Jackie Brown, Page 23

  His beeper went off on her nightstand.

  Anita said, "Shit." Nicolet said, "Keep hold of it, hon, and we won't lose it." He dialed the number showing on his beeper and was surprised when Jackie Burke answered. He asked where she was and got another surprise.

  "What're you doing there?"

  "Ordell called and left a message on my machine.

  He said I have to sign something so he can get his money back, for my bond."

  "You don't sign anything."

  "I didn't think so. I have a feeling he wants me to bring the rest of his money here, from Freeport. What do I do?"

  "He's gonna be there?"

  "He said about eight."

  Nicolet glanced at the clock on the stand.

  "Why didn't you call me sooner?"

  "I just found out. Will you come, please?" Anita said, "Pleeease."

  Jackie said, "What?"

  "Is Max there?"

  "No, but the other guy is."

  "I'll be there right away. Hang on."

  Jackie said, "Hurry."

  Nicolet hung up the phone. "I have to be there and get some backup in the next fifteen minutes." Anita said, "You might as well, hon. You're not doing much good here."

  Ordell drove. He'd take this VW over to the beach mall after and put its license plate on the Mercedes. Get on the turnpike and head north into the night.

  "All the time I've known her," he said to Max, big next to him in the little car, "I never heard her sound scared like that. Ordinarily, man, she's cool. All she had to do was take a taxicab to where my car's at and have it for me. She would not do it."

  He felt like talking while Max Cherry wasn't saying a thing. He did take a cigarette, asking for one as Ordell lit up.

  "How come you have that sign in your office, no smoking, if you smoke?"

  "I started again," Max said.

  "Yeah, I remember you didn't have an ashtray for me that first time I come in. I told you I had cash to put up as collateral and you said oh, use that coffee mug there. I could've used anything I wanted. I said that time, you have ways to skim money, don't you? 'Cause you all crooks in that business. The woman tells you her scheme, man, your greedy eyes light up. You both of you plan to rip me off, I know that, and lost your nerve, huh? Gonna have to stay a bail bondsman, deal with the scum while you try to act respectable, huh? The rest of your life."

  Max Cherry sat there dumb, the man knowing what he was.

  They were approaching Banyan. Max said, "It's the next street."

  Ordell said, "I know where it is." Max said, "Turn left."

  "I know where to turn."

  They parked in the lot next door, the VW angled against the side of the storefront building. Max got out and stood by the trunk. He watched Ordell adjust the pistol stuck in his waist as he approached, pulling his shirt over it.

  "What do you need that for?"

  "You never know, do you?" Ordell started toward the front of the building.

  Max waited. "What about the fifty thousand?" "We leave it in the trunk," Ordell said, "till I see she has my money." He led the way around front to where MAX CHERRY BAIL BONDS was painted on the window. Ordell said, "Now I want you ahead of me." Max opened the door covered with a sheet of plywood and crossed to the lighted doorway, Ordell behind him saying, "Easy now." Max walked in.

  He saw Jackie seated at his desk holding a cigarette, her legs crossed. He stepped aside, toward Winston's desk, and saw her looking at Ordell. She wore a man's shirt, very little makeup.

  Ordell said, "Girl, you not suppose to smoke in here. Don't you see the sign?"

  Max watched Jackie swivel the chair slowly toward the door to the meeting room. It was closed. He saw her gaze raise to the sign.

  He saw the door open and saw Ray Nicolet step out of the room and heard Ordell's voice.

  Ordell saying, "What's this shit?"

  Max turned to look at him and saw Jackie, still with the cigarette, begin to swivel back toward Ordell, Jackie saying, "Ray . . ." without changing her expression, but raising her voice now as she said, "He's got a gun!"

  Max saw Ordell's face change. Saw his eyes come open wide with a look of surprise and then panic. Saw him pulling at his shirt to get to the pistol and did have it in his hand, cleared. But Nicolet beat him. Nicolet brought up the Beretta nine from against his leg and shot Ordell in the chest. Shot him three times there in barely more than a second and it was done. It seemed so quiet after.

  Nicolet walked over to Ordell, lying in the doorway to the front office. A Sheriff's deputy with a shotgun appeared out of the dark. Then another one. Nicolet looked at them. He stooped and touched Ordell's throat. Stood up and turned to look at Jackie. He didn't say anything. He looked at Winston, standing in the doorway to the meeting room now. Turned again, this time to Max.

  "You were with him."

  "I went to give him his refund, so he wouldn't have to come here."

