Swag (19 page)

Leon Woody, with a beard and moustache, looked like an Arab. He sat quietly, with one leg crossed over the other. He'd smile a little with a gentle gaze that held as long as he wanted it to. Leon Woody reminded Stick of Sportree. There was something African, mysterious, about them. Nothing was going to hurry or surprise them.

The other one, Carmen Billy Ruiz, was Puerto Rican. His eyelids were heavy with scar tissue and his mouth looked puffy and sore drawing on his Jamaican tailor-made. A long time ago he had been a welterweight with a seventeen-and-seventeen record, then a sparring partner for Chico Vejar, then for Chuck Davey after Davey whipped Vejar. In 1955, in Detroit, he shot and killed a store clerk during a holdup and spent the next seventeen years in Jackson. (Carmen Billy Ruiz said
diez-y-siete
was a bad fucking number; don't mention it in front of him.) He resented the fact Stick had killed two men and said through a smoke cloud, while Frank was telling the story, “What is this shit? He put away a couple of kids.” Leon Woody and Sportree looked at each other—Stick noticed this—and Leon Woody said, “Billy, be nice and let the man finish. Then you can tell how many you put away.”

Stick was glad, God, he was glad he wasn't going to have any part of this. They could say anything they wanted. He'd listen and nod and seem to go along, and when they were through, that was it. He didn't know these guys or owe them a thing. Be nice, like the man said, and play along.

He nodded yes, he'd have another bourbon, yes please, when Marlys picked up his glass. Marlys was doing the drinks and constructing big Jamaican cigarettes with four pieces of paper each for Billy Ruiz and anybody who wanted one. The redheaded black girl who played the piano wasn't around. Unless she was in the bedroom. Or Sportree could've gotten rid of her for the meeting.

There wasn't any doubt Sportree was in charge. He sat on the couch with Marlys next to him, looking over his shoulder, and sheets of drawing paper on the coffee table that showed the floor plan of several different sections of Hudson's downtown store—including the administrative offices, with dotted lines leading to exits—and a plan of the exterior with adjacent streets indicated.

“We start with the outside,” Sportree said and looked at Stick. “You—you here on Farmer Street on the back side of the building, in the bar, right here. You see the Brink's truck turn in the alley that run through the building. You know what I'm saying?”

“I know the alley you mean,” Stick said. “It's like a tunnel.”

“That's right,” Sportree said. “They come in off Farmer, alley bends in there, they pick up the load and come out on the south side the building. Before that, soon as you see it coming, you make the call.”

“What's the number?”

“You get the number when I'm through.”

Sportree looked at Frank. “You by the telephone outside the men's room, north end of the toy department, fourteenth floor. You been there to see it?”

Frank nodded.

Sportree's gaze moved to Leon Woody. “You watching Frank. You got the doll box, huh, in the Hudson bag.”

“Little Curly Laurie Walker's box,” Leon Woody said.

Sportree began to smile and shook his head. “Come on, shit—Curly Laurie Walker. That her name?”

“Little redhead girl, three foot tall, she do everything but bleed,” Leon Woody said. “Billy try to jump her. I give her to my little girl so she be safe.”

“What was that?” Billy Ruiz said. “What'd you say?”

Marlys was laughing and slapped her leg. “I can see him doing it, stoned on his herb.”

Billy Ruiz was frowning, puzzled. “See what?”

“Man, let's pay attention,” Sportree said. “Okay? You got one minute. Bang on the door the men's room, Billy comes out in his uniform.” He looked at Ruiz. “We get that tomorrow, bus driver suit, I know where we can get one. With the holster it be good enough, get you in the office. Okay, so the three of you take the stairs, here, by the exit sign. You go up to the office floor.”

“How long's it take them, the Brink's guys?” Frank asked.

“About five minutes,” Sportree said. “It varies.”

Marlys looked up from the drawings. “You know the man down at the door, he's like a porter? He calls up the office when they come, then we know to expect them in a few minutes. He doesn't call and some dudes walk in with uniforms on, we know they not from Brink's.”

“So we get to the office just before the Brink's guys,” Frank said, “giving us, say, four minutes.”

“Say three,” Sportree said, “to get in and get out. They see Billy in the bus driver suit and the gun, they open the door. You two go in behind him, put the people on the floor, take the sacks, put them in the doll box, and get the fuck out, down the stairs to the toy department. You go in the stockroom and put the box on the shelf where all the curly what's-her-name little jive-ass doll boxes are, in the back. The box is already marked.” He looked at Leon Woody. “You been in there?”

“Yesterday.”

“And they still got enough little curly-ass doll boxes?”

“Whole shelf full. I put it there and see Billy get out of his bus suit.”

“All right,” Sportree said, “about that time the bell's going to ring and they'll be security people all over the store, at every door and exit. The police, First Precinct, could be there before you get to the ground floor, and then it's time to be cool. First thing, dump your pieces in a trash bin, someplace like that. Then split up and circulate. They want to search you going out, that's fine, you just a dumb nigger, you don't know what the fuck is going on at
all
. They let you out, you go home. Two days later, this man here”—he looked at Stick—“goes up to the stockroom and gets the doll box with the mark on it. He goes because nobody's seen him before, clean-looking white gentleman. Tell me you see something wrong.” He waited.

Frank and Leon shook their heads.

Billy Ruiz said, “How much we going to get?”

“No way of knowing,” Sportree said. “I told you, I give you a guarantee, five K off the top. You said beautiful. You want something else now?”

“I want to be with him, carry it out,” Billy Ruiz said. “I don't want somebody giving me some shit later—we didn't do so well, here's a humnert bills. Fuck that shit, man, right now.”

