Elmore Leonard - Riding the Rap

“Victoria’s from Jamaica,” the old lady said, and smiled, looking at the roses. “From Warren.”

Her husband’s name. The woman living in the past.

“Every week he sends me four dozen roses.”

Raylan said that was nice, flowers made a room… it made the room cheerful. Ms. Ganz said the flowers had been coming every week for as long as she’d been here. Raylan didn’t ask how Warren Ganz worked it, being dead. He stepped over to smell a rose, show some interest, and had to look at the framed photographs then, all of the same woman, Ms. Ganz at different ages. Ms. Ganz in big hats, Ms. Ganz by an old-model Rolls in a big hat, with a man and a small boy, the woman wearing a big straw summer hat in that one and holding flowers. It made Raylan think of her property so overgrown and was about to ask if she’d hired a yardman, but she spoke up then.

“Will you talk to them, please?”

He turned to see her looking up at him, helpless in her chair. “Talk to who?” Raylan said.

“I can’t take much more. Will you tell them to stop it?”

He couldn’t help feeling sorry for her, poor old lady in her curly wig; tied up. “You say you call the police?”

“Every day. First it was my underwear. I ask Victoria, I ask Louise, I ask Ada, ‘What in the world is happening to my underwear?’ They say oh, I’m imagining things. I put my underwear underneath the bed wrapped in newspaper. They found it. They’ve stolen my underwear, my good shoes, a lovely pin my grandmother gave me when I was a little girl, all my towels I brought from home, my piano-”

“Your piano,” Raylan said, “you had it here?”

“Right there by the window. That’s how they got it out. My friends here, they used to come by every day and ask me to play. Their favorites were ‘Indian Love Call’ and ‘Rose Marie,’ different ones Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy sang together. I have the records, too. ‘Oh, Rose Marie, I love you…’ I woke up from my nap, I couldn’t believe it. Two colored men I know are Jamaican, because I see them around here, were picking up the piano and shoving it through the window. I said, ‘Put that down this minute.’ They paid no attention. Oh, I was mad. I raised Cain around here. I said, ‘Didn’t any body see them? My God, they marched off with my piano right down Flagler Avenue in broad daylight.’ Not a person here said yes or no, but you could tell they knew about it.”

Raylan nodded, trying to show interest. He said, “By the way, Ms. Ganz, did you hire a man to do yard work?”

“Something’s going on,” the old lady said, “and I think it’s that Victoria who’s behind it. She’s another one of the Jamaicans.”

“I’ll speak to her,” Raylan said.

“Would you do that? I’d be so grateful.”

The old lady’s eyes shining with hope, or just watery; Raylan wasn’t sure.

“If she denies it,” Ms. Ganz said, “tell her she’s a lying fucking nigger. That’s what I do.”

He asked Victoria about the yardman, Cuban or Puerto Rican, said he came by to see Ms. Ganz and get paid?

“She tell you that?”

“The yardman did.”

“I saw a person like that come to see her last week, but I didn’t speak to him myself. It used to be people came to be paid by her; a plumber fixed something, another one for the air-conditioning. Not so much anymore.”

“She ever go home?”

“She used to, when she first come. Go home for a few days.”

“She said some guys stole her piano?”

“Yes, steal her underwear, her shoes. She goes crazy when nobody believes her. I go in there, sometimes she tries to hit me with her cane, call me something I won’t say to you. You understand this woman never had a piano long as she been here. The roses? She send those to herself, two hundred dollars a week, a standing order, they have to sign the card ‘With love from Warren.’”

“Her husband,” Raylan said. “I imagined Ms. Ganz was the one doing it.”

“Not the husband,” Victoria said, “suppose to be from the son, Chip. But that’s as hard to believe as the dead man sending them. Chip don’t spend ten cents on his mother. You know Chip?”

“Not yet,” Raylan said. “Tell me about him.”

It was dark now and they kept the house dark except for the study where there were no windows. When Bobby Deo came in from outside he said to Louis, “You see him?”

It straightened Louis, sitting on the sofa, the shotgun next to him. “He come back?”

“Quiet this time, no lights on.”

Louis said, “Man, I didn’t see a thing. Got it on the full screen, too. But you can’t see shit out there at night with that cheap-ass camera, even with the spot. He get out and look around?”

“Came up to the house, he takes a look in the windows. Looks all around before he leaves. Walks to the back, looks at the swimming pool, looks in the garage…”

“You put your car in there.”

“Yeah, well, he’s seen it now. Gonna want to know what it’s doing there at night.”

“You mean if he comes back,” Louis said. “What you tell him, you’re the caretaker.” Louis thought about it and began to nod saying, “Yeah, the dude looks in the window, don’t see any furniture, looks at the scummy swimming pool… You understand what I’m saying? The dude can see nobody’s living here.”

“Yeah, but my car is there,” Bobby said.

“Man, I just told you, you the caretaker. You watch the place nobody breaks in. You sleep in the kitchen and must not’ve heard him outside. I’m saying if he comes back. See, then you ask him for some identification. You want to know who the fuck he thinks he is coming around here at night, you trying to sleep.”

Bobby was nodding like he agreed, but then said, “I don’t know about this guy. Is he looking for Harry?”

“See, I wondered the same thing,” Louis said, “on account of Chip owing Harry and here Harry is right upstairs. So we think, ‘Oh, he must be looking for Harry.’ You understand what I’m saying? But all the dude say he wants is to talk to Mr. Ganz. Am I right? The dude, it might be wants to sell the man something, like he can give him a deal on aluminum screens, some shit for the house.”

“So he comes at night,” Bobby said, “to measure the windows.”

“What I’m saying,” Louis said, “we don’t know what the dude wants outside of he wants to talk to Mr. Ganz. But now he sees Mr. Ganz ain’t here. Nobody is.”

Bobby was nodding again, only this time he said, “Why do you call him Mister?”

“Does it bother you?”

“I don’t know why you do it. You don’t work for him.”

“We go back,” Louis said. “He use to come over to the casino in Freeport when I was back there awhile dealing blackjack. One night he cashes in big, gives me a five-hundred-dollar tip and hires me to bodyguard him now and then. I been living here, learning how to be African-American, going back and forth when I felt like it; but now I come to stay. And now I’m being me , you dig? See, mostly he was going down to Miami then, playing high-stakes poker with the big boys and some of them had bodyguards, so he wanted one, too. Wasn’t bad at cards. He start losing, his mama would pick up his IOU’s, keep her sonny from getting his legs busted. See, then I went away and didn’t hear from him till I come out and he start to call me, ask how I’m doing. I come here to see him? Everything’s different now, his mama’s gone, he’s selling off the furniture, and he lay his idea on me, how we gonna be millionaires.”

“Without him doing any the work,” Bobby said.

“I told you he don’t know shit. Tried falsifying bank loan applications one time and drew probation. Otherwise the man’s cherry.”