Authors: Elmore Leonard
"You call me up," the son-in-law said, "you give me some shit--I don't give a fuck what you need."
"Yes, you do," Armand said. "You don't want me to get picked up for some reason and they start asking me who I work for, who sent me, was I in Detroit last Friday with your car, things like that. Pretty soon they mention, well, if I give them something maybe they let me go home. That's not what you want. What you want to do is call that guy in Detroit, you know who I mean, guy with the cars, and arrange for me to get one tonight."
Armand watched the gas-station man close the hood of Donna's car as the son-in-law was saying he wanted to know what was going on. He wanted to know what happened to the Cadillac, why it was left in Windsor. Armand said, "What difference does it make? It's a blue car, that's all. There's nothing in it can hurt you." Through the window he watched the gas-station man return the hose to the pump and hook the nozzle in the slot. Armand said, "Hold it a minute. Don't go away." He placed the receiver on the desk and stepped to the open doorway.
"You forgot to check the tires."
The gas-station man, coming toward the station now, stopped in the drive. "What?"
"I want the tires checked."
"You do that yourself." Glancing off he said, "Over there," and started toward Armand again. "That's nine-forty for the gas."
Armand moved to the desk, picked up the phone and said, "Listen to me. Tell the guy ten o'clock somebody will pick up the car." The son-in-law started to speak and Armand said, "Listen to me. Ten or maybe later. This is for your good as much as for mine."
The gas-station man entered as Armand was hanging up the receiver.
"You just use the phone?"
"It was a local call," Armand said. "How much you want?"
"Local to where, across the river? You people, I swear. You come over here, you expect we're suppose to give you everything. Well, I'm not one of them sees you as poor souls. Gimme nine-forty and go on get out of here."
Listen to him. Armand had to take a moment to stare at this fat, worn-out guy talking to him like that. He said, "What you trying to tell me, I shouldn't come here, 'ey? Is that it?"
"You start anything," the gas-station man said, "I can have the police here in one minute. They're just up the street."
Maybe it was funny. Look at it that way. Armand shook his head. "Whatever you say." He took a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and placed it on the desk. "How about if you keep the change for the phone call? Okay?"
The gas-station guy didn't answer. That was all right. Armand edged past him through the doorway, smelling grease and tobacco, and was crossing the drive almost to the Honda, when he heard the guy call out to him. Something about was he trying to cheat him.
Armand turned.
The guy was coming out, holding up the ten. "This here's Canadian. You owe me another two bucks."
When Armand got back to Donna's house he told Richie about it, in the kitchen while he poured himself a drink. Donna was in the bathroom, taking a shower. Richie said, "Yeah? So what'd you do?"
"I gave him the two bucks. What would you do?"
Richie said, "Jesus Christ," shaking his head. "You didn't teach him a lesson?"
"I want to know what you'd do," Armand said.
"If I had my piece on me? Shit. If I didn't, I'd get it and go back there. No, I'd use the shotgun, blow the place to hell."
"What about the guy?"
"Him too. I know that gas station you're talking about. You go in there the guy doesn't say a fucking word to you."
"He did to me."
"That's what I mean," Richie said. "He ever talked to me like that and I was a Indian? I'd scalp the son of a bitch." Richie paused and thought about it a moment. "I don't know, that shotgun's a lot of fun. Maybe what I'd do, shoot the place up and then scalp him." Richie paused again and frowned, squinting at Armand, then opened a drawer and took out a paring knife, still frowning. "How do you scalp somebody . . . ?"
"You do all that with the police up the street or maybe driving by, 'ey? Or somebody else that sees you?" Armand said. "You know why I told you about it? To see what you'd do. Now I'm gonna tell you not to think like that, not anymore till we get this business done."
"You want me to think like you, huh?"
"I want you to take it easy, how you think."
"I know you're a cool fucker, Bird, but if that guy didn't get you pissed there's something wrong with you."
