Riding the Rap (9 page)

W
hen Raylan introduced himself to Ms. Ganz, she looked at his I.D. and his star and said, “Thank God. I call the police every day and you're the first one to come.”

The old lady sat in a wheelchair, cloth straps around her like a seat belt to hold her in. One of the nurses had told Raylan Ms. Ganz was eighty-five and she looked it except for her blond hair, a white wine color, he realized must be a wig. There was the wheelchair and an oxygen machine by the bed, otherwise this room—with Lake Worth out the window and Palm Beach
across the way—reminded Raylan of a hotel suite he'd gone into one time to make an arrest.

He said, “Ms. Ganz, you call the police?”

The old lady looked past him at a nurse, a big black woman, coming in with roses, dozens of white roses in a vase she placed on a dining table full of magazines and photos in silver frames. Raylan watched her pick up the vase of roses already sitting there, the flowers barely starting to wilt, to take out with her.

Ms. Ganz said, “Victoria, are those from Warren?”

Victoria said yes ma'am, they were, and left.

“Victoria's from Jamaica,” the old lady said, and smiled, looking at the roses. “From Warren.”

Her husband's name. The woman living in the past.

“Every week he sends me four dozen roses.”

Raylan said that was nice, flowers made a room . . . it made the room cheerful. Ms. Ganz said the flowers had been coming every week for as long as she'd been here. Raylan didn't ask how Warren Ganz worked it, being dead. He stepped over to smell a rose, show some interest, and had to look at the framed photographs then, all of the same woman, Ms. Ganz at different ages. Ms. Ganz in big hats, Ms. Ganz by an old-model Rolls in a big hat, with a man and a small boy, the woman wearing a big straw summer hat in that one and holding flowers. It made Raylan think of her property so overgrown and was about to ask if she'd hired a yardman, but she spoke up then.

“Will you talk to them, please?”

He turned to see her looking up at him, helpless in her chair. “Talk to who?” Raylan said.

“I can't take much more. Will you tell them to stop it?”

He couldn't help feeling sorry for her, poor old lady in her curly wig; tied up. “You say you call the police?”

“Every day. First it was my underwear. I ask Victoria, I ask Louise, I ask Ada, ‘What in the world is happening to my underwear?' They say oh, I'm imagining things. I put my underwear underneath the bed wrapped in newspaper. They found it. They've stolen my underwear, my good shoes, a lovely pin my grandmother gave me when I was a little girl, all my towels I brought from home, my piano—”

“Your piano,” Raylan said, “you had it here?”

“Right there by the window. That's how they got it out. My friends here, they used to come by every day and ask me to play. Their favorites were ‘Indian Love Call' and ‘Rose Marie,' different ones Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy sang together. I have the records, too. ‘Oh, Rose Marie, I love you. . . .' I woke up from my nap, I couldn't believe it. Two colored men I know are Jamaican, because I see them around here, were picking up the piano and shoving it through the window. I said, ‘Put that down this minute.' They paid no attention. Oh, I was mad. I raised Cain around here. I said, ‘Didn't
any
body see them? My God, they marched off with
my piano right down Flagler Avenue in broad daylight.' Not a person here said yes or no, but you could tell they knew about it.”

Raylan nodded, trying to show interest. He said, “By the way, Ms. Ganz, did you hire a man to do yard work?”

“Something's going on,” the old lady said, “and I think it's that Victoria who's behind it. She's another one of the Jamaicans.”

“I'll speak to her,” Raylan said.

“Would you do that? I'd be so grateful.”

The old lady's eyes shining with hope, or just watery; Raylan wasn't sure.

“If she denies it,” Ms. Ganz said, “tell her she's a lying fucking nigger. That's what I do.”

 

He asked Victoria about the yardman, Cuban or Puerto Rican, said he came by to see Ms. Ganz and get paid?

“She tell you that?”

“The yardman did.”

“I saw a person like that come to see her last week, but I didn't speak to him myself. It used to be people came to be paid by her; a plumber fixed something, another one for the air-conditioning. Not so much anymore.”

“She ever go home?”

“She used to, when she first come. Go home for a few days.”

“She said some guys stole her piano?”

