The Friends of Eddie Coyle (9 page)

“Uh huh,” Foley said.

“So this afternoon,” Dillon said, “I’m in there as usual and listening to the feature at the Rock and getting my brains whipped
out as usual, and probably I sold four dollars’ worth of beer all day, nobody drinks a straight shot any more, and who comes in but the fellow that Jimmy Scal calls about yesterday. So I finish out of the money as usual, old Babe never did me no good, and then I go up to him and he’s got this kind of a tense expression on his face, like he thinks maybe he’s got his tit caught in the wringer, and I say to him, you know, what’ll you have and all, and he orders a shot and a beer, bless my soul. So I bring it up, and I’m giving him a little gas, you know, one thing and another, and then I remember, because I got so many people calling in, I remember that this guy is one of the guys they been calling in for. So I say to him: ‘Hey, Jimmy Scal get in touch with you?’

“Well,” Dillon said, “he gets this look on his face and he says: ‘No, I didn’t know he was looking for me.’ And from the way he looks I think it’s probably just as well he didn’t, he looked like somebody knocked the whey out of him.

“So I say: ‘Yeah, he called last night, looking for you. Said it was important. He didn’t get in touch with you, huh?’ See, I’m giving it to him a little bit.

“ ‘No,’ he says, ‘no, I told you he didn’t. He leave a number?’

“So I’m standing there, still playing Mickey the Dunce, all these guys running around like mad all over the countryside, keeping in touch by calling me up, I practically haven’t got time to pour the booze, I’m so busy answering the fucking phone, but nobody trusts me all the same, see, I’m just the switchboard operator. So I’m entitled to some of my own. And I say: ‘Jesus, no. I asked him for one and he says to me, he says he’s leaving and just to tell you it’s important, he wants to talk with you.’

“That party sits there,” Dillon said, “and all of a sudden, whomp, he’s got that shot down and the beer running right after
it, and I actually think he’s getting white. ‘Do it again, quick,’ he says, ‘gimme another one.’ So I pour him another one. He gets back on that one just as fast, throws some money onna bar and backs off the stool, you know, like he hadda go to the john and quick, too. ‘I’m leaving,’ he says. ‘Around an hour or so, I’ll call back in, see if anybody called, and if they did, you tell me, and when they do, well, say I’m going to the place and I’ll be there as soon as I see a fellow. Okay?’

“Okay with me, is what I say,” Dillon says, “and he goes out. Now what do you make of that?”

“Who was this party?” Foley said.

“That’s what interested me,” Dillon said. “It was Eddie Coyle. Funny, huh?”

“The Duck sent me,” Jackie Brown said to the battered green door on the third floor landing of the tenement house. There was a strong smell of vegetables around him.

The door opened slowly, without any sound. Light trickled out around the edge and Jackie Brown’s eyes refocused again in the thick air. He could see the side of a man’s head, one eye and an ear and part of the nose. At waist level he saw two hands gripping the stump of a double-barreled shotgun that was less than a foot long. “What does the Duck want?” the man said. He hadn’t shaved for a few days.

“The Duck wants me to help him sometimes,” Jackie Brown said, “and I did. Now he wants you to help me, on account of it.”

“What kind of help exactly?” the stubbled man said.

“Suppose I was to say I wanted ten pieces and had cash to pay
for them right now?” Jackie Brown said. “Would that help you out?”

The door opened fully and the stubbled man backed away from it, still holding the shotgun at waist level. “Come in,” he said. “I assume you know what I can do with this thing if I was to decide I didn’t like what you were saying. Come in and tell me what you got in mind.”

Jackie Brown entered the apartment. It was furnished with white shag wall-to-wall carpeting, heavy orange drapes, and black chairs. There was a large, low table made of glass and chromium before a black leather couch. There were gold and orange pillows on the couch. A girl with long, blonde hair, wearing a white cashmere jumpsuit, unzipped deeply in the front with no bra under it, sat curled up on the couch. From hidden speakers, Jackie Brown heard Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones singing. Illuminated by a globular white lamp hanging from a silver arm was a poster that said in orange on white: “Altamont. This Is The Next Time.”

“Pretty nice,” Jackie Brown said.

The stubbled man said: “Leave us alone, Grace.”

