The Friends of Eddie Coyle Read Free

thirty-eights a week or so ago, and I come up with one of those and a Colt two-incher. He liked the Colt all right but he was all edgy about the Smith. Asked me if I thought he was going to go around wearing a fucking holster or something. But he took it just the same.”
    “Look,” the stocky man said, “I want thirty guns. I’ll take four-inchers and two-inchers. Thirty-eights, I’ll take a three-fifty-seven mag if I have to. Thirty pieces. I’ll give you twelve hundred.”
    “Balls,” Jackie Brown said. “I got to have at least seventy apiece.”
    “I’ll go fifteen hundred,” the stocky man said.
    “Split the difference,” Jackie Brown said. “Eighteen hundred.”
    “I’ll have to see the stuff,” the stocky man said.
    “Sure,” Jackie Brown said. His expression changed: he smiled.

2
     
    The strawberry ice cream soda and the dark green Charger R/T arrived in the stocky man’s vision almost simultaneously. The waitress went away and he watched the car travel slowly past the stores and stop at the far end of the parking lot. He unwrapped the plastic straw and began without haste to drink the soda. The driver of the car remained inside.
    The stocky man paid for his soda and said to the waitress: “I was wondering if there was a men’s room here.” She gestured toward the back of the store. The stocky man walked into the narrow corridor at the rear, past the rest rooms. Beyond him there was a screen door ajar on a loading platform. He went out on the loading platform and crouched. He jumped clumsily off the platform onto the service road. Two hundred yards away there was another loading platform. When he reached it, he clambered up and entered through a metal door marked PRODUCE ONLY. Insidethere was a young man sorting lettuce. The stocky man offered an explanation: “My car broke down out on the street there. Is there a phone in here I can use?” The young man said something about a phone near the registers in front. The stocky man left the store by the front door. He took a general view of the parking lot. When his vision settled on the Charger he began to walk toward it.
    The driver unlocked the passenger door of the Charger and the stocky man got in. The stocky man said: “Been waiting long?”
    The driver was about thirty-five. He was wearing suede boots, flared tweed slacks, a gold turtleneck sweater and a glossy black leather car coat. He had long hair and wore broad sunglasses with heavy silver frames. “As long as it took you to decide it was safe to come out,” he said. “What the hell made you choose this place? You getting your hair done or something?”
    “I heard they were having a special on skis,” the stocky man said. “This is a pretty nice car you got here. Anybody I know?”
    “I don’t think so,” the driver said. “Fellow out in the western part of the state was using it to transport moon. Poor bastard. Paid cash for it and got hooked on his first trip. I don’t see how the hell they can afford to sell the stuff when they got to buy a new car every time they take a load out.”
    “Sometimes they get away with it,” the stocky man said.
    “I didn’t know that was in your line,” the driver said.
    “Well, it isn’t,” the stocky man said, “but you hear things from time to time, you know. People’re careless.”
    “I know,” the driver said. “Like last week I heard you were coming up for disposition in New Hampshire the fifteenth of January, and I said to myself, I wonder where Eddie’s got plans to spend the Fourth of July.”
    “That’s why I was interested in the skis,” the stocky man said. “I figure as long as I got to go up there I might as well make a weekend out of it, you know? Think we’ll have snow by then?”
    “I think we’re getting some right now,” the driver said.
    “Because I was thinking, if we did,” the stocky man said, “maybe you could join me for the weekend. You’d make out like a bandit, those clothes, the