Elmore Leonard - Bandits

“Because it wasn’.”

“You’re not positive though.”

“This is Mullen and Son.”

“That’s right.”

“Then it was you, no one else.”

“I’ll tell you, chief, I’d remember going to Carville. You say it was yesterday? No, I’m afraid I was right here the whole day.”

“You lying to me.”

Jack gave him the Big Yard stare, cold and hard, set his tone low, and asked, “What did you say?”

The colonel hung in, didn’t budge, stared back at him through tinted glass and Jack began to think he might’ve made the wrong move with that Big Yard bullshit; it worked right away or it didn’t. When the colonel said, “Franklin, show him your gun,” Jack was sure he had made the wrong move. He looked over to see the bluesteel pistol in Franklin’s extended hand.

Jack said, “Well, I think I’d better call the police.” Something he had never said before in his life.

The colonel said, “How you going to do that?” Jack didn’t have an answer, but it didn’t matter; the colonel was anxious to tell him what he had said earlier. “In case you didn’ hear me, I said you a fucking liar. What do you think of that?”

This was not Big Yard stuff; this was different. There was no manhood to prove here. What he had to do was… handle it, that’s all.

“I think,” Jack said, “that is, I have to assume, you’re distraught over the death of this person you mentioned. I’ve seen many people in your state, mourning a tragic loss, and I can understand. After all, it’s my business.” Jack paused. “I wonder if you’d mind telling me your name.”

The guy’s suspicious mind, behind those rosy glasses, wouldn’t let him come right out with it.

“If you would, please. I know this is Franklin. Franklin, how you doing?” The guy didn’t seem to know how to answer. Jack turned back to the colonel saying, “And you’re…”

“Colonel Dagoberto Godoy.”

Man, and proud of it. The guy straightened and there was a very faint but sharp sound as though he might have clicked his heels. Jack wondered. He couldn’t remember any heel clicking since grade school. It made him think these guys were from some world he knew nothing about. The only thing to do was get them out of here.

“Colonel,” Jack said, “if your buddy will put his gun away I’ll show you around, let you look in every room in this place, and if you see the person you mentioned… What was the name?”

The colonel didn’t want to say it, but he did. “Amelita Sosa.” Snapping the name.

“If you see her, then it will be the first time in mortuary history,” Jack said, “the deceased ever walked in on his or her own. If you’ll follow me, please…”

Leo had brought Mr. Louis Morrisseau upstairs and was working over him in the embalming room, head down, concentrating to find that carotid artery in the old man’s neck, Leo’s rubber fingers probing into the incision he’d made. It caught Colonel Godoy’s eye. He approached the doorway from the hall, where Jack and the Creole-looking guy, Franklin, waited. Leo still didn’t look up. Not even when the colonel asked him what he was doing and Leo told him.

“Drain the blood, uh?” the colonel said. “I always wonder how you do that. I don’t understand why you don’ make more holes, do it quicker.”

Leo mumbled something. The colonel said, “What?” as he moved in closer. “This is a very old man I see. But yesterday you had a young girl, uh? Very nice-looking one.”

Leo said, “I wasn’t here yesterday. I told you that.” Still not looking up, his shoulders hunched, his rubber fingers working away.

“But you do get young girls who die.”

“Once in a while.”

The colonel glanced over his shoulder at Franklin and gestured for him to go down the hall. “See if she’s in a room somewhere, hiding.”

Jack turned to follow Franklin. He heard the colonel saying to Leo, “When you place a young girl in the coffin, you don’ dress her completely, do you?”

Jack said to Franklin’s back, “Will you please put your gun away.”

He was glad Leo hadn’t noticed it. Leo might have come apart and told them anything they wanted to know. He watched Franklin take a look in Leo’s office, then come back along the hall to the two-room apartment. The door was closed. Franklin stepped aside for Jack to open it. That surprised him. He waited in the doorway as Franklin looked at the old sofa and refrigerator. When he went into the bedroom Jack stepped over to the refrigerator, opened it and looked in, then waited for Franklin to peek in the bathroom and appear once again.

“You want a cold one?”

The guy stared at him.

“That means a beer. You want one? You like beer?”

The guy shook his head and Jack closed the refrigerator. The guy had really weird hair. Not so nappy up close, rounded in a semifro, but all of it was above his ears in sort of a bowl hairdo, no sideburns. He looked as if he’d just stepped off the banana boat and somebody bought him a suit of clothes, guessing the size: a black suit with pointy shoulders, meant to be snug and mod, but at least a size too big, the sleeves almost touching his knuckles. The guy had the hands of a stonemason, the nails cracked and ridged. It was hard to guess his age, other than he was full grown but not too big. Now, with time to look at him, he appeared different than he did yesterday, when Jack was picturing him in the Big Yard. The guy looked like he was out of the fucking Stone Age, wearing a white regular shirt buttoned at the neck but no tie. Jack thought of asking the guy who dressed him, but then came up with a better question.

“What do you carry a gun for?”

“They gave it to me to use.”

There was the accent that made no sense. If the guy had trouble with Spanish, what was he? Maybe Jamaican. Except it wasn’t quite that kind of accent and the colonel had said he was from Nicaragua.

“To use how?”

“To use, to shoot it.”

“Well, I guess that’s what I’m asking. Who you gonna shoot in New Orleans?”

“I don’t know. They don’t tell me if I am.”

Jesus Christ. “You mean if the colonel, Godoy, he told you to shoot somebody you’d do it?”

“That’s why they give me the gun. If I have to use it.”

“Yeah, but it’s against the law. You can’t just shoot anybody you want.”

It seemed as if the guy had to think that one over. Finally he said, “If I’m told to shoot… You understand it isn’t the same as I want to shoot. Uh? It would be I have to do it.”

“If you have to… You realize this is hard for me to understand. What you’re talking about.”

“Why is it?”

A simple question. The guy waiting for an answer.

“Well, I guess it’s different here than in Nicaragua.”

“Much different, yes. But I think I like it here.”

“Well, that’s nice.” The guy seemed so easy to talk to, but he wasn’t, he didn’t make sense. The guy was studying him now, beginning to nod.

He said, “That was you, yesterday.”

“You think so?”

“Yes, in the coach. I know it was you.”

Like stating a simple fact, nothing more to it than that, nothing in his expression… The Creole-looking guy stared at him and then walked out.

Jack waited. He looked at the phone, on the end table next to the sofa. He walked over and put his hand on the phone, then took it off. He couldn’t think of anyone to call who’d do him any good. He thought of Leo’s trocars, in the cabinet in the prep room. He had been good yesterday, wide awake. But a failure today. He was slow today. He wasn’t thinking. He thought, Well, you better start now, quick. And began to think, Take ’em. Just fucking take ’em, that’s all. You see ’em, hit. Take the guy with the gun first. Unless they both have a gun. Shit. Then had to get ready again, work himself up… It was so quiet before the sound from the hall reached him, the hurried steps coming this way…