“You’ve done this before,” Jackie said.
Melanie turned her head, as if to check if anyone was listening, and looked at Jackie again. “I’ve scored cash, dope, jewelry, a painting once that was supposed to be priceless and turned out to be a fake. Cars now and then—ninety miles an hour out of there one time in this asshole’s Mercedes I dropped at the airport in Key West. Get clear and then take off, like to Spain. No backpacks, they’ll check you for drugs. You’re too old for a backpack anyway. Wear a dress, good shoes, you’ll walk through Customs in almost any civilized country except here and Israel. You don’t want to go to Israel anyway, it isn’t safe.”
Jackie said, “That’s it?”
“How it’s done,” Melanie said.
Jackie said, “Thanks,” and slid off the stool.
Melanie’s head came up in a hurry. “Where you going?”
“Find a telephone,” Jackie said.
It was close to seven by the time she got the message Nicolet had left on her machine, ran home to change, and arrived at Good Samaritan in a print dress and earrings. Nicolet brought a chair over as she spoke to Tyler, smiling, working up to touching his hair and giving him a pat on the head. Not exactly in a motherly way, though he looked about seventeen sitting up in bed with a can of beer. There were flowers on every surface that would hold them and getwell cards upright on the windowsill. Nicolet got her seated. She brought out a cigarette and lit it.
“I have something to report,” Jackie said. “Two things. I deliver the money the day after tomorrow. Same arrangement, four thirty at The Gardens Mall. I’ll be meeting Sheronda.”
“The one lives on Thirty-first Street,” Nicolet said to Tyler.
Tyler nodded. “She married to Ordell?”
“They live together,” Jackie said, “but he’s not there all the time. Sheronda has no idea what’s going on. She’s nice, I hope you don’t have to arrest her.”
Nicolet said, “What kind of deal can she offer?”
“She was too scared to open the door,” Tyler said. “She gives you Ordell as the man the money’s for, that ought to get her off.” He said to Jackie, “What’s the other thing you have for us?”
“Ordell has a guy working for him named Louis Gara.”
She saw Tyler look at Nicolet and she turned to him, next to her, as he said, “Have you met him?”
“This afternoon, at an apartment in Palm Beach Shores. I don’t think Gara lives there, but I can probably find out.”
Nicolet reached down to lift a grocery sack from the floor to his lap. “You talk to him?”
“Not really.”
“What’s he do for Ordell?”
“I don’t know yet. I suppose I could ask.”
“You want a beer?”
“I’d love one.”
Nicolet reached in the sack, twisted a can from a six-pack, popped it open, and handed Jackie the can, wet, ice-cold. She took a sip.
“I know he just got out of prison. They seem to be pretty close for a white guy and a black guy.”
Tyler was grinning at her. “You’re doing all right.”
“Enough to get me off?”
“We know about Louis Gara,” Nicolet said, “he’s a bank robber. Late last night we put the house where he’s staying on Thirtieth Street, West Palm, under surveillance. This morning about five thirty he comes out, walks over to a house on Thirty-first where Sheronda lives, gets car keys from her, and takes off in a Toyota parked in the drive. The car’s registered to him. He’s followed to a self-service storage place off Australian Avenue in Riviera Beach. You’ve seen them, they look like rows of garages?” Nicolet looked at Tyler. “That must’ve been where Cujo was going.”
Tyler, nodding, said, “I know, to drop off the piece. And we thought it was the bump shop.”
That went by Jackie; she let it go.
“He opened one of the doors,” Nicolet said to her, “brought a cardboard box out of the trunk of his car, and put it inside. He comes out and returns to the house on Thirtieth. Three thirty this afternoon he drove to the apartment you mentioned in Palm Beach Shores.”
It surprised her. “Then you must’ve seen me go in.
“I wasn’t there,” Nicolet said. “I was at the storage place with a search warrant and a locksmith. We enter—it’s full of guns, all kinds, even military weapons. . . . Some of the stuff we know was taken from that farm out by Loxahatchee, where the triple homicide took place on Monday.”
