Riding the Rap

“Would you do that? I’d be so grateful.”

The old lady’s eyes shining with hope, or just watery; Raylan wasn’t sure.

“If she denies it,” Ms. Ganz said, “tell her she’s a lying fucking nigger. That’s what I do.”

He asked Victoria about the yardman, Cuban or Puerto Rican, said he came by to see Ms. Ganz and get paid?

“She tell you that?”

“The yardman did.”

“I saw a person like that come to see her last week, but I didn’t speak to him myself. It used to be people came to be paid by her; a plumber fixed something, another one for the air-conditioning. Not so much anymore.”

“She ever go home?”

“She used to, when she first come. Go home for a few days.”

“She said some guys stole her piano?”

“Yes, steal her underwear, her shoes. She goes crazy when nobody believes her. I go in there, sometimes she tries to hit me with her cane, call me something I won’t say to you. You understand this woman never had a piano long as she been here. The roses? She send those to herself, two hundred dollars a week, a standing order, they have to sign the card ‘With love from Warren.’”

“Her husband,” Raylan said. “I imagined Ms. Ganz was the one doing it.”

“Not the husband,” Victoria said, “suppose to be from the son, Chip. But that’s as hard to believe as the dead man sending them. Chip don’t spend ten cents on his mother. You know Chip?”

“Not yet,” Raylan said. “Tell me about him.”

fourteen

It was dark now and they kept the house dark except for the study where there were no windows. When Bobby Deo came in from outside he said to Louis, “You see him?”

It straightened Louis, sitting on the sofa, the shotgun next to him. “He come back?”

“Quiet this time, no lights on.”

Louis said, “Man, I didn’t see a thing. Got it on the full screen, too. But you can’t see shit out there at night with that cheap-ass camera, even with the spot. He get out and look around?”

“Came up to the house, he takes a look in the windows. Looks all around before he leaves. Walks to the back, looks at the swimming pool, looks in the garage…”

“You put your car in there.”

“Yeah, well, he’s seen it now. Go

“You mean if he comes back,” Louis said. “What you tell him, you’re the caretaker.” Louis thought about it and began to nod saying, “Yeah, the dude looks in the window, don’t see any furniture, looks at the scummy swimming pool… You understand what I’m saying? The dude can see nobody’s living here.”

“Yeah, but my car is there,” Bobby said.

“Man, I just told you, you the caretaker. You watch the place nobody breaks in. You sleep in the kitchen and must not’ve heard him outside. I’m saying if he comes back. See, then you ask him for some identification. You want to know who the fuck he thinks he is coming around here at night, you trying to sleep.”

Bobby was nodding like he agreed, but then said, “I don’t know about this guy. Is he looking for Harry?”

“See, I wondered the same thing,” Louis said, “on account of Chip owing Harry and here Harry is right upstairs. So we think, ‘Oh, he must be looking for Harry.’ You understand what I’m saying? But all the dude say he wants is to talk to Mr. Ganz. Am I right? The dude, it might be wants to sell the man something, like he can give him a deal on aluminum screens, some shit for the house.”

“So he comes at night,” Bobby said, “to measure the windows.”

“What I’m saying,” Louis said, “we don’t know what the dude wants outside of he wants to talk to Mr. Ganz. But now he sees Mr. Ganz ain’t here. Nobody is.”

Bobby was nodding again, only this time he said, “Why do you call him Mister?”

“Does it bother you?”

“I don’t know why you do it. You don’t work for him.”

“We go back,” Louis said. “He use to come over to the casino in Freeport when I was back there awhile dealing blackjack. One night he cashes in big, gives me a five-hundred-dollar tip and hires me to bodyguard him now and then. I been living here, learning how to be African-American, going back and forth when I felt like it; but now I come to stay. And now I’m being me, you dig? See, mostly he was going down to Miami then, playing high-stakes poker with the big boys and some of them had bodyguards, so he wanted one, too. Wasn’t bad at cards. He start losing, his mama would pick up his IOU’s, keep her so

“Without him doing any the work,” Bobby said.

“I told you he don’t know shit. Tried falsifying bank loan applications one time and drew probation. Otherwise the man’s cherry.”

“But we say okay, whatever he tells us.”

“Going with his idea, yeah.”

“He says let Harry sit there two three weeks, nobody talk to him. We say okay and we sit here watching the TV.”

“What you saying,” Louis said, “you don’t think we should wait.”

“I don’t see what good it is. Kidnap a guy and give him time to wonder what’s happening to him. For what?”

“We didn’t kidnap him,” Louis said, “we took him hostage.”

“You like to think of it that way? It’s the same thing,” Bobby said, coming over to the sofa, standing so close Louis had to bend his head back. “You get caught, you go to prison, man. He’s four days up in the room, that’s enough. We should talk to Harry now, tonight, tell him what he has to do.”

Louis said, “Get to it, huh?” wanting to think about it, but knowing he didn’t have time. It was him and Bobby for the time being and he’d have to go along. So he said, “I don’t see the good of waiting either, just ‘cause the man say to.”

Bobby said, “Let’s go do it.”

And that was that.

What they’d do, go upstairs and Louis would check on Harry, see if he had to go potty, while Bobby went to Chip’s bedroom to get him, the man last seen staring out his window burning herb.

As soon as Louis opened the door Harry’s voice in the dark said, “Is someone there?” Same as he always did.

“Goddamn it, say something!”

Yelling it. Bobby was right, this man was ready to be talked to. Louis went in past him to the bathroom and turned on the light. The window in here and the two in the bedroom were covered over with sheets of plywood nailed to the window frames. Louis looked at Harry in the light from the bathroom, sitting on his cot, the towel and silver tape wrapped around his head, the man not moving a muscle, listening hard for sounds.

The same way the hostages in Beirut must’ve sat listening, not knowing shit where they were at, why they were being held, nothing.

Chip had read all about the hostages, seen them on TV when they were released, read a book one of them wrote and came up with the idea he told to Louis. Pick up any one of these rich guys he had on his list and hide him out for a while.

Louis had said at that time, “You talking about kidnapping?” The same thing Bobby said when he was told about it. Like the man was crazy.

The way Chip saw the difference: “Kidnapping, you hold a person for ransom. What I’m talking about, we don’t call anyone, like the guy’s wife, and say pay up or you’ll never see your husband again. We wait, and after a while we ask the guy what his life’s worth to him.”

Louis, that time, still didn’t see the difference. He said, “But everybody knows the man’s been kidnapped.”

And Chip said, “No, the guy’s disappeared. No one knows if something happened to him or he took off or what. All the time they’re looking for him we’ve got him hidden away. Okay, once the guy’s no longer in the news, nobody’s talking about what happened to him, we pick up another guy from the list and do the same thing, chain him up blindfolded… like the real hostages, they were kept like that for months, some of them even years.”