Riding the Rap Part 5

"He knows I'm from there."

"Yeah, but you didn't say nothing, did you?"

"Not yet."

"You see a way to get the money?"

"I'm starting to have an idea, yeah."

"We should talk about it before you tell Chip anything."

"You want to cut him out?"

"I say I think we should talk," Bobby said. He took the car keys. "You watch Harry. I'm gonna check on the fortune-teller, see how she's doing."

Louis said, "You don't have time for that."

"For what?" Bobby said. "What do you think I'm gonna do to her?"

They had put Reverend Dawn in the bedroom, out of the way. Bobby opened the door and looked in and there she was sitting on the bed twisting a strand of hair between her fingers. Bobby stepped in and closed the door and she stopped fooling with her hair.

He said, "How you doing?" Giving her a chance to come on to him in some way that women let you know they were interested.

She stared at him, but not with a look he recognized.

"You have my money?"

Bobby almost told her to see Chip; it was on the tip of his tongue. He changed his mind and said, "I'm gonna bring it to you, next week." Giving her another chance to show some interest.

She kept staring at him and maybe it meant something, he wasn't sure. He said, "Are you scared?"

She said, "Should I be?"

Bobby stared and she stared back at him.

"I like your act."

"It's real."

"He was hypnotize, uh?"

"I checked his eyes."

"What does that tell you?"

"They were rolled back. You can't fake that."

"I thought maybe it was too easy, what you got him to say."

"Harry likes to talk about money. He pays cash for everything, even his car."

"You like that car?"

"It's all right."

"Better than your little car. You know how much we gonna get from Harry?"

She said, "Look, I don't want to know anything about what you're doing. I don't even want to talk to you."

"You see see what we doing." what we doing."

"I saw nothing. Harry was never here."

"I was thinking you should get more than fifteen hundred."

"I told Chip what I wanted; that's it. And that's all I'm doing for you."

Bobby said, "You sure?"

eight.

Sunday, Raylan phoned Joyce from the restaurant in Delray Beach.

"The waiter remembers him. He said Harry had a few drinks, paid for the first one and then ran a tab. The reason the guy remembers him, Harry left his money on the table when he went in to use the phone."

Joyce said, "That's when he called and left the message. Said he'd call me later, but that was the last I heard."

"The waiter said he kept an eye on Harry's money."

"I'll bet he did."

"No, he said he told Harry, when he was leaving, he ought to be more careful with it."

"The guy he was meeting never showed up?"

"Doesn't look like it. No, but there's a lady hangs around here does tarot card readings?"

Joyce said right away, "Yes, he mentioned that," and sounded excited about it. "Is she there?"

"Not on Sunday. The waiter said she sat down with Harry and I guess they just talked. She didn't lay out the cards or anything."

"But she was with him."

"I guess. I don't know how long."

"Can you find out?"

"Listen, Joyce? The waiter said Harry was drinking doubles, throwing them down. I checked with Delray PD and Boca Raton, see if he might've been picked up."

"He would've called," Joyce said, "I'm his one phone call, his bail, his ride home . . ."

"Unless he didn't want you to know he'd messed up again. He could've called somebody else, one of the guys used to work for him."

"It was two days ago," Joyce said. "Where is he? Raylan, he calls me every day day for something." for something."

Tell me about it, Raylan thought, using his day off to look for a guy he wished would disappear from his life. Joyce, at the same time, saying how much she appreciated his help, sounding so polite, saying if anyone could find Harry . . . He might've said, What if I don't want to find him? But didn't and there was a silence. He was getting used to silences talking to her.

Her voice came on again, Joyce saying, "What if Harry went to see the tarot card lady and she told him . . . I don't know, that he was about to take a trip, go to some exotic place. That would appeal to Harry. I think he might do whatever she said."

"You mean made plans to see her later."

"It's possible."

"Like she told him to go back to Italy, where he wouldn't be bothering anybody."

Joyce said, "I think it's worth following up," sounding so serious, sounding like that all the time lately. "Can you ask around, find out where she lives? Or get her number and I'll call her."

"I have her card," Raylan said. "There's a whole stack of them by the cash register."

Joyce said, "You're way ahead of me, aren't you?"

"I'll go see her, find out if Harry had his fortune told. Maybe, as long as I'm there, have her tell mine, see what's in my future."

"You believe in that?"

"I don't know-maybe some of it."

She said, "Well, you're psychic yourself. You know things no one else does."

It took him a moment to realize what she meant. Still at him. He said, "You want to go around on that again? I knew Tommy Bucks had a gun. I've thought about it since the other night and there's no way I see it any different. I called him out and he knew it. If he didn't pack his suitcase and leave he'd be packing a gun. That was his choice."

"You called him out," Joyce said. "What did you think, you were in a movie?"

It caught him by surprise, because he did see it that way sometimes. The idea of giving the guy twenty-four hours . . .

