Jackie Brown (23 page)

Five left in the pack he'd bought this morning before seeing the lawyer about filing, the lawyer suggesting he and Renee sell the house, divide their assets, and that should do it. Then in the kitchen before coming to bed Jackie saying, "This is all you have to do," describing his part in making off with a half million or so. "Okay?"

Nothing to it. If changing your life was this simple, why was he ever concerned about the everyday stuff, writing fifteen thousand criminal offenders? He said to Jackie, "Okay," and was committed, more certain of his part in this than hers. Until she stood close to him in the kitchen and he lifted the skirt up over her thighs, looxing at this girl in a summer dress, fun in her eyes, and knew they were in it together. He did. And was sure of it when they made love, again looking at her eyes.

The times he had doubts, he was alone. Wondering if she was using him and he would never see her again once it was done.

It was 10:45.

He used to think that with the name Max Cherry he should be a character. Max the legendary bail bondsman who told wild stories about skip-tracing, collaring felons on the run, to the patrons of the Helen Wilkes bar. He did tell one-how he drove all the way to Van Horn, Texas, to return a defendant who'd skipped on a five-hundred-dollar bond-and they didn't get it, failed to understand the street value of what that kind of dedication meant. He settled for being a man of his word instead of a character, and that could be why he was here.

Jackie came in with their drinks, the man's dress shirt hanging open. "That was Faron." She handed Max his glass and moved around to her side of the bed. It was 10:51.

"You have a nice chat?"

"Ray just got word they're moving the guns, three guys, and left. So I called Ordell hoping to God he wasn't one of them. We don't want to lose him now, after all this."

Max watched her place her drink on the night table and light a cigarette before slipping into bed, propping her pillows against the headboard.

"He must've been home," Max said.

"At the apartment. I told him he was about to go out of business and he carried on for a while. That's what took so long, getting him calmed down. I told him we'd better bring the money in tomorrow. He said Mr. Walker was in Islamorada, he'd have to get in touch with him. I said, drive down and get him. Take him to Miami and put him on a plane to Freeport, he has to be there to meet my flight. I told him if he wanted his money he'd better get it out of there quick. He said okay, Mr. Walker would take his cut and put exactly five hundred and fifty thousand in my bag. Now I have to get in touch with Ray before I leave in the morning."

So calm about it. Max said, "Why?"

"Tell him it's tomorrow."

"If he's not at the mall, so much the better."

"I want him to be there, that's part of it. Let him search me and see I'm clean."

"You're starting to sound like people I know." Jackie said, "I'm going to tell Ray that Ordell changed his mind. With what's happened he's afraid to bring in all of his money, but will need about fifty thousand for bail, in case he's picked up."

"He'll need more than that."

"Don't be so literal. This is what I tell Ray."

"But you show him the money at the airport."

"Well, you know I'm not going to show him the whole amount. He'll see fifty thousand."

"Where's the rest of it?"

"In the bag, underneath."

"What if he looks through it?"

"He won't. He'll be expecting fifty thousand and there it is, on top. He didn't search my bag the last time."

"You're taking an awful chance."

"If he finds it, I say Mr. Walker put the money in and I didn't know it was there, like the coke." "Then you're out, you get nothing."

"Right, but I tried and I'm not in jail."

"Keep it simple, huh?"

"Exactly." She said, "Oh," thinking of something else. "Is tomorrow okay?"

He had to smile. "I'll try to be there."

Jackie was quiet for several moments smoking her cigarette, staring off.

"It's pretty much the same plan. Your part doesn't change."

"You're gonna have surveillance all over you."

"I know. That's why you don't make a move till I come out of the fitting room."

"In a dress."

"Well, a suit, an Isani I've had my eye on. The only thing I don't like about it now," Jackie said, "Simone's disappeared, and guess who's taking her place. Melanie."

