Ordell had three women he kept in three different homes.
He had Sheronda living in the house on 31st Street off Greenwood Avenue, in West Palm. Sheronda, a young woman he’d picked up coming through Fort Valley, Georgia, one time on his way back from Detroit. There she was, standing at the side of the road, no shoes on, sunlight showing her body in the wornout dress. Sheronda cooked good collards with salt pork, black-eyed peas, chicken-fried steak, cleaned the house, and provided Ordell with grateful pussy, anytime day or night, for taking her out of the peanut fields. There was nothing in this little red-brick ranch that told what Ordell did for a living. About once a week he’d have to explain to Sheronda how to set the alarm system. She was afraid of getting trapped in the house, not able to get out with grillwork covering the windows.
Simone, a cute woman for her age, sixty-three years old, was from Detroit and knew all about alarm systems and liked the bars on her windows. Ordell had her living in a stucco Spanish-looking house on 30th Street near Windsor Avenue, not two blocks from Sheronda’s, but without them knowing about each other. Simone put weaves in her hair and believed she resembled Diana Ross. Her pleasure was to sing along with Motown recordings and do the steps and gestures accompanying the Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Syreeta Wright, all the oldies. Whenever Ordell let Simone take him to bed, it was ten times better than he thought it would be. Simone could write a book on the different ways to please a man. Ordell would store guns temporarily in this house, semiautomatic weapons like TEC-9s purchased legally by “straw buyers” that Simone hired to do it, mostly retired people. Give an old woman the cash plus twenty bucks to buy an assault rifle. None of the straw buyers knew about Ordell, at least not by name.
He had his white woman, Melanie, living in the apartment in Palm Beach Shores, located at the south end of Singer Island, only two blocks from the public beach. Melanie was the fine big girl Ordell had met in the Bahamas when he went there to see the husband of the woman he and Louis had kidnapped. Melanie was only about twenty-one then, making her thirty-four or so now, but had hustled her tail all over the world taking up with rich guys. She had been with the husband of the kidnapped woman, but when Ordell looked for him he was hiding and she wouldn’t tell where he was. So Ordell, what he did was have his friend Mr. Walker take them out in the ocean in his boat and Ordell threw Melanie over the side. They went off a ways, circled around back to where Melanie’s blond head was bobbing in the water, and Ordell asked her, “You want to tell me where the man’s at?” She was a show. Told Ordell after she would help him score off the husband of the kidnapped woman ’cause she liked him, Ordell, better. She said also ’cause she didn’t want to end up in the flicking ocean.
So here was Melanie after keeping in touch, running into her in Miami . . . Melanie still up for a hustle anytime. She didn’t cook or clean too good and, for all her talk and acting sexual, was only average in the bed. (Ordell wondered should he send her over to Simone’s for some lessons.) The fine big girl had in thirteen years become bigger, show tits grown to circus tits but still okay, tan, always tanning her body out on the apartment balcony facing the ocean. Ordell used this place sometimes for business, would have his big blond woman get off her butt and serve drinks while he showed his gun movie to buyers from Detroit and New York City. Mr. Walker, over in Free-port, had a print he showed to buyers from Colombia.
The jackboy, Cujo, had called here a few moments ago to say the Olds Ninety-Eight was waiting. Ordell still had the phone in his hand. He punched a number in Freeport, Grand Bahama.
“Mr. Walker, how you this evening?”
Melanie looked up from Vanity Fair, the magazine she was reading on the sofa. She went around in cutoffs and had her fine brown legs tucked under her.
“I got Beaumont out. Cost me ten thousand. I get it back, but don’t like having it out of my sight.” Ordell listened and said, “Was yesterday. I had to do some thinking, reason I didn’t call you right away.”
Melanie was still watching him. Ordell looked over and she lowered her eyes to the magazine like she wasn’t interested. She’d be listening though, and that was fine. He wanted her to know some things without knowing everything.
