Jackie Brown (28 page)

"Why weren't you home, where he could find you?"

"I was afraid. I wasn't sure he'd give me a chance to explain."

Max watched her thinking about it, her face moving into the light as she reached over to roll the tip of her cigarette in the ashtray, staring at it, saying, "I should be there before he arrives."

Max said, "Why?"

She didn't look up. "That's where I've been hiding, in your office."

"Nicolet-is he already there, or does he come busting in while we're chatting?"

"He's already there."

"What if he hears something he's not supposed to?"

"We won't let that happen."

"You still have a gun?"

Jackie looked up now. "Yeah, why?"

"Don't bring it."

26

Ordell believed looking out the window would be a waste of time. If they knew he was here they'd come busting in with their sledgehammer, or that big crowbar from hell he'd seen SWAT teams use on TV, pry a door right off its hinges. They come in yelling down, down, down, screaming it at you, and the next thing you had was a shotgun against your head as you're saying what is this, man, what's going on here. Wasting your breath.

It was because he was pacing the room, Raynelle nodding on the sofa for what company she was, and happened to look outside as he came to the window, he saw Max Cherry on the sidewalk. Ordell looked out that front window good then, both ways up and down the street expecting to see one of those big vans with FDLE on the side, or some other initials. There was nothing suspicious going on out there, almost dark, some people down the street, but just people. Ordell quick went to the sofa and had to move Raynelle's skinny ass to get his pistol from under the cushion. Max Cherry knocking on the door now. Ordell stuck the Beretta in his waist, under his shirt hanging out, pulled the woman up by her arms, walked her into the bedroom, and dumped her on the bed. He had another pistol there under the pillow and one in the kitchen. Max Cherry knocking some more as Ordell tried to think how Max could've found him, Ordell telling himself it was okay, the man was a bail bondsman, so be cool, you hear? Be cool. You want to know, ask him.

Ordell let him in and closed the door.

He watched Max Cherry turn, his hand going inside his seersucker jacket as he glanced around the room, and Ordell pulled his Beretta and put it on him. Like that. Max said to him, "You want your money? Your bond refund?" His hand came out of the jacket holding a wad of bills in a rubber band, tossed it up, and Ordell swiped it out of the air with his free hand.

"This's all?"

"I have a receipt for you to sign."

"I said, 'This's all?'You know what I want. Did you speak to her?" Ordell moved to a front window saying it and looked out again.

"I didn't bring anybody," Max said. "She wants to give you the money. If she didn't, there'd be cops coming through the fucking door while you're asking me questions."

"Where's it at, in your car?"

"She wants to give it to you herself and collect her cut, her ten percent. She wants to explain why she held on to it."

"I like to hear that too."

"Why she didn't give it to Melanie."

"Turn around," Ordell said. He started patting Max down. "You tell me why."

"Jackie didn't trust her. Melanie'd already tried to get Jackie to go in with her, the two of them work it and split the half million. What she did was take quite a risk to see you get your money."

"Lift up your pant legs," Ordell said. "You helped her?"

"All I did was walk out with it."

"Put the bail-bondsman twist on it, huh? Smelling all that cash? And you telling me you want me to have it?"

"The only reason I'm here, I don't want to see Jackie get shot or busted."

"Protecting her," Ordell said. "I think you're pimping me is what you're doing."

"Then let's forget the whole thing," Max said. "Stay here with your junkie friend and your VW." He started for the door.

"Hey, man." Ordell waved the pistol at him and Max stopped. "Go on sit over there on the couch." He watched Max looking at the stained cushions. "Do like I say, man, sit down. It's dry, my friend hasn't thrown up on herself in two days. That's it. Now tell me where my money's at."

"My office," Max said.

"And where's Jackie?"

"She's been there since Thursday night."

"She wanted to see me, why wasn't she home?"

"She was afraid."

"I have to see that."

"She still is. She doesn't want to get shot before she can tell you what happened."

"Have her bring me the money here."

"It's in the safe. She can't get at it."

"Call her, tell her the combination."

"She won't leave there till you have the money and you're gone. I'll tell you that right now."

"But you expect me to walk in there."

