the Big Bounce (1969) (12 page)

Ryan said they had better drive him back, he wasn't buying anything today after all. Ahead of them he could see the stoplight at Six Mile Road. They were approaching it, but the car slowed down and turned left into an alley before they reached the corner. The car stopped; the headlights beamed down past trash cans and incinerators and the shadowed back walls of stores. The headlights went off and the guy next to the driver, thin-faced with long hair, about Ryan's age, turned with his arm on the backrest. He said it would cost ten bucks. He said whether they took Ryan to the school or back to the gas station or anywhere, it would cost ten bucks. Ryan said no, he had changed his mind. The guy looking at him said, man, nothing was free. Everything cost ten bucks. Ryan said okay, I'll make you a deal. You don't have to drive me back. I'll get out here.

The inside light went on as the driver opened his door. Ryan remembered seeing the girl, her hair lighter than he thought it would be; he remembered feeling the beer running up his sleeve, colder than it had tasted, as he raised the bottle by the neck and saw the guy next to the driver drop behind the backrest. Ryan was out, slamming the door, moving along the car to the rear, then sliding in the gravel and changing his direction. As the driver came past the front end Ryan went into him, chopping the bottle against the side of his head backhanded so that the guy fell against the hood.

The bottle didn't break. In the movies the bottle breaks, but this one didn't. He held on to it and ran, all the way down the alley and right, past the brick side of a store to Six Mile, across the street and east along the sidewalk, not aware that he was still holding the bottle. He was in the next block when he felt the car moving along next to him. He didn't want to look at the car, he wanted it to pass and he wanted to keep walking.

But the car didn't pass and he did a dumb thing. He looked at the car because he had to, a car that as soon as he looked at it was a black-with-yellow-lettering police car. And he ran. He didn't think, he ran. Later, thinking about it, he realized what a dumb thing he did and made a resolution it would never happen again; but later was too late. He ran to the corner and around it; he ran down the length of a cyclone fence, down to the end of it and up over the fence. He hid in the darkness and silence against the wall of the lumber company, in the aisle between ten-foot stacks of two-by-fours, and he was standing there with the beer bottle in his hand when they put the flashlight on him. He held the beer bottle half raised at his side, the light in his eyes, and finally he let go of it.

The judge at Morning Sessions, a nice calm-looking guy with his hair starting to get gray at the sides, gave him sixty days in the Detroit House of Correction.

He had had enough bad luck. It was time to have some good luck. There had to be a beginning to the good luck if he was going to have any, and maybe this was the beginning. It was good to have a car again. It was good driving along at night with the radio on. It was good rolling into the Bay Vista and angle-parking in front of the office. If this was the beginning of the good luck, he would have to watch and be ready and, finally, at one point, if it still looked good, he would have to say yes and step into it and do it, go all the way.

Why would it be any harder than going into a house for TV sets and fur coats? Or any harder than walking into his own room.

From the bed, sitting across it against the wall and his cracked curl-toed boots sticking out over the side, Frank Pizarro said, Hey, Jack, how you doing?

Get off the bed.

What's the matter with you?
Pizarro pushed himself to the edge and sat with his legs hanging, not touching the floor.

How'd you know I was here?

Billy tole me. What's the matter with you?

I mean this room.

A guy outside, when I came. I ask him.

He tell you to walk in, make yourself at home?

No, I wait out there awhile, then I think maybe you sleeping and don't hear me, so I try the door and it's open. Listen, I got fired from my job.

I heard.

From Billy. But he didn't tell you about the bus.

Frank, I'll see you, okay?

Listen, Camacho wants me to drive the bus back for the money I owe him. Drive him in it and leave my truck because the goddamn thing's busted anyway.

Ryan hesitated. That's fine with me.

Sure, but how do the rest of them get home? See?

In the bus.

No. Camacho say, 'I don't have to take them home.' I say, 'But they already pay you to take them.' He say, 'That was when I was crew leader. But I'm not crew leader no more, so I don't have to take them.' He say then, 'But if they want to pay my bus company five hunnert dollar and give me money for the airplane, then I leave the bus here.'

Come on. They believe that?

What are they going to do? They tell him they don't like it, Camacho leave them here.

