Elmore Leonard - Riding the Rap

A few minutes later he was back with a tray from the kitchen. Chip said, “What’s this?” as Louis set a plate of food on the chest in front of him.

“Your dinner.”

“I mean, what is it?”

“Pork chops done to a crisp,” Louis said, going over to the desk with the tray. “Butter beans fixed with drippings and okra done in a tangy creole sauce. The okra, man, you have to stir it and stir it.”

“I can’t eat that,” Chip said, making a face.

Louis was seated now, mouth watering and having to swallow, deciding what his first bite would be. The okra. He took some-mmmmm-and said to Chip, “Your tummy acting up on you?”

“Heartburn,” Chip said, touching his chest.

Ever since last night the man had been popping Tums like peanuts, Tums and shots of Pepto-Bismol. He’d taken sick while trying to clean blood from the carpeting, most of it where the S&L man’s head had come out of the blanket bumping down the stairs, Bobby dragging the body and not caring he was leaving a trail; the stains still there like rust spots.

“It’s that microwave shit,” Louis said, “angers your tummy you eat too much of it. I’m gonna cook from now on, fix you some of my favorite dishes.”

Chip was watching him. “How can you eat that?”

“Love it. I acquired the taste learning to be African-American; it’s part of our culture.”

“Nigger food,” Chip said, “if you’ll pardon the expression.”

Louis watched the man go back to looking at mail, Louis deciding not to make something of the disrespect. That was weed talking. The man’s nerves were strung tight and the weed helped him sound like he was one of the guys. Push him, he could go over the edge, run off screaming. Look at that-throwing aside the Victoria’s Secret catalog without even checking out the cute undies. Louis started eating his dinner, mixing the okra and butter beans together and taking big, heaping bites.

Chip said, “Jesus Christ.”

Louis looked up to see him reading a postcard, the man’s eyes glued to it.

“There’s no way he could know,” Chip said. “There’s no fucking way.”

Louis didn’t recall a postcard when he’d skimmed the mail. The man kept staring at it. Louis finally got up, went over, and took it out of his hand. It showed a government building on the front. Louis turned the card over and saw it was made out to Harry Arno at this address on Ocean Drive, Manalapan; it had the zip, everything. The message was short. It said:

Harry-

Hang in there.

Help is on the way.

Raylan

Louis said, “Hey, shit,” grinning, reading it again and then holding the card up to Chip. “You know what this building is? The federal courthouse in Miami. The message is for Harry, the picture’s for us.”

Chip said, “You think it’s funny?”

“You got to appreciate the man’s sense of humor,” Louis said. “What’s wrong with that?”

“He knows Harry’s here.”

“How could he? If he knew , or like he had good reason to believe it? He’d have been here with the SWAT team the day he mailed the postcard. You understand what I’m saying? The man’s trying to get us to jump. Run out the door with Harry and the cowboy’s there waiting on us.” Louis caught movement a on the TV screen, glanced at it, at the black car coming through the shrubs, and said, “Here’s Bobby.”

“He’s the reason,” Chip said, “this whole fucking thing is coming apart.”

“We still in business,” Louis said. “Soon as I get hold of my man in Freeport, make the arrangements, we’re out of here in two days, three at the most.”

Chip said, “But you haven’t talked to him yet.”

“If he ain’t in jail he’ll call me, I left this number. Man has a thirty-six-foot boat.”

Chip was looking at the screen, nothing there to see now but bushes. He said, “That fucking Bobby.”

“I’ll tell you something,” Louis said, “he’s never been what you’d call a favorite of mine neither.”

“I thought you two were cooking something up between you,” Chip said, “and you were gonna cut me out, after I come up with the idea, the whole scheme.”

“That’s your nerves,” Louis said, “they cause you to look over your shoulder and imagine things creeping up on you. We cool, huh? Me and you? Thinking back on all the time we been together, we ever have a problem? You always been the man. See, but now we getting to where I can make this deal with Harry work out how we want it to. What you have to do is trust me.”

He saw the man blinking his eyes, thoughts running around slow-motion in his head.

“You trust me?”

“Yeah…”

“Yeah, but what?”

“That fucking Bobby.”

Louis held up his hand. “He’s coming.”

“She wasn’t home,” Bobby said.

Like that was all he had to report on the subject. Looks at the plates of food, one then the other, and starts to go. Leaving something out, Louis believed, he didn’t want to tell.

Louis said, “Hey, Bobby?” and waited for him to look around. “That’s it, huh, she wasn’t home?”

Now Bobby was looking suspicious. “You want me to tell you again she wasn’t home? She wasn’t home.”

From the sofa Chip asked, “You stop by the restaurant?”

Bobby shook his head. He started out again as Louis picked up the plate he’d set there for Chip. He said, “Bobby, you going upstairs, aren’t you?”

He stopped, but didn’t say he was or he wasn’t.

Louis walked over and shoved the plate at him. “This’s for Harry. Be a treat for him, some home cooking.” Bobby took the plate and Louis said, “Hold it in both hands, you don’t drop it.” That got Louis Bobby’s dead-eyed look, one Louis was getting used to. Bobby walked out and Louis said after him, “You come back, I’ll dish you up.”

Louis turned to Chip.

“Never wants you to forget he’s a mean motherfucker. The man practices up there front of the mirror, trying different mean looks to use on people.”

“All he says is she’s not home,” Chip said. “What do you think?”

“I’m thinking he might’ve done the fortune-teller,” Louis said, “and he’s practicing his story.”

“Jesus,” Chip said, his nerves showing through the weed in him. “I could call her up and see.”

“Don’t,” Louis said, using the remote to switch the TV picture to the upstairs room, Harry still lying on the cot. “I’ll drive over there in a minute, peek in a window.”

Louis picked up a pork chop from his plate, got ready to take a bite and held it in the air seeing Bobby on the screen now, his pigtail hairdo, his back in the fiesta shirt moving toward Harry with the dinner plate. Now they were looking at Bobby in profile standing over Harry stretched out on the cot.

“He’s asleep,” Louis said. “Don’t have his mask on.” Louis raised his voice to the TV screen, saying, “Harry, pull the bathing cap down, man.”

Now it looked like Bobby was saying something. Harry didn’t move, eyes still closed. Now Bobby nudged the side of the cot with his leg. Now he raised his foot, put a lizard-skin shoe against the side rail of the cot and gave it a good bump. Harry’s eyes opened. Opened wide seeing Bobby at the same time Bobby turned the plate of food upside-down, dumping the chops, the butter beans, the tangy okra all over Harry’s face. They watched Bobby come away looking up at the camera, but with no expression to speak of.

“The guy’s crazy,” Chip said.

Louis watched Harry, sitting up now, wiping the food off him, the man looking dazed, but then seeing a pork chop and picking it up from the floor, studying it close, both sides, before taking a big bite.

Louis took a bite of his pork chop, laid it on the plate and brushed his hands in the air, ready to go. He said, “Well, least Bobby didn’t shoot him.”