The real estate man said he wasn’t sure, he might’ve read about it.
“Well, that was me. The guy had this big roll of bills in his pocket. I knew it was there, I saw it, but he didn’t want to take it out. I said, ‘Okay, I’ll give you three seconds.’ By the time he started to reach in his pocket I was at three and it was too late. So I blew him away. You understand? I won’t hesitate to blow you away you give me any trouble. Or I find out you have cops in your office pretending to be real estate salesmen. Shit, I know a cop when I see one. Look him in the eye I can tell in a minute. See, you won’t know me from any other home buyer that comes in, but I’ll know who you got there in the office and if any’re cops. If I see any I won’t do nothing then, I will later on, some other time. Say you come out of your house to go to work, I could hit you with a scope-sight rifle. You understand? There’s no way you can fuck with me. Ten thousand when I come to collect or you’re a dead real estate man.”
That was how he’d set it up four days ago.
The guy should have the money by now, ten thousand, a figure Richard had used in estimating how much he could make robbing a bank in every state of the union, a half million dollars minus Alaska. Except that robbing a bank by yourself you only had time to hit one teller and the most he’d ever scored was $2,720 from a bank in Nor-wood, Ohio. Another thing different about this one, besides the score, you had to look the part of who you were supposed to be, walk in that office as a young home buyer. The other day he’d swiped a sport coat at Sears, a gray herringbone, the sleeves a little too long but it was okay. Donna got excited and bought him some shirts and ties, thinking he was dressing to look for a job.
So here he was sitting in Henry’s drinking beer, wondering if he might go semicasual and wear the it’s nice to be nice T-shirt under the sport coat. Thinking of that but mostly thinking about getting a car for tomorrow. He couldn’t use Donna’s. Once he drove away from the real estate office with all that money he was gone. If somebody read the license number they could I.D. him through her. Or if he took her car Miss Corrections would turn him in for walking out on her. So he’d have to steal one. Go out in the parking lot after it got dark, see if any fool left their key in the car. People did that, rings of keys they didn’t want to carry— stick it under the seat. Otherwise, since he didn’t have a tool to punch out the ignition, he’d have to wait for people to come out after they finished their dinner and get in the car with them. Or him or her. That meant taking the person on a one-way trip in the country. But shit happens, if that’s the way it had to be. At least he could pick and choose.
He watched an ’86 Cadillac pull into the lot and park. Baby blue with an Ontario plate. Richie liked it right away. He watched the guy get out of the car, short and stocky, his hair slicked back, adjusting his coat, Jesus, getting ready to make his entrance. Richie waited. There he was, the hostess taking him to a table by the front windows. Shit, the guy looked like an Indian. Most likely got paid today. Got all dressed up in his suit and tie to come in here for the dinner.
Richie liked the car and liked the guy more and more the way he sat there all alone ordering one drink after another, still drinking as he ate his dinner and the river and the trees outside turned dark. The guy would look up at the running lights of a freighter going by or stare across toward Walpole Island where he probably lived—look at him—had a job up at the oil refinery for good money, got paid and came over here to spend it, the only Indian in the whole place. It’s nice to be nice, Richie thought, staring at the guy and working himself up to what he was going to do. But I got news for you . . .
Armand drank Canadian Club, doubles, good ones. He told himself it was to keep his mind alive, thoughts coming, as he had a conversation with himself and made some decisions. He asked himself, Why would you want to live here? Answered, I don’t. Asked himself, Why do you want Lionel or anybody to want you to live here? That one, facing it, was harder. He took a drink and answered, I don’t. I don’t care or want to live here or ever come back. He knew that but had to hear it. No more Ojibway, no more the Blackbird. He knew that too. What was he losing? Nothing. You can’t lose something you don’t know you have. What would he get out of being Ojibway? He watched a down-bound ocean freighter, its lights sliding through the trees, and thought, Learn to do the medicine and turn yourself into a fucking lion, man, or anything you want. That ship, tomorrow sometime it would be going by Toronto, then going by Kingston, and imagined his brother seeing the ship from a window in the prison. Armand had never visited his brother; he didn’t know if you could see the lake or the St. Lawrence River from the prison; but the ship had made him think of his brother and that life they were in, beginning from the time they were young tough guys and liked having people afraid of them. He raised his glass to the waitress for another drink and looked around at people eating, nobody alone, nobody afraid of him. There was one person alone over there, a guy with long hair staring at him, a guy making muscles, it looked like, the way his bare arms were on the table, something written on his shirt, a guy who’d be at home at the Silver Dollar. He’s trying to tell you something, Armand thought, and turned to look at the river again, through his own reflection on the glass, not interested in anything the guy had to tell him. The guy was a punk. The ship was gone, down in the channel now through the flats, all that marsh and wetlands for the big-shot duck hunters from Detroit. He could go back that way tonight, keep going fifteen hundred miles south and spend the winter in Miami, Florida. There were Italian guys there if he needed something to do for money. Finding work was easy. And thought in that moment, You didn’t get rid of the gun. Anxious to come here and see the grandmother. It was under the front seat as he came through the tunnel from Windsor to Detroit and told the customs guy he was visiting and got waved on. If the customs guy had wanted to look in the car for any reason and found the gun, it would have been a problem, yes, but the car was still registered to the son-in-law and the gun was registered to no one. The Browning with two shots fired. Throw it in the river when you leave. It was on his mind now to do that. Still, he took his time and had two more drinks with his deep-fried pickerel and ate every bite of the fish and French fries with a big plate of salad. It was good and he was feeling good as he left the restaurant, looking over at the punk’s table but the punk wasn’t there.
He was outside standing by the Cadillac, wearing a work jacket now over the T-shirt with the words on it. Waiting to give you some shit about Indians, Armand thought. But could he be that kind of punk? He wasn’t big enough. He said, “I’m looking for a ride.” Starting to grin.
“Good luck.”
“No, you say, ‘What way you going?’ And I say, ‘Any way I want.’ Look it here.” He held open his jacket to show the grip of a revolver sticking out of his pants. A checkered-wood grip on a nickelplate Armand believed was a .38 Special made by Smith & Wesson. He saw the gun and saw it’s nice to be nice on the guy’s T-shirt, beneath the jacket held open. The guy was older than he had appeared in the restaurant, maybe thirty years old or more, with that tough-guy stare and a diamond pinned to his ear, things that told you he was a punk. Armand walked past him to get in the car and the guy went around to the other side.