Riding the Rap by Elmore Leonard

me a thousand or two until he moves the car, I keep it for making the deal. Then when he pays me the rest, you and Chip get some of it.”
    Louis was thinking he could sell the car himself, ship it to Nassau—he’d done that plenty of times in his youth—but didn’t say anything about Bobby’s arrangement. Keeping the peace, for the time being.
    He said, “So we don’t pay Dawn right away. It ain’t like she can take us to court.”
    Â 
    What Bobby was thinking now, watching the fortune-teller’s house, there could be a problem with her. He knew it without knowing the woman. Felt it looking at the house, the vegetation almost hiding it: an old melaleuca rotting inside itself, palmettos that had never been cut back growing wild across the front windows. A woman who lived alone in a house like that had problems. And a woman with problems, man, could make you have some of your own.
    When the white Cadillac rolled past, crept up the street to stop in front of the house, Louis said, “Here we go,” sitting up now, alert. “Your friend Mr. Arno. Man, it worked, huh? I wasn’t sure it would.”
    Bobby watched Harry get out of the car and stand looking at the house, his hand resting on the mailbox mounted on a crooked post.
    Louis said, “Man’s older than I thought.”
    Bobby didn’t say anything. He had no feeling about Harry, one way or the other.
    Now a compact Toyota came past them, faded red, trailing a wisp of smoke from the tailpipe. The car braked and turned into the drive that looked like gravel and weeds. Bobby watched Harry Arno walk over to greet the woman getting out of the car, saying something to her, Bobby seeing the fortune-teller for the first time. He said, “She isn’t bad,” sounding a little surprised.
    â€œShe’s something else,” Louis said. “Can tell you things about yourself you never even knew.”

seven
    T he house reminded Harry of Florida forty years ago, a little stucco crackerbox with jalousie windows where a garage door used to be. He said to the girl, “Nice place you have,” trying to sound like he meant it.
    She didn’t say anything. Took him past a sign next to the front door that said:
    PSYCHIC READINGS
    DREAM INTERPRETATIONS
    PAST-LIFE REGRESSIONS
    and into a room full of dark furniture from some other time and a gray leatherette recliner thatseemed out of place. She touched the backrest saying, “I’d like you to sit here, if you would, please, and try to relax. Close your eyes if you want.”
    He got in the chair and looked around at all the clutter, knickknacks, dolls, little china and ceramic figures and a few stuffed animals, an old teddy bear, all of it here and there on bookshelves and side tables. On the walls, an Indian rug with a design that looked something like the zodiac, and a framed print of Jesus—that one where he’s surrounded by little kids.
    Reverend Dawn Navarro said, “I was thinking on the way here, I asked if you had any investments over in Italy and you said no, just the villa you leased.”
    â€œThat’s right,” Harry said, still looking around. The recliner faced the doorway into the room with the jalousie windows that used to be a garage. He saw more clutter in there—old aluminum lawn chairs, a plastic swan that looked like a planter. . . . Reverend Dawn wasn’t much of a housekeeper.
    Her voice said, “You got the villa through a real estate agent. They showed you pictures of different ones. . . .”
    â€œRight again,” Harry said.
    He felt her hand touch his shoulder and rest there and he looked up, but she was behind him.
    â€œYou didn’t pay cash, though, for the villa.”
    Harry smiled. “No, not that time. I had to transfer enough from a Swiss bank to one in Rapallo, establish myself there to make the deal,you know, and have money for living expenses. I