Authors: Elmore Leonard
"Retaining rods," Lionel said.
"Retaining rods," Armand said over his shoulder, "they put in concrete. He landed on one of those things, sticking straight up."
"Jesus Christ," Richie said.
"Like he sat down in it."
"Jesus Christ--it went up his ass?"
"It hit him under his butt," Armand said over his shoulder as they came to the boat dock: a plank walk that extended out into the river, Lionel's aluminum boat with its forty-horse Johnson tied alongside.
Lionel turned to them, saying, "The rod went through me and came out my back here, at my kidney. Where it used to be."
"Jesus Christ," Richie said.
"He only has one kidney," Armand said.
"I lost the kidney, I broke both my feet and my legs and had to get a new plastic kneecap, this one," Lionel said. "But I was lucky, 'cause if I didn't land on that retaining rod I'd be dead. It slowed me down." He moved toward the boat saying, "What else you want to know?" and began to free the line.
Armand said, "Ten, twelve years ago, 'ey?"
"More than that. It was when we were building the Renaissance Center, over in Detroit. More like fourteen years now." He was holding the boat for them, offering a hand. Armand, stepping aboard, gripped Lionel's hand. Richie ignored it.
"You were talking to a guy yesterday," Armand said, "I notice was an ironworker."
"Yeah, he was on that job too," Lionel said. "I think it was the first time I met him. He was a punk then."
"But not now, 'ey?"
"A punk," Lionel said, coiling the line, "is what ironworkers call an apprentice. No, believe me, he's no punk now."
"What's his name?"
Armand waited. Lionel was looking toward the house and was thinking about something or maybe didn't hear him.
"I should have left my wife a note," Lionel said. "She drove our girl to go ice-skating, over the sports arena."
Armand looked toward the house, then up at Lionel on the dock. "This won't take long."
A lake freighter appeared, a small one but towering over them as it passed, Lionel saying it was going up to Hazzard Grain in Wallaceburg, Lionel now telling them things without being asked.
At first it was like any river with land on both sides, tree lines and thickets Lionel called "the bush." But as they moved south the banks of the Snye changed to marshland, reeds and cattails as far as Armand could see from low in the boat. Now it was like a river that ran through weeds growing out of the water. He said, "Where's the land? There's no place you can get out."
Lionel seemed to smile. He was not so serious now guiding his boat, the forty-horse Johnson grumbling in the water. Pointing then to an opening in the marsh bank he said, "That swale there--when the water's up you punch your boat through there, find some muskrat."
Richie, in the bow, said, "Where? I don't see any muskrats."
"They seen you first," Lionel said. "I had a trap I'd stick it in there. That's where they crawl up."
"You eat 'em?"
"If you want," Lionel said. "You can barbecue muskrat, the way I like it, or make a stew. See, but they're bottom feeders so a lot of people won't eat them, afraid they gonna get some toxic-waste dressing in their meat."
Richie said, then what good were they? Lionel told him a nice pelt was worth six-fifty and Richie said, shit, was that all?
"Watch the sky," Lionel said. "You want ducks, we have to see where they land."
"My jaw hurts," Richie said, "and I'm cold."
It made Armand think of summer, being here a long time ago when it was hot. "It looks different--all this water."
"Maybe you never came down this far," Lionel said, "you and your brothers. There aren't no cats or dogs here to shoot."
"Keep talking like that," Armand said, "I'll turn you into a muskrat." He looked over his shoulder at Lionel in the stern. "I learned how to work medicine from my grandmother. She was gonna turn me into an owl one time."
"Too bad she didn't," Lionel said.
Armand had to twist around to look at him again. "What do you mean by that?"
"An owl knows things gonna happen." Lionel smiled then a little and said, "You gonna turn me into one of these rats, wait till spring when they come in heat. I'll have some fun."
"That's what you already are now," Armand said, "live in a place like this." He was cold and wanted this trip to hurry up and be over. Turning around on the seat, so the wind hit his back, didn't help much. All Lionel had on was the sweatshirt, but didn't appear cold. He wore jeans and dirty sneakers--no, they were running shoes. Look at him. He liked it here and there was no way to insult him. Armand watched Lionel's eyes raise to read the clouds or the wind or some goddamn Indian thing he did.
"How much to take us out tomorrow?"
"A hundred each."
"No special price, 'ey? For an old friend?"
Lionel didn't answer that one, but he said, "You need a twelve-gauge I can let you have one. You buy the shells."
Armand said, "How about that ironworker? You take him out? The one yesterday?"
