Elmore Leonard - Tishomingo Blues

Kirkbride jumped on it. "Still around-where else would he be?"

"I mean if he's still alive," Robert said. "Arlen has the kind of personality, there must be people would like to shoot him. You know what I'm saying?"

It wasn't a question the man was likely to answer, but Robert saw him looking at it.

"The point I'm making, Mr. Kirkbride, everybody knows he did Floyd and everybody knows he deals drugs. You go out to his store, that honkytonk, and buy all you want."

"You been there, huh?"

Why did that stop him?

"Haven't you?"

"Not in a while."

"What I'm thinking," Robert said, "it must be easy to deal here. Pay off whoever you have to and go about your business. But it can't be easy for Arlen Novis 'cause Arlen's a nitwit, and that makes him dangerous. Somebody's directing him, else he'd be living high, driving around the country in a Rolls-Royce, have all kinds of federal people checking him out. He'd hide the money someplace, like under his bed."

He had Kirkbride listening, paying close attention, the man appearing almost to nod his head in agreement.

"See, first I ask myself, why would you hire a man everybody knows is a criminal to run your security? It must be you don't have nothing to say about it. Like Arlen 's got some kind of hold on you. Stays close by so he can keep an eye on you. You're the front, you're-" Robert stopped, a lyric coming into his head, and he said it again, "You're the front… you're the Colosseum. You're the front, you're the Louvre Museum."

Robert kept his expression deadpan.

Now he had the man staring at him, mouth not quite open but almost. Robert believed he could fuck him up some more, tell Mr. Kirkbride he was the Nile, the Tower of Pisa. He was the smile, on the Mona Lisa .

But the man still wouldn't get it.

So he said, "What you do is hide the money for him. Put it to work." He said, "I'm telling you this for two reasons. One, so you'll know I know what you're doing. And two, so you'll be ready to make a decision when the time comes."

The man was doing all right, listening and keeping himself in control. He said, "You want to tell me what you're talking about?"

"Look at it," Robert said, "like you're coming to a crossroads and you know you have to make a turn. You don't decide quick enough, what happens? You end up in the ditch."

Robert stepped to his car and opened the door. "I have to make a decision about what?"

The man wanting an answer. Robert turned to him.

`Where you want to be," Robert said, "when Arlen goes down.”

AS SOON AS ROBERT GOT BACKto his suite he called room service and asked for Xavier. He waited, punched the remote to turn the TV on and said, "My man Xavier. Dos margaritas . Ten dollars for every minute you get 'em here under fifteen. You sabe what I'm saying?… Then go." He laid a fifty-dollar bill on the table and took a quick shower. Robert came out in the hotel robe to see two margaritas on the table and the fifty gone. Robert had Xavier going through his Basics with incentives, getting the waiter in the right frame of mind to deliver meals from the hotel to the campsite. There was no way they'd get Anne to cook. She had never in her life slept in a tent and knew she'd hate it. Jerry told her she was gonna sleep in the fuckin tent, so forget it. Robert didn't believe in sleeping in tents either; he believed people who camped out must be as serious as people who put on uniforms and became Civil War soldiers, and here these people were doing both.

He watched TV as he called Jerry's suite, knowing Anne would pick up.

"I have two ice-cold margaritas sitting here."

"He's taking a nap."

"I thought he was going down to roll the dice."

"He changed his mind. He'd rather play at night."

"Wake him up. Tell him that Australian, the one fucks with poisonous snakes, is on TV Jerry likes that show."

"You ever wake him up?"

"Doesn't like it, huh?"

"Even when he wakes up himself, in the morning? You can't talk to him for a couple of hours."

"I'll come by later."

He watched the Aussie fuckin with the poisonous snake, his chin down on the ground talking to it in a nice tone of voice, the snake hissing, the snake trying to tell the man, get the fuck away from me, fool.

Robert could picture Anne right now looking down at Jerry sleeping with his mouth open, zoo noises coming from him, Anne wondering if what she got out of being his wife was worth it.

Jerry had picked her out of an auto show, Anne on the carousel with a car she said was all new from its high-concept styling to its heart-stopping performance, Anne dealing out adjectives with a dreamy smile. Robert was there. He watched Jerry walk up and ask the standard question auto show models got a hundred times a night, "Do you come with the car?" He did, and she said, "You can't afford me, with or without the car." She told Robert, after Jerry had put her into a high-rise on the Detroit River, "You're supposed to smile and act coy, but I knew this guy was real and I made the first move to get him. I thought he looked like a gangster."

Robert said to her that time, "Not many girls wish for a gangster and get one. You challenged the man and he stepped up."

Even dumped his wife, left her behind with three kids in college. It cost him, but must've been worth it. Germano attentive at first, acting like he was in love. Was he still in love? It was hard to tell with a gangster. Robert believed he loved her the way he loved a pair of good-looking alligator shoes he'd never let go of. Anne said, "Of course he loves me, don't you?" Saying it with the same high opinion of herself she had when she told Jerry he couldn't afford her, even though her modeling career hadn't left Detroit and there she was working an auto show.

Robert admired girls who were determined and worked hard on getting what they wanted. It didn't take nothing but a look to get her to slide over.

Anne 's situation, once she had it, she didn't want it. But couldn't walk out on account of the prenuptial agreement gave her zero if she left during the first five years. But Jerry's personality was even more threatening than the agreement. Would he let her walk even if she decided to?

They were kidding around one time and she said to Robert, "But when Jerry dies, like if he got popped? Which could happen, right? That's different, I get what I deserve." Robert thinking that was a funny way to put it. She mentioned it another time in bed saying, "I worry about Jerry getting popped." Robert thinking, Women that worry about it don't say it that way. Robert having heard a number of women, not even counting his mother, express this kind of worry about him but using much softer words.

Still another time after being intimate and still bare naked, when she talked the most, Anne said, "Robert, I'm gonna be honest with you. If something happens to Jerry and we can be together? I won't ever marry you."

Like he'd ask her.

"How come?"

"I wouldn't be able to handle the racial thing." Robert gave her his puzzled look that time.

"Why? I can take you to black clubs, nobody'll say nothing. You'll be safe."

She said, "I don't mean that ."

See, she didn't get it.

Anne had style and was mostly with it, but not all the way on the same level of cool as he was. Those three-quarters of white girl in her held her back. Like being seen out in public with him would jeopardize her having passed. It was the reason she told Dennis she wasn't into having kids. Careful not to. A child with black features was to emerge, Jerry would throw both of them out on the street. Her dressing as a quadroon whore for the reenactment wasn't a risk. Robert saw it as showing off for him, something between them, no chance of Jerry catching on. Robert told her one time, "You want Jerry to let you go? Tell him your grandma was high yella." She told him he wasn't funny.