Elmore Leonard - Maximum Bob

“Someone you never saw before,” Kathy said.

“Wait now. I didn’t see him good then was the trouble. I run out, here’s all these people coming off the bus. Five of ‘em ID’d me.”

“They caught you right away?”

“Still on the Turnpike. Florida Highway Patrol ran me down. They take me in, want to know what I got against Ignacio Nieves. I said, ‘Who’s Ignacio Nieves?’ Anyway that was the guy’s name. The only thing I can figure,” Elvin said, “this dink knew I was on him. I follow him in that one men’s room door to the toilets and he come out the other side from the washroom, giving me the slip. Don’t matter killing the guy was an accident. I pled to second-degree, best deal I could make with a semi-smoking gun and this judge, the son of a bitch, gives me ten to twenty-five with probation. You like my story?”

“I’m not sure,” Kathy said, “why you told me.”

He looked surprised. “I want you to see I’m not some ordinary two-bit fuckup you got on your list.”

“What do you call shooting the wrong guy?”

“Anybody could’ve made that mistake. I’m talking about now. If we’re gonna be seeing each other the next five years…”

“Once a month,” Kathy said, getting up from the sofa. “We’re not going steady.”

Elvin was next to her by the time she reached the door. “Yeah, but there’s no reason we can’t get along.” He put his hand on the door as she started to open it.

“Touch me, Elvin, you’re back doing the twenty-five.”

“Listen, okay? I just want to mention, I had a girl write me when I was in the joint? One I never met in my life but seen my picture in the paper and read about me. She’d send these letters, say she knows in her heart I’m the kind of fella, all I need to straighten me out is some tender loving care.” Elvin grinned. “My cellmate sure liked to smell those letters. But what I was wondering, if that’s how little girl probation officers see us bad boys.”

“Yeah, what I do,” Kathy said, “is devote my life to making fuckups and losers happy. I’ll see you.” She pulled the door open and went out.

“You saying I’m a loser ?” Sounding surprised to hear it. “Hey, there things I could tell you…”

“Next month, at the office.”

Going down the front steps to the walk she heard him say from the doorway, “How ‘bout tomorrow? You still need to see Dale, don’t you?”

He watched her drive off in her little Volkswagen. Ms. Touchy, that was a good name for her, asking did he have a job. He had felt like saying he was leaving for work directly and she’d read about it in the paper the next day or so. That would’ve been good. See her face after calling him a loser. Losers didn’t make ten thousand dollars for a night’s work.

The gun Dr. Tommy had given him was in the fridge, in a box a pizza had come in Elvin recalled as being piss-poor. The idea he had was to go up to the judge’s house with the pizza box, knock on the door… If there was cops around he’d say he must have the wrong address and do it another time.

Dr. Tommy’s boy Hector was a sketch coming out with the rifle first, this little pump-action.22. Elvin had looked at it and said, “Doc, I ain’t going after flamingos. I’m gonna shoot a full-size judge.”

Dr. Tommy thought he meant he wanted a heavier rifle. Well, let’s see, he had a Savage, a Remington, both thirty-ought-sixes.

Elvin said, “Doc, I ain’t gonna sit in a blind neither, waiting on a buck to come past. What I want is a gun I can stick in my pants and walk up to the man.” When Dr. Tommy looked like he had to think that one over, Elvin said, “I know a person like you, one time in the dope business, wouldn’t go to bed without a pistol in the drawer next to it. I bet chrome plate with a pearl grip.”

The one Hector brought out, once Dr. Tommy gave him the sign, was stainless but with a walnut grip, a Ruger Speed-Six.357. Not the gun he’d pick if he had a choice, but she’d do the job.

“Okay, and where’s my half down?”

This was where he ran into a wall.

“How do I know,” Dr. Tommy said, “you won’t take the five thousand and I never see you again?”

“‘Cause this is my kind of work,” Elvin said. “Why would I settle for half?”

Dr. Tommy’s offer was “Two grand when you tell me how you’re going to do it. The rest if you do it.”

Elvin didn’t like that if . He said, “I’m gonna knock on his door and shoot him when he opens it.”

“That’s your plan?”

“It’s how I do it.”

“I want to know when and where.”

“Tonight. How’s that? Out to his house.”

“Yes, but how do you know he’ll be home?”

Dr. Tommy dragging his feet. It got Elvin mad.

“You want this done or not?”

“I want to be sure.”

“So do I,” Elvin said. “What I’ll do is shoot him and you pay up after, the whole thing, or I shoot you too. How’s that sound?”

The doctor gave him a shrug. “You kill him and I read it in the paper, we have no problem.”

Nothing to it, since he wasn’t doing a goddamn thing. Elvin hated a person talking to him like that. Little booger sitting there on his patio… If he had ten thousand cash to pay out he’d have more where it came from, in the house. Something to look into after.

Not two minutes, from when Ms. Touchy had left, Elvin was in Dale’s pickup heading out, the pizza box on the seat next to him. He took 95 up to West Palm and turned left on Southern Boulevard, following Dr. Tommy’s directions. He’d said it would take about a half hour. Elvin said, “If you’re a pokey driver it might.” He knew this road, repaved since he used to travel it, lined with reflectors that popped in his headlights. Keep going, it took you out to the Stockade and the Loxahatchee Road Prison for dinks, drunks and short-timers. Either place you could walk out the front gate. Beyond there you were heading for the Glades. This trip he was going only as far as the first stoplight past the Florida Turnpike.

It turned red as Elvin approached and he had to pull up behind cars in the inside lane. The directions said you turned left here, followed the road to a dead end, turned left and then left again on a dirt road that went along a canal before it veered through woods and took you up to the house. One-story red brick, sitting by itself. Fine. He’d drive up fairly close and make his delivery.

The light turned green. Elvin got ready.

He watched the first car in the lane ease out and then wait for a car to pass from the other direction. The next two cars in front of him continued straight ahead. Elvin didn’t move, still watching the first car as it made its turn. A light-colored Volkswagen. He said, “Jesus Christ,” out loud. If that car wasn’t Ms. Touchy’s it was one just like it.

Bob Gibbs was outside waiting for her, standing in the beam of a spotlight mounted on the house. He motioned her to nose in toward the open garage and stop right there in the drive, behind the blue Ford pickup that had a cap with windows mounted on the bed.

“You have any trouble finding the place?”

“Not a bit,” Kathy said. She almost told Gibbs, helping her out of the car, to take his hands off her. A reflex, or not seeing that much difference between this judge and a criminal offender.

He brought her into the kitchen through the garage, told her to make herself at home while he fixed her a Jim Beam and water, not asking if she wanted one, and freshened his own. Both of their glasses were enclosed in orangey red holders-to keep the drinks cold or your hand dry-the word Gators printed on them. “In honor of the University of Florida football team,” Gibbs said, “not that visitation the other night.” He took Kathy out to the porch to show where the alligator had entered, the screen back in place but torn and sprung, held down with a length of two-by-four. “Smashed the glass door; I had it replaced, but I’m still waiting on the screen man. Look in there at the sofa how it’s all chewed up.”