21

The three jackboys in the self-service storage unit, Sweatman, Snow, and Zulu wearing his black bandanna and sunglasses, had brought cardboard boxes to load the different weapons in, wrapping each piece in newspaper. The guns didn't have to be packed too good going from here in the van to halfway down in the Keys and put on a boat. It got so hot with the door closed using flashlights, Zulu turned the van around, drove it partway in, and put on the headlights. There wasn't anybody outside from here to Australian Avenue so what was the difference? When they finished packing the boxes he'd turn the van around again and they'd load it through the rear. When they heard the voice outside they thought it was somebody's radio. When they stopped to listen and heard the voice again they knew what it was, shit, a bullhorn, police telling them, "Come out with your hands up!"

The voice said something about they were federal officers and to lay their guns down and come out one at a time with their hands in the air.

Sweatman said, "How they gonna shoot us, they down the street? They have to be right there in front to do it."

Snow said, "Shit, we got all the guns we need." Zulu said, "Sweat, get in the van and take a look out the back. See where they at."

He had pulled the van far enough into the unit that they could open the doors and get in without being seen. Zulu started looking through boxes, saying to Snow, "Where those throwaway rocket shooters we got out at Big Guy's?"

Sweatman came back and said they had both ends of this street blocked with green and whites and were some of them up on the roof too, laying down up there right across the street. Zulu turned to him with an olive-colored LAW rocket launcher in his hands, a tube twenty-four inches long with a grip, a trigger, sights, and writing on it with pictographs. "How to fire the motherfucker," Zulu said. "Each of us take one and get in the van."

Snow said, "I want my AK."

Zulu said, "We bringing AKs, but this the motherfucker gonna set us free. See, here the instructions."

They all wore flak jackets with identifying letters on the back. Nicolet, ATF, huddled behind the radio cars with an agent from FDLE and an older guy named Boland who commanded the Sheriff's Office TAC unit. They stared at the lighted street of garage doors on both sides to the back end of a van sticking out of one of the units. The surveillance team said there were three of them, young black guys. Two jumped out when the van arrived; the driver backed it in first, then turned it around. Beyond the van, at the opposite end of the street, sets of blue gum balls were flashing. There were about fifty law enforcement officers on the scene.

"If they're all young guys," Nicolet said, "the one I want isn't there, so I'll need to take prisoners. The only problem I see, they have about a hundred and fifty machine guns, a big M-60, grenades, and half a dozen rocket launchers. It could drag on. These guys have more firepower than we do."

The TAC guy said, "But can they shoot?"

"I don't want to find out," Nicolet said. "Before they start firing rockets at us, I thought I'd go up there and toss in a flash-bang."

"The van's in the way," the TAC guy said.

"It's my cover," Nicolet said. "Bounce it in there off the roof of the van. The concussion knocks them on their ass and we'd have about seven seconds to get the drop on them. I need those guys alive."

Zulu had his sunglasses off to read the pictographs printed on the side of the LAW rocket launcher, holding the weapon in the van's headlight beam. "'Pull pin,'" Zulu said. "'Re-move . . . rear . . . cov-er and . . .' "

"'Strap,'" Snow said. "Say remove the rear cover and that strap there."

Zulu said, "Yeah, this thing," and began reading again. "Now. 'Pull o-pen un-til . . .' Shit."

"Say to pull the motherfucker open," Sweatman said.

"It's what I'm doing," Zulu said. "You pull open your own one. Hey, like this."

His LAW rocket launcher was now thirty-six inches long.

Zulu said, "'Re- . . .' The fuck is that word there?"

Snow said, " 'Re- . . . lease.' Yeah, it say to release the . . . something. 'Release the safe-ty.' Yeah, that thing right there. Release it."

Zulu said, "Push it?"

Snow said, "Release the motherfucker however you suppose to release it. I think, yeah, you push it. Then the next word it say to aim. You ready to shoot." Zulu said, "I am? What's this next one say?"

Snow   said,     " 'Squee- . . .'   I           think     it          say 'Squeeze.' "

Sweatman said, "What's it say on top there? That 'Danger'?"

Snow said, "Lemme see. Yeah, it say 'Danger . . rear blast . . .' "

Something hit the top of the van. They heard it and then saw it, a round kind of long thing like a stick of dynamite, bounce past over their heads to land among cardboard boxes. They heard a sound like goof. For maybe two seconds they stood frozen before the concussion grenade exploded with a flash of blinding light and a bang so loud it slammed all three of them against the front of the van.

