Rum Punch

own money. I’d have to keep enough in my car for 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.”

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 could-n’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