"Not too much. He's a kind of guy, he don't eat it, he won't shoot it. I think it's more he don't like to clean 'em. My wife does it for hunters. She's what you call a duck-plucker." Lionel grinned. "A buck a duck."
"What's the guy's name?"
"What guy?"
"Your friend, the ironworker."
"It's Wayne."
Yeah, it was the name the woman in the real estate office had called. Wayne.
"You go deer hunting with him, 'ey?"
"Yeah, he's got a private woods there, on his property."
"He seem like a nice guy," Armand said. "What's his name, Wayne?"
"Wayne Colson."
"Where's he live? Around here?"
"Over by Algonac."
"He seem like a nice guy."
"Yeah, I go over there," Lionel said. "Sometimes me an my wife, my little girl, Debbie. His wife says, when we go over there, she wishes they had a little girl. She tells Debbie that."
"So he's married, 'ey?"
"Yeah, his wife sells real estate."
Armand said, "You kidding me."
"What's wrong with that?"
"It seems funny, that's all, an ironworker married to a woman sells real estate."
Lionel shrugged. He said, "They have a grown son, in the U.S. Navy," and looked off at his sky again.
After a while Armand heard Richie yell out, "There's some!" and turned to see land and a flock of birds Armand recognized rising out of an old willow on the bank. Blackbirds.
"I see I'm gonna have trouble with him," Lionel said, grinning. "He'll be shooting at coots thinking they're mallards."
Richie was turned around in the bow.
"What's wrong?"
"Ducks don't land in trees," Lionel said. "Birds, yeah, but not any ducks I know of. That's the first thing you have to learn."
Armand saw the way Richie was looking past him at Lionel. He said, "Let's go over there and stretch our legs."
"If you want to," Lionel said.
He brought them to the bank where the willow stood empty now and cut the motor. Richie grabbed the tall weeds, stepped out of the boat and both feet sank into mud and water. Armand saw what not to do and jumped past the soft edge of the bank, landed okay, but felt the ground mushy beneath him, weeds up to his waist. He looked around at Lionel, still in the boat.
"You coming?"
"I don't need to stretch any."
Armand said to Richie, "Do him," and expected to hear some excuse. Out here? It's too open. Something like that.
No--he reached under his coat behind him, brought out that nickelplate, cocked it, aimed with two hands like in the movies and shot Lionel three times as he was trying to get out of the boat, that third shot punching him out to drop in the water. They were quick shots too, no hesitation. Loud, but flat out here in the open, the sound just now fading.
"Well, you took more than one," Armand said, "but you knocked him down."
Richie was looking at Lionel facedown in the water, one arm hooked over the side of the boat.
"That pissed me off," Richie said, "telling me ducks don't land in trees. I know ducks don't land in trees."
Back at Lionel's, before they got in the Cadillac and drove off, Armand went in the house and came out with two Remington pump-action shotguns and a couple of camouflaged duck-hunting coats and hats. Richie said, "What's all that for?" Armand told him he'd see. Then, when Armand left the island by way of the swing bridge, heading for Wallaceburg, Richie said, "Aren't we going home? Man I have to get cleaned up." Armand told him to put on one of the duck-hunting coats, they were going to Windsor. They'd leave the car at the airport in long-term parking and pick out another one for the time being. "Then come home?" Richie said. Then cross back at Detroit through customs, Armand said, couple of duck hunters on their way to Algonac. And find out where the ironworker lived.
"What's the big hurry?" Richie said. "If he lives there, he's gonna be there."
"You want to do something else?"
"Well, have a few beers, anyway. Watch some TV."
"After we find their house, take a look at it. You hear Lionel? I'm pretty sure that real estate woman's his wife. The one saw us."
"The one was with him?" Richie sounded surprised. "She didn't do nothing. Was the guy hit us."
Armand turned his headlights on the blacktop moving through farmland, getting dark out there. "I forgot you have to be pissed off," Armand said. "All this blowing away you did, you never blew away a woman, 'ey?"
"I never felt a need to."
"Well, you better feel one now."
Richie was silent. Armand wondered if maybe it was the first time in his life the guy had stopped to think before opening his mouth. Armand waited another few moments before saying, "Let me tell you something. You don't ever leave things undone. You don't ever think somebody's not gonna remember you. Me and my brothers went in that hospital in Sarnia--"
"You already told me about it."
There, he was talking again without thinking.
"Listen to me. My younger brother, Jackie, is holding the elevator. My older brother, Gerard, is watching so nobody comes in the room. He's standing inside by the door, has it open a little bit. A nurse comes down the hall. She don't go by, she opens the door and there's my brother right in front of her, face-to-face, close. He takes her quick into the bathroom, turns out the light and tells her don't make a sound."
