dark. He’d need a flashlight, he got that out. And his stun gun, the best way to throw a punch without hurting your hand. He didn’t want to shoot Louis. He wanted to knock him down, handcuff him, and turn him over to the police. The house appeared empty, deserted, trash laying around. Walking up to the side entrance by the carport, he was surprised there weren’t broken panes in the windows. Max tried the door, gave it a shoulder, then stepped back and kicked it open.
The place smelled of mildew.
He sat in the living room in the dark, an expert at waiting, a nineteen-year veteran of it, waiting for people who failed to appear, missed court dates because they forgot or didn’t care, and took off. Nineteen years of losers, repeat offenders in and out of the system. Another one, that’s all Louis was, slipping back into the life.
Is this what you do?
He knew why he was here. Still, he began to wonder about it, thinking not so much of waiting other times in the nineteen years but aware of right now, the mildew smell, seeing himself sitting in the dark with a plastic tube that fired a beanbag full of buckshot.
Really? This is what you do?
Max pointed the stun gun at a window, pushed in the plunger and saw a pane of glass explode.
In the car, driving back to the office, he saw Jackie again and was anxious to tell her something.
He said to Winston, waiting in the front office, “He’ll never come back.”
Winston said, “That’s right.”
“So we’re out a couple of guns. It’s worth it.” Winston said, “You didn’t see him.”
“I think he’s cleared out.”
“The man didn’t come fix the door.”
Max turned to look at it, not saying anything. “You want me to keep waiting on him?”
Max said, “I’m getting out of the business.” Still looking at the door.
Winston began to nod. He said, “That’s a good idea.”
The way Ordell heard what Jackie was saying: If she kept quiet and did time on his account, she wanted to be paid for it. He asked her was this a threat. She said that would be extortion. It might be, but wasn’t an answer to the question. Was she saying if he didn’t pay her she’d go talk to the police?
Wait a minute.
He said, “Baby, you don’t know any more what my business is than they do.”
She said, “Are you sure?”
“You run some money you say is mine. What am I suppose to get convicted of?” Asking what sounded like the key question . . .
She came back saying, “The illegal sale of firearms.” Like that. “It’s true, isn’t it? You sell guns?”
Sounding innocent saying it that way, naive, nice-looking airline stewardess sitting across the room on her white sofa. Except she had the two guns resting on cushions to either side of her, little guns to look at but nothing naive about them. She had watched him fix drinks— hers on the coffee table in front of her now. From where he sat holding his Scotch it would take him two, three, almost four strides to get to her once he jumped up and if he didn’t trip over the coffee table. He believed he would get only about halfway, even with her smoking and drinking, before she picked up most likely the Airweight she’d got hold of somewhere between the Stockade and here and blew him back in the chair. So Ordell was more interested now in their conversation than estimating space and his chance of getting to her. Jackie telling him now:
“Whatever they know, they got from Beaumont, not me. Why did ATF pick me up if it’s not about guns? Even if they didn’t know you before, they do now. You got us out of jail.”
“You don’t get convicted for putting up bonds.”
“No, but I think you took a chance.”
Man, she had that right.
Telling him now, “If they think you’re selling guns, they’ll keep an eye on you. Won’t they? Then what? You’re out of business.”
“I’m trying to hear what you’re saying,” Ordell said. “If I pay you to keep quiet and they ask you about guns, then you say you don’t know nothing about any. Is that right?”
“I don’t, really. You’re right, you’ve never told me.”
“Then what do I have to worry about? You saying you
“If I say I won’t,” Jackie said, “will you take my word for it?”
“You getting me confused now.”
“All I’m saying is we have to trust each other.”
“Yeah, but what’s it gonna cost me?”
She said, “How about a hundred thousand if I’m convicted. That would be for jail time up to a year or if I’m put on probation. If I have to do more than a year, you pay another hundred thousand.”
“You be making more in than out, huh?”
She said, “You’d have to put the money in some kind of escrow account in my name. If I get off, you get it back.”
“Just like that, huh?”
“It’s up to you.”
“Even if I agree,” Ordell said, “I think you’re high. But say I agree. I see two problems. One, you put a hundred grand in cash in the bank, anything over ten, the U.S. government gets told and they want to know where it came from.”
She said, “I think we can find a way around that. What’s the other problem? I bet I know what it is.”
Listen to the woman.
“All my money,” Ordell said, “is over in Freeport.”
Watched her nod and take a sip of her drink.
“What’s there now and what will be coming in.”
Watched her raise her eyebrows at that.
“If ATF’s on my ass like you say, how do I get money here to pay you?”
She said, “You’re right, it’s a problem. I’m pretty sure, though, I can work it out.”
“Now that we talking big money it’s worth the risk?”
She smiled at him.
“Okay, how you gonna do it if you out on bond and can’t go nowhere?”
“There’s a way,” Jackie said. “Trust me.”
11
Friday morning, half-past eight, Tyler and Nicolet had Ordell Robbie’s house under surveillance. They were in Tyler’s Chevy Caprice parked on Greenwood Avenue, close enough to the corner of 31st to give them a clear view of the third house down on the south side of the street.
At ten to eight they had checked the garage and knocked on the front door. Nothing happened until Tyler held his ID case open to the peephole. That got the sound of locks snapping open and the face of a young black woman peering at them over the chain. She said, “He ain’t here,” and closed the door. Tyler had to keep knocking and ringing the bell to get the door open again and the woman to tell them no, he hadn’t been there all night, and no, she didn’t know where he was at. Big eyes in the space that narrowed gradually until the door closed again. They drove around the block and parked on Greenwood to watch the house: a neat little red brick ranch with bursts of pink and white impatiens in the flower beds and bars on the windows. Tyler thought he saw the drapes move and checked with his binoculars. Yeah, the woman was there looking out.
“Waiting for hubby,” Nicolet said. “He gets home she’s gonna kill him.”
Tyler said, “We don’t even know it’s his wife, or if he’s got one.”
“We don’t know shit,” Nicolet said, “except he’s into guns, that I’m positive of. Doing big business too, or he wouldn’t have stuck his neck out putting up their bonds. He was desperate, had to get them out before either one of them finked on him.”
“Or he’s stupid,” Tyler said.
“He’s got one fall that goes back twenty years,” Nicolet said. “That’s not a guy that fucks up.”
“Maybe he’s been clean.”