Elmore Leonard - City Primeval

“Let’s go to Tampa, Florida,” