Elmore Leonard - Maximum Bob

She said, “If you want to know do I go there to get picked up, ask me. Don’t be afraid.” He used milk and sugar and stirred his coffee forever.

“Do you?”

“No, I don’t. I go with friends. You want to drive by Dr. Tommy’s house, see what it looks like?”

“Tomorrow. I’d like to check on him first.”

She thought of Elvin hanging out at a million-dollar home on the ocean. It was hard to imagine. She could see him in Dale’s house, no problem, among the longnecks and pizza cartons. Pizza from Pisa, with the drawing of the Leaning Tower. The same kind she saw in the judge’s kitchen, after…

“We could go to my place,” Gary said. “Talk, listen to music. I’m down in Boynton, right off Hypoluxo.”

Kathy raised her eyebrows as if to say, oh, that’s an idea. Talk and listen to music. Uh-huh. She said, “Well, okay,” not wanting to sound too anxious. “Drop me at the office to get my car, I’ll follow you.”

“Or I can drive you back later.”

She didn’t like that idea. “I only live about five miles from you, in Delray. You want to drive all the way up here, and then we both have to drive all the way back?”

He was stirring his coffee again. “I don’t see a problem. It’s not that far.”

“I’d have to leave my car on the street all night.”

They were looking at each other across the table as she realized what she said.

“I mean, you know, it might be late.”

He wasn’t stirring now. He said, “We can get your car whenever you want.”

Elvin said to his big brother, Dale Senior, “How do I look?”

It didn’t matter Dale Senior couldn’t answer him, metal pins sticking out of his sunken cheeks, wires holding his jaws shut tight like he was gritting his teeth, which he did most of his life anyway.

Elvin had looked at his reflection in the bedroom mirror and had to grin at himself, man, in that bright blue suit from Taiwan China and a bright yellow shirt with the collar spread open, duds that had once belonged to Roland and Elvin had stored in the attic of Dale Senior’s house before going off to prison.

Dale Senior was most likely trying to tell him with his beady eyes he looked like blue shit tied in a bow, this old man big brother sitting at his kitchen table one-legged. Elvin stooped to make sure. No, that’s all was under there, just the one leg and a stump.

“Buddy, where’s your plastic wooden leg at?” No answer. “I hear you got in some trouble over to Clewiston.”

This man had worn nothing but bib overalls or state clothes all his life. Had been up to Starke on a Corrections bus, but never over to Palm Beach, forty miles away. Had thought their brother Roland was leaving this world when all he did was move down to Monroe County. Dale Senior had a jelly-glass jar of Rebel Yell bourbon he was sucking in through a straw, glaring, the booze putting words in his head he was dying to say but couldn’t. All it did was bulge his veins where he was going bald in front.

It reminded Elvin he had to get a haircut. He’d shaved off the week’s worth of beard before putting the suit on. It was driving the Cadillac last night had changed his mind about looking rough and ready. The Cadillac and the go-go whore he picked up at the bar after she was done and took to Dale’s house. He said to Dale Senior, “Bud, I was with a girl last night had her puss shaved near clean. Told me so she wouldn’t look like a female gorilla up there in her G-string. I thought of ones me and you use to take out on the lake? Man, there were some of those old girls had bushes on ‘em-I’d say I ain’t going in there without a gun and a flashlight. Remember? This one last night was like a little girl down there ‘cept she was grown.”

One of Dale Senior’s big ugly hands, all spotted and gnarled up with arthritis, was scratching at the oilcloth cover on the table, putting nicks in it, like a hound pawing on the end of a chain. Cut him loose and look out.

“This here’s a go-go rock whore I’m talking about. Does it to buy crack and get high. That’s the new thing, crack. They can get scrappy on you.”

Insulting too, this one, calling Dale Junior’s house a rat hole. This whore appraiser named Earlene, hand on her hip saying, “Drive a Cadillac and live like a nigger.” He gave her a look at the shank he’d made for Dale, sticking it up under her nose. Oh, is that right? You calling me a nigger? It changed her tune quick, eyes about to pop out of her head. He told her he had already killed a man, was about to get him another one and to watch the newspaper if she thought he was blowing smoke at her.

But she was right in a way, what she said. What was he doing in this dump if he drove a Cadillac Fleetwood only three years old and looked brand-new? Or why dress as he did and look like he stole the car?

It was the reason he came here this bright Sunday morning and pulled Roland’s trunk from the attic where it had laid ten years untouched-not counting his getting the hat and boots out of it. Animals had scratched at the trunk, but none had got in to mess up the clothes. Three suits, a bunch of shirts and ties and undies. All he had to do to complete his changeover, besides get a haircut, was move in with Dr. Tommy and that little puss Hector.

He said to Dale Senior, “You know where Ocean Ridge is at? You go on over to Palm Beach and turn south.” Elvin would catch himself talking loud, as if the man couldn’t hear as good with his jaw wired, and have to lower his voice. “I’m moving into a house over there, big one, right on the ocean. How’s that sound to you?” Dale Senior could at least nod his head. Shit, it was like talking to the wall.

He turned as Mavis came in the back door and walked right past him, looking concerned and heading straight for Dale Senior.

“I’m home,” Mavis told him, in case he didn’t see her standing there. “I come right back like I said. Can I dish you up a nice bowl of soup? It’s split pea with bacon in it, your favorite.”

Elvin watched Dale Senior swipe the jelly glass, empty now, clear off the table with that big ugly hand of his.

“I think he wants another toddy,” Elvin said to Mavis, and looked over at the cast-iron pot of soup on the stove, bubbles popping in it. He said, “I bet, thirty years with the old sweetheart, you’ve thought of adding roach powder with the bacon. Look at him. He’s afraid I’m giving you ideas.” He said to Dale Senior, “You better be careful what you suck into your mouth there, Bud.”

Mavis stopped to get the glass from the floor and came up sniffing, her nose in the air.

“What’s that smell?”

“If you mean me,” Elvin said, “it’s my suit of clothes, from being in mothballs. I think it’ll air though.”

Mavis was getting the bourbon off the sink counter.

“Where’s his leg at?”

She said, “Shhh,” putting her hand up by her mouth. “Don’t mention it.” Now she was pouring Dale Senior another three inches of whiskey and setting fresh straws in the glass, telling him, “Honey? You know I brought some soup over to Inez’s for Dale Junior? He’s still there, doing just fine.”

Elvin said, “That’s where Dale’s at?”

Mavis gave him a scared look, the kind, when you’re caught saying something maybe you shouldn’t have. Then seemed to decide it was all right and told him, “Since yesterday. They been looking all over for him, deputies have.”

“That ain’t a problem,” Elvin said. “What is, he’s going to prison tomorrow. Man, I know if I was I wouldn’t be staying over at Inez and Dicky’s, Jesus. I’d be in every bar in West Palm. No, I wouldn’t either, I’d find that little girl I was with last night.”

“I don’t know as he’s decided he’s going or not,” Mavis said.