Pronto (25 page)

Joyce said, "But you can't charge him with it here." Sounding surprised.

Raylan said, "No, we can't."

She looked at him for a time and said, "I don't know you, do I?"

What was there to tell? They got comfortable with drinks to sip, a lamp on now. Raylan said, "I grew up in coal camps, chewed tobacco when I was twelve. Went to Evarts High and played football, our archrival being the Harlan Green Dragons. What else you want to know? I've worked deep mines, wildcat mines -- abandoned ones where you go back in and scratch for any coal left -- and I've stripped."

"So have I," Joyce said.

"Pardon me?"

"Never mind."

"Stripping we'd cut the top off a hill and dig out the coal, mess up the countryside.... My mom put her foot down, wouldn't let me work for those people. Let's see, I walked a picket line over a year when we struck Duke Power. Learned about company gun thugs. During that same time my dad died of black lung and high blood pressure. My mom said, 'That's enough.' Her brother was shot and killed during the strike. We picked up and moved to Detroit, Michigan. I went to Wayne State University, graduated, and joined the Marshals Service. What else you want to know?"

"Two boys, I wanted to call the first one Hank and the next one George, after Hank Williams and George Jones, old Possum, the greatest country singers that ever were. See, we'd agreed each time that if it was a boy, I'd name him, and if it was a girl, then Winona'd pick the name. But when the babies were born, Winona got her way as usual and named them Ricky and Randy. I attended the same church back home as the one where George Jones learned to sing, Assembly of God? I mean the same denomination. His church was in eastern Texas, the Big Thicket country, and mine was over in eastern Kentucky. Winona, if she had a girl, was going to call her Piper, Tammy, or Loretta. Her favorite song was Loretta Lynn's 'Don't Come Home A-Drinkin' with Lovin' on Your Mind.' I don't know why, 'cause it wasn't something I ever did."

Joyce said, "You know what happens when you play a country tune backwards? You get your girl and your truck back, you're not drunk anymore and your hound dog comes back to life." She said, "I was born in Nashville."

He wanted to know why she hadn't told him and asked if she'd ever been to the Ryman Auditorium and Tootsie's Orchid Lounge. It seemed important to him. Joyce was sorry to have to tell him they'd moved when she was two: first to Dallas, then Oklahoma City, then Little Rock and then here. She said her dad sold cars, any kind, and drank; her mom smoked and played cards and neither one was still living. Raylan asked if she was a religious person. Joyce said she seemed to be doing okay and hadn't yet felt the need. She said, "Are we going to tell everything there is to know about each other the first time we've sat down without looking out the window, waiting for something awful to happen? I guess we're still waiting, but taking time out and getting things said, is that it? Making up for lost time? You want to know what my favorite color is? What vegetables I hate? I won't eat stewed tomatoes. I like rock and roll, short of heavy-metal head banging. The highlight of my life happened almost twenty-five years ago: I went to Woodstock, I was there with all those people in the rain, the mud, nothing to eat, and at the time didn't think it was much fun. I was married once, I told you that. Patton is my maiden name, I never gave it up. I went to the University of Miami three years, majored in psychology, and I worked as a stripper for three years in topless bars in Miami, but not the grungy joints. I never took off my G-string or did private parties or got hooked on dope or got pregnant or had an abortion. What else do you want to know?"

There was a silence till Raylan said, "What're you mad at?" He touched her face, laying the palm of his hand very gently on her cheek.

Harry said, "You hear that?"

"I sure did," Joyce said. "Right in my ear."

"I dropped the goddamn phone."

"Are you okay?"

"Am I okay?"

"That's not a hard question, Harry."

"You mean outside of being stuck here, not knowing what's going to happen to me or when? Yeah, I'm just great. How're you doing?"

"I'm worried about you."

"Is that right? Torres said you were worried about Raylan, but didn't know if you were worried about me or not."

"We covered that the last time you called."

"We did? Come over and keep me company, allay my apprehensions."

"Harry, you're drinking again. That's what I'm worried about. You're right back where you left off."

"Come over and I'll quit."

"You're acting like a child."

"Come over and I'll grow up right before your eyes. I'm starting to feel horny."

"I'm not coming, Harry."

"Why not?"

"I'm in bed."

"It's only -- it's not even ten o'clock."

"I'm tired. Why don't we talk tomorrow?"

"Raylan's home," Harry said. When he paused, Joyce kept quiet. "I thought you'd want to know. Torres called, he's been checking with Immigration at the airport. That's how he found out the Zip was home. They said Raylan Givens arrived on a British Air flight around six. So he made it. I knew he would; they're after me, not him." Harry paused. "I tried calling him just now but there was no answer." Harry paused again. "He gave me his number that time he was watching over me. He said if I had the least suspicion anything was wrong I was to call him. Even if there was another marshal downstairs in the lobby. I thought that was kind of odd."

"Harry, let's talk tomorrow, okay?"

"You haven't heard from him, have you?"

She said, "Who, Raylan?" lying on her back staring at the ceiling.

Harry said, "I listened to him and came home and where am I? Worse off than before. I shouldn't have let him talk me into it."

"He didn't. You had no other choice."

"I could've gone somewhere else. I could've gone to Africa. I could've gone to the French Riviera. Paris."

"Harry, I'll call you tomorrow."

"You promise? What time?"

"I don't know, in the morning sometime." She said, "Good night, Harry," reached over to replace the phone, and rolled back to Raylan's face on the pillow, watching her.

"Why didn't I tell him you're here?"

"You feel sorry for him. He's alone, he's scared."

"He's doing it to himself."

"Not all of it."

"He's using it as an excuse to drink. Being stuck there, not knowing what's going to happen. The police won't help."