Joyce said, "What if he told you, sitting at that table, he didn't have a gun?"

She wouldn't let it go.

"Would you have shot him?"

"I don't know if I would've or not. How's that?"

The h.e.l.l with it, let her think what she wanted.

She said, "All right," in a different tone of voice, quieter. "I won't mention it again."

Was he supposed to be grateful?

Raylan said, "Honey, I shot the son of a b.i.t.c.h and killed him and I'd do it again, the same way. If you have trouble with that, then you don't know me and there's nothing I can do to help you."

She said, after a moment, "I'm sorry," her voice even quieter than before.

Raylan waited, looking out at the Sunday brunch crowd on the terrace, not feeling he had any more to say, and there was a silence.

When her voice came on again: She said, "Raylan?"

"What?"

"If we knew who owed Harry money, would that help?"

Like that, back to poor Harry.

"It might."

"When I was driving him around, he had names in a ledger he'd check off, with the amounts. Then when he called me from where you are and left the message? He said the guy would have sixteen five for him. The one who didn't show up."

"He mention his name?"

"No, only that he's Puerto Rican."

"I'll call you after I see the tarot card lady."

"Call me at Harry's. I'll go right now and look for the ledger." She said then, "Raylan, I'm sorry. I really am."

He said, "I am, too," without knowing exactly what either of them was sorry about. As soon as he'd hung up, though, he felt a sense of relief.

nine.

Harry would say, "Is somebody there?" He'd wait, feeling someone in the room with him. "Will you please tell me what you want?" Nothing. No answer. So he'd wait. Sitting on a metal cot, a blan ket and a thin mattress, no pillow. His ankles chained and padlocked. His hands free. At the time they brought him here he said, "You're gonna leave the blindfold on?"

No answer. They never said a word to him or to each other, not even in a whisper.

The last voice he heard was the little girl's, Dawn Navarro, asking him how much he had in the Freeport bank. Like being half asleep and hearing it, lying in that chair with his eyes closed, and telling her he wasn't exactly sure, close to three mil. . . . Was that what he said? What he actually had in there was just under two million. Now he wasn't sure if he'd been awake or actually hypnotized. He remembered lying there waiting . . . then all of a sudden realizing a blindfold was being taped over his eyes and he thought it was the little girl doing it, so he wouldn't be distracted. But then there were hands all over him holding him down and tape being pressed over his mouth. They pulled him out of the recliner, got him facedown on the floor, rough hands on him, and taped his wrists together behind his back. The tape covering his mouth touched his nose and he could smell it trying to breathe and turned his head from side to side to let them know, Christ, he couldn't breathe breathe. He did hear the little girl, Dawn, heard her say, "What are you doing doing?" yelling it out. That That was the last thing he heard-not her asking about the bank account-but didn't remember her saying it until he was here in this room and began going over in his mind step-by-step what happened. How he tried to calm down and breathe through his nose and that part wasn't too bad; he could breathe okay if he didn't get excited and start to panic thinking he was suffocating. It was an awful feeling. They sat him in a chair and never said a word to him or to each other or to Dawn, if she was still there. Maybe they'd done the same thing to her and she was sitting right next to him taped up. He heard them moving around on the wood floor that creaked under them and was bare except for an old braided throw rug-remembering the rug from before, when he was looking around at all the clutter. Then for a while there wasn't a sound in the little girl's house, not until he felt himself pulled out of the chair. was the last thing he heard-not her asking about the bank account-but didn't remember her saying it until he was here in this room and began going over in his mind step-by-step what happened. How he tried to calm down and breathe through his nose and that part wasn't too bad; he could breathe okay if he didn't get excited and start to panic thinking he was suffocating. It was an awful feeling. They sat him in a chair and never said a word to him or to each other or to Dawn, if she was still there. Maybe they'd done the same thing to her and she was sitting right next to him taped up. He heard them moving around on the wood floor that creaked under them and was bare except for an old braided throw rug-remembering the rug from before, when he was looking around at all the clutter. Then for a while there wasn't a sound in the little girl's house, not until he felt himself pulled out of the chair.

Two of them, each taking an arm, brought him outside, shoved him into the trunk of a car and closed the lid on him. Not his car, his still had that new-car smell. He was afraid again of suffocating, his face against the rough texture of the carpeting. So conscious of trying to breathe he wasn't sure how long he was in the trunk or what direction they went after making a few turns, maybe to confuse him. Harry believed he was in there over an hour before they stopped and pulled him out-Harry ready to be marched into a woods or a swamp out in the Glades and one of them would say okay, that's far enough. No, they brought him into a house. Harry could-n't believe it. He sensed it was a house, a residence, as soon as they brought him up a carpeted stairway that curved up to a second floor and along a hallway to what he a.s.sumed was a bedroom. But then wasn't so sure when they sat him down on a cot with a thin mattress. He did feel deep-pile carpeting on the floor and decided, yes, he was in someone's house and this was a bedroom.