Elmore Leonard: Mr. Paradise

He said, "Who told you that?"

Last night he and Serita were having their coffee and Remy, chocolate sauce on raspberry sorbet, and Allegra, the old man's granddaughter, stopped by from the funeral home with her husband, the one sold bull come, to show him the old paintings in the foyer. She kept apologizing for interrupting their evening till Serita, good at talking to white people, invited them to sit down and have some dessert. It was all right, but you had to talk on their level and laugh at things that weren't funny. Jesus, but he was tired of doing that.

Jerome turned from washing his hands at the sink and started making ugly sandwiches with the meat hanging out. Lloyd said, "Here," and took over the job. He said to Jerome, aside, "Listen to some of the Dumbest Criminals I Have Ever Known, and learn something."

All three of them sitting now at the round table by the windows.

The cheap phone inside Montez' leather coat came on playing "How High the Moon" and he brought it out and walked through the swing door into the pantry saying, "Ricky?: Yeah? Tell me." He came back after a few minutes and sat down at the table again with Carl and Art.

"She's in a fashion show tonight at the Detroit Institute of Arts. I told you about my man Ricky, fourteen years old? Sweet boy, can talk about fashion. He got that for me wiping off her windshield and made a buck."

Art said, "That's all you pay the kid?"

"What Kelly gave him. I owe Ricky another twenty's all. She told him she be home about nine-thirty. We get over there around nine, wait till she gets out of the car: I think as she's crossing the street to her building we roll up and snatch her, put her in the Tahoe."

Carl said, "We use your car."

"Man, you got more room."

"You got a trunk, don't you?" Carl said. "The Tahoe stays in the garage."

Art said, "We gonna shoot her?"

Montez said, "If that's how you want to do it. You the pros."

"Well, shit," Art said. "She gets back, walk up to her car and pop her."

"She has to disappear," Montez said. "Like she left town and didn't tell nobody."

"Take her out'n the woods?"

"I was thinking bring her back here," Montez said, "till we work out what to do with her. You know you could stick her head in a plastic bag. That way there won't be no blood."

Art said, "Shit, drop her in the river."

"You have a boat?"

"Off the Belle Isle bridge. Weight her down."

Carl said to Montez, "You ever kill anybody?"

Montez said, "I'm gonna talk to you about it?"

Art said, "I think he's cherry, never done it in his life."

"I doubt he has," Carl said. "Tells us we're the pros and stays out of it. Tells us, stick her head in a plastic bag, like he knows these different ways he saw in the movies, but won't do it himself." He said to Montez, "How come you didn't take the bag off your suit from the cleaners and suffocate the old man with it? He's sleeping, nobody around. We walk in the other night, a party's going on."

"I tried to call you," Montez said. "Ask Connie."

Carl said to Art, "You think he should do the girl? Since he's the one fucked up the deal, bringing her in?"

Art said, "We do it, he'll have to pay us."

"He already owes for the old man," and looked toward the worktable. "Lloyd, you getting all this?"

Lloyd turned his head to one side. "I didn't hear you. What'd you say?"

Now Montez looked over at him. "You don't hear these guys fuckin with me?"

"I'm making y'all sandwiches," Lloyd said, finishing up the last one. "Anything you want to put on them's in the refrigerator. Horseradish, pickles, chili sauce, ketchup, mayonnaise-"

Art said, "You got any mustard?"

"We have yella mustard, Poupon mustard, whatever kind pleases you, Pelican mustard," Lloyd said, motioning with his head for Jerome to leave the kitchen, saying when he didn't move, "Go on, they don't care." Then raised his voice to tell the three mutts deciding on who was going to kill the girl, "Me and Jerome gonna be in the den watching TV."

Mr. Paradise had liked to watch it in the living room saying the den was too small, crowded with the big brown leather chairs and the couch. There were three walls of Book-of-the-Month Club books in their jackets, fifty years of book selections in all colors from the counter to the ceiling. Against the fourth wall was where Lloyd put the TV, the guy who replaced the glass helping him.

Lloyd came in to see Jerome punching numbers in a cell phone, got to him and snatched the phone out of his hands.

"Who you calling?"

"A homicide detective, man. I'm his C.I."

"You mean his fink."

"You didn't hear them, they talking about killing some girl."

"I heard everything was said. It ain't your bidness."

"You don't care they gonna kill her?"

"I said it ain't your bidness," Lloyd said. "They got to pick her up first, bring her here."

"They gonna put a plastic bag over her head. Man, what's going on in this house?"

"You don't read the paper, watch the news? You running with those mutts, they haven't told you what they did here?"

Jerome looked like he was beginning to understand, nodding his head. He said, "I know they hit men. They whack somebody here and come here to hide out?"

"You want to read about it," Lloyd said, "I've saved the papers. They by the chair."

Jerome turned and Lloyd stopped him, taking hold of his arm.

"Lemme have your gun."

Jerome frowned at him. "Man, I need it."

"I told you this ain't your bidness," Lloyd said. "You won't need it, but I might."

He couldn't see her living on Farmbrook in a redbrick and white siding-what did you call it, postwar bungalow? With three small bedrooms, hardly any closet space for her clothes. She walked into the closet in her loft and was gone and would come out with pants and a blouse. On Farmbrook, a wood garage in back rotting in places, full of junk. Jesus, and the storm windows:

He thought about this standing in the entrance to the museum's Rivera Court, the artist Diego Rivera's giant murals of machinery and workers, a tight-mouthed boss, covering both walls of the court, left and right, chairs around the stage that came out of the far wall and was only a couple of feet off the floor, high enough to make the girls look seven feet tall coming down the runway with indifferent expressions but in command, striding to a heavy disco beat.

He knew Kelly the instant she appeared. He saw her looking for him without giving it away. She wore a slight smile, pleasant. He imagined that everyone in the audience, a few hundred in black tie and evening dress, knew she was fun and would like to know her. He raised his hand as high as he could reach, above the heads of those in front of him, when she came to the end of the stage and paused and made her turn. He didn't think she saw him. She was a knockout. She had his favorite girl look, her eyes, her nose. Jesus, looking at her and not noticing the outfits, none of them, he looked at their faces and wondered about them. But he did recognize Kelly's favorite, the suit she called a biker outfit with the chains, the chains the only thing about the suit he'd associate with bikers-but even then couldn't remember ever confronting bikers with chains. He thought of Maureen because Maureen didn't have his favorite look, but it didn't seem to have mattered. He lived on Farmbrook nine years with Maureen and the house was fine, it was their home. Maureen called the old storm windows that came with the house and you busted your ass to put up, those fuckers. He couldn't see Maureen in any of the clothes coming down the runway, Maureen shorter and heavier than these girls.

He had a program that described each look as it came along, like "No. 35, Black wool striped boucle jacket with lace inset, black lace chiffon skirt." They were up to cocktail dresses now, a different sound to the disco, and he felt his phone pulse against his chest. He said, Shit, because Harris had called earlier, as he arrived and was telling the valet guy to put his car right there, about thirty feet down the circular drive, Delsa showing the young guy his badge but low-key about it.