Elmore Leonard - Riding the Rap

Chip was turning his head from Louis to Bobby. “Go along with your prison buddy, is that it? The cons taking over?”

“Hey, come on,” Louis said, “it’s cool.”

“He’s stoned,” Bobby said.

“Yeah, feeling good, huh?” Louis said, getting close, in the man’s face now. “You like that ganja.” Louis’s gaze moved to Bobby. “Gets some of his herb at his mama’s nursing home, from one of them Rasta fellas work there.” Now he was looking at Chip again, the man staring back at him with big eyes. “Listen to me now. We all going along with it. Me and Bobby Deo and my man Mr. Ganz. Understand? Harry, I can tell, is strung out ready for us, so we gonna do it, get to the money part.”

Chip shrugged and had to move his feet to keep his balance. He said, “This is the way you want it?” Being cool now since he didn’t have a choice. “Fine. I’ll go in and put the bug in his ear. ‘Harry, what’s it worth to you to get out of here?’”

“Go home to his loved ones,” Louis said, placing his hands on Chip’s shoulders. “Except one thing worries me. You made bets with Harry on the phone, didn’t you? Many times, called him about every week.”

“I’d speak to one of his sheet writers.”

“Yeah, but you talk to him, too.”

“Once in a while.”

“See, you go in and talk to him now, he could recognize your voice. Man like Harry, being careful, he knows voices. Same as with Bobby. Bobby’s spoken to him, the reason he come here. So he could know it was Bobby to speak to him.”

“You’re gonna do what you want,” Chip said.

“Listen to me. What I’m saying is I’m the one should talk to the man,” Louis said. “One, he don’t know me; but two, I know Freeport, Grand Bahama. Man, I’m from where his money’s at. Soon as he told Dawn I began to think, Do I know somebody works at his bank? I told you that. You my man, Mr. Ganz. What I want you to tell me is go in there and say your words, set the man up just like you was saying it.”

Harry raised his head, the way he always did.

“Is somebody there?”

Louis closed the door before turning the light on. He walked over to the cot and sat down. Harry, feeling it, turned his blindfolded head toward him.

“Will you say something? Please?”

“I’ll make you a deal,” Louis said.

“Jesus, anything.”

“We do some business. Just me and you. We don’t tell nobody else, not a soul. You understand what I’m saying? Just me and you.”

Wednesday, Raylan brought his prisoner, the man barefoot and handcuffed in bathing trunks, through the parking structure and into Miami Beach police headquarters by way of the sally port in back. Check your weapon through a window slot and they close the outer door before opening the inner one to the holding-cell area.

Lt. Buck Torres was there waiting.

“I thought finding them in bed asleep was the way to do it,” Raylan said. “Get ‘em sunbathing’s even better, no surprises under the covers. Buck, we have here Carl Edward Colbert, escapee from the West Tennessee Reception Center, down for armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon, a pitchfork.”

Torres, looking up at Colbert, said, “Man, he’s a size.”

“Yeah, but sunburnt. All you have to do is touch him and he minds. If it’s okay with you,” Raylan said, “I’ll leave him here till I can arrange transportation, have him shipped back. Carl, how about packed in ice, would you like that?… Carl isn’t talking; he’s lost faith in his fellowman. A buddy of his, guy works at one of the hotels on the beach, turned him in to avoid getting brought up for harboring.”

Torres said, “You could’ve taken him over to Dade, they got more room there.”

“Yeah, but I wanted to ask you something,” Raylan said, “you being a good friend of Harry’s and all. He’s disappeared.”

Torres said, “Again?”

“Last Friday he was to meet a guy collected on some old bets for him-this was up in Delray Beach. The guy never showed up. Harry left the restaurant and that’s the last anyone’s seen of him.”

“Friday,” Torres said. “Maybe he went back to Italy, decided he liked it.”

“Harry wouldn’t leave without making a big production out of it. He goes to the bathroom, he calls Joyce and tells her. She checked with Harry’s travel agent; he said Harry hasn’t gone anywhere that he knew of. I was thinking one of Harry’s sheet writers might know who did the collection work, but I can’t find any of those guys around.”

“No-we closed Harry down, they left,” Torres said. “Let me think a minute. If Harry couldn’t find a certain guy, he’d call me to check, see if he was in jail. As a last resort he’d hire a collector. I know once in a while Bob Burton helped him out. Burton’s a skip tracer-you know, a bounty hunter, always working. He’d do a collection for Harry as a favor. There was another guy, a bounty hunter, went up on a manslaughter conviction…”

“Harry told Joyce the guy was Puerto Rican,” Raylan said, and right away saw Torres nodding.

“Bobby Deogracias-that’s the guy-they call him Bobby Deo. This one, man, I’m telling you is dirty. It used to be we find a guy shot in the head and it looks like an execution? We bring in Bobby Deo. We knew he worked sometimes for the wiseguys, Jimmy Capotorto, when he was around, but we could never close on him. He did that kind of work and he went after fugitives,” Torres said. “Same thing you’re doing.”

“How about that,” Raylan said. “You think he’s the one?”

“Could be. How much was Harry trying to collect?”

“Sixteen thousand five hundred.”

“That kind of money, yeah, it could be Bobby Deo, it could be anybody. He tells Harry no, the guy didn’t pay him and keeps it.”

“But he called Harry and told him the guy did pay, and to meet him in Delray Beach.”

“So he changed his mind. All that money in his hand? What’s Harry gonna do, call the police? Listen, if it was Bobby Deo-anybody hires a guy like that deserves to get ripped off. Harry realizes too late he should’ve known better, so now he’s feeling sorry for himself. You know how he is. Underneath all that old-time hip bullshit he puts on he’s a baby. Hides out so we have to look for him.”

“Wants attention,” Raylan said.

“Loves it. He’ll give it a few more days. You don’t find him, he’ll get tired of hiding and come out. Ask him, ‘Where you been?’ He’ll say, ‘What do you mean, where’ve I been?’ He doesn’t show up by this weekend I’ll give it to Missing Persons.”

“I think you’re right,” Raylan said. “But I still wouldn’t mind talking to Bobby… What’s his name?”

“Deogracias. I remember seeing it on a Corrections release report when he got out. DOC’ll have his address. But whether it’s any good or not…”

“I appreciate it,” Raylan said. “You might run a trace on Harry’s car, brand-new Cadillac. See if it might’ve turned up abandoned.”

Torres nodded. “I can do that.”

“And you might run a name for me,” Raylan said, “while we’re covering the bases. A Dawn Navarro?”

Raylan walked into the cool, tiled lobby of the Santa Marta on Ocean Drive, South Beach; salsa, mambo, some kind of Latin music coming out of the bar. Raylan crossed to the desk clerk, a good-looking young Hispanic in a dark suit, hair shining, rings on his fingers, and said, “Excuse me.”

The desk clerk was busy working a computer behind the reception counter, his hips twitching to the Latin beat. He didn’t answer Raylan or look up from the screen.

Raylan said, “I was here one other time…”