Elmore Leonard - Cat Chaser

“Don’t call her my lady, all right?”

“What should I call her?”

It annoyed him, “my lady.” He never liked the expression; but that was something else. “Think a minute,” Moran said. “What if somebody else put Jiggs up to this and he’s playing a game with you?”

“That’s it, man, a game.” Nolen was half-listening. “It’s us against them. Shirts against the skins, man. They’re swarthy fuckers, but they got white legs… if you know what that means on the basketball court can figure it out.” He gave Moran a feeble grin. Then came alive again. “We’ll get little Loret some pom-poms, she’ll be the cheerleader. Muerte a de Boya , Fight! The old locomotive. M-U, M-U, M-U-E-R; T-E, T-E… What do you think? Get her a short little red and white pleated skirt…”

“Where’s Loret?”

“Jesus, that’s right. She hooked up with some guy at the Fontainebleu, guy in the lounge smoking a cigar. She gives him the eye, says excuse me, going to take a leak and I haven’t seen her since. I know, you told me. But don’t say it, all right? I hate guys like that. Have to rub it in.”

Moran said, “What am I gonna have to do to get you to understand something? You dumb shit.”

Nolen grinned, eyes out of focus. He held up the dirty stub pinched between his fingers. “How ’bout a smoke? Good stuff.”

“It makes me hear tires squeal when I’m barely moving,” Moran said. “No, this’ll do me.” He raised his glass. “Like it’s doing you in. I don’t want to sound preachy-”

“Then don’t.”

“But I got to tell you. You’re in a no-win situation. The best you can get out of this if you’re lucky, I mean if you come out alive, would be something like fifteen to twenty-five at Raiford. Hard time.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Nolen said. “I’m having fun.”

Moran stared at him before easing back in the sofa. All right then. Okay…

He was tired.

He saw Mary in his mind, in the room in the University Inn, her hands between her legs on the chair cushion and could see the line of her thighs beneath the tan skirt. He saw her looking at him with her look of quiet awareness, waiting. What did he need to talk to this shithead for?

Corky came out to the red and white Cadillac in the drive. He asked Jiggs, getting out of the car, then reaching in to punch the headlights off, what he wanted. Jiggs said, “If I thought I had to tell you, Corko, I’d be in pretty bad shape. Tell Mr. de Boya I’ll be around back where you used to have a boat dock somebody took out while you’re keeping an eye on it.” And walked away.

He was inspecting the splintered stubs of the pilings, barely visible in the dark water, when de Boya came out to him. Jiggs turned very carefully on the crumbled edge of the retaining wall and stood with his back to the tide breaking in below him, giving de Boya a casual, death-defying pose.

He said, “Seems you got a problem here,” with a grin of sympathy. “Jimmy Cap says take a look. He don’t care to see any his friends get fucked over by parties unknown. Jimmy says it’s like they’re doing it to him.”

De Boya was looking down at the water now, at the stump remnants of his dock.

“How do you think of it?”

Jiggs took cautious half-steps from the cement edge until he felt the safety of grass underfoot. “Well, my first thought when I read about it in the Herald , I think to myself, some dopers’re having a disagreement and one of ’em sends his guy to the wrong address. ‘ Seven hundred Arvida. Oh, I thought you said six hundred. Oh well.’ “

De Boya’s reaction: nothing. Like a statue with clothes on.

“But then I started asking around.”

“Yes? What did you learn?”

“You understand we got contacts in Little Havana,” Jiggs said. “I first come here they’re referring to it in the company as Sowah Seda. This girl Vivian Arzola used to work there says, ‘Go on over to Sowah Seda,’ I’m supposed to see somebody over there. I ask her where Sowah Seda is. She says, ‘Sowah Seda, Sowah Seda.’ Finally it dawns on me. Oh, Southwest Eighth Street. She says, ‘Yeah, Sowah Seda.’ Well, I talked to a guy down there this time name of Benigno, runs a tavern, if he’s heard anything. What’s this shit, a man’s dock getting blown up? He looks around see if anybody’s listening. They got the salsa on so loud I can’t even hear Be nig no. He says it’s the work of the FDR. I said FDR? Franklin D. Roosevelt? You said that name to my mother she’d genuflect. Christ, she’d have left home, all the kids, for FDR, he ever wanted to get it on. But, it turns out, Benigno says it stands for Democratic Revolutionary Front.”

“It’s Salvadoran,” de Boya said. “It has nothing to do with me.”

“That’s what Benigno says, they’re from El Salvador. But evidently these people, your different revolutionary groups, are getting together, helping each other out. They don’t give a shit you’re Dominican, you’re Nicaraguan, you come from the ruling class you’re one of the bad guys. What do they call it? The oligarchs. You’re one of them and they’re all working for Castro anyway, they don’t give a shit. See, he’s sending ’em here to spread a little terror.”

“For what purpose would that be?”

“I check around, hear it from some other sources there,” Jiggs said. “These people with little bugs up their ass, they come here to cause trouble, score a few big names.”

“What do they destroy the dock for?”

“Get your attention,” Jiggs said. “So you know it’s coming. Like toying with you. Little terrorist foreplay. You go to the cops for protection you’re all right for a while. Then when you aren’t looking-whammo. They hit you a good one, for real this time and get their initials in the paper.”

Jiggs felt de Boya studying his face in the dark, probably trying to look in his eyes, the truth test. De Boya said, “Yes, and what do you do for me?”

“Well, are the cops helping any?”

“They say they keep an eye on my house. They drive by.”

“You hire any more people?”

“Not yet.” De Boya turned abruptly. “We go inside.”

“I know you like Corky, but get rid of the rest of ’em,” Jiggs said, following de Boya, “and I’ll send you over a couple guys, couple heavy-duty Cubans worked for the CIA when the CIA had a hard-on for Castro. Now these guys’re freelance. Jimmy Cap says take care of you, that’s what I’m doing.”

“It’s kind of him,” de Boya said.

They went up on the deck, through the two-story hallway filled with plants and young trees like a path through the jungle, and into de Boya’s study. Jiggs liked it, the oak paneling, the gun cabinet, the framed photographs of people in military uniforms all over the walls. There was a big one of Trujillo himself in a white uniform full of medals, shots of de Boya with different people, another one of de Boya in what looked like a German SS uniform, de Boya nonchalantly holding an old-model Thompson submachine gun. Jiggs paid his respects to the photographs, nodding solemnly, while de Boya went around behind a giant oak desk and sat down. There was a tape recorder on the desk, a tray that held a brandy decanter and glasses.

Jiggs finally took a chair. He said, “I wanted to ask you. I locate any of the party responsible, General, you’re gonna want to prosecute, I take it.”

“In my own way,” de Boya said.

Jiggs said, “That’s how I’d feel about it myself. You have ’em arrested they’re back on the street in twenty-four hours.” He said then, “I understand, what I’ve heard, you were the expert at getting people to tell you things they didn’t want to. Back in the old days.”