Stick by Elmore Leonard Page B

Stickley, Jr.,” DeJohn said. “They some details missing, but it was some funny business following whenyou and Frank robbed the J. L. Hudson Company in downtown Detroit and got ate up.”
    Stick was careful. He said he was doing his time for a grocery store in Oakland County, not any homicide or robbery in downtown Detroit.
    DeJohn said, “I know that. It’s cool.” He said, “Believe me, my man. You my man and it’s cool. But it don’t change you did Sportree and the dude was with him.”
    Stick said, to DeJohn only, okay, but it was unavoidable.
    DeJohn said, “They all unavoidable when you have to do it. Like the two brothers in the shopping mall, in the parking lot, I believe was Northland.”
    Stick said yeah, that had been unavoidable too, the two brothers wanting to mug him, for Christ sake, take his groceries.
    DeJohn showed his gold and his pink tongue. “Groceries, yeah, shit”—enjoying it—”and the cash underneath the Wheaties from the store where you and Frank did your shopping.” DeJohn said, “What they say, you could have got a hundred years just for the cars you used on those jobs. You take the fall on the grocery store, but they got Frank on the big one, didn’t they? The Hudson’s store.”
    Stick wondered how he knew all that.
    DeJohn said, “You famous, baby.”
    When Luther made the move it was at a time when Stick was playing basketball in the yard. Heleft the game wheezing, out of shape, put on his work jacket and sat bent over on a bench trying to get his breath. He felt the wet on his back and thought at first it was sweat. He began to smell something . . .  Christ, gasoline, and heard it when Luther dropped the match on him and wouf the back of his jacket went up in flames and he dove head-first over to land on his back on the cement and roll from side to side grinding in that hot sting . . .  seeing the guy standing there with the Windex squirt bottle of clear liquid watching him.
    DeJohn said it was the man’s style and they should’ve known. “But the man lied to you, didn’t he? Say he was going to shank you.”
    Three days later there was an accident in the butcher shop. Three witnesses in wool caps and white aprons swore Luther was splitting pork ribs with a cleaver, missed and cut off his left hand.
    DeJohn said, “Man was lucky, wasn’t he? He could have been seriously hurt and bled to death.” He said, “I told him that, too.”
    There was all kinds of luck.
    Stick sat on the cement porch of the Hotel Bon-Aire, listening to elderly people with New York Jewish accents complain about high prices, about Medicare and how Reagan had betrayed them. The hotel was light-green stucco, four stories, and seemed morelike a retirement home than a hotel. Stick could feel the old people staring at him; one asked if he was with the government, looking things over.
    August, no tourists, but still a lot of people on South Beach.
    He crossed the street always lined with cars and went out on the sand past the clumps of sea grape and the Cuban families cooking over charcoal, eating at the picnic tables, and lay in the sun listening to bits of voice sounds coming to him in Spanish. They sounded like they were arguing but looked like they were having fun. Try and figure out Cubans. He would lie in the sun not moving and think about going up to Stuart or Daytona, or maybe over on the west coast around Naples, work construction. He could always drive a transit-mix, he’d done enough of that before.
    With the hot glare pressing on his glasses and his eyes closed tight he would try to look into the future to a place where a man forty-two, starting over, could find something interesting and make up for lost time. If he was going to work he’d have to stay in Florida and get back in construction. Not around Miami, though. Or Detroit. People up there with