“You way ahead of me, Mr. Walker. I had the same thought.” Cedric Walker had been a two-bit fishing guide with a whaler till Ordell showed him where the money was. Now the man had a thirty-six-foot Carver with all kinds of navigational shit on it. “You understand, the drunk driving alone violates Beaumont’s probation. It wouldn’t matter he had the pistol on him . . . That’s right, they bring up the machine gun charge again. Means he’ll be facing ten years and what he gets for the concealed weapon on top of it. That’s what the bail-bond man said. . . . No, I let him put up the bond. Max Cherry. . . . Yeah, that’s the man’s name. Sounds like one a calypso singer would have, huh? Maximilian Cherry and his Oil Can Boppers . . . What? No, I can’t see it either. They keep him overnight he’s pulling his hair out. I’d send him home to Montego if it didn’t cost me the ten. . . . No, there’s nothing to talk about. Mr. Walker? Melanie says hi.” Ordell listened again and said, “She’ll love you for it, man. I’ll tell her. You be good now, hear?” and hung up the phone.
Melanie, the magazine on her lap, said, “Tell me what?”
“He’s sending you a present. Be in the next delivery.”
“He’s a sweetie. I’d love to see him again.”
“We could fly over sometime. Go out in his boat. Would you like that?”
“No, thanks,” Melanie said. She picked up her magazine.
Ordell watched her. He said, “But you know the boat’s always there.”
Two A.M., Ordell left the apartment and walked up to Ocean Mall, a bar named Casey’s where people went to dance, a restaurant, Portofino, some stores, some fast-food places, not much else in this block-long strip facing the public beach. The parking lot was back of the mall, only a few cars left in the rows, all the places closed. He got in the black Olds Ninety-Eight, found the keys and a .38 snubby under the seat, fooled with the instruments to find the lights and the air, and drove out of there, over the humpback bridge to Riviera Beach, a two-minute trip.
Ordell believed if you didn’t know Beaumont’s house you could ease down these dark streets off Blue Heron till you heard West Indian reggae filling the night, music to get high by, and follow the beat to the little stucco dump where Beaumont lived with a bunch of Jamaicans all packed in there. They’d keep the music on high volume while they maintained their crack binge—only this evening, peeking in, they appeared to be doing reefer, crowded in the room like happy refugees, having some sweet wine and dark rum with the weed. Go in there, start to breathe, and be stoned. It most always smelled of cooking too. A messy place—Ordell had wanted to use the bathroom one time, took one look, and went outside to relieve himself among trash barrels and bright clothes hanging on the line.
From the doorway he caught Beaumont’s eye, Beaumont the one with slicked-down almost regular hair among the beards and dreadlocks, and waved at him in the haze of smoke to step outside.
Ordell said, “Dot ganja, mon, mek everyone smile to show their teet, uh?” bringing Beaumont out through wild fern and a tangle of shrubs to the big Olds parked in the street. “You the most relaxed people I ever met.”
Except now Beaumont was rubbing a hand over his jaw, looking at the car he knew wasn’t Ordell’s.
“There’s a man,” Ordell said, “I never dealt with before, wants to buy some goods. I want to test him out. You understand?” Ordell unlocked the trunk. Raising the lid he said, “When I open this to show my wares, you gonna be inside pointing a gun at him.”
Beaumont frowned. “You want me to shoot him?”
Beaumont was no jackboy. He was Ordell’s front man on some deals, figuring prices in his head, and his backup man other times. Mr. Walker set up deliveries, received the payments, and arranged for getting the funds from Grand Bahama to West Palm Beach. Right now Bea
umont was peering into the trunk, dark in there.
“I have to be inside how long?”
“We just going over to the beach, mon.”
Beaumont kept looking in the trunk, his hands flat in the tight pockets of his pants, no shirt, skinny shoulders hunched up some.
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t like to be in there.”
“I put up ten thousand,” Ordell said, “to get your skinny ass out of jail. Now you gonna take a stand on me? Man, I don’t believe this shit.” Sounding surprised, hurt. “Nothing’s going to happen, it’s just in case.”
Beaumont took his time to think about it, Ordell listening to the reggae beat coming from the house, moving just a little bit with it, till Beaumont said, “Okay, but I have to dress.”
“You look crisp, mon, you fine. We be right back.”
“What do I use?”
“Look in there. See the trash bag?”