They were on the pavement now with their rocket launchers and machine guns, dazed, blinking their eyes in the dust clouding the headlight beam, looking up at flak jackets and shotguns.

Nicolet hunched down next to Zulu. He picked up a rocket launcher, glanced at the instructions, and laid the weapon across the jackboy's chest.

"couldn't read it, could you? You dumb fuck-we wondered what you were doing. See?" Nicolet said, "You should never've dropped out of school."

Ordell had Louis meet him at a bar on Broadway in Riviera Beach, all black in here, Louis looking over his shoulder sitting at the bar, Ordell telling him, "You all right, you with me." Ordell was edgy too, in his mind, anxious and smoking cigarettes with his rum drink: wanting to drive by the storage place, see what it looked like, and having to drive down to Islamorada tonight, pick up Mr. Walker, and get him on a plane to Freeport. Everything at once. It would be good, though, to get out of town this evening and not show himself too much tomorrow either.

He said to Louis, "The main thing I want to tell you: Melanie goes in the place where they try on clothes."

"The fitting room," Louis said. "I make sure no suits are around before she comes out."

"Do that," Ordell said. "But then don't leave. You do, she gonna walk with the Macy bag. You know what I'm saying? Take the bag from her and split, don't wait. She give you any trouble, punch her in the mouth. What I mean, you have to take it from her, dig? Else Melanie's gone and it's gone. All of it. Five hundred and fifty thousand, man."

22

Thursday, on the Freeport to West Palm flight, Jackie spent fifteen minutes in the lavatory rearranging her bag. The five hundred thousand she put in first took nearly half the space. She tucked lingerie around the edges, covered the money with blouses and two skirts and tied it all down, tight. The remaining fifty thousand went in last, across the top.

When she came out, a guy who'd been to Freeport to gamble said, "I'm waiting for a drink and you spend half the flight in the can. Soon as we land I'm making a formal complaint."

Jackie said, "Because I was airsick?"

"How can you be a stew if you get airsick?"

"That's why I'm quitting."

"I'm still gonna make the complaint."

"Because I was airsick," Jackie said, "or because I called you an asshole?"

It confused him. He said, "You didn't call me that." Jackie said, "I didn't? Okay, you're an asshole." It was her last flight.

Ray Nicolet was waiting on the top floor of the parking structure. He took the wheels from her saying, "We have to stop meeting like this."

"You said that the last time."

"So? It's true, isn't it? We could meet someplace else when this's buttoned up. What do you think?" "We could, if I'm not in jail."

"Faron called the State Attorney's Office. You were no-filed this morning in circuit court."

Like that-hearing it in a dim parking structure among empty cars. She stopped and waited for Nicolet to look back and pause. "Are you saying I'm off the hook?"

"Free as a bird. I expect you to deliver the goods though, finish the job. How much you have this time?"

"What I told you," Jackie said, "fifty thousand. He's pretty sure he's going to need bail money."

"If a bond is set, which I doubt," Nicolet said. They reached Jackie's Honda. As she unlocked the trunk he said, "Last night we scored what would bring him another two hundred grand, easy, and took three of his boys without firing a shot."

Jackie raised the trunk lid. "But you didn't get Ordell."

"Not yet. One of 'em will give him up. Or the guy you met in the hospital, he's ready to flip." Nicolet placed the wheels in Jackie's trunk and got in the car

with the flight bag. It was on his lap unzipped and open by the time Jackie slid in behind the wheel. He said, "That's fifty thousand, huh?" looking at the packets of hundred-dollar bills, each bound with a rubber band. "It doesn't look like that much."

"I was told ten thousand in each pack."

"You didn't count it?"

"I never have. It's not my money."

"He might've slipped some coke in here. Did you check?"

She watched Nicolet's hand feel through the packets of currency and into the folds of a skirt.

"Mr. Walker promised he'd never do that again."

"Where your curlers?"

"I didn't bring them."

She watched his hand move to a pair of black heels wedged into one side. His fingers touched the shoes, then moved again to pick up one of the packets. He held it close to his ear and riffled the bills with his thumb.

"Ten thousand, right."