Elmore Leonard - Out of Sight

Karen waited.

"He sat down in a chair this time… I spoke to him on the phone. He sat down in the chair and when he went to get up, he got blown to pieces."

Karen said, "You knew it was going to happen?"

"I knew too much," Moselle said.

"I knew waaay too much.

It's why I don't know nothing now. I don't know any Glenn, I don't know nothing what's going on. Understand?"

Karen watched her, Moselle's arms hugging the green robe closed.

"Your dog was killed?"

"Got run over by a car."

"What did you call it?"

"Was a she, name Tuffy."

"Where do you think I might find Maurice?"

"I don't know-the gym, the fights. He thinks he still in that business. I know he don't miss the fights. Having some tomorrow night at the State. He use to take me."

Kenneth stood in the arched entrance from the foyer. He said to Karen,

"What you want with Maurice?"

Moselle said, "She looking for a man name of Glenn."

Kenneth said, "Did I ask you? Go on out of here. Do something with yourself." He waited until Moselle got up, not saying a word, and walked away from them through the dining room. Karen watched him coming toward her now in kind of an easy strut, the backward baseball cap low on his forehead, letting her know he was cool, he was fly, by the way he moved.

She saw the scar tissue over his eyes and said, "You're a fighter?"

"How you know that?"

"I can tell."

"I was," Kenneth said, moving his head in what might be a feint, "till I got my retina detached two times." He was standing in front of her now, so close Karen had to look up at him.

"What'd you fight, middleweight?"

"Light to super-middleweight, as my body developed. You go about what, bantam?"

"Flyweight," Karen said, and saw him grin.

"You know your divisions. You like the fights? Like the rough stuff?

Yeah, I bet you do. Like to get down and tussle a little bit?

Like me and Tuffy, before she got run over, we use to get down on the floor and tussle. I say to her, "You a good dog, Tuffy, here's a treat for you." And I give Tuffy what every dog love best. You know what that is? A bone. I can give you a bone, too, girl. You want to see it? You close enough, you can put your hand out and touch it."

Karen shook her head.

"You're not my type."

"Don't matter," Kenneth said, moving his hand across his leg to his fly.

"I let the monster out, you gonna do what it wants."

"Just a minute," Karen said. Her hand went into her bag, next to her on the chair.

Kenneth said, "Bring your own rubbers with you?"

Her hand came out of the bag holding what looked like the grip on a golf club and Kenneth grinned at her.

"What else you have in there, Mace? Have a whistle, different kinds of female protection shit? Telling me you ain't a skeezer, or you don't feel like it right now?"

Karen pushed out of the chair to stand with him face-to-face.

She said, "I have to go, Kenneth," and gave him a friendly poke with the black vinyl baton that was like a golf club grip.

"Maybe we'll see each other again, okay?" She stepped aside and brushed past him, knowing he was going to try to stop her.

And when he did, grabbing her left wrist, saying, "We gonna tussle first."

Karen flicked the baton and sixteen inches of chrome steel shot out of the grip. She pulled an arm's length away from him and chopped the rigid shaft at his head, Kenneth hunching, ducking away, yelling "God damn," letting go of her and Karen got the room she needed, a couple of steps away from him, and when he came at her she whipped the shaft across the side of his head and he howled and stopped dead, pressing a hand over his ear.

"What's wrong with you?"

Scowling at her, looking at his hand and pressing it to his ear again, Karen not sure if he meant because she hit him or because she turned him down.

"You wanted to tussle," Karen said, "we tussled." And walked out.

Moselle came out of the dining room holding her robe together, shaking her head to show her brother some sympathy.

She said, "Baby, don't you know what that girl is?"

Kenneth turned to her frowning, showing how dumb he was from getting his head pounded in the ring.

"She some land of police, precious. But nice, wasn't she?"

"You gonna tell Maurice?"

"You the one she beat on, not me."

"Maurice is coming by later. We gonna do a job."

"If I'm upstairs, tell him I need grocery money."

The phone rang. Kenneth went into the den to answer.

The doorbell rang. Moselle opened the door and there was Karen again, handing her a business card. Moselle looked at it as Karen said, "I wrote the hotel number on there-in case you run into Glenn."

Moselle slipped the card into the pocket of her robe.

Kenneth didn't ask who it was at the door and she didn't tell him.

What Foley couldn't understand, for a big industrial city like Detroit there were so few people on the streets. Sunday, Buddy said it was because it was Sunday and everybody was home watching the game. Today was Tuesday, there still weren't many people walking around downtown.

You could count them, Foley said. Buddy said he didn't know, maybe they built the freeways and everybody left town. They were on their way out East Jefferson in the Olds, a Michigan plate on it now, Buddy the tour guide pointing out the bridge to Belle Isle, the old Naval Armory, the Seven Sisters-those smokestacks over there on the Detroit Edison power plant, they were called the Seven Sisters. There's Waterworks Park. Buddy said, "You know Pontiac? Not the car, the Indian chief? Somewhere right around here he wiped out a column of British soldiers, redcoats, and they called the place Bloody Run."

Foley was half listening, looking around but seeing Karen, Karen's picture in the paper, Karen in real life coming out of the trunk saying, "You win, Jack," his favorite picture of her in his mind.

It was snowing now, pretty hard.

"We're coming to it," Buddy said, "there's the fire station."

Now he was frowning, sitting up straight behind the wheel, windshield wipers going, Buddy squinting, trying to see through the snow coming down. He said, "Where's the plant? It use to come all the way out to the street, with a bridge across to the offices, the administration building; it's gone. There's something way over there. Jefferson North. You see the sign? Yeah, way over there, some stacks. It must be the new one. I mean this was a big fucking plant, took up blocks around here, six thousand hourly, and it's gone. You want to see where I lived?"

"That's okay," Foley said.

"We may as well turn around," Buddy said, guided the Olds into a gas station and came out again to go back toward downtown.

"It keeps coming down they'll get the salt trucks out.

The job I had in the old plant, I hooked up transmissions to the engines."

Foley had torn the picture out of the paper, Karen with her shotgun in the black outfit that looked familiar. He had it in the inside pocket of his suitcoat. He was imagining what would happen if he phoned her.

She says hello and he says…

"The engine comes down the line, let's say it's for an automatic. Okay, I take this brace in my left hand-it's hanging from a track-work the hoist button with my right hand, get it in position so the pins in the brace line up with the holes they have to fit into in the transmission, jockey it around."

He'd say his name. Hi, this is Jack Foley, how you doing?

Like that, keep it simple. She'd ask where he was or how he knew she was here. No, she'd say she was surprised, or she'd say something he wouldn't expect. Either way he'd listen to her tone of voice.

"Then you hit the button on the hoist again and swing the transmission over to the line, rock it, get it in position with the engine. You let go of the hoist then and pick up your air gun and run four bolts into the top of the housing-tsung tsung tsung, fire 'em in."