The Roust
Every man’s got reasons to be bitter, but you can’t give in to them any old time. There Hollis and me were, killing a pint under the overpass and wishing we had another, and this cop car comes screeching right into the lot — damn near runs us over. Shook me so bad I dropped and broke the bottle. There’s just one cop. He jumps out yelling “Spread ’em!” and yanks out his gun and it goes flying out of his hand and bounces smack at my feet. Hollis yells “Get it!” and I do. I hadn’t held a gun since the army. Up go the cop’s hands. I’m shaking and wondering what I’m doing. “Easy now,” the cop says. Hollis tells him shut up. The cop says he’s looking for two white guys just hit the McDonald’s on Third, he can see now we’re not them, give him his gun and we can scram. I’m saying let’s go man, but Hollis is pissed. He grabs a chunk of cinder block and POW! — he spiderwebs the cop’s windshield. He yells “Sicka getting rousted!” Takes another chunk of block and busts the headlights. Pow! — Pow! Yells “Fuck it all!” He’s smashing the car’s party lights, going “Goddam cops! Goddam people! Goddam Terry, you whore!” Terry’s his ex. Now sirens are closing in from all sides like walls, but Hollis keeps pounding the car and cussing a blue streak. Forget running. I hand the cop the gun and we just watch the backups come tearing in. Hollis went down swinging and swearing. I drew ninety days in the county stockade. Hollis got a year and a day at Raiford. Probably spending it brooding on all the goddam things he’s sick of.
The Holdup
We hit this convenience store last Thursday night nearly did us in. The routine went just fine at first. Rankin braced the redhead chick at the register while I watched the doors and kept the others covered. Rankin worked smooth and quiet as always. Red went big-eyed but quick started sticking it in a paper bag. The two guys holding hands by the ice cream freezer were freaked out but they stood fast and kept their mouths shut. So did the big Cuban momma holding her little girl against her legs. They couldn’t keep their eyes off the gun. That’s why I use the .44 — they remember the cannon better than my face. But this guy in a Dolphins shirt’s got his head in the deli cooler and doesn’t know what’s going down. He’s already chomping on a sandwich when he turns around and catches the scene. Next thing you know he’s on the floor, choking and turning blue — and all I can think is how in Florida if somebody dies for any reason in a felony it’s murder. Rankin sees what’s happening, says “Damn,” and drops down to work on the guy. Who’s now purple. Eyes rolled up, tongue bulging out. Rankin hugs him from behind and gives one hard squeeze after another. Everybody’s watching like it’s TV. I’m about to wet my pants. Suddenly this glob of sandwich flies out and splats on a Fritos bag. The guy starts sucking breath like an air brake. We split fast. And come to find out we scored sixty-two bucks. Jesus, this business. I usually have me two beers every night. That night I put down a dozen.
The Odyssey
by Elmore Leonard
Miami Beach
(Originally published in 1995)
Joe Sereno caught the Odyssey night clerk as he was going off: prissy guy, had his lunch box under his arm.
“I saw it this morning on TV,” Joe said. “So there was a lot of excitement, huh? I thought the cops’d still be here, at least the crime scene guys. I guess they’ve all cleared out. You hear the shots? You must’ve.”
“I was in the office,” the night guy said.
Joe wondered how this twink knew he was in the office at the exact time the shots were fired. What’d he think, it was soundproof in there? But the cops no doubt had asked him that, so Joe let it pass and said, “It was the two guys in one-oh-five, wasn’t it?”
“I think so.”
“You’re not sure?”
The night guy rolled his eyes and then pretended to yawn. He did things like that, had different poses.
“Fairly respectable-looking guys,” Joe said, “but no luggage. What’re they doing, shacking up? Maybe, maybe not. But I remember thinking at the time, they’re up to something. The TV news didn’t mention their names, so there must not’ve been any ID on the bodies and the cops didn’t think the names they used to register were really theirs. Am I right?”
The night guy said, “I wouldn’t know,” acting bored.
“Soon as I saw those guys yesterday — they checked in as I was getting ready to go off — I said to Mel, ‘Let me see the registration cards, see what names they gave.’ He wouldn’t show me. He goes, ‘Registering guests is not a security matter, if you don’t mind.’” Mel, the day guy, sounding a lot like Kenneth, the night guy.
“I didn’t have time to hang around, keep an eye on them,” Joe went on. “I had to go to another job, a function at the Biltmore. They put on extra security for this bunch of Cuban hotshots meeting there. I mean Cuban Cubans, said to be Castro sympathizers, and there was a rumor Fidel himself was gonna show up. You believe it? I wore a suit instead of this Mickey Mouse uniform, brown and friggin’ orange; I get home I can’t wait to take it off. Those functions, you stand like this holding your hands in front of you, like you’re protecting yourself from getting a hernia, and you keep your eyes moving. So” — he gestured toward the entrance — “I saw the truck out there, the tan van, no writing on the sides? That’s the cleanup company, right?”
“I wouldn’t know,” the night guy said.
Little curly-haired twink, walked with his knees together.
“Well, listen, I’ll let you go,” Joe said, “and thanks for sharing that information with me, it was interesting. I’ll go check on the cleanup people, see how they’re doing. What room was that again, one-oh-five?”
It sure was.
There was furniture in the hall by the open door and a nasty smell in the air. As Joe approached, a big black guy in a white plastic jumpsuit, latex gloves, what looked like a shower cap, goggles up on his head, blue plastic covering his shoes, came out carrying a floor lamp.
Joe said, “Joe Sereno, security officer.”
“I’m Franklin, with Baneful Clean-Up.”
“Baneful?”
“The boss named it. He tried Pernicious Clean-Up in the Yellow Pages? Didn’t get any calls.”
Joe said, “Hmmmm, how about Death Squad?”
“That’s catchy,” Franklin said, “but people might get the wrong idea. You know, that we doing the job ’stead of cleaning up after. This is my partner, Marlis,” Franklin said, and Joe turned to see a cute young black woman approaching in her plastic coveralls, hip-hop coming out of the jam box she was carrying.
“Joe Sereno, security officer.”
“Serene, yeah,” Marlis said, “that’s a cool name, Joe,” her body doing subtle, funky things like it was plugged into the beat. She said to Franklin, “Diggable Planets doing ‘Rebirth of Slick.’ ‘It’s cool like dat.’”
“‘It’s chill like dat,’” Franklin said. “Yeah, ‘it’s chill like dat.’”
Franklin bopping now, going back into the room.
Joe followed him in, stopped dead at the sight, and said, “Oh, my God,” at the spectacle of blood: on the carpet, on two walls, part of the ceiling, a trail of blood going from this room into the bathroom. Joe looked in there and said it again, with feeling, “Oh, my God.”