Elmore Leonard - The Big Bounce

“You want some A-one?”

“No, just ketchup.”

His dad never looked like a bus driver. He was nice looking. Dark hair. Sort of a slick guy. Good dresser. But he was a bus driver in his forties, making about a hundred and a quarter a week with a wife and three children and living in an apartment building with kitchen smells and peeling plaster out in the hall. He could crush in his hat and wear it hotshot on the side of his head and pretend he was piloting a 707 or a truckload of explosives up the Alcan, but it was still a DSR bus and there was no way to make it something else.

“How about dessert?”

“I don’t think so.” Ryan sipped his water. “You know, my dad died when he was forty-six.”

“Well”-Mr. Majestyk was looking at his hand on his water glass and now Ryan’s eyes dropped to the hand, a thick, toughened hand with swollen knuckles and cracked, yellowed nails, a hand that made the heavy restaurant tumbler seem thin and fragile-“I don’t know. I guess a person just dies.”

“Yeah, I guess we all have to die.”

“I don’t mean that,” Mr. Majestyk said. “I don’t mean it that way. I mean we’re supposed to die. You can’t kill yourself, but that’s what we’re here for, to die. Are you a Catholic? With your name, I mean-”

“Yeah. I was.”

“Well, don’t you know what I mean?”

“I never was an altar boy or anything.”

“You don’t have to be an altar boy, for Christ sake. You were taught, weren’t you? You went to church.”

“Let’s not get into all that.”

Mr. Majestyk’s serious gaze held, then began to relax, and he smiled with his perfect-looking false teeth. “What’re we talking about dying for. Come on, let’s go over the Pier.”

He didn’t see the waitress in the red pants. She was gone and a dumpy Indian-looking waitress was serving the tables. There were girls scattered around the place, but none of them seemed to be alone. There was more noise, the lights were on and there were a lot more people now. There was a long table of beer-drinking college-looking Hermans who had probably been out sailing or cruising around in their cruisers and were loud and never shut up. It wasn’t as good as before.

When they were at a table again with a pitcher of beer, he saw Bob Jr. come in with the girl. He didn’t recognize the girl right away because he was watching Bob Jr. as they moved through the people down to the end of the bar. Bob Jr. was all slicked up in a real slick checkered sport shirt with the collar tips pointing out to his shoulders, short sleeves turned up once, silver expando watchband and everything, big can hanging over the bar stool now and his hair combed back like Roy Rogers. The girl with him went on to the ladies’ room.

“You get these guys from Dodge Main off the shift,” Mr. Majestyk was saying. “But get them in at night, that’s the trick.”

Bob Jr. looked this way, toward the front end of the bar, and, sure enough, his forehead was pure white.

“Well, it was August, so we figure how about fresh corn? All you can eat for fifty cents with this sign out in front. Now we only have one pot,” Mr. Majestyk was saying. “On purpose. One that would hold maybe a dozen and a half ears. So the guys come in and order the corn; they’re going to see how much they can eat, see? Fifty cents, you can’t beat it. But they got to wait because only with the one pot we can’t cook more’n a dozen and a half ears. So while they wait they’re drinking, I mean throwing it down. We make money on the booze and, listen, we make money on the corn . Because, see, we get it for twenty-five cents a dozen out by Pontiac and these guys, they pay fifty cents, right?” Mr. Majestyk sat back, the winner. “But none of them eat more than twelve, fourteen ears apiece!”

Ryan smiled and laughed a little bit, but he wasn’t picturing any Polacks eating corn; he was watching the dark-haired girl coming back from the ladies’ room, recognizing her and suddenly having a funny feeling shoot through him from his scalp right down to his hind end.

Ryan let the smile fade and said, “You know Bob Rogers, works for Ritchie?”

With a heavy knuckle Mr. Majestyk was wiping the moisture from his eye. “Bob Junior? Sure, his old man and I play pinochle.”

“He’s down at the end of the bar.”

Mr. Majestyk glanced around. “Yeah, I see him.”

“Who’s the girl with him?”

Now Mr. Majestyk straightened and looked over his shoulder again. He came back slowly, gazing around, so no one would think he was staring. He took a sip of beer. “That little lady’s in some trouble.”

“Who is she?”

“I forget her name. Nancy something. She’s supposed to be like a secretary to Ritchie, but that’s a bunch of crap.”

“He keeps her here?”

“That’s the word, buddy. He keeps her.”

“Whereabouts?”

“In this place he’s got on the beach. His wife comes up, he moves the broad over to his hunting place up by the farm.”

“She looks young.”

“How old do you have to be?”

“I mean for him. Ritchie.”

“Ask him-how should I know?”

“What’s she doing with Bob Junior?”

Mr. Majestyk glanced around again. “That dumb bastard. He’s got a good job, a nice family, a speedboat. His old man leases all the cucumber land to Ritchie Food and all Bob Junior’s got to do is work the crews-”

“He’s a horse’s ass.”

Mr. Majestyk shrugged, making a face. “He’s all right, he’s a big kid. He thinks he’s the Lone goddamn Ranger or something.”

“You said the girl was in some trouble.”

“Reckless driving. She’s got to appear in my court sometime next month.”

“What’s so bad about that?”

Mr. Majestyk leaned over the table on his forearms. “I’m not talking about running a red light. She almost killed a couple of kids.”

“You know it was her fault?”

“All right. These two Geneva boys are out in their car, a piece of junk just riding around looking to raise some hell, you know, or somebody to race. They spot the broad cruising along in her Mustang, so naturally they pull up alongside and start giving her the business, making remarks, asking her if she wants to race or go in the bushes, I don’t know.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, they don’t get a rise out of her, so they pass and go on wherever they’re going. But a couple of miles later they’ve turned off the Shore Road and they’re on this county road, gravel, and they see these lights coming up behind them. They expect the car to pass, but the car doesn’t pass, it bangs into their rear end. They don’t know what’s coming off. They speed up and the car-it’s the broad-gets right on their bumper and guns it. These guys they try to go faster, they try to shake her off, you know, swerving, but she hangs on and now she’s pushing them sixty, seventy miles an hour.”

“Yeah?”

“They try to brake and they burn the linings right off. They can’t do anything, this crazy broad keeps pushing, gunning it, and she’s going a good seventy-they both swear to it-when she backs off. She must have seen it: the road dead-ends at a crossroad and beyond is this plowed field. Well, these guys try to swerve, they fly over the ditch and hit the plowed field and roll over three times.”

“What happened to the guys?”

“One of them’s okay, a few cuts. The other kid’s got two broken legs and some internal injuries.”

“How’d they know it was her?”

“They saw her, for Christ sake.”

“I mean they could be lying.”

“Yeah, with her front end all banged the hell in.”

Nancy said, “I thought you told him to leave.”

“Who?”