Jackie Brown (10 page)

He brought out his tools only when he needed to use them himself.

Like this evening, getting into Jackie Burke's apartment.

Max drove home seeing her across the table in barroom light, Jackie looking at him the way she did with those sparkly green eyes, looking off at the piano and saying he shouldn't be allowed to play "Light My Fire." Saying "Great," in that same dry tone of voice when he told her she might do a year and a day. Saying "You're as much fun as the cops," when he didn't believe her at first. But pretty soon she was confiding in him and he could feel them getting closer, like they were in this together and she needed him. It was a good feeling. He had watched her eyes to sense her mood. Watched the way she smoked cigarettes and wanted one for the first time in a couple of years. Before they'd left the cocktail lounge he knew something could happen between them if he wanted it to.

He hadn't had this feeling in a long time. Never with a defendant.

Once, during the past two years living alone, he had almost told a woman he loved her. A waitress named Cricket with a Georgia accent. Got that tender feeling one night lying in bed with her, stirred by the way the light from the window softened her hollow cheeks and lay across her small pale breasts. Except the shine was from a streetlight outside, not the moonlight of "Moonlight Becomes You" or "That Old Devil Moon," and realizing this might have stopped him if good sense didn't. Cricket sang Reba McEntire numbers with gestures. She sang that old Tammy Wynette song "D.I.V.O.R.C.E.," would give him a look and say, "Hint, hint." Cricket made him feel good. The trouble was finding something to talk about. It was the same way with Renee. All those years of not talking. He had tried reading poetry to her when they were first married. If she said anything at all after it was, "What's that suppose to mean?"

He hadn't told Renee he loved her in about ten years. He told her a few times when he knew he didn't love her and then quit. What was the point? She never told him. Not even that much in the beginning when he told her all the time, because he did. She was tiny, she was cute as a bug, and he wanted to eat her up. She never said a word making love. She was afraid of getting pregnant; she said a doctor had told her she was too small and it would kill her, or her uterus was tipped or she was afraid of hydrogen bombs; take your pick. It was okay if she didn't appreciate his reading to her. It wasn't romantic poetry anyway, it was mostly Ginsberg and Corso, those guys. He liked them even though he had to face demonstrators in those days with a riot baton, out in the streets being called a pig, and he'd wonder, Wait a minute. What am I doing here? This was before he made detective and liked Homicide so much he was willing to die there. One time he finished reading a poem and Renee said, "You should see yourself."

Meaning a uniformed deputy in dark green reciting poetry, but missing the point entirely that it was one of the Beats.

He remembered a poem more recently by a guy named Gifford called "To Terry Moore" that ended with the lines,

            Tell me, Terry

            when you were young

            were your lovers ever gentle?

He remembered it because he had been in love with Terry Moore in the fifties, right after being in love with Jane Greer and just before he fell in love with Diane Baker. This year he had passed on Jodie Foster, only because he was old enough to be her dad, and fallen in love with Annette Bening. He didn't care how old Annette was.

Jackie Burke had made him think of the poem to Terry Moore. The last part, "were your lovers ever gentle?" On the way to dropping her off to get her car. Jackie telling him she had been flying nearly twenty years and married twice. Once to an airline pilot "who went to prison with a two hundred-dollar-a-day habit." And once to a Brit in Freeport, floor-man at a hotel casino, "who decided one evening it was time to die." And that was all she said about them. He thought of the poem because he could imagine guys coming on to her as a matter of course, before those marriages and in between and maybe during, thirty thousand feet in the air.

She asked in the car as they were corning to the airport if he was married. He told her yes and how long and she said, "Twenty-seven years?"

Almost raising her voice. He remembered that. Making it an unimaginable period of time.

He said, "It seems longer," and in the dark, staring at his headlight beams, tried to explain his situation.

"We started out, I was already with the Sheriffs Office, but Renee didn't like being married to a cop. She said she was worried sick all the time something would happen to me. Also, she said, I put the job first."

"Did you?"

