“Where is it?”
“In the bank. Barnett branch on Collins.”
“What about in the Bahamas, in the Swiss bank?”
“The Bahamas?”
“Freeport. You forgot about that one. What I’m gonna do,” Chip said, “is give you one day, twenty-four hours, to come up with a way of drawing all the funds out of the Bahamas account and giving it to us, in cash. I mean, of course, without anyone else knowing about it. If I don’t like the idea, Harry, you’re dead. You pay up, you go home. So it better be the best fucking idea you ever had in your life.”
Harry said, “Do I get my car back? It’s brand-new.”
He heard the guy say, “That’s what you’re worried about?” And felt the guy’s hand on his shoulder, pushing on it as he got up from the cot, the guy saying, “Twenty-four hours, Harry,” and a few seconds later heard the door open and close and the key turn.
Harry waited. He said, “You still there?” He waited again, a little longer, and said, “You still there, asshole?” and peeled up the edge of the bathing cap.
He tried now to picture the guy from the glimpse he got of him, no one he’d ever seen before, but a type: Miami Beach, there were hundreds of those skinny middle-aged guys around with tans, retired, nothing to do; they sat on benches in Lummus Park watching the models getting their pictures taken. But this one-in a place right on the ocean, carpeting that had to run seventy, eighty bucks a square yard easy, expensive fixtures in the bathroom, a marble floor… Did the guy live here? He didn’t sound like a wiseguy, he sounded like a guy trying to act cool. Giving him twenty-four hours to come up with an idea-that was bullshit. If they knew he had an account in the Bahamas, all they had to do was get him to transfer the money from his account to their account. Open one-what was hard about that?
Harry ate an Oreo cream cookie thinking: They start out with this great idea, how to score a bundle. Propose a deal, dress it up. If it works and they get the money they let you go. He believed they would, otherwise why bother with a blindfold? But the black guy had his own proposition, cut the other guys out, and if he did he’d have to kill them. So that’s the kind of people you’re dealing with, Harry thought. Some guys with an idea who most likely never tried it before, felt their way along without knowing shit about what they were doing. So you don’t know either, Harry thought. It could come apart for any number of reasons: not trusting each other, or one of them tells somebody else, the wrong person, the cops enter the picture and these guys panic… Harry thinking, The cops should be on it by now anyway, for Christ sake. What were they doing? Buck Torres, he’d know you’re missing. Joyce would call him first thing. It got Harry excited. But then he thought, No, she wouldn’t call Buck, she’d call Raylan… Well, that was okay, get the cowboy on his trail. But would he have his heart in it? That fucking cowboy might just as soon you stayed missing.
No, he’d get on it. Wouldn’t he?
What Raylan did was drive along Ocean Boulevard looking for vacant property, someplace he could park and cut through to the beach. As a last resort he could go up to the shopping center by the Lantana bridge and park there; he didn’t think it was too far, maybe a mile. He watched his odometer. At six-tenths of a mile he came up on a bunch of Australian pines, big and scraggly, bent from years of wind off the ocean, the trees lining an empty lot of scrub growth. It looked good. He’d leave the Jag here and approach Ganz’s place from the ocean side. Take his boots off to walk along the beach.
Chip was back in the study keeping watch, the hostage room still showing on the TV screen: Harry Arno, without the bathing cap, sitting on his cot eating a cookie… eating another one, digging into the package of Oreos again, Jesus, biting into another one. It made Chip hungry to watch. Not for cookies, though, popcorn. Nothing hit the spot after smoking weed like hot buttered popcorn laced with garlic salt. Thinking about it he had to swallow. Sit here and shove handfuls of popcorn into his mouth while he kept watch. He remembered there was a big jar of Newman’s Own popcorn, unopened, in the kitchen and it gave him a good feeling. He preferred Paul Newman’s to Orville Redenbacher’s, though Orville’s wasn’t bad. It was nice to be a little stoned and know the situation was in hand. Watching Harry the bookmaker eating Oreo creams. Chip grinning now-hey, shit, look at him, still eating. An Oreo wouldn’t be bad… Or peanut brittle-there was a box of it in Harry’s room, right there, on the floor. Jesus, peanut brittle, he could taste it. That’s what he needed, something sweet. First scan the grounds, then go upstairs and get the peanut brittle. Fuck Harry, he had his cookies. Chip pushed a button on the remote. Nothing going on out front. Now the back of the property…
And Chip felt himself jump, the same way he’d jumped ten minutes ago when he looked at the room upstairs and didn’t see Harry. What he saw this time, out beyond the patio, was the guy in the hat again, the U.S. marshal, by the trees at the edge of the yard, the guy pulling on his boots, looking toward the house and now coming this way past the pool, coming across the patio, the guy in the hat and dark suit in full view now, close, filling the screen, looking up as he approached and now he was out of the picture, beneath the video camera mounted above the French doors.
The phone rang and Chip reached for it.
It was in his mind he didn’t want the guy to hear any sounds from inside the house and had the phone in his hand before he realized his mistake. What he should’ve done, let the guy hear the phone ring and no one answer… It wasn’t too late to hang up. He started to when he heard, “Chip?” and thought he recognized the voice but wasn’t sure.
“Who is this?”
“Who do you think?” Dawn said.
“Listen, I can’t talk to you right now.”
“Someone’s there?”
Chip watched the TV screen, the empty patio, wanting the guy to appear again, see him walk away. All the doors were locked; he’d made sure of that after Louis and Bobby left. The guy wouldn’t break in-he couldn’t, he was a federal officer, for Christ sake.
“Chip? I’m at Chuck and Harold’s…”
“I know-something came up, I couldn’t make it.”
“You don’t have my money, do you?”
“Tomorrow, how’s that?”
“You’re stringing me along…”
“No, I called, you’d already left,” Ganz said.
“I’ll check my machine.”
“I didn’t leave a message. Listen, I wondered, has that guy been back?”
“What guy?”
“With the hat.”
“No.”
“You said he was a fed, some kind of federal cop.”
“Yeah?”
“How’d you know?”
“I guess the same way I know he’s looking for you now. He hasn’t found you yet, but he’s getting close.” Dawn paused and Chip waited. She said, “He isn’t by any chance there right now, is he? Outside, looking around…?”
“I haven’t seen him.”
“You mean you haven’t spoken to him,” Dawn said.
The front door chimes rang in the hall.
Chip switched the picture on the screen from the patio to the front entrance and there he was, waiting, touching his hat as he looked up at the video camera, Dawn’s voice saying, “But you have seen him. Chip? Tell me the truth, aren’t you looking at him right now?”
He didn’t answer.
“Chip?”
He was watching the guy, watching him turn finally and walk off the front stoop, gone, out of camera range, and Chip switched the picture to the driveway. Nothing. No sign of him. Chip thinking, He’s gone around back. And Dawn’s voice came on again.
“Chip? He knows we know each other.”
“How could he?”
“It’s what he does. He finds out things.”
“All right, let’s say he’s on it. But you haven’t seen me. Listen, I’m not even here. Louis told him I’m down in the Keys, doesn’t know when I’ll be back.”
“He’s talked to Louis,” Dawn said, “but not to you. Is he still there?”