What do you care? You've got a ride.

What do I care? They all my friends.

Come on, Frank.

I mean it. I work with them seven years.

All right, so why come to me?

Man, we been friends, right? Billy say, 'Why don't we borrow the money from Jack?' Pizarro's flat, open face stared up at Ryan.

Five hundred dollars.

Billy say you got it. He say if you spent it, you can get some more easy.

Where is Billy?

He don't want to come. You know, to ask you.

It doesn't bother you any.

Listen, I don't ask you for the money. Billy say that. I want to borrow it from you and we pay you back.

You think I have five hundred?

You don't, you can get it. Easy.

If I loaned you what I have, you'd pay it back, uh?

You know that. Sure.

When?

Next year when we come up.

It's been nice knowing you, Frank.

Man, we got these families. How they going to get home?

Come on I've got this family.

You don't care what happens to all those people?

Hey, Frank, I'll see you.

Okay, buddy,
Pizarro said. He came off the bed slowly. Screw you too.

Pizarro moved past him and opened the door; narrow shoulders and drooping pants seat, checkered pants that were worn and dirty, shapeless, with slash continental pockets and a snappy snap-around elastic waist.

Wait a minute,
Ryan said. You got your truck?

I tole you, it's busted.

You going to walk?

No, I'm going to rent a goddamn Hertz car.

Ryan hesitated, watching Pizarro holding the door open, but only a moment. He said, See you, Frank.

Pizarro noticed the mustang in front of the office. He looked at the car as he walked past it and something about it was familiar. There were a lot of dark green Mustangs, but there was something else about a Mustang that stuck in his mind. He walked down to the first side road beyond the Bay Vista and got his panel truck out of the trees and headed for Geneva Beach as fast as the rusted-out panel would move. But by the time he got there, the bars and liquor stores were closed and the town was locked up for the night. Goddamn Ryan.

Waiting for Ryan and not finding anything to drink in Ryan's place, he had thought of getting a bottle of something, tequila or gin. Or a bottle of red. If he bought wine, he'd have a few bucks left over. He had four dollars and sixty cents of the hundred Ryan had given him as his cut. Sure he had waited in the truck. But, goddamn, it was his truck; he was the one to drive it. At the time he should have pulled off the road and laid it on him. Hey, man, where's my cut? No chickenshit hunnert dollars, my cut.
Lay it on him and let him know. Ryan had been lucky with Camacho; but that didn't mean he was always lucky.

He had never liked Ryan. Ever since San Antonio, at the gas station: Ryan standing there with his bag looking for a ride, standing there with his hands on his hips looking them over as they pulled in the bus, the panel truck, and two cars, all migrants; then talking to Camacho for a while and getting in the bus. Ever since then. Ever since, on the trip up, Ryan started going into the stores where they had trouble being served to get the pop and stuff to make sandwiches. Ever since in the town in Oklahoma talking the gas station man into letting them use his stinking broken-down washroom, thinking he was a big shot because he did it. Ever since he started talking to Marlene Desea and before they were out of Missouri had got her to leave the panel truck and ride in the bus with him. Somebody else, one of the other girls, had said, Frank, I would love to ride with you.
But he had told her nothing doing, nobody was riding with him now.

Camacho was right what he said after they had reached the cucumber fields that Ryan only wanted a ride. He got what he wanted and there was nothing to keep him not Marlene Desea, not anything. He used the truck. He used Billy Ruiz. He used everybody and once he got what he wanted, he left. Sure, that's the kind of guy.

Beyond Geneva Beach, on the highway south, he turned off on the dirt road that pointed through the fields to the migrant camp.

Goddamn cucumbers. He was through with the cucumbers. He could pick ten times more than the goddamn kids they sent up from Saginaw and Bay City, but if they wanted the kids instead of him, that was up to them. He had drunk a little too much since Saturday, a hundred dollars worth almost, but buying the others a lot of it too. It was gone, the hundred, and he owed Camacho four hundred fifty dollars and he didn't have a job and San Antonio was sixteen hundred and seventy miles away.

