Stick by Elmore Leonard Read Free Book Online Page B

back.” He seemed stoned, half asleep, holding his left arm, the elbow, pressed in. He had on an old worn-out leather jacket zipped partway up, nothing under it but bare skin. Stick would bet he had a couple of tattoos on him somewhere, crude, threatening artwork.
    â€œI got to get out,” Stick said, “before you get in, don’t I?” Wanting him to move back.
    Moke said, “I guess if you’re stupid.”
    Rainy was patting the inner side of his seat. “Through here, man. Just come through here.”
    Stick edged around between the seats to the rear compartment, hearing Moke say, “Where’d you find him at?” in that lazy, know-it-all tone so familiar, a twang of pure ignorance.
    Moke climbed in and slammed the door. Then looked around at Stick. “Let me have the suitcase. Make sure you assholes aren’t pulling any shit here.”
    The compartment bare, Stick was about to sit on the case. He got it up in front of him, kneeling on the carpet, and thought about shoving it hard into Moke’s face. He could feel his heart beating.
    Moke took the suitcase, laid it on his lap and fooled with the clasps until he got the top half raised. Rainy glanced out the side windows, then switched on the interior light. Stick raised up on his knees. He saw neat rows of banded one-hundred-dollar bills filling the suitcase. Moke picked up one of the packets and riffled through it, picked up another one, raising it to his ear and did it again. “Yep, it’s all there.” Rainy started to laugh. Moke half-turned to put dull eyes on Stick.
    â€œThe fuck you looking at?”
    Rainy said, “Hey, where we suppose to go, man? Let’s get the show on the road.”
    Stick got a good look at those sleepy eyes before Moke straightened around again, told Rainy to go on over to 87th Avenue and head south.
    He could still feel his heart beating.
    What he had to do was tell himself, keep telling himself, he had nothing to do with this, he was along for the ride. Take a moment to think, realize where he was now and not just react to things.
    That guy he had read about last winter, the one who wrote the book inside and they got him a parole, that guy hadn’t stopped to think. Maybe the other guy, the guy working in the luncheonette who told him there was no place for customers to go to the bathroom there, the health department or somethingdidn’t allow it, maybe he had said the wrong thing and the guy just out had felt his heart beating. That was understandable. But out here you didn’t use a knife on somebody who said you couldn’t take a leak. Inside you would have pissed on the guy. But outside—he shouldn’t have even had the knife on him. He shouldn’t have been out to begin with after they knew he had killed inside and didn’t think anything of human life and after he had spent all that time in the hole. They could’ve read the guy’s book and known they shouldn’t ever let a guy like that out. It was so different out . . .  All the lights, for one thing, all the headlights
and streetlights, the neon lights, all other people’s lights that had nothing to do with you. But inside you all lived together in the same fluorescent light or lights in metal cages without shades. You were in the same kind of light together all the time. If a guy like Moke ever gave you that look or tried to lean on you various ways, everybody was watching and you better back him off or else sew up your asshole because if you gave the guy the first inch he’d take the rest any time he wanted.
    You were lucky in there, Stick began to think. Jesus, you were lucky. You know it?
    He had backed some of them off, the hot-shit guys in the wool-knit caps, but he wouldn’t have backed them off the whole seven years if he hadn’t been lucky and found a six-four, 240-pound soul-buddyby the name of DeJohn Holmes. One moment thinking he was going to