'Nothing. I was talking is all.'
See? It reached the point every time where you had to deliver or let the guy up. Tell him one time what you're going to do. Tell him twice, he knows you're full of shit. Once you started to lose it it was over. LaBrava leaned in closer, eye to eye, the gun barrel beneath Nobles' chin, raising it slightly.
'The surprise is how six hundred thousand dollars disappear. Look at me, Richard. The surprise--you see all the cops standing around scratching their head. You're undoing the baling wire, opening the garbage bag, taking out all that money. Look at me, Richard.'
He did. Nobles met his eyes and said, 'I ain't done nothing.'
'What else do you see, Richard?'
'I ain't done nothing.'
He was losing it.
'What movie did she show you?'
'What?'
'She said she showed you a movie.'
He was getting it back. Maybe.
Nobles was thinking again. 'She told you that?'
'What was the name of it?'
'I don't know, I forget.'
'Who was in it?'
'You kidding me? Shit, I don't know.'
'Where's your partner?'
'I don't know--I don't have no partner.'
'The little Cuban.'
'I met the booger one time, 'at's all.'
'You came to meet him tonight.'
'Shit, it was you. Goddamn, we're clever.'
He felt tired knowing he was losing it. It was hard to keep it up unless you were honestly detached enough to go all the way and break the guy's jaw looking into his eyes. He could sit on the guy all night and threaten and never deliver and finally the guy would get tired of it. So who was full of shit?
He tried again, though, one more time. Said, 'Richard, call it off.'
Heard himself and knew it was over.
Nobles said, 'Or what?'
See?
Nobles said, 'I gotta go the hospital.'
See?
'So get the fuck offa me.'
Man, lost and gone forever. He would give anything to be able to bust the guy's jaw. He couldn't do it. So he reached out and hacked the gun barrel across that forearm--already broken--a gesture, for Uncle Miney if not his own peace of mind--and had to roll for his life as Nobles screamed and erupted beneath him, came up in a crouch holding his arm tight to his body, ran hunched into tree shadow a dozen yards away and must have felt protected. He took time to yell at LaBrava, back there on his knees, 'You're crazy! You know it? You're fucking crazy!'
Chapter 22
BUCK TORRES THOUGHT he was crazy, too. He didn't say he was crazy, he said, 'You broke the guy's arm?' and asked if he was crazy; it was the same thing. He came at 7:30 in the morning to say Nobles had left his hotel during the night and never returned.
Once LaBrava told him to check Sinai and Jackson Memorial Out-Patient and look for a guy walking around with his left arm in a cast, he had to tell it all. He wondered if Torres was going to comment. He was silent for so long after, staring at him in the kitchenette pouring coffee for them. Finally, that was when Torres said it.
'Are you crazy?'
'I don't think so.'
'What's the matter with you?'
'Maybe I'm a little crazy. But maybe you have to be crazy to make something happen or make it hard for them,' LaBrava said. 'Look at it. A note comes asking for money. Jean goes to the bank, picks it up. Another note comes, it'll tell her to take the money to a certain place and she'll do it.' LaBrava paused and said, 'Is it that easy?'
'We're with her every step, Joe.'
'They know you're gonna be with her.'
'We have to wait and see.' Torres sounded helpless. 'What else can we do?'
'You ever had one like this or heard of one?'
'Only dope, dopers trying to score off each other. The Major called the Bureau and they never had one like this either. They said, what is this? Your suspect is practically wearing a sign.'
'The Bureau's in it now?'
'Miami office. They're busy on some Castro spy stuff they didn't care to discuss, but they took the note for analysis. They give us their R.A. in West Palm, the resident agent, and some words of wisdom. 'Don't lose the woman or the money or it'll fuck up your day.' '
Jean Shaw came into LaBrava's mind in black and white and then in color and then in black and white again. He brought the color picture back, saw her eyes looking at him and wanted to be with her, talk to her. He saw Richard Nobles' face now, in moonlight, and said, 'The guy can't wait for it to happen. He tells us we're about to get the surprise of our life.'
'He had to say something like that,' Torres said, 'you're sitting on him. It's like what a kid would say.'
'The whole thing is like a bunch of kids made it up,' LaBrava said. 'Gimme the money or I'll kill you. Are you gonna play with them? You say you have to. All you've got is this six-foot-three-and-a-half blond asshole in a silver jacket waving at you, trying to get your attention.'
'Not anymore we don't.'
'He could've left anytime. He stayed around long enough so you notice him. Jean says, 'This guy's been bothering me,' and there he is, right there. That one. What does that tell you?'
'If he's running it,' Torres said, 'he has to be pretty fucking dumb.'
LaBrava smiled, because he could feel they were looking into the center of it. He blew on his coffee and took a sip.
'Or somebody else is running it and using Richard,' LaBrava said, 'I like to think because he is pretty fucking dumb.'
'Using him--who, the boat-lifter?'
'The boat-lifter and somebody we don't know about who's smarter than both of them.' LaBrava paused and said, 'What about the old man's pickup?'
Torres shook his head. 'No boat-lifter prints; I couldn't believe it. We found any the Bureau was ready to put out a fugitive warrant. But... the way it goes.'
LaBrava said, 'Think about the boat-lifter and somebody else we don't know about who's using Richard. If they're gonna stand him out in the open and hang a sign on him... what does that tell you?'
Torres said, 'They make it they're not gonna cut him in. They'd be dumb as him if they did.'
'That's right,' LaBrava said, 'Richard's a celebrity now. The first twenty he breaks he's in jail. If he does it around here, and I don't think he could wait. So if they don't give him a cut...'
'They have to dump him,' Torres said.
'There you are,' LaBrava said, and sipped his coffee. 'Richard's a throw-away and doesn't know it.'
'You tell him that?'
'I hadn't thought of it yet.'
