Elmore Leonard - Cat Chaser

The driver, Corky, was opening the rear door.

A man about sixty got out. A man with a broad, tight expanse of double-breasted gray suit that he adjusted smartly, pulling the jacket down to appear even tighter. The man was Hispanic but very light and had a certain bearing, immovable, built like the stump of an oak tree cut off at about five nine. He reminded Jerry for some reason of a labor leader, a guy high up in the Teamsters, a Latin Jimmy Hoffa. Though this guy was more polished. That word was in Jerry’s mind because the guy looked like he darkened his hair with black shoe-polish, the way it was shining in the sun, like patent leather.

The man was taking a pair of sunglasses from his inside pocket as he looked up at the Coconut Palms. He didn’t seem too impressed.

Moran was half-dressed, packing his canvas carry-on bag. Two pair of pants, five shirts, a couple of light cotton sweaters… he wasn’t sure how long he’d be down there. Four or five days maybe. When the phone rang Nolen looked up. He’d been sitting with his beer, grateful, not making a sound. He heard Moran say, “They’re back?” Then heard him say, “Jesus Christ, yeah, that sounds like him… It’s okay, Jerry, I’ll see what he wants.” Moran was looking toward the side window as he hung up.

Nolen said, “What’s going on?” Watching Moran pull on a dark blue sport shirt and move toward the door.

“Stay where you are,” Moran told him. He swung the door open and stopped.

The Irish-ex-cop-looking guy, Jiggs Scully, was standing outside the door, pushing his glasses up on his nose. He said, “George, how we doing? Your team won last night, uh?”

Moran stepped out, pulling the door closed behind him. He started past Scully and stopped.

“Which one was my team?”

Scully gave him a wise grin. “The Lions. You’re from the Motor City, aren’t you?”

“What’d I do?” Moran said.

“I don’t know, George, you tell me. Or tell Mr. de Boya there. He wants to ask you something.”

Moran moved past Scully, buttoning his shirt, approaching Andres de Boya now who stood near the far end of the cement walk, looking out at the beach with his hands locked together behind his back. He turned to watch Moran coming, then squared around again to face the beach as Moran reached him.

“How much frontage you have?”

It stopped Moran for a moment. He opened his beltless khaki pants and tucked in his shirttails, zipped as he said, “The same I had the last time. Was it a hundred and twenty or a hundred and thirty feet? I forgot.”

“You’re talking about a difference of two hundred thousand dollars,” de Boya said to the ocean. His voice was soft, but with a heavy accent.

“Numbers aren’t my game anymore,” Moran said. “How’s your golf?”

De Boya didn’t answer or move a muscle.

Moran wondered what would happen if he kicked the guy ass-over the cement wall into the sand, and walked away. He attempted again to nudge him with, “If you’re looking for your sister, she isn’t here… You already know that, huh?”

Hard-headed guy, he refused to come to life.

“Am I getting warm?” Moran said. “I’ll tell you something. If you think I had anything to do with her coming here, you’re wrong. I never met your sister before the piano player and I’ve only talked to her once, if you could call it that.”

“How much you want?” de Boya said, out of nowhere.

“For what? My place?”

“I give you…” de Boya paused. “Million six hundred thousand.”

“You serious?”

“How much you want?”

“The real-estate guys that call about every week now are up over two million.”

“I give you two million and two hundred thousand.”

De Boya’s gaze came past him and Moran smiled. Was he serious? The man’s gaze continued on, sunglasses like a hooded beacon sweeping the beach; black hair parted in a hard line, showing his scalp.

Moran said, “You want me to go away, Andres? Come on, what’s your game?” He wanted to keep it light and not let the guy get to him. “Whatever it is, the Coconuts isn’t for sale.” And looked out at his beach, at the surf pounding in. “I like it.”

“Why?”

Moran waited; he wanted to be sure.

“I ask you why.”

The man had turned and was almost facing him now. He had asked a question that had nothing to do with real-estate value or numbers and seemed interested in getting an answer.

“I live here,” Moran said. “It’s my home.”

De Boya looked past him, toward the stucco bungalow. “You live in that?”

“I live in that,” Moran said.

“How much you make here?”

“A lot,” Moran said.

“How much? A few thousand?”

Moran said, “I don’t know your sister and I haven’t seen your wife in over a year. I want you to understand that. I never made any moves on your wife. Never.”

De Boya seemed to be staring at him, though might have been sightless behind the sunglasses, the wax figure of a former general.

He said, “Get three offers on real-estate letter paper. I give you a hundred thousand more than the best one.”

Moran looked at him closely. Maybe you had to hit him on the head with a hammer to get a reaction. Moran imagined taking a ball peen and the man’s plastic hair that covered his one-track mind flying in pieces.

He said, “You serious, Andres? You want to build?”

“Of course, build,” de Boya said, more animated than before. “What else do you think?”

And maybe that’s all there was to it, though Moran still had his doubts.

He said, “Well, we could sure use another condominium,” turning to look at his property. “There’s room for forty units you go up ten floors. Sell them for around three and gross twelve million. Cost you about eight and a half to build it, say two for the property, add on this and that, cost of tearing down the Coconuts, you net maybe a million, million and a half. I could do the same thing. But it seems like a lot of trouble to go to. I mean what do I get out of it? Pay half to the government. I’m the owner so I live up in the penthouse with a great view of the Atlantic Ocean but have to take an elevator anytime I want to go outside.” Moran nodded toward his bungalow. “I already have a view of the ocean. I got a living room, a bedroom. I got a color TV…”

The Dominican former general, cane grower, head of the secret police or whatever role it was that made him rich, stared at Moran. Maybe he understood; maybe he didn’t.

But either way, Moran thought-packed, ready to take off on his adventure-what difference does it make?

He said, “Andres, all I’m trying to say to you is, there’s no place like home and no friend like Jesus.”

Moving away Moran’s gaze came to the two figures standing at the opposite end of the walk, in front of the bungalow, Nolen and the Irish-looking guy, Scully. As Moran got closer he saw they were each holding a can of beer, his beer; Nolen acting, telling a story, Scully grinning, getting a kick out of it.

There you are, Moran thought. You gonna worry about these people?

ALL OVER THE WORLD, Moran decided, the past was being wiped out by condominiums.

There were condos now on the polo grounds west of the hotel, where Amphibious Task Force helicopters had dropped off Marines from the U.S.S. Boxer , the grounds becoming a staging area for Marine patrols into the city. There were condos and office buildings rising in downtown Santo Domingo with the initials of political parties spray-painted on fresh cement, PRD and PQD; but only a few YANQUIS GO HOME now, on peeling walls out in the country, old graffiti Moran had noticed coming in from the airport.