Elmore Leonard - Riding the Rap

“But we say okay, whatever he tells us.”

“Going with his idea, yeah.”

“He says let Harry sit there two three weeks, nobody talk to him. We say okay and we sit here watching the TV.”

“What you saying,” Louis said, “you don’t think we should wait.”

“I don’t see what good it is. Kidnap a guy and give him time to wonder what’s happening to him. For what?”

“We didn’t kidnap him,” Louis said, “we took him hostage.”

“You like to think of it that way? It’s the same thing,” Bobby said, coming over to the sofa, standing so close Louis had to bend his head back. “You get caught, you go to prison, man. He’s four days up in the room, that’s enough. We should talk to Harry now, tonight, tell him what he has to do.”

Louis said, “Get to it, huh?” wanting to think about it, but knowing he didn’t have time. It was him and Bobby for the time being and he’d have to go along. So he said, “I don’t see the good of waiting either, just ‘cause the man say to.”

Bobby said, “Let’s go do it.”

And that was that.

What they’d do, go upstairs and Louis would check on Harry, see if he had to go potty, while Bobby went to Chip’s bedroom to get him, the man last seen staring out his window burning herb.

As soon as Louis opened the door Harry’s voice in the dark said, “Is someone there?” Same as he always did.

“Goddamn it, say something!”

Yelling it. Bobby was right, this man was ready to be talked to. Louis went in past him to the bathroom and turned on the light. The window in here and the two in the bedroom were covered over with sheets of plywood nailed to the window frames. Louis looked at Harry in the light from the bathroom, sitting on his cot, the towel and silver tape wrapped around his head, the man not moving a muscle, listening hard for sounds.

The same way the hostages in Beirut must’ve sat listening, not knowing shit where they were at, why they were being held, nothing.

Chip had read all about the hostages, seen them on TV when they were released, read a book one of them wrote and came up with the idea he told to Louis. Pick up any one of these rich guys he had on his list and hide him out for a while.

Louis had said at that time, “You talking about kid napping?” The same thing Bobby said when he was told about it. Like the man was crazy.

The way Chip saw the difference: “Kidnapping, you hold a person for ransom. What I’m talking about, we don’t call anyone, like the guy’s wife, and say pay up or you’ll never see your husband again. We wait, and after a while we ask the guy what his life’s worth to him.”

Louis, that time, still didn’t see the difference. He said, “But everybody knows the man’s been kidnapped.”

And Chip said, “No, the guy’s disappeared. No one knows if something happened to him or he took off or what. All the time they’re looking for him we’ve got him hidden away. Okay, once the guy’s no longer in the news, nobody’s talking about what happened to him, we pick up another guy from the list and do the same thing, chain him up blindfolded… like the real hostages, they were kept like that for months, some of them even years.”

Louis knew it was some Muslim brothers over there did the job. Being Abu Aziz for a moment instead of Louis Lewis, he said, “I believe was the Shi’ites. You don’t mess with those people.” He asked Ganz where he was going to hide his hostages and the man said he hadn’t worked that part out yet. This was before deciding his house was as good a place as any; the house itself was hidden away and hardly anyone he knew ever came by.

“This kind of setup,” Chip said, “only dealing with the hostages, you don’t have to warn anyone not to call the cops. Once the guy’s missing they’ll look for him; but remember, we’re not asking for ransom money, so there’s nothing to tie us to the hostage.”

“So how do we score?”

“First,” Chip said, “we take time to prepare the guy, get him in the right frame of mind. For weeks he sits in a room and never hears a human voice. He knows somebody’s bringing him food, taking him to the can, but nobody in all that time says one fucking word to him. See, then when I do speak to the guy he can’t believe it. Jesus, someone’s actually talking to him. But all I say that first time, I ask him, ‘What’s it worth to you to get out of here?’”

Louis liked that part. “Yeah?”

“Couple of days go by, I approach him again. ‘Have you decided?’ You bet he has. How much do we want? Name it. Then it’s like negotiating, coming up with a figure we both agree on, something we know the guy can manage. We have to, you know, be realistic.”

“He pays, we let him go?”

“I guess. The guy’s never seen us. Take him out in the Glades and leave him.”

“What if he don’t want to pay?”

“He doesn’t have a choice,” Chip said. “First we agree on the amount. Then he has five days… I tell him, ‘You have five days to come up with a way of paying us that we like.’ I tell him, ‘And it better be the best idea you ever had in your fucking life, I mean foolproof, because if we don’t like it, if we’re not absolutely sure it’ll work, you’re dead.’ So it’s strictly up to him. In other words we don’t have to work anything out, the guy does it. And he’s the kind of guy who knows how to move money around, a guy with hidden resources, like that savings and loan guy. Goes bankrupt, can’t pay his depositors, but he’s sitting on an estimated thirty mil. Right now he’s out on bond. Another guy on the list, everybody knows he launders drug money, gets it cleaned and pressed, puts it in a land development deal and the feds haven’t been able to touch him. There’re all kinds of guys like that around, I mean right in South Florida.”

“The hostage,” Louis said, “can’t think of a good idea, he gets shot in the head, huh?”

“If that’s how you want to handle it. There’re other ways might even be worse.”

“Like what?”

“You didn’t hear about the guy,” Chip said, “wakes up in the middle of the night, his wife’s got his dick in her hand?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“She’s standing across the room with it. Cut his dick off with a butcher knife while he’s sleeping.”

Louis made a face. “Man, that’s the worst thing I ever heard of.”

Chip said, “See?”

It was in the news when they first started talking about taking hostages. Chip said he was kidding about threatening the guy that way. He said no, if the guy refused to cooperate, or came up with an idea of paying them they didn’t like, Louis could take care of the guy any way he wanted.

Letting him do the heavy work.

Louis unlocked Harry’s chain and brought him into the bathroom, Harry turning his head to say, “I only have to take a leak.” So Louis put him in position. When he was going, looking down at the toilet blindfolded, Harry said, “Speak to me, will you? Tell me what time it is. Christ, what day it is. You don’t want to do that, fine, but say some thing.”

Louis felt like whispering in the man’s ear and see him jump, but couldn’t think of anything good. He took Harry back to his cot and locked his chain again to the ring bolt in the floor, Bobby and Chip standing in the hall now looking in. Bobby motioned and Louis came out. As soon as he closed the door Chip started in.

“This guy, this fucking bill collector, tells me he wants to change the plan I spent more than a year working out. He gets a bug up his ass ‘cause he’s tired of sitting around.”

“We already decide,” Bobby said.

Louis took Chip by the arm saying, “We gonna talk, let’s step over here,” and brought the man away from the door. Saying to him now, “We wouldn’t be here it wasn’t for you.” Louis keeping his voice quiet, soothing. “We not changing nothing, we just want to get it moving.”