Rum Punch

“And where’s Jackie?”

“She’s been there since Thursday night.”

“She wanted to see me, why wasn’t she home?”

“She was afraid.”

“I have to see that.”

“She still is. She doesn’t want to get shot before she can tell you what happened.”

“Have her bring me the money here.”

“It’s in the safe. She can’t get at it.”

“Call her, tell her the combination.”

“She won’t leave there till you have the money and you’re gone. I’ll tell you that right now.”

“But you expect me to walk in there.”

“If I wanted to set you up,” Max said, “I already told you, they’d have busted in by now. She knows if you get picked up you’ll name her as an accessory. That scares her more than anything.”

“It’s why she’s giving up my money, huh? Not that bullshit about Melanie. I didn’t trust her either, but I knew how to handle her.” Ordell moved to the window again. “She was my fine big girl.” The street was quiet, dark out now. “I said to Louis, ‘Man, you could’ve hit her.’ Give her a punch in the mouth.” He turned to Max. “Jackie wants her cut, huh?”

“Fifty grand.”

“How ‘bout the money she wants if she does time?”

“She got off.”

“Yeah, I forgot. All right, I give her the fifty ATF marked up, since she let them do it, and she gives me my money. Do it at your office, huh?”

“She’s there now.”

“How ’bout your man Winston?”

“He’s out at the jail.”

“I call your office, she better answer the phone, not somebody else.”

Ordell took Max’s business card from his shirt pocket and looked at it going over to the phone, on the floor next to a chair with a clear-plastic cover over it. He hated the chair, you stuck to it. He needed to get out of this place. He needed his clothes. He needed to get his hair done, his pigtail was coming loose from fooling with it. He needed his car. He could take the license plate off the VW and put it on the Mercedes. Stop on the way . . . Or have Jackie go pick it up right now, key under the front seat, and bring it to Max’s office, have it there ready. If nobody had stole it. Put the money in the trunk and you’re gone, man. Put all the money in the trunk. Five hundred and the marked-up fifty. Tell them, well, that’s how it is.

Ordell laid the pistol on his lap, picked up the phone, and dialed the number. He waited. Then smiled saying, “Hey, baby, how you doing? You know who this is?”

Nicolet would watch Faron and his wife Cheryl, the way they acted when she came to visit, and he’d get an urge to see his ex, Anita. It didn’t make sense, because he thought the way Faron and Cheryl talked to each other was stupid. Hi, hon. How’re you feeling, hon? Not bad, hon. Both of them hon, no identity of their own when they were together. Like all fathers were dad or daddy to their kids. Nicolet could not see himself in this anonymous group. And yet almost every time he saw Faron and Cheryl honing and touching each other, he’d miss Anita and get her to meet him for a drink. He’d say, “What’re you gonna have, hon?” and watch her tighten her black eyebrows giving him a serious funny look. Cheryl was a homemaker, Anita an X-ray technician at Good Samaritan. They’d met when he was there for a physical. She gave him a barium enema and he asked her how she’d managed to get a job shooting white gunk into assholes all day. Anita said she guessed she was just lucky. They never called each other hon while they were married or knew what they would have for dinner, both of them working. He still considered scoring with Jackie. She was there. But so was Anita. He was seeing her more since Faron was in the hospital. Finally this evening Anita said okay when he suggested going back to her apartment.

His beeper went off on her nightstand.

Anita said, “Shit.” Nicolet said, “Keep hold of it, hon, and we won’t lose it.” He dialed the number showing on his beeper and was surprised when Jackie Burke answered. He asked where she was and got another surprise.

“What’re you doing there?”

“Ordell called and left a message on my machine. He said I have to sign something so he can get his money back, for my bond.”

“You don’t sign anything.”

“I didn’t think so. I have a feeling he wants me to bring the rest of his money here, from Freeport. What do I do?”

“He’s gonna be there?”

“He said about eight.”

Nicolet glanced at the clock on the stand. “Why didn’t you call me sooner?”

“I just found out. Will you come, please?”

Anita said, “Pleeease.”

Jackie said, “What?”

“Is Max there?”

“No, but the other guy is.”

“I’ll be there right away. Hang on.”

Jackie said, “Hurry.”

Nicolet hung up the phone. “I have to be there and get some backup in the next fifteen minutes.”

Anita said, “You might as well, hon. You’re not doing much good here.”

Ordell drove. He’d take this VW over to the beach mall after and put its license plate on the Mercedes. Get on the turnpike and head north into the night.

“All the time I’ve known her,” he said to Max, big next to him in the little car, “I never heard her sound scared like that. Ordinarily, man, she’s cool. All she had to do was take a taxicab to where my car’s at and have it for me. She would not do it.”

He felt like talking while Max Cherry wasn’t saying a thing. He did take a cigarette, asking for one as Ordell lit up.

“How come you have that sign in your office, no smoking, if you smoke?”

“I started again,” Max said.

“Yeah, I remember you didn’t have an ashtray for me that first time I come in. I told you I had cash to put up as collateral and you said oh, use that coffee mug there. I could’ve used anything I wanted. I said that time, you have ways to skim money, don’t you? ’Cause you all crooks in that business. The woman tells you her scheme, man, your greedy eyes light up. You both of you plan to rip me off, I know that, and lost your nerve, huh? Gonna have to stay a bail bondsman, deal with the scum while you try to act respectable, huh? The rest of your life.”

Max Cherry sat there dumb, the man knowing what he was.

They were approaching Banyan. Max said, “It’s the next street.”

Ordell said, “I know where it is.”

Max said, “Turn left.”

“I know where to turn.”

They parked in the lot next door, the VW angled against the side of the storefront building. Max got out and stood by the trunk. He watched Ordell adjust the pistol stuck in his waist as he approached, pulling his shirt over it.

“What do you need that for?”

“You never know, do you?” Ordell started toward the front of the building.

Max waited. “What about the fifty thousand?”

“We leave it in the trunk,” Ordell said, “till I see she has my money.” He led the way around front to where MAX CHERRY BAIL BONDS was painted on the window. Ordell said, “Now I want you ahead of me.”

Max opened the door covered with a sheet of plywood and crossed to the lighted doorway, Ordell behind him saying, “Easy now.” Max walked in.

He saw Jackie seated at his desk holding a cigarette, her legs crossed. He stepped aside, toward Winston’s