Riding the Rap

He used two pairs of cuffs from the trunk to link the car-jackers together-had them do it left wrist to left wrist and right wrist to right wrist side by side-and had them slide into the front seat next to Dale Junior.

Would he have shot them? Dale Junior kept quiet wondering about it. One of the cops back in Ocala had told him he’d better behave while in this marshal’s care, but he hadn’t thought about it until now. He could feel the shoulder of the car-jacker sitting next to him, the one with cornrows, pressing against his arm. Now the marshal, back there in the dark with his shotgun, was saying, “Fellas, this is Dale Crowe Junior, another one believes it’s the system’s fault he’s ill-tempered and feels it’s okay to assault people.”

Saying then, after a minute, “I know a fella sixty-seven years old, got rich off our economic system ru

The car-jacker next to Dale Junior said, “You was to lemme go, I’ll see the man don’t bother you no more.”

Dale Junior thought the marshal would tell him to keep his mouth shut, maybe poke him with the shotgun. But nothing happened like that and there was a silence, no sound from back there in the dark until the marshal said, “You miss the point. This friend of mine-his name’s Harry-he isn’t bothering me any, he’s his own problem. Same as you fellas. I don’t take what you did personally. You understand? Want to lean on you. Or wish you any more state time’n you deserve. What you’ll have to do now is ride the rap, as they say. It’s all anybody has to do.”

two

Harry hired a Puerto Rican bounty hunter to go after the sixteen five this guy Warren “Chip” Ganz owed him. Warren Ganz III, living up in Manalapan, Palm Beach County.

“Those homes up there on the ocean,” Harry said to the collector, “with the boat docks across the road, on the Intracoastal? They have to go for a few mil, so you know he’s got it. The guy phoned in his bets, NFL the entire season, some college basketball, NC double-A and NBA play-offs… You know I’m out of business. So my sheet writers are closing the books, checking the slow pays, I find out this Warren Ganz was using three different names. He’d call up to place a bet and say, ‘This is Warren.’ Once in a while he’d say, ‘This is Cal.’ Most of the time, though, he used Chip. Call up and say, ‘This is Chip.’ One of my rules, forty years in the business-going back to the syndicate days-twenty years ru

The Puerto Rican, a slim, good-looking guy with dreamy eyes and a ponytail he twisted into a knot, said he was no longer a bounty hunter, but still knew how to find people. His name was Roberto Deogracias and was known as Bobby Deo and Bobby the Gardener.

Bobby said, “This guy’s name is Cheep?”

“You got it,” Harry said. “Chip Ganz.”

He loved guys like Bobby Deo; they’d do anything for a price, whatever you had to have done.

A couple of days later Bobby phoned Harry at his apartment in the Della Robbia Hotel on Ocean Drive, Miami Beach.

“The mother of this guy Chip Ganz owns the house where he’s living. The father, Warren Ganz, Junior, paid two hundred thousand for it in sixty-five, died and left the estate to his wife. Two point three-five acres on the ocean worth four to five million now. That’s an estimate, comparing it to places along there sold in the last few years.”

“How do you find that out?”

“You call the office of the Property Appraiser.”

“They tell you all that?”

“They have to, Harry. Is no secret.”

“So he lives there with his mother?”

“The mother is in a nursing home in West Palm, but I don’t know if there’s something wrong with her or she just getting old or what. I have to check, maybe go see her. So Mr. Chip Ganz, I’m pretty sure, lives there alone. Nine thousand square feet, man; swimming pool, tile patio, the house white with a red tile roof they call Mediterranean, Harry. It could be a beautiful place, but it’s in bad shape.” Bobby the Gardener speaking now. “I mean the property is overgrown, needs to be landscaped. You can barely drive into the place.”

“Maybe,” Harry said, “it’s for sale.”

“Maybe, but it’s not listed. When I went up there he wasn’t home, so I walk around the place, look in some of the windows at the living room, the dining room. There almost no furniture in the downstairs. Like he’s selling it, maybe a piece at a time and his mommy don’t know about it. Big three-car garage has a Mercedes-Benz in it, ten years old, needs some bump and paint work.”

Harry’s voice on the phone said, “Shit. Well, it doesn’t look like he’s go

Bobby Deo said, “Let me see what I can do.” And drove back to the Ganz estate: along Ocean Boulevard past walls of flowering oleander and wind-blown Australian pines to the spray-painted sign in the vegetation that said PRIVATE DRIVE and below it KEEP OUT. Bobby backed into the drive, eased his Cadillac through the vegetation growing wild and stopped when he heard it scraping the car. He got out and walked along the drive through sea grape, palmettos, sabal palms, past an old gumbo-limbo spreading all over the place, through this jungle to the house with no furniture in it. He looked again in windows to see the rooms still empty before walking around to the ocean side of the property and was pretty sure he’d found Mr. Chip Ganz.

In a lounge on the red-tiled patio, reading the paper and smoking a joint, ten-thirty in the morning.

Bobby’s first impression of Chip Ganz, he saw a ski

Bobby said, “How you doing, Chip?” and took time to look around, notice the sea grape taking over the frontage along the ocean. “Your property needs a lot of work. You know it?”

The guy seemed to be interested, putting the paper down and pushing up to lean on his arm, the joint pinched between his thumb and his finger. He said, “Is that right?”

“I use to work as a gardener,” Bobby said.

“Yeah? What do you do now?”

“Harry Arno ask me to come by. You know what I’m talking about?”

“I have a pretty good idea,” Chip said to the guy coming toward him now in a white guayabera shirt hanging starched over his waist-but the real thing if he was doing collection work. The guy standing at the lounge now looking down at him.

“You want to check me out, call Harry. Ask him is Bobby Deo here to pick up what you owe him.”