Elmore Leonard - Cat Chaser

Nolen raised the sack. “Lemons.”

Jerry said, “You gonna make lemonade?”

“I’m gonna squeeze all the vitamins out of ’em,” Nolen said, “and make whiskey sours.”

Jerry made a face as though he might be sick. At this point he saw the two Latins get out of a car across the street and start this way, one of them carrying garden shears.

Nolen had already seen them. He was moving Jerry into the office. “Call George. Hurry.”

Jerry didn’t understand the note of urgency. “I can tell ’em,” he said, “we don’t need any trimming done. The hell they want to work in the rain for?”

Nolen said, “Goddamn it, gimme the phone. He dialed the number looking out the window and said, “George, run. I mean quick .”

Moran put the phone down. On an angle through a side window he saw the Mendoza brothers coming through the corner alcove past the icemaker and Coke machine, coming toward the bungalow. Both were wearing wool knit watch caps and leather jackets, one of them carrying a large pair of pruning shears with rubber grips. Moran got back to the phone. He said, “Call the cops.”

Now Jerry was on. He said, “What do they want, George?”

“They want me . Call the cops-tell ’em it’s an emergency.” He hung up. Christ-he had to get something on; he’d showered and dried himself but wasn’t dressed. Moran pulled on jeans, got a sweater out of the closet. He needed a weapon, a club. He didn’t want a knife, he didn’t know how to use a knife. Now they were banging on the door. He had to get out of here. They were banging on the door again. The side window was stuck, it was always stuck. But he strained and raised it enough to slip through the opening. He was walking away from the side of the house when the two Mendozas appeared, coming around from the front. They waved.

The one with the shears said something in Spanish. The other one said, “Come here. We want to go inside.”

Moran’s ears strained for the sound of a siren. He picked up the ten-foot aluminum pole that was used, with an attachment, for vacuuming the pool.

“Got to work, trabajo ,” Moran said.

The Mendoza brother who had spoken English held his palms up to the rain. “You don’t work today, man. We go inside, out of this, the tiempo .”

“I work every day,” Moran said. “I love to work. Got to get it done.”

He glanced around, saw Nolen coming up on the other side of the pool. Nolen was looking at the Mendozas, saying, “Hey, you got the wrong guy. This is a friend of Jiggs Scully, his amigo .”

Moran said across the pool, “These guys work for Jiggs? ”

Nolen gestured, minimizing. “I think so… Hey, we’re amigos of Jiggs. You sabe Jiggs? Go call him on the telefono , he’ll tell you. You got the wrong guy.”

The Mendozas didn’t seem to understand or didn’t want to. The one who spoke English had the end of Moran’s aluminum pole now. He tried to pull it hand over hand toward him, but Moran tightened his grip and they tugged back and forth for a moment about eight feet apart. The other one stood with the shears in both hands now, the blades pointing up.

“We go in the house,” the one holding the pole said. “You suppose to give us something for Señor de Boya.” He repeated it, Moran believed, in Spanish and the one with the shears laughed and continued to grin.

“You think I’m going in the house with you,” Moran said, “you’re outta your mind.” He raised one hand to indicate the motel units. “There people here, they’re all watching. You sabe witness? Shit, what was the word? Testigo. Muchos testigos in all the ventanas .”

“Come on, we go inside,” the Mendoza holding the end of the pole said, and gave it a quick jerk, almost pulling it away from Moran. But he got both hands on it and jerked back, his hands slipping on the wet metal, pulling, having a tug-of-war in the rain. When finally he heard the first high-low wails of a siren coming very faintly from Atlantic Boulevard, hearing it because he was listening for it, he let the Mendoza holding the pole pull him closer hand over hand until Moran was in reach, the Mendoza still gripping the pole when Moran let go and slammed a hard left hand into the astonished Mendoza’s face; the man sat down, stunned. With five feet of aluminum pole in front of him now, the rest dragging, Moran drove at the Mendoza with the shears and caught him in the belly-the siren wail much louder now-and jabbed at him until the shears came clanging against the pole; but Moran was going to get in and not let this man alter his life and when he caught the Mendoza’s throat with the pole it stopped him, brought him up, and Moran was able to step in and belt him with a left and another left that brought blood from his nose, the Mendoza wobbly but trying to stick him with the shears. Moran gave him a head fake and went in high, got inside those jabbing blades, grabbed hold and drove. They went over the cement wall to land in wet sand, Moran on top, getting a hand under the wool cap now to grab hair, twist the guy’s head facedown. He heard words snapped in Spanish above him. The other Mendoza had a knee on the cement wall, pointing a blue-steel revolver… But now a voice called out in hard Anglo-Saxon English telling the Mendoza to freeze, called him an obscene name and that was it for the Mendozas. The two Pompano Beach officers came hatless looking like young pro athletes with nickel-plated Smith & Wessons gleaming wet and it was clear they would use them.

Moran said yes, he would sign charges, assault with deadly weapons or assault to do great bodily harm, whichever was worse, and if the officers could think of anything else put it down. This kind of thing, Moran told them, was not good for the tourist business. He didn’t tell the police he knew the Mendozas or that he had seen them assist in murder last night; he’d save that and maybe tell them another time. One of the cops said, “Well, you sure handled these fellas.”

Moran said, “I was protecting something more valuable to me than I can tell you.”

From his bathroom-cleaning up, changing his clothes again-he heard a familiar voice in the front room and walked out through his bedroom to see Nolen talking on the phone. Nolen raised his hand. On the counter was a pitcher of what looked like French-vanilla ice cream, melted and watery.

“Jesus, make yourself at home,” Moran said and went back into the bedroom. Putting on a clean pair of jeans and a dark blue pullover sweater, he heard Nolen say “Jiggs” a couple times. When he went out again Nolen was off the phone, pouring the mixture in the pitcher into two glasses. He offered one of them as Moran came over.

“Breakfast,” Nolen said. “Fresh lemons, bourbon and four eggs. A little powdered sugar. You don’t provide a blender, I had to beat hell out of it by hand.”

Moran took the glass Nolen offered and drank it, not to be sociable but because he needed it. It wasn’t bad.

“So, they work for Jiggs.”

“Listen, he’s very apologetic,” Nolen said, seated at the counter now, cowboy boots hooked in the rungs of the stool, starched safari shirt hanging out. For a change Nolen didn’t appear sick this morning. “Jiggs sent ’em over to de Boya, like to help out with that piss-poor security he’s got, but actually to help Jiggs, get the master plan rolling.”

“You mean those guys are your partners?”

“Naw, they don’t know anything. You wind ’em up and pay ’em, they do whatever they’re told. Like yank out de Boya’s telephone line. Screw up his head, he thinks the terrorists are closing in.”

“Well, you know who they’re screwing up,” Moran said, “while I’m trying to get his wife out of there.”