Free The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins Page B

afterit, and I actually think he’s getting white. ‘Do it again, quick,’ he says, ‘gimme another one.’ So I pour him another one. He gets back on that one just as fast, throws some money onna bar and backs off the stool, you know, like he hadda go to the john and quick, too. ‘I’m leaving,’ he says. ‘Around an hour or so, I’ll call back in, see if anybody called, and if they did, you tell me, and when they do, well, say I’m going to the place and I’ll be there as soon as I see a fellow. Okay?’
    “Okay with me, is what I say,” Dillon says, “and he goes out. Now what do you make of that?”
    “Who was this party?” Foley said.
    “That’s what interested me,” Dillon said. “It was Eddie Coyle. Funny, huh?”

12
     
    “The Duck sent me,” Jackie Brown said to the battered green door on the third floor landing of the tenement house. There was a strong smell of vegetables around him.
    The door opened slowly, without any sound. Light trickled out around the edge and Jackie Brown’s eyes refocused again in the thick air. He could see the side of a man’s head, one eye and an ear and part of the nose. At waist level he saw two hands gripping the stump of a double-barreled shotgun that was less than a foot long. “What does the Duck want?” the man said. He hadn’t shaved for a few days.
    “The Duck wants me to help him sometimes,” Jackie Brown said, “and I did. Now he wants you to help me, on account of it.”
    “What kind of help exactly?” the stubbled man said.
    “Suppose I was to say I wanted ten pieces and had cash to payfor them right now?” Jackie Brown said. “Would that help you out?”
    The door opened fully and the stubbled man backed away from it, still holding the shotgun at waist level. “Come in,” he said. “I assume you know what I can do with this thing if I was to decide I didn’t like what you were saying. Come in and tell me what you got in mind.”
    Jackie Brown entered the apartment. It was furnished with white shag wall-to-wall carpeting, heavy orange drapes, and black chairs. There was a large, low table made of glass and chromium before a black leather couch. There were gold and orange pillows on the couch. A girl with long, blonde hair, wearing a white cashmere jumpsuit, unzipped deeply in the front with no bra under it, sat curled up on the couch. From hidden speakers, Jackie Brown heard Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones singing. Illuminated by a globular white lamp hanging from a silver arm was a poster that said in orange on white: “Altamont. This Is The Next Time.”
    “Pretty nice,” Jackie Brown said.
    The stubbled man said: “Leave us alone, Grace.”
    The girl arose and left the room.
    “Let’s see the money,” the stubbled man said.
    “Let’s talk about what the money’s for,” Jackie Brown said. “I want ten pieces, thirty-eights or better. I want them now. The Duck says you have them.”
    “How long you know the Duck?” the stubbled man said.
    “Since I got grabbed at the Weirs about five years ago and he was in the next cell with me,” Jackie Brown said.
    “You still ride?” the stubbled man said.
    “No,” Jackie Brown said. “That was before I heard about making money. I was just having fun then.”
    “You see any of the guys?” the stubbled man said.
    “I saw some of them a couple years ago,” Jackie Brown said. “I happened to be up around here doing a little business, and I see a lot of hogs around this place outside town, so I stop, pass the time of day, and it turns out to be Lowell, they got a charter, finally. The big fellow was supposed to be in town.”
    “He was,” the stubbled man said. “They had a council of war.”
    “In the sand pit,” Jackie Brown said. “Yeah, I know. Some of the Disciples and the Slaves, I heard they were looking to do some business with me, but I said, I sent the word back, no, I was through with that, and anyway, I was going to trade with anybody, and keep in mind I