Elmore Leonard - Riding the Rap

Bobby came up to the Mercedes as Louis was backing the car out of the garage.

“Where you going?”

“Get laid; I’m overdue.”

“The guy was there, Raylan? At the fortune-teller’s house. He pulled a gun on me, told me to go on, get out of here. I didn’t want Chip, the way he is, to know the guy was there, so I didn’t say nothing.”

“You didn’t get to talk to Dawn.”

“No, he came out, Raylan did.”

“You had your piece in the sack?”

“Yeah, but I never did it that way. What I want to do, man, is meet him face-to-face with my piece right here”-Bobby patted his stomach-“and draw. I know I can beat him.”

“Like in the movies,” Louis said.

“Yeah, only it’s real life. I want to practice doing it with you, so I be ready.”

“You want to practice…?”

“Get so I can pull it out quick.”

“Man, you crazy. You know it?” Louis took a moment, sitting there with the motor running, Bobby hunched over his arms on the windowsill. “You didn’t see her?”

“She was inside.”

“You don’t know if they talked and she told him anything.”

“It don’t matter,” Bobby said. “I’m gonna kill him.” He straightened, stepping away from the car. “You get back, we practice.”

Dawn’s front door was open a crack. Louis walked in and there she was, coming out of the bedroom, something in her hand. Seeing him, she stopped next to a canvas suitcase sitting in the middle of the floor.

“You leave your door open?”

“I was on my way out,” Dawn said and held up her sunglasses. “I forgot these.”

Louis moved toward her standing there in a white skirt he’d never seen before, Dawn-with that nice dark hair-looking afraid of him or afraid of something. He held his hands out and now she moved toward him, coming into his arms. She said, “Hold me,” and he took her slender body close, tight against him, his fingers feeling the bones in her shoulders, stroking her hair now.

“What’s wrong, baby? Got caught in the middle, huh? Bobby tuggin’ at you from one side, the law tuggin’ from the other…”

“I didn’t tell him anything.”

“I know you didn’t, baby. The cowboy come to see you-then what?”

“When Bobby came, Raylan wouldn’t let him in the house.”

Calling him Raylan.

“He talk to Bobby, ask him what he wanted?”

“They were outside. Bobby had a paper bag with a gun in it. I didn’t see it, but I knew it was a gun.”

Louis said, “Bobby take it out, show the marshal?”

He felt her shake her head no, close to him. She smelled nice. “And the cowboy, the marshal, he didn’t show his gun either?” He felt her shake her head, again saying no. “Told Bobby to leave and Bobby did, huh? Didn’t give the marshal any shit out the side of his mouth?” She said no, still scared; he could feel it the way she clung to him.

Like she clung to him the first time he came here.

Told him what he was thinking: “You’re trying to imagine what I look like without my clothes on.” And he said, “I know you gonna look fine. Let’s see if I’m right.” He opened his arms and that was when she clung to him the first time-back when she was still seeing Chip but about to break it off, telling Louis Chip talked a good game, but that was all. Louis had caught her when she was tender, in need of loving. She would read him and they’d go to bed and satisfy each other until they were worn out. Fifty dollars for the first reading, on the house after that, once a week or so, Chip never knowing a thing about it. Chip hadn’t even seen Dawn in months when Louis thought of using her to set up Harry.

“Chip say you going to the police if he don’t pay you.”

Dawn said, “I had to tell him some thing. I stick my neck out-what’ve I gotten? Nothing.”

“Your ship’s coming in, baby, pretty soon now. Tell me what the marshal knows.”

“He thinks he knows everything, except where Harry is.”

“But can’t come up with a probable cause, the way the system works, to get some action going. Else they’d be all over us,” Louis said. “I never saw a deal get fucked up so quick-one thing after another. I won’t give you the messy details.”

“Please don’t,” Dawn said.

“I should be making my move tomorrow, Sunday the latest. You hear what I’m saying?”

“ Your move,” Dawn said. “You’re making plans of your own.”

“See, according to my horoscope my reputation for shrewd business ideas is paying off, but it also say romance could suffer. What should I do?”

“Well, for one thing your star pattern is going through a dramatic change.”

Talking to him in her fortune-teller voice now while he held on to her, letting her feel he could hold her tighter if he wanted.

“The cosmic dust is just now beginning to settle. The good thing is that during this astrocycle others are extremely open to your ideas.”

“I see it happening,” Louis said, “starting to put my ideas to work. Seeing who I want and who I don’t want, who’s gonna get cut out or left behind. Tell me what you see.”

“An empty house,” Dawn said.

“Whose?”

“This one.”

“Where you gone to?”

“I see myself on a beach.”

“Around here?”

He felt her shake her head.

“On an island in the Bahamas. Isn’t that where the money is?”

Louis grinned. “You something else.”

She said, “Am I going with you?”

“You gonna follow, in a day or so. But tell me where you going now, where you gonna be.”

“You won’t believe it. Harry’s apartment in South Beach. For my own protection.”

“You feel you need it?”

“Well, I sure don’t want to see Bobby again. I’ll call when I get there, give you the number.”

“I got all kind of numbers for Harry Arno,” Louis said. “What I need to know, if it’s true what my horoscope say, about romance could suffer.”

“I doubt it.”

“Tell me what you feel.”

“Well, I feel some thing,” Dawn said, “pressing against my tummy. It means you haven’t lost confidence in your ability to please others.”

“I get next to you, girl, I become confident in a big way.”

She looked up at him, making a face with sad eyes.

“I have to get going, or Raylan’ll be looking for me.”

“You call him Raylan,” Louis said. “What’s he call you?”

“I didn’t tell him anything, honest to God.”

“I know you didn’t, baby.”

They sat in metal chairs on the Della Robbia porch making conversation, waiting for Dawn Navarro.

“Harry says these chairs have to be fifty years old,” Joyce said. “He never sits out here-doesn’t want to look like he’s retired. He said the way it used to be, every hotel along the beach you’d see old people lined up in their chairs like birds sitting on a telephone wire.”

A guy in his twenties, a grown man wearing shorts down to his knees, no shirt, but gloves and knee pads, went sailing past on a skateboard.

“Harry says the weirdos have taken over and he doesn’t like it. You know, maybe he did just take off.”

Raylan watched the guy on the skateboard, wondering if this was the high point of his life, weaving through crowds of people in bathing suits and resort outfits-the guy wanting everybody to look at him-skimming past the tables outside the Cardozo, across a the side street, where Raylan had walked inside to sit at a table with a man he told his time was up and when the man pulled a gun, shot him. He had thought it was going to happen with Bobby Deo, in front of Dawn’s house, but he didn’t force it and Bobby, on the edge of doing it, changed his mind. He wondered if he had wanted Bobby to pull his gun and tried to remember what he felt in those moments. There was too much to watch here to concentrate on something that didn’t happen. He wondered what he’d do if he saw Bobby now, on the street, Bobby going to see his girlfriend, Melinda. Raylan couldn’t picture them together. He liked Melinda for no special reason; he liked her because she seemed natural, full of life. He could stop in while he was down here, ask her… what, if she’d seen Bobby? Try to set something up?… He didn’t want to use her that way. He was thinking, though, she could help him bring Chip Ganz out in the open, and she might go for it. The Santa Marta, where Melinda was staying, was only a few blocks from here.