"I'd have coldcocked her," Richie said.
"I finish with the guy and say to my brother, 'What about her in there?' In the bathroom, the door's closed. He says, 'I don't think she saw me good.' I say to him, 'What are you telling me? You don't think she saw you?' He says, 'No, she didn't see me good.' It was seven months later the police come to the Waverley Hotel--"
Richie said, "The Royal Canadian Mounties?"
"The Toronto Police, that's enough. They come to the hotel where we stay there looking for the Degas brothers. This time they find only Gerard, take him in and that nurse points to him in the lineup. Yes, he was in the room when the man was killed. They find my brother Jackie and shoot him down, they say resisting arrest. That could be true. They find me, the nurse takes a look; no, she never saw me. They have to let me go. See, but I lost my two brothers--one dead, one in prison for life, because Gerard says she didn't see him good. That one time . . . Why did he say that? I don't know, maybe he looked at her. Maybe he liked her face, I don't know. I'm never gonna figure that out."
Richie said, "Well, did you ask him?"
"Sure, I asked him. He don't know either. Now he's at Kingston trying to figure it out."
They drove through the dusk in silence.
Until Richie said, "Well, I don't see there'd be much difference anyway, whether it's a man or a woman. . . . Is there?"
"Not if you don't think about it," Armand said.
Chapter
7
LATE AFTERNOON, cool and clear outside, three days since the excitement at the real estate office, the phone rang. It was on the wall next to the window over the kitchen sink.
Carmen knew it was Lenore because she had her hands in meat loaf, working a raw egg, onions and bread crumbs into the ground beef and pork, and her mom only called when she was in the middle of something or in the bathroom. If Carmen called her mom, Lenore would answer, "Who is this?" in case it might be an obscene phone call. She had worked at one time in the telephone company's Annoyance Call Bureau and knew all about dirty-mouth pervert callers. Just last month she had changed her number after twice answering the ring and the caller hung up without saying a word. She told Carmen, "That's how they find out if you're home, so they can come in and rape you." Wayne said to Carmen, "Tell her don't worry, once the guy got a look at her she'd be safe."
Carmen turned to the sink, rinsed her hands and dried them on a dish towel, the phone still ringing. Sometimes she'd pick it up and say, "Hi, Mom."
But not today. Carmen looked out the window as she lifted the receiver from the hook and didn't say a word.
She saw something move in the woods. Not the far deep woods, where Wayne grew his row of corn along the edge and had placed the salt lick, but in the thicket beyond the chickenhouse, where a section of woods came down close to the backyard. She was pretty sure a man was standing in there, in the tangle of dense branches; not at the edge but back in the gloom, his form blending, most of him concealed. Lenore's voice was saying, "Carmen?" Repeating it. "Carmen, what are you doing?"
Whoever it was just stood there, not moving.
Carmen said, "Hi, Mom."
She didn't say anything about it to Wayne, not right away. He came home--it was on her mind as she got dinner ready and Wayne opened beers for them and phoned Lionel. No answer. Two days now, no one home. Carmen said didn't they have relatives in Ohio they went to visit? Wayne said, "In duck season?"
During the week Carmen would turn on the TV in the kitchen and they'd watch Jeopardy while they ate dinner, sitting at the counter. Wayne was good at state capitals, country music, some history, because it was all he read outside of hunting magazines, and wars. His favorite was the Civil War. Carmen was good at popular music and groups, movie stars who had won Academy Awards and biology. Carmen would get more right than Wayne. Jeopardy was on now. Some of the categories were Art, Bowling, Four-letter Words and Kings Named Ed. But they weren't paying much attention to it. Carmen listened to Wayne saying he wondered if he should go over to Walpole, check up on Lionel.
Wayne saying he liked the One-Fifty Jefferson project, he knew most of the guys on the raising gang and the walking boss was an old buddy. One of the connectors got a bunch of flowers with a card signed by five women who'd been watching him from an office building. Wayne saying he was bolting up and doing some welding, but that was okay, it was the kind of story job he liked, put it straight up in the air three hundred feet and go on to the next one. Wayne saying the meat loaf was the best he'd ever tasted. Then going on to say he could never understand why Matthew didn't like it. How could you not like meat loaf?
Carmen, waking up, said, "Oh, we got a letter today."
Wayne gave her a funny look, because a rare letter from Matthew would be sitting right here on the counter. Carmen had to find it, over in a drawer where she filed letters and bills.