"If I wanted to set you up," Max said, "I already told you, they'd have busted in by now. She knows if you get picked up you'll name her as an accessory. That scares her more than anything."

"It's why she's giving up my money, huh? Not that bullshit about Melanie. I didn't trust her either, but I knew how to handle her." Ordell moved to the window again. "She was my fine big girl." The street was quiet, dark out now. "I said to Louis, `Man, you could've hit her.' Give her a punch in the mouth." He turned to Max. "Jackie wants her cut, huh?"

"Fifty grand."

"How 'bout the money she wants if she does time?"

"She got off."

"Yeah, I forgot. All right, I give her the fifty ATF marked up, since she let them do it, and she gives me my money. Do it at your office, huh?"

"She's there now."

"How 'bout your man Winston?"

"He's out at the jail."

"I call your office, she better answer the phone, not somebody else."

Ordell took Max's business card from his shirt pocket and looked at it going over to the phone, on the floor next to a chair with a clear-plastic cover over it. He hated the chair, you stuck to it. He needed to get out of this place. He needed his clothes. He needed to get his hair done, his pigtail was coming loose from fooling with it. He needed his car. He could take the license plate off the VW and put it on the Mercedes. Stop on the way . . . Or have Jackie go pick it up right now, key under the front seat, and bring it to Max's office, have it there ready. If nobody had stole it. Put the money in the trunk and you're gone, man. Put all the money in the trunk. Five hundred and the marked-up fifty. Tell them, well, that's how it is.

Ordell laid the pistol on his lap, picked up the phone, and dialed the number. He waited. Then smiled saying, "Hey, baby, how you doing? You know who this is?"

Nicolet would watch Faron and his wife Cheryl, the way they acted when she came to visit, and he'd get an urge to see his ex, Anita. It didn't make sense, because he thought the way Faron and Cheryl talked to each other was stupid. Hi, hon. How're you feeling, hon? Not bad, hon. Both of them hon, no identity of their own when they were together. Like all fathers were dad or daddy to their kids. Nicolet could not see himself in this anonymous group. And yet almost every time he saw Faron and Cheryl hon-ing and touching each other, he'd miss Anita and get her to meet him for a drink. He'd say, "What're you gonna have, hon?" and watch her tighten her black eyebrows giving him a serious funny look. Cheryl was a homemaker, Anita an X-ray technician at Good Samaritan. They'd met when he was there for a physical. She gave him a barium enema and he asked her how she'd managed to get a job shooting white gunk into assholes all day. Anita said she guessed she was just lucky. They never called each other hon while they were married or knew what they would have for dinner, both of them working. He still considered scoring with Jackie. She was there. But so was Anita. He was seeing her more since Faron was in the hospital. Finally this evening Anita said okay when he suggested going back to her apartment.

His beeper went off on her nightstand.

Anita said, "Shit." Nicolet said, "Keep hold of it, hon, and we won't lose it." He dialed the number showing on his beeper and was surprised when Jackie Burke answered. He asked where she was and got another surprise.

"What're you doing there?"

"Ordell called and left a message on my machine.

He said I have to sign something so he can get his money back, for my bond."

"You don't sign anything."

"I didn't think so. I have a feeling he wants me to bring the rest of his money here, from Freeport. What do I do?"

"He's gonna be there?"

"He said about eight."

Nicolet glanced at the clock on the stand.

"Why didn't you call me sooner?"

"I just found out. Will you come, please?" Anita said, "Pleeease."

Jackie said, "What?"

"Is Max there?"

"No, but the other guy is."

"I'll be there right away. Hang on."

Jackie said, "Hurry."

Nicolet hung up the phone. "I have to be there and get some backup in the next fifteen minutes." Anita said, "You might as well, hon. You're not doing much good here."

Ordell drove. He'd take this VW over to the beach mall after and put its license plate on the Mercedes. Get on the turnpike and head north into the night.

"All the time I've known her," he said to Max, big next to him in the little car, "I never heard her sound scared like that. Ordinarily, man, she's cool. All she had to do was take a taxicab to where my car's at and have it for me. She would not do it."

He felt like talking while Max Cherry wasn't saying a thing. He did take a cigarette, asking for one as Ordell lit up.

