Elmore Leonard - Maximum Bob

Inez said, “Do him a favor and he’ll do you one. That was some deal you made.”

Dicky walked away to get fingerprinted and sign some papers. It gave him time to think, wonder how he was going to raise five hundred dollars without killing another gator. It gave his wife time to think too, because when they were out in the hall and he mentioned it, she said, “That ain’t the way to do it. They catch you now, you go to jail.”

He asked her, “How, then?”

Inez said, “Get it off the judge.”

“If the judge can work it for you to go to Starke,” Elvin said to Dale, “that’s fine. I can tell you all about how to jail up there. Only I don’t see it happening. You get to Reception at Lake Butler, I doubt they’ll send you there on a first-time five-year deal. I’m talking about Florida State Prison, what we generally call Starke. Or you could get Union Correctional, over west of there not too far. It don’t matter which though, they’re both shitholes.”

They sat in the living room of the house in Delray Beach drinking beer out of longnecks, the only way Dale liked to have his. It wasn’t much fun though. Dale wanted to leave or turn the radio on loud or shut Elvin up if he knew how.

“Union Correctional, or UCI, is what they use to call Raiford, when they had Old Sparky there. See, wherever the ‘lectric chair is, that’s your state prison. That’s why now it’s at FSP. The difference I noticed my second fall, there aren’t no more real convicts since this crack shit come about. Convicts, they’d sit around talking about jobs, banks they’d held up, argue about how to blow a safe. Now you got inmates instead of cons and these guys are crazy. All they think about is getting dope and getting laid, looking to see who they can turn. See, once you get turned you’re pussy. In mates, they’ll snitch you for smoking a joint, anything, to get in good with the turnkeys.”

Dale said, “You want another beer?”

Elvin said, “Sit still when I’m talking to you.”

Dale eased back in the sofa, Elvin staring at him.

“What you have to learn is how to ride the rap, do your own time, but get salty quick as you can. You’re in the population you don’t have to be good-looking, you’re a new punk coming in and that’ll get you elected. The first one comes at you and you back down, you’re pussy. What you have to do is boo him up. A nigger, you have to stick him. See, if a nigger has a white boy, even one’s ugly, he thinks he’s a big man. What you do is buy yourself a shank. You can get anything you want in there but a woman. Some pretty good shine we call buck, made of rice or orange juice with some yeast and sugar. We’d have some poor asshole keep it in his cell while it set up.” Elvin paused. “I better show you how to make a shank. I could use a spoon… The easiest kind of weapon to make, you melt the end of a toothbrush and stick a razor blade to it. I cut a dink one time looked at me funny, he’s got a scar now from sixty-five stitches in his face. You won’t kill a person with a toothbrush, but he’ll stay wide of you. Let’s see… Yeah, what you might do till things settle down, stick a book in your pants under your shirt, one in front, one in back, so your belt holds ‘em there? It’ll give you some protection in case a dink tries to shank you . He comes in high on you, going for the throat or the heart, the books won’t do you no good. But most times it goes down is in a crowd and the dink will stay low so as not be seen. There was a boy one time, they’re hurrying him to the infirmary and this one holding the stretcher drops his end and stabs the boy again. So don’t trust nobody till you find out who’s with who, how they hang out together in the yard. Understand? They send you to Starke write me and I’ll give you the names of people can do you some good. It’ll cost you, nothing’s free. But it’s nice to have friends, huh? Listen, where your keys at? I have to go someplace.”

“I have to go someplace too,” Dale said. He wasn’t sure where, but knew he had to get out of here. Out of this house, out of Delray and keep going. He’d been to Orlando to Disney World and Daytona Beach a lot of times, but he’d never been past the Georgia line or to places he’d like to see like California.

“Dale? Where your keys at?”

It was quicker to shoot over to Dr. Tommy’s house from Delray than coming down from Palm Beach sightseeing, like the other night. Elvin took Dale’s pickup north on 95 to Boynton Beach, cut over to Ocean Ridge and it didn’t take him fifteen minutes.

From a dump full of palmetto bugs, called roaches other places, to what Elvin believed was the slickest house he’d ever seen. And yet a little sneak like Dr. Tommy owned it. The house was light-gray brick with white trim and shutters and a white tile roof. It didn’t look to have any size till you went up the drive through palm trees and sea grape and saw it was built into high ground, a lot more house on the ocean side where it had a big flagstone patio, a swimming pool but no diving board-shit-and all kinds of shrubs and palm trees dressing up the grounds. Elvin found this out by walking around the outside of the house and there was Dr. Tommy on his patio reading the paper, a tall drink on the table next to him, the whole patio in shade with the sun off on the other side of Florida.

Elvin said, “How we doing today?”

He didn’t see the Cuban guy-what was his name? Hector. Dr. Tommy was also a Cuban but hard to tell. Neither one of them had what you’d call that true greaser look. This doctor was a shifty booger though. Look at him. Shorts and no shirt, tan and skinny, squirming to sit up straight, putting his nice face on. Some newspapers slid off his lap to fall on the flagstone. Dr. Tommy didn’t seem to notice.

“Well,” he said. “I didn’t expect you so soon. No, I should say I expected you, yes, but didn’t think it would be this soon.”

Getting his meaning straightened out. Elvin didn’t see it changed anything. He pulled a chair away from the glasstop table, a heavy wrought-iron patio set, nothing but the best, settled into the chair’s maroon cushions, then had to turn his head to look up at the house this close. Two floors with an upper deck across the back and stairs coming down from it.

“Being put out of business hasn’t seemed to hurt you none,” Elvin said. “What kind of doctor were you?”

“I still am,” Dr. Tommy said. “Dermatologist.” He raised a finger to his cheekbone. “Those brown spots you have right here should be looked at.”

“You’re looking at ‘em, aren’t you?”

“I mean tested. You have to be careful, you let it go, it could be melanoma.”

“Now you’re trying to scare me.”

“If you don’t worry about skin cancer…”

“I been outside all my life.”

“That’s why you have those spots. But you wear a hat, that’s sensible. What else you want to know?”

Dr. Tommy didn’t seem as nervous talking about skin as he did movies the other night. Elvin put his hat down on his eyes a little more. “I been thinking about what Sonny told me.”

“Oh, the movies?” Dr. Tommy said. “I can hear Sonny. Told you if you got your hands on them, even one, you could make a lot of money. Is that right?”

Smiling now-look at that. Not a bit nervous.

“That was Sonny’s idea, threaten to show my father unless I paid him. But he didn’t have the nerve to do it himself, so he tried to get a young lady to help him. She would do all the work, keep him out of it. But she came to me instead, told me everything. So then I accused Sonny in front of the young lady. He called her a liar and she hit him with her fist, a big woman. Sonny had to protect himself, so he hit her with that iron thing, the poker.”