Wayne began to read the letter from their son. Carmen took a bite of meat loaf--it was okay but she'd made better--played with her peas and carrots, looked up at the window and saw the kitchen reflected on the glass, the portable TV screen a bright spot. One of the Jeopardy contestants had picked the Kings Named Ed category. Something about one of them being a saint and the contestant, a woman, said, "Who was Edward the Confessor?"
Just as Wayne said, "Everything's initials with him now. The A-7Es, the AE-6Bs. He isn't on a carrier, he's on a CVN. Here, he says, 'My new job is to make sure the nosegear towbar engages the catapult shuttle and then stand clear. You don't want to get caught between the aircraft and the JBD.' What's the JBD?"
"The jet blast deflector," Carmen said.
"Well, what's FOD? He says, 'We police the flight deck for anything lying around that might cause an aircraft to FOD-out.' "
"Foreign object damage," Carmen said. "I guess something that might get sucked into the jet engine."
It seemed to irritate Wayne.
"How do you know that?"
"It was in the book he sent, Supercarriers in Action."
"I haven't read it yet."
The woman contestant on Jeopardy was running the Kings Named Ed category, answering one, "Where is the Tower of London?" in the form of a question, as you were supposed to. The woman was the smartest Jeopardy contestant Carmen had ever seen.
She said, "Mom called this afternoon."
Wayne looked up from Matthew's letter. "To brighten your day. Asked what you were fixing for dinner, you told her meat loaf and she said leave the Tabasco out, we're ruining our stomachs."
"She said to be sure to add milk."
"I bet she asked about your dad, what's new with him."
"She hinted around."
"Hoping to hear his liver had finally got him. Guy's down in Tampa happier'n a pig in shit. She's up here drinking her vodka and grapefruit juice, thinking of ways to be miserable. How's her back?"
"The same. She bends over, it's like somebody sticks a redhot poker in her."
"I better not say anything," Wayne said and returned to the letter. After a moment he said, "I like this part. Matthew says, 'The steam pressure it takes to catapult a thirty-ton aircraft off the flight deck would send a pickup truck five miles out over the ocean.' Now something like that I can picture. Then he talks about steam building up in the 'below-deck accumulators.' How's a kid like Matthew know that? He's nineteen years old."
"He's grown up," Carmen said. "You were working when you were his age."
"He says, 'Hoping your days are CAVU and all is well.' You think he's overdoing it a little? What's CAVU?"
"Ceiling and visibility unlimited."
"You know what it is? Being on a new job. You use all the words, like you know what you're talking about. Matthew's out there on his CVN with that JBD and the FODs on a CAVU kind of day."
"Somebody was in the woods," Carmen said, "this afternoon. I looked out, it was when I was talking to Mom."
Wayne said, "Well, that could be," and paused. "You didn't see who it was."
Carmen shook her head. "There might even've been two, I'm not sure."
"You say while you were talking to your mom."
"I didn't mention it to her."
"No, I don't imagine you would. But how come you wait till now to tell me?"
"I was going to right away, but then . . . I don't know, it didn't seem that important anymore. They might've been hunters."
"It's the duck season, honey. There aren't any ducks in the woods. Were they just, maybe walking through?"
"It was more like they were trying to stay hidden, watching the house. That was the feeling I had."
"I don't see how it could be those two guys, if that's what you're thinking."
"No, I don't either."
"They might like to run into me sometime, but they're not gonna hang around on the off chance, with the police looking for them. Or so they say."
Carmen said, "How could they know where we live?"
"They couldn't, there's no way they could find out."
She saw Wayne thinking about it as he finished his dinner. On Jeopardy the contestants were getting ready for the hardest part, Final Jeopardy.
"Unless," Wayne said, "that one, the Indian, remembers me talking to Lionel and goes to see him. Hey, but Lionel's away someplace. I don't know where, but he sure as hell isn't home."
"It probably wasn't anybody," Carmen said. "Just some guy. I'm not gonna worry about it."
"No, they'd be pretty dumb to hang around."
Carmen didn't say anything. They were showing the Final Jeopardy question now. She looked at it, then at Wayne as he slid off the kitchen stool and went over to the closet where he kept his hunting gear, his shotguns, boxes of ammunition, coats, boots, lures, old copies of hunting magazines. She could see him in there with the light on.
"Hon, what are two adjacent states, one's a Spanish word, the other's Indian and they both mean red, the color?"
She was pretty sure the states were Colorado and Utah.
Wayne came out of the closet holding his Remington 870 fitted with the shorter slug barrel. He said, "Colorado and Oklahoma," crossing to the door. He stood the shotgun next to it, against the wall.