"Sure he did," Armand said. "The same as every time it ever happened in my life. But wait a minute, what do we have to think about right now? This guy at a gas station or two people can send us to prison?"
"I'd have still done something."
"Listen to me. That guy at the gas station," Armand said, tapping the side of his head with a finger, "I have him in here, I can go see him sometime if I want. Pay myself to do it. You understand? But we got this other thing to do first." Armand touched his forehead now, tapping it with the tip of his finger. "We have to keep it here, in the front of our heads."
Richie was stabbing the knife at the kitchen counter, trying to hit a crack in the vinyl surface. Like a kid, Armand thought. Don't want to be told anything.
"Donna mentioned it was on the radio," Richie said, stabbing away. "She listens to WSMA, this program called Tradio where you phone in and trade shit you don't want no more. It's where she got that pink robe. I go, 'I thought you got it off the Salvation Army.' She gets pissed you kid with her like that."
"You through?" Armand said.
Richie looked up, the knife poised. "Am I through what?"
"Donna mention something was on the radio."
"Oh, yeah, about the Seven-Eleven was robbed, suppose to be they said a couple hundred was taken. Bullshit, it was forty-two bucks, worst score I ever made. No, shit, I take that back. I only got twenty-eight bucks once, place down in Mississippi."
"You told Donna it was you?"
"No, she kept talking about the girl being shot, did I hear about it, hinting around." Richie was stabbing at the counter again. I just go, 'Oh, uh-huh, an armed robbery, imagine that.' See, Donna, she might suspect it was me, but it's talking about it I think turns her on. The idea of a hardcase going in there with a gun. In her life, I bet she's known more guys that packed one time or another than didn't."
"Guys in prison," Armand said.
"Yeah, in the joint."
"Dumb guys that got caught."
"Hey, it can happen to anybody."
"Not to me," Armand said. "Listen, you gonna pick up a car tonight."
"We got a car."
"This is a clean one, with papers. You take the van, leave it someplace in Detroit to get stolen, like you said, and pick up this one we don't have to worry about cops looking for." Armand could tell from Richie's stupid grin he liked the idea, showing some respect for a change.
"You're a slick guy, Bird, you know it? How'd you work that?"
"How do I do something like this, I make a phone call," Armand said. "It's what I don't do is the difference, what you have to learn. I don't leave my sunglasses someplace, I don't leave my fingerprints, I don't do nothing 'less I work it out first and I'm sure." He saw Donna in the hall, a glimpse of her in the pink robe going from the bathroom to the bedroom. "Then all you have to do," Armand said, "is walk in, walk out."
It was half-past nine. Carmen and Wayne were sitting in the living room with lamps turned on talking about a thirty-four-year-old wanted criminal named Richie Nix, referring to a "detainer list" the FBI man had shown them: the detainers indicating crimes he was wanted for in several different states, armed robbery and capital murder.
"What I can't figure out," Wayne said, "he's been doing this for, what, about twenty years. He was in the Wayne County Youth Home when he was fifteen, a few years later he robs a package store in Florida, does something else in Georgia, goes to prison . . ."
Wayne stopped as a spotlight hit both windows from outside and flashed again in the foyer, on the oval glass panel in the front door. There was a silence. Wayne got up from the sofa, walked to a window and looked out.
"They're about five minutes late."
Carmen sat in a rocking chair they'd bought unfinished in Kentucky one winter, coming back from Florida. She had stained the chair with a clear varnish and made an olive green pad for it.
"Why get worked up? They're doing their job."
"What? Shining spots on the windows?"
She watched him walk back to the sofa, fall into it and stick out his blue-jean legs, the heels of his work shoes resting in the rag carpeting. They had furnished the place without much thought, farmhouse traditional; Carmen was tired of it.
"You realize we're actually sitting here talking without the TV on? We haven't done this since you watched me strip the woodwork."
