Stick by Elmore Leonard Read Free Book Online Page A

anybody at the Mutiny, they tell you. Nestor, he finally say okay, but Chucky has to pay him for the bond, you know, that Nestor lost.”
    â€œForfeited,” Stick said.
    â€œYeah, forfeit. The court don’t give it back. So that’s it, man, in the suitcase. He always say that, Chucky? About the gorilla.” Rainy grinned. “Oh, man . . .”
    â€œWhy’d he pick you?”
    â€œWhat, to take it? He ask me.”
    â€œHe’s got all those guys—why didn’t he send one of them with it?”
    â€œI tell him I need a job, some money. So . . .”
    Stick thought about it, trying to accept Chucky doing Rainy a favor. “What’s he on?”
    Rainy glanced over. “Who, Chucky? ‘Ludes, man. You can tell, uh? How he moves?”
    â€œLike he’s walking in mud,” Stick said.
    Following 95 through Miami, Stick couldn’t believe all the cement that had been poured since he was last here, when he was married and living here . . .  He had begun thinking about his former wife, Mary Lou, when Rainy had to brake hard in traffic not watching his lane, and Stick felt his bucket seat slide forward and had to plant his feet. His wife’s Camaro had had a seat like that. He would adjust it, there, but it would break loose within a few days and give them something to discuss when his wife wasn’t complaining about the hot weather, about not seeing her friends, about her mother driving her crazy . . .  till they moved back to Detroit and she began complaining about the cold, busing, about the colored taking over the shopping malls. Now she was back here again, Stick believed, because she missed bitching about her mother. They were a great pair, with their mouths turned down and set that way for all time. He hoped it wouldn’t hurt his little
girl, always hearing the negative side of things. His little girl’s name was Katy. She had sent him handmade birthday and Father’s Day cards, her school pictures some years, and twenty letters during the time he was in prison; more than half of them written when she was twelve. He’d call tomorrow . . .  get a present for her.
    They left the freeway and after that Stick didn’t know where they were, somewhere in South Miami; all the streets, up-down and across were numbers. Finally Rainy turned a corner at Southwest Seventy-Third Street and pulled up in front of a place with a sign that said Neon Leon’s. They had to meet a guy here, Rainy said, who would tell them where to go. A guy name Moke.
    Stick said, “Why don’t you give him the bag? Get it over with.”
    â€œI have to give it to Nestor Soto or his father-in-law, a guy name Avilanosa, nobody else,” Rainy said. “Nestor don’t advertise, I have to find out where he is . . .  Lock your door.”
    Stick watched Rainy go into the place—a lounge or a restaurant, it looked new, whatever it was, flashy. Neon Leon’s. Hot shit. Places like this and Wolfgang’s made Stick tired thinking about them. He was getting old. Getting on and nothing to show for it. He’d earned five dollars a week in Jackson as a clerk-porter in the Guidance Center office, filing, mopping floors, cleaning toilets, and managed to come out with 680 dollars. A hundred and a half to get to Florida; a week paid in advance at the Hotel Bon-Aire on South Beach . . .  he had about three hundred left. He’d go as high as a grand from Rainy for sitting here in the dark guarding Chucky’s suitcase with almost a quarter of a million in it. Christ . . .
    Moke came out, let go of the door and Rainy had to catch it. Stick watched him approach this side of the van as Rainy came around and got back in.
    â€œHe’s going with us.”
    When Stick opened the door Moke said to him, gesturing with his head, hair to his shoulders, “Get in the