He watched Beaumont hunch in to bring it out unwrapping the brown plastic from a 12-gauge, no stock, the barrel sawed off at the pump.
“No, don’t rack it, man, not yet. Not till we there and I open the trunk. Right then you can rack it, dig? Get the man’s attention.”
Ordell drove back Blue Heron Boulevard to the bridge that humped over Lake Worth and followed the curve north past Ocean Mall, past hotels and high-priced condos with gates, until his headlights showed a solid wall of trees behind a wire fence on his side of the road, MacArthur State Park, and what looked more like jungle on the other side. Ordell picked a sandy place to pull off on the left, all mangrove along here and scraggly palm trees growing wild. No headlights showed in either direction. He got out and unlocked the trunk. A light went on inside as the lid came up, and there was Beaumont hunched on his side with the shotgun, ducking his head to see who was here.
Ordell said, “It’s just me, babe.” He said, “I was wondering did any federal people come visit you in jail and I should be watching my ass.”
Beaumont bent his head some more to see out, frowning.
“You wouldn’t tell me if they did, and I wouldn’t blame you,” Ordell said, unbuttoning his double-breasted sport jacket, the yellow one. He had a Targa on him that fired .22 longs, okay for this kind of close work. Or he could use the one Cujo left him—and decided, yeah, he would.
So now Beaumont was looking at the five-shot .38 snubby Ordell slipped from his waist. Beaumont quick racked the pump shotgun, pulled the trigger, and there was that click you get from an empty weapon. Beaumont had a pitiful look on his face racking the pump again, hard. Click. Racked it again, but didn’t get to click it this time. Ordell shot him in his bare chest. Beaumont seemed to cave in like the air was let out of him and Ordell put one in his head. Loud. Man, but it was a nasty gun the way it jumped and felt like it stung your hand, Ordell wishing he had used the Targa now. He wiped the piece clean with his T-shirt pulled out of his pants, threw it in the trunk with Beaumont, and closed the lid.
The digital clock on the dash read 2:48 as he pulled into the parking lot behind the mall. He used napkins he found on the ground by a trash bin to wipe off the steering wheel, the door handle, trunk lid, any part of the car he might have touched. Walking home along the beach, dark out in the Atlantic Ocean, quiet, nobody around, he could hear the surf coming in and the wind blowing, that was all. It felt good on his face.
Ordell got home, all the lights were off in the apartment, Melanie asleep, girlish little snores coming from the bedroom. She was hard to wake up if you wanted anything. Simone snored louder, but would stop if you made any noise and say in her sleepy voice, “Come on in the bed, baby.” Sheronda would hear him unlocking the door, turning off the alarm, and would come out of the bedroom with her big eyes asking what he wanted, wide awake.
Melanie had slowed down some in thirteen years. Had become a blowhead and wasn’t as spunky as she used to be. That was too bad. But she wasn’t as apt to surprise you either. As close as Ordell was to realizing his dream of becoming a wealthy retiree, he didn’t need any surprises.
What he needed was somebody to take Beaumont’s place. Not a jackboy. Somebody smarter, but not too smart. Like Louis. He was the one. You could talk to Louis. You could kid around with him and act foolish if you wanted to. Man, they had laughed picking out masks to wear when they kidnapped the woman. He seemed more serious now. Looked meaner than he used to. He could use some more meanness. Maybe prison had done him some good. Louis said he didn’t want any part of whatever it was. But Louis, you pin him down, he didn’t know what he wanted.
Maybe a way to get him, put Melanie on him.
Then put her on Big Guy at the right time. The Nazi.
4
They watched Jackie Burke come off the Bahamas shuttle in her tan Islands Air uniform, then watched her walk through Customs and Immigration without opening her bag, a brown nylon case she pulled along behind her on wheels, the kind flight attendants used.
It didn’t surprise either of the casual young guys who had Ms. Burke under surveillance: Ray Nicolet and Faron Tyler, in sport coats and neckties with their jeans this Wednesday afternoon at Palm Beach International. Jackie Burke came through here five days a week flying West Palm to Nassau, West Palm to Freeport and back.
