Elmore Leonard: Bandits

“I know none of the sisters ever got it and they’ve been there since the place opened, almost a hundred years ago. The same ones that are at Charity Hospital. You recall if you met a Sister Teresa Victor?”

Jack didn’t answer or say anything because he was staring at the face of the man on the prep table, recognizing familiar features beneath the lacerations, realizing he knew him, even without the dark hair that used to curl down on his forehead. Jack said, “That’s Buddy Jeannette, isn’t it?” Surprised, but quiet about it, a little stunned. “Jesus Christ, it is, it’s Buddy Jeannette.”

Leo turned to look at the death certificate, on the counter next to the Porti-Boy embalming machine. “Denis Alexander Jeannette,” Leo said. “Born in the parish of Orleans, April twenty-third, 1937.”

“It’s Buddy. Jesus.” Jack shook his head and said, “I don’t believe it.”

Leo had Buddy hooked up to the Porti-Boy now, the machine pumping a pink fluid called Permaglo through clear plastic tubing that snaked over Buddy’s naked body and into his carotid artery, in the right side of his neck. Leo looked up, took time to study Jack.

“Why don’t you believe it?”

“He was so careful.”

Leo picked up the hose, began to play its gentle stream over Buddy Jeannette’s shoulders and chest. “Where’d you know him, in prison?”

“Before,” Jack said. There was a silence, Leo waiting, running the hose over Buddy, soaping him. “I’d see him downtown. Like a Saturday afternoon I might see him in the bar at the Roosevelt, we’d have a drink.”

“Sounds like you were pretty good friends.” Leo was massaging Buddy with the soap, kneading his flesh to help the Permaglo work through and give him a tint of natural color.

“We were friends when we saw each other,” Jack said. “But if we didn’t see each other it didn’t matter.”

“I don’t recall you ever mentioned him.”

“Well, it was a long time ago.”

“What was?”

“When I’d run into him.” He was getting used to looking at Buddy’s wounds. The poor guy’s head, skinned raw, looked sunburned. “He was in an accident, huh?”

“Went off the road into a canal. Early this morning,” Leo said, “out on the Chef highway.” He looked over at the death certificate again. “I see your friend was married. Lived in Kenner.”

“Is that right?”

“Only he had somebody else in the car with him. A young lady,” Leo said. “How’d you like to be his wife and you’re told that?”

Jack said, “Well, that can happen, I guess.”

“No matter how careful you are?”

“Maybe I was wrong,” Jack said. “Maybe he wasn’t careful. Or he was at one time but going through the windshield changed him. I don’t know anything about him, what he’s been doing.”

“Sounds like we have a touchy subject here.” Leo turned to check the pressure gauge on the Porti-Boy machine.

Jack knew he should leave, right now; but he continued to look at Buddy. “What happened to the person that was with him?”

“You mean the young lady that wasn’t his wife? The same thing that happened to your friend,” Leo said. “Cause of death, multiple injuries. Pick one. I’m surprised they didn’t do a post on ’em at the morgue. All they did was take some blood. The young lady’s out at Lakeview. You know where I mean? In Metairie, brand-new building. They must do two hundred funerals a year, easy. Mrs. Jeannette requested your friend be brought here. But you act like you don’t know her.”

“I don’t. I didn’t even know he was married.”

“How about the girl friend?”

“You mean the girl that was with him? What’re you trying to find out, Leo?”

“You know lots of girls. I just thought you might’ve known the one he had in the car.”

“Tell me what you’re getting at.”

“We’re talking about girls, Jack. What’s a good place to meet ’em these days?” Leo was reaching into the cabinet above the Porti-Boy now. “I hear the Bayou Bar at the Pontchartrain isn’t bad.”

“It’s all right.”

Leo turned to Buddy Jeannette with a sixteen-inch trocar, a hollow, chrome-plated brass rod with a handle at one end and a knife-sharp point at the other.

“You were there, weren’t you, just a few days ago?”

“Leo, don’t start with the trocar yet, okay? Let’s get this cleared up. What day are we talking about?”

“You worked three nights this week, so it must’ve been Monday. I think around six o’clock.”

Jack nodded, but not ready to come right out and admit anything, his conscience telling him he was innocent. “Uh-huh, and who was I with?”

Leo said, “You know who you were with.” He picked up a length of plastic tubing coupled to a metal aspirating device that hung inside the sink and attached the tubing to the handle end of the trocar. “You gonna try and tell me you weren’t with her? Kind of girl you can spot a mile away with that red hair?”

“Yeah, I was with Helene.”

“You admit it.”

“I want to know who told you.”

“You admit it, what difference does it make?”

“Leo, you’re not sayng I was with her, you’re accusing me of it.”

“If that’s the way you take it.”

“But what am I being accused of ? I’m not a parolee anymore, Leo, I’ve been rehabilitated. I don’t have to stand at attention and take any more shit, okay? I want to know what I did.”

“I don’t know. Did you take her up to a room?”

“I happpen to run into her. I haven’t seen Helene in, you know how long, it’s been years.”

“Since you went to prison.”

“We had a drink, that’s all.”

“But did you have the urge?”

“To what?”

“Take her up to a room.”

“Leo, you can’t look at a girl like Helene and not get the urge, that’s the way God made us.” He watched Leo move toward Buddy with the trocar. “What it looks like to me, you’re worried I could be getting into something,” Jack said, “or I’m gonna screw up again because this guy used to be a friend of mine, years ago.”

“About the same time as Helene.”

“See, that’s what I mean. They didn’t even know each other. This poor guy, he’s driving out Chef Menteur with a girl could be his sister-in-law, a friend of the family, you don’t know. But you start imagining things. I’m guilty because he’s guilty and you don’t even know if he is. But the thing is, Leo, even if the young lady in the car was his girlfriend, what’s it got to do with me?”

“I worry about you,” Leo said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know, I guess it’s your nature, your tendencies, make me a little nervous.”

“We’re two different people, Leo.”

“We sure are.”

“You like this work, I don’t. You like to lie in the hammock at the Bay, read your book, smell the gumbo Raejeanne’s fixing in the kitchen…”

“And what do you like to do, Jack?”

Jack didn’t answer, looking at the spearlike trocar poised above Buddy Jeannette’s belly, a few inches from his navel.

“See?” Leo said. “You don’t think of normal things that’d be on the tip of your tongue everybody enjoys, you have to try and think of something crazy, huh?”

“I wasn’t thinking anything at all. But if you don’t mind my saying, Leo, I think this business ages you before your time. It’s always serious. You know, there are very few light moments.” He watched, with a sense of relief, Leo relaxing his grip on the trocar.

“You’re right,” Leo said, “I tend to jump to conclusions. I hear you’re with that redheaded broad and right away I see you getting back in that hotel cocktail lounge routine.”