But Ryan wasn't gone. Man, he had Ryan. All he had to do was think of a way to tell him, a good way to tell him without getting his jaw broken. Like:

Hey, Jack. You know that beer case with the wallets you tole us to throw away? We don't throw it away, man. I got it hid somewhere.

Then Ryan would say something and he would say to Ryan, How much you give me for that beer case, buddy? So somebody don't find it with your name on it.

That would be the difficult part, to tell Ryan so he would see clearly that he had no choice but to buy the case of wallets. Look, you swing at me, you never see the beer case, you understand?

The son of a bitch, you didn't know what he might do. Tell him quick, Something happen to me a friend of mine take the beer case to the police. How you like that, buddy?

Then tell him how much. Five hundred dollars for the case. No, six hundred dollars. He don't have it, he has to work for it then, go in some places.

He had planned to tell Ryan tonight. Begin with the phony story about the bus and see if he could get some money that way, the easy way. Then tell him about the beer case. But when Ryan came in and was standing there, he couldn't do it.

Maybe get some paper and write it to him. Buy the paper and get a pencil somewhere. Write it clearly and some night put it under his door. But he would have to see Ryan sooner or later, or else how would he get the money from him? Goddamn, why did it have to be so hard to do?

For a reason Frank Pizarro would never be sure of other than he might have seen the car with the girl in it going past the camp, going past this shed where he was now stopping he remembered the dark green Mustang and remembered at once who owned it. Mr. Ritchie's girlfriend. Sure, the same green Mustang with the dents in the front end, the same dents in the same car in front of Jack Ryan's place.

Pizarro turned off the engine and the headlights, but he didn't get out right away. He kept thinking about the green Mustang because he knew goddamn well Jack Ryan had something to do with it.

Chapter
10

IT'S A GOOD DEAL,
Mr. Majestyk said. Thirty bucks a week she comes in every day but Sunday. Sunday I like to cook a steak outside on the grill, nice sirloin, this guy at the IGA cuts it about two and a half inches thick.

Mr. Majestyk sliced off a piece of kielbasa and dipped it in chili sauce. He pushed the fork into his sauerkraut and heaped it over the sausage with his knife. Chewing, he took a piece of bread and buttered the whole slice. Still chewing, he said, She bakes it herself. At home, bakes two, three times a week and brings it in fresh. I mean fresh.

It's all right,
Ryan said.

She keeps the place clean. Vacuums twice a week.

Ryan was eating fast. He had missed breakfast again and he was hungry. The idea had been to get up early and drive over to Ritchie's hunting lodge and look it over, before anybody was around. But he'd overslept and missed breakfast. He'd have to drive out there after work, but he was too hungry to think about that now. She can cook,
Ryan said.

I wouldn't let her if she couldn't,
Mr. Majestyk said.

You got something going with her?

With Donna?
Mr. Majestyk glanced toward the doorway into the living room. Christ, what do you think, I'm hard up or something?

She's old, but she's not too bad looking,
Ryan said. I mean, better than nothing.

You're young, you got it on the brain.

Well, it's natural, isn't it?

Natural doesn't mean you got to think about it all the time.

Is that right? What do you think about?

I got plenty of things,
Mr. Majestyk said. For example, should I stay up here year-round? I mean, what's in Detroit? I might as well live here. I mentioned keeping the place open for hunting season?

You said something about it.

Well, I got another idea. A hunting lodge.

Like Ritchie's?

Naw, that's a farmhouse he fixed up. You know what an A-frame is?

I'm not sure.

Like a Swiss-looking place a steep roof almost comes down to the ground? For people who ski. They're building them all over up north. Prefab.

I've seen pictures.

Take two of them,
Mr. Majestyk said. Big ones, each sleeps about ten with the loft upstairs, and join them together with a central heating system.

You already got the cabins,
Ryan said.

I'd have to put in new heating units. It gets twenty below, them little units in there would quit. No, I don't mean here. There's some property I know a guy wants to sell off by itself, woods, a lake. You know the road there it goes through the migrant camp and up past Ritchie's lodge?

Yeah?

Go past it about a half a mile, you see a sign, ROGERS, turn left and follow the road up the hill through the woods.

Out away from everything.

