Elmore Leonard - Riding the Rap

Joyce nodded again, uh-huh. “So did you get him?”

She still didn’t see the point.

“We got him. Even with all the commotion, busting the door down? The guy was still in bed.”

“Did you shoot him?”

Looking right at Raylan as she said it and it stopped him, because he could see she was serious, waiting for him to answer.

“We had to wake him up.”

Nudged the guy with a shotgun-the way it actually happened-the sheriff’s deputy saying, “Rise and shine, sleepyhead.”

But that wasn’t the point either. What he wanted Joyce to see, she had as much chance of helping Harry Arno as this woman had of hiding a fugitive. There was a silence. “I didn’t like to bust into somebody’s house,” Raylan said. “I asked the woman why she didn’t open the door. She said, ‘Invite you in for iced tea?’”

There was another silence until Raylan said, “You know Harry’s an alcoholic,” and saw Joyce look at him as if she might’ve missed something, one minute talking about apprehending a fugitive… “You know that, don’t you?”

“He’s trying to stop.”

“How? Is he in a program? He won’t admit he’s got a problem, so he makes excuses. It’s what alcoholics do. You left him, he’s depressed and that’s why he’s drinking again.”

Joyce said, “As far as he’s concerned…”

“You dumped him. After how many years you’ve been going with him on and off? How serious were you?”

She didn’t answer that.

“Honey, alcoholics never blame themselves when they mess up. It’s your fault he was drinking and lost his license, so he gets you to feel sorry for him and drive him around, drop whatever you’re doing.”

She said, “Well, I’m not working.” Meaning she hadn’t gotten any calls to do catalog modeling.

“Come on. The man’s sixty-seven years old acting like a spoiled kid.”

“He’s sixty-nine,” Joyce said, “the same age as Paul Newman. Ask him.”

They picked at each other using Harry as the reason, not nearly as lovey-dovey as they used to be, that time right before he shot Tommy Bucks and was temporarily assigned out of the Miami marshals office.

A situation Raylan blamed on the assistant U.S. attorney who reviewed the shooting:

This very serious young guy all buttoned-up in his seersucker suit, but acting bored to indicate his self-confidence. He wanted to know why Raylan was sitting in a crowded restaurant with a man known to be a member of organized crime when he shot him. Raylan told him the Cardozo Hotel lunch crowd was out on the porch and Tommy Bucks had his back to a wall, a precaution the man had no doubt been taking since his childhood in Sicily.

The assistant U.S. attorney asked if they’d had some kind of disagreement. Raylan said he believed it was his job as a marshal to disagree with that type of person, a known gangster. The assistant U.S. attorney said he couldn’t help but wonder if the shooting might not have been triggered, so to speak, over a busted deal, an argument over some aspect of an arrangement Raylan had with this individual. Not flat accusing Raylan of being on the take, but coming close.

He said then he’d heard a rumor that, sometime earlier, Raylan had given Tommy Bucks twenty-four hours to get out of town or he would shoot him on sight. That wasn’t exactly true was it? The assistant U.S. attorney sounding as though he saw humor in this without believing a word of it.

“I gave him twenty-four hours to get out of Dade County,” Raylan said. “Tommy Bucks was sitting at that table when his time ran out. Armed. A witness saw it and called out, ‘He’s got a gun!’ It was confirmed and put in the police report. What happened then, Tommy Bucks drew on me and I shot him.”

The assistant U.S. attorney said if this was true, it sounded as though Raylan had forced Tommy Bucks to draw his gun so he would have an excuse to shoot him.

Raylan said, “No, he had a choice. He could’ve left. He had, he might still be alive; though I doubt it.”

Raylan’s boss, the Miami marshal, thought it best to get him out of that U.S. attorney’s sight for a while, pulled him off warrants and assigned Raylan to the Fugitive Apprehension Strike Team in Palm Beach County, working out of the Sheriffs Office. It was the type of duty Raylan liked best, enforcement, way better than standing around in a courtroom or shuffling papers in Assets and Forfeitures. Except that in a way it was like being exiled: have to drive two hours up to West Palm in the morning, two hours back at night to Joyce’s place or the house he’d rented in North Miami, that freeway traffic wearing him out. It was another reason things weren’t as lovey-dovey with Joyce-they didn’t see each other as much.

Or maybe the distance, the drive, arguing about Harry, maybe none of that had anything to do with the way things were between them.

He wondered about it, sitting at the kitchen table with Joyce, thinking of something she’d said a minute ago. He’d told her about apprehending the fugitive and she asked if he’d shot him. Serious, wanting to know.

She asked now if he wanted another beer.

Raylan said, “Did you think I had shot that guy today?”

“I wondered, that’s all.”

“Really? A guy lying in bed asleep?”

“I saw you shoot and kill a man,” Joyce said. Not twenty feet from the table when he shot Tommy Bucks three times, Joyce watching it happen.

She said, “But we’ve never talked about it, have we? How you felt?”

He wasn’t sure how he felt. Relieved? It was hard to explain. He said, “It scares you, after, thinking about it. I don’t feel sorry for him or wish I hadn’t done it. I didn’t see any other way to stop him.”

“It was a personal matter?”

“In a way.”

“Man to man. You have an image of yourself, the lawman.”

“It’s what I am.”

She said, “You want to know what I wonder about? What if he wasn’t armed?”

“But he was.”

“You know that?”

“He wouldn’t have been there without a gun.”

She said, “Let me put it another way. If you knew he didn’t have a gun, would you have shot him anyway?”

“But he did . I don’t know what else to tell you.”

She said, “Well, then think about it.”

“I’d like to know what you think,” Raylan said. “Would I have shot him knowing he was unarmed?”

Joyce said, “I don’t know.” She waited a few moments and said, “You want another beer or not?”

Harry got to the restaurant in Delray Beach at ten to one, a little early. He wasn’t going to have a drink, had made up his mind driving here; but as soon as he was seated he ordered a vodka and tonic and paid the waiter. He’d have one, that’s all. It was nice here on the terrace, watching people going by, like a sidewalk café. One-fifteen Harry ordered another drink and told the waiter to run a tab. He got the drink and took it inside with him to the pay phone, where he dialed Bobby Deo’s number in Miami Beach and got no answer, no recorded message. He walked out to the terrace among the Friday afternoon lunch crowd and sat down at the table in the shade where he’d left his cigarettes and change. He talked to the waiter for a couple of minutes about this and that, ordered a double Absolut on the rocks with a twist, and watched a girl holding a deck of cards pausing at tables to say a few words, but not having any luck until she came to a woman seated near Harry. The woman, wearing quite a lot of makeup, gold-framed sunglasses and earrings, asked the girl to sit down. Harry heard the woman say she was sick and tired of customers acting bitchy, throwing their credit cards, treating her like a servant. He didn’t hear the girl’s voice until she said, “The Eight of Swords. Yes, there’s a lot going on you feel you have to put up with, more than you think you can handle.” The girl speaking slowly, with kind of a southern accent. “So, let’s see. The Ace of Wands. You don’t feel you’re getting anywhere, but you’ve learned a lot about yourself. Isn’t that true?” The woman said something Harry couldn’t hear. Then the girl’s voice again. “The Prince of Swords reversed. Hmmmm.” She said, “Well, you’re not afraid to take on challenges,” and something about a painful situation that hadn’t been resolved. “The Three of Wands. Hmmmm, now I see a past-life connection…” Harry ordered another drink.