The girl arose and left the room.

“Let’s see the money,” the stubbled man said.

“Let’s talk about what the money’s for,” Jackie Brown said. “I want ten pieces, thirty-eights or better. I want them now. The Duck says you have them.”

“How long you know the Duck?” the stubbled man said.

“Since I got grabbed at the Weirs about five years ago and he was in the next cell with me,” Jackie Brown said.

“You still ride?” the stubbled man said.

“No,” Jackie Brown said. “That was before I heard about making money. I was just having fun then.”

“You see any of the guys?” the stubbled man said.

“I saw some of them a couple years ago,” Jackie Brown said. “I happened to be up around here doing a little business, and I see a lot of hogs around this place outside town, so I stop, pass the time of day, and it turns out to be Lowell, they got a charter, finally. The big fellow was supposed to be in town.”

“He was,” the stubbled man said. “They had a council of war.”

“In the sand pit,” Jackie Brown said. “Yeah, I know. Some of the Disciples and the Slaves, I heard they were looking to do some business with me, but I said, I sent the word back, no, I was through with that, and anyway, I was going to trade with anybody, and keep in mind I dunno which one you was with, I was to trade with anybody, I’d stay with the Angels. All of my friends, the guys I knew that stayed with it, they’re with the Angels, and you don’t, you know, you don’t go back on that.”

“You do any business?” the stubbled man said.

“Hey look,” Jackie Brown said, “now why don’t you put that fucking thing down so we can talk. I’m in kind a hurry. I got to see a man a good bit south of here and I want to get some god-damned supper some time tonight. No, I didn’t sell nothing to the Angels. The kind of stuff I handle is sidearms, not like that piece you got there. The Angels didn’t want any of that, that stuff I was trading.”

The stubbled man pushed the safety on the shotgun. He lowered it, but kept it in his hands. “I think I can probably get you the ten,” he said. “It’ll be five bucks and I got to warn, the stuff is very hot. And we got to take a ride for it. Cash in front.”

“Cash in front,” Jackie Brown said. He produced his wallet and removed a packet of fifty-dollar bills. He counted off ten of them.

“Haven’t you got anything smaller?” the stubbled man said.

“No,” Jackie Brown said. “It’s American money. Besides, you wouldn’t want no tens or twenties anyway. There’s a hell of a lot of bogus flying around in tens and twenties. Fifties’re nice and safe. How much of a ride?”

“About an hour,” the stubbled man said. “Grace, I’m going out. I’ll be back.”

“Which direction?” Jackie Brown said.

“Why?” the stubbled man said.

“Because if it’s south I’d take my car and follow you,” Jackie said. “I already told you, I got to go back the other way tonight.”

“You’re not taking no car,” the stubbled man said. “We’ll go in my car. Never mind where we’re going. Come on, out the back way.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jackie Brown said, “by the time I get fucking home tonight, it’ll be morning.”

In Desi’s Place on Fountain Street in Providence, Jackie Brown found a kid with greasy brown hair and a bad complexion. He was wearing a cheap, plaid sport shirt and chino pants and he needed a shave. He looked worried. He was sitting alone in a booth in the back of the restaurant.

Jackie Brown stopped at the table and said: “If I was telling you I was looking for a guy that was in the Marines with my brother once, you think you’d be able to help me?”

The kid’s eyes filled with emotion. “I was getting worried,” he said. “You were going to be here at seven-thirty. I had three plates of eggs so far.”

“You should lay off the eggs,” Jackie Brown said. “They make you fart worse’n beer.”

“I like eggs,” the kid said. “Especially, what I mean is, all we
get’re them powdered ones, that’re always scrambled. Every time I get liberty, I go out and have myself some eggs.”

“You get your cookies too?” Jackie Brown said.

“Huh?” the kid said.

“Never mind,” Jackie Brown said. “I didn’t come fucking down here to talk about fucking eggs. I came down here to do something. Let’s do it. Where do we go?”

“Look,” the kid said, “I don’t know if they’re still there. I mean, it’s almost ten o’clock and all. I didn’t have no way to check with them. We’re supposed to be there by eight-fifteen. I didn’t know what to do.”

“Have we got to drive some place?” Jackie Brown said.

