Elmore Leonard: Freaky Deaky

No more fooling around in the gray area, the first one. There was a second gray area now: a white '87 Cadillac sedan, license number JVS 681. He was thinking about asking Jerry Baker if he'd check with the First Precinct, see if the owner had reported a blown-out windshield and fifteen 9-millimeter rounds in the backrest of his front seat. Or through and through, into the back seat. There might even be a couple in the trunk. At this point Jerry Baker, the gray area expert, might ask, "What's gray about it?"

It was something to think about driving up the freeway, eight o'clock and still light. Chris imagined a conversation as sort of a rehearsal for conversations to come, a chance to get a few answers straight in his mind, starting with Jerry asking what's gray about the guy getting his car shot up.

CHRIS: Let's-say it happened in the line of duty. The city pays for the damage, right?

JERRY: But it didn't.

CHRIS: Looking at it retroactively, it could turn out that it was in the line of duty. That's the gray area.

Jerry doesn't understand that. No one would.

CHRIS: Look at it this way. While holding evidence until Monday, I've put myself in a position to observe the perpetrators, aware of the possibility they could, A, show their hand, B, fuck up, or C, as it happens sometimes with these people, they have a disagreement and go after each other instead of the intended victim, Woody.

JERRY: Or they could go after you.

CHRIS: That's right. You could get a leg broken. But when the attempt fails and a Cadillac sedan, JVS 681, is damaged in the process, there are two ways to look at it. One, it was a matter of a private citizen defending his life.

JERRY: Who's the private citizen?

CHRIS: Me. Or, another way to look at it, the car was damaged by a police officer in the performance of his duty.

JERRY: But you're not a police officer.

CHRIS: I am if they'll reinstate me retroactively, in consideration of the undercover work I've been doing, lining up the perpetrators. All right, that's done. Or it will be. Then Monday, Homicide throws a full investigation at them. Get them with dynamite in their possession. Then I bring out the evidence I've been holding over the weekend, five sticks of Austin Powder. We match it to their dynamite, same lot number and all, and we're on our way. Maybe Homicide'll want to go about it a little different, but here's hard evidence that could lead to a conviction. Get 'em for one homicide, one attempted.

JERRY: You produce the five sticks of dynamite-that's all?

Not the check for twenty-five grand?

CHRIS: I don't know. That's still in the gray area all its own, isn't it?

Jerry doesn't answer. The gray area expert doesn't know either. Or won't say…

In the next hour and a half Chris arrived at Robin's mother's house, off Lone Pine Road, pressed close to the windows in all three garage doors and saw a Lincoln and two clean, empty spaces; no red VW. He pressed close to windows along the back of the house, came to a door and rang the bell. If he had I.D. he'd get the Bloomfield Hills cops to go in. Just checking. But he didn't have I.D." so he poked his elbow through a pane of glass, reached in and opened the door. Right next to it on the wall was the panel of buttons you punched as soon as you entered, to turn off the silent alarm system. Shit. So he got in his dad's car and drove back to Robin's:

Buzzed her apartment and got no answer. Buzzed the manager…

From 9:30 till 3:00 A.M. Chris sat in the car parked across the street from 515 Canfield, in the dark. He pictured Robin and Skip in a bar, two ex-cons talking past their shoulders, scheming, grinning at each other as they had fun getting smashed. Seeing them in a bar because he would love a drink. Go somewhere to have a few and get something to eat. He hadn't had anything since breakfast.

A box of popcorn in the show. He should've called Greta.

He caught a glimpse of Phyllis, the cotton between her toes…

Then saw Greta in her T-shirt now, bending over the stove.

Saw her sitting at the desk in the squad room. Saw her walking, her thighs moving in the skirt. Saw her in his dad's car, in profile.

And saw Mel Gibson playing the burnout and saw Juicy in the Cadillac, the Clock going off, Jesus, and saw Juicy's gray tongue in the pink interrogation room.

Greta was alone in that empty house, the phone and message recorder on the bare floor. He should've called.

He wasn't different.

He saw Donnell in the library, that dismal room, it seemed dusty, a gray area of figurine lamps and leather chairs, Donnell getting the checkbook out of the desk, holding it close to him.

Greta, he liked her name. He liked her red hair against the pillow, her mouth…

He saw Donnell and Skip and Robin standing slack, not moving a muscle.

They better not. He was covering them with the Clock auto. But where would it happen?

Donnell kept waiting for the man to fall asleep so he could go downstairs a while, have some time to himself.

The house would be quiet and Donnell in his room listening would think, Finally. Then would hear the man's voice from down the hall.

"Donnell?"

And he'd move through the dark to the master bedroom, light showing inside. Three times now, walk out of the room dim, the night light on in the bathroom, come back to it lit up.

"I'm right here, Mr. Woody."

"I can't sleep."

"You keep turning the light on, how can you?"

"But I can't see. " "That's the idea. You close your eyes and you have sweet dreams. Think of like you lying in a hammock and this lovely woman, has a flower in her black hair, is holding a banana rum daiquiri, big, big one, kind you love, and you sipping it through a straw." Give the man some kind of shit his wet mind would recognize and accept. Patient with the man, kindly, that new page for the will downstairs in the desk drawer.

"Put the light on in the bathroom."

"The night light's on in there. You see it?"

"I want the light on."

"You got it."

Donnell stepped over to the bathroom. As he came back the man, the mound under the covers, big curly head against the pillow, said, "I thought I heard you go out."

"Ain't I right here?"

"You went out last night. I woke up, I didn't know where you were."

What the man meant, he didn't know where he was.

"I told you I had to go out, Mr. Woody. My mother had a dream I died and I had to show her I was fine. Then I had to look in the Dream Book for her, see what number it meant to play."

That quieted the man. Either give him some shit his mind would accept or, the other way, confuse him, shut him up.

"You be fine now," Donnell said and reached down to touch the man's toes under the covers, about to tell him good night. What he said to him instead was, "Mr. Woody, you forget to take your shoes off, didn't you?"

Picking the knots out of the man's shoelaces woke him up some more. One thirty in the morning he believed maybe a drink would help him go to sleep. Donnell said, "Yeah, that's what you need"-on top the fifth or more of scotch, the fifth of gin, the half dozen cans of beer the man'd had today-"a nightcap. Why don't I bring it to your bed?"

And if that didn't do it, hit him over the head with something.

Donnell went downstairs wishing he had a baby bottle.

Fill it with booze and let the man fall asleep sucking on it.

There was scotch at the bar in the library, but no ice left from the man's evening entertainment; the refilled trays in the fridge underneath the bar weren't half frozen. He'd have to get a couple of cubes from the kitchen. Always something, catering to or picking up after. He turned off the light in the library, walked through the front hall to the dining room turning lights on, pushed through the swing door to the butler's pantry and was in darkness again edging into the kitchen, running his hand along the wall. There it was. Donnell flicked the light on, turned and said, "Jesus!" loud, feeling his insides jump.