Right. Build the A-frames there, get twenty hunters, twenty-five bucks a day each three full meals, all the mix and ice and everything included for twenty-five bucks a day.

That'd be all right.

In the heart of deer country. But you see with the lake you got the bird hunters too. These guys Christ, I know a dozen guys I could call, they wouldn't hesitate. And they all got friends who hunt.

Why don't you do it?

Mr. Majestyk stared at Ryan, then shrugged. Maybe. I don't know.

You'd make five hundred bucks a day.

Gross. Yeah, but I'd need a guy, maybe a couple of guys who could cook, you know, and knew how to handle guns.

What's the problem?

No problem, just finding the right guys. You know anything about guns?

I used to sell them,
Ryan said. Hunting rifles, shotguns, at this sporting goods store.

I thought you were a cook?

Yeah, I did that too. Fry chef.

Are you a good cook?

Sure. It was mostly these chefburgers, but lunchtime you'd have everything going filets, fried eggs, pancakes, club sandwiches. The waitresses would call the orders and you had to keep it all going.

For a young guy,
Mr. Majestyk said, I guess you've done a few things.

A few.
He told Mr. Majestyk about working at The Chef and the sporting goods store and at Sears but didn't mention the carpet cleaning job because that was where he had met Leon Woody.

A friend of Ryan's had the job first. The friend wanted to quit and go to electronics school, but he didn't want to let his boss down, he said, so he told Ryan about it. Good pay, not too hard, these big, beautiful homes you work in, and the women, these rich babes, honest to God you wouldn't believe it what some of them wear around the house, showing you the goodies, boy, some of them just asking for it. Ryan said, yeah? And his friend said, you know, bending over to do something and no bra on? Or these babes that let their housecoats come undone?

Ryan never did see anything like that. He seldom saw anyone at all except when they arrived and when they left. He realized after a few weeks that the guy had been pulling his chain about the women, but that was all right. He liked the job. What he liked about it especially was being in a strange house and seeing personal things that belonged to people he didn't know. It wasn't the same as being in a friend's house. It gave him a funny feeling, especially when he was alone in a room, in the silence after he had turned off the machine, or alone going up the stairs to do a bedroom. It was a feeling as if something was going to happen.

Until this time Ryan hadn't stolen anything since grade school when they used to steal combs and candy bars from the dime store. The only big things he had ever stolen and ever thought about were a baseball glove, hat, spikes, and a green jersey with yellow sleeves from Sears. It wasn't too hard. Everybody on the 8th-grade team did it, making about four trips each at different times with raincoats or shopping bags, twelve guys and not one was caught, though two guys got the wrong color jerseys and when they went back, they were out of the green and yellow.

It was a time Ryan was working in a room alone that he thought of coming back to the house later. The woman happened to mention they were leaving for Florida the next day. Ryan thought about it while he worked, trying to imagine the feeling of being alone in the house at night. He began to wonder then if he had enough nerve to go into a house while the people were sleeping, or not knowing if they were asleep or awake or what. God, you'd have to be good to do that. But if you were sure of the layout of the house, if you were sure there wasn't a dog, and if you had a good way to get in, it could be done.

He was working with Leon Woody when he thought of the way to do it. They would move the furniture out to the middle of the floor and shampoo the carpeting around the walls first, then move the furniture back and put aluminum foil pads under the legs. Ryan positioned an end table, reached into the draperies, and unlocked a side window. He pulled his hand out and saw Leon Woody watching him.

Leon Woody shook his head, grinning. Ryan said, What's the matter with you?

Leon Woody said, Nothing,
still grinning.

He didn't bring it up until they were in the truck. He said, Man, why would you want to get the company in trouble? You want to go in, pick a house we haven't been to.

Ryan told him he was crazy or didn't know what he was talking about. Something like that.

You think I don't know?
Leon Woody said. I've been watching you looking around. Let me tell you something. You go in where they're home and sometime some hero is going to blast your ass, man. You go in when they're not home, when you know it and have it in writing they're not home.

You've done it?

Do it, man. I do it.

I've only done it once.

And about to do it again.

I wasn't going to take anything.

Leon Woody looked at him. Then, why do you want to go in?

I don't know.
It sounded dumb. Just to see if I can, I guess.
It still sounded dumb.