“Sure,” the kid said. “That was the plan. They let me off here to wait for you and they went, you know, and I take you there and we get there about eight-fifteen and take care of it. I mean, I understood that was the way we were going to do it. We’re just late, is all. I’m only telling you, I don’t know if they’re still there. Only thing we can do is go see. It’s not my fault.”

“Where’ve we got to drive to,” Jackie Brown said, “and don’t tell me it’s south of here.”

“Well we have,” the kid said. “We got to go down the road to where we were going to meet. That was the way we were going to do it.”

“Christ,” Jackie Brown said. “I been on the goddamned road all day. Well, come on.”

The kid was very impressed with the Roadrunner. “How much did it cost you?” he said.

“Look, I don’t know,” Jackie Brown said. “I bought it about a year ago. Four grand or so, I guess.”

“Has it got the magnum mill?” the kid said.

“Hemi,” Jackie Brown said, “three-eighty-three hemi. It goes.”

“How come you got the automatic?” the kid said. “I had one, I’d want the Hurst shifter in it.”

“You wouldn’t want it once you started buying clutches for it,” Jackie Brown said. “You let that thing out a few times and pretty soon you got this loud noise in the scatter shield. Or else she misses a shift on you and you got valves coming up through the hood like bullets. The Torqueflite’s good enough, you get a high-ratio rear end and positraction it, and she’ll wind out pretty good. Where’re we going?”

“Look,” the kid said, “you take the freeway south. You want to, with this thing we can be there in about fifteen minutes.”

“I don’t want to,” Jackie Brown said. “I get pinched tonight with what I’m carrying, I’ll never see the sun shine again. Legal limit all the way.”

“Shit,” the kid said. “I always wanted to see what one of these things can do.”

“Well I tell you,” Jackie Brown said, “you get me, say, another twenty-five or thirty of these rifles and you can get one of your own and see for yourself. But I’m Mister Lawabiding tonight, and that’s all there is to it.”

The Roadrunner went off at the Warwick-Apponaug ramp of Interstate 495 and burbled through the quiet streets. “You go down here about a mile or so and when you’re almost into East Greenwich, you take a left. You got to keep your eyes open, though, because it goes down by the water there and then you hook a hard right and go up a dirt road.”

“Where the fuck’re you taking me?” Jackie Brown said. The car lurched into a narrow street that twisted down a steep hill. Overhanging evergreen branches brushed the roof and sides of
the car. The headlights covered the tops of the trees now and again as the car jounced. At the foot of the hill the road ended at a small red building and a series of yacht slips. Several small quahaug boats lay comfortably at anchor in the dark water.

“You take the right here,” the kid said. “You go up about a hundred yards and you come to a clearing. That’s where they are. It’s a horse farm in back of here. You can rent horses and go riding.”

Jackie Brown nosed the Roadrunner into the dirt parking area in front of the red building. He shut off the lights. He put the car into reverse and backed it around. When he finished, the car was pointing up the hill they had just descended. The moon reflected on the water of the harbor. Jackie Brown put the transmission in Park. He opened the window and let salt air into the car. “Get out,” he said.

“No,” the kid said, “up the hill there.”

“Right,” Jackie Brown said. “Get out and go up the hill there, and get your friends and the rifles, and come back down here and we’ll do business. Here, not there.”

“Why?” the kid said.

“Because I think you need exercise,” Jackie Brown said. “I’m afraid of horses. I like the moonlight. And I’m not so fucking stupid as to drive this car into the woods to find two other guys with machine guns who know I’ve got money. This life’s hard, but it’s harder if you’re stupid. Now you go and get them, and I’ll be waiting here. When you come back I’ll tell you what to do next. Move.”

The kid got out and shut the door. Jackie Brown reached over and locked it. From the glove compartment he removed a chrome-plated forty-five automatic. He switched on the courtesy
lights, checked the safety on the automatic, worked the slide back and jacked a round into the chamber. He released the slide and then let the safety off. He put the pistol on the dashboard. From under the dashboard he unclipped a chromium spotlight. He plugged it into the cigarette lighter and placed it on the dashboard next to the pistol. The hemi muttered quietly. He could hear the small boats working against their lines. He stared carefully up the road.