“Yes, steal her underwear, her shoes. She goes crazy when nobody believes her. I go in there, sometimes she tries to hit me with her
cane, call me something I won't say to you. You understand this woman never had a piano long as she been here. The roses? She send those to herself, two hundred dollars a week, a standing order, they have to sign the card ‘With love from Warren.'”

“Her husband,” Raylan said. “I imagined Ms. Ganz was the one doing it.”

“Not the husband,” Victoria said, “suppose to be from the son, Chip. But that's as hard to believe as the dead man sending them. Chip don't spend ten cents on his mother. You know Chip?”

“Not yet,” Raylan said. “Tell me about him.”

I
t was dark now and they kept the house dark except for the study where there were no windows. When Bobby Deo came in from outside he said to Louis, “You see him?”

It straightened Louis, sitting on the sofa, the shotgun next to him. “He come back?”

“Quiet this time, no lights on.”

Louis said, “Man, I didn't see a thing. Got it on the full screen, too. But you can't see shit out there at night with that cheap-ass camera, even with the spot. He get out and look around?”

“Came up to the house, he takes a look in the windows. Looks all around before he leaves. Walks to the back, looks at the swimming pool, looks in the garage. . . .”

“You put your car in there.”

“Yeah, well, he's seen it now. Gonna want to know what it's doing there at night.”

“You mean if he comes back,” Louis said. “What you tell him, you're the caretaker.” Louis thought about it and began to nod saying, “Yeah, the dude looks in the window, don't see any furniture, looks at the scummy swimming pool. . . . You understand what I'm saying? The dude can
see
nobody's living here.”

“Yeah, but my car is there,” Bobby said.

“Man, I just told you, you the caretaker. You watch the place nobody breaks in. You sleep in the kitchen and must not've heard him outside. I'm saying
if
he comes back. See, then you ask him for some identification. You want to know who the fuck he thinks he is coming around here at night, you trying to sleep.”

Bobby was nodding like he agreed, but then said, “I don't know about this guy. Is he looking for Harry?”

“See, I wondered the same thing,” Louis said, “on account of Chip owing Harry and here Harry is right upstairs. So we think, ‘Oh, he must be looking for Harry.' You understand what I'm saying? But all the dude say he wants is to talk to Mr. Ganz. Am I right? The dude, it might be wants to sell the man something, like he can give him a deal on aluminum screens, some shit for the house.”

“So he comes at night,” Bobby said, “to measure the windows.”

“What I'm saying,” Louis said, “we don't
know
what the dude wants outside of he wants to talk to Mr. Ganz. But now he sees Mr. Ganz ain't here. Nobody is.”

Bobby was nodding again, only this time he said, “Why do you call him Mister?”

“Does it bother you?”

“I don't know why you do it. You don't work for him.”

“We go back,” Louis said. “He use to come over to the casino in Freeport when I was back there awhile dealing blackjack. One night he cashes in big, gives me a five-hundred-dollar tip and hires me to bodyguard him now and then. I been living here, learning how to be African-American, going back and forth when I felt like it; but now I come to stay. And now I'm being
me
, you dig? See, mostly he was going down to Miami then, playing high-stakes poker with the big boys and some of them had bodyguards, so he wanted one, too. Wasn't bad at cards. He start losing, his mama would pick up his IOU's, keep her sonny from getting his legs busted. See, then I went away and didn't hear from him till I come out and he start to call me, ask how I'm doing. I come here to see him? Everything's different now, his mama's gone, he's selling off the furniture, and he lay his idea on me, how we gonna be millionaires.”

“Without him doing any the work,” Bobby said.

“I told you he don't know shit. Tried falsifying bank loan applications one time and drew probation. Otherwise the man's cherry.”

“But we say okay, whatever he tells us.”

“Going with his idea, yeah.”

“He says let Harry sit there two three weeks, nobody talk to him. We say okay and we sit here watching the TV.”

“What you saying,” Louis said, “you don't think we should wait.”

“I don't see what good it is. Kidnap a guy and give him time to wonder what's happening to him. For what?”

“We didn't kidnap him,” Louis said, “we took him hostage.”

“You like to think of it that way? It's the same thing,” Bobby said, coming over to the sofa, standing so close Louis had to bend his head back. “You get caught, you go to prison, man. He's four days up in the room, that's enough. We should talk to Harry now, tonight, tell him what he has to do.”

