52 Pickup by Elmore Leonard

Author:Elmore Leonard
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Detective, Mystery & Detective - General, Detective and mystery stories, Mystery & Detective, Fiction - Mystery, Political, Fiction, Literary, Suspense, Mystery fiction, General
ISBN: 9780060083991
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2002-07-11T05:00:00+00:00

15

* * *

“I DON’T KNOW,” LEO FRANK SAID. “Deal looks clean and simple, then all of a sudden it gets complicated. There must be something. I mean the guy’s got some dough, hasn’t he?”

Bobby Shy looked over at Alan. Those two were talking. Bobby sat on a pillow with his back leaning against the wall. He was uncomfortable but he was listening, getting it clear in his mind. There was a funny sound in the talk: somebody jiving somebody.

Alan was over by the window that had a tree painted on the shade, a brown heavy line for the trunk and a green circle for the leaves. Alan was home. He was smoking a joint, exhaling with barely a trace of anything coming out of his mouth.

He said, “The man has money. I told you he had money. He can get his hands on more money when he cashes in his stocks and bonds and shit. But the government has got him by the balls. He owes them over a hundred and fifty grand on his income tax the last two years and he’s got to pay up. If he doesn’t they make him sell his house, his business, everything.”

Leo said, “Then why did he have money the other day, in the envelope?”

“Because he had to hold us off,” Alan said. “He was afraid we might jump and call the cops on him. So he let us smell the dough figuring we wouldn’t do anything right away. That gives him time to set up the meeting.”

“I don’t know,” Leo Frank said.

“I know you don’t,” Alan said. “Jesus, I’m glad he talked to me and not to you. He might be a fuck-up in business, but he had that much sense.”

No, Bobby Shy was thinking, something is not right. He didn’t like the sound of the talk. He didn’t like being here in Alan’s apartment. The place looked bare, like he’d just moved in and hadn’t put anything where it belonged; and yet it was full of all kinds of weird shit on the walls, on the floor, even hanging from the ceiling. There were psycho designs and names and words in bright aerosol paint sprayed all over the white walls and on the shades—like the men’s room of a jive joint or a New York subway station. Man had gooseneck lamps you could twist around in every direction, black lights and colored mood lights in white globes, Indian bells and shit, birds and mobile shapes hanging down, balls on aluminum sticks that hit against each other, rugs that looked like they were made out of animal hair, pillows from India lying around, a couple of straw chairs and all these big red and green and purple and yellow pillows. Like they’d turn the men’s room in the jive joint into a Turkish whorehouse.

“I mean,” Leo said, “if a guy makes that kind of dough, how come he doesn’t have any left to pay the government?”

“He invested it. Look,” Alan said, “he’s supposed to pay the government quarterly, every three months.

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