'Cover it first,' McCormick said, 'then worry about what people think of you, if you worry about such things. Next, get the Lauderdale cops to canvas the mall, see if they can get a lead on the two guys. They'll give you a lot of shit, but at least you tried. After that... what've you got? Nothing. I don't see the big blond guy in the picture anywhere.'
'Richard--' Torres began to say.
'If those two guys have the balls to grab the bag, what do they want to cut Richard in for? What's he, their typist?'
'Listen, Richard--I didn't tell you,' Torres said to LaBrava, 'we found out was treated early this morning at Bethesda Memorial, compound fracture. The nurse said a cop brought him in.'
LaBrava was wondering why he'd gone all the way up to Boynton Beach, fifty miles, as McCormick said, 'Cop from where?'
'She didn't know where the cop was from,' Torres said, looking at LaBrava again. ' 'But a real one,' she said, not a rent-a-cop. We called every town from West Palm down. Nobody's got him or has a record of him.'
'He has a friend who's a cop,' LaBrava said, and could see Richard Nobles in the Delray Crisis Center flashing his badge and the slim girl standing up to him, Jill Wilkinson, and Richard saying he had a friend... either with the Delray or Boca police... the other girl, Pam, saying yes, she knew him. 'I'll see if I can get his name for you.'
He wondered if the slim girl was back from Key West.
McCormick said, 'Let me take a look in her apartment tomorrow, maybe give you a better idea what you have to do next.'
LaBrava said, 'You gonna get her permission?'
'I could do that,' McCormick said. 'Or I could take a peek first. See, then if it looks interesting, get a warrant. Why bother the lady?'
'Get her permission,' LaBrava said.
McCormick stared, smiled a little. 'Well, now, what have we here?'
'Get her permission,' LaBrava said.
'You don't,' Torres said, 'I bet you could open the door and get your arm broke.'
Nobles could see without even trying there was no way he could get a uniform shirt on. The goddamn cast came all the way bent-arm to his shoulder. He ended up he had to cut the left arm out of his good silver jacket; put on uniform pants and the goddamn police hat to make him look at least semiofficial. No sense wearing the holster, empty.
It was too late to get another gun. It was too late to get anything to eat and he was hungry for a Big Mac and some fries. He thought about the snake eating the bat--the lesson there, be patient. He thought about--the idea he liked best--walking up behind that blindsider and tapping him on the shoulder. ' 'Scuse me.' And as the blindsider comes around hit him in the face with the goddamn cast. Then say to him laying there on the ground...
He'd have to think of something good.
Going on 3:00 A.M. he hiked the two and a half miles from his dumpy place out Township, cut across the county airport past a lot of rich guys' planes, then over Lantana to Star Security, across from the state hospital. It was not luck he had kept a set of patrol car keys, it was using the old bean.
Going on 4:00 A.M. Nobles was down on Ocean Drive, Boca Raton, slow-cruising the beach condos like a regular security service car, except now he was looking for the law instead of boogers. He did not expect any sign of them. Why would there be with the horse out of the barn? He rode up to the top floor in that goddamn pokey elevator, went into her place with the key she'd given him and right away could smell her. Taking a leak he began to feel horny. She had yelled at him one time, 'Close the door, you sound like a horse.' And he had yelled back, 'Puss? Come in here and help me hold this hog, would you, please?' They'd had some times. In her bedroom he was tempted to poke through her drawers, but knew he'd best take it and get.
It was in the walk-in closet. Lord have mercy, it actually was. Round fat garbage bag of money he and her had agreed to split two to one in her favor, which he believed was fair. Shit, $200,000 he could buy any goddamn thing he wanted, starting with a pair of lizard wingtip cowboy boots he'd seen on Burt Reynolds one time up in Jupiter. Buy the boots, buy a 'Vette, buy some guns, have 'em in glass cabinets in his knotty-pine den...
He had to drive back to his place first, which had two rooms and not any kind of den, to store the loot. He had to drive back on over to Star Security and leave the car, shit, then hike the two and a half miles back home. It wasn't so bad though. He started out thinking of what he would say to the blindsider laying there on the ground.
'You mess with me, boy--'
'You fuck with me, boy--'
'You fuck with the bull, boy--'
He liked 'bull' but he didn't like 'bull, boy.'
How about, 'Boy, you fuck with the bull... you see what you get.'
'You see what can befall you.'
Befall you? He sounded like a preacher.
Saw the blindsider being struck by a bolt of lightning.
Saw him through a car windshield as he ran over the son of a bitch.
Then saw Cundo Rey, Lord have mercy, and felt tears come into his eyes it was so funny to imagine. The little booger opening that other Hefty bag. Sure, he would, set to skip with the whole load. The dink might even skip and then open the bag. Get to some motel up around Valdosta, open her up... The poor little fucker. He'd blame it on the law doing him a tricky turn, and there wouldn't be a goddamn thing he could do about it.
Cundo Rey woke up the next morning, 6:00 A.M., he didn't sleep so good, he opened his eyes he had a headache. Ouuuuu, he had a good one. He believed it was from not using his anger.
Anger was good if you could use it right away, let it pick you up and carry you. But if you didn't use it, then it passed and it left your brain sore. Like balls became sore if you were ready to make love but for some reason didn't do it. Like you had to get out of her house quick. Man, they ached. It was the same thing with the brain. He took aspirin and Pepsi-Cola. Pretty soon he was able to think. In time he began to wonder why he had got angry.
The creature had told him to get a good place close by to hide. He had found a perfect place, Bonita Drive, a one-block curve of apartments, cheap, between Seventy-first Street and Indian Creek Drive. Ten minutes from the action down on South Beach. One minute from the North Bay Causeway, shoot over to Miami, you're on the freeway. He rented the first floor of a two-story place for a month; it even had a garage to hide the car in.
He had given the address to the creature and the creature said good, here's what I do and here's what you do, and told him all the things he eventually did. Take the bag from the woman, who would follow a note to the car-park building. Run home and hide the bag. Get rid of the stolen car... Then after a week or so, when it was cool, the creature said he would come and pick up his half of the money and they would never see each other again.
But the creature never told where he was going to be hiding. The creature never called him a name and said, don't try to take the money for yourself or I'll find you and kill you. That should have opened his eyes. But his own greed, thinking how easy it would be to take it all, had perhaps blinded him.
So last night, 8:30, he came back from getting rid of the Skylark, a nice car; he opened the Hefty bag upside down, and for a long time he sat looking at the pile of cut-up newspaper on the floor, the Miami Herald and one called the Post.
What made him angry was thinking the cops did this to him. The cops not caring if it endangered the woman. The dirty cops, like all cops, full of cop tricks. He drank a pint of rum and a liter of Pepsi-Cola to become tranquil, but it didn't do any good.
This morning, a beautiful day outside, he looked at the pieces of newspaper he had kicked all over the living room, at the pieces of broken glass and dishes on the floor, and began to wonder different things.
Why the creature hadn't tried to frighten him: take the money, you die.
How the creature himself was able to put the note in the woman's car and in that hotel if the cops were watching. How he could do it, a man who always wished to be seen, and not be seen.
Why there were no cops in the car-park building if the note told her to go there. He had been very careful entering, looked in cars, all over.
Why, if the note didn't say to go there, she did.
It was getting good.