Like, man, a game?

Yeah, sort of.

You know what you get if you lose the game?

That's part of it. The risk. There's got to be a risk.

What's the other part?

Seeing if you can do it, I guess.

No baby, that's not the other part. The other part is a white Mercury convertible and fifteen suits and twelve pairs of shoes and I don't know how many chicks I can call anytime of the night. Anytime.

If you want money,
Ryan said, that's something else.

Man, it's the whole something else. You going to tell me you don't want it?

Sure, everybody wants enough to live on. I mean to live well.

Do you live well?

I get along.

Do you live well?

Not that you'd call, you know, comfortably.

Well, man,
Leon Woody said, let's make you comfortable.

It was hard, when he thought about it, not to think of it as a game. A kick. He was breaking the law and knew he was breaking it, but he never thought of it that way. It was funny, he just didn't. It was wrong to break into somebody's house, okay, but he wasn't taking anything they really needed. A TV set, a mink jacket, a couple of watches, all insured; maybe they'd get two-fifty, three hundred for the load. The insurance company pays off and the guy buys another TV set, another fur for his wife, and a couple of watches, everything at a discount because he's a big shot and has all kinds of ins. The guy probably got the money to buy the stuff in the first place by screwing somebody in business. It was all right in business, but it wasn't all right going through a basement window. Why not?

Maybe that didn't follow. Maybe you couldn't justify going through the window, but how many things in your life did you bother to justify? If you got caught, you got caught. No excuses. No trying to skinny out. Right? That was the only way to think about it. Though the best way was not to think about it at all. Just do it and don't make a big thing out of it.

In spite of Leon Woody, he still had to go into a place not knowing whether the people were home or not, and finally he did it. The first time he stayed downstairs, felt his way around, and left in a couple of minutes, not taking anything. The next time he went up to the second floor, keeping to the side of the steps, putting his weight gradually on each step, until he was in the upstairs hall. He walked into a bedroom where a man and a woman were sleeping and took seventy-eight dollars out of a billfold on the dresser. He was going to tell Leon Woody about it, but at the last second, ready to tell him, he decided to keep it to himself. Leon Woody might think he was nuts.

Finally, though, he didn't have to worry about Leon Woody or what he thought. Twice Leon Woody was picked up on suspicion. Somehow the police got onto him. They went into his place with warrants and wanted to know how he could afford the car and all the expensive clothes. Leon Woody told them gambling horses, man. The third time Ryan and Leon were both picked up. They had gone into a house and, on the way home, stopped for a couple of beers. They weren't in the bar a half hour, but when they came out, two plainclothesmen were waiting at Leon's car with a warrant. Ryan was arraigned with Leon on a charge of breaking and entering and was given a suspended sentence. Leon drew six months for possession of stolen property. He also lost his job with the carpet cleaner. After his release he was arrested again, this time for possession of narcotics, and was sent to the Federal Correction Institution at Milan. Ryan wrote to him for a while, but Leon Woody hardly ever answered. He probably had something going at Milan and was too busy.

In eight months of part-time breaking and entering Ryan made about four thousand dollars. He didn't buy expensive clothes or move out of the apartment because he knew his mother would suspect something and ask questions. Though one time he brought home a stolen TV set when the one at home had blown a picture tube, and no one not his mother or his sister or Frank, his brother-in-law asked him where he got it.

In June, Ryan took a Greyhound to Texas for another try at Class C ball.

It's being inside all the time that gets you,
Mr. Majestyk said. That's why I sold the tavern. You got to get out and do what you want to do and feel you own yourself. You know what I mean?

When I quit the job at Sears,
Ryan said, that's the way I felt.

Sure, I know what you mean. What about the baseball?

I told you, I got this bad back.

I mean when did you play Class C?

It was just three summers, I thought I told you,
Ryan said. I'd work at these jobs the rest of the year. Then two summers I didn't play because of my back. Then it felt okay and I tried out again this June, figuring I could make it.

Yeah?
Mr. Majestyk was interested.

But my back I don't know, it gave me a hitch in my swing. A guy would curve me and I'd get all out of shape. So I come home, figure forget it.