It reminded her again, she wanted to do something with the living room, liven it up. Keep the rocker, paint it a bright color, but get rid of that old green plaid sofa, and the duck prints her mom had given them as a combined present, housewarming and Wayne's birthday, a month late. Her gaze moved to Wayne. She liked to look at him and wait for him to become aware of it. Their eyes would meet and they'd see how long they could stare at each other without smiling--until Carmen would do something like running the tip of her tongue over her lips or she might stick a finger in her nose.
"You want to go to bed?"
He looked over. "It's early."
They stared for a moment. He said, "We haven't done much making out lately, have we?"
"It's been days. Not even hugs and kisses," Carmen said. The way he shook his head she could tell he was thinking of something else. "What is it you can't figure out? You started to say something about Richie Nix, his record, he went to prison . . ."
"That's right--three times and they let him out," Wayne said, getting back into it. "He's in a federal prison, he sees a guy stabbed to death, he testifies at the guy's trial that did it and they put him in the Witness Protection Program."
"It was his cellmate," Carmen said, "the one that was murdered. I meant to ask Scallen about that--you notice he called it the Witness Security Program." She saw Wayne anxious for her to finish. "But that's beside the point."
"I don't know," Wayne said. "The thing I don't understand, here he's supposed to be in prison for something like twenty years, am I right?"
"He was already there a few years when it happened."
"Yeah, a few. Now they say they have to protect him, in case the guy's buddies he testified against tried to get him. So they put him in the witness program and let him out. How can they do that?"
Carmen paused, seeing the FBI man in the kitchen talking quietly to them about a man who robbed and killed and another who was paid to kill. "I don't think he said Richie got out, not right away. No, that's when he was transferred to Huron Valley. He was in the witness program while he was in prison, I think three more years, and then for a little while after, till he committed a crime." She had to add, "And that disqualified him. So all these detainers Scallen showed us, the crimes Richie Nix is wanted for now, are things he did in the last couple of years."
"That's what I'm talking about," Wayne said. "They let him out and he starts killing people. He gets a job through a friend, what does he do? He shoots the guy and takes off."
"There was one before his friend," Carmen said, "another one he shot, in Detroit."
"Yeah, he gets out--he's pulling robberies and all of a sudden he's killing people, too. You go down the detainer list, robbed a package store in Dayton, Ohio, shot and killed the store employee. All those others, in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, shot and killed store employee, every one of them. He finds out from Lionel where we live--that must've been what happened--and shoots him three times. He didn't have to kill him. The girl in the store, she didn't have a gun or anything, she's a seventeen-year-old girl. He takes the money and shoots her in the head. Why does a guy like that all of a sudden start killing people?"
"Why is he after us?" Carmen said. "If we knew that . . . I mean what does he stand to gain?"
"I think getting thrown out a second-story window has something to do with it," Wayne said, "though he doesn't seem to need a reason to shoot people. I guess it's just the way he is. Or right now he's working for the Indian and does whatever he's told. From what Scallen said, the Indian's the one to look out for. I've thought that all along. When I was sitting at Nelson's desk watching him, I think about it now, he didn't touch a thing. They found Richie Nix's fingerprints all over the place, but not the Indian's. We think Richie's bad but, Jesus, what about Armand, the things he's done?"
"There sure isn't much privacy around here," Donna said, "having two men in the house." She was sitting on the side of her bed in her pink chenille robe, rolling up a pair of sheer black panty hose to stick her toes in, the nails painted an orange-red.
Armand stood in the bedroom doorway watching her.
There were furry stuffed animals on Donna's bed, on the purple-red-and-yellow chenille spread done in a big peacock design, and a picture on the wall, over the head of the bed, a color portrait painted on black velvet that Armand believed was supposed to be Elvis Presley. He was pretty sure that's who it was because Donna had a rack of Elvis Presley records, that Elvis Presley doll dressed in the white jumpsuit and Elvis Presley plates out in the kitchen. Eat down through Donna's TV Salisbury steak and there was Elvis Presley looking at you.