Elmore Leonard: Mr. Paradise

That was how it worked. Avern came out in a pongee bathrobe, narrow blue and yellow stripes, showing bare legs and black velvet slippers with gold crests on them. Carl jumped out of the car and grabbed him, but had to yell at Montez to pick up the fuckin papers.

They brought Avern in the back way to the kitchen. Kelly looked at the guy in the striped pongee bathrobe, his skinny white legs, and said to Carl, "I bet this is your agent, Mr. Cohn."

Carl watched Avern raise his eyebrows and slide onto the bench next to her saying, "And you must be Kelly Barr."

Delsa pulled up behind a gold Mercedes convertible in the drive, a young couple getting out, going to the door. The girl in her twenties, nice-looking, turned to Delsa as he approached them.

"Hi, I'm Allegra, Tony's granddaughter, and this is my husband, John Tintinalli?"

The guy who sold bull semen. Delsa recognized the name and said, "Frank Delsa," as he shook their hands. Allegra rang the bell again. As they waited Delsa imagined Montez spotting him through a window and going out the back.

When the door finally opened there was Lloyd in a dress shirt but no tie smiling at Allegra, saying it was good to see her again.

She said, "Lloyd," hugging him, "do you know Mr. Delsa?"

Lloyd's smile faded and came back again and he said, "Yes, indeed, I know all about Mr. Delsa," looking at him now. "I bet you want Montez."

"I sure do," Delsa said.

"Lemme see can I find him."

Lloyd walked away and Allegra said, "I love Montez, he's so cool." Now she was looking at the paintings in the foyer, talking about them with her husband, Delsa listening, Allegra saying she loved them and asking her husband if he loved them-two paintings of dark woods with shafts of light coming through the trees; the third one an ocean at night, the same kind of shafts of light coming through dark clouds. Her husband said he liked them okay.

Lloyd was coming back now wearing his white butler coat and bow tie, looking at Delsa, serious, Lloyd's attention on him as he came through the hall from the living room. He said, "Montez be with you in a minute."

Now Allegra was asking Lloyd what he knew about the paintings. Lloyd said, "They always been hanging there's all I know. The man from DuMouchelle come and look at 'em but didn't tell me nothing."

"Well," Allegra said, "he told me they're the very early work of a Hungarian painter named Dizsi Korab. He used to live in Greektown and is hot right now in New York with his streaks of light. These early ones could be worth quite a bit. But that's not why I love the paintings and want to take them with us, to California. Lloyd, we're moving."

He said, "Well, yeah, it's your house, take what you want."

"No, it's your house," Allegra said, "we're giving it to you, if we can have the paintings."

Lloyd said, "You giving me this house?" Not sounding too sure of it.

"And everything in it except the paintings," Allegra said. "The other night you looked so at home, so cozy with your lady friend, Serita?"

"Yeah, she works over at Blue Cross."

"Are you serious about her?"

"I can't make up my mind," Lloyd said.

"The other night when we stopped in, you were so nice to us. I said to John, 'You have your new business-do we really need to sell the house?' He said, 'Not if you want to give it away.' John's anxious to get out of Detroit." She turned to him as he brought a deed out of his inside coat pocket and handed it to her, Allegra saying to Lloyd, "It's a Quit Claim Deed, dated and notarized, so all you have to do is sign it and have it recorded." Now she looked at the deed. "'The grantor,' that's us, 'for and in consideration of one dollar, convey and quit claim to the grantee,' that's you, and we've added, 'and everything in it except the three Korab paintings in the foyer.'" Now she was hugging Lloyd, Lloyd looking over his shoulder at Delsa, his eyebrows raised.

John Tintinalli lit a cigarette and stood looking around for an ashtray. He walked into the den and Delsa followed him, saying with kind of a smile, "Your father-in-law tells me you deal in bull semen."

"I did," John said, turning to look Delsa over. "What's your opinion of Tony?"

"He's a defense lawyer," Delsa said, "and I'm a homicide detective. But we get along okay."

"You're working on the old man's murder, uh? You know who did it?"

Delsa nodded. "It won't be long now."

"To answer your question, I did broker bull semen, sold the company and bought a vineyard out in Sonoma. A bunch of 'em are going bankrupt and I made a pretty good deal."

"What I wondered," Delsa said, "was how you get the semen."

"Everybody wonders that. There're three ways, an artificial vagina, digital manipulation-"

Delsa stopped him. "That one. How do you do it?"

"You massage the bull's pecker."

"Who does?"

"The guy who does it, the pro. He strokes the ampullae, the seminal vesicles and prostate gland through the wall of the rectum, with a collection tube slipped over the penis."

Delsa said, "That's it, huh?"

"Nothing to it," John said.

He picked up an ashtray and Delsa followed him out to the foyer where Allegra was telling Lloyd the funeral mass would be tomorrow at St. Mary's, corner of Monroe and St. Antoine, the burial at Mt. Olivet.

"Yes, indeed I'll be there," Lloyd said.

Allegra and John left and Lloyd stood there holding the deed to his house, looking at it.

Delsa said, "You gonna live here?"

"Gonna sell it and move to Puerto Rico, where you know what the weather's gonna be every day you get out of bed." Looking past Delsa he said, "Here comes Montez."

Delsa turned.

Behind him now Lloyd said, "First thing I do, I'm gonna throw his ass out of my house."

Montez was looking at the sheet of paper Lloyd was holding. "What's that you got?"

"Your eviction notice," Lloyd said.

Montez frowned saying, "What?"

Delsa said, "Montez?" and got the man in black leather looking at him. "I'm gonna ask you about Kelly Barr, and I want a straight answer."

Montez said, "Man, she's out'n the kitchen. How'd you know?"

Lloyd followed Montez following Frank Delsa through the swing door and into the kitchen. Delsa paused once he was in here, then walked to the end of the worktable, pots and pans hanging above him. Lloyd moved around to the other side where Jerome stood against the counter by the sink, dirty dishes in there he'd told Jerome to clean up. Lloyd felt he should be near Jerome, a street kid witness to big-time serious business. Now Lloyd looked across the worktable at Delsa looking at the four seated at the round table in the alcove of windows: Kelly and Avern Cohn on the bench looking straight ahead at Delsa, Carl Fontana and Art Krupa in chairs to the right, their guns out on the table in front of them.

No one said anything, all looking at Delsa.

Ten minutes ago, when Lloyd came in and told Montez the cop was here to see him, there weren't any guns on the table.

Montez, in this house where there'd been a double homicide five days ago, said, "A cop? What one?"

"The man in charge, Frank Delsa."

There was a silence then like the one now.

Lloyd thought the two guys and Montez might run out the back. He couldn't figure out what was in their heads. He thought Kelly would speak, try to get up, but she stubbed out her cigarette and sat there like she was afraid to move.

Montez said, "What'd you tell him?"

"I'd see if I could find you."

"Tell him I'm not here."

They had been talking about keeping quiet, Avern taking over, saying, "You don't say a word to them. They have to go with whatever they have, which can't be hard evidence. You three are the only witnesses."

Carl said, "You're staying out of it, huh?"