“She’s cool,” Nicolet said. “You notice?”
“She ain’t bad either,” Tyler said, “for a woman her age. She’s forty?”
“Forty-four,” Nicolet said. “She’s been flying nineteen years. Some other airlines before this one.”
“Where you want to take her, here or outside?”
“When she gets in her car. It’s upstairs.” They watched her from a glass-partitioned office in this remote wing of the terminal, Ray Nicolet commenting on Jackie Burke’s legs, her neat rear end in the tan skirt, Faron Tyler saying she surely didn’t look forty-four, at least not from here. They watched her bring a pair of sunglasses out of her shoulder bag and lay them in her hair that was dark blond, loose, not too long. It did surprise them when Jackie Burke took the escalator up to the main concourse. They watched her go into the Ladies’ rest room, come out after about five minutes not looking any different, and pull her cart into the snack bar. Now they watched her sit down with a cup of coffee and light a cigarette. What was she doing? Ray Nicolet and Faron Tyler slipped into the souvenir shop, directly across the way, to stand among racks of pastel-colored Palm Beach T-shirts.
Tyler said, “You think she made us?”
Nicolet wondered the same thing without saying it.
“You don’t come off a flight and have a cup of coffee, you go home,” Tyler said. “She doesn’t act nervous though.”
“She’s cool,” Nicolet said.
“Who’s here besides us?”
“Nobody. This one came up in a hurry.” Nicolet fingered the material of a pink T-shirt that had green and white seagulls on it, then raised his gaze to the snack bar again. “You make the bust, okay?”
Tyler looked at him. “It’s your case. I thought I was just helping out.”
“I want to keep it simple. A state charge, she won’t have as much trouble bonding out. I mean if we have to take it that far. You badge her, lay it on—you know. Then I’ll ease into the conversation.”
“Where, here?”
“How about your office? Mine,” Nicolet said, “I don’t have enough chairs. Your place is neater.”
“But if all she’s carrying is money . . .”
“The guy said fifty grand this trip.”
“Yeah, what’s the charge? She didn’t declare it? That’s federal.”
“You can use it if you want, hold Customs over her head. I’d still like it to be a state bust, some kind of trafficking. Otherwise, if I bring her up,” Nicolet said, “and she has to bond out of federal court—man, they make it hard. I don’t want her mad at me, I just want to see her sweat a little.”
Tyler said, “If you know who she’s taking it to . . .”
“I don’t. I said we have an id
ea. The guy kept holding out, wouldn’t give us the name. He was afraid it could fuck up his life worse than prison.”
“I guess it did,” Tyler said. “So how about if we follow her, see who she gives it to.”
“If we had a few more people. We lose her,” Nicolet said, “we have to come here and start all over. No, I think if we sit her down and give her dirty looks she’ll tell us what we want to know. Whatever that is.”
“She sure looks good for her age,” Tyler said.
They were a couple of South Florida boys, both thirty-one, buddies since meeting at FSU. They liked guns, beer, cowboy boots, air boats, hunting in the Everglades, and chasing bad guys. They’d spent a few years with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office before splitting up: Ray Nicolet going to ATF, the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; Faron Tyler to FDLE, The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Division of Criminal Investigation. Every once in a while they got a chance to work together. Right now the ATF office was busy working a sting operation out of a pawnshop they’d taken over, buying a lot of hot guns on camera. So Nicolet had called FDLE and got his buddy to help out on an investigation. One they believed had to do with the illegal sale of firearms.
“She’s leaving,” Tyler said.
One of the two guys Jackie Burke first noticed in the Customs office got on the elevator with her, the dark-haired one. He asked what floor she wanted. Jackie said, “I’m going all the way.”
He grinned saying, “Me too,” pushed the button, and then touched his hair. The kind of guy who was used to women coming on to him. Almost a hunk, but not quite. Jackie was pretty sure if she asked if his partner was already on the top level he wouldn’t act too surprised. Maybe grin at her again. Both were young, but with that lazy confidence of pro athletes or guys who carried badges and guns. She hoped she was wrong, felt the urge to light a cigarette, and thought of leaving her flight bag on the elevator.