Louis said, “You aren’t meeting Ordell. He would’ve told me.”
“So you’re working for him,” Max said. “Well, I’m looking for both of you, so it’s not like I’m wasting my time.”
He walked in brushing Louis with a shoulder that turned him off balance to hit the door, banging it against the wall. Max glanced at him.
“You okay?”
The woman said, “I don’t want no rough stuff.” She stood holding her housecoat closed, barefoot but wearing makeup, her face highlighted blue and red, her hair done up for a party. What was going on here? Both of them half undressed, Puerto Rican rum and Coke bottles on the coffee table but no glasses, the Motown sound filling the room. Max said, “Ms. Harrison, what group is that?”
“The Marvelettes,” Simone said, “ ‘Too Many Fish in the Sea.’ Like it’s getting in here.” She walked over to the stereo and turned it off.
Max watched her. “Does this guy live here?”
Louis was standing by the coffee table now. The woman walked past him, touching his bare arm, to sit down in a deep-cushioned rocker and cross her legs, showing Max some thigh. She said, “You want to know anything about Louis, why don’t you ask him? He standing right there.”
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Max said. “He and I can step outside to talk.”
“No, it’s all right.” Simone leaned over to pick up a Coca-Cola bottle, some left in it. “Long as you behave yourselves.”
This woman was going to watch.
It was hard to tell her age with all that makeup and the way her hair was piled on her head and what looked like a strand of pearls running through the hairdo.
“Louis used to work for me.”
The woman said, “Oh, is that right?”
“When he left he busted the front door of my office and took a couple of guns.”
Louis said, “What ones?” with a straight face.
“You mean the Mossberg and the Python?”
Max saw four years of state prison in Louis’s pose, hands on his hips showing his muscle. What he didn’t see was the dead stare, that convict look in Louis’s eyes, more glazed now than threatening, Louis too drunk to pull it off.
Max said, “Louis, you’re never gonna make it.” The guy didn’t know what he was doing. “Where’re the guns?”
Louis shrugged his shoulders, or flexed them.
“In your car?”
“He loan it to somebody,” Simone said. “His car ain’t here, or any guns. You gonna search my house, see if I’m lying?”
“He can’t,” Louis said.
Max turned to him. “You want to call the cops?”
“You try looking around, I’ll stop you,” Louis said. Max wished he had his stun gun with him. He brought the Browning auto out of his jacket, the inside pocket, and put it on Louis. “Sit down, okay? If you come at me, I’ll shoot you. It won’t kill you but it’ll hurt like hell and you’ll limp for the rest of your life.” He glanced at the woman. “It might even save his life.”
She nodded, sitting in her rocker. “It might.”
“Guy gets out of prison, he does everything he can to go back.”
“He can’t help it,” Simone said. “You know the story, the scorpion ast the turtle could he ride on him acrost a stream?”
“I don’t think so.”
“This scorpion ast a turtle could he ride on him acrost a stream. The turtle says, ‘No way, and let you sting me?’ The scorpion says, ‘I do that we both’d drown. You think I want to kill myself?’ Turtle says okay. They get out in the middle of the stream? The scorpion stings him. Now they drowning and the turtle says, ‘You crazy? Why’d you do that?’ The scorpion says, ‘I can’t help it, man, it’s my nature. It’s the way I am.’ ”
Max nodded. “That’s a good story.”
“Scorpion says, ‘It’s the way I am,’ ” Simone said.
“It’s the way he is too, and every one of them I ever met that come out. They can’t wait to go back.”
“I’m going to look around your house,” Max said.
“You ain’t asking, are you?”
Max shook his head.
“You know what your guns look like? You can identify them?”
“Shotgun and a revolver.”
“All right, go ahead,” Simone said. “You find any other guns, or you find something else and you take it? The man’s gonna come after you. Understand? Man that has more guns’n you ever saw in your life.”
Louis sat erect gripping the arms of his chair, looking at it step by step, thinking, Wait a minute, what happened here? The woman’s riding him on the bed, he’s about to let go and bounce her off the ceiling, and now this guy’s going around searching the
The doorbell rings. She gets up saying it must be Ordell wanting something, rings the bell ’stead of walking in on them. Comes back in the room, it ain’t Ordell, some man. Puts his pants on, goes to the door. Jesus Christ, it’s Max Cherry. So, what’s the problem? How does Max know about this place if Ordell did-n’t tell him? Lying about meeting Ordell, but maybe he isn’t. So let him in. You can take him. He mentions the guns, shove it in his face. Oh, you mean the Mossberg and the Python? Deadpan, no expression. If he doesn’t think it’s funny, fuck him. What can he do? He can’t prove anything.
But it wasn’t like that. It happened too fast and he wasn’t ready. He should have thought about it some more before letting him in. Comes in and he’s in, he takes over.
He said to Simone, “I’m not in shape.”
“You look fine to me, baby.”
“I thought I was yesterday, but I’m not. I don’t feel that edge. You know,
“You talking crazy now. You have the man’s guns?”
“Not here.”
“Then what you worried about? He ain’t the police.”
“What if he was?”
“Well, you wouldn’t have let him in, would you? Baby, you just messed up in the head a little from being in stir. I seen it do that to people.”
“That’s what I’m saying. Inside, I was in shape. I come out—you can lose the edge fast, your sense of . . . you know.”
She sighed. “Yeah, I know, baby.” Looked up to see Max and said, “Uh-oh.”
Max coming out of the hallway with a Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bag, the pistol stuck in his waist.
“That’s the something else I mentioned you best not take,” Simone said, and looked over at Louis. “You see what’s happening? You my witness I didn’t take it. Was this man here you used to work for.”
Louis waited for Max to say something about his guns, but he was speaking to Simone.
“Tell Ordell we’re even. I left something in the bedroom for him.”
“What,” Simone said, “a receipt?”
Max gave her a smile and Louis wondered if he’d missed something, if the two of them knew each other. Max was speaking to her again saying, “I’d have Ordell pick up those machine guns you have in your closet, tonight, or as soon as possible. The police find them here, you could lose your house.”
Max was leaving now. Simone raised her hand and waved it at him, like waving him off.
Louis watched her, thinking about the TEC-9s in the closet he was supposed to take out to the storage place. He turned his head to see Max open the door and walk out with the shopping bag. Louis continued to stare at the door.
Simone got up and headed for the bedroom.
