Elmore Leonard: Mr. Paradise

"Assholes," Delsa said, "the kind we bring in here every day and lie to each other, asking questions and taking statements."

"What you're doing with Jerome," Wendell said. "Setting him up to be an informant, huh? Does he know it?"

"Not yet. I'll pick him up later on, bring him here for another talk. See where he stands on ratting out people he knows."

"What's his incentive?"

"Tell him there's money in it."

"It could work once or twice," Wendell said.

"The one last night," Delsa said, "the hotel on Cass, the guy couldn't explain the blood on the carpeting. Jackie asked him how he got blood on his shirt and he said, 'Oh, Tammi hugged me and she has a tendency to bleed.' Tammi's the complainant. He shot her for taking twenty-eight bucks off the dresser. The man's son, and a guy he sells crack with in the lobby, came up to get rid of the body. They got partway down the stairs and left her."

"Too much like work," Wendell said.

"I guess."

"What else? The guy sitting in his car on St. Antoine."

"Talking to his wife on the phone," Delsa said. "She hears three shots. We've got no witnesses, nobody to focus on. And we're still looking for two white guys going around shooting black drug dealers. They should stick out like they're wearing signs, but we're not getting anywhere."

"The guy out by Woodmere," Wendell said, "back of the cemetery. What's a man thinking, he shoots another man thirteen times?"

Delsa said, "What're any of them thinking."

Early evening Montez Taylor was in the man's brown Lexus leaving downtown Detroit by way of East Jefferson. His phone rang. Montez brought it out of his tan cashmere topcoat, muted gold tie against dark gray underneath, and said, "Montez." Always Montez, because it always could be Mr. Paradise.

It was Lloyd.

Meaning the man had told Lloyd to call and have him pick up something like booze, cigars, porno movies. Montez didn't wait to hear what it was, he wanted to talk and said, "I'm at the office checking on that little girl's new there, Kim? Tony Jr. comes along with his big ass, wants to know what I'm doing. I said picking up his daddy's junk mail. He tells me soon as the old man's gone I am too. I said, 'What about my benefits, my bonus, my Blue Cross?' Junior says, 'You got to be kidding.'"

Lloyd said, "Like you didn't know they gonna throw your ass out in the street."

"Hey, I was fuckin with him. What's the man doing?"

"Watching his show, Wheel of Fortune. He wants you to pick up some of those Virginia Slim 120's, the real long ones. The girlfriend's coming this evening."

Montez said, "Wait now." Stared at taillights running away from him in the dark, realized he was slowing down, and punched the gas pedal to catch up. Lloyd was mistaken, getting old. "You're thinking of last night she was coming. I told you, I went to pick her up, she wasn't home."

"That's why she's on for tonight," Lloyd said.

"He never said a word to me she was coming."

"He told me and I'm telling you. So stop and get the fuckin cigarettes," Lloyd said, and was gone.

Montez replaced his personal flip phone and brought out a cheap cell from the inside pocket of his suit: this phone to use when he called the number he jabbed in now with his thumb. A woman's voice he recognized said hello. Montez said, "Lemme speak to Carl." The woman's voice said he wasn't there. Montez asked where he was and if he was coming back. The woman's voice said, "Who knows where that shithead is." Said, "Don't call here again," and hung up.

Montez said, "Fuck," out loud, turned left off Jefferson, oncoming cars blowing horns at him, screeching tires, cruised up Iroquois to the middle of the second block, turned into the circular drive and eased up to the front entrance.

He used his key to step from the eighty-year-old Georgian facade into the gloom of dark furniture, heavy chests and tables, chairs nobody ever sat on, old paintings of woods and the ocean, scenery, light coming through trees, the clouds, nothing going on in the pictures. All this old shit would be gone once the man was. He'd said, sounding pissed, none of his kids wanted to live in Detroit, happy to be out in West Bloomfield and Farmington Hills. So he was giving the house to someone who'd lived in the inner city all his life and would appreciate it. The man sincere, rewarding Montez for ten years so far of faithful, ass-kissing service.

But then just last month:

Montez explaining to the man how he could turn his study into an entertainment center with a big plasma TV screen on the wall, the latest kind of sound system, all hi-tech shit, and the man said, "I know your game, Montez," his mind working on and off, "you want me to pay for how you'd fix it up."

Then like getting punched in the stomach:

"Montez, I've changed my mind about giving you the house." Saying he was sorry but not sounding like it. "I know I promised it to you:" but now his granddaughter Allegra, Tony Jr.'s married daughter, thought bringing up her kids in the city would be a stimulating experience. The man saying, "And you know when it comes to family:"

Montez saw what he had to do. He shrugged, showed the man a sad kind of grin, said, "I can't compete with little Allegra"-being cute getting the bitch anything she wanted-"and can appreciate her wanting to live in the inner city, even with crime the way it is here, it's way more stimulating than Grosse Pointe."

"Ten to one," the old man said, "Allegra sells it before she ever moves in. I know her husband John wants to move to California, get in the wine business."

Fuck. Another punch in the gut. Montez made himself shrug and grin, knowing the man would have to offer him something else instead. And he did.

"You'll get a check in the form of a bonus from the company," the man said, "so your name won't come up in the will and cause a commotion."

This time Montez could not shuck and jive the man with a shrug and grin. He stared at the man that time last month, stared and said, "Mr. Paradiso, do you believe your son would actually give me anything?"

The man didn't care for that. It was like being talked back to. He said, "If I tell my son you have something coming, you're gonna get it, mister."

His serious tone and that "mister" shit meaning the conversation was over. Except Montez could not leave it there. He had to ask the man:

"When you're gone, how you gonna make Junior do what you want?" Paused and said, "When he don't give a fuck what you want anyway?"

Blew it. The man didn't say another word. Went over to his big double-size easy chair full of pillows and sat down in front of his old TV console, like a piece of furniture in the living room.

Where he was now.

Mr. Paradise shrinking and going frail with age, strands of white hair combed just right to cover his scalp, the man watching the end of Wheel of Fortune, Pat Sajak and Vanna White busting their ass to stretch the conversation through the closing seconds.

"Vanna doesn't give him much help," the man said. "She can't wait to say 'Bye' and wave to the audience. What she's good at."

He was wearing a warm-up suit, the dark blue with yellow piping. He had glanced at Montez coming in the room and gone back to Pat and Vanna.

Montez said, "Chloe's coming tonight, huh?"

"Yeah-you get the cigarettes?"

"Not yet. You want me to pick her up?"

"That's what you do, isn't it?"

Montez could say not always, but this was edgy enough. He said, "What time?"

"Nine-thirty."

Montez waited a moment. "You know I didn't have any idea she was coming?"

The man was watching a sappy ad now about Mr. Goodwrench. He said, "Don't forget the cigarettes."

"Come on, Mr. Paradise, do I ever forget anything?"

The man looked up at him and said, "You forget who you are sometimes."