  "How'd you know where he was?"

  "I found out."

  "You didn't tell any police? Not even these people" -meaning the deputies-"where you used to work?" Max said, "I thought you wanted him," and kept staring to hold his attention.

  But Nicolet turned to look at Ordell again. Something going through his mind. He said, "We don't know who has his money, do we? The marked bills."

  Max looked at Jackie. She drew on her cigarette. Neither of them spoke. Nicolet would look in Ordell's car soon enough.

  He seemed to want to say something, but wasn't sure how to put it-staring at the man he'd killed.

  "You told me," Jackie said to him, "you hoped you'd get him before he got me. Remember that?" Nicolet turned, still holding the gun at his side. He nodded.

  "Well, you did," Jackie said. "Thank you."

  Chapter 27

  Jackie said, "You finally got the door fixed." "Yeah. You like it?"

  "I've driven by a few times."

  Max, at his desk, didn't say anything, waiting. "Since the package came," Jackie said.

  She stood in the doorway where a man had been killed ten days ago. She looked clean and fresh in white slacks and a bright green shirt, dark sunglasses she removed now and he could see her eyes.

  "The mailman usually leaves them downstairs by the elevator, but he brought this one up. Maybe he shook the box-you know, and thought there had to be at least a half million in it."

  "Less ten percent," Max said.

  "Yeah, your fee. I had to figure that out, since there wasn't a note, no explanation. Only this isn't a bail bond, Max."

  "I hesitated taking that much."

  "You worked for it-if that's all you want."

  He felt awkward sitting here; he thought if he didn't say much he'd be okay. She'd realize he understood how it was. But she didn't make it easy the way she was looking at him, with that gleam in her eyes. She said, "I thought you were quitting the business," and he shrugged.

  "I don't know."

  "How old are you, Max?"

  It surprised him, because she knew.

  "Fifty-seven."

  "And you don't know what you want?"

  He could answer that, but he hesitated and she said, "I know what I want. I'm leaving, I have my things in the car. Why don't you walk out with me? I want to show you something." Still he hesitated and she said, "Come on, Max. I won't hurt you." She smiled.

  So he smiled and got up from the desk. He didn't want to; he felt let down. Still, he'd prepared himself and was resigned, sensing all along and despite moments of optimism this was the way it would end, if it ever got this far. Or if in fact, thinking of Nicolet, they were all the way out of it.

  She said, "I saw Ray at the hospital the other day, when I went to visit Faron."

  It amazed him and made him think of the time she said they were alike. Their minds working the same way.

  Jackie saying, as they walked through the front office and he held the door for her, "Ray's working in a new area, looking for all kinds of weapons the Desert Storm sol
diers are bringing back as souvenirs, Russian AK-47s, he said even live hand grenades. They found four pounds of plastic explosive one of the guys shipped home to his wife and she showed it to a neighbor, not having any idea what it was."

  They walked along the front of the building. "And, he's after a guy who owns a gun shop he says is 'woefully and wantonly' selling assault rifles to minors. He actually used those words. He called the guy who owns the gun shop a 'whackjob' and said he's going to take him down if it's the last thing he does."

  "Did you tell Ray you were leaving?"

  "I told him I might. His ex-wife was with him. Anita. Attractive but, well, a little overdone."

  Max had the feeling he'd missed something. Maybe they should sit down and talk and he'd ask her questions. But they came around the corner of the building to the lot and he was looking at a black Mercedes convertible with its top down. He said, "That's Ordell's."

  "I'm borrowing it," Jackie said. "They confiscated his Volkswagen, with the money in it. This one's sort of left over, you might say. The registration's in the glove box." She looked at Max for a moment. "What's the matter? Haven't you ever borrowed someone's car?"

  He said, "Not after they're dead."

  She walked around to the other side and looked across the low black Mercedes at him. "Come on, Max. I'll take you away from all this."

  "Dealing with scum," Max said, "and trying to act respectable." He saw Jackie frown, her nice eyes narrowing for a moment. "That's how Ordell described my situation."

  "And you like it?" Jackie said. Max hesitated.

  "Where would we go?"

  "I don't know," Jackie said, and he saw her eyes begin to smile. "Does it matter?"

  ELMORE LEONARD has written thirty-four novels, including such bestsellers as Cuba Libre, Out of Sight, Riding the Rap, Pronto, Maximum Bob, Get Shorty, and Glitz. Many of his books have been made into movies and he has written numerous screenplays. He lives with his wife, Christine, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

  Table of Contents

  Start