 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 café 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 ba
g 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 Café Manet, past Barnie’s Coffee & Tea, and turn the corner before the cowboy stepped out. He watched Nicolet allow the young woman 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 café 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.
Even giving him the key to the padlock, so he could bring over a few guns, TEC-9s, still at Simone’s house.
Louis hearing the familiar voice of his old buddy, certain now it wasn’t Ordell trying to use him, it was Melanie.
Ordell saying, “You appreciate this kind of situation, Louis. It can make you rich, yeah, but you see some fun in the idea too, huh? You see funny kind of things that happen nobody else sees. You know what I’m saying? You the only white guy I ever met understands what the fuck I’m ever talking about. Melanie don’t. Melanie can say funny things without knowing it. But when she thinks she’s funny, she ain’t. Like we in the car coming home from Gerald’s? You hear her? She says, ‘You two guys are still a couple of fuckups.’ See, she thinks she can say that after shooting the man. Like she’s kidding and I’m not gonna say nothing.”
“You didn’t,” Louis said.
“No, but I remember it. See, she disses you and thinks it’s funny. I don’t like to be dissed in a kidding way less it’s somebody I respect.”
Louis said, “You trust her?”
“I never have,” Ordell said, “from the minute I first met her laying in the sun. I keep an eye on her, she can still surprise me, like having that gun. Little Waither .32—you believe how loud it was? She must’ve stole it off me and I didn’t even know she had it. Where else she gonna get a pistol like that cost eight hundred? She ain’t gonna buy it.”
Louis said, “I’d keep both eyes on her.”
Ordell’s gaze moved from the road, Windsor Avenue, to Louis. “She trying to work you against me? . . . You don’t have to say, I know the woman.
She gonna look at every angle, make sure she lands on her feet. She shot Big Guy five times, didn’t she?”
“Four,” Louis said.
“Okay, four. The piece holds seven loads. How come if she wants me out of this, she didn’t do it when she had the chance? You know why? ’Cause she ain’t sure you can take it all the way. You could’ve shot me and Big Guy at the same time, but you didn’t do it. Melanie’s thinking hey, shit, ’cause he don’t have the nerve? She’s the kind, wants to know who’s gonna win ’fore she puts her money down.”
“Why do you keep her around?”
Ordell grinned at him. “She’s my fine big girl, man. Now I got you watching my back. . . .”
“You take too many chances,” Louis said. “You expose yourself. Too many people know what you’re doing.”
“High profit,” Ordell said, “high risk. I need the people till this’s done. I know who I can trust and who I can’t. The only one worries me right now is Cujo, I mentioned to you. They got him up at Gun Club. I called, they don’t have a bond set on him yet. I’d like to get him out of there and send him on his way, only I’m afraid the bond’s gonn
a be too high to get him one without the cash, and I don’t have it right now. I don’t think they’ll get him to talk about me right away. He’ll act tough for a while, and all I need is a couple more days. Get my ass out of here.”
They turned off Windsor onto 30th Street and pulled up in front of Simone’s stucco Spanish-looking house, Ordell saying, “You take those TEC-9s over to storage?”
“I’ll do it tonight.”
Ordell saying, “You never told me, you bone that old woman or not?”
18
Nicolet stopped in during prime time Tuesday evening, showed his ID, shook hands with Max, shook hands with Winston, and said, “Winston Willie Powell—I was a kid my dad used to take me to the fights at the Convention Center in Miami? I saw you beat up on Tommy Laglesia and a guy named Jesus Diaz, Hey-soos. I remember thinking, A name like that, he’ll never make it. You won thirty-nine professional fights, lost only a couple on decisions?”
“Something like that,” Winston said.
“It’s a pleasure to shake your hand,” Nicolet said and sat down next to Max’s desk, his back to Winston. “It’s a pleasure meeting you too,” he said to Max. “All the stories I’ve heard about you, I mean when you were with PBSO, closing homicides in two, three days.”
“You better,” Max said, “or you’re in trouble.”
“I know what you mean,” Nicolet said. “The longer a case sits there, nothing happening . . .” The phone rang and he paused until Winston picked it up. “I have kind of a problem I think you could help me with, Max. Having been in law enforcement, you know the airtight case we have to have to get a conviction.”
“All I know about Ordell Robbie,” Max said, “is where he lives, and I’m not absolutely sure of that.”
Nicolet grinned. “How’d you know it was about him?”
“I’ve been waiting for you to stop by.”
“It’s about him indirectly,” Nicolet said. “You know the guy that shot the FDLE agent, Tyler? We’re convinced he works for Ordell.”
“Hulon Miller, Jr.,” Max said. “I’ve written him several times going back to when he was sixteen years old.”