Elmore Leonard - Bandits

“I know where it is. Are you alone?”

“The housekeeper’s here, Dolores… If you could come as soon as you can… But not in the hearse. Just in case…”

He said, “No, I have a car.” He waited a moment and said, for the first time, “Lucy?”

“What?”

“We’ll be right over.”

SHE BROUGHT HIM THROUGHa hall of dim portraits and framed pictures of Carnival balls, past sitting and dining rooms that were dark, formal, to a sun parlor that was startling, the atmosphere suddenly tropical as he looked at walls papered in a blaze of green-and-gold banana trees. Lamplight reflected on giant green fronds, on green-cushioned wicker, a ceiling fan, baskets of fern, a bar with bottles displayed against tinted glass. On the wicker coffee table was a glass of sherry. She was quiet, polite, wearing a white shirt now with tan slacks and sandals. She asked him if he’d help himself to a drink, then asked if he was sure he wasn’t hungry-as he poured vodka over ice-Dolores was fixing something for Amelita and it would be no trouble. He shook his head. She said Dolores had been to church. She said Dolores had been attending the African Baptist Church on Esplanade as long as she could remember. She said Dolores used to teach her hymns and it disturbed her mother to hear Protestant songs in the house. Jack took a sip of the drink and looked at her and said, “You’re not a sister anymore.”

She said, “No, I’m not.”

“I called you Sister.”

“Once or twice.”

“You sound different.”

She seemed to smile.

“I mean since this afternoon.”

She was looking at his drink and said, “Let me try that.” He handed her the glass. She took a sip of the vodka and looked at him with that round lower lip pouting as she swallowed, then shook her head. “I still don’t like it.”

“You’re trying different things again?”

She said, “The day I got back to New Orleans I called my mother for the name of a hairdresser. I’d made up my mind, after thinking about it for at least a year, I was going to get a perm. Curl my hair and change my image. I felt I needed to pick myself up. So I made the appointment… It wasn’t until I was in the chair, looking at myself in the mirror, I realized that a perm wasn’t going to do it.”

“Do what?”

“I mean it wasn’t necessary. I’d already changed. You said I sound different. I am, I’m not the same person I was a year ago or this afternoon, or the same person right now that I’m going to be.”

She was close enough to touch; not as tall as earlier today, in the heels. He said, “I think you made the right decision. That’s the way your hair should be, natural.” He thought a moment and said, “The day I got home from Angola, the first thing I was gonna do was get dressed up and head for the bar at the Roosevelt, like I’d never been away. But I didn’t. My parole came up the same time as a friend of mine, guy named Roy Hicks.” Jack felt himself start to smile. “Roy had a way of looking at you, with this cold stare, not putting much into it at all, but it was like he was asking if you wanted to die. He wasn’t that big, either.”

Lucy had started to smile because he did, but now the smile left her eyes. “I thought you said you were friends.”

“We were. Roy taught me how to jail. No, he didn’t give me the look, it was for guys who came onto him or got out of line… You know what I’m talking about?”

“I think so.”

He started to smile again, knowing what he was going to tell, and saw Lucy ready to smile, he was pretty sure. It encouraged him, made it all right to show off a little, slip into a role with her that was comfortable, natural; the feeling he could tell her anything he wanted.

“We get to New Orleans, Roy says he has some business to tend to and wants me to come along. We take a cab over to the projects, you know, off Rampart? We go up to a door, Roy bangs on it with his fist… I forgot to mention, Roy Hicks was a New Orleans cop at one time, but that’s another story.”

“What was he doing in prison?”

“That’s what I mean it’s another story; but a good one. We’re in the projects, this black guy opens the door I think I recognize. He doesn’t invite us in, but he knows us and we go in, and I see three more black guys sitting there. The place, I find out later, is a dope house. I’m thinking, what am I doing here, as Roy says to the black guy that runs it, ‘Shake hands, dude.’ But the guy doesn’t want to. By then I realize I know the guy; he was at Angola and got his release about six months before us. He ran a still while he was inside, made home brew out of fruit cocktail, rice, raisins, whatever he could find. It was terrible stuff. He’d sell it and give Roy a cut, something like half, ’cause Roy had given him permission to make it.” He saw Lucy frown and said, “Roy ran the dormitory we were in, Big Stripe, medium security.” He didn’t know what else to tell her. “It’s the way it is, part of the convict social structure… Anyway, Roy goes, ‘Shake hands, dude.’ Says it a couple more times and finally the guy sticks his hand out. Roy grabs it, gets an armlock on him, pulls a gun out of the guy’s pants, a P .38, with the three guys sitting there watching. Roy tells the guy he’s got in the armlock he left owing Roy money, and with accumulated interest the amount was now two thousand dollars. The guy told Roy he was crazy, couldn’t he see they were outside now? That kind a deal was over with. Roy goes, ‘It ain’t over till I say it is. Pay up, dude,’ never raising his voice or threatening the guy, and the guy finally gave him the money.”

Lucy was staring at him. “Amazing.”

“You understand, the guy might’ve owed him a few bucks, but this was a shakedown. Or with the gun you could even say it was a thinly disguised stickup. We get in the cab I ask Roy if he’s flipped out. He goes, ‘It’s like you fall off a bike you have to get right back on it again.’ I said to him, ‘Yeah, we took a fall, but I don’t see ripping off a dope house the same as getting back into what we were doing.’ Meaning neither of us, strictly speaking, had ever been into armed robbery. Roy goes, ‘What difference is it what statute you break, B and E or going in with a gun? You think you’re ever gonna live like a civilian?’ I told him I had every intention of trying. He goes, ‘Well, here’s a start.’ Counts out half the money, a thousand bucks, and hands it to me.”

She said it again. “Amazing.”

“I was thinking, that kind of scene is enough to curl your hair, if you don’t want to pay to get a perm.”

Lucy’s eyes raised. “It looks fairly straight now.”

“Yeah, well, that’s from working in a funeral home, seeing unexpected sights that get it to stand on end.”

“What’s your friend Roy doing?”

“He’s a bartender. Works in the Quarter.”

She took his glass and poured another vodka before looking up at him again. “Let’s sit down. I want to tell you something.”

“When my dad put up his new office building in Lafayette, he told me this at dinner, it was going to cost just over three million dollars. But they’d have to remove a live oak that was about a hundred and fifty years old. So my dad had the plans changed. He built his office at right angles, sort of around the tree, and it cost him another half million… What do you think that says about him?”

It was quiet in the room. Jack could feel the vodka, a good feeling in soft lamplight. He liked the fit of the deep-cushioned wicker chair; he could fall asleep here. Lucy waited, not far away, on the end of the sofa close to his chair, legs crossed. She leaned forward now to reach her sherry. He thought of ways to answer, moved only his arm, slowly, to raise the glass, and gazed at banana trees before taking a sip.