Jackie Brown (18 page)

Ordell moved away from the window as he started in, saying, "Big Guy's been training, getting ready for the black revolution." Ordell playing with the zipper tab on his coveralls, zipping it up, zipping it down. "He hears us saying we shall overcome and knows it's gonna happen."

Louis had looked over his shoulder at the window. He heard Ordell, but not that popping sound outside. It had stopped. He saw the two bikers by the gunrange counter, maybe reloading.

Ordell saying, "It won't be like the A-rab war out in the desert. Unh-unh, the nigger war's gonna be in the streets. Gonna be a job stopping us natives, huh, man?" Ordell provoking the guy, saying, "You think you and your racist brothers can handle it?"

Gerald said, "You talking to me like that in my home?" Lines in his face drawn tight. Fired up now. "Why'd you come here, bringing your whore? To get your black ass whipped? I'll do it for you, you want."

Ordell had his coveralls zipped down to his waist, his hand going inside. It was about to happen. Ordell was going to shoot the guy. Louis felt it and wanted him to come on, hurry up if he was going to do it. Louis anxious-he had to look out the window again, quick, check on the bikers.

They were leaving the gun range: two heavyset guys coming with pistols and rifles.

Louis turned from the window. He said, "Those guys are coming," trying to be cool about it, wanting Ordell to know without throwing him off.

But it did, it stopped Ordell and he looked over, his hand still inside his coveralls.

In that moment Melanie yelled, "Shoot him!" Louis saw her pulling the knit bag from her shoulder, that much, before he swung the Mossberg at Gerald, putting it on him as the man got to Ordell and slammed a fist into him. It drove Ordell back to land hard in a leather chair, the Colt auto cleared, in his hand, and Gerald took it away from him: punched him in the mouth, twisted the gun from his hand, and threw it over on the sofa, out of the way. He got into a crouch then and hooked his fist into Ordell's face, then threw the other hand, bouncing Ordell's head against the brown leather cushion.

Melanie yelled it again, "Shoot him!" and Gerald paused, sinking to one knee as if to rest, then to look over his shoulder.

At Melanie, Louis thought. But the man was looking this way, right at him, staring. Louis squeezed the grip and saw the red laser dot appear on Gerald's forehead. Gerald grinned at him.

"You got the nerve? Asking have I ever looked death in the face. Shit, you ain't ever seen any combat, have you?"

Melanie's voice said, "What're you waiting for?" Gerald turned enough to look at her. "He's got buckshot in there, honey. How's he gonna get me without hitting his nigger friend?" He said to Louis, "Am I right? Shit, you don't have the nerve anyway."

Louis went for him, raising the Mossberg to lay it across his head, aiming at that crew cut, and caught the man's shoulder. Gerald rose up in his GI T-shirt, all arms, grabbed the barrel and gave it a twist, and Louis, hanging on, was thrown against the chair on top of Ordell. Louis slid off, scrambled out of the man's reach to have room to move. Got to his feet . . . Gerald was standing with his back to him.

Gerald, and now Louis, watching as Melanie's hand came out of her knit bag with a stubby bluesteel automatic. Gerald said, "Now what is that you have, some kind of low-cal pussy gun?"

Melanie was holding it in both hands now, arms extended, aimed at Gerald.

He tossed the shotgun to land on the sofa, looked at Melanie and said, "Okay, now you put that down, honey, and I won't press charges against you." Confident about it, as though it would settle the matter. Melanie didn't say anything. She shot him.

Louis felt himself jump-the sound was so loud in that closed room. He looked at Gerald. The man hadn't moved; he stood there.

Melanie said, "I'm not a whore, you bozo."

Christ, and shot him again.

Louis saw Gerald grab his side this time as if he'd been stung.

She shot him again and his hands went to his chest and his knees started to buckle as he moved toward her and she shot him again: the sound ringing and ringing in this room full of guns and animal heads,

until it faded away and the man was lying on the floor.

Ordell said through his bloody mouth, barely moving it, "Is he dead?"

Melanie said, "You bet he is."

Ordell said to Louis, "They coming?" And to Melanie, "Girl, where'd you get that gun?"

Louis was at the window now.

