Elmore Leonard - Mr. Paradise

It came back with "Error: Symbol Not Found."

She said, Uh-oh, entered "Del Rio Power" into another window and clicked SEARCH. Now she got a headline that read "NYSE to suspend, apply to delist Del Rio Power, Inc."

Shit.

She got out of the Stock Exchange and found Del Rio's Web page through Google. It told her the company was a North American provider of natural gas: has a core business in the production, gathering, processing: and was committed to developing new supplies and blah, blah, blah: Kelly clicked on MARKET DATA and got the company's fifty-two-week history, the price of Del Rio stock one year ago was $81.40 a share, making the whole load worth $1,628,000. She clicked on CURRENT VALUE and looked at it, sat back in her chair and said, "Shit," feeling let down, even though she wasn't that surprised.

The current price of Del Rio stock was 53 cents a share.

She heard her dad say, "Yeah? What's wrong with ten thousand six hundred?"

Kelly went back to the Google search list and clicked on a Business Week story about "Fraudulent energy trading: Could be looking at bankruptcy proceedings: Trying to work out a settlement with states where they owe money:" and heard her dad calling them a bunch of crooks.

Now she tried to imagine what Chloe would say, hanging in as the old guy's mistress for almost a year, for what she made in two weeks. She wouldn't throw a fit. She'd say, "Fuck," and let it go. But then she might play with it, say something like, "Maybe it'll come back," in an innocent tone of voice. Or, "Maybe I should sell before it goes any lower." Kelly loved her, loved to sit with Chloe, both sunk in the sofa with drinks and Slims, talking about movie stars, about Iraq, Chloe saying, "Throw out Saddam, you get one of those guys wears his turban on the back of his head." Or she'd say, "It takes a heartless dictator to handle those nuts over there."

She missed Chloe and her stories about guys trying to act cool and did everything she could not to see her sitting in the chair in her blood. She would think of Chloe, feel herself moments from tears, and would think of Frank Delsa and the way he looked at her. He was almost always on her mind.

She knew Montez would phone from downstairs on his cell, wanting to come up. When he called, he had to first tell her what the bouncer did. "The man threw me out on the street in my good coat."

"You sound like it's my fault."

"What'd you say to him? Nothing, not a word."

"You mean I should've explained we're friends, working on a fraud scheme? Getting thrown out of Alvin's isn't your problem. You want to know what the stock's worth?"

He paused before saying, "All right, how much?"

"As of the closing bell today, fifty-three cents a share."

"Hey, come on-I don't believe you."

"Down from eighty-one forty a year ago."

"You're playing with me, aren't you?"

"It comes to ten thousand six hundred. Not worth your time, Chops. You want the stock certificate? I'll mail it to you."

Montez said, "Now wait a minute, hold on. I want to talk to you."

"Go ahead."

"Come on, babe, buzz the door for me."

"I would," Kelly said, "but there's nothing you can say that I want to hear."

Now a pause before Montez said, "Turning on me, huh? The money ain't what you expected."

"I told you from the start I wouldn't help you," Kelly said. "Why can't you understand that?" She said, "Listen, Frank Delsa's on his way over. You want the certificate or should I give it to him?"

"How you explain you have it?"

"I tell him you gave it to me. I've told him everything else. What's the difference?"

Montez said, "You're fuckin with me, aren't you?"

"You don't believe me, look it up. Or I can e-mail you the story, if you want-why Del Rio Power, already in the toilet, is about to go down the drain."

Montez said, "You gonna hear glass breaking out here, you don't open the door."

Kelly reached in her bag for her cell and said to Montez, "And you'll hear the nine-eleven operator on my cell ask what's going on." She said, "I forgot to mention, Delsa has the two white guys staked out. If I were you, Chops, I'd get out of town."

Kelly heard him say, "You think you done with me?"

She hung up the phone, got Delsa's card out of her bag and called his cell number and heard his voice say, "Frank Delsa," in that quiet way of his.

Kelly said, "I'm home and Montez is downstairs."

Delsa stepped inside the loft and turned to Kelly, her back to the door. He said, "He wasn't outside," and hesitated, barely, before she was in his arms and they were kissing in that dark hallway like they would never get enough of each other, her hands slipping inside his jacket, sliding over his ribs. They kissed and held each other and he told her, "I've been wanting to do this since the other night."

She said, "Love at first sight?"

He said, "Almost. It was when you came out of the bathroom with your face washed."

"It's working out," Kelly said. "I planned to jump you if you came over tonight. I'm not a witness anymore, I'm out of it," and told him about getting the stock certificate while a homicide cop's son was rapping-Delsa saying, "Hush"-and about looking up the stock and telling Montez the million six was now ten six and going fast. "You want the certificate?" She said, "I have it," leading him to the counter in front of the kitchen where the papers were lying.

She asked him what he wanted to drink. He said anything and she poured them each a scotch. They touched glasses eye to eye, put the glasses on the counter and took hold of each other and got into more of that first-time kissing, neither of them getting enough of the other until he whispered to her, "You're no longer a suspect. But you're still a witness."

She stood in her wool socks looking up at him.

"But you don't care."

"This is bigger."

She was nodding. "You're sure I'm not a suspect?"

"I think you were tempted, so you played it out."

Still looking up at him she said, "'If you want me to, I'll love you. I know you better now.'"

He remembered the key word but not the line he'd have to make positive. He said, "And I'll be glad to reciprocate," and had to smile. "Who wrote that?"

"John O'Hara."

"I thought he was supposed to be good."

"He was. I love his short stories, especially the ones set in Hollywood. O'Hara drank a lot and was near the end when he wrote this one. It's called The Instrument. But he also wrote Appointment in Samarra, about not being able to escape your fate."

"Like Montez," Delsa said. "No matter what he does to slip out of this one, he's going down."

She said, "I was thinking more of us."

"I know what you mean. There's a lot we haven't said."

"We've barely said anything."

"See, but Montez still might want the ten six. Try to get you to sign the paper."

"I'm giving it to you," Kelly said, "and the driver's license. There won't be any way I can help him. But you're probably right. The last thing he said to me, on the phone, 'You think you're done with me?'"

"That's all?"

"I hung up on him."

"That's why you're still a witness, I don't have him yet. Or the two guys. We've got the prints of one of them on the same vodka bottle with Montez'. It could put them together at the house-if you'll testify that's what the old man was drinking, the Christiania. And I'd like you to look at the two guys in a lineup. If you can put them at the scene that night, they're done. We'll pick 'em up if they ever come home. Carl's wife Connie says he stays with Art a lot of the time. Art lives in Hamtramck with Virginia Novak. We checked, they're not married, but have a statue of the Virgin Mary in the front yard holding a birdbath. I'm hoping it was Art's idea. I didn't tell you their names, did I? Art Krupa and Carl Fontana. They could've met at Jackson, they were both there at the same time. They come out and for the past year and a half they've been shooting drug dealers, and then Paradiso."