Stick saw Sportree and Leon Woody look at each other again. “Hey, we trust each other,” Sportree said to Billy Ruiz. “Nobody going to cheat nobody. You hear Frank saying anything? Leon? No, we all in this.”

“This guy, he picking up the money, I don't even know him,” Billy Ruiz said.

“He don't know you, either.” Sportree looked over at Stick and back to Billy Ruiz. “You saying you want to pick it up, Billy? You don't trust nobody?”

“I go with him,” Billy Ruiz said.

Stick saw the exchange between Sportree and Leon Woody again, their gaze meeting, each one knowing something.

“All right, Billy,” Sportree said. “You go with him.”

After that they sat around a little while. Sportree went out to the kitchen for something and Frank followed him. Marlys went over to the hi-fi and picked up a record sleeve. Stick looked over at Leon Woody sitting there quietly with his legs crossed. There was something he wanted to ask him. It wasn't important, but if he got the chance, if the guy happened to look over.

Billy Ruiz said to Marlys, “Hey, Mama, play some of that Al-ton for me, okay?”

Marlys, reading the record sleeve, had her back to them. “You want some Alton Ellis and his Caribbean shit? I'll give you some Stevie,” Marlys said. “Be grateful.”

“He's all right, his soul,” Billy Ruiz said. “It's very close.”

“Close about a thousand miles,” Marlys said. “Stevie can fake that reggae boogie shit better than Alton can do it straight.”

Leon Woody was smiling, listening to them. Stick didn't know what they were talking about. He waited until the music came on. Leon Woody looked over at him, maybe to see what he thought of it.

“You have a little girl?” Stick said.

“Yeah, little eight-year-old. She small, not much bigger than the doll.” Leon Woody smiled faintly. “Sportree has trouble with that name, don't he?”

“I got a little girl seven,” Stick said. “She's going to be in the second grade next month.”

“Is that right? Yeah, they cute that age, aren't they?”

Stick said yeah, they sure were. After that, he couldn't think of anything to say.

It was getting dark when they left. Frank drove. He was up, excited about what they were going to do. He tried to appear calm, but it showed in the way he took off from lights and wheeled the T-bird through traffic.

Stick said, “That Carmen Billy Ruiz—where'd he get a name like that?”

“He's Puerto Rican,” Frank said. “He was a fighter once. Fought Chuck Davey—you remember him?”

Stick said, “What I meant to say—where'd they get him, for Christ sake. He could get you in trouble, not even trying.”

Frank said, “Don't worry about it. Sportree's going to handle him.”

“Is that what he's going to do?” Stick said, “because I'll tell you something, I don't see him doing anything else.”

“He's been going down there—he's the one put the whole thing together.” Frank looked over at Stick. “Now that you've seen it, what do you think?”

“What do I
think
? I think it looks like amateur night.”

“Come on—”

“Come on where? You got a guy with a little girl used to steal TV sets. You got a crazy Puerto Rican living on dope and a guy runs a bar telling you what to do. A bus driver's suit—you imagine that crazy fucking guy walking in in a bus driver's suit? Is he going to have one of those change things on him?”

“He knows what he's doing,” Frank said, “Sportree. Listen, that's why I took it to him. Everything he gets into, it goes. He doesn't touch something he doesn't make out.”

Stick said, “What's he touching? He's sitting home watching the fucking ball game while you clowns are running around the store with a doll box. I thought you said it was your idea.”

“It was, the basic idea, yeah, when I find out Marlys's working in the office. But it was Sportree worked it out. You got any doubts or questions, talk to him about it.”

“I'm talking to
you.
I don't even know the guy, what do I want to talk to him for, like I work for him now or something? We got a nice thing going, two grand a week, we can't even spend it all, you want to go hold up a department store.”

“You know for how much?”

“He said you didn't know.”

“He told Billy we didn't know. We're talking about minimum, I mean
minimum
, a hundred grand.”

“You're crazy,” Stick said. “It's all charge accounts there, and checks.”

“Uh-unh, not the downtown store. Half the people go there are colored. You think they all got charge accounts?”

“I don't know—” Stick said.

“I know you don't. Listen, fourteen floors of cash registers, every floor the size of a city block. People come in, buy all kinds of things, some on charge, some pay with a check, and a bunch of them, man, a bunch of them, have to pay strictly cash, because that's all they've got.”

“Anybody ever do it before?”

“Not the whole thing,” Frank said, “that any of us can remember. Ten years ago, maybe more than that, a guy got twelve hundred from a cashier on the mezzanine. All small stuff.”

“Small stuff like what we've been doing.” Stick said, “and getting away with. Now all of a sudden you want to do the whole fucking thing at once.”

“I'll talk to you when you calm down,” Frank said. “It's staring you in the face and you can't even see it.”

“Relax, huh?”

“Right. Relax and think about it. We walk in—it's waiting there in little gray sacks—and pick it up. Christ, you're outside, what're you worried about?”

“I'm outside—till I go in with that crazy Puerto Rican.”

“I told you, what're you worried about him for? I talked to Sportree, he said, Don't worry about Billy.”

“I'm not worried, because I'm not going to have anything to do with it,” Stick said. “Nothing.”

20

STICK LINED UP FOUR PAY
phones on Farmer Street, behind the J. L. Hudson Company.

He did this after he'd given in and told Frank okay, but this was the last one, and found out this part of the plan hadn't been thought out at all. What if he went in the bar to call and some guy was using the phone? What if he went in the doughnut shop or the drugstore, the same thing? What if all of a sudden the Brink's truck comes and everybody around there decided to make phone calls? Sportree hadn't planned it at all. He'd gone through the motions. If they made it, fine; if they didn't, well, it wasn't his ass, he wasn't out a thing.