Elmore Leonard - Bandits

“Who’s we?”

“You and I, maybe Cullen.”

“Cullen, they let him out?”

“Medical release, so he can get laid.”

“What was he in, twenty-five years?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Jesus, they’d a had to shoot me off the fence.”

“Well, he’s out and feeling pretty good.”

“What’re we talking about, a bank, for Christ sake?”

“Not anything like it.”

“Then what do you need Cullen for?”

“I think he’d enjoy it. Why not?”

“You’re feeling pretty good yourself, aren’t you?”

“I’ve been born again. Since yesterday I have an entirely new outlook on life.”

“This guy’s gonna collect five mil you say, give or take… Are we talking about cash, with bank straps on it?”

“You’ve never heard of one like this, Roy. It’s never been done before.”

“It has to do with the funeral business.”

“Not unless somebody gets shot.”

“This doesn’t sound like you atall, Delaney.”

“I told you, I’m a different person. You want to know what it is, or you rather guess?”

“I know every kind of scam or heist there is grown men have tried to pull and fell on their ass doing.”

“All except this one.”

“Have you seen the guy? You know who he is?”

“I met him today.”

“Yeah?… Well, what is he?”

“He’s a Nicaraguan colonel.”

Roy stared at Jack. He turned then, walked down the bar, made a drink, rang it up, and came back.

“You met a woman you say you can trust and she told you an amazing story I’m not gonna believe. How to pick up five mil.”

“Give or take.”

“How come she gets half? The guy her husband?”

Jack shook his head. “She needs it to build a hospital, for lepers.”

Roy paused, then nodded. “A leper hospital, yeah, that’s a good idea. You know why lepers never finish a card game?”

“They have to quit,” Jack said, “when they throw in their hands.” He looked at Roy with the same deadpan expression, because he knew he had him and knew they were going to play this one and might even have a pretty good time working it out.

He said, “What I need at the moment is a police officer. Or someone who knows how to speak in that same ugly, obscene way they have of addressing offenders.”

ROY’S KILLER LOOK DIDN’Twork on lavatory doors or in creeping traffic, so he’d have to kick something or pound the dashboard of Jack’s VW Scirocco with the edge of his fist. It was a tan ’78 Scirocco, faded but still mean-looking, Jack Delaney had bought used and now had 153,000 miles on the odometer. He wasn’t worried Roy could hurt the car hitting it, but he’d jump when Roy yelled, “Move it, goddamn it,” the man’s impatience coming out unexpectedly, in spurts; then Roy would be quiet for a while. Jack got them out of the narrow streets of the Quarter, across Canal, and through the new downtown that looked like every other big city. They were heading uptown on St. Charles Avenue, once again in New Orleans, before he told Roy about the deal, why the guy was collecting five-million dollars.

Roy would say, “Now hold on a minute,” and ask a question. Jack would answer it or he’d say, “Don’t you know what’s going on in the world, Roy? Christ, don’t you read the paper? You never heard of the Sandinistas, for Christ sake?” Lucy had given Jack a book of color photographs called Nicaragua that showed all these young guys in sport shirts and baseball caps wearing masks, hoods with holes, or scarves tied around their faces, and armed with all kinds of dinky weapons, Saturday Night Specials, .22 rifles… A pickup army fighting well-armed uniformed troops wearing helmets, and it was a kick looking at pictures of these guys in print sport shirts and bandit masks. Jack could see himself one of them if he were Nicaraguan and had been there in ’79. There were pictures of bodies, too, death and destruction, fires, refugees running and crowds of people waving red and black flags. There was a picture of the guy they hated and finally overthrew, ran out of the country, Somoza, wearing a white suit with a sash. Jack could tell by looking at Somoza he was that type of person who was set in his ways and didn’t know shit.

Roy said he had a snitch one time who was a Nicaraguan. When he was working undercover with the felony action squad. He said there were plenty of Nicaraguans in New Orleans.

Jack said, “Yeah, and I think you’re gonna meet a couple of them pretty soon.”

With the windows open they would quit talking as Jack passed a St. Charles Avenue streetcar clanging along the median. It was his favorite street, overgrown with oak and all kinds of shrubbery, palm trees in the yards of old shuttered homes. He rode the streetcar for fun when he was little. The tracks ran all the way to the levee and then up Carrollton Avenue to a point where the motorman would flip the seatbacks, walk to the other end of the car, and drive it downtown to Canal.

Roy said, “I hope some guys I know don’t find out what this Nicaraguan’s up to. They’d be standing in line to take a swipe at him. Is the guy really as bad as you say?”

“Ask Lucy. She’ll tell you.”

“I mean this guy is bad .”

“That’s what’s good about taking his money.”

“But if he’s bad …”

“Yeah?”

“How come he doesn’t keep the money for himself? What is he, just bad in certain areas?”

“I wondered about that, too,” Jack said. “Maybe he’s got all the money he needs.”

“Or why would he want to go back and take a chance getting killed?”

“Why were you a cop?”

“It wasn’t for the money, I’ll tell you that.”

Jack said, “Well then.”

He took the Scirocco rumbling in second gear down Audubon, the street full of trees and the dark shapes of big homes, warm lights in windows here and there, a few porch lights showing through hedges and shrubs. He said, “There, on the left. That’s Lucy’s house, her mother’s.”

Roy said, “Get Lucy to buy you a muffler. I think she can afford it.”

“There’s the car. What should I do?”

“Keep going.”

“It’s the same one, the Chrysler… Jesus, the guy behind the wheel, that’s the one named Franklin. The colored guy, or whatever he is. Creole, I don’t know.”

“Go down the end and turn around.”

“The other guy, I don’t think it’s the colonel.” Jack felt a need to talk. “But Franklin, Christ, he’s the one that was with him and put the gun on me.”

“I love that kind,” Roy said. “Come on, turn around.”

“I have to get down there first, don’t I?”

Near the river end of the street the dark mass of trees opened to show bare telephone poles and vacant lots that extended to the levee, a grassy barrier against the night sky. Jack circled one of the poles and his headlights again probed the aisle of trees.

Roy said, “Ease up behind them.”

“I get out, too?”

“You come up on the curb side. Stand close to the car but a few steps back, so they can feel you but can’t see you. It might confuse ’em otherwise. What is this guy, an undertaker or a cop? Before you get out, write down the license number.”

“I don’t have a pen.”

Roy said, “Jesus Christ,” took one out of the inside pocket of his corduroy jacket, pulled out a bunch of folded papers then, looked through them, and handed Jack the pen and an envelope that said The International Lounge Featuring Exotic Dancers from Around the World across the flap. “From now on you carry a pen and a notebook. And you wear a suit or sport coat any time we have to pull this kind of shit.”