“Are your chops okay?” Jimmy says.
“Yeah, they’re fine,” Danny says. “Why?”
“Mine are a little overdone.”
“They have to cook pork that way. Because of trichinosis,” Danny says.
“They don’t have to burn the fuckin things,” Jimmy says.
“Mine are fine,” Danny says, and shrugs.
“I got a cholesterol problem,” Jimmy says, “I eat red meat—”
“Pork is white meat.”
“Yeah, bullshit,” Jimmy says. “I eat beef, pork, maybe once a month, twice if I wanna live real dangerously. So when I order pork chops, I don’t expect to get burnt shoe leather. I mean, this is a treat for me, eating pork.”
“So send them back if they’re not the way you want them,” Danny says.
“I’m almost finished with them already.”
“Then finish them already.”
“I’m just saying,” Jimmy says, “this is supposed to be a fuckin treat here. Instead, they’re burned to a crisp.”
The men eat in silence for several moments.
“Also,” Danny says, “there’s more than one of them. That’s what you said, right, Rafe?”
“Yeah, but one of them’s a chick. Maybe both of them, for all I know,” Rafe says. “Maybe these two chicks got it in their heads to steal my sister-in-law’s kids. They know she’s coming into big money…”
“You’re sure about that, huh?”
“Positive. It’s a double indemnity policy. It’ll pay two-fifty.”
“When it pays,” Danny says.
“If it pays,” Jimmy says.
“It’ll pay,” Rafe assures them. “Besides, who cares about the policy? We’re talking about the fake money here. We’re talking about two-fifty large already in the hands of whoever’s got the kids. We’re talking about retrieving that money.”
“Who we don’t even know who they are,” Danny says.
“Miss?” Jimmy says, and raises his hand to the waitress. She signals that she hears him, finishes taking the order at a table across the room, and then comes over to them.
“Freshen it?” she asks.
“Please,” Jimmy says. “Also, my chops were overdone.”
“Gee, I’m sorry about that,” she says.
She’s maybe eighteen years old, little blonde girl in a yellow uniform, big tits and frizzy hair, Southern accent thick as molasses.
“You’da told me, I’da ast the chef to do them all over again,” she says. “You want me to do that now?”
“No, that’s okay,” Jimmy says.
“Won’t take a minute,” she says.
“I’m fine, thanks,” Jimmy says.
“Y’all want more coffee, too?” she asks the other two men.
They both nod. Danny, in fact, lifts his cup and puts it on her tray, smiling. He fancies himself a ladies’ man even though he’s ugly as homemade sin. That’s another thing Jimmy doesn’t like about him. His vanity. Vanity just ain’t appropriate on a man. The waitress fills their cups, returns Danny’s smile even though he’s ugly, and leaves the table. Jimmy is having very serious doubts here about going into an enterprise with a man like Danny, who calls him Jimbo and James and who thinks he’s handsome as hell when he ain’t. Also, kidnapping is a serious offense.
“Also,” he says, thinking out loud, “suppose there’s more than just the two chicks? Or suppose it’s just the black chick your sister-in-law knows about, plus some guys, let’s say. Maybe some hardened criminals, let’s say, and not some small-time drug shits like the three of us. We go after that money…”
“He’s got a point, Rafe. We could be walking into a hornet’s nest here.”
“Or not,” Rafe says. “Instead, we could be walking away with two hundred and fifty thou in bills that look so real you can lick them off the page.”
“If it’s true.”
“It’s what the cops said.”
“Cops,” Jimmy says.
“You trust what cops say?” Danny says.
“The bills have to look good,” Rafe says. “You think they’d endanger those kids’ lives? Come on, be reasonable.”
“He’s got a point, James,” Danny says.
“So let’s say, for the sake of argument,” Jimmy says, “these bills do look like the real thing…”
“Exactly my point,” Rafe says.
“And let’s also say, for the sake of argument, that we manage to somehow get our hands on these bills…”
“And split them three ways, don’t forget.”
“What does that come to?” Danny asks.
“Eighty-three K for each of us.”
“Comes to a big thousand bucks a year,” Jimmy says.
“I don’t follow.”
“Assuming Florida’s as tough on kidnapping—”
“We don’t know that for sure.”
“—and assuming I live to be eighty-three years old,” Jimmy says.
“Behind bars,” Danny says, nodding in agreement.
The table goes silent.
“So what are you saying here?” Rafe asks.
“I’m saying count me out,” Jimmy says.
“Me, too,” Danny says.
Rafe sits alone at the table long after his so-called friends have got into their car and driven off. Man, he thinks, you can’t count on a fucking soul these days. Asshole buddies in the lockup — well, not literally — they get a taste of fresh air and then chicken out of the sweetest little setup anyone could ever want. Two-fifty large sitting out there someplace in the hands of two dizzy chicks, just waiting to be ripped off. Well, he can’t do it alone, that’s for sure, everybody needs their back covered, man.
He drinks a second cup of coffee, checks the cash Danny and Jimmy left on the table as their share of the bill and tip, adds his own share to it, and then calls the little blonde waitress over.
“S’pose I oughta get out of here, huh?” he says with a grin. “Before you start charging me rent.”
“Oh, don’t let that worry you none,” she says. “We got plenty to do here ’fore we close.”
“What time would that be?” he asks.
“We’re usually out of here by ten.”
The clock on the wall reads five minutes to nine.
“What do you do then?” he asks. “After you get out of here?”
She knows at once he’s putting the moves on her. She takes a deep breath to fill out the uniform chest, rolls her big blue eyes, and says, “Well, usually, my boyfriend picks me up here.”
“How about tonight? Is he picking you up tonight?”
“I reckon,” she says, without a trace of regret. “Did you want me to take this now?” she asks, and lifts the plate with the cash and the bill on it.
“Sure,” he says. “Thanks.”
Her rejection annoys him even more than his so-called pals’ did. Telling him, in effect, she prefers a pimply faced kid who probably slings burgers at McDonald’s to a sophisticated thirty-five-year-old man who’s been around the block a few times, sweetheart, and who can teach you some tricks you never learned here at the old Redbird Café. He’s beginning to regret having left a fifteen percent tip on the plate. Ten percent would’ve been enough. More than she’d see down here in a week. Pay for a fuckin two-week vacation. He leaves the table before she comes back.
His rig is parked outside.
He settles himself in the cab, starts the engine, and then turns on the cell phone. Nothing he can do down here anymore, he might as well head back home. He dials his home number, lets it ring three times, and is surprised when a voice he doesn’t recognize answers.