Elmore Leonard: 52 pickup

"Brief Encounter."

"I don't get it."

"What about Barbara?"

"What about her?"

"I mean if you were so in love, why didn't you leave Barbara and marry the girl?"

"Come on, Jim."

"I'm serious. You say you think about her all the time, you're deeply in love. Why didn't you get a divorce and marry her?"

"Jim, last night when I went there, the reason? I was gonna tell her I wasn't coming back anymore."

"Why?"

"Try faking it for three months," Mitchell said. "Whether you're faking one or the other it isn't worth the state you get yourself in."

"Conscience," O'Boyle said.

"You said that before." Mitchell was silent for a moment, thoughtful. "I'll tell you a funny thing though. I've been married twenty-two years. All of a sudden I fall in love with a young, really nice, good-looking girl. But you want to know something, Jim? Barbara's better in bed."

O'Boyle was still in the office when the call came. Mitchell recognized the voice. Nodding toward the extension phone on the table by the couch he said, "Yeah, I know who it is." O'Boyle went over and very carefully picked up the phone.

"Have you thought it over?" the voice asked.

"I'm still thinking," Mitchell said. "A hundred and five thousand, that's a lot to think about, isn't it?"

"Not for you, sport. A little side money."

"I guess I'm tight with it then. I work hard for what I make. I say to myself, why give it to some asshole who comes along trying to con you?"

There was a silence and O'Boyle made a face, closing his eyes. Finally the voice said, "This is no con. You don't come across you're going to find yourself up to your chin in shit, buddy, and I mean it."

"But it's my decision," Mitchell said. "If I want to be in up to my chin or not is up to me, right?" Again there was a silence.

"You can have it any way you want," the voice said.

"All right, then give me a couple more days to think about it." Mitchell looked over at his lawyer. "You've probably been working on this for a while. What's a couple more days? I mean you lay it on me all of a sudden, I have to have a little time to make up my mind."

"We'll give you till tomorrow. First payment, ten grand, to show your good faith."

"Where do I send it?"

"I'll call you tomorrow, let you know."

"What time tomorrow?"

But the voice was no longer there.

Mitchell hung up. "Now what?"

"You're sure," O'Boyle asked, "you've never heard his voice before?"

"Not before last night."

"Could he be somebody who used to work here?"

"I don't know, I guess so. The guy knows more about me than my accountant. So what do we do?"

"Eventually," O'Boyle said, "we'll probably have to go to the police."

"You're kidding."

"You want to give them a hundred thousand dollars?"

"I want to give them two feet of pipe across the head."

"Let me work on it," O'Boyle said. "I'll talk to a guy I know in the prosecutor's office and find out the procedure."

"Not like drawing up a contract, is it?"

"I'll admit it's been a while since I've done any criminal work."

"Just suppose," Mitchell said, "what if I pay them and forget about it?"

"You know better than that. If you pay they won't let you forget about it. You'll pay forever."

"But if I don't, then people find out." Mitchell saw his wife on the patio in her housecoat. She always looked good. In the cold morning light she looked good.

"Let's wait and see what happens."

"I guess I ought to tell Barbara."

O'Boyle, getting fifty dollars an hour for his advice, thought about it a moment. "Mitch, I wouldn't say anything that you don't have to. Not yet, anyway. These guys could chicken out for some reason, get scared, change their mind. The whole thing could blow over like it never happened."

"The clouds break and the blue sky appears."

"Mitch, no one ever got in trouble keeping his mouth shut."

That was all the advice he could buy for one day. Some encouragement, but not much. Maybe there was something he could do about it himself. He wasn't going to sit here thinking about it.

It had been a sporting goods store at one time-Mitchell remembered it because he had stolen a baseball glove from the place when he was in the seventh grade and his dad was working at the Ford Highland Park plant. It was on Woodward six miles from downtown in a block of dirty sixty-year-old storefronts. The showcase windows of the sporting goods store were painted black now and whitewash lettering four feet high read, nude models.

The girls sat around the lobby in aluminum porch furniture with green-and-yellow-plaid cushions. They weren't bad-looking, they weren't especially good-looking. They were girls in their early twenties who could have been waitresses or countergirls at a dry cleaner's. On the walls were nude photos of girls, but not of any of the girls who were in the room now. A customer walked over to a secondhand office-desk, paid the man in the swivel chair fifteen dollars, rented a Polaroid for five more if he wanted to or if there were any cameras working or any film available, and then would pick a girl and go down the hall to one of the eight-by-ten cubicles, or studios, as the girls called them.

The first time Mitchell came here he rented a camera and picked Cini right away, though without giving any indication that he knew her. He remembered being very self-conscious walking into the place and paying the fifteen dollars. Cini grinned but didn't say his name until they were in the room and she was taking off her sweater and jeans. She didn't wear anything under them. It was the first time he had seen her naked. She smiled again and asked if he was really going to take pictures. He said he thought that's what you were supposed to do. She said most of the guys just sat in the chair and stared at her boobs and crotch. Sometimes they'd ask her to lie down on the cot and put her legs apart, but very few of them ever brought a camera or rented one. Mitchell asked her if the guys ever tried anything. She said yes, sometimes; but most of the guys were creepy; they were nervous and mostly just wanted to look. There was a sign on the wall that read, look or take pictures but no touching. Really? Mitchell asked her. None of the girls put out? Probably, Cini said. She never discussed it with them. It was an easy way to make a hundred and fifty a week, part-time, and not have to worry about getting arrested. It was more than she needed to pay for school and to live on. She said she was glad she wasn't into drugs anymore and didn't have to work every day. Pretty soon, that first time, she started to play around, striking exaggerated nude-model poses. He took a half-dozen pictures that came out sharp and clear in the brightly lit room, but didn't take the pictures with him when he left. That evening they went to the Caravan Motel for the first time. Three weeks later he leased the apartment and she quit the modeling job.

Now, the second time Mitchell had come here, he was again self-conscious walking in and seeing the three girls and the guy behind the desk look up at him, knowing they were judging him: horny, middle-aged guy who had to pay to see a naked girl; dirty old man trying to act casual.

The guy behind the desk was heavy, soft-looking, with sculptured sideburns and thin hair combed carefully to the side in an attempt to cover his baldness; a thirty-year-old thirty-pounds-overweight guy in a tight mod sport shirt. He smelled of aftershave lotion and stared at Mitchell, not moving, as he approached the desk.

Mitchell said, "There was a girl named Cini, Cynthia, used to work here. Is she still around?"

The fat man, whose name was Leo Frank and was the owner of the place, stared at Mitchell another moment before he said, "We got a Peggy, we got a Terry, we got a Mary Lou, but no Cinis."