Raylan_ A Novel - Elmore Leonard [57]
“You fall for another filly.”
She could see him grinning now.
“That’s right, but the amount of affection I show the girl can make her a winner.”
“How would that work with me,” Jackie said, “your being affectionate?”
“Honey, I’m seventy-five years old. We’ll have drinks and I’ll make you laugh and give you a kiss on the cheek. You keep everything you win. I’ll be a happy dog havin you pet me once in a while.”
“What if I’m in a game but low on chips?”
“I see you can win, I’ll help you out.”
“And if I lose my stake . . . ?”
“It comes to that,” Harry said, “I’ll drop you off anywhere you want.”
Jackie leaned over to kiss his old man’s cheek and tell him, “Harry, you just made me the happiest girl in the world.”
It took her four hours and ten minutes to win eighteen thousand at two different no-limit tables that afternoon in Shelbyville; Jackie playing against people who hired truck drivers, people who bet on grain futures produced by farmers they didn’t know or care to. Jackie was having a bottle of beer now, Harry Burgoyne a double scotch.
She said, “All they did was try to bluff.”
“And you could tell.”
“They weren’t good at it.”
“Fellas I play with at Keeneland, I think they’re always tryin to bluff me. I know it, so I stay in too long, call their raise, but every time I do, one of ’em beats me.”
“I’d have to watch your game,” Jackie said, “see what you could do.”
“That’s what I been thinking,” Harry said. “Or get these boys to play hold ’em with you. They’re breeders, have almost the money I do. I tell them you’re my niece visitin from college. Loves poker and thinks she’s pretty darn good. I say, ‘You fellas want to play Jackie if I stake her?’ You bet they do. They win they see it as takin my money.”
Harry, sipping his drink, said, “Keeneland, I use to do a skit for the bar crowd with a driver I had, the African colored guy. I’d chide him for the way he’s dressed in my racing colors. He’d say, ‘But, Boss, is your wife dresses me.’ Watchin you play I was thinkin how I could use you in a humorous exchange, a skit we’d make up.”
Jackie said, “You’re kidding, right?”
Chapter Twenty-four
A former convict named Delroy Lewis ran the show: hired Floy, an eighteen-year-old street kid who stole cars he sold to chop-shops—good-looking expensive ones, Mercedes and BMW Floy’s favorites—picked up mostly from big shopping mall lots using tools took him twenty seconds to jimmy the door, a half minute to start her up. Sometimes he’d settle for a Chrysler or Buick, the big Honda lately, a roomy car that gave the girls space to relax and smoke a doobie on their way to work.
Floy parked on the street and went in the apartment house had a fire escape going this way and the other down the front of the building and pushed a number.
Cassie came on saying, “What kind a car?”
“Gray Beamer. Had it washed for y’all.”
Cassie said, “Be down in five minutes.”
Delroy had told Floy, “They not down in a half hour, leave. I’ll give them a talkin to.”
They finally got done dressing and came out to the car looking like fashion-conscious bag ladies in their outfits they got from Goodwill, hip-huggers under their raincoats, sporty little beach hats, brims turned down, Janie wearing a Detroit Tigers baseball cap; the three carrying shiny bags from ladies’ stores.
They got in the car, Kim saying to Cassie, “You know you’re wearing your fuck-me heels?”
Cassie said, “They sound cool on marble floors.”
Kim said, “What if we have to run for the car?”
“I could have on sneakers,” Cassie said, “we’re still fucked. You think Floy’s gonna wait for us?”
“I was told,” Floy said to his rearview mirror, “y’all take more than six minutes to come out, I take off. Delroy say to worry about my own young ass.” Floy turned in his seat to look right at the girls. “Nobody say what you doin’s easy but, come on, you walk in cool and walk out your shoppin bags full of green. Delroy told me hisself, you the best chicks robbin banks he ever had. The man loves you.”
Janie said, “That’s why he hits us?”
“You don