Peter Leonard - Back from the Dead

“What’d you sell ’em?”

“Two Colt .45 Commanders, stainless with black grips, one 870 Wingmaster twelve-gauge, and one Smith & Wesson .38 revolver,” High said like he was reading a sales order. “That’s why I want to know who in the apartment before we go up.”

It was almost one in the afternoon, car runnin’, engine workin’ hard with the air on, Cordell watching the Latin babes go by on the street, young ones in tank tops and short shorts, hard tight bodies, dark hair, long brown legs, and the older bitches with heavy legs and tits down to their waist. Cordell thinkin’ about age, wondering how many years before he got old and fat? His momma was already there but she’d had a hard life, smokin’ rock. Her only exercise, walkin’ to a dope house. Cordell only had fuzzy memories of his father, like photographs out of focus.

After a while, Alejo, Jhonny and two other greasers came down the stairs, all wearing those greaser shirts hangin’ over their pants, High said to hide their guns. They got in Alejo’s Road Runner and drove off.

Forty-five minutes later Cordell saw Alejo’s black Road Runner come down the side street and park. The four greasers got out and walked up the stairs to an apartment on the second floor.

“Okay,” High-Step said. “Let’s get it done.”

“What’re you gonna do?”

“What’re we gonna do? That what you mean?”

“Whatever.”

High-Step got out and opened the trunk of the ’66 GTO, came back with something wrapped in a nylon windbreaker, unwrapped it, showing Cordell a short compact sub-machine gun with a skinny black clip.

“I want my money back but I ain’t gonna kill nobody for it.” Cordell looked at the gun. “What you want me to do?”

“Stand outside, make sure nobody come in behind me.” There was a strap on the end High fit over his right shoulder, let the gun hang under his armpit. Put the windbreaker on, couldn’t see a thing. They got out of the car, High wearin’ a white sport shirt with epaulettes under the windbreaker, white captain’s hat with a black brim, and sunglasses, looked like a nigger yachtsman.

They went up the stairs, moved along the balcony, woman pushin’ a baby carriage on the street below, couple seagulls flew by overhead. High-Step was breathin’ hard and sweatin’ when they got to the apartment door. High looked back at him, nodded, knocked on the door, waited a couple seconds, knocked again. Door opened, Jhonny the kid, standing in the crack, eyes on High-Step then looking over at Cordell.

“Yo, how you doin’? My man Alejo at home?”

The kid turned looking in the room, said something in Spanish. Cordell heard a voice say something back.

Kid looked at High-Step, sounded like he said, “I doan thin so.”

“I can see it’s a big place — must have six hundred square feet — Alejo could be in there you don’t even know it.”

Cordell moved up behind High, saw two greasers on a couch looking at them.

Jhonny said, “Give us a moment, uh?”

The kid tried to close the door, but High-Step got his good foot in the way, blocked the door and pushed it open. The kid moved backward into the room. The greasers, alert, reached behind their backs for their guns but didn’t draw them. A TV was on, Cordell could hear the scratchy voice track of a Latin soap opera. And now Alejo appeared, right arm hanging down his wrinkled white pants, smiling. “Señor High-Step, man what you doing here?”

“Never guess what happened. After my man met with y’all the second time, took the woo woo home, somebody come and stole it. You believe that?”

“I can see it happen,” Alejo said. “You friend got this good smoke, people hear about it, and human nature take over, huh?”

“Wasn’t your human nature takin’ over though, right?”

“No, not us.”

Alejo looked at the greasers like he was giving them a signal. High-Step brought out the Uzi, swung the barrel at Alejo as Alejo lost the grin and brought up a sawed-off pump gun, leveled it as High fired a burst from the silenced Uzi that sounded like a BB gun, cut Alejo down and blew out the TV, turned the gun on the greasers as they stood drawing, chewed them up along with the couch and the wall. Cordell saw Jhonny draw, but High-Step was already turning, firing.

Cordell stepped in the apartment, closed the door, saw four dead Colombians on the floor. He wasn’t thinking about the money or the weed now, just getting the hell away from there. But High wasn’t leavin’ till they got what they came for. There were two bedrooms. Cordell found two black plastic garbage bags in the closet, the ends knotted. He lifted them and both had heft, felt like twenty pounds at least. Opened one, got a blast of high-grade woo woo.

There was a nylon gym bag on a shelf over the weed. Cordell brought it down, sat on the bed, unzipped it, looking at stacks of cash held together with rubber bands. High came in the room. Cordell showed him the money.

“Hit the jackpot,” High said, flashing a grin.

He could see people looking out the apartment window next door as they passed by on the way to the stairs, and heard a siren as they were going down to the car, passing a police cruiser, lights flashing, on the way out to the freeway, and cut over to the Grove.

They had a couple drinks to calm down and split the money — $68,500, and the woo woo — fifty pounds. Cordell didn’t like it, knew this wasn’t the end. Somebody’d be comin’ after them. But he wasn’t gonna be around when they did.

When Cordell got back to the motel it was 7:15 in the evening. The doors between their rooms were open. Looked like Joyce had cleared out, took her suitcase and left. His first thought, the Nazi had come and grabbed her. But how’d the Nazi know where they were at? Cordell picked up the phone, called Joyce’s apartment — no answer. He’d screwed up, felt bad about it. He had to find her, but where was he going to start?

Seeing the police cars and ambulance parked in front of the Winthrop House, Harry assumed the worst. Joyce had gone home and Hess had shot her. He parked the rental car in the shadow of the building on Worth Avenue and went in the side entrance. The lobby was chaotic, dozens of elderly residents trying to get the attention of two police officers in tan uniforms, trying to find out what was going on, what happened.

Harry moved around the crowd, approached the front desk manned by a sullen dark-skinned Latino in a sport jacket, losing his hair on top.

“Sir, may I help you?”

Harry walked by him, stepped into a waiting elevator and rode to the fourth floor. The door to Joyce’s apartment was open. Detective Conlin was talking to a black maid in a light blue uniform in the living room. Harry walked in, looked around. Conlin saw him and stood up, said something to the maid and she got up and walked by Harry, black eyes staring straight ahead like she was in a trance.

“Another homicide, look who walks in the door,” Conlin said. “Poor girl found the body. I don’t suppose you saw or heard anything.”

“I just got here,” Harry said. “Came right from the airport. Where’s Joyce?”

“I was going to ask you.”

“She’s not dead then?”

“Not that I know of,” Conlin’s hard stare held on him. “No one’s seen her for a couple days.”

“You try her office?”

“Manager said Joyce went to Baltimore, her aunt died. I called, talked to the dead aunt who it turns out isn’t. She had no idea what was going on or where Joyce was at.”

Down the hall toward the bedrooms he heard voices and flashbulbs popping.

“Who is it?”

“Night manager. Shot twice in the chest. Been dead two days or so, accounting for the odor. Ever smell a body in decomp?”