Elmore Leonard - Riding the Rap

Coming into the study Louis checked the TV screen, the patio still on big. “Saw me blow him away, huh? That was the famous Puerto Rican gunfighter, wanted to High Noon it and met his match.”

“You planned that?” Chip said.

“No, it just came to me. When I was talking to Mr. Walker.”

“You said something to Bobby.”

“I told him he wasn’t going to Freeport.”

“He was still alive?”

“Just hanging on. I didn’t see a reason to shoot him again. The scum on top the pool like opened up? But the water in there’s so putrid, brown like a sewer, what it smells like, too, you stir it up? But you can’t see him down there, man’s in nine feet of deep shit.”

Chip said, “Louis, what about Bobby’s money? He had quite a bit, didn’t he? What he got for Harry’s car?”

He could tell Louis hadn’t thought of that.

“Was a wad on the dresser this morning.”

“Is it still there?”

He was thinking of it now, you bet.

Louis said, “Lemme look,” and was gone.

Chip eased back in the sofa telling himself, Great, no more Bobby Deo, Chip picturing the scene again and wishing he could play it back. He felt a sense of relief, no more Bobby, a big mistake corrected before his eyes… Except that the bottom of a swimming pool wasn’t the bottom of the ocean. Not seeing him didn’t mean he wasn’t there. Someone, sometime or other, would find him. They couldn’t say, oh, he must’ve fallen in; not with two bullet holes in him. Chip didn’t want to think about it, but the fact remained, Bobby was still with them.

Louis believed there had to be a couple thousand in the wad Bobby carried around and left on the dresser sometimes, like daring Louis to touch it. The money wasn’t there; it wasn’t in any of the drawers or anyplace Bobby kept the clothes he’d brought. Looking around, Louis thought of Bobby’s lizard shoes; he should’ve tried them on before pushing the man in. He still had on the black silk sport coat, a gun in each pocket-the Sig and a Browning-he took out and laid on the dresser. The Browning he’d used he’d bury somewhere in the yard; so he left it stuck in his waist when he went downstairs and said to Chip:

“It wasn’t there.”

Chip had a blank look on his face from doing weed, like he had to think hard of what to say.

“You sure?”

“I looked every place it could be. He must have it on him.”

“You’ll have to get it,” Chip said.

“ I have to get it. You crazy? Dive in the pool in all that scummy shit?”

“You put him there,” Chip said.

Like that was supposed to make sense.

“You the one wants the money, you dive in. Just don’t breathe, you in there.”

“ We want the money,” Chip said, “to pay Dawn. Christ… we have to get rid of the body anyway.”

“I did get rid of it. Go on out and look at the pool, you can’t see him. He ain’t gonna gas up and float, neither, not with that table on him. The man’s the same as gone.”

Chip said, “Louis, you know we can’t leave him there. He’ll smell.”

“It already smells; I told you that.”

The man had his mind made up, thinking how to do it, saying, “We’ll have to get a pump and drain the pool.”

Louis stared at him, not agreeing, not angry, not anything, just staring, thinking what he should do was put the man in the pool with Bobby, something heavy like the TV set he was sick of looking at tied around the man’s neck. If he didn’t owe the man nothing, what was he putting up with the man’s shit for?

The phone rang.

Chip reached for it and Louis said, “When you gonna learn? You been smoking, huh?” He walked over to the sofa and picked up the phone from the end table.

“Ganz residence.”

A girl’s voice said, “Where’s Bobby?”

“He ain’t here.”

“You know where he went?”

“Didn’t tell me.”

“Well, when’s he coming back?”

Louis said, “Girl, I’m busy. Bobby ain’t here or ain’t ever coming back. So don’t call no more. You understand what I’m saying?”

“You understand this?” the girl’s voice said. “Get fucked.”

They both hung up.

Louis said to Chip, “Some girl looking for Bobby.”

Chip said, “Who was it?”

See the patience you had to have with this stoned ofay motherfucker?

“I just told you, didn’t I?” Louis said. “Some girl wanted Bobby.”

“I meant, what was her name?”

“She didn’t tell me.”

“Anyway,” Chip said, “you know where we can get a pump?”

Louis stared at the man, still not angry or anything, but thinking, Shit, put him in the pool.

There was a poster with the heading HANG ‘EM HIGH that showed a famous hanging judge of a hundred years ago, Isaac Parker, against a montage of condemned prisoners on scaffolds waiting to be dropped through the trapdoors.

Raylan would look at the poster, in the lobby of the Marshals Service offices in Miami, and feel good about their tradition. Not the hanging part-they had quit handing out death penalties in federal court-but the tradition of U.S. marshals as peace officers on the western frontier. Every time he looked at Judge Parker up there in the poster Raylan thought of growing a mustache, a big one that would droop properly and look good with his hat.

Rudi Braga would be sentenced in the central courtroom of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, in Miami. Raylan and a three other marshals shackled Rudi’s wrists and ankles, brought him down to the basement of the new building, shuffled him through the corridor to the old building and up in the smelly prisoners’ elevator to the central courtroom holding cell on the second floor.

An old hand at court support, Milt Dancey stepped out to the hallway for a smoke and Raylan went along to ask him a question. The second-floor hallway was outside and looked down over a railing on an open courtyard with potted palms and a fountain.

Raylan said, “Does a kidnapping conviction always draw life?”

Milt Dancey, smoking his unfiltered Camel, told Raylan that kidnapping, abduction or unlawful restraint carried a base offense sentencing level of twenty-four. “Look it up in the guidelines,” Milt said, “it’s fifty-one to sixty-three months for the first offense. If ransom is demanded it goes up five or six levels, say to around a hundred and twenty months. And it goes up depending on how long the victim is held or if the victim is sexually exploited.”

Raylan admired Milt’s use of the word exploited , the way, Raylan was pretty sure, it would appear in the guidelines.

They removed Rudi Braga’s shackles before taking him into the courtroom and seating him next to his attorney at the defense table. Raylan and the three other marshals sat behind them, while the rows of spectator seats, like church pews, were nearly all occupied by people who could be friends or cartel associates of Rudi Braga. Watching them was a contingent of full-time court security officers in uniform, blue blazers and gray trousers.

The assistant U.S. attorney present, the one who’d prosecuted the case, was the same natty young guy in seersucker who had seemed anxious to prosecute Raylan following the Tommy Bucks shooting. Seeing him gave Raylan a momentary feeling of sympathy for Rudi, a bald little guy about Harry’s age and even resembled him, except Harry had hair. Rudi had been convicted of the unlawful importation and trafficking of a controlled substance, more than 150 but less than 500 kilograms of cocaine, and was facing, according to the presentence investigation report, 360 months to life. This was the reason, Milt Dancey said, for the crowd, nearly all Latins. The sole responsibility of Raylan’s group was Rudi. If he tried to run, demonstrate, or threaten the court, “We will assist him,” Milt said, “in regaining his composure.”