Elmore Leonard - Cat Chaser

“I imagine it’s tough,” Moran said, “when you think of all the Doug McClures out there.” He saw Nolen eyeing the two Fort Wayne secretaries, their chairs backed up to the low cement wall, the high-rise shade now up to their knees.

“I’m at a motel in Golden Shores,” Nolen said, looking at Moran again. “It’s not bad, three bills a month, it’s fairly clean. The thing is, I’d like very much to give you the business-”

“I think you are,” Moran said.

“But even your off-season rate, thirty bucks a day, and you know, come on, that’s not only steep it’s unrealistic. Maybe not for transients, no. But what I’m offering you is the assurance of a permanent tenant.”

“How permanent?”

“What have you got? With the lovers and the secretaries you got about four units out of twelve rented, am I right? And it’s like that I bet eight nine months of the year. Okay. For a fair rate you’ll have guaranteed occupancy of Number Five the year ’round. I’ll even help you out keeping the place up. Skim the pool, cut the grass-”

“We don’t have any grass.”

“Feed the chickens-I don’t know what you do around there. You tell me .”

“Six hundred,” Moran said.

Nolen said, “George, six hundred, I can get a furnished two-bedroom apartment for six hundred.”

“Maybe over at the Seminole Indian Reservation. Not on the beach you can’t.”

“How about three? For old time’s sake, the Dominican Republic,” Nolen said. “I’ll entertain the secretaries, teach ’em how to sit up and roll over. Listen, I’ll even sign a year’s lease.”

And leave in the dead of night, Moran thought. But what would he be out? He liked Nolen. He didn’t trust him especially, but he didn’t have to. Moran said, “Okay, but no smoking in bed. You promise?”

Saturday Nolen Tyner moved into Number Five with everything he owned. Two old suitcases and several cardboard boxes loaded with magazines, letters, glossy photographs of himself in different outfits and poses, a hair dryer. A liquor case that held bottles of scotch, vodka and rum, most of them nearly empty. A lot of clothes, soiled-looking, out-of-style shirts, trousers and sport coats doubled up over bent hangers. A big Northern tissue box of sporty shoes, tan ones and white perforated ones that caught Jerry’s eye and Nolen told him he could have any pair he wanted if they fit. The man’s life was in cardboard boxes he carried from one motel to another.

Jerry left with his shoes and Nolen poured Moran and himself a scotch to mark the occasion.

He said, “You’re right, that Dominican broad is not de Boya’s wife.”

“You find out who she is?” Moran sat at the Formica table with his drink.

“She’s de Boya’s sister. I see the address, Bal Harbor,” Nolen said, “I guess I assumed they’re separated and she moved out. So this morning I ask Marshall, ‘Why’d you tell me it’s the guy’s wife?’ He goes, ‘I didn’t tell you that. I told you her name’s Anita and who the client is, that’s all. You musta decided she’s his wife.’ Marshall’s one of those guys, he’s never wrong. He gives me the information on the back of an envelope.”

“His sister,” Moran said. “I didn’t know he had one.”

“Anita’s forty-two, divorced for the third time.” Nolen poured himself a little more scotch. “She starts fooling around de Boya calls Marshall. ‘Anita is doing it again with somebody.’ De Boya protecting the family name. ‘Find out who she is fucking and let me know.’ This’s been going on for years. One time he follows her all over Miami, she keeps giving him the slip. Marshall’s sitting in his car in front of a place over on Collins Avenue, a store where he knows she went in. He looks in his rearview mirror, Christ, here she comes up behind him in her Mercedes, slams into the ass-end of Marshall’s car, backs up, doesn’t give a shit her grille’s all smashed in, and gives him the finger as she drives past. Gives him the old finger… Another time, Anita starts out she’s balling this jai-alai star in Dania. Right in the middle of the investigation, Marshall’s moving in, getting the goods, she switches over to a bongo player with some reggae band doing a gig on the Beach. This broad, she’s got gold fixtures in her bathroom, I mean gold , man, and she’s fucking this guy wears a wool cap pulled down over his dreadlocks out in the sand. They don’t even get a room .”

“Love is funny,” Moran said.

Sunday night Moran saw lights on in Number One and checked with Jerry. Jerry said it was the Latin lovers, they’d paid for the place they could come anytime they wanted, couldn’t they? Moran was always patient with Jerry; he said yeah, but why at night all of a sudden when up till now they’d only come afternoons from one to five? Jerry said, don’t ask me; those Cubans, you never know what they’re up to. Moran checked with Nolen and Nolen said the piano player was off Sunday and Monday. Moran said well, maybe they were seeing what it was like at night, like regular folks. He wouldn’t worry about it.

MORAN WAS WATCHINGMonday Night Football on television, Detroit Lions and the Chicago Bears fighting it out for the obscurity award, Moran trying to decide if he’d rather be a wide receiver or a free safety… whether he should have another beer and fry a steak or go to Vesuvio’s on Federal Highway for spaghetti marinara and eat the crisp breadsticks with hard butter, Jesus, and have a bottle of red with it, the house salad… or get the chicken cacciatore and slock the bread around in the gravy… The phone rang.

Moran got up out of his chair and walked barefoot across the vinyl tile floor. It felt sticky and he thought again of carpeting the living room, redecorating the place and getting rid of the dumb furniture that was here when he moved in: the jungle floral print, black and pink and green, curved bamboo arms on the chairs and sofa. He could hear the wind outside, that overpowering ocean pounding in out of the night. Sometimes it made him feel daring to live on the edge of it, fifty yards away watching a professional football game in color. The phone was on the end of the high counter that separated the kitchenette from the rest of the room. He said, “Coconut Palms…” and expected to hear the voice of a secretary calling from up North somewhere.

Jerry said, “George, could you come in the office a minute, help me out here?” Then a silence, waiting.

It was Jerry’s voice but it didn’t sound like him. His tone was quiet, cold sober and that wasn’t Jerry’s sound after six in the evening, even when he was doing the books.

Moran said, “What’s wrong?”

Jerry said, “There’s a party here looking for somebody. I don’t know they’re registered or not.”

There was an innocence in this voice that was not Jerry. Jerry knew everything.

Moran said, “Hang on, I’ll be right there.”

Outside he felt the wind through his T-shirt and looked for stars. There weren’t any. Tomorrow it would continue to blow and the secretaries would moan about the weather. Their apartments were dark, only the amber porch lights on. Number One showed light behind draperies drawn closed. It surprised Moran. The second night in a row for the lovers. Here all night-they’d left sometime this morning and were back at it. Couple of alligators. Moran couldn’t picture them saying romantic things to one another. He imagined the woman scowling, impatient with the piano player, telling him what to do as the poor guy tried to service her. Moran walked past the warm underwater glow of the swimming pool and approached the office. Through the window he could see Jerry behind the registration desk that was like a narrow counter, Jerry shaking his head, saying something past the two men who were leaning on the counter close to him, not meeting their gaze, nervous, evasive, not like Jerry.