"I could hear what he was saying. You want to go see him?"

"Tomorrow."

"He's blaming me, huh?"

"He's drunk."

"Yeah, but he has a point. Bringing him home didn't help any."

"What will?"

"Maybe if I have a talk with those boys."

Chapter
Twenty-five.

Gloria heard him grunt and then gasp, you'd think in agony, the air going out of him, and felt his belly collapse on her hips, Christ, her kidneys, Gloria on her hands and knees in the king-size bed -- the only way they could make contact -- Gloria terrified that if her arms gave out with Jimmy on top of her she would suffocate beneath his mass of flesh and he wouldn't find out she was dead until he rolled off, if then. She said, "Oh, God, don't, please." She said, "Honey? Don't go to sleep on me, okay? Please?" Her arms shaking, losing strength. She said, "Honey?" And screamed at the pillow, "God, will you get off me!"

It worked. He slipped off and rolled and she scrambled against the sagging mattress to get out of there and make it to the bathroom arching her back, moving her head from shoulder to shoulder, having lived through another life-threatening experience, nap time with Jimmy Cap. Maybe there wouldn't be too many more. She wanted to take a shower and wash her hair, but was meeting the Zip in a half hour and had to hurry.

Gloria returned to the bed with a glass of water for Jimmy, part of the ritual. After that he might snort a few lines off the bedside table and want to go again. She hurried to get into her panties.

"What're you doing?"

"I'm getting dressed." And picked up her white shorts from the chair.

"I want to talk to you. Get your advice on something."

"The last time I told you what I thought you go, 'Who the fuck asked you?'"

"'Cause I didn't ask you that time. Okay, now I am. You see the difference?"

She had the shorts on. "What do you want to know?"

"Where you going?"

"I promised my mom I'd stop by."

"Tell me what you think of Joe Macho."

"Nicky? What do you mean, what I think of him?"

"Is he all mouth or what?"

"How would I know?"

"What's he say about Tommy?"

"Not much. He doesn't like him. Even less than before, since they got back."

"You know what Nicky calls him, the Zip. Yesterday we're in the Jacuze talking?"

"I was there."

"I know you were. Nicky says Tommy says things about me? You ever hear him?"

"Who, Tommy? I don't think so."

"You never talk to him?"

"Hardly ever."

"You hear Nicky? He says I should watch him. Says if Tommy gets the sports book, what's he gonna want next?"

Gloria said, "Yeah?" pulling a black T-shirt over her head.

"He says what do I need him for?"

"You mean like fire him?"

Jimmy Cap smiled at her. He very seldom did that and it surprised her.

"No, he don't mean like fire him, he means like whack him, take him out, get rid of him. For my own good."

"Yeah?"

"Nicky wants to do it, whack him out. You know, you didn't hear that word so much till I read John Gotti uses it all the time. Or he used to. 'Whack him,' and it became popular again."

Gloria stood looking at the soles of Jimmy Cap's feet, his belly rising from the white spread covering the bed and behind the belly, peeking over it, his head propped against pillows.

"Nicky's serious?"

"Every once in a while."

"I can't see him doing it."

"Me neither. Nicky's more for having around, pick up a pizza, carry your suitcases. The trouble is," Jimmy said, "I don't have a guy right now, outside of Tommy, who I know is any good at it. I don't know why, but you just don't find the kind of guys today you used to. I mean white guys who want to do that kind of work. Latins and colored guys, shit, you can get all of them you want. It's like in pro sports today, you know it? The same thing."

He was smiling at her again.

"You ever consider that line of work?"

"What?"

"Whacking guys. There's good money in it."

Raylan drove to Jimmy Cap's house in a confiscated Jaguar sedan he happened to have the keys to; stopped at the gate on Pine Tree Drive and reached out to press the button below the speaker in the stone pillar. A voice that sounded like a recording said, "State your name and the nature of your business."

Raylan said to the speaker grille, "This is Deputy United States Marshal Raylan Givens. I have business of a confidential nature with Mr. Capotorto. I'd appreciate your opening the gate so I don't have to drive this car through it." He had to wait about five minutes before the gate opened and he went up the drive lined with coconut palms and shrubs to his favorite type of house, a tan-colored hacienda with dark-wood trim and a red tile roof. Some guy let him in. Raylan looked around, heard steps clicking on the terrazza floor, and there was Nicky and a blond-haired girl in a black T-shirt. Nicky said something to her. Raylan watched her look this way, a cute girl, right out front about studying him. She walked off. Nicky said to the guy who'd opened the door, "It's okay, Jack," and motioned for Raylan to follow him. They went down a hall and came to an open-air kind of room with white furniture, the pool and patio right outside. Jimmy Cap was sitting on the sofa, taking up half of it in a white robe.

Nicky said, "You want me to pat him down?"

Raylan had to smile. He waited while Jimmy Cap looked him over and said, finally, "So you're the cowboy."

Raylan touched his hat brim. "With the Marshals Service, but at the moment acting on my own."

"And you have something you want to tell me. All right, have a seat."

"It's of a private nature," Raylan said, easing into a fat white chair. "You don't mind my speaking in front of this boy?"

"What's it about?"

"Harry Arno."

"Go ahead, I don't care."

Raylan was aware of Nicky standing off to his right, but kept his attention on Jimmy. He said, "I want you to leave Harry alone. Call off your dogs. Anybody touches him I'll hold you responsible and cause you more trouble than you can believe."

Jimmy kept staring at him, no doubt thinking it over. Raylan wanted to look at Nicky, see what kind of face he was putting on, but knew he'd better stay with Jimmy. Finally Jimmy said, "You're on your own time?"