words.'
He read what she had written and said, 'This here looks fine to me.'
She said, 'Listen to yourself. That's what I want it to sound like.'
It didn't make any sense to him that writing would sound like a person. Writing was writing, it wasn't like talking. But he did as he was told, fought that dinky typewriter and finished the note.
Jean said, 'All right, read it to me.'
' 'Your life is worth six hunnert thousand dollars,' ' Nobles began, rolling the sheet up out of the typewriter, remembering not to touch it. ' 'You have three days to get the money. It must be used money with nothing smaller than a twenty and nothing bigger than a hunnert dollar bill and don't say you can't get it. You are worth a sight more than that.' ' Nobles looked up. 'I added that part.'
'Fine,' Jean said. 'Go on.'
'Let see. 'Get four thousand hunnerts, three thousand fifties and twenty-five hunnert twenties.' ' Nobles paused. 'How you know the bag'll hold it?'
'It will,' Jean said. 'Go on.'
' 'You are to put the money in a Hefty thirty-gallon, two-ply trash bag. Put this one in another Hefty trash bag of the same size and tie it closed with some type of wire. Hay-baling wire is good. You will be told where to take the money. If you do not do as you are told you will die.' I like that part. '... you will die.' Underlined. 'If you try any tricks you will die. If you tell the police or anybody you will die. Look at your car. You know this is not just a threat. You have two days to get the money and your car fixed. I am watching you.' Underlined. I said baling wire there, so it won't come undone. Is that okay?'
'Good idea,' Jean said. She leaned close to him to look at the note. 'You misspelled baling, as in hay-baling wire.'
'Shit,' Nobles said.
'That's all right, leave it,' Jean said. 'But if the police question you they might get tricky and pick up on that word, ask you how to spell it.'
'Yeah?'
'There's no e in it. It's b-a-l-i-n-g.'
'That's balling,' Nobles said and started to grin and said, 'Hey, puss...'
'Richard, we have a lot of work to do and I have to get back.'
He hunched in to look at the note with her. 'Hey, what should we sign it?'
'Well, Cordially, would be nice,' Jean said. 'No, that's fine the way it is. Now we'll write what you're going to say when you call, so you'll have it word for word. You'll tell me to go to a phone booth, you'll call me there at a certain time.' Nobles was shaking his head. She said, 'What's the matter?'
'Nuh-uh, they're gonna have traps on the phone. Shit, I know that much. I seen the feds do it when I was on the Opa-locka Police, setting up drug busts. They can't prove what I write, but they can sure as hell get my voice print on a phone. You have to tell 'em where you're suppose to go, don't you? Make it look real?'
'Yeah, you're right.'
'By the time you get to Boca they got a trap on the phone booth. It tells 'em right away what number I'm calling from. See, it's different from a movie. They got equipment now, shit, you don't have a chance of doing something like that. You might as well give 'em your phone number.'
Jean said, 'All right, we'll do it with notes. Instead of a call I receive a note at the hotel, telling me where to go...'
'Find it on the porch, say.'
'I'll go to the phone booth in Boca, find another one--'
'Hold it there. I'm being watched how'm I gonna put the note in the phone booth?'
'I'll have it with me,' Jean said. 'Make it look as though I found it. Hello--what's this?'
'That'd work.'
'The note tells me to go to my apartment.' She gave him a wink. 'Got it?'
'Gotcha.'
'I find another note, slipped under the door.'
'You have it with you too.'
'Or we write it now and leave it here.'
'Yeah?' Nobles was thinking. 'You know where you go next?'
'Of course.'
'Got the whole deal worked out, haven't you?'
'Every step. The only change, notes instead of phone calls. I like it even better--they'll be playing with all their electronics for nothing.'
'They love it, the feds, all that technical shit. Where's my little Cuban come in at?'
'The next stop.'
'You're still gonna have a tail on you, you know that.'
Jean nodded, smoking a cigarette, blowing the smoke out in a slow stream. Boy she was calm.
'All I'll need is to be out of their sight for about twenty seconds.'
'You got the place?'
'I've got the place. I'm pretty sure. But I'm going to look at it again when I leave here.'
'Cundo's gonna take it from you by force.'
'There's no other way,' Jean said. 'But I'll cooperate, you can be sure of that. Does he have a gun?'
'Doesn't like guns or rough stuff. Talks big but being half queer he's girlish.'
Jean said, 'Okay, we'll write the notes. We'll need three...' She paused. 'You'll have to take the typewriter with you when we're finished here.'
'Yeah, I guess I better.'
'Drop it in the Intracoastal. That area just before you come to the Hillsboro Inlet, there're a lot of trees.'
'It's a shame, it's a nice typewriter.'
'Richard?'
'Don't worry, I'll get rid of it. Or I could sell it.'
She said, 'Oh, Christ.'
'Just kidding. Don't you worry, it's good as done.'
She was thinking or worrying about something though. This little schemer--boy, she was a sketch.
She said, 'Does your friend Cundo know where you live?'
'You mean up here or down there?'
'In Lake Worth.'
'Nobody does, 'cept you.'
'You can't go there while you're being watched.'
'I know it.'
'Promise?'
Nobles said, 'Hey, you think I'm stupid or something?'
She thought of handkerchiefs and how simply it was done in the movies: Henry Silva making phone calls with a handkerchief over the mouthpiece, in a time before electronic surveillance; the movie cop using a handkerchief to pick up the murder weapon. Henry Silva had used a second-hand typewriter and dropped it off the side of his boat on their good-luck cruise to Catalina, their last time together before her husband would receive the letter--$150,000 or you're dead. Impressive enough as a pre-inflation demand; today it would hardly be worth the risk. She remembered her line: 'You can't come near the boat as long as the cops are tailing you.' (Beat) 'Promise?' And Henry Silva's line: 'Do I look stupid?'
Some of it was different, some of it almost exactly the same. One thing she was certain of, it wouldn't end the way the movie did.
Chapter 18
