Leading up to something. Louis could feel it.
"For what?"
"Just see what happens. I think it'd be a kick. You know Melanie, she hasn't changed any. Can you see her with this asshole Nazi?"
Ordell acting like a kid with a secret, dying to tell it, but wanting to be asked.
He said to Louis, "You don't know where in the fuck you're at, do you? Keep coming out of prison and starting over. I see you got rid of your mustache, have some gray in your curly hair. You staying in shape, that's good."
"What'd you do," Louis said, "get your hair straightened? You used to have a 'fro."
"Got to keep in style, man."
Ordell ran his hand carefully over his hair, feeling the hard set, ran it back to his pigtail braid and curled it between his fingers, fooling with it as he said, "No, I don't imagine you know what you want."
Louis said, "You don't, huh?"
"Giving me the convict stare. Well, you learned something in the joint," Ordell said. "Otherwise, Louis, that shirt you have on, you look like you pump more gas than iron. Ought to have 'Lou' on the pocket there. Clean the windshield, check the oil. . . ."
Smiled then to show he was kidding. Ordell in
linen and gold, orange crew-neck sweater and white slacks, the gold shining on his neck, his wrist, and two of his fingers.
He said, "Come on, let's go see the show."
Louis said, "You're the show."
Ordell smiled and moved his shoulders like a fighter. They walked up behind the crowd that was held back by yellow police tape cordoning off the steps in front of the fountain. A young Nazi up there was speaking as the others stood facing the crowd in their supremacy outfits. Ordell started to push through to get closer and Louis took hold of his arm.
"I'm not going in there."
Ordell turned to look at him. "It ain't the same as on the yard, man. Nobody has a shank on them."
"I'm not going in there with you."
"Well, that's cool," Ordell said. "We don't have to."
They found a place where they could see enough of the young Nazi. He was shouting, "What do we want?" And his buddies and the Nazigirls and the rest of the cuckoos up there would shout back, "White power!" They kept it up until the young Nazi finished and shouted, "One day the world will know Adolf Hitler was right!" That got voices from the crowd shouting back at him, calling him stupid and a retard. He yelled at the crowd, "We're going to reclaim this land for our people!" his young Nazi voice cracking. And they yelled back, what people was he talking about, assholes like him? A black woman in the crowd said, "Come on up to Riv'era Beach and say those things, you be dead." The young skinhead Nazi began screaming "Sieg heil!" as loud as he could, over and over, and the cuckoos joined in with him, giving the Nazi salute. Now young guys in the crowd were calling them racist motherfuckers, telling them to go home, go on, get out of here, and it looked like the show was over. Ordell said, "Let's go."
They walked over to Ocean Boulevard where they'd left his car, a black Mercedes convertible, with the top down. The time on the meter had run out and a parking ticket was stuck beneath the windshield wiper on the driver's side. Ordell pulled the ticket out and dropped it in the street. Louis was watching but didn't comment. Didn't say much of anything until they were on the middle bridge heading back to West Palm. Then he started.
"Why'd you want to show me that guy? He call you a nigger and you want his legs broken?"
"That payback shit," Ordell said, "you must get that from hanging out with the Eyetalians. Ain't nothing they like better than paying back. Swear an oath to it."
"You want to see where I hang out?" Louis said. "You come to Olive, take a right. Go up to Banyan, used to be First Street, and hang a left." The next thing Louis was telling him, on Olive now, "That's the court building up on the right."
"I know where the courts are at," Ordell said. He turned onto Banyan and was heading
toward Dixie
Highway now. Halfway up the block Louis told him to stop.
"Right there, the white building," Louis said, "that's where I hang out."
Ordell turned his head to look across the street at a one-story building, a storefront with MAX CHERRY BAIL BONDS printed on the window.
"You work for a bail bondsman? You told me you with some funky insurance company the Eyetalians got hold of."
"Glades Mutual in Miami," Louis said. "Max Cherry writes their bonds. I sit in the office-some guy misses his court date, I go get him."
"Yeah?" That sounded a little better, like Louis was a bounty hunter, went after bad guys on the run.
"What they want me for mainly, see if I can bring in some of those big drug-trafficking bonds, hundred and fifty grand and up."
Ordell said, "Yeah, I 'magine you made some good contacts in the joint. That why the company hired you?"
"It was my cellmate, guy was in for killing his wife. He told me to look up these friends of his when I got out. I go to see them, they ask me if I know any Colombians. I said yeah, a few. Some guys I met through a con named J.J. I told you about him, the one that got picked up again? I'm staying in his house." Louis lifted a cigarette from the pocket of his work shirt. "So what I do is look up these Colombians, down in South Beach, and hand out Max Cherry business cards. 'If you ever go to jail, I'm your bail.'