Louis said, “Get to it, huh?” wanting to think about it, but knowing he didn't have time. It was him and Bobby for the time being and he'd have to go along. So he said, “I don't see the good of waiting either, just ‘cause the man say to.”

Bobby said, “Let's go do it.”

And that was that.

What they'd do, go upstairs and Louis would check on Harry, see if he had to go potty, while Bobby went to Chip's bedroom to get him, the man last seen staring out his window burning herb.

 

As soon as Louis opened the door Harry's voice in the dark said, “Is someone there?” Same as he always did.

“Goddamn it, say something!”

Yelling it. Bobby was right, this man was ready to be talked to. Louis went in past him to the bathroom and turned on the light. The window in here and the two in the bedroom were covered over with sheets of plywood nailed to the window frames. Louis looked at Harry in the light from the bathroom, sitting on his cot, the towel and silver tape wrapped around his head, the man not moving a muscle, listening hard for sounds.

The same way the hostages in Beirut must've sat listening, not knowing shit where they were at, why they were being held, nothing.

Chip had read all about the hostages, seen them on TV when they were released, read a book one of them wrote and came up with the idea he told to Louis. Pick up any one of these rich guys he had on his list and hide him out for a while.

Louis had said at that time, “You talking about
kid
napping?” The same thing Bobby said when he was told about it. Like the man was crazy.

The way Chip saw the difference: “Kidnapping, you hold a person for ransom. What I'm talking about, we don't call anyone, like the guy's wife, and say pay up or you'll never see your husband again. We wait, and after a while we ask the guy what his life's worth to him.”

Louis, that time, still didn't see the difference. He said, “But everybody knows the man's been kidnapped.”

And Chip said, “No, the guy's disappeared. No one knows if something happened to him or he took off or what. All the time they're looking for him we've got him hidden away. Okay, once the guy's no longer in the news, nobody's talking about what happened to him, we pick up another guy from the list and do the same thing, chain him up blindfolded . . . like the real hostages, they were kept like that for months, some of them even years.”

Louis knew it was some Muslim brothers over there did the job. Being Abu Aziz for a moment instead of Louis Lewis, he said, “I believe was the Shi'ites. You don't mess with those people.” He asked Ganz where he was going to hide his hostages and the man said he hadn't worked that part out yet. This was before deciding his house was as good a place as any; the house itself was hidden away and hardly anyone he knew ever came by.

“This kind of setup,” Chip said, “only dealing with the hostages, you don't have to warn anyone not to call the cops. Once the guy's missing they'll look for him; but remember, we're not asking for ransom money, so there's nothing to tie us to the hostage.”

“So how do we score?”

“First,” Chip said, “we take time to prepare the guy, get him in the right frame of mind. For weeks he sits in a room and never hears a human voice. He knows somebody's bringing him food, taking him to the can, but nobody in all that time says one fucking word to him. See, then when I
do speak to the guy he can't believe it. Jesus, someone's actually talking to him. But all I say that first time, I ask him, ‘What's it worth to you to get out of here?'”

Louis liked that part. “Yeah?”

“Couple of days go by, I approach him again. ‘Have you decided?' You bet he has. How much do we want? Name it. Then it's like negotiating, coming up with a figure we both agree on, something we know the guy can manage. We have to, you know, be realistic.”

“He pays, we let him go?”

“I guess. The guy's never seen us. Take him out in the Glades and leave him.”

“What if he don't want to pay?”

“He doesn't have a choice,” Chip said. “First we agree on the amount. Then he has five days. . . . I tell him, ‘You have five days to come up with a way of paying us that we like.' I tell him, ‘And it better be the best idea you ever had in your fucking life, I mean foolproof, because if we don't like it, if we're not absolutely sure it'll work, you're dead.' So it's strictly up to him. In other words we don't have to work anything out, the guy does it. And he's the kind of guy who knows how to move money around, a guy with hidden resources, like that savings and loan guy. Goes bankrupt, can't pay his depositors, but he's sitting on an estimated thirty mil. Right now he's out on bond. Another guy on the list, everybody knows he launders drug money, gets it cleaned and pressed, puts it in a land development deal and the feds haven't been able to touch him.
There're all kinds of guys
like that around, I mean right in South Florida.”

