Elmore Leonard - Riding the Rap

“They ought to be in separate rooms,” Chip said.

“That’s right, but what you have is this cheap motherfucking video system, a camera in the one room. I told you I wasn’t gonna keep running up and down the stairs, check on the room don’t have the camera. Man, a cut-rate operation like this, you play it as you go.”

“Bobby’s got money,” Chip said.

“You want to ask him for it?”

Louis saw the man thinking of something else, sipping his drink and thinking.

“I have to pay Dawn. She called, she’s getting goosey.”

“You want me to talk to her?”

“It was on my mind-you and Bobby got back and I mentioned it to him. He’s gonna go see her?”

“Want to scare her more’n she is, huh? Well, Bobby’s the man.” Louis picked up his drink and the one for Bobby.

Chip said, “The marshal came back.”

Louis paused. “He see you?”

“Rang the bell, went around and knocked on the patio doors.”

“I want to know did he see you?”

Chip shook his head.

“We can talk about it afterwhile,” Louis said. He turned and led the way from the kitchen across the hall to the back study, the TV room.

Bobby was standing, watching the screen. He said, “Look at this.”

Louis turned to the screen with a drink in each hand. “Yeah? You said they be talking.”

Bobby said, “That’s all you see? I told him don’t take off the blindfold. He has it off.”

Louis said, “No, I told him don’t take it off.”

Chip said, “This’s what happens you start changing things.”

Louis said, “I knew we gonna have trouble with this one.”

Bobby said, “No, we’re not,” and walked out of the room.

Chip said, “Where’s he going?”

“Gonna beat him up,” Louis said. “Want to watch? Be good if the man fights back, huh?”

Louis’s eyes held on the screen; he didn’t look at Chip or hear him say anything. What Louis saw, waiting for the door in the hostage room to open:

Ben King sitting hunched on his cot and Harry Arno, the bathing cap off, sitting hunched on his, the two hostages facing each other, Ben King doing the talking, gesturing, the man taking his left thumb in his right hand-look at him-like you grip a golf club, taking a short swing now, showing Harry-the man, blood in his hair, blood on his shirt-telling Harry about his golf game. It’s what he was doing. Wait. Looking up now. Harry looking up and putting his bathing cap on quick and then sitting back, and here was Bobby in the room, Bobby from behind going to Ben King, Ben King starting to push himself up from the cot, Bobby grabbing him by the hair to raise his face and punch him, what it looked like, but it wasn’t happening. Right there Chip said, “Jesus!” loud, because Bobby’s right hand was behind him, coming out from under his Latino fiesta shirt with a piece Louis hadn’t seen before, not the Browning, one that looked like it, an automatic that size Bobby put in Ben King’s face, King all eyes seeing it, mouth coming open, and Bobby shot him. They heard the sound of it like somewhere in the house far away. Louis watched Bobby turn and look up at the camera, his face on the screen with no special kind of expression, like saying to them, hey, nothing to it, and now he was gone. Louis saw Ben King lying dead across his cot in the trash, blood on the wall, man, blood all over it, Harry Arno sitting there made of stone with his bathing cap on.

Louis looked at Chip staring at the screen.

“You wanted Bobby Deo, you got him.”

Lay it on the man, then go speak to Bobby. He was in the mother’s bedroom now, the show over, but still holding the piece when Louis walked in and turned on the light. Louis stood watching him, not saying anything just yet, wanting to hear what Bobby had to say.

Nothing. Laying the piece on the dresser, he looked over at Louis and Louis said, “What you got there?”

Bobby seemed to shrug, subdued after killing a man. He said, “A Sig Sauer. I’ve had it.”

“You had it at the golf course,” Louis said. “I see you getting out of the car without a piece… but you had that on you, huh? Have it on you all the time. You wanted to shoot the man right then, didn’t you? Out on the links. Why was that, you hadn’t shot anybody in a while?”

“I didn’t like him,” Bobby said.

“I got that impression.”

“You the one told him don’t take off the blindfold. Didn’t you say, or you shoot him?”

“In the head,” Louis said. “Laying it on to make my point.”

“Well, you tell them what you gonna do, man, you have to do it. You know? Or else don’t say it.”

“I do the telling and you do the shooting, huh?”

“I could see already it was a waste of time with him. He wasn’t gonna pay us nothing.”

“What about the mess you made?”

Bobby said, “Harry can clean it up,” still subdued, like he was tired or didn’t care.

But when Louis said, “Harry, the witness, heard the whole thing. You gonna shoot him too?”

Bobby got his attitude back, put on that macho shit saying, “If I have to.”

It hooked Louis. He said, “You mean if you want to.” He watched Bobby shrug like, yeah, that was cool, and Louis said, “What you gonna do with the man’s body?”

“Dump him in the swamp. You want to help me?”

Louis walked over to the dresser; he picked up the piece Bobby had told him was a Sig Sauer and hefted it.

Bobby said, “Light, uh, for a .45? Eight shots.”

“You think that’s enough?”

“I can have one, nine millimeter, holds twenty in the magazine, if I want it. Five hundred.”

“Go to war with a piece like that,” Louis said. “How ‘bout I help you to the car with Mr. King? You take him to the swamp, wherever you take people, and I’ll get Harry to clean up the room.”

Bobby gave him his shrug.

“Want the room nice,” Louis said, “for the next guest. That is, if you like him.”

Bobby gave his dead-eyed look now, no expression.

The man’s problem, he had no sense of humor.

Louis said to Harry, sitting on the cot with him, “You didn’t see nothing, you didn’t hear nothing.”

“It was loud,” Harry said. “Jesus.”

“I bet it was.”

“I had the bathing cap on.”

The man seemed numb.

“I know you did. Like doing time, man, you don’t know nothing going on around you, even right in the cell you’re in. So don’t think about it no more. You never saw the man… You listening to me?”

He watched Harry’s bathing cap with the yellow flower nod up and down, the man sitting straight, like afraid to move.

Louis sat thinking for a minute, looking at Mr. King’s stain smeared on the opposite wall, then looked away as he realized he was staring at it. He said, “Harry, go on in the bathroom and stand at the mirror-you be away from the camera-and pull your blindfold off.” He had to say, “Go on,” before Harry picked up his chains and shuffled in there. Louis followed him.

Louis stood behind Harry, taller, looking over the man’s shoulder to see his face appear, red marks on it from the bathing cap, eyes bloodshot, with the pitiful expression of a man who didn’t know shit what was happening to him.

Louis said, “Harry, what you see behind you, man, is your salvation. Me. I’m the only way you gonna get out of here alive. I want you to see what I look like ‘cause we partners now. Understand?”

He watched Harry’s head nod up and down without much change in his eyes.

“You gonna do whatever I tell you, huh?”

Harry nodded.

“We get out of here, you gonna take a trip to Freeport with me.” Harry waited and Louis said, “Aren’t you?”

Harry nodded.