He saw the two bikers standing in kind of a crouch with their rifles, shoulders hunched, looking this way, nearer the house now than the gun range. He saw them out there in the open, cautious. Saw them both look toward the driveway at the same time and start to turn in that direction, raising their rifles. Louis heard the sound of automatic weapons, not as loud as he heard them in Ordell's gun movie or in any movie he had ever seen, and watched the two bikers drop where they were standing, seem to collapse, fall without firing a shot, the sound of the automatic weapons continuing until finally it stopped. Pretty soon the jackboys appeared, the kids with their Chinese guns, curved banana clips, looking at the men on the ground and then toward the house.

Louis wondered if combat was like that. If you had a seat and could watch it.

He heard Ordell say, "They get 'em?"

Louis nodded. He said, "Yeah."

And heard Ordell say, "Man, my mouth is sore. I think I'm gonna have to go the dentist."

Heard him say, "Now I have to get those boys to load up the van. We going home in Louis's car, if it makes it." Heard him say, "You ever shoot anybody before?"

And heard Melanie say, "Hardly."

He watched the jackboys poke at the bikers with the muzzles of their guns. Now Ordell appeared, walking up to them, and it surprised Louis; he hadn't heard Ordell leave the room. Louis turned from the window to see Melanie on the sofa, still holding the pistol.

She said, "Why didn't you shoot him?"

Louis said, "You did all right."

Melanie looked at Gerald on the floor. She said, "I don't mean him."

17

Jackie didn't see Ray Nicolet until she came off the elevator in the airport parking structure, Tuesday afternoon. He said, "We have to stop meeting like this," deadpan, posed against the front fender of a Rolls.

She was supposed to smile, so she did; because he was young, he was having fun being a cop, and because she had to be nice to him. She could smile, too, at his swagger, coming to take the wheels from her in his cowboy boots, a gun beneath that light jacket, stuck in his jeans.

"I thought you'd be waiting in Customs."

"We don't need to bring them in," Nicolet said. "This is ATF business. How was your flight?"

"Smooth, all the way."

"I imagine you're glad to be working again."

"You'll never know," Jackie said, walking with him now along the row of cars.

"We have the money here?"

"Ten thousand."

"Anything else? Weed, coke?"

"No, but I can get you some."

"I'll toke once in a while if it's there," Nicolet said. "You know, like at a party. But I won't buy it, it's against the law."

He placed the wheels in the trunk of the Honda and brought the flight bag in the front seat with him. Jackie slipped in behind the wheel. Opening the bag he said, "Three-ten PM," and gave the date and location, where they were. "I'm now taking a manila envelope from the subject's flight bag. The envelope contains currency . . . all the same denomination, one-hundred-dollar bills. Now I'm counting it." Jackie said, "What're you doing?"

He showed her the mike hooked to his lapel, then pressed the palm of his hand over it. "I'm recording."

"You said you were letting this one go through." "I am. Don't worry about it."

"Then why're you being so official?"

"I don't want any surprises. Every step of this goes in my report."

She watched him count the bills, dab each one with a green felt-tipped pen, and describe where he was putting the mark, ". . . on the first zero of the numeral one hundred in the upper left corner." He finished and said, "I'm putting the currency back in the envelope, ten thousand dollars. The subject will deliver the money in . . ."

Jackie said, "A Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bag," smoking a cigarette now.

"A Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bag."

She gestured to several bags on the back seat.

"A large black bag with handles and red lettering," Nicolet said, took the recorder from his coat pocket, and turned it off. "Okay, we can go."

"You're not coming with me, are you?"

"I'll be along," Nicolet said.

"What time you have to be there?"

"Four thirty. I'm meeting a woman."

"What's her name?"

"He wouldn't tell me. Will you be alone?"

"Don't worry about it. The woman leaves, somebody'll be on her."

"But you're not going to stop her," Jackie said. Nicolet had the door open and was getting out.

"Are you?"

He stuck his head back in. "Why would I do that?"

Max got to the mall at four, parked by Sears, and went in through the store. He'd stop and see Renee, talk to her, get that over with. Tell her he had to leave if she started one of her monologues. All that time he could never think of anything to say to her, she never had trouble talking to him. Always about herself.