“The hostage,” Louis said, “can't think of a good idea, he gets shot in the head, huh?”

“If that's how you want to handle it. There're other ways might even be worse.”

“Like what?”

“You didn't hear about the guy,” Chip said, “wakes up in the middle of the night, his wife's got his dick in her hand?”

“What's wrong with that?”

“She's standing across the room with it. Cut his dick off with a butcher knife while he's sleeping.”

Louis made a face. “Man, that's the worst thing I ever heard of.”

Chip said, “See?”

It was in the news when they first started talking about taking hostages. Chip said he was kidding about threatening the guy that way. He said no, if the guy refused to cooperate, or came up with an idea of paying them they didn't like, Louis could take care of the guy any way he wanted.

Letting him do the heavy work.

 

Louis unlocked Harry's chain and brought him into the bathroom, Harry turning his head to say, “I only have to take a leak.” So Louis put him in position. When he was going, looking down at the toilet blindfolded, Harry said, “Speak to me, will you? Tell me what time it is. Christ, what day it is. You don't want to do that, fine, but say
some
thing.”

Louis felt like whispering in the man's ear and see him jump, but couldn't think of anything good. He took Harry back to his cot and locked his chain again to the ring bolt in the floor, Bobby and Chip standing in the hall now looking in. Bobby motioned and Louis came out. As soon as he closed the door Chip started in.

“This guy, this fucking bill collector, tells me he wants to change the plan I spent more than a year working out. He gets a bug up his ass ‘cause he's tired of sitting around.”

“We already decide,” Bobby said.

Louis took Chip by the arm saying, “We gonna talk, let's step over here,” and brought the man away from the door. Saying to him now, “We wouldn't be here it wasn't for you.” Louis keeping his voice quiet, soothing. “We not changing nothing, we just want to get it moving.”

Chip was turning his head from Louis to Bobby. “Go along with your prison buddy, is that it? The cons taking over?”

“Hey, come on,” Louis said, “it's cool.”

“He's stoned,” Bobby said.

“Yeah, feeling good, huh?” Louis said, getting close, in the man's face now. “You like that ganja.” Louis's gaze moved to Bobby. “Gets some of his herb at his mama's nursing home, from one of them Rasta fellas work there.” Now he was looking at Chip again, the man staring back at him with big eyes. “Listen to me now. We all going along with it. Me and Bobby Deo and my man Mr. Ganz. Understand? Harry, I can
tell, is strung out ready for us, so we gonna do it, get to the money part.”

Chip shrugged and had to move his feet to keep his balance. He said, “This is the way you want it?” Being cool now since he didn't have a choice. “Fine. I'll go in and put the bug in his ear. ‘Harry, what's it worth to you to get out of here?'”

“Go home to his loved ones,” Louis said, placing his hands on Chip's shoulders. “Except one thing worries me. You made bets with Harry on the phone, didn't you? Many times, called him about every week.”

“I'd speak to one of his sheet writers.”

“Yeah, but you talk to him, too.”

“Once in a while.”

“See, you go in and talk to him now, he could recognize your voice. Man like Harry, being careful, he knows voices. Same as with Bobby. Bobby's spoken to him, the reason he come here. So he could know it was Bobby to speak to him.”

“You're gonna do what you want,” Chip said.

“Listen to me. What I'm saying is I'm the one should talk to the man,” Louis said. “One, he don't know me; but two, I know Freeport, Grand Bahama. Man, I'm
from
where his money's at. Soon as he told Dawn I began to think, Do I know somebody works at his bank? I told you that. You my man, Mr. Ganz. What I want you to tell me is go in there and say your words, set the man up just like you was saying it.”

 

Harry raised his head, the way he always did.

“Is somebody there?”

Louis closed the door before turning the light on. He walked over to the cot and sat down. Harry, feeling it, turned his blindfolded head toward him.

“Will you say something? Please?”

“I'll make you a deal,” Louis said.

“Jesus, anything.”

“We do some business. Just me and you. We don't tell nobody else, not a soul. You understand what I'm saying? Just me and you.”