Elmore Leonard - 52 pickup

Above him his wife called his name.

As she appeared on the landing he said, "Get the camera. And a flash."

They were in the den now. Bobby sat holding a handkerchief to the side of his face. He would dab at his cheekbone and then look at the fresh blood spot that appeared on the cloth.

Mitchell was unloading the.38. He put the cartridges in his pajama pocket and the empty revolver on the coffee table. As he sat down across from Bobby Shy he looked at his wife.

"Why don't you see if you can find a Band-Aid?"

Barbara stood in the doorway, behind Bobby Shy, in her nightgown. She seemed to want to say something, but Mitchell's calm gaze held her off. He was in control. As she turned away Mitchell looked at Bobby Shy again.

"You got pictures of me," he said, "and now I've got pictures of you and Leo. All but Alan. You want some coffee or a drink or anything?"

Bobby Shy's eyes raised, his hand holding the handkerchief against his face. "Man bust in your house, you always serve him drinks?"

"On special occasions."

"Maybe you thinking I'm somebody I'm not."

"We can waste a lot of time," Mitchell said, "or we can get to the point. I know your voice, I can identify you."

"How come you ain't call the cops?"

"Now you sound like your friend Alan," Mitchell said. "You think I want the police involved? The only thing I want to know, why you bother to steal ten grand when I'm going to give you more than fifty thousand. Hand it to you."

"You going to give me fifty thousand?"

"Fifty-two," Mitchell said. "That's the figure. Alan told you, didn't he?"

"About what?"

"Maybe you haven't seen him. You see him today?"

"What fifty-two thousand?" Bobby Shy said.

"Or he meant to tell you and he forgot."

"Hey, I'm asking you, what fifty-two thousand?"

"The figure we agreed on. What I can afford to pay. He didn't tell you about it?"

"He say something about you owing the government."

"Oh." Mitchell nodded and was silent, giving the man time to think about it.

"You don't owe them anything?"

"Everybody owes the government. What's that got to do with it?"

Bobby Shy took the handkerchief away from his cheek, but didn't look at it. "You made a deal with Alan?"

"It was Alan I spoke to," Mitchell said. "The payment's supposed to be for three of you, however you split it up."

"Or however he don't split it," Bobby Shy said.

Mitchell shrugged. "Well, that's not my problem, is it? Who gets what."

"When you make this payment?"

"In a few days. When I get it together."

"Where?"

"Look," Mitchell said, "why don't you talk to Alan about it? I told him I'd pay. You want to know anything else, talk to him."

"I'm going to do that," Bobby Shy said. "Yeah, have a talk."

Mitchell nodded. "I would." He watched Bobby Shy get up, look at the handkerchief and put it in his pocket. "Don't you want a Band-Aid?"

"Thanks, I don't think I need it."

"You can sit, rest your head some more if you want."

"No, I'm fine."

As Bobby Shy turned and started to walk out Mitchell said, "Hey, you forgot something."

Bobby Shy looked back at him. "What?"

"Your gun," Mitchell said.

Alan didn't usually go to the movie theater until late in the afternoon or early evening, unless he needed some extra spending money. Then he'd make a day of it at the theater. Take tickets for a while in the afternoon, pocket a handful of them, then resell them later and keep the money, when he worked the ticket booth in the evening while the girl was on her relief. Twenty tickets were usually enough. Twenty times five was a hundred dollars and the guy down in Deerfield Beach, Florida, who owned the theater, never knew the difference. The money went for sugar candy and cigarettes-very often for the two teenaged sisters who lived in the building. Laurie, fourteen, and Linda, fifteen. He would let them come to his apartment after school and take their clothes off and listen to music and smoke dope and sometimes drop a little acid. Little teenyboppers with skinny white bodies. Groovy little girls who squealed and giggled when they got turned on and loved to jump on Alan, on the Indian pillows, and undress him and do everything they could to turn him on too. Alan called it playing with his kids.

Laurie and Linda and the rock music were turned way up when Bobby Shy knocked at the door.

Alan, still dressed, went over and opened the door a crack with the chain on. He said, "Hey, Bobby," grinning but not liking it one bit, closed the door, took the chain off and let him in.

Bobby Shy looked at the little naked girls on the pillows. They looked back at him, not turning away or trying to cover themselves. They stared at him with knowing little smiles and gleams in their eyes.

Bobby Shy said, "Get rid of the fuzzies. We got something to talk about."

Alan got the warning in the man's quiet, cut-dry tone. Bobby was in a mood, so don't mess with him or ask questions. But stay loose; don't ever look scared. Alan clapped his hands once and said, "That's it for a while, kids," like a stage manager. "Let's take a break."

The girls pouted and said awwww and oh shit, but Alan got them into their clothes and out of there in a couple of minutes. He closed the door and looked over to see Bobby taking a chair away from the table in the dining-L. He placed it in the middle of the floor and sat down. Alan sat against the wall on a pillow, yoga-fashion, and began building a joint. When he finished it and looked up again, reaching toward the low coffee table for a match, Bobby, seated about fifteen feet away, facing him, was screwing a silencer attachment into the barrel of his.38 Special.

"Hey now, come on," Alan said, "don't fool with guns in here, okay? The goddamn piece's liable to go off."

"It's due to go off," Bobby Shy said, "unless you give me the straight shit when I ask you a question."

"Come on, what is this?" The extension on the barrel was pointing at Alan now; he could see the little round black hole. "Are you kidding, or what?"

"This number don't kid," Bobby Shy said. "You ready for the question?"

"Man, what're you on?"

Bobby Shy crossed his legs and rested the butt of the revolver on his raised knee. "The question," he said, "is how much did the man say he give you?"

"Give me?"

"Give you, give us-say it."

Alan was silent. He stole a little time by lighting the joint and tossing the matches back on the coffee table.

"You went out to see him, didn't you?"

"What's the answer?" Bobby said.

"Before I can talk to you, you go out on your own and see the guy. Is that it?"

Bobby turned the revolver on his knee slightly, a couple of inches, and shot a pig off the coffee table-a blue ceramic jar shaped like a pig that seemed to explode from within because there was no sound relating the exploding fragments to the gun.

Alan sat up straight, his back against the wall, his eyes open. He said, "Bobby, listen to me for a minute, all right?"

"Man pull shit on me," Bobby said, "he got to be very brave or stoned out of his head." His gaze lowered, he pulled the trigger and shot a fairy-looking figurine he never did like off the coffee table. It flew apart, was gone, with bits of it landing in Alan's lap. "Which are you," Bobby said, "brave or stoned?"

"My mind is clear, man," Alan said. "Think about it a minute. How am I going to tell you with Leo sitting there? I called you later, you were gone. I called Doreen's, nobody answered."

"She was home." Bending his wrist, Bobby raised the trajectory of the revolver and shot two birds off a mobile hanging to Alan's left.

"All right, maybe she was home. I'm saying nobody answered, for Christ sake."

The barrel shifted past Alan to ten o'clock. Bobby squeezed the trigger and shattered the globe of a mood lamp hanging from the wall.