Elmore Leonard - Riding the Rap

“When is this happening?”

“I don’t know. It’s not clear at all.”

Raylan waited. He watched her frown and then shake her head. He said, “You see Chip with the Huggers, trying to score either pot or acid to use on some poor teenage girl…”

Dawn looked off again, closing her eyes. “Some little girl who’s run away from home. They come to gatherings all the time, runaways. Chip will talk to her, kid around; he’ll get her to toke or trip and find out all about her-where’s she from, why she doesn’t get along with her folks… Then he’ll call them and say he’s found their little girl, and if they’ll pay him a certain amount for his trouble, he’ll tell where she is. It’s like one out of four will wire the money to him, under a different name he uses.”

“What is it?”

“Cal. I don’t know the last name. I’ve never seen him go to Western Union to pick up the money. He uses a fake I.D.”

“Why do the parents believe him?”

“He tells them things he could’ve only learned from their little girl.”

“How does he get Harry to pay?”

Dawn said, “You’re sneaky, aren’t you? I don’t know anything about that, or if there’s anything to know. Believe me, I don’t.”

Raylan watched her look down at their hands.

“Because you don’t want to know? You can shut it out?”

She seemed to be concentrating and didn’t answer.

Raylan said, “You want to hear what I think I know? You can nod your head if I’m right.”

Dawn said, “I see the person in your relationship, she’s standing with her back to you, looking out at the ocean. I see you touch her. You want her to turn around.”

Raylan was staring at Dawn’s profile: head slightly lowered, her dark hair, soft-looking and with a nice scent, falling past her shoulder, bare in the sleeveless blouse.

Dawn saying, “You’re looking at me now wondering… You want to know something about what I’m wearing, or not wearing, but you don’t think it would be right to ask.”

He watched her head begin to raise.

Dawn saying, “Someone else I’m thinking of…” and paused and said, “Someone I’m thinking of because he’s coming… No, because he’s already here .”

Dawn turned to him, so close she was all eyes and it startled Raylan-he didn’t hear anything, not a sound. She was out of the sofa now, going to the door by the time he’d turned half-around to look toward the window and through the palmetto leaves, see what was out there:

In the street, a car parked nose to nose with his, a black Cadillac sedan.

Bobby knew the dark green Jaguar. Seeing it as he approached the fortune-teller’s house he had to make up his mind in a few seconds: keep going and come back later or stop.

He stopped. Because he knew from the way the feeling came over him all of a sudden and keyed him up, this was the time. Better than if he’d planned it. His chance to meet the cowboy face-to-face and see what it was like.

When he was getting ready to leave the house he had told Chip, who didn’t want him to come here, “You like me to scare her? Okay, that’s what I’m gonna do.” Chip asked if he was going to hurt her and he said, “Why would I do that?” Chip asked why was he bringing a gun. In a brown paper sack some food they bought for Harry had come in, a small sack. Bobby demonstrated. “I hold it up, she thinks the money you owe is in here. I say to her, ‘You want it?’ She says yes. I bring out the gun instead of money and she sees, man, she can get paid one way or the other, so she better not talk to nobody. Is like a surprise, so it scares her more than if I hit her a few times and she thinks about it later, when she’s alone, and gets mad. You got to watch out for women that get mad at you.” Louis said yes, that was right, and wanted Chip to tell about the woman who had cut off her husband’s dick while he was sleeping; but Bobby wasn’t going to stand there listening to stories. He folded over the top of the sack telling them, “This is the way to do it, surprise her.”

The sack with the gun was next to him on the seat.

Bobby watched the door of the fortune-teller’s house open. Now the United States cowboy marshal, Raylan, appeared. There he was, like it was planned: wearing his suit, his hat, the boots Louis liked-they were okay-and with his coat open. He’s not leaving, Bobby thought, and waited a few moments.

He’s not coming to you, either. He’s going to stand outside the door like a fucking bodyguard. Meaning the fortune-teller had talked to him, so now he was protecting her. If it was true it gave Bobby another reason to get out of the car and do it. Or he could shoot him from here, not even get out. But it wouldn’t be face-to-face the way the cowboys did it and he wanted to see what it was like.

He was glad he’d brought the Sig Sauer, his own gun he was used to and knew the feel, and not the Browning. He slipped it out of the sack, racked the slide, cocked it and slipped it back in, careful not to tear the brown paper. Okay, he thought, are you gonna do it? Yes, he was ready now. Then get out of the fucking car and do it. Bobby got out of the car with a smile to greet the cowboy.

“Man, every time I turn around…”

The cowboy stood there.

“You not talking today?”

It didn’t look like it.

Bobby came away from the car. “You know this lady, uh? Gonna get your fortune told?” On the front walk now, he held up the paper sack in his right hand. “I got something I want to give her.”

“She isn’t home,” Raylan said.

Bobby nodded toward the red Toyota in the drive.

“Her car’s there.”

“She still isn’t home,” Raylan said.

“Maybe she’s asleep, or she’s taking a shower.”

“When I say she isn’t home,” Raylan said, “it means she isn’t home.”

With that cop way of talking.

He had his thumbs in his belt, the same way he had posed before. Bobby could see his shirt, his dark tie, but couldn’t see his gun back in there on his hip. The distance to the cowboy, Bobby believed, was about twenty meters. He wanted to get closer, but not too close.

“I think she’s home and you don’t want me to see her,” Bobby said, taking a step, then another; one more and now he was where he wanted to be. He held up the sack. “Man, I just want to give her this.”

“What is it?”

“A gift-what do you think?”

“If it’s money, she doesn’t want it.”

Bobby was holding the sack in his left hand now, underneath. All he had to do was unfold the top-take one second-and slip his hand in.

He said, “Money? What do I want to give her money for? I don’t owe her no money.”

He believed he was ready.

But now the cowboy was coming down the walk toward him, saying, “I’ll tell you what. You can give it to me and I’ll see she gets it.”

This was the moment, right now. But Bobby hesitated, because this wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen, the guy so close, standing only a few feet away now. He had shot guys as close as you can get, but not standing up facing like this. He had never seen it done in the movies this close. It wasn’t the way to do it. If the cowboy knew what was going to happen he would’ve stayed by the door, giving them some room-but he didn’t know. He’d know when he saw the gun come out of the sack and he’d try for his-that was the idea, how it was supposed to work-but he didn’t know that yet.

Saying now, close, “What’s in there?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“I’ll tell you what you do,” Raylan said. “Keep it. She doesn’t want any surprises and I don’t either. You aren’t to come around here anymore or phone Reverend Dawn or bother her in any way. Tell your friends Louis and Chip they’re to leave her alone.”