Harry waited again, hearing only the guy’s chains rattling, and pulled off his bathing cap.
King sat across his cot in the trash-wrappers and empty containers-head and shoulders against the wall, chin down on his chest. The towel covering his head-silver tape around it-showed traces of blood and there was blood on his shirt. He had on black-and-white golf shoes.
Harry cleared his throat and saw King’s head raise.
“I’m Harry Arno. Your name’s King?”
The guy didn’t answer, surprised or maybe thinking it was some kind of stunt, take him off-guard. But then he said, “Who are you?”
“I just told you, Harry Arno. I been here… What day is it?”
“Thursday. You chained up?”
“Yeah, but I can take my blindfold off when they’re not in the room.” He watched King sit up and begin picking at the tape. Harry said, “I wouldn’t do that. They like to keep you in the dark for a while, I think to get you disoriented.”
“Where are we?”
“Someplace on the ocean.”
“That tells me a lot.”
“You know as much as I do,” Harry said. He didn’t care for the guy’s attitude. Still, if they were going to be together… “You were playing golf, huh, when they picked you up?” The guy didn’t answer, busy working on the tape, and Harry thought, No, he wears the golf shoes for tap dancing. Ask a stupid question… He watched the guy pull the towel and the tape from his head and Harry recognized him right away, Ben King, his picture in the paper lately, the S&L crook, dried blood in his hair, looking this way now.
“Who’re those guys?”
“I just met them myself seven days ago,” Harry said, “but I haven’t seen them yet.” He held up his bathing cap. “I have to put this on, anybody comes in.”
“I saw them,” King said. “I won’t forget them, either.”
The wrong attitude.
“I’d put the blindfold back on,” Harry said, “if I were you,” knowing King wouldn’t do it, the type of hairy-assed individual he was, used to having his way.
“How long have you been here?”
See? Didn’t even listen.
“This is my seventh day,” Harry said.
“How much they want from you?”
“All they can get.”
He saw King becoming interested in him. “Yeah? What do you do?”
“I’m retired,” Harry said, not feeling a need to confide in this guy, this crook. He began to wonder how the black guy was going to work his scam, whisper things to him with King in the room. It was something to think about. But if the black guy could cut out his partners to deal with him one-on-one, he could do the same with King.
“You ever play the Breakers,” King said, “the ocean course?”
Harry shook his head. “Never have.”
“I was on a straight par four,” King said, “lining up my approach. If I got anywhere near the pin I was going for a bird…”
Louis took Chip to the kitchen to make drinks, but mostly to get the man away from Bobby. Louis got out the ice, put it in three glasses and poured Scotch, telling the man, “The way you see something work in your head, don’t mean it can work that way when you go to do it. Understand? Bobby say they gonna be talking anyway, comparing their situations, asking each other if they gonna pay and how much, all that shit.”
“They ought to be in separate rooms,” Chip said.
“That’s right, but what you have is this cheap motherfucking video system, a camera in the one room. I told you I wasn’t gonna keep running up and down the stairs, check on the room don’t have the camera. Man, a cut-rate operation like this, you play it as you go.”
“Bobby’s got money,” Chip said.
“You want to ask him for it?”
Louis saw the man thinking of something else, sipping his drink and thinking.
“I have to pay Dawn. She called, she’s getting goosey.”
“You want me to talk to her?”
“It was on my mind-you and Bobby got back and I mentioned it to him. He’s gonna go see her?”
“Want to scare her more’n she is, huh? Well, Bobby’s the man.” Louis picked up his drink and the one for Bobby.
Chip said, “The marshal came back.”
Louis paused. “He see you?”
“Rang the bell, went around and knocked on the patio doors.”
“I want to know did he see you?”
Chip shook his head.
“We can talk about it afterwhile,” Louis said. He turned and led the way from the kitchen across the hall to the back study, the TV room.
Bobby was standing, watching the screen. He said, “Look at this.”
Louis turned to the screen with a drink in each hand. “Yeah? You said they be talking.”
Bobby said, “That’s all you see? I told him don’t take off the blindfold. He has it off.”
Louis said, “No, I told him don’t take it off.”
Chip said, “This’s what happens you start changing things.”
Louis said, “I knew we gonna have trouble with this one.”
Bobby said, “No, we’re not,” and walked out of the room.
Chip said, “Where’s he going?”
“Gonna beat him up,” Louis said. “Want to watch? Be good if the man fights back, huh?”
Louis’s eyes held on the screen; he didn’t look at Chip or hear him say anything. What Louis saw, waiting for the door in the hostage room to open:
Ben King sitting hunched on his cot and Harry Arno, the bathing cap off, sitting hunched on his, the two hostages facing each other, Ben King doing the talking, gesturing, the man taking his left thumb in his right hand-look at him-like you grip a golf club, taking a short swing now, showing Harry-the man, blood in his hair, blood on his shirt-telling Harry about his golf game. It’s what he was doing. Wait. Looking up now. Harry looking up and putting his bathing cap on quick and then sitting back, and here was Bobby in the room, Bobby from behind going to Ben King, Ben King starting to push himself up from the cot, Bobby grabbing him by the hair to raise his face and punch him, what it looked like, but it wasn’t happening. Right there Chip said, “Jesus!” loud, because Bobby’s right hand was behind him, coming out from under his Latino fiesta shirt with a piece Louis hadn’t seen before, not the Browning, one that looked like it, an automatic that size Bobby put in Ben King’s face, King all eyes seeing it, mouth coming open, and Bobby shot him. They heard the sound of it like somewhere in the house far away. Louis watched Bobby turn and look up at the camera, his face on the screen with no special kind of expression, like saying to them, hey, nothing to it, and now he was gone. Louis saw Ben King lying dead across his cot in the trash, blood on the wall, man, blood all over it, Harry Arno sitting there made of stone with his bathing cap on.
Louis looked at Chip staring at the screen.
“You wanted Bobby Deo, you got him.”
Lay it on the man, then go speak to Bobby. He was in the mother’s bedroom now, the show over, but still holding the piece when Louis walked in and turned on the light. Louis stood watching him, not saying anything just yet, wanting to hear what Bobby had to say.
Nothing. Laying the piece on the dresser, he looked over at Louis and Louis said, “What you got there?”
Bobby seemed to shrug, subdued after killing a man. He said, “A Sig Sauer. I’ve had it.”
“You had it at the golf course,” Louis said. “I see you getting out of the car without a piece… but you had that on you, huh? Have it on you all the time. You wanted to shoot the man right then, didn’t you? Out on the links. Why was that, you hadn’t shot anybody in a while?”
“I didn’t like him,” Bobby said.
“I got that impression.”
“You the one told him don’t take off the blindfold. Didn’t you say, or you shoot him?”
“In the head,” Louis said. “Laying it on to make my point.”
“Well, you tell them what you gonna do, man, you have to do it. You know? Or else don’t say it.”