Bandits (1987) by Elmore Leonard Read Free Book Online

Nicaraguan would think she was dead. That had to be it. Now she was waving to a guy in a lab coat . . .
    And he thought, Yeah, but she got the girl out of Central America by herself under the gun and brought her all the way here, didn ' t she? So leave her alone. Don ' t rush her. She knows what she ' s doing. Look at her, Jesus, with that movie-star nose and the lower lip he wouldn ' t mind biting . . .
    She looked at him just then and Jack said, My mother ' s Aunt Elodie was married to a guy, I never knew him, but his dad was here back in the thirties. He was a building contractor and got the disease, according to my mother ' s aunt, from a colored fella that worked for him. She said he had a little cut on his hand, right here. I remember her telling me when I was little. She lived out Esplanade Avenue in a big frame house that was always dark inside. She kept the shades drawn during the day and it smelled old and musty. I picture her, I can smell that house. She believed that was the way you got leprosy, from a colored person. You had to be careful, she said, if you were around them and you had any cuts. I used to think about that old man, her father-in-law. . . . He died the same year I was born. I couldn ' t imagine a well-to-do man like that, in New Orleans, having leprosy. Lepers were always natives in Africa or Asia. . . . There was a movie we saw in high school about a leper colony in Burma that I ' ll never forget. When I think of lepers now I see those people. I mean they were in the worst shape you can imagine, really awful-looking. Some of ' em, I remember, didn ' t have noses. He paused a moment and said, But what I remember most was this Italian missionary that ran the place. Guy with a full beard, real long, scraggly, wore a white cassock and a beret. But the thing about him, he was always touching the lepers, no matter how deformed they were. Like he was going out of his way to touch them. Taking hold of the stubs they had for hands, touching their faces . . .
    Jack paused again. They were on the tree-shaded drive that led to the infirmary building, Sister Lucy ' s gaze on the entrance, directly ahead of them.
    He said, You touch them, too, don ' t you? Not just the drunks at the soup kitchen, I mean lepers, at the hospital where you worked.
    She came to a stop and turned off the ignition before looking at him with those quietly aware eyes.
    That ' s what you do, Jack, you touch people.
    They sat in the hearse parked in the shade of old oak trees while she smoked a cigarette, Jack deciding it was no more weird for a nun than the way she was dressed. She had offered him one, a Kool Filter King. He told her he ' d quit three years ago.
    In prison?
    After I got out. When I was in there I smoked all the time.
    Before lighting up she asked if he ' d mind and he thought of Buddy Jeannette in the hotel suite that night his life changed. You mind if I smoke? Now wondering if the same thing could be happening with a nun, thinking that in the past week he had seen two old movies on TV where guys were with nuns in strange situations . . .
    She said, I left you up in the air. I come here and the place overwhelms me.
    It ' s a lot bigger than you think it ' s gonna be.
    What I should remember, it ' s also a public health service hospital.
    Why do you have to remember that?
    It ' s operated by the federal government. Anyone with an in can find out things.
    He said, Yeah? and waited.
    You don ' t see the connection, do you?
    He said, We started out you thought I knew things I didn ' t. Well, if you ' re still under that impression then I ' m sorry but I can ' t help you. I ' m only the driver and I ' m not even doing that. Letting her see some of his irritation. Why not? She was a sister, but she wasn ' t going to make him stay after and clean the erasers if he talked back. You want the colonel to think she ' s dead, I can understand that. But why go to all this trouble if he ' s busy down in Nicaragua?
    He isn ' t down in