Elmore Leonard - Cat Chaser

Moran opened the door to the courtyard and closed it against the rain coming in. “Jerry, how about Nolen? Is he around?”

“Got a phone call about an hour ago and left right after. Smashed as usual. I hope he don’t get in a car wreck.”

Moran went out with the bags.

Mary said to Jerry, “Nice seeing you again.” Amazed at this natural response, her voice not giving her away. Outside, hurrying to keep up with Moran moving fast with the three bags, she said, “I don’t believe it.” Her voice raised in the wind. She said, “Remember how you kept saying that? When I called your room in Santo Domingo-‘I don’t believe it.’ Remember?” Talking out of a compulsion to hear herself and know she was in control. “ ‘Come on, I don’t believe it.’ You said it about five times.”

Moran said over his shoulder, “I believe it now,” not stopping till they got to the end apartment off the beach, Moran hunching his shoulders against the rain coming in sheets off the ocean, Mary trying to hold her tote out of the way and get the door open.

They were soaked by the time they got inside and Moran let the bags drop. Mary closed the door and came to him, pressed her wet face against his wet shoulder, felt the familiar comfort of his arms come around her. It seemed late, so dark for afternoon. She pressed against him, hearing the wind moan out of the gray mass of ocean and felt an excitement that was hard to keep down. She said, “I’ve done something else you’re not gonna believe,” raising her face to his.

Moran saw her expression, the grin she was trying to hold back. He looked at her with the innocence of a straight man waiting for it and said, “Are you serious?”

She said, “Wait till I show you,” and saw his expression change, starting to grin but not sure he wanted to.

Nolen found 84 and turned off the freeway at the peak of his whiskey rush, the glow carrying him along with a feeling of effortless control, gliding in the high excitement of a rainstorm, clouds hanging close enough to touch. (He had come out of the bar with his sunglasses on and thought it was midnight.) Now it was that colorless nothing kind of time, the eye of the storm. He found the New River Canal Road, not another car in sight and kept pressing, riding the wind, the black overcast his cover, until he saw the stand of pines off to the north. He touched the right-hand pocket of his raincoat and felt the hard bulk of the .45. Here we go… turned in and rode the Porsche through pools formed in the ruts, hearing the wake washing aside, saw the house and two cars in the yard now, the wipers giving him quick glimpses. He rolled to a stop on the off side of the Cadillac and now considered-in spite of the charm he felt-the tricky part. Walking from the car to the house. He felt his mouth dry and wondered why he hadn’t brought a bottle with him.

Well fuck it, he’d gone into houses on the east bank of the Ozama with cotton in his mouth and automatic weapon fire popping away and one place had found beer inside, not cold, but beer all the same and he hadn’t gotten even a scratch in anger during that war and was subject to serious gunfire nearly every day and you know why?, because his life was being spared for something big if not fame that would come to him with more money than he could count on a rainy afternoon in Florida. You’re goddamn right. He got out of the car and walked up to that house… saw the door open a crack… hesitated the moment he needed to clear the .45 and kicked the door in with a cowboy boot.

Jiggs sat in an easy chair that faced away from the front windows and the door, so that Nolen came in almost behind him. He saw Jiggs look him up and down, Jiggs just sitting there. Nolen looked past him at the two suitcases lying closed on a round card table. He turned and looked toward the hallway.

“Where’s the general?”

“In the bathroom.”

“Still?” Nolen looked at the suitcases again. “How come you haven’t opened ’em?”

“They’re open.”

“Well, why don’t you say something, for Christ sake?”

“I want to hear you,” Jiggs said.

Nolen went over to the card table. He reached up to switch on the hanging fixture that was like an oil lamp with a glass chimney. He saw the suitcases were unfastened, unzipped, and looked at Jiggs again.

“Go ahead,” Jiggs said.

Nolen lifted the flap of a suitcase and let it fall open. He saw newspapers. He saw the front page of the Miami Herald telling him Haitians had drowned in the surf at Hillsboro. He felt down under the papers. He threw back the flap of the other suitcase and saw more newspapers and felt through them all the way to the bottom. He looked at Jiggs, squinting at him.

“The general see us coming?”

“Nah, it wasn’t the general.”

“Well, did you have a talk with him? Christ!” Nolen whipped around, cocked his weapon as he stomped toward the hallway.

“I said it wasn’t him,” Jiggs said.

He waited, a clear picture of a rainy afternoon in his mind: Moran throwing the same kind of luggage into the back seat of a beat-up Mercedes, girlfriend who was way ahead of everybody behind the wheel of the getaway car. He heard Nolen scream:

“Jesus Christ!”

And waited for him to appear: barely moving in his shroud raincoat, gunhand hanging limp, like he’d been hit over the head and was now about to fall.

“It was your buddy,” Jiggs said. “Son of a gun beat us to it.”

“My settlement,” Mary said, on the floor next to the open suitcase. “Now do you love me?” She had taken off her wet clothes, chilled, and held a cotton bedspread around her like an Indian blanket; a young girl at a pajama party eager to have fun. She said, “What’s the matter, can’t you say anything? You’re looking at it, but you still can’t believe it, huh?”

“I believe it,” Moran said without emotion.

He sat in his shirt and Jockeys on the edge of the sofa, hunched over in lamplight to look at the stacks of currency, packets of brand-new hundred-dollar bills, rows of them filling the suitcase, remembering Scully telling him about the Igloo coolers and a hundred thousand stacking up to less than a foot high. He felt vulnerable and wished he had run across to his house to change first. He’d brought Mary here because of the three suitcases, because he thought she’d need more room for clothes than his house could offer.

He said, “All three are full of money?”

“No, two,” Mary said. “I brought a few things, but I didn’t want to load myself down.”

“How much’s in there?”

“I don’t know exactly. It looks like a million one hundred thousand in each bag. But anything over two million Andres gets back. I only want what I have coming.”

“You didn’t count it?”

“George, this’s the first time I’ve even seen it. I made the switch while Andres was downstairs in his den.”

“The switch-you sound like a pro.”

“No, it’s my first job. I was gonna call a cab and then I found out you were on the way. My hero.” She looked at him curiously, smile fading to a slight frown. “Does money make you nervous? What’s the matter?”

He was looking at the scene on Arvida, flashing lights reflecting in the rain. “Andres and Corky came out with two suitcases, just like these.”

“He has at least a dozen Louis Vuitton,” Mary said. “I think he must have stock in the company. He kept two bags packed with his traveling money, always ready.”

“Where’d he hide them?”

“You guessed it the other day and thought you were kidding. Under the bed.”

“Come on-just sitting there? Not locked up?”

“Under two hundred and fifty gallons of water and inside a marble safe that looks like the pedestal of his bed. There’s a tiny hole at the foot you can barely see. You slide in a magnetic key that’s like a long needle and part of the marble slides open.”