"How come you have that sign in your office, no smoking, if you smoke?"

"I started again," Max said.

"Yeah, I remember you didn't have an ashtray for me that first time I come in. I told you I had cash to put up as collateral and you said oh, use that coffee mug there. I could've used anything I wanted. I said that time, you have ways to skim money, don't you? 'Cause you all crooks in that business. The woman tells you her scheme, man, your greedy eyes light up. You both of you plan to rip me off, I know that, and lost your nerve, huh? Gonna have to stay a bail bondsman, deal with the scum while you try to act respectable, huh? The rest of your life."

Max Cherry sat there dumb, the man knowing what he was.

They were approaching Banyan. Max said, "It's the next street."

Ordell said, "I know where it is." Max said, "Turn left."

"I know where to turn."

They parked in the lot next door, the VW angled against the side of the storefront building. Max got out and stood by the trunk. He watched Ordell adjust the pistol stuck in his waist as he approached, pulling his shirt over it.

"What do you need that for?"

"You never know, do you?" Ordell started toward the front of the building.

Max waited. "What about the fifty thousand?" "We leave it in the trunk," Ordell said, "till I see she has my money." He led the way around front to where MAX CHERRY BAIL BONDS was painted on the window. Ordell said, "Now I want you ahead of me." Max opened the door covered with a sheet of plywood and crossed to the lighted doorway, Ordell behind him saying, "Easy now." Max walked in.

He saw Jackie seated at his desk holding a cigarette, her legs crossed. He stepped aside, toward Winston's desk, and saw her looking at Ordell. She wore a man's shirt, very little makeup.

Ordell said, "Girl, you not suppose to smoke in here. Don't you see the sign?"

Max watched Jackie swivel the chair slowly toward the door to the meeting room. It was closed. He saw her gaze raise to the sign.

He saw the door open and saw Ray Nicolet step out of the room and heard Ordell's voice.

Ordell saying, "What's this shit?"

Max turned to look at him and saw Jackie, still with the cigarette, begin to swivel back toward Ordell, Jackie saying, "Ray . . ." without changing her expression, but raising her voice now as she said, "He's got a gun!"

Max saw Ordell's face change. Saw his eyes come open wide with a look of surprise and then panic. Saw him pulling at his shirt to get to the pistol and did have it in his hand, cleared. But Nicolet beat him. Nicolet brought up the Beretta nine from against his leg and shot Ordell in the chest. Shot him three times there in barely more than a second and it was done. It seemed so quiet after.

Nicolet walked over to Ordell, lying in the doorway to the front office. A Sheriff's deputy with a shotgun appeared out of the dark. Then another one. Nicolet looked at them. He stooped and touched Ordell's throat. Stood up and turned to look at Jackie. He didn't say anything. He looked at Winston, standing in the doorway to the meeting room now. Turned again, this time to Max.

"You were with him."

"I went to give him his refund, so he wouldn't have to come here."

"How'd you know where he was?"

"I found out."

"You didn't tell any police? Not even these people" -meaning the deputies-"where you used to work?" Max said, "I thought you wanted him," and kept staring to hold his attention.

But Nicolet turned to look at Ordell again. Something going through his mind. He said, "We don't know who has his money, do we? The marked bills."

Max looked at Jackie. She drew on her cigarette. Neither of them spoke. Nicolet would look in Ordell's car soon enough.

He seemed to want to say something, but wasn't sure how to put it-staring at the man he'd killed.

"You told me," Jackie said to him, "you hoped you'd get him before he got me. Remember that?" Nicolet turned, still holding the gun at his side. He nodded.

"Well, you did," Jackie said. "Thank you."

27

Jackie said, "You finally got the door fixed." "Yeah. You like it?"

"I've driven by a few times."

Max, at his desk, didn't say anything, waiting. "Since the package came," Jackie said.

She stood in the doorway where a man had been killed ten days ago. She looked clean and fresh in white slacks and a bright green shirt, dark sunglasses she removed now and he could see her eyes.

"The mailman usually leaves them downstairs by the elevator, but he brought this one up. Maybe he shook the box-you know, and thought there had to be at least a half million in it."