Rum Punch

was acting dumb. He said, “How much is in there?” “Maybe fifty,” Ordell said. “Maybe not that much.” “You said five hundred and fifty.” “I did, didn’t I? So we light, huh, a half million.” “She came out with that bag,” Louis said.

“Never even put her hand in it and I didn’t either.” “Came out of where?” “The fitting room. It went down exactly the

way it was suppose to.” “How long was Melanie in there?” “Maybe a minute. She came right out.” “Louis, you telling me the truth?” “Swear to God, she came out with the bag and

I took it from her.” “Then what?” “We left. Went out to the parking lot.” “Where you shot her.” “That’s right.” “She ain’t waiting somewhere with the half

million I worked my ass off to earn?” Louis said, “Jesus Christ.” “And you giving me this as my cut?”

Louis was shaking his head now, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“What’d you shoot her with?”

“It’s in there,” Louis said.

Ordell opened the glove box and brought out the Beretta. He smelled the barrel. It didn’t tell him anything. He released the magazine and emptied it, one hollow point at a time, counting them, as they dropped into the Macy’s bag. Two were gone out of a full load.

“Maybe I took two out,” Louis said. “You fuck, I thought you trusted me. Now you’ll have to wait, see if it’s on the news.”

Ordell kept looking at him, thinking as he stared. He said, “Okay, so it was Jackie Burke. I trusted her too.”

“If she’s got it,” Louis said, “why didn’t she take it all?”

Ordell nodded. “I have to think about that one. Then, I suppose, have to ask her.” He reached into the bag, brought out a few hollow points, and began snapping them into the magazine. “See, if there was nothing in here but towels, then maybe she didn’t have a chance to take it from her suitcase and ATF got it, or she hid it someplace in that mall. See, she had to show ATF the money at the airport. Okay, then the idea is it disappears and nobody knows where it went. Jackie, nobody. But her giving me this fifty— it’s like she’s telling me she took the rest of it. You know what I’m saying? Like she wants me to know it and is rubbing it in my face.”

“I don’t know,” Louis said. “Either she has it or the feds.”

“Or . . .” Ordell paused. “She gave it to somebody else first, before Melanie went in the dressing room.”

It was quiet in the car.

Maybe a minute went by before Louis said, “Jesus Christ,” in a quiet tone of voice.

Ordell, loading bullets in the magazine, looked up at him. “What?”

The man thinking of something that must’ve slipped his mind.

“You know who I saw there in the dress department?”

“Tell me,” Ordell said.

“Sitting there reading a newspaper? I didn’t think anything of it.”

The man making excuses first, putting off saying it. Not wanting to sound dumb. Ordell waited.

“No—I did wonder what he was doing there, but didn’t think it had anything to do with us. You know, like maybe he was there with his wife or his girlfriend.”

The man had to be out of excuses now. Ordell said, “You gonna tell me who it was?”

“Max Cherry,” Louis said.

Ordell looked out the windshield at traffic going by, let his gaze move to look at the cars lining the Ford dealer’s lot, before turning to Louis again.

Louis was still there.

Something must’ve happened to him in prison. Four years staring at the walls and drinking shine, the man was burnt out, useless. Ordell said, “You see Max Cherry in the dress department. We’re about to be handed half a million dollars—man, look at me when I’m talking to you. And you don’t think nothing of him being there. Every time I ask you what’s wrong or what happened here, what would you tell me?”

Louis frowned at him.

“Answer the question.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Ordell shoved the magazine into the pistol, racked the slide, and pressed the muzzle against Louis’s side.

“I said what would you tell me?”

Louis’s eyes were wide open now.

“Yesterday I ask you, what’s wrong, Louis? You say it was Max Cherry knowing where you’re staying. I ask you what happened to Simone? You say Max Cherry must’ve scared her. Say he scared you too. Every time I turn around there’s this Max Cherry the bail bondsman. You worked for the man, you know he’s a crook just like all of ’em. Money hungry, do anything to get it. You saw him, knowing what he is, and you let him take my fucking money right under your nose. Man, what happened to you?” Ordell pressed the barrel of the pistol as hard as he could into Louis’s side, squeezed the trigger, and saw Louis jump with the blunt sound it made. Saw Louis’s eyes open staring at him. He worked the barrel up higher on Louis’s side, getting it under his arm, and shot him again, Louis pressed against the door. This time his head bounced off the window, fell forward with his chin against his chest, eyes open, and stayed that way.

Ordell said, “What’s wrong with you, Louis?” He said, “Shit, you use to be a beautiful guy, you know it?”

Ordell left him there. He walked along Northlake Boulevard looking for the last car in the world anybody would expect to see him driving. He bought an ‘89 VW Golf with less than thirty thousand miles on it, maroon; paid fifty- two hundred for it out of the Macy bag.

Now he had to find a place to stay.

There was a woman in Riv’era Beach he used to see now and then. From the old school, did heroin ’stead of crack, hooked now and then. Yeah, saw her last night in the bar when he was talking to Louis and she kept looking at him. If he could remember her name . . .

24

They brought Jackie to the ATF office on South Dixie in West Palm. Nicolet removed a satchel charge from the chair by his desk so she could sit down. She asked him what it was. He said a bag of explosives and left her alone for about twenty minutes. To talk to his surveillance people, Jackie believed, and see if they had something to throw at her. While they were still at the mall she had told about Melanie coming into the fitting room and grabbing the money. They had her flight bag, so they must have spoken to Frieda, the saleswoman.

In the car coming here they told her Melanie was dead, shot twice, but no details. Nicolet, in the front seat of the ATF car, said, “You see what can happen?” Which meant he wasn’t buying her story, or not all of it. The girl with the shoulder bag sitting next to her in back said, “That Unitel body mike isn’t worth shit in a mall. I couldn’t hear anything but Muzak.” Nicolet glanced at her and the girl didn’t say another word. Jackie caught it. They had a hole in their surveillance.

While Nicolet was away from the office Jackie looked at photographs of weapons taken inside a storage facility and thumbed through a copy of Shotgun News. No ashtrays, so she used someone’s coffee mug from this morning. The office, with two desks pushed together, was smaller than Tyler’s at FDLE, messier, looking more lived in. There was a tagged submachine gun on the other desk Jackie assumed wasn’t loaded.

Nicolet brought her a mug of coffee without asking if she wanted one. A good sign. He had his coat and tie off and didn’t appear to be armed. Sitting down at the desk he said, “You didn’t tell me you’re gonna do some shopping.”

“I thought I did, at the airport.”

Nicolet shook his head. “I would think, this delivery on your mind, you’d wait till after.”

“I’ve had my eye on this suit,” Jackie said, “and I was afraid it might be gone.”

“Why’d you leave your flight bag?”

“Well, first of all, I brought it to put my uniform in and whatever else I bought I wasn’t going to wear.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No, because when I came out . . . Wait, let’s start over. The idea was, I’d leave whatever I bought in the flight bag, not have to carry it around, and meet Sheronda with the bag that had the fifty thousand in it.”