Elmore Leonard - The Big Bounce

You got used to it, that was all. You made up your mind you were going to be good at it and not panic. It was something you developed in your mind, a coolness. No, cooler than cool. Christ, everybody thought they were cool. It was a coldness you had to develop. The pro with icewater in his veins. Like Cary Grant. Pouring champagne for the broad or up on the rooftop and the guy with the steel hook instead of a hand coming at him, he’s the same Cary Grant. No sweat. That was good when he threw the guy and as the guy fell his hook scraped down the metal slant of the roof, making sparks.

Cary Grant was a good jewel thief. But it never showed what he did with the jewels after he stole them. There was an Armenian guy in Highland Park who would take TV sets, clothes, furs, things like that; but what if you brought him a $100,000 diamond necklace? “Harry, I got this $100,000 diamond necklace. What’ll you give me for it?” Could you see Harry?

But no more of that. Without a car and 150 miles from a pawnshop, they could keep their TV sets and suitcases. No, no more of that anyway.

During the time he had worked with the colored guy, Leon Woody, they would look for the easy ones first: newspapers on the front steps, or houses that were dark in the early evening with the shades down, or houses where the lawns needed to be cut. They would make notes on the houses they liked. They would note down what lamps were on at what time, and if the same lamps were on two or three nights in a row-one or two downstairs and one up-they would go to the front door and ring the bell and if no one answered, they’d go in.

Leon Woody’s favorite way was to go up to a house in the afternoon and ring the bell. If someone answered, he would tell the person they were looking for odd jobs-painting or wall washing or cleaning up the yard. The person, the lady, would almost always say no, and Leon Woody would ask about the people next door, if the lady knew if they were home or not. Sometimes the lady would say no, they were away for the summer or in Florida, handing it to them. Leon Woody would shake his head slowly and say, “Doggone, we is sure doin’ poorly,” putting on his dumb-nigger act but looking at Ryan and just barely almost smiling. If the lady did have work for them, Leon Woody would say, “Oh, thank you, ma’am. We sure do ‘preciate it. But seein’ it’s so late, maybe we best come back in the morning.” And walking away from the house, he would say to Ryan, “In the morning, she-it.”

If no one answered, they would park in the drive and knock at the back door. If still no one answered, they would go in, usually through a basement window, and look for luggage first, something to put stuff in. Then they would walk out the front door carrying the suitcases full of clothes, fur coats, silver, and the TV’s and radios-whatever they thought was worth taking-and throw it in the car.

They had always stayed cool during the B & E’s, not showing each other anything but feeling it inside. One would never say to the other, “Come on, let’s go.” Or look anxious to get out. The idea was to walk through it, take your time, pick up what you wanted. Once Ryan walked into the den and Leon Woody was sitting down reading a magazine with a drink in his hand. That was about the coolest until the afternoon the guy came with the dry cleaning. Ryan went to the door: he took two suits and a topcoat from the guy, thanked him, and put the clothes in a suitcase. Thanking the guy was the touch. It was a hard one to beat. Leon Woody came close the time he answered the phone and the guy calling wanted to know who the hell this was speaking and where his wife was. Leon Woody said, “Waiting for me up in the bed, man. Where do you think?” And hung up. They gave themselves a few more minutes, just enough time, and were up in the next block when the cop car pulled in front of the house.

Once Leon Woody brought along a set of power tools he had stolen somewhere and they plugged into the porch light and drilled the lock out of the front door. Ryan said it made too much noise. Leon Woody said yeah, but it seemed more like the professional way. It was good to vary the style, he maintained, so all your B & E’s didn’t look alike. He was a funny guy, a tall skinny jig who had played basketball in high school and got college offers but couldn’t pass the entrance exams even at the jock schools. Leon Woody’s problem was heroin. He was strung out most of the time Ryan knew him and it was costing him fifteen, twenty dollars a day. But he was a good guy and he would have gotten a kick out of the job Sunday, walking into the house with fifty people out in front eating hamburgers.

There were lights in the darkness, but they were pinpoints, cold little dots off somewhere in the night, as far away as stars and not part of the beach, not part of now.

There was another light, faint orange, above him. The lake frontage had climbed gradually from the low rise at the Bay Vista to a steep bluff above the beach: a brush-covered slope rising out of the sand and lined every two hundred feet or so by wooden stairways that reached up into the darkness.

Ryan stared up at the slope as he walked along, as the realization that he was wasting his time sunk in and became a fact. Finally he stopped. He should have stayed in bed. What was he supposed to do, guess which stairway led to her place? Then what, if you found it? Go up and knock on the door and act casual and say, “Hello, I just happened to be walking by.” The hell with it.

Nancy watched him. Above him, up on the bluff, she had watched him pass. She had watched him stop and stand for a moment gazing up the slope; now he was coming back. Nancy walked into the orange glow of the post lamp-a girl in a dark sweater and shorts and sneakers-and out of it, a dark figure again moving down the stairs to the beach.

She waited, one hand on the railing. He was staring up at the slope and not until he was almost even with her did his gaze drop and there she was, stopping him only a few strides away.

“Well, Jack Ryan,” Nancy said. “What a surprise.”

Ryan walked up to her and she didn’t back away or shift her position. She was at ease. She had been waiting for him, expecting him, and he could feel it.

“I was taking a walk,” Ryan said.

“Uh-huh.”

“You think I was looking for you?”

“Uh-unh, you were taking a walk.”

“Just up the beach, nowhere special.”

“I believe it,” Nancy said. “Do you want me to walk with you?”

“I was going back.”

“Why don’t you relax a little?”

Walking along the beach, doing something, he felt better; though he was still aware of himself walking along next to her. They didn’t talk much at first, just little probing introductory questions that Nancy asked about the migrant camp and Camacho and picking cucumbers. He answered them simply: The camp was okay. He didn’t worry about Camacho. Yes, picking cucumbers was hard work. They stopped to light cigarettes and he felt her hair against his cupped hands as she leaned in and saw her face clearly for a moment in the glow of the match. She was really nice looking. The rich girl in the movies.

“You look like somebody in the movies,” Ryan said.

“Who?”

“I can’t think of her name.”

“What type is she?”

“Like you. Dark hair, long.”

“Is she sexy?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“What was she in?”

“I can’t remember right off.”

“I probably didn’t see it anyway. I don’t go very often. Just sometimes.”

They walked along in silence and Ryan said, “Do you watch any television?”

“Hardly ever. Do you?”

“If it’s something good.”

“Like what?”

“A war movie, something like that. Or spy stuff.”