Elmore Leonard - Maximum Bob

Kathy said, “There was a guy down at the far end of the bar…”

Gary looked over.

“I didn’t get a good look at him. He’s gone now.”

“What about him?”

Kathy hesitated. “I better not tell you anything unless I’m sure.”

Elvin located her Volkswagen, then moved the pickup to where he could sit and watch it without straining himself. The Polo Lounge was in a semi-mall of stores, all closed now except the bar.

What he was thinking, it might be good to learn where Ms. Touchy lived. If she visited the judge, walked around in the dark with him, maybe the judge visited her too. He’d no doubt have cops with him now wherever he went, guys in suits, and it would be harder to get to him. If he was to slip off to visit Ms. Touchy that might be the place to be waiting. Or work some way of using Ms. Touchy as bait. Like get her to call the judge, ask him over…

There was the curly-haired blond girl and her friend coming out, talking away-no doubt about her experience still-going to their cars now. He felt like honking the horn at her. Get Ms. Curlyhead over here and throw her in the back. Here he was again getting an urge and having to let it pass. In prison you couldn’t do whatever you wanted. Out in the civilian world, though, he’d always felt you could.

Watching the curly-haired girl he missed seeing Ms. Touchy come out. She was almost to her car, walking along with the guy in the suit, before Elvin noticed her. Now they were standing by her VW talking. Didn’t finish talking inside they had to talk some more out here. Elvin said, “Come on, God damn it, let’s go.” Gets shot at and stops at the bar with her boyfriend, the guy touching her arm. Elvin thinking, Kiss her good night or I will. Now she was touching his arm, still talking. Elvin waited for them to hug and kiss, but it didn’t happen. Ms. Touchy went and got in her car, the dink waiting there now so Elvin had to wait, not wanting to start the pickup and have the guy look over. Now her rear lights came on red and the guy stepped aside and waved and, shit, stood there watching her drive off. She was heading out the lot onto Military Trail before the dink finally turned and walked off and Elvin was able to get after her.

He had her now and would keep her taillights in sight all the way home.

One time when Inez Campau’s dog Buddy was running loose and neighbors complained it was biting their children, Inez was told to bring the dog to the shelter. She brought her sister’s dog instead, a whiteish pit bull that was from the same litter and looked almost identical to Buddy. The sister, Mavis, was married to Dale Crowe Senior. When Mavis found out her dog had been put down in place of Buddy, she called the Belle Glade sheriff’s station. That not only took care of Buddy it got Inez charged with stealing her dog and fined fifty dollars.

So Inez couldn’t believe it when Mavis came to ask a favor. If Dale Junior could stay with her and Dicky awhile. Deputies were looking for him, wanting to charge him with trying to kill Judge Gibbs.

Inez kept her mouth shut and listened.

Mavis said it tore her up they’d think Dale Junior would do something like that. He was already supposed to go to prison, but now was thinking of going to California instead and maybe after while they’d forget about him.

Inez sighed, a wheeze of sympathy coming out of her sturdy two-hundred-pound frame in housedress and dirty apron.

Mavis said that having Dale Senior home didn’t help none. Oh, but he could tear up the house when he got mad, ‘specially when his stump bothered him, as it was doing now. Mavis said the only way to protect herself and all their dishes was to hide his artificial leg on him. His face would get red as fire when he tried to yell and carry on but wasn’t able to, his jaw wired from when he’d had it broken in Clewiston.

Inez kept her own mouth shut, having no sympathy for Dale Senior and knowing it wasn’t Dale Junior had tried to shoot the judge.

What she finally said was “Where’s your boy at now?”

“In Pahokee, at his sister Clarissa’s. They been checking on her two days now. Clarissa expects they’ll be back any time with a search warrant. So I got to thinking, they won’t ever look at your house, knowing me and you don’t get along.”

They never had. Not since years ago Dicky had hung out with Dale Senior, drinking on the ditch bank by day, going out in the lake by night in a Gillis boat to pick up bales of marijuana dropped to them from airplanes. Dicky had done jail time and Inez had blamed Mavis ‘cause she couldn’t blame Dale Senior to his face. He’d get drunk and bust her dentures.

The next question, “When’s your boy have to go to prison?”

“Not till Monday.”

“I’ll keep him the weekend’s all. I won’t hide a fugitive.”

“He’ll be gone by then,” Mavis told her, “either to prison or California. But you have to go get him. That darn Elvin’s using his truck.”

Inez watched her stringbean sister cross through the hedge grown wild to Dale Senior’s pickup in the street. Couldn’t walk the few blocks from their place. Always tired from having a mean one-legged man in the house. Inez closed the door, walked through the musty front room dark with its shades drawn to the smell of fish in the kitchen, bluegill crackling in the iron skillet, burning up. She’d told Dicky to keep an eye on it while she went to the door. He was at the kitchen table, still hiding behind the newspaper he’d been reading all morning.

SHOTS FIRED AT JUDGE’S HOME

The first time he read it Dicky said well, they didn’t know who done it, that was good. She told him if they did he’d be in the county jail having catfish for dinner, wouldn’t he?

This noon it looked like they’d have blackened blue-gill. Add cayenne pepper and Tabasco and serve it Cajun style.

Dicky didn’t say a word about it till the story appeared in the paper, on the front page of the Post with Judge Gibbs’s picture, the same one they used with the alligator story Inez cut out and stuck inside the Bible. When Dicky got home the night before last, drunk and slurring his words, he told her someone was visiting the judge when he got there, so he wasn’t able to see him and make a deal. Yesterday, Dicky had stayed around the house all day hung over, sickly. This morning when the paper arrived and he looked at it, the first thing he said was, “Uh-oh.”

So Inez took the paper from him, read the story and said, “Did you think if you shot him you wouldn’t have to pay the fine?”

Dicky said what happened, Gibbs had a girl there with him. So he pulled back to wait till the judge was alone.

“You were drinking,” Inez said.

He’d stopped for a couple on the way, yeah. Think about what he was going to say to Gibbs. Get the words straight in his head.

She had told him exactly what he was to say. I’d like to borrow five hundred dollars, Judge , looking him in the eye. And if the judge pretended not to get it, tell him, Or else it could be learned you ordered a gator delivered . That was the part Dicky had trouble with.

“You stopped for a couple and picked up a fifth.”

He said a pint was all.

“You got drunk sitting in the woods feeling sorry for yourself,” Inez said, “went and got your rifle and took some shots at the judge, thinking it would solve your problem.”

Dicky said the judge was out in the yard with a flashlight, flashing it around, and at first he thought the judge was looking for him. But what he was doing, he was showing this girl his flowers.

“In the dark?”

Dicky said he never shot at the judge, he shot at a window where a light was on inside. He believed the kitchen.