The Exotic Darla said, “Yeah?”
“That’s the end of the story.”
“You’re not gonna buy me a drink, are you?”
“No, I’m not,” Jack said. “You want to hear another Roy story?”
She thought a moment. Maybe that’s what she was doing, Jack wasn’t sure. She said, “No, thank you,” swiveled around on the stool, looking over the room, raised both arms to adjust the halter holding her tired breasts, and left him.
Roy came down the bar holding a bottle of vodka by the neck. He poured a shot into Jack’s glass, then twisted off another one, Jack saying, “Darla’s got bruises on her arm. You notice?”
“Bumping into the wrong guys. That girl’s a sack of roaches.”
“I read in the paper that in the U.S., I think it was just this country, a woman is beaten or physically abused something like every eighteen seconds.”
Roy said, “You don’t tell me.”
“Somebody made a study.”
Roy said, “You wouldn’t think that many women get out of line, would you?” He walked off.
Jack watched Roy making a drink down the bar. He wondered why he remembered a short piece in the paper about women being abused but hardly anything at all about Nicaragua.
When he came back Roy said, “Delaney, you know what broads do when they get sick? I’ve never seen it to fail, they throw up in the washbasin. They don’t throw up in the toilet, like you’re suppose to.”
“That’s interesting,” Jack said. “You think that’s why they get beat up?”
“Who knows why. They’re all different and they’re all the same.”
“Still hate women, huh?”
“I love women. I just don’t trust ’em.”
“I met one you can.”
“Yeah? Good for you.”
“And heard an amazing story you aren’t gonna believe.”
“But you’re gonna tell me it anyway.”
“You’d be hurt if I didn’t. You’d pout and probably never speak to me again. It’s an opportunity story, as in chance of a lifetime.”
“Is it about money?”
“Five million, give or take a few bucks.”
“That’s money. Where is it?”
“You’re jumping to the best part. It belongs to a type of individual, Roy, that if you can take it from him you’d not only never have to work again as long as you live, you’d be performing a service to humanity. The kind a thing that makes you feel good all over.”
Roy said, “You understand I serve humanity every day for eight hours and it doesn’t make me feel worth a shit. They come in, a guy wants a Sazerac. He has no idea in the world what a Sazerac is, but he’s in New Orleans. I serve him something with a lot of bitters in it. Another guy comes in, looks around, he whispers to me, ‘You got any absinthe?’ He says, ‘They don’t have none at the Old Absinthe House. They tell me it’s against the law to serve it.’ I say how do I know, to this little pussy fella, you’re not a cop? He shows me he’s from Fort Wayne, Indiana. I glance around the bar, get out a clear bottle I make up that’s got Pernod in it and a piece a deadwood with a caterpillar stuck on it. Asshole drinks five of ’em at five bills a shot. Serve humanity, I serve ’em any fucking thing they want.”
Jack said, “That’s why I’m talking to you, Roy, you’re a sensitive, understanding person. This guy gets finished collecting his five million he’s most likely gonna hop in a private plane and leave the country with it. We get a half share we split three ways.”
“Who’s we?”
“You and I, maybe Cullen.”
“Cullen, they let him out?”
“Medical release, so he can get laid.”
“What was he in, twenty-five years?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Jesus, they’d a had to shoot me off the fence.”
“Well, he’s out and feeling pretty good.”
“What’re we talking about, a bank, for Christ sake?”
“Not anything like it.”
“Then what do you need Cullen for?”
“I think he’d enjoy it. Why not?”
“You’re feeling pretty good yourself, aren’t you?”
“I’ve been born again. Since yesterday I have an entirely new outlook on life.”
“This guy’s gonna collect five mil you say, give or take… Are we talking about cash, with bank straps on it?”
“You’ve never heard of one like this, Roy. It’s never been done before.”
“It has to do with the funeral business.”
“Not unless somebody gets shot.”
“This doesn’t sound like you atall, Delaney.”
“I told you, I’m a different person. You want to know what it is, or you rather guess?”
“I know every kind of scam or heist there is grown men have tried to pull and fell on their ass doing.”
“All except this one.”
“Have you seen the guy? You know who he is?”
“I met him today.”
“Yeah?… Well, what is he?”
“He’s a Nicaraguan colonel.”
Roy stared at Jack. He turned then, walked down the bar, made a drink, rang it up, and came back.
“You met a woman you say you can trust and she told you an amazing story I’m not gonna believe. How to pick up five mil.”
“Give or take.”
“How come she gets half? The guy her husband?”
Jack shook his head. “She needs it to build a hospital, for lepers.”
Roy paused, then nodded. “A leper hospital, yeah, that’s a good idea. You know why lepers never finish a card game?”
“They have to quit,” Jack said, “when they throw in their hands.” He looked at Roy with the same deadpan expression, because he knew he had him and knew they were going to play this one and might even have a pretty good time working it out.
He said, “What I need at the moment is a police officer. Or someone who knows how to speak in that same ugly, obscene way they have of addressing offenders.”
ROY’S KILLER LOOK DIDN’T work on lavatory doors or in creeping traffic, so he’d have to kick something or pound the dashboard of Jack’s VW Scirocco with the edge of his fist. It was a tan ’78 Scirocco, faded but still mean-looking, Jack Delaney had bought used and now had 153,000 miles on the odometer. He wasn’t worried Roy could hurt the car hitting it, but he’d jump when Roy yelled, “Move it, goddamn it,” the man’s impatience coming out unexpectedly, in spurts; then Roy would be quiet for a while. Jack got them out of the narrow streets of the Quarter, across Canal, and through the new downtown that looked like every other big city. They were heading uptown on St. Charles Avenue, once again in New Orleans, before he told Roy about the deal, why the guy was collecting five-million dollars.
Roy would say, “Now hold on a minute,” and ask a question. Jack would answer it or he’d say, “Don’t you know what’s going on in the world, Roy? Christ, don’t you read the paper? You never heard of the Sandinistas, for Christ sake?” Lucy had given Jack a book of color photographs called Nicaragua that showed all these young guys in sport shirts and baseball caps wearing masks, hoods with holes, or scarves tied around their faces, and armed with all kinds of dinky weapons, Saturday Night Specials, .22 rifles… A pickup army fighting well-armed uniformed troops wearing helmets, and it was a kick looking at pictures of these guys in print sport shirts and bandit masks. Jack could see himself one of them if he were Nicaraguan and had been there in ’79. There were pictures of bodies, too, death and destruction, fires, refugees running and crowds of people waving red and black flags. There was a picture of the guy they hated and finally overthrew, ran out of the country, Somoza, wearing a white suit with a sash. Jack could tell by looking at Somoza he was that type of person who was set in his ways and didn’t know shit.
Roy said he had a snitch one time who was a Nicaraguan. When he was working undercover with the felony action squad. He said there were plenty of Nicaraguans in New Orleans.