"You have to. So I quit. She didn't like being married to a cop-she hates being married to a bail bondsman. Nineteen years she's been telling people I sell insurance."

Jackie said, "You don't look like a bail bondsman."

Meaning it, he assumed, as a compliment. She didn't say what a bail bondsman was supposed to look like. He imagined she meant a sleazy type, fat little guy in a rumpled suit who chewed his cigar. A lot of people had that picture.

"Renee moved out of the house. She opened an art gallery and has these guys, they look like gay heroin addicts, hanging around her. Twice before, we separated. This time it's been almost two years."

Jackie said, "Why haven't you gotten a divorce?"

"I'm seriously thinking about it."

"I mean before this. If you don't get along."

"It always seemed like too much trouble."

It didn't now, driving home, putting up pictures of Jackie Burke in his mind. The ones where she had that gleam in her eyes, the look saying, We could have fun.

Unless she was appraising him with the look, making a judgment, and what it said was, I could use you.

 Maybe.

 Either way it was a turn-on.

 Max pulled into the drive of the house he and Renee had bought twenty-two years ago, when she was coming out of her decoupage period and getting into macrame, or the other way around. The house was an old-Florida frame bungalow being eaten by termites and almost obscured from the street by cabbage palms and banana trees. Renee had moved to an apartment in Palm Beach Gardens, not far from where Jackie Burke lived-according to her Rough Arrest report. He'd leave the car in the drive while he went in the house, planning to go back to the office later. He was surprised his beeper hadn't gone off while he was with Jackie. Prime time for a bail bondsman was six to nine.

He opened the glove box to get his .38 Airweight. Whenever it was out of his hands for a period of time he liked to check it; this evening, make sure it was his gun the guard at the Stockade had handed him. He felt inside, then leaned across the seat to take a look. The gun wasn't there. No one had touched the car while they were in the hotel cocktail lounge or the alarm would have  gone  off.  They came  out,  he opened the door for Jackie. She got in, he closed the door and walked around to the other side. . . . Maybe the look said, I can take care of myself.

10

It was the kind of building had all outside doors on balconies and at night you'd see these orange lights on every floor up and across the front of the building. Jackie's apartment was on the fourth level you got to by elevator, then mto using the thin little tension tool and feeling around with the feeler pick until you heard the click. Nothing to it. Ordell had checked the kind of lock it was the first time he came here. . . .

Through a little hallway that went past the kitchen into the living room and dining-L. The bedroom and bath were to the left. He remembered she had it fixed up nice but kind of bare-looking, mostly white, drapes over the glass door to the balcony. Ordell pulled the drapes open and could see better, light coming from outside. He sat down on the sofa to wait. Sat there in the dark calculating how long it would take Max Cherry to drive out to the Stockade and bond her out, give her a ride home. . . . Unless she had to get her car. He felt like smiling at the way Max Cherry had accepted the watch as his take for the bond. This place looked cold. Fixed nice, but like she could move out in about ten minutes. Not like a place you called home, with all kinds of shit laying around. He reached over and turned the lamp on.

No sense frightening the woman, come in and see a man sitting in the dark, maybe scream. Best to keep her calm, not expecting harm. See how she behaves first, if she was nervous talking to him. Man, who could you trust these days? Outside of Louis. See? Thinking of Louis right away coming to mind. Knowing him twenty years as a man would never tell nothing on you. Had that old-time pro sense of keeping his mouth shut. Even thinking of himself as a good guy basically, Louis would never snitch you out. Louis could be worth a cut of the score. Not a big cut, more like a nick.

Ordell waited.

Got tired of it and went to the kitchen, found the Scotch, and put some in a glass with ice from the refrigerator. Hardly any food in there, the woman getting by day to day. Orange juice, Perrier, half a loaf of bread. Some cheese turning green. Some of those little cups of nonfat yogurt with fruit in it, the woman watching her weight. He didn't see she needed to worry about getting fat, she had a fine body on her. One he'd wanted to see but couldn't ever get her in a mood to show to him. He'd touch her, tell her, man, she was fine and she'd look at him like . . . not stuck-up exactly, more like it was too much trouble to get it on and she had her laundry to do. Maybe tonight if she came in scared and saw she had to please him . . .

