Elmore Leonard - Riding the Rap

Raylan walked toward him through sunlight and touched his hat brim to set it lower on his eyes. He said, “You got your work cut out for you,” looking around at the vegetation. “You cleaning up this whole place?”

The guy didn’t move, standing there with his machete.

He said, “It needs to be cut back and start over.”

A Cuban or P.R. accent. No shirt, but wearing what looked to be his good pants and came to work in a Cadillac. Raylan loosened his hat and set it again, looking around at the growth. “There plants here I’m not too familiar with. Is that some kind of palmetto there?”

“Yucca. Over there, that’s saw palmetto.”

Wearing his good shoes, too. Snake or lizard under the film of dust.

“I recognize the oleander and hibiscus. Is this periwinkle?”

“Yeah, what they call it here.”

“What’s that tree growing all over the place?”

“Gumbo-limbo. It has to be taken out.”

“You’re busy, I don’t want to hold you up,” Raylan said. “I’m looking for Mr. Ganz. Is he in the house?”

“Mr. Ganz?”

The guy frowning at him now, shaking his head.

“I don’t know any Mr. Ganz.”

“He doesn’t live here?”

“I never saw him.”

Shaking his head again.

“His name’s on the mailbox out front. Isn’t this the Ganz place?”

“Yeah, Ganz, sure. I work for Ms. Ganz.”

“That his wife?”

The guy shook his head. “His mother.”

“Well, is she home?”

“She don’t live here. She’s in a place in West Palm Beach, staying there, you know, so somebody can take care of her.”

“She’s in a nursing home?”

“Yeah, that’s what it is, for old people. I go see her to pay me, but she don’t know who I am. You understand? She’s old, has something wrong with her head, like she forgets who you are. So when she don’t know me this time, she don’t pay me and I have to go back.”

“You see her every day?”

“Two times, I just start to work here. You looking to buy this place?”

“Why, is it for sale?”

“I don’t know that.”

“What’s the name of the nursing home?”

“I forget.”

“But you go there.”

“Yeah, it’s by the hospital, that street there.”

“Flagler?”

“Yeah, I think that’s it. Listen, I got all this work to do, okay?”

Raylan watched the guy turn and walk away, a pair of pruners on his belt at the hip, the same place Raylan carried his gun.

Chip said, “What’s he doing?”

“Nothing,” Louis said. “He’s standing there.”

“Well, why doesn’t he leave?”

“He’s looking the place over.”

Louis had sent Bobby out front and got back to the study quick to keep an eye on Chip, watch how he behaved in this situation, somebody coming to the house. The man looked like he’d froze, his eyes stuck to the TV screen, the video of the front drive on big. Bobby wasn’t in the picture now, he’d walked off, but the dude in the suit was still there.

“I make him to be a real estate man,” Louis said. “Come to see you want to sell the house. Got all dressed up in his suit, his dude hat, wearing it like he knows what he’s doing, or wants you to think he does.”

Right then Chip said, “The hat .” Sounding at the moment excited, like he was remembering something he’d forgot.

Louis looked at him. “Yeah? What?”

Chip didn’t answer, staring at the screen.

Louis looked at it to see the dude walking away now, past Bobby’s Cadillac to his car. The dude doing all right for himself to be driving that Jag-u-ar.

“He’s leaving.” Louis watched the car back out of the drive, disappear, then looked over at Chip to see the man still watching the screen. “He’s gone, Chipper, the show’s over.”

It brought the man back to life saying, “Jesus, that was close.”

“Close to what? You saw Bobby talk to him, send the dude on his way?”

“I thought he might come up to the house.”

The man looked to be still edgy, rubbing his hands together, scratching his arms.

“Why would he come to the house? He don’t have no business here. Bobby told him nobody’s home; what he said he’d tell anybody came. He’s cleaning up around the place and don’t know shit otherwise. With that blade in his hand. You think the dude’s gonna argue with him?”

Bobby came in the study then, sweaty, still holding the machete.

“Told the dude you just the help around here, don’t know shit, huh?”

“Who was it?” Chip said. “What did he want?”

Louis said, “Was a real estate man, huh?”

“I ask him,” Bobby said. “He didn’t say.”

Chip said, “Will you tell me, for Christ sake, what he wanted?”

“You,” Bobby said. “I told him you not here. So he’s gonna visit your mommy now, then maybe come back. What do you think?” Looking right at Chip. “You ever see this guy before?”

Chip said, “No,” shaking his head.

But didn’t seem that sure about it, edgy, or like he was thinking of something else. Louis watched him walk out of the study, the man not telling where he was going.

Louis asked it. “What you think?”

“If we have to watch him, too,” Bobby said, “it’s more work.”

“I know what you mean. We got to keep the man out of sight.”

“Tie him up in a room,” Bobby said, “if we have to.”

“Why you say the dude may come back?”

“I think he’s a cop.”

“He didn’t show you nothing.”

“No, it was the way he checked me out,” Bobby said. “Like a cop trying to be a nice guy.”

“So if he comes back?”

“We wait and see.”

Chip phoned Dawn from his bedroom.

“You said the guy wore a hat.”

She said, in almost a whisper, “I happen to have a client with me.”

“Just tell me, for Christ sake, what it looked like.”

“I did. Like a cowboy hat, the way the brim was shaped. But not one of those big ones like the country music guys wear.”

Chip sat at his desk in the bedroom staring out a window at dark shapes, the sun gone from the yard. He heard her say, “Turn a light on so I can see you,” and felt himself jump. He heard her say, “You called him the Marlboro man and I said, ‘Yeah, except he’s real.’ Don’t tell me he came to see you… please.”

“Somebody did. Bobby spoke to him.”

“Chip, if you get me involved in this…”

“It’s not the same guy. I just wanted to make sure.”

Her voice said, “Chip…” as he hung up the phone.

When Raylan introduced himself to Ms. Ganz, she looked at his I.D. and his star and said, “Thank God. I call the police every day and you’re the first one to come.”

The old lady sat in a wheelchair, cloth straps around her like a seat belt to hold her in. One of the nurses had told Raylan Ms. Ganz was eighty-five and she looked it except for her blond hair, a white wine color, he realized must be a wig. There was the wheelchair and an oxygen machine by the bed, otherwise this room-with Lake Worth out the window and Palm Beach across the way-reminded Raylan of a hotel suite he’d gone into one time to make an arrest.

He said, “Ms. Ganz, you call the police?”

The old lady looked past him at a nurse, a big black woman, coming in with roses, dozens of white roses in a vase she placed on a dining table full of magazines and photos in silver frames. Raylan watched her pick up the vase of roses already sitting there, the flowers barely starting to wilt, to take out with her.

Ms. Ganz said, “Victoria, are those from Warren?”

Victoria said yes ma’am, they were, and left.