Elmore Leonard - Maximum Bob

No answer. Earlene tossed her head, getting her hair out of her eyes, watching Gary circle the car. He acted different. As soon as they were moving he said, “We’re off,” like they were going for a ride in the country. Then, on the way, gave his views of the weather, the traffic, ethnic restaurants along Federal Highway: Gary making small talk-it was funny-to the part-time prostitute smoking cigarettes, nodding to some beat in her head, not saying a word. Earlene had told Gary she remembered the street in Delray but didn’t know the address. Maybe if she saw the house. Kathy asked what night it was he brought her there. Earlene said Saturday. Kathy asked if the guy wore a cowboy hat and Earlene said, hey, yeah, that’s right. Gary turned into the street of old frame houses and trees. Pulling up in front of Dale’s he said, “Is this the one?”

Earlene wasn’t sure. She said, “I can tell by the inside, but I’m not going in if he’s there. No way.”

Gary looked at Kathy in the backseat. “You mind?”

“You can see no one’s home.”

“For Earlene?”

For Earlene-for Gary. Save him the trouble of getting a warrant.

“If the door’s locked, do I break in?”

“My guys checked yesterday. You can push it open.”

That’s what Kathy did, walked in and turned on the lamp without a shade, then the lights in the kitchen and the bedroom. Gary brought Earlene in. She said, “This’s the house. Man, all the beer bottles and shit.” She crossed to the bedroom but didn’t go in. “This’s where he practically raped me.”

Gary said, “Practically?”

“He was so rough, and he smelled. I go, ‘How can you live in a rat hole like this and drive a Cadillac?’ and he got pissed.”

Gary glanced at Kathy.

“He was driving a Cadillac? You didn’t mention that.”

“Yeah, a black one.”

Earlene walked over to the kitchen, Kathy watching the way she moved in her short skirt and backless heels in a kind of confident slouch, a low-speed sway to her hips. She kept her hand on the small beaded purse hanging from her shoulder. Earlene was looking in the kitchen now.

“Jesus-see that thing? He stuck it up my nose.”

The shank made from a spoon, lying on the kitchen table. Gary edged past her and picked it up. “I thought he didn’t threaten you.”

“It was when I said the place looked like a rat hole? He goes, ‘You calling me a nigger?’ I forgot that part. See, it was right then he told me he had killed a guy and was gonna do it again.”

Gary prompted her saying, “And if you didn’t believe him…”

“Yeah, I’d see it in the paper.”

“But even if there was a story about a homicide,” Gary said, “how were you supposed to know he did it?”

“He said it would be a big headline on the front page, with a picture. Not some nigger got killed.”

“You went in the bedroom then?”

“Yeah, and the bed smelled worse’n he did.”

“He mention it again, after? About killing someone?”

“Not a word.” Earlene turned from the kitchen. “Or last night either.”

She moved in a kind of slow motion that seemed natural to her, heels scuffing the floor. Gary came out of the kitchen shaking his head at Kathy. One surprise after another.

“Earlene? You were here again last night?”

“We went to a guy’s house, over on the beach.”

Gary looked at Kathy again.

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know, some guy.”

“Where was it, Palm Beach, Lantana, Ocean Ridge?”

“I don’t know, one of those. He made me get down on the floor. In the car, going over there.”

“He was driving the Cadillac?”

Earlene frowned. “It might’ve been a different car. This other guy drove me home. He didn’t make me get on the floor, but I was so bummed out it didn’t matter. I’m getting out of the car this little greaseball goes, ‘Don’t ever come back again.’ I go, ‘Hey, I came with a guy has a key to the house, if you don’t fucking mind, okay?’ This’s a guy that works there talking to me like that.”

“Would you know the house if you saw it again?”

“I didn’t see the house, where it’s at. You understand? Hey, can we go? Jesus.”

Getting antsy. Beamed up on the way here and now coming down. Kathy went over to her. “You have something, don’t you, take the edge off?”

Earlene said, “You gotta be kidding,” her eyes going to Gary watching them.

“No, it’s okay,” Kathy said, moving Earlene to the sofa and easing her into it. She sat down next to her saying, “You have something in that purse, don’t you, help you relax? It’s okay, really. He doesn’t care.”

Earlene opened her purse, glancing at Gary again. She brought out a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches. Kathy took the matches. Earlene worked a thin, tightly rolled joint from the cigarette pack and Kathy gave her a light. Earlene sat back in the sofa to take long, slow drags, Kathy sniffing that familiar aroma, wondering if Gary ever smoked grass. She and Dr. Baker would do it on weekends when he was still in school, using forceps for a roach clip, Keith the only person she knew who could smoke and never crack a smile.

She said to Earlene, “The guy who owns the house, what was he like?”

“He was nice.”

“You go to bed with him?”

“He wasn’t in the mood. He said next time.”

“You’re going back there?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“The guy in the cowboy hat, he and the guy who owns the house must be pretty good friends.”

“They didn’t act it especially.”

“Didn’t you say the one who took you had a key to the house?”

“He opened the front door with it,” Earlene said. “Oh, and he got all dressed up for me. Had on the ugliest suit I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“Pretty bad, uh?”

“It was this real bright blue. You had to see it.”

“You go to bed with him last night?”

“Yeah, and you know what? The son of a bitch never paid me. The first time in my life I didn’t ask for it up front, that’s what happens. I go, ‘Hey, come on, man, I don’t give freebies.’ He says it was for fun, like I get laid on my day off. I’m still sore. He tells me, when he picked me up? Bring my G-string, they’re gonna pay me to dance. Only all they have is a bunch of South American cha-cha shit. The nice one gave me a hundred bucks. But you know what? I left my G-string there. My best one, black with silver sequins on it.”

“I’ll see if I can get it,” Kathy said. She gave Earlene’s arm a pat, got up from the sofa and motioned to Gary. They went into the kitchen. She said, “Is Elvin living there now?”

“It sounds like it.”

“She isn’t upset that he’s going to kill someone. It’s because he didn’t pay her.”

Gary was nodding. “I got that.”

“You want to know something else?” Kathy stepped to the table and picked up an empty “Pizza from Pisa” carton. “There’s one just like this at the judge’s house, and he never eats pizza.”

She was thinking that getting one on the way here was a mistake. Or they should have gone to bed as soon as they walked in the apartment and microwaved it later instead of opening cans of beer, sitting down with the pizza and arguing about a flat square cardboard box that had held another pizza at one time and was in the judge’s garage, Elvin Crowe’s fingerprints all over it.

Gary said, “If you’re lucky.”

He was eating his pizza with a fork.

She said, “Okay, maybe not all over it. Maybe you get only one or two good latents. How many do you need?” She said, “If you have trouble seeing yourself walking in the Sheriff’s Office with a pizza box, let me do it.”