Jackie Brown Read Online Free Page B

guns temporarily in this house, semiautomatic weapons like TEC-9s purchased legally by "straw buyers" that Simone hired to do it, mostly retired people. Give an old woman the cash plus twenty bucks to buy an assault rifle. None of the straw buyers knew about Ordell, at least not by name.

    He had his white woman, Melanie, living in the apartment in Palm Beach Shores, located at the south end of Singer Island, only two blocks from the public beach. Melanie was the fine big girl Ordell had met in the Bahamas when he went there to see the husband of the woman he and Louis had kidnapped. Melanie was only about twenty-one then, making her thirty-four or so now, but had hustled her tail all over the world taking up with rich guys. She had been with the husband of the kidnapped woman, but when Ordell looked for him he was hiding and she wouldn't tell where he was. So Ordell, what he did was have his friend Mr. Walker take them out in the ocean in his boat and Ordell threw Melanie over the side. They went off a ways, circled around back to where Melanie's blond head was bobbing in the water, and Ordell asked her, "You want to tell me where the man's at?" She was a show. Told Ordell after she would help him score off the husband of the kidnapped woman 'cause she liked him, Ordell, better. She said also 'cause she didn't want to end up in the fucking ocean.

    So here was Melanie after keeping in touch, running into her in Miami . . . Melanie still up for a hustle anytime. She didn't cook or clean too good and, for all her talk and acting sexual, was only average in the bed. (Ordell wondered should he send her over to Simone's for some lessons.) The fine big girl had in thirteen years become bigger, show tits grown to circus tits but still okay, tan, always tanning her body out on the apartment balcony facing the ocean. Ordell used this place sometimes for business, would have his big blond woman get off her butt and serve drinks while he showed his gun movie to buyers from Detroit and New York City. Mr. Walker, over in Free-port, had a print he showed to buyers from Colombia.

    The jackboy, Cujo, had called here a few moments ago to say the Olds Ninety-Eight was waiting. Ordell still had the phone in his hand. He punched a number in Freeport, Grand Bahama.

    "Mr. Walker, how you this evening?"

    Melanie looked up from Vanity Fair, the magazine she was reading on the sofa. She went around in cutoffs and had her fine brown legs tucked under her.

    "I got Beaumont out. Cost me ten thousand. I get it back, but don't like having it out of my sight." Ordell listened and said, "Was yesterday. I had to do some thinking, reason I didn't call you right away."

    Melanie was still watching him. Ordell looked over and she lowered her eyes to the magazine like she wasn't interested. She'd be listening though, and that was fine. He wanted her to know some things without knowing everything.

    "You way ahead of me, Mr. Walker. I had the same thought." Cedric Walker had been a two-bit fishing guide with a whaler till Ordell showed him where the money was. Now the man had a thirty-six-foot Carver with all kinds of navigational shit on it. "You understand, the drunk driving alone violates Beaumont's probation. It wouldn't matter he had the pistol on him . . . That's right, they bring up the machine gun charge again. Means he'll be facing ten years and what he gets for the concealed weapon on top of it. That's what the bail-bond man said. . . . No, I let him put up the bond. Max Cherry . . . Yeah, that's the man's name. Sounds like one a calypso singer would have, huh? Maximilian Cherry and his Oil Can Boppers . . . What? No, I can't see it either. They keep him overnight he's pulling his hair out. I'd send him home to Montego if it didn't cost me the ten. . . . No, there's nothing to talk about. Mr. Walker? Melanie says hi." Ordell listened again and said, "She'll love you for it, man. I'll tell her. You be good now, hear?" and hung up the