Elmore Leonard - Riding the Rap

Dawn: Get my picture in the paper…

Ganz: In the paper, in magazines, you’re on talk shows. Before you know it they’re lined up to get a reading. Will I ever meet Mr. Right? Is my husband fooling around on me? Pretty soon you have a syndicated column in newspapers…

Dawn: What if they find out the guy I describe didn’t do it?

Ganz: Then you’re fucked. You were gonna go in there and put it on me , and if it turns out I did it, you’re a star. You want to work this mental telepathy shit to make a name for yourself. Okay, go ahead, try it. Only I’m clean, I wasn’t anywhere near Mary Ann’s place that night. As I said before, if you’re any good, if you know what you’re doing…

Dawn: You said Mary Ann screamed as she was falling.

Ganz: Wouldn’t you?

Dawn: She was already dead.

Ganz: They told you that?

Dawn: I told them .

Ganz (after a pause): Are you always right?

Dawn: Often enough. You want a quick reading? I won’t charge you.

Ganz: Sure, go ahead.

Dawn: Give me your hand. (long pause) You make a good first impression, you can turn on the charm when you want to, and can talk people into doing things they’d rather not. At least some people. You could make a lot of money in sales, but you’d have to work and that’s out of the question. So you live by your wits and a high opinion of yourself, for what it’s worth, and so far it hasn’t proved to be worth much at all.

“She’s got him down cold,” Falco said.

Ganz: But I know what I want and I’m ambitious. You saw that in my palm, right? When we’re through here, what do you say we have a drink?

“I think they had that drink,” Raylan said, watching Falco reach over to push the rewind button, “and got to be pretty good friends. She tell you right away it wasn’t Ganz?”

“She said she didn’t think so, but wanted to meditate on it. A couple days later she said she was positive he didn’t do it.”

“After they got to know each other,” Raylan said.

Falco was nodding. “That was taken into consideration. We know she thought the guy had a lot of money, living in Manalapan.”

“Anyone tell her he didn’t?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Why was Ganz your main suspect?”

“We didn’t like anything about him, the guy’s shifty. We know he’d borrowed money from the victim, we see cancelled checks in the amount of two grand, twenty-five hundred, that add up to over twelve thousand. He says he paid her back in cash, if you want to believe that, this born fucking loser-we know he owed bookies in Miami. The theory was, he’s in deep, he asks Mary Ann for another loan and she turns him down. The guy’s desperate, frustrated, they get in a violent argument and he creams her with the bookend, this brass modernistic bull.”

“The one Dawn identified as the murder weapon,” Raylan said, “without having seen it.”

“Right, it was being held as evidence. She did see the other bookend on the shelf; there were two of them. We said, ‘You mean that one?’ She goes, ‘No, the one that was used has blood on it.’”

“Wasn’t it wiped clean?”

“No prints, no, but minute traces of blood around the base, this wood block the bull’s standing on.”

“What about Ganz’s prints?”

“All over the apartment. Listen to this, even on Mary Ann’s checkbook. The only other prints belonged to the cleaning woman. That’s another reason we leaned toward Ganz; there wasn’t anyone else, unless some guy walked in off the street.”

“None of Dawn’s prints around?”

“Not that I recall.”

“Wasn’t she ever a suspect?”

“We checked her out. There was no reason to think she had a motive.”

Raylan gave that some thought before saying, “The two guys that robbed the grocery store, you haven’t picked them up, have you?”

“Not that I’ve heard, no.”

“I think I know who they are.”

“Like you happen to know Ganz’s mom?”

“In a way, yeah,” Raylan said. “I want to take them federal. If I don’t, they’re yours.”

Dawn Navarro was wearing a skirt today, a white one that ended a few inches above her knees, and a pale green sleeveless blouse. Raylan, on the mohair sofa, liked the skirt a lot. He thought she’d bring the card table over as she did the last time. Not yet, anyway. She stood in the middle of the floor, about ten feet away and said, “Well now. What can I do for you?”

The skirt showed her figure; she wasn’t as slim as Raylan had been picturing her. He said, “Just out of curiosity, do you have to have a license?”

“First,” Dawn said-making that move, tossing her head and brushing her hair aside with the tips of her fingers-“you should know I’m a Sagittarian, born with a Grand Trine in the center of my natal chart. You have that, it almost demands the life I’ve taken up.”

Raylan watched her sway just a little from side to side, moving from one foot to the other in flat white slippers that looked sort of like the kind toe-dancers wore. He noticed the way her hips moved.

Dawn saying, “When I was two years old I knew my dad wasn’t my real dad; I wouldn’t let him pick me up and everybody thought that was bizarre. I had dreams about things that came true, premonitions; I even experienced astral travel. One time when I was seven, a few days after my grandmother died, I saw her sitting in the living room. She was wearing a housedress and a white wool bed jacket over it. I went to the kitchen and told my mother. She didn’t believe me till I described the bed jacket, white wool with little pink ribbons and the store tags still on it. My mother turned white as a sheet. She brought a box from her closet and took out the exact same bed jacket my grandmother was wearing. It was a birthday present, but she died just before. She would’ve been sixty-three. My mother had never shown the bed jacket to anyone and knew I hadn’t seen it. Yet I described it, even the store tags still on it.”

Raylan said, “What’s astral travel?”

“Leaving your body. Finding yourself somewhere else.”

He believed he should let astral travel go and said, “Did your grandmother say anything to you?”

“Yeah, she did. She said let’s keep in touch. I talk to her every once in a while. She used to smoke three packs of cigarettes a day.”

“You always made a living as a psychic?”

“I did nails and hair studying to be a beautician, but I hated it. I used to run around and get a little crazy sometimes. That was my Sagittarius rising, with Mars on aspect. I’m thinking seriously now of becoming an acupuncturist; it’s a wide-open field. You want a cold drink?”

“Not right now, thanks.”

“You asked me a question before,” Dawn said. “Yes, I’m a licensed psychic, clairvoyant, astrologer, spirit medium and character reader. The license fee is two hundred and twenty-five dollars, while so-called faith healers and exorcists don’t have to pay a dime. I’m also an ordained minister. After studying with several distinguished teachers and ministers-Marlene Locklear you might’ve heard of?-I was ordained into the Spiritualist Assembly of Waco, Texas.”

Sounding to Raylan like she was reciting from memory.

“And I do aura readings. Yours doesn’t look too bad-a nice blue tone, just a faint red showing around the edge. How do you feel?”

“Pretty good.”

“Can you imagine having harmony in your life? Between yourself and others you don’t always get along with?”

“I get along with most everybody.”