Jackie had said four thirty. Watch the way it works. A woman would come up to her table or sit at the one next to it. There would be lots of people, she said, the cafe area busy from noon on. If he came early, look for her at Saks.

The sign on the showroom glass said DAVID DE LA VILLA in dark green, with dates.

A white cloth covered the library table in the center of the gallery, the walls hung with green paintings, the busboy's cane fields, Renee peering naked from one. . . .

Too small to see from the entrance, through the showroom glass, but that's where she was-on the wall to the right, the third canvas. Max entered. The olive pot just inside seemed to hold the same cigarette butts, gum wrappers, the Styrofoam cup-no more, no less. He saw Renee.

Coming out from the back with a tray full of cheese and crackers. She looked up and saw him and looked down again.

He said, "Renee?"

She said, "Oh, it's you," placing the tray on the table, centering it.

He wondered how he could be anyone else standing here.

"It's nice to see you too."

She avoided looking at him now. "I have an exhibit opening at five." Getting that tray exactly in the center, an inch this way.

"I know," Max said, "but I'd like to talk to you."

"You can't see I'm busy?"

"With the cheese and crackers," Max said. "I know they're an important part of your life."

"What do you want?"

He hesitated. The busboy was coming with a silver tray and a coat over his arm. Max waited, looking at Renee waiting for the busboy. Renee wearing a gauzy white gown to the floor he thought of as a flowerchild dress, or the kind women dancing around Stonehenge in the moonlight wore. Renee making up for lost time. Max thinking, Like all of us. Now David de la Villa arrived with a tray of raw vegetables surrounding some kind of creamy dip. He placed the tray on the table and put on the coat, a tux jacket, an old one, over a yellow tank top he was wearing with jeans frayed at the knees. He said to Renee, "Is he bothering you?"

Nothing here made sense. What if he was bothering her? What could this guy do about it?

"We're talking," Max said.

Renee shook her head. "No, we're not." And her pert little cap of black hair moved, a sprig of earthmother green in it, no strands of gray showing, they were gone. She turned to leave, green loop earrings swinging. "I told him we're busy."

"You heard her," the busboy said.

Max stood there puzzled, staring at this freak in the tux staring back at him, but aware of Renee leaving them and he said after her, "It's important."

She paused long enough to look back and tell him, "So is my show."

Familiar? I'm working. Well, I'm working too. I'd like to talk to you. I'm busy. I'm filing for divorce. . . . That might get her attention. He turned to the

busboy, who irritated him more than anyone he could think of in recent memory.

"You know what you look like?"

"Yeah, what?"

The guy standing hip cocked, waiting.

Max hesitated. Because the guy could look whatever way he wanted, he was the show, he was putting the art lovers on and making out. . . . Or, the guy had talent, he knew how to paint, and Max, in his seersucker jacket and wing-tips, didn't know shit. That was a possibility Max could look at like a big boy and admit. Even somewhat proud of himself. So he said, "Never mind," and turned to leave.

"I see you around here again I'm gonna call security," Max heard that irritating fucking busboy say and almost stopped. "Have them throw you out." But he kept going. The bond for first-degree murder, if you could get one, was fifty thousand.

Four thirty on the dot, Jackie picked up a couple of egg rolls and an iced tea at China Town and walked past the semicircle of cafe counters with her Saks bag, on display in her Islands Air uniform. Next, she moved through the maze of aisles in the center area, beneath the giant gazebo, before choosing a table and slipped in behind it to sit against a planter, able to see what was going on around her. She thought she might spot Nicolet; Max, if he was able to make it; but didn't count on picking out any ATF agents, assuming Nicolet had people with him. She didn't put a lot of trust in anything he told her. He did say someone would follow whoever picked up the money. But that didn't mean another ATF agent. Jackie had a hunch Ordell would send the woman he lived with, the one who answered the phone, said he wasn't there, and hung up. Fifteen minutes passed. Jackie finished her egg rolls and lit a cigarette.

A slender young black woman holding a full tray and a Saks bag hanging from her hand said, "This seat taken?"

Jackie told her no, sit down, and watched her unload the tray. Tacos, enchiladas, refried beans, a large-size Coke, napkins, plastic utensils . . . "You're hungry," Jackie said.