Elmore Leonard - Mr. Paradise

"And Chloe," Kelly said.

"And Chloe. Montez hired them to do the old man. But how did he find out about them? Look at it another way. How did they get the contracts to take out the drug dealers? These two guys wouldn't ordinarily have much to do with African-Americans. It's like they have someone who arranges the hits. Like a manager."

"Or an agent," Kelly said. "Have you ever heard of that?"

Delsa shook his head. "No."

"You want to spend the night?"

"Yeah, if I can take a shower first."

She said, "We can do that."

The counter girl told Delsa it happened during the break time, going on eleven, between the Egg McMuffins and the Big Macs, "The three dudes come in-I look at the one and think I know him. Yeah, it's Big Baby, still with the puffy cheeks. He lived down the street from us on Edison. I'm about to call to him, Hey, Big Baby, and surprise him 'cause he won't remember me from living on Edison. But then I see all three dudes pulling guns, Big Baby taking a sawed-off shotgun from outta his clothes, the two dudes with nines they hold sideways-know what I'm saying?-like they can shoot these guns any way they want. The one dude goes to the back, the other dude has his gun on Mr. Crowley by the french fry station, telling him he wants the money he knows is put somewhere. Big Baby tells us in front-they's three of us-get down on the floor and don't move. Right then the one yelling at Mr. Crowley, the manager, shoots him and Big Baby says, 'What you shoot him for?' like he can't believe it. But see, he only shot him in the leg, up here, and the dude shot him is still yelling for the money. See, then Big Baby gets me up from the floor account he's swearing, he can't open the fuckin register. I open it and he say to me open the other two while he's cleaning out the first one. Right then they's two shots and I see Mr. Crowley fall by the carry-out window and I see the dude aim his nine at Mr. Crowley lying on the floor and shoot him two more times. Now the three dudes are yelling at each other, 'What you shoot him for?' 'You didn't have to shoot him.' The dude that killed him saying he wouldn't give him the fuckin money, and saying they got to get out of here. Big Baby and the other dude follow the first dude out and get in a '96 Grand Marquis that's a dark color, but I didn't see the license good."

Delsa was listening but thinking of last night, looking through scenes in his head, stepping into the shower and Kelly turning to him, water streaming over her naked body, her perfect breasts, her navel, Kelly smiling at him and laughing out loud as he said, "Heil Hitler," and to the counter girl, "Do you know Big Baby's real name?"

She said, "No, I only heard people speak of him as Big Baby, but I never knew why."

Delsa, seeing Kelly on the bed in lamplight, her arms reaching for him, said, "You didn't know the other two?"

She said, "No, I didn't," and said, "I told you I lived on Edison? The house was on the corner of Rosa Parks Boulevard and my name is Rosa account of I was named for her? I thought I would live there the rest of my life. But what happen when I was twelve, my daddy lost his job at Wonder Bread and we were evicted for not paying the rent."

Delsa said, "That's a shame," remembering them in bed barely dry after the hurried shower but not caring.

"My mama and daddy's living on LaSalle Gardens now. It's nice there, they gentrified it. I live in Highland Park with my boyfriend Cedric, on Winona? He's valet at the MGM Grand."

"Later on today," Delsa said, handing her his card, "come down to police headquarters and we'll write up your statement. But give me a call first, we might have to do it tomorrow. Is that okay, Rosa?"

She said she guessed she could.

Delsa looked at the manager on the floor thinking there would always be this kind of work. The middle of April the manager would be, what, the one hundredth homicide? About that. Business would pick up in the summer maybe enough to match last year's four hundred homicides. Delsa had been at it eight years out of seventeen with the Detroit Police, started at the Seventh Precinct in radio cars, went to Violent Crimes and now Homicide. In less than eight more years he could retire on half pay. He'd be forty-five. Then what? Corporate security. He had taken prelaw at Wayne, kept putting off going to law school and now he didn't care much for lawyers. What he knew was how to investigate a homicide, how to peel open a case and find out who was who, the ones lying to him and the ones telling him things he could use, until finally meeting the suspect and knowing he had him by the nuts, this arrogant guy who could not believe you'd ever take him down, and you present the evidence and watch his face, watch his fuck-you expression fade looking at twenty-five to life or life without parole. There was nothing like that moment. No guns, no need for them. Just that one time he'd fired his Glock intending to do great bodily harm if not to kill. Maybe he should've told the second guy to put it down, the guy with Maureen's gun, but he didn't and wasn't sorry. He said to himself in the McDonald's on West Chicago, This is what you do. Stick around and you'll make inspector. The section was due for a white guy running the squads. But now he went back to cutting through scenes in his mind from last night to making love in the first light of morning. Now he was having breakfast in Kelly's terrycloth robe that was tight on him but felt good. Each time she brought something to the table, the paper, the coffee, the toast, she would touch his face and kiss him on the mouth. He would watch her walk to the kitchen in a heavy wool sweater that covered her black panties and wool socks sagging around her legs and would wait to see her face coming back, looking at him.

She said, "Do you know it's Saturday? I have to be at the DIA at two for rehearsal, hair, makeup. We have dinner at five in a cozy room and the show, I think, is at seven. Five changes in twenty-five minutes and it's over. Are you coming?"

She was not like any cop's wife he had ever known.

"I'll be there," Delsa said.

"You have a tux?"

"They'll let me in."

"I'll have to drive," Kelly said.

"I could maybe drop you off at two."

"But what if something comes up and you can't make the show?"

He said, "Yeah, you'd better drive."

They were both at the table with the paper and their breakfast. He said, "You know I'm ten years older than you are?"

She was biting into a piece of toast, looking at the front page of the paper. She said, "Good for you," still looking at the paper.

He said, "We're on different schedules, aren't we?"

She put the paper down.

"I lived with a call girl for two years," Kelly said, "on quite different schedules. If we want to see each other, Frank, we'll work it out." She said, "Won't we?"

There were evidence techs on the scene, Jackie Michaels talking to the help, and the death investigator from the Medical Examiner's office, Val Trabucci, taking pictures. Delsa approached him and Val took a break. He said, "Frank, this guy got out of bed this morning-if somebody told him he'd be dead before noon, he'd say they're full of shit."

"You think about things like that?"

"All the help here liked him, a nice young guy, married. But what's his wife doing right now while he's dead and she doesn't know it? That's what I think about."

There was a silence before Delsa said, "I've got a question for you. You ever hear of a couple of guys named Fontana and Krupa?"

"Gene Krupa?"

"This one's Art."

Val said to the girl standing there watching, "Sweetheart, give me a big scoop of those fries, will you, please?" He said to Delsa, "Art Krupa. He shot a guy in a bar on Martin Luther King Day and copped to first-degree manslaughter."