Carmen said, "I think it's Colorado and Utah."
That was what the smartest woman she had ever seen on Jeopardy also thought, and they were both wrong. The states were Colorado and Oklahoma.
It surprised Carmen. Still, she felt good about it, smiling as she said, "How'd you know that?"
"I went bird shooting down there one time," Wayne said. "Remember?"
"Knowing my love of corrections," Donna had said to Richie Nix more than once and in different ways, "for them to treat me the way they did, I have lost all respect for our prison system."
He told the Bird she was always going on about it. It convinced Richie they could trust Donna. At least tell her where they got the van. The Bird said no.
"She's confused," Richie said. "We drive off Saturday in a Cadillac, come back that night in a Dodge van wearing hunting outfits." Camouflaged coats and caps, all green and brown with a little black.
The Bird said, "Let her be confused."
"Yeah, but we don't want her pissed off at us."
The Bird said, "You don't tell a woman use to wear a state uniform your business."
He didn't get it.
"That's the whole point of what I'm saying," Richie said, "she knows my business. She knows I got felony warrants out on me. It don't matter to her, she spent her life with guys like me. Man, she's a fucking convict groupie. We stay friendly with her, we have a nice little place to hide out. But we hurt her feelings, that'll piss her off. Bird? You understand?"
The Bird said, "Don't call me Bird no more."
That stopped Richie, confused him. "You said they call you the Blackbird."
"Not anymore."
"Well, what am I suppose to call you?"
"My name, Armand."
"Armand? You serious?"
They had been having their differences the past couple of days. It had taken that long to locate the ironworker's house, the address in the phone book listed as a rural route number. They had to scout the place then. The Bird's idea, leave the van on a back road and cut through the woods like a couple of hunters, sneak up on the house from behind. Okay, they had done that. Stood in wet weeds and bushes in their camie outfits--there was the house, there was a Cutlass and a boat with an outboard on a trailer in the garage, but no pickup truck. Which meant the ironworker wasn't home and the Bird would not go up to the house till he knew both the guy and his wife were in there. Richie liked the idea of walking into the house, take care of the woman and wait for the guy to get home. Surprise him, we're sitting there. The Bird had said, "Take care of the woman, 'ey? You think you can do it?" Still bringing it up. The Bird didn't like the idea of walking in, he said, because somebody they didn't expect could come along while they were in the house. Maybe cops. These people would have talked to the cops, no? What if the cops stopped by to ask them some more questions? Anything Richie wanted to do, the Bird was against it. Now he had a faggy name he wanted to be called, Armand.
They were in Donna's living room under the pictures of guards, cons and prison officials: Richie and Armand sitting with their drinks among the stuffed animals, Armand fooling with Mr. Froggy's button eyes; while Donna prepared her gourmet frozen chow, banging pans out in the kitchen so they'd know she was there.
Richie said, "Armand?" Jesus Christ, he felt weird saying it. "You notice she's not talking to us? When she makes all that fucking noise like that it means she's getting pissed off. I don't want her to do nothing dumb."
The Bird, Armand, said, "Pimpslap a woman, you want to keep her in line."
"Now that would really set her off."
"If she don't know better," Armand said, "she's in trouble."
Man, this guy was from some other fucking world. "Armand," Richie said, "you're not married, are you?"
"No way."
"You ever live with a woman? I mean outside of your family?"
"What's the point?"
"Armand, lemme tell you something. You're always telling me something, now it's my turn. Okay, Armand." If he kept saying the name it would get easier. "You might've shot a woman or two in your line of work. . . . Have you?"
"Go on what you're gonna tell me."
"Let's say you have. But shooting a woman and understanding a woman are two entirely different things, man. I've lived with women in foster homes and women since then." Richie dropped his voice to add, "I might even still be married, I'm not sure, she got scared and took off on me. That's okay, a woman being scared. But don't ever let 'em get pissed off at you if you can help it. First thing, they'll stop talking to you. Like her out there. You give them any more cause, then look out. A woman won't ever come at you, they got other ways. Put ground-up glass in your chow. Pour gasoline on you while you're sleeping and set you afire. I know guys it's happened to. The least thing they can do is tell on you, that's too fucking easy. Donna knows I got a sheet six feet long besides warrants from here to Kentucky. She can make a case anytime she wants. But, see, that don't worry me. What does is the sneaky shit she's liable to pull, say her feelings get hurt. What I'm telling you, Armand, you have to keep a woman thinking you give a shit what she thinks."