Yeah, it should be dark. Ordell turned the light out in the kitchen, took his drink to the living room to sit down on the sofa again, and switched off the lamp.

He waited.

Finished the drink and waited some more.

At least it was comfortable. He felt himself starting to doze off, eyelids getting heavy . . . eyes opening then, quick, Ordell full awake hearing her key in the lock, Jackie home at last. There she was now in the light coming through from the balcony, her bag hanging from her shoulders, trying to remember-look at her-if she had closed the drapes or left them open. Slipping her keys in the bag now . . .

Ordell said, "How you doing, Ms. Jackie?"

She didn't move, so he got up and went over to her, seeing her face now, no color to it in this light. He came up close and put his hands on the round part of her arms below her shoulders. "You looking fine this evening. You gonna thank me?"

"For what?"

"Who you think got you out of jail?"

"The same guy who put me in. Thanks a lot."

"Hey, you get caught with blow, that's your business."

"It wasn't mine."

Not sounding mean, looking straight in his eyes, like to say it was his fault. Ordell had to stop and think. He said, "Hey, shit, I bet it was the present Mr. Walker was sending Melanie. Yeaaah, he's the one musta put it in there if you didn't. Hey, I'm sorry that happened. I 'magine they asked you all kind of questions about it, huh? And about all that money? Want to know where you got it?"

She didn't answer him.

"Who you giving it to? All that, huh?"

"They asked."

"And what did you tell them?"

"I said I wanted a lawyer."

"Didn't let nothing slip?"

She said to his face, "You're not asking the right question."

Ordell's hands moved up to rest on her shoulders. He said, "I'm not?" feeling her body there under her jacket and the strap of her bag, thin little bones he rubbed with his fingers.

She said to him, "Ask why I was picked up."

"Dog didn't sniff your bag?"

"They didn't need a dog. They knew about the money, the exact amount."

"They tell you how they found out?"

"They asked if I knew Mr. Walker."

"Yeah? . . ."

"I didn't tell them anything."

"My name come up?"

He watched her head go side to side but didn't feel the bones move. His thumbs brushed her collarbone, the tips of his fingers touched her neck, caressed the skin, Ordell seeing how lightly he could touch her, not wanting her to move, try to run, and maybe scream. Her eyes never blinked.

"Say they know about Mr. Walker. Who else?"

It made her hesitate before she said, "The Jamaican, Beaumont."

"What'd they say about him?"

"They'd spoken to him in jail."

Ordell nodded. He'd had that right. "You know what happen to him?"

"They told me."

"Yeah, somebody musta been mad at Beaumont, or got worried about him facing time. You understand what I'm saying? Somebody knowing what he might tell not to get sent away. I suppose they give you all kind of shit then about what they know. Get you thinking you may as well tell what you know, huh?"

Her head went just a little bit side to side.

He brought his thumbs from her collarbone up to her throat and her shoulder with the strap on it moved like she meant to twist away from him, but he held on to her and felt the shoulder ease back. He liked the way she was trying to act cool, staring at him. He liked the way she looked too, her face pure white in the dark, whiter than Melanie's face or any white face he had been this close to, thinking he could put her down on the floor, or he could take her in the bedroom, and after they were done put the pillow over her face and aim the pistol he had with him into the pillow. . . . Man, it was a shame to have to do it. ... He said, "You scared of me?"

Her head went side to side without her eyes leaving his.

He knew she was scared, man, she had to be, but wasn't acting like she was and it made him press his thumbs into her soft skin and tighten up on his fingers, wanting to know what she'd told them and knowing he'd have to take her close to the edge to find out. He said, "Baby, you got a reason to be nervous with me?" He saw her eyes close and open. . . .

And felt what must be her hand down there touch his thigh, brush across it, and move on up and had to admire her using a female way of getting to him, liking it, yeaaah, till something else besides a hand, something hard, dug into him.

She said, "You feel it."