Elmore Leonard: Riding the Rap

“I admit it’s crossed my mind,” Raylan said.

“See? Come on then, let’s go.”

“Wanting to is one thing,” Raylan said, “doing it wouldn’t be appropriate.”

“Ap pro priate-gimme a break. If you want to and I want to…”

“I’m not gonna arrest you.”

There was a pause.

“You’re not?”

Raylan felt her hands slip from his shoulders. She was sitting down now at the table, hunching her chair in close, all the while looking at him.

“How come?”

“It’s not my case. I was never on a case, I was looking for Harry. I’ll be asked what I know, but mainly it’ll be Harry’s word, and you said he was nice to you.”

“Yeah, but what’ll you tell them about me?”

“Only what you told me, you were threatened, they made you do it.” Raylan paused. “You said the other day, when we were talking about that woman’s murder and how you conned the detectives-”

“I did not . I saw the murder weapon, that bookend.”

“You took a chance, guessed there were two bookends and reasoned it out from there. I called you on it and you said, ‘What’s wrong with wanting to do better?’ Wanting to get ahead in the world, be somebody. See, I think the way you go about it,” Raylan said, “you give yourself enough problems without my adding to them.”

“You’re not gonna testify against me?”

Sounding like she wanted to be sure about it.

Raylan shook his head. “Why put you in prison? This place is bad enough.”

“Then why can’t we go to bed?”

He said, “I’m getting out of here before I do something foolish.”

She said, “What’s wrong with being foolish sometimes?”

It was a good question.