“One of them,” Jackie said, “a white supremacist named Gerald something?”
“Yeah, it was on the news yesterday, front page of the paper. This morning too.”
“I didn’t see it,” Jackie said. “A woman named Melanie, Ordell’s girlfriend, told me she shot Gerald four times in the heart. Is that right?”
They were both staring at her. Nicolet said, “Four, yeah, but not in the heart.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“She told you she did it? When was this?”
“About an hour and a half ago at Casey’s, right after I left the apartment. That’s where she lives. She said some, quote, ‘crazy young black kids’ who work for Ordell killed the other two.”
Tyler and Nicolet looked at each other again and Nicolet said, “She tell you their names?”
Jackie shook her head, drawing on her cigarette. She said, “I don’t even know Melanie’s last name,” and saw Nicolet look at Tyler again.
“You know a Melanie?”
“I don’t think so,” Tyler said. “What’s she look like?”
Jackie said, “Well, she has very large tits. . . .”
Tyler said, “Yeah?”
“A lot of blond hair. She’s about thirty but looks much older.”
Nicolet said, “Why’d she tell you about it?”
“Because she’s pissed at Ordell. She shoots a guy who’s beating him up and he won’t let her sit in on the Pay Day meeting,” Jackie said. “Pay Day is what happens Friday. He likes to use code names. Rum Punch is his deal with the Colombians.”
Nicolet said, “We used that once, Rumpunch, one word, rounding up Jamaican posses. So we can put Ordell at the scene. What about Louis, was he there?”
“She didn’t say.”
Nicolet was quiet for a moment.
“If Melanie’s pissed off enough at Ordell . . .”
“She won’t leave,” Jackie said. “I’m sure of it.”
Nicolet looked at Tyler. “You know what they say, once they’ve had a black guy. . . . But I want him more than I bet she does. There’s gonna be a fistfight,” Nicolet said to Jackie, “over who gets him now, ATF or Faron’s people and the Sheriff’s office. You said there’s one more arms delivery coming up?”
Jackie nodded. “That’s what he told me.”
“They’ve got enough there, it could go down anytime. My beeper goes off, man, I’m out of here.”
Jackie said, “What if Ordell’s not with them?”
“I don’t care if he is or not, I know it’s his dump,” Nicolet said. “We can show weapons there were lifted from Gerald’s place and take Ordell on the homicides and the guns. It’s better than what we had going before, I love it. Get him sent to Marion, that would be beautiful. You’re in lockdown there twenty-two hours a day.”
Jackie put her beer can on the floor; got up, crossed to the lavatory, and dropped her cigarette in the toilet. She came out and stood by the door to the hall.
“When am I off the hook?”
“When it’s over,” Nicolet said.
She looked at Tyler. “I’m your case, not his.”
“That’s right,” Tyler said, “and I’m calling the state attorney tomorrow, get him to agree on a no-file.”
Jackie said, “An A-99?”
Tyler smiled at her. “Why don’t you stay a while? We’ll get rid of Ray . . .”
Louis turned off Windsor Avenue to Thirtieth Street and Ordell, riding with him, said, “Keep going. I don’t like that Chevy back th
ere. Guy sitting in it.”
“I didn’t notice him,” Louis said, looking at his mirror. “Was he black or white?”
“How do I know he’s black or white in the dark?”
“It’s a black neighborhood,” Louis said.
“I know that. But they got brothers are cops too, if you never heard of it. Look, no lights on. Too early for her to be in bed. Go ’round the block.”
Louis turned on South Terrace and then on 29th and came around again to Simone’s street. Now they came past the Chevy and Ordell looked back at it.
“Shit, I can’t tell. Go on to Sheronda’s, see what it looks like over there, Thirty-first Street.”
“I know where it is.”
“Man, they make it hard for you. No, forget going over there. Turn around up here at the corner and go back. Man, I have to find out right now. The house’s dark . . . Guy in the Chevy could be staking out anybody. Or it’s some man thinks his woman’s running around on him. The cops don’t know you, so how could they know you staying there?”
