“I don’t think it matters if they followed me or not. They know what we’re doing.”
Ordell said, “How’s that again?”
“I told them we’d be meeting.”
“Wait a minute. You told them it’s me?”
“They already know that. They know more about you than I do. The ATF guy kept talking about guns. I said I can’t help you there. . . .”
“But you’d see what you could find out?”
She moved right up on him saying, “Look, the only way I can get permission to fly is if I agree to help them. I have to give them something. Or appear to. But it has to be something they can check, otherwise I could be blowing smoke. So the first thing I give them is what they already know. Do you understand that?”
“What was the next thing?”
“I told them you have money in Freeport and you want me to bring it here. A half million put away and more coming in.”
“You told them all that?”
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Is it true or not?”
“I said around that amount.”
“They know I was delivering for you,” Jackie said. “I mentioned the half million—they’re not that interested in the money, they want you with guns. I said, well, if you want proof he’s getting paid for selling them, let me bring the money in. I’ll make two deliveries, the first one with ten thousand, like a dry run. I said, you watch, see how it works. Then you set up for the next delivery, when I bring in the half million plus.”
“How it works,” Ordell said. “I come by your place and pick it up.”
“I told them you’re very careful. You send someone to meet me, and I never know who it is.”
Ordell said, “That’s an idea. You know it?”
“If you’ll listen,” Jackie said, “you’ll see it’s the whole idea. The first time I do it they’re lurking about, they see me hand the ten thousand to someone.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, one of your friends.”
“A woman?”
“If you want.”
“Yeah, I think a woman.”
“The next trip, when I come with all the money, it’ll look like I hand it to the same one I did before. . . .”
“But you don’t.”
“No, I give it to someone else, first.”
“And they follow the wrong one,” Ordell said, “thinking she’s bringing it to me, huh?”
“That’s the idea.”
“So we need two people, two women.” Jackie nodded, looking as though she was thinking about it, or remembering what else she’d told them. The woman was cool.
“Where does this happen?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You have two different flight bags and make a switch.”
“I guess so.”
“You
“I haven’t worked it out yet.”
“The woman they think has the money but don’t, they gonna come down on.”
“If she doesn’t have it, what’s the problem?”
“Has to be a woman won’t open her mouth.” Ordell paused to look at this idea. “They still know I’m the one it’s coming to.”
“Once you have the money,” Jackie said, “that’s your problem. You’re on your own.”
“You must see a piece of this for yourself.”
“Ten percent. Plus, what we’ve already agreed to. A hundred thousand if I go to jail.”
“But you helping them. They gonna let you off.”
She turned to face the ocean, saying to him, “Maybe.” Her eyes closed now, the breeze blowing her hair. Fine looking.
Ordell said, “If they say they gonna let the first run go through, why don’t we bring the whole load in that time?”
She said, her eyes still closed, “I don’t trust them all that much. Let’s see how it goes.” She pulled her T-shirt off over her head and shook her hair free.
Ordell saw what looked like a swimsuit bra covering her ninnies. Not much showing, but they looked to be fine ones. He said, “I have to do some thinking on this.”
She said, “You should,” and walked out to the hard-packed wet sand. Stood there and then looked around at him. “You know someone named Cujo?”
What was this now? Man, coming out of nowhere.
“What about him?”
“He’s at Good Sam.”
“What you talking about?”
She said, “He was shot yesterday,” and started walking out in the ocean.
“Wait a minute!”
Ordell yelled it at her, but she kept going. He ran down to the hard-packed sand. “Who told you that?” She didn’t hear him, so he moved toward her yelling, “Come back here!” and the surf came in over his alligators before he realized it. Shit. He watched her dive into a wave. Watched her come up and dive into another one, her butt in the white shorts mooning him.
Melanie had the vodka on the coffee table now, close by with a bowl of ice, while Louis finished up a cigar- size joint she’d rolled Jamaica-style, Louis sucking away in a cloud of white smoke. This guy appreciated everything you gave him. Five vodkas so far, with the dope, but very attentive. Head against the sofa cushion, staring at her through deep, dark enlarged pupils as she spoke about their pal Ordell:
How he’d looked at the cocaine business at one time and found it too competitive, all the corners taken; try to move on one you’d get shot. Guns, though, you didn’t need a franchise, you could sell guns wherever there was a demand. She told how Ordell saw himself as an international arms dealer when, come on, the only people he sold to were dopers, Jamaican crazies, and now the cartel guys from Medellin.
“Making out though. He’s doing all right,” Louis said, raising his glass in slow motion.
“Well, so far he is,” Melanie said, with some doubt in her tone. She had washed up and put a shirt on, the romance part over for the time being. She said, “You have to admit he’s not too bright.”
Louis said he wouldn’t go so far as to say that.
Melanie said, “Louis,” in her quietest serious tone, “he puts his fingers on the words when he reads. He moves his lips. Let’s say he’s streetwise. But that doesn’t stop him from being a fuckup.”
Louis said, “If you’re talking about the kidnapping, I was in it too, you know.”
“You weren’t in Freeport,” Melanie said, “were you, when my provider at the time was told to pay up or he’d never see his wife again? And he’d already filed for divorce, and if he
Louis seemed to think about it and shook his head.
“We happened to see it on TV, not more than a month ago. Ordell’s watching, he goes, ‘What is this shit? You believe it?’I said, ‘Hey, if it does-n’t even work as a movie . . .’ Now he’s talking about it again—I mean the real kidnapping. You know why? Because of this Nazi freak he met.”
“Big Guy,” Louis said. “I saw him.”
“At the white-power rally. That’s why he brought you there,” Melanie said, “to see him.”
Louis nodded. “ ’cause he looks like Richard.”
