Elmore Leonard - Cat Chaser

“You felt something, a kinship,” Nolen said, “one grunt sniffing another. I’ll tell you what. Even if it wasn’t me I’ll buy you a drink later on. Make it up to you.”

“I’m going down there next week,” Moran said.

“Where?”

“Santo Domingo.”

“Jesus Christ, what for?”

“Walk my perimeter, see if it looks the same. Stay at the Embajador-we were bivouacked right there. Maybe look up some people. There doesn’t seem to be anything going on; now it’s El Salvador.”

“If there’s any place down there we can go in and fuck things up,” Nolen said, “Reagan and Haig’ll find it, don’t worry.”

“You been back to the D.R. since?”

“I ate that chow just one time and got Trujillo’s Revenge,” Nolen said. “I partied with one girl, one and took home a dose. I take a vacation, man, I go to Las Vegas where everything’s sanitary.”

They took a sip of their beers. Looking at Moran Nolen Tyner said, “Well, well…”

“I’m not gonna say it’s a small world,” Moran said, easing back in the recliner to get comfortable, crossing his sneakers, the strings hanging loose.

“You want to know how small it is,” Nolen said, looking across the pool. “You got a couple Dominicans right in that end apartment. The piano player and the broad, the lovers. Though my sheet says the piano player might be Puerto Rican.”

“I thought they might be Cuban,” Moran said, “all the Cubans in Miami. “Your sheet-what do you mean by your sheet?”

“The IDs of people I got under surveillance. The broad, for example. She’s married to a guy by the name of Andres de Boya. Miami big bucks, I mean big.”

“Wait a minute,” Moran said. “The woman in there?”

“They got a house on Biscayne Bay looks like that Polynesian restaurant in Lauderdale, the Mai Kai, only bigger.”

Moran agreed, nodding. “That’s right. But the woman isn’t Mrs. de Boya.”

Nolen gave him a funny look, guarded. “How would you know?”

“Mrs. Andres de Boya’s from the same place I was originally,” Moran said. “Detroit. And she’s no more Dominican than I am. She’s a very nice-looking woman. In fact she’s… well, she’s a nice person.”

Nolen was looking at the holes in the toes of Moran’s sneakers, the left one larger than the right. He didn’t seem too sure about Moran.

“Maybe it’s a different de Boya, a relative.”

“How many Andres de Boyas are there?” Moran said. “He was in Trujillo’s government, something like twenty years ago, right up to the time Trujillo got shot on the way to see his girlfriend.”

“Twenty-seven times they hit him,” Nolen said. “A prick like that, I guess you have to be sure.”

Moran was patient. “De Boya came to Miami-I imagine with a few million he’d scored. He was a general in charge of something or other…”

“Something or other-try head of the secret police,” Nolen said, “the Cascos Blancos, the white helmets. You’re a poor Dominican you see a guy wearing a liner painted white you run for the fucking hills.”

“I thought he owned sugar mills,” Moran said.

“That’s how he got rich. Trujillo used to pass out sugar mills for good behavior. Three days after the old dictator’s killed, de Boya’s on his yacht bound for Miami. With all the U.S. dollars he could get his hands on.” Nolen was looking at Moran’s sneakers again; his gaze thoughtful, still somewhat skeptical as it raised to Moran’s beach-bum bearded face.

“How do you know him?”

“Leucadendra Country Club. I played golf with him a few times. Actually it was twice,” Moran said, “in the same foursome. That was enough.”

“Too rich for your blood, uh, the bets? Little Nassau?”

“No, the guy cheats,” Moran said. “You believe it? Guy that’s worth, easy, forty fifty million, he cheats on a hundred-dollar round of golf and all the clucks, the guys that play with him, know it. I couldn’t believe it. They not only pay up they go, ‘Gee, Mr. de Boya,’ give him all this shit what a great game he plays.”

Nolen said, “Yeah?” Still a little hesitant. “What about you? You pay him?”

“No, as a matter of fact I didn’t,” Moran said. “My father-in-law at the time, I thought he was gonna have a stroke. ‘You out of your mind? You know who that is, for Christ’s sake?’ I said, ‘Yeah, a guy that cheats. Fuck him.’ My father-in-law goes, ‘A hundred bucks, Christ, I’ll give you the hundred.’ I tried to explain to him that wasn’t the point, but my father-in-law was nervous because de Boya was putting money in his condominium developments and I worked for him, my father-in-law. So he was afraid it would look like he was siding with me, not making me come across. I told him that was too bad, I wasn’t gonna pay any tinhorn hacks his way out of the rough like he’s cutting weeds, three-putts the hole and says he took a five. Bullshit.”

“You belong to Leucadendra?” Nolen’s tone of skepticism was giving way to mild surprise.

“Not anymore,” Moran said. “De Boya tried to get me blackballed. He not only didn’t like the way I played golf, he hinted around I was trying to hit on his wife.”

“Were you?”

“No. I told you, she’s a very nice person. Her name was Mary Delaney, worked for de Boya’s lawyer before they got married.”

“Change her luck and marry a spic, uh, with fifty million. Shit, I’d marry him too.”

“Be careful,” Moran said.

Nolen grinned. “Got a little soft spot there? I won’t say another word.”

“De Boya didn’t get me blackballed,” Moran said, “but it didn’t help my standing at the club any. Then when my wife divorced me for not playing the game, her dad helped give me a shove and there went the club membership. Which was fine, I never liked golf that much anyway.”

“So you were married to bucks, too.”

Moran shrugged. “It might’ve worked, it didn’t, that’s all. The last time I saw de Boya-he came by here about six eight months ago like nothing had happened, like he hardly knew me, and offered to buy the place, build a condominium.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“I turned him down. I got real estate people calling here every week. They’re trying to build a solid wall of condos from Key West to Jacksonville.”

“I won’t ask you the last time you saw his wife.” Nolen grinned to show he was kidding around.

Moran didn’t grin. He said, “Good. We leave her out of this.” He said, “I understand you had a talk with the piano player today.”

“You got eyes even when you’re not here,” Nolen said. “Yeah, actually I felt sorry for him. I told him I had him under surveillance with a woman he wasn’t supposed to be with. Then, before he started to sweat I told him he was perfectly safe, I wasn’t gonna turn him in. Even though I was taking a terrible risk.”

“You made him understand,” Moran said, “the risk ought to be worth something.”

“Like fifty a day. Why not.”

“And you don’t even give ’em clean towels,” Moran said. “What do you do when you’re not hanging out?”

“I rest,” Nolen said. “I got rid of my goals, decided to take it one day at a time. Don’t overdo it, never drink more than a case of beer or a fifth of booze in any given day. Unless there’s a party.”

“I’ve always admired restraint,” Moran said. “Not overreaching your capabilities.”

“There you are,” Nolen said. “I was an actor for twenty years. Well, ten years professionally. Some film work in New York, mostly dinner theater down here. You’re trying to act, the audience’s sitting there trying not to break wind out loud. They want to leave, go home, but not any more’n I do. I played either the lead guy’s buddy or the broad’s brother. You know, just a straight asshole type of guy, wrings his hands a lot, opens his eyes real wide: ‘Gee, Scott, I don’t know if I’d do that .’ Doesn’t ever know what the fuck’s going on. I start playing the guy as a drunk, give the part a little dimension. Or I’d play it, give it just a hint the guy’s homosexual. But the asshole directors on that dinner circuit, to get any respect from them you had to be Forrest Tucker… Doug McClure. You know what I mean? That type.”