Riding the Rap

Chip said, “What’s he doing?”

“Nothing,” Louis said. “He’s standing there.”

“Well, why doesn’t he leave?”

“He’s looking the place over.”

Louis had sent Bobby out front and got back to the study quick to keep an eye on Chip, watch how he behaved in this situation, somebody coming to the house. The man looked like he’d froze, his eyes stuck to the TV screen, the video of the front drive on big. Bobby wasn’t in the picture now, he’d walked off, but the dude in the suit was still there.

“I make him to be a real estate man,” Louis said. “Come to see you want to sell the house. Got all dressed up in his suit, his dude hat, wearing it like he knows what he’s doing, or wants you to think he does.”

Right then Chip said, “The hat.” Sounding at the moment excited, like he was remembering something he’d forgot.

Louis looked at him. “Yeah? What?”

Chip didn’t answer, staring at the screen.

Louis looked at it to see the dude walking away now, past Bobby’s Cadillac to his car. The dude doing all right for himself to be driving that Jag-u-ar.

“He’s leaving.” Louis watched the car back out of the drive, disappear, then looked over at Chip to see the man still watching the screen. “He’s gone, Chipper, the show’s over.”

It brought the man back to life saying, “Jesus, that was close.”

“Close to what? You saw Bobby talk to him, send the dude on his way?”

“I thought he might come up to the house.”

The man looked to be still edgy, rubbing his hands together, scratching his arms.

“Why would he come to the house? He don’t have no business here. Bobby told him nobody’s home; what he said he’d tell anybody came. He’s cleaning up around the place and don’t know shit otherwise. With that blade in his hand. You think the dude’s go

Bobby came in the study then, sweaty, still holding the machete.

“Told the dude you just the help around here, don’t know shit, huh?”

“Who was it?” Chip said. “What did he want?”

Louis said, “Was a real estate man, huh?”

“I ask him,” Bobby said. “He didn’t say.”

Chip said, “Will you tell me, for Christ sake, what he wanted?”

“You,” Bobby said. “I told him you not here. So he’s go

Chip said, “No,” shaking his head.

But didn’t seem that sure about it, edgy, or like he was thinking of something else. Louis watched him walk out of the study, the man not telling where he was going.

Louis asked it. “What you think?”

“If we have to watch him, too,” Bobby said, “it’s more work.”

“I know what you mean. We got to keep the man out of sight.”

“Tie him up in a room,” Bobby said, “if we have to.”

“Why you say the dude may come back?”

“I think he’s a cop.”

“He didn’t show you nothing.”

“No, it was the way he checked me out,” Bobby said. “Like a cop trying to be a nice guy.”

“So if he comes back?”

“We wait and see.”

Chip phoned Dawn from his bedroom.

“You said the guy wore a hat.”

She said, in almost a whisper, “I happen to have a client with me.”

“Just tell me, for Christ sake, what it looked like.”

“I did. Like a cowboy hat, the way the brim was shaped. But not one of those big ones like the country music guys wear.”

Chip sat at his desk in the bedroom staring out a window at dark shapes, the sun gone from the yard. He heard her say, “Turn a light on so I can see you,” and felt himself jump. He heard her say, “You called him the Marlboro man and I said, ‘Yeah, except he’s real.’ Don’t tell me he came to see you… please.”

“Somebody did. Bobby spoke to him.”

“Chip, if you get me involved in this…”

“It’s not the same guy. I just wanted to make sure.”

Her voice said, “Chip…” as he hung up the phone.

thirteen

When 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 anybody 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.