Elmore Leonard: Mr. Paradise

Kelly sipped her drink.

"Listen, and make sure they know I didn't see them the other night. I didn't, really. Not well enough to swear they're the same guys who were here."

She sipped her drink and again thought of sitting in this chair the other night in her coat, half in the bag, thinking, Are you nuts? Even considering what Montez wanted her to do, a houseful of cops on the scene? Are you fucking nuts? She was easing into that mood now, reminding herself she had to be smarter than these guys, and to keep her eyes open and watch for a way to get out of here. She thought of Delsa and tried to remember details he'd told her about the case. She thought of him and wondered if he'd made the show and where he was now and what he was doing. She did that whenever they were apart.

She said to Montez, "Is there anyone else involved in this besides the two guys? I mean who you ought to talk to?"

Montez laid the stock information on the bed, didn't say a word to her and walked out. Kelly finished her drink and set the glass on the floor. She looked up to see the young black guy standing in the doorway, the room dim with only the lamp on.

He said, "I have these cigarettes for you Lloyd give me."

Kelly said, "Thank Lloyd for me, okay?" and he came in the room to hand her the pack of Slims and a book of matches. She said, "You see the ashtray anywhere?"

Jerome pointed. "Right there, the end of the bed."

"Where I left it the other night," Kelly said. "I didn't see it. You can turn the light on if you want."

"Don't matter to me."

She opened the pack and popped out a cigarette.

"You're related to Lloyd?"

"I come with the two white dudes."

"You work for them?"

"We looking for a dude has twenty thousand reward on him, but I don't work for them or ever would. I'm a C.I."

"What's a C.I.?"

"Confidential Informant."

Kelly struck a match.

"I work for a man with the Homicide police name of Frank Delsa."

Kelly was lighting the cigarette. She blew out the match and said to this guy in the dark red do-rag, "Why don't you hand me the ashtray and sit down for a minute? I know Frank."

Montez was at the round table now in the kitchen with Carl and Art. He said, "Y'all still drinking, huh?"

He saw Art look at Carl while Carl kept looking this way, staring at him.

"Bitch say to me upstairs she can't pick you out. Is she shittin' me? But then I wonder about it. I'm thinking, she's on the second floor as you run out. She look down from up there, she looking at the top of your heads. Understand what I'm saying? She can't see your faces, you got your Tiger hats on. What I'm saying, she can't put either one of you at the scene."

Carl turned to Art. "What he's saying is he don't want to shoot her, or put a bag over her head. He's changed his mind."

"There's no cause to mess with her," Montez said. "No, I think the one we ought to get over here and have a talk with is your agent, Avern Cohn."

At eleven-fifteen last night Delsa drove to the loft and saw Kelly's black Volkswagen in the lot and phoned her from outside the building. Her voice said to leave a message. Okay, she didn't drive. Someone picked her up, one of the other models, and they stopped off or ran into friends and went to a party after the show. He had to remind himself she had a life he didn't know much about.

This morning, Sunday, he phoned from the squad room, putting it off until ten in case she was sleeping in, and got no response. He drove to her place again, three miles from 1300, and saw her VW still in the lot. This time he got the manager to let him into the loft. The manager stood inside the door while he listened to phone messages, all from women in the fashion business, all related to the runway show last night. No calls from Montez.

But yesterday on the phone she told him the last thing Montez had said to her when he called the night before, "You think you done with me?" and she hung up on him.

It was time to see Montez.

Last night Kelly asked Jerome how he knew Frank Delsa. Jerome was self-conscious and didn't look at her directly telling about the shooting at Yakity Yak's he'd witnessed and how he became Delsa's C.I. and how he ran into the two hit men at the house Orlando tried to burn down account of the three bodies in the basement, one of 'em cut up into six pieces. Kelly said, "Six?" Jerome said the arms and the legs were four, the head five and body was six. He said people forgot to count the body.

Kelly said, "If you work for Frank Delsa and the two hit men are here, why don't you slip out? Tell Delsa the ones who killed Mr. Paradiso and my friend Chloe are here?" Jerome said Lloyd told him it wasn't none of his bidness. He said he had to go and left, closing the door. Kelly got up and locked it. She didn't know what she was supposed to do. After a while she stretched out on the bed in her Donna Karan sweater and pants, and a little later heard the faint sound of voices in the hall. Someone rattled the doorknob. At 2 A.M. she opened it and looked down the hall toward the staircase. She saw Jerome down there in an easy chair he'd got from one of the rooms. She walked toward him, got close enough to see he was asleep, but he woke up as she started down the stairs and told her she was supposed to stay in her room.

In the morning the chair was still there but Jerome was gone. This time she got to the bottom of the stairs and was startled to see Carl sitting in the foyer in one of the upholstered straight chairs. Carl said, "Go on in the kitchen you want some breakfast. Lloyd's in there." He said, "I'm gonna talk to you later on."

She said, "About what?"

He said, "The situation."

Montez was at the round table in the alcove with a cup of coffee. She said to him, "Would you mind telling me what's going on?"

Montez said, "We gonna have a sit-down here and get things straightened out."

"When?"

"We got to get somebody first. You want some coffee? Lloyd brewed a pot."

"Where's Jerome?"

"The gangbanger? I guess he's sleeping."

Lloyd came in and asked if she'd like a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice. He could fix her eggs if she wanted.

"I've been kidnapped," Kelly said. "I'm being held against my will, and I get fresh-squeezed orange juice?"

"They do it at the market," Lloyd said. "Six-ninety-five a half gallon. It's nice and cold."

Kelly said okay, orange juice and coffee, and turned to the window. It looked like it would be a nice day.

Montez finished his coffee and left.

Nine o'clock Sunday morning Montez and Carl sat in Lloyd's car parked on 14 Mile Road at the south end of Bloomfield Hills. They watched the front yard of Avern Cohn's house, on the corner of Crosswick and 14, through a line of shrubbery, waiting for him to come out and pick up his newspapers, the Detroit News and Free Press in a plain plastic bag, the fat New York Times rolled up in a blue one.

Montez had wanted to stay home to keep an eye on Kelly. Carl was afraid she'd talk him into letting her go and he wanted to speak to her first, reach some kind of an understanding. Art wanted to come so he could walk in Avern's house, shoot him and walk out. He said what was there to talk about? Carl felt if they scared Avern enough he'd keep his mouth shut. This deal was now way out of hand; he wasn't shooting anybody 'less they got paid. Montez had asked, before, how he knew where Avern lived. "I said if he didn't tell me, we wouldn't make a deal with him to do contracts. He said, 'Why you want to know?' I told him so I'd come to the right house he ever fucked us over."

Carl said to Montez now, "We don't talk to him in the car. Don't say a fuckin word."

"How come?"

"He's gonna act surprised, want to know what's going on. You start in with him, the son of a bitch'll talk us out of what we're doing. He'll be scareder we don't say a fuckin word. He comes out to get the newspapers I'll quick pull into the drive. I'll grab Avern and throw him in the car, you pick up the fuckin newspapers."