She said, “What’s wrong with wanting to do better? I have the gift.”
Eyes wide open, just a girl trying to get ahead in the world. For a moment there Raylan actually felt sorry for her. He said, “But if you guessed…”
“I didn’t. I knew.”
“Did you know where the missing bookend was?”
“I didn’t even think about it.”
“You don’t know what suits you not to know,” Raylan said. “You tell me Harry’s okay, but you don’t know where he is. Don’t you realize that if he’s seen these guys and can identify them, they’ll kill him? Whether they score the money or not. Don’t you know that?”
“He hasn’t seen them,” Dawn said, turning to the window again. “He’s blindfolded.”
“That’s what you’re betting the man’s life on, a blindfold? How do you know he hasn’t seen them?”
“I just do.”
Sounding like a little girl now.
“Tell me where he is.”
Raylan waited.
She looked like a little girclass="underline" at the window in sunlight, her fingers stroking dark strands of hair. She said, “Right before Bobby came you were looking at me-remember? You were trying to tell, even with all that business on your mind, if I had on a bra.” She turned from the window to look at Raylan. “You couldn’t decide, could you?”
Raylan said, “You slip in and out of conversations, from one thing to another…”
“You were about to say ‘like a snake,’” Dawn said, “and changed your mind.”
He watched her come away from the window, past him.
“Where you going?”
“To get ready. I see I’m gonna meet the woman in your relationship.”
Each time she took him by surprise like that, he’d try to keep from asking how she knew. Raylan said, “I’m gonna hide you out in Harry’s apartment, the Della Robbia Hotel in South Beach. I imagine you already know where he lives. Joyce has a key, so I guess, yeah, you might see her.”
“She’s dying to meet me,” Dawn said, at her bedroom door now. “I’ll pack a few things… You go ahead, I want to have my car, case I have to be somewhere.”
Raylan said, “I don’t know…”
And Dawn said, “Bobby’s not coming back. He’s home waiting for you.”
Chip was going through mail Louis had found in the box on the road and skimmed on his way in with it. Mostly catalogs and junk. What Chip would hope to find was a dividend check he could forge his mama’s name on and cash, the checks turning up every now and then. Louis glanced at the front drive on the TV screen, switched the picture to the room-Harry stretched out on his cot-and switched to the front drive again. Louis said, “Bobby should be getting back,” and left the study.
A few minutes later he was back with a tray from the kitchen. Chip said, “What’s this?” as Louis set a plate of food on the chest in front of him.
“Your dinner.”
“I mean, what is it?”
“Pork chops done to a crisp,” Louis said, going over to the desk with the tray. “Butter beans fixed with drippings and okra done in a tangy creole sauce. The okra, man, you have to stir it and stir it.”
“I can’t eat that,” Chip said, making a face.
Louis was seated now, mouth watering and having to swallow, deciding what his first bite would be. The okra. He took some-mmmmm-and said to Chip, “Your tummy acting up on you?”
“Heartburn,” Chip said, touching his chest.
Ever since last night the man had been popping Tums like peanuts, Tums and shots of Pepto-Bismol. He’d taken sick while trying to clean blood from the carpeting, most of it where the S&L man’s head had come out of the blanket bumping down the stairs, Bobby dragging the body and not caring he was leaving a trail; the stains still there like rust spots.
“It’s that microwave shit,” Louis said, “angers your tummy you eat too much of it. I’m gonna cook from now on, fix you some of my favorite dishes.”
Chip was watching him. “How can you eat that?”
“Love it. I acquired the taste learning to be African-American; it’s part of our culture.”
“Nigger food,” Chip said, “if you’ll pardon the expression.”
Louis watched the man go back to looking at mail, Louis deciding not to make something of the disrespect. That was weed talking. The man’s nerves were strung tight and the weed helped him sound like he was one of the guys. Push him, he could go over the edge, run off screaming. Look at that-throwing aside the Victoria’s Secret catalog without even checking out the cute undies. Louis started eating his dinner, mixing the okra and butter beans together and taking big, heaping bites.
Chip said, “Jesus Christ.”
Louis looked up to see him reading a postcard, the man’s eyes glued to it.
“There’s no way he could know,” Chip said. “There’s no fucking way.”
Louis didn’t recall a postcard when he’d skimmed the mail. The man kept staring at it. Louis finally got up, went over, and took it out of his hand. It showed a government building on the front. Louis turned the card over and saw it was made out to Harry Arno at this address on Ocean Drive, Manalapan; it had the zip, everything. The message was short. It said:
Harry-
Hang in there.
Help is on the way.
Raylan
Louis said, “Hey, shit,” grinning, reading it again and then holding the card up to Chip. “You know what this building is? The federal courthouse in Miami. The message is for Harry, the picture’s for us.”
Chip said, “You think it’s funny?”
“You got to appreciate the man’s sense of humor,” Louis said. “What’s wrong with that?”
“He knows Harry’s here.”
“How could he? If he knew, or like he had good reason to believe it? He’d have been here with the SWAT team the day he mailed the postcard. You understand what I’m saying? The man’s trying to get us to jump. Run out the door with Harry and the cowboy’s there waiting on us.” Louis caught movement a on the TV screen, glanced at it, at the black car coming through the shrubs, and said, “Here’s Bobby.”
“He’s the reason,” Chip said, “this whole fucking thing is coming apart.”
“We still in business,” Louis said. “Soon as I get hold of my man in Freeport, make the arrangements, we’re out of here in two days, three at the most.”
Chip said, “But you haven’t talked to him yet.”
“If he ain’t in jail he’ll call me, I left this number. Man has a thirty-six-foot boat.”
Chip was looking at the screen, nothing there to see now but bushes. He said, “That fucking Bobby.”
“I’ll tell you something,” Louis said, “he’s never been what you’d call a favorite of mine neither.”
“I thought you two were cooking something up between you,” Chip said, “and you were gonna cut me out, after I come up with the idea, the whole scheme.”
“That’s your nerves,” Louis said, “they cause you to look over your shoulder and imagine things creeping up on you. We cool, huh? Me and you? Thinking back on all the time we been together, we ever have a problem? You always been the man. See, but now we getting to where I can make this deal with Harry work out how we want it to. What you have to do is trust me.”
He saw the man blinking his eyes, thoughts running around slow-motion in his head.
“You trust me?”
“Yeah…”
“Yeah, but what?”
“That fucking Bobby.”
Louis held up his hand. “He’s coming.”
“She wasn’t home,” Bobby said.
Like that was all he had to report on the subject. Looks at the plates of food, one then the other, and starts to go. Leaving something out, Louis believed, he didn’t want to tell.
Louis said, “Hey, Bobby?” and waited for him to look around. “That’s it, huh, she wasn’t home?”
Now Bobby was looking suspicious. “You want me to tell you again she wasn’t home? She wasn’t home.”