Elmore Leonard - Cat Chaser

He was walking off. Moran rose. He said on impulse, “How about dinner later? If you’re free…”

Rafi made a circle with his thumb and index finger. He waved and was gone.

Moran sat down.

Mary said, “I’m surprised he didn’t click his heels.”

“Your Dominicans are very polite people,” Moran said.

Mary gave him a look. “Tell me about it.”

“That’s right, you have one at home, don’t you? You see his Rolex?”

“He’d like you to think it’s a Rolex, but it’s not.”

“How do you know?”

“I know gold, George. I have some of that at home too.”

He sipped at his beer in silence.

“If she’s in Santo Domingo, fine. But I don’t want to go chasing all over the country.”

“Then don’t.”

“Yeah but, what if he busts his ass, goes to a lot of trouble, finds out she’s in Puerto Plata… I don’t want to go to Puerto Plata. I’m really not that hot about taking him to dinner.”

“But you don’t want to seem ungrateful.”

“You shoot a guy’s left nipple off,” Moran said, “I think you ought to buy him dinner, at least. Especially if you’re the owner of a swank resort.”

“I couldn’t help it,” Mary said. “Are you mad at me?”

“The Fontainebleu. Jesus, can you see me running a place like the Fontainebleu?”

“You can’t say he wasn’t impressed.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. I’m his new buddy.”

Mary waited a moment.

“You don’t seem to be as anxious about finding Luci. What happened?”

“Nothing. It was an idea, that’s all,” Moran said. “Something that happened a long time ago. Sixteen years.” He looked at Mary. “What were you doing sixteen years ago?… What were you doing last week? The week before?… What’re we doing sitting here?”

Rafi said to the desk clerk in English, “Let me see it again. The woman’s.”

The clerk looked past him at the lobby before taking out the registration card and laying it on the counter.

Rafi studied the card without picking it up. “I don’t know if that’s a one or a seven, in the address.”

“Siete,” the clerk said.

“All right, take it. I’ll fix it up when you want to score, man. Let me know the room and what time.”

“Speak so I can understand,” the clerk said.

“I’m practicing my American,” Rafi said.

He walked past the uniformed guard into the hotel casino where there were players at the first roulette table and at several of the blackjack tables, though not much of a crowd this early in the evening. Rafi nodded to the young American in the three-piece gray suit, pointed to the telephone on the stand by the entrance and the young American, the casino assistant manager, gave him the sign, okay, though he seemed to hesitate and have doubts. Rafi picked up the phone and told the hotel operator the number he wanted, then turned his back to the room, hunching over the stand that was like a podium.

“It’s Rafi again.” He spoke in Spanish now. “Mary Delaney. Seven hundred Collins Avenue, Miami Beach.”

The woman’s voice on the phone said, “Wait.”

Rafi turned to look over the room, though with little interest; he drum-rolled his fingernails on the polished wood of the stand. The woman’s voice came on. “Rafi?”

“Yes.” He turned his back to the room again.

“It’s a jewelry store, that address, and there is no Mary Delaney in Miami Beach.”

“Hiding something,” Rafi said, pleased. “Can you look her up some other way?”

The woman’s voice said, “I have directories-what do you think I am, the FBI?”

He could see the woman, imagine her sitting in her room that was like a gallery of photographs of important people: some of the pictures framed and enscribed, “To La Perla, with love,” or “fondest regards,” though most of the pictures, the ones in color, had been cut from magazines twenty or thirty years ago. La Perla had written about parties and scandals and was said to have been an intimate of Porfirio Rubirosa, the world’s greatest lover. Now she sold pieces of her past and somehow remained alive.

“You have to see this one,” Rafi said. “Anyone who looks like she does has to be somebody. I think I’ve seen her picture, but I’m not sure. I don’t have your memory, like a recording machine.”

“What does she look like?”

“An ice cream. I had a spoon I would have eaten her,” Rafi said. “Listen. Be at Mesón de la Cava, nine o’clock, you’ll see her.”

“You’re taking me to dinner?”

“Sit at the bar. Look at her and tell me who she is.”

“I have to take a taxi there, five pesos,” the woman said, “for you to buy me a drink?”

“I’ll pay for the taxi,” Rafi said. “You can have two drinks.”

“I hope I don’t become drunk,” the woman said.

“Tell me what would make you happy,” Rafi said.

“I want three daiquiris, at least,” the woman said, “and I want the large shrimp cocktail.”

“If she’s somebody, you can have a flan, too. Nine o’clock,” Rafi said, looking at his watch. He hung up and walked over to a blackjack table where the dealer, a light-skinned Dominican who wore the casino’s gold jacket and vacant expression, stood alone waiting for players. Rafi hooked his leg over a stool and gave the dealer a ten-peso note for ten pink chips. As they began to play Rafi touched his chin and worked his jaw from side to side.

“My face hurts from smiling.”

“All the sweetness gone out of it,” the dealer said. “You want a hit?”

“Hit me… That’s good.” He watched the dealer turn over his cards, totaling fifteen. “Take one yourself.”

“I know how to play,” the dealer said, putting a card down. He went over twenty-one and paid Rafi his chips.

“I’m letting it ride,” Rafi said. “Deal.” They continued to play, Rafi winning again. “You think of her husband’s name?”

“Who?”

“Who have we been talking about? Luci Palma.”

“I still don’t remember it,” the dealer said. “They live in Sosua. That’s all I know.”

“I don’t like her having a husband,” Rafi said. “She have a good-looking sister?”

“Some brothers.”

“Pay me again. I’m letting it ride,” Rafi said. “I know she has brothers. Hit me. It was a brother I talked to. He knew the one who was with her that the Marine shot. I think I need a younger sister if I don’t find a good Luci Palma.”

“You’re crazy,” the dealer said, paying him for the third straight time.

“How do you know? Have I told you anything?”

“I don’t want to know,” the dealer said.

“Hit me,” Rafi said. “Does the Marine come in here?”

“I haven’t seen him.”

“Again… What about the woman that’s with him?”

“I don’t know his woman.”

“You haven’t seen her? Once more. You’re missing it. She’s an ice cream. Butter almond. I look at her…”

“You wish you had a spoon,” the dealer said.

“I think I need a girl about twenty. Very beautiful, very innocent. I mean with the appearance of innocence. I don’t have that in my stable right now.”

“Your girls look like the hotel maids,” the dealer said, paying Rafi for the fourth straight time.

“I’m riding one hundred and… seventy pesos,” Rafi said, holding out his original ten. “If I win this one then I’m going to win something else very big, maybe the jackpot of my life… Come on, give it to me.”

The dealer gave him an ace and a queen. Blackjack.

“There,” Rafi said, like there was nothing to it.

He watched the dealer turn up his own cards. Another ace, another queen. The dealer raised his eyes.