“Max Cherry knows.”
“Hey, fuck him. We going in the house.”
They parked in the drive and entered through the side door. “Not one light on in here. This ain’t like her,” Ordell said in the kitchen. “Well, we only have to look one place, where she keeps her Motown records. If they gone, she’s gone.”
Louis said from the living room in the dark, “They’re gone.”
Ordell said, “Shit. Well, let’s look for the money.” Louis said, “You know if she’s gone the money’s gone. It’s why she’s gone.”
“What? You saying nine thousand dollars gonna make her run off, leave her home? Man, that hurts me. I was gonna give her two for helping me out.”
“She left your watch,” Louis said.
“It has something to do with Max Cherry,” Ordell said. “Comes in her house, it scared her.”
“It scared me,” Louis said. “How’d he find out I was here?”
“Man, this shit works on my nerves,” Ordell said. “Tells me I should change the plans around. First thing, I have to find somebody to take Simone’s place.”
“Don’t look at me,” Louis said.
“I’m not looking at you, I’m thinking who I can use.”
“You’re looking at me,” Louis said in the dark.
“You could do it.”
“Walk in the women’s fitting room? How would I work that?”
“Shit,” Ordell said. “Lemme think.”
Max didn’t touch the phone: on the table with the lamp and digital clock, next to Jackie’s side of the queen-size bed. It rang while she was in the kitchen, three times and stopped. She would have picked it up standing by the counter in a man’s dress shirt she put on leaving the bedroom, nothing under it, lighting a cigarette now, talking to Ordell or Ray Nicolet about Friday, the clock reading 10:37, while she finished making their drinks. Max got a cigarette from the table on his side.
Five left in the pack he’d bought this morning before seeing the lawyer about filing, the lawyer suggesting he and Renee sell the house, divide their assets, and that should do it. Then in the kitchen before coming to bed Jackie saying, “This is all you have to do,” describing his part in making off with a half million or so. “Okay?”
Nothing to it. If changing your life was this simple, why was he ever concerned about the everyday stuff, writing fifteen thousand criminal offenders? He said to Jackie, “Okay,” and was committed, more certain of his part in this than hers. Until she stood close to him in the kitchen and he lifted the skirt up over her thighs, looking at this girl in a summer dress, fun in her eyes, and knew they were in it together. He did. And was sure of it when they made love, again looking at her eyes.
The times he had doubts, he was alone. Wondering if she was using him and he would never see her again once it was done.
It was 10:45.
He used to think that with the name Max Cherry he should be a character. Max the legendary bail bondsman who told wild stories about skip-tracing, collaring felons on the run, to the patrons of the Helen Wilkes bar. He did tell one—how he drove all the way to Van Horn, Texas, to return a defendant who’d skipped on a five-hundred-dollar bond—and they didn’t get it, failed to understand the street value of what that kind of dedication meant. He settled for being a man of his word instead of a character, and that could be why he was here.
Jackie came in with their drinks, the man’s dress shirt hanging open. “That was Faron.” She handed Max his glass and moved around to her side of the bed. It was 10:5 1.
“You have a nice chat?”
“Ray just got word they’re moving the guns, three guys, and left. So I called Ordell hoping to God he wasn’t one of them. We don’t want to lose him now, after all this.”
Max watched her place her drink on the night table and light a cigarette before slipping into bed, propping her pillows against the headboard.
“He must’ve been home,” Max said.
“At the apartment. I told him he was about to go out of business and he carried on for a while. That’s what took so long, getting him calmed down. I told him we’d better bring the money in tomorrow. He said Mr. Walker was in Islamorada, he’d have to get in touch with him. I said, drive down and get him. Take him to Miami and put him on a plane to Freeport, he has to be there to meet my flight. I told him if he wanted his money he’d better get it out of there quick. He said okay, Mr. Walker would take his cut and put exactly five hundred and fifty thousand in my bag. Now I have to get in touch with Ray before I leave in the morning.”
So calm about it. Max said, “Why?”
“Tell him it’s tomorrow.”
“If he’s not at the mall, so much the better.”
“I want him to be there, that’s part of it. Let him search me and see I’m clean.”
“You’re starting to sound like people I know.”
Jackie said, “I’m going to tell Ray that Ordell changed his mind. With what’s happened he’s afraid to bring in all of his money, but will need about fifty thousand for bail, in case he’s picked up.”
“He’ll need more than that.”
“Don’t be so literal. This is what I tell Ray.”
“But you show him the money at the airport.”
“Well, you know I’m not going to show him the whole amount. He’ll see fifty thousand.”
“Where’s the rest of it?”
“In the bag, underneath.”
“What if he looks through it?”
“He won’t. He’ll be expecting fifty thousand and there it is, on top. He didn’t search my bag the last time.”
“You’re taking an awful chance.”
“If he finds it, I say Mr. Walker put the money in and I didn’t know it was there, like the coke.”
“Then you’re out, you get nothing.”
“Right, but I tried and I’m not in jail.”
“Keep it simple, huh?”
“Exactly.” She said, “Oh,” thinking of something else. “Is tomorrow okay?”
He had to smile. “I’ll try to be there.”
Jackie was quiet for several moments smoking her cigarette, staring off.
“It’s pretty much the same plan. Your part doesn’t change.”
“You’re gonna have surveillance all over you.”
“I know. That’s why you don’t make a move till I come out of the fitting room.”
“In a dress.”
“Well, a suit, an Isani I’ve had my eye on. The only thing I don’t like about it now,” Jackie said, “Simone’s disappeared, and guess who’s taking her place. Melanie.”
21
The three jackboys in the self-service storage unit, Sweatman, Snow, and Zulu wearing his black bandanna and sunglasses, had brought cardboard boxes to load the different weapons in, wrapping each piece in newspaper. The guns didn’t have to be packed too good going from here in the van to halfway down in the Keys and put on a boat. It got so hot
with the door closed using flashlights, Zulu turned the van around, drove it partway in, and put on the headlights. There wasn’t anybody outside from here to Australian Avenue so what was the difference? When they finished packing the boxes he’d turn the van around again and they’d load it through the rear. When they heard the voice outside they thought it was somebody’s radio. When they stopped to listen and heard the voice again they knew what it was, shit, a bullhorn, police telling them, “Come out with your hands up!”
The voice said something about they were federal officers and to lay their guns down and come out one at a time with their hands in the air.
Sweatman said, “How they gonna shoot us, they down the street? They have to be right there in front to do it.”
Snow said, “Shit, we got all the guns we need.”
Zulu said, “Sweat, get in the van and take a look out the back. See where they at.”
He had pulled the van far enough into the unit that they could open the doors and get in without being seen. Zulu started looking through boxes, saying to Snow, “Where those throwaway rocket shooters we got out at Big Guy’s?”
Sweatman came back and said they had both ends of this street blocked with green and whites and were some of them up on the roof too, laying down up there right across the street. Zulu turned to him with an olive-colored LAW rocket launcher in his hands, a tube twenty-four inches long with a grip, a trigger, sights, and writing on it with pictographs. “How to fire the motherfucker,” Zulu said. “Each of us take one and get in the van.”
Snow said, “I want my AK.”
Zulu said, “We bringing AKs, but this the motherflicker gonna set us free. See, here the instructions.”
They all wore flak jackets with identifying letters on the back. Nicolet, ATF, huddled behind the radio cars with an agent from FDLE and an older guy named Boland who commanded the Sheriff’s Office TAC unit. They stared at the lighted street of garage doors on both sides to the back end of a van sticking out of one of the units. The surveillance team said there were three of them, young black guys. Two jumped out when the van arrived; the driver backed it in first, then turned it around. Beyond the van, at the opposite end of the street, sets of blue gum balls were flashing. There were about fifty law enforcement officers on the scene.