Elmore Leonard - Bandits

Sister Lucy did, just like that, without looking at him or asking questions. She straightened around again as one of the Latinos appeared at her window looking in. A little guy. He touched the window and said something in Spanish. She said in English, “I can hear you. What is it?” The guy began speaking in Spanish again, Sister Lucy looking up at him about a foot away from her, listening.

Jack turned as the other one came up on his side, past him and around to the front of the hearse. Both were little guys, 130-pounders. Jack liked that. What he didn’t like were their suit coats and open sport shirts. Not migrant bean pickers, were they? The one on Sister Lucy’s side wore sunglasses, his print shirt was silk and his hair was carefully combed. The other one was Creole-looking, a light-skinned black guy with pointy cheekbones and nappy hair. He stared at the windshield of the hearse while the face close behind Sister Lucy continued to speak to her in Spanish.

“He wants you to open the back. He says they’re friends of the deceased and would like to see her a last time before she’s buried. It has to be now because they have business, they’re unable to come to the funeral.”

Jack said, “How does he know who’s in there? Ask him.” He waited while Sister Lucy spoke to the face with sunglasses. The guy said something, one word, and hunched over trying to see into the back of the hearse, squinting, shading his eyes against his reflection in the glass.

Sister Lucy looked at Jack quickly, about to speak. But the face with the sunglasses straightened and began talking again, his expression solemn.

“He says they want to say a prayer for the departed. He says they’re determined to do this, or they wouldn’t be able to live with themselves.”

Jack waited because she kept looking at him, her eyes alive, as though she wanted to say more but couldn’t, the face so close behind her. Jack nodded, taking his time, making a decision. “Tell him I wish I could help him, but it’s against the law to show a body on the street.” She started to turn and he said, “Wait. But tell him he’s gonna see one if his partner doesn’t move out of the way, now, ’cause we’re leaving.” He saw her eyes, for a moment, open wider and saw the guy’s face staring at him. Jack said, “He understands, but tell him anyway. Put it in your own words.”

She said, “Jack,” her voice low, “look at me. He has a gun.” The fingers of her right hand slipped inside her jacket at the waist. “Right here.”

The man was talking again and she listened, still looking at Jack. “He wants to know why we’re being difficult.” Translating as the face with the sunglasses spoke through the window. “He says it will only take a minute. He wants you to turn off the motor and get out. With the key.” She listened again and then said, “If you try to drive off someone will be dead in this coach. If there isn’t someone already.”

He saw her eyes and then she was turning away, saying something back to him now in rapid Spanish, fluent, an edge to her tone. The window framed the face with the sunglasses and the BIG SPRING TIRE SPECIAL behind him, lettered on the window of the empty station with the light on inside and the decals on the door.

Jack said, “Don’t get him mad, okay?” He took the key from the ignition and she turned back to him as he opened the door. “But keep talking.” He got out, pushed the lock button down and closed the door.

The farm boys across the street were uncapping beers in the sunlight, still watching, a boy turning his head to remark, speculate, force a laugh, fool with the bill of his tractor cap. Trying to liven up a Sunday afternoon in St. Gabriel. Jack had known some farm boys at Angola, one who’d killed a man with a beer bottle, drunk.

He’d known guys like the face with the sunglasses and the Creole-looking guy standing in front of the hearse, the guy turning to face him as he came around. They’d stand like that in the Big Yard looking for some new guy to turn out, give him that sleepy mean look and not move out of the way. The dead-eyed stare saying, Walk around me, man. But knowing if you did you might as well hand over your balls, they weren’t yours anymore. He would walk around this one; there was nothing to prove. But you didn’t have to walk around any of them in the yard if, one, you walked over them or, two, you used your head. If you knew before they tried to turn you out you were smarter than they were, smarter than at least 95 percent of the entire prison population…

Smarter than these two assholes giving him that old familiar look. Jesus, he hoped so, if he had learned anything of value in those thirty-five months. A good rule was, whenever you were with people whose intentions were in doubt, the first thing you did was look for a way out or something to hit them with.

He nodded and smiled at the Creole-looking guy with the nappy hair as he walked past him. “How you doing, partner?” And said to the face with the sunglasses, the guy stepping away from the hearse, “This never happened to me before. Long as I’ve been in the funeral business.” Jack kept moving toward the station.

The guy said, “Hey, where you going?” Coming after him now, the Creole-looking guy closing in, too.

Jack stopped at the door and half turned. “I have to get something.”

The face with the sunglasses, close to him, said, “No, you can’t go in there. Look.” He reached past Jack and tried to turn the knob on the glass, wood-framed door. “See? Is locked. You can’t go in there.”

Jack said, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” He looked around, frowning, and said, “Shit. Now what am I gonna do? I have to go to the toilet and the key’s inside there. See, it’s on the desk. Has a hunk a board wired to it so nobody’ll steal it. Toilet keys being as valuable as they are.”

The face with the sunglasses said, “Go someplace else. Tha’s no problem for you.”

They stood close to each other. Jack said in a quiet voice, “I think we both have a problem. You want my car key and I want the key to the toilet. We’re a couple of desperate characters, aren’t we? Desperadoes. You know what I’m saying to you?” The face with the sunglasses staring at him, not answering. “Only I’m more desperate than you are, partner. You don’t believe it I’ll show you.”

Jack turned to face the door, took a short place-kick sort of step, his eyes on the VIDETTE ALARM SYSTEMS decal, and punched the sole of a black loafer through the plate glass.

The blast of sound from the burglar alarm was so immediate and loud he barely heard the glass shatter. Even louder than he’d expected. He looked around at the guy in the sunglasses edging away. The Creole-looking guy didn’t move and the other one had to gesture to him. Jack watched them move off in a hurry, turned, and there was Sister Lucy’s face in the side window, staring. And beyond the hearse the farm boys across the road, their heads raised to the clanging racket, heads turning now to follow the black Chrysler peeling its tires out of there, from shade into sunlight and gone, down the blacktop toward the interstate. Jack watched too, thinking, Well, there were other roads home, with bathrooms along the way. He had not felt this good in… he couldn’t remember.

The sister had a different look for him as he slipped in behind the wheel. Not exactly wide-eyed, but sort of stunned, lips parted, eyes staring in what he would like to think was respectful amazement. She didn’t say a word. He didn’t either until they were pulling away from that urgent sound and he gave her his nice-guy smile.

“That’s why I only went into hotel rooms.”

AS SOON AS JACKturned onto Camp Street he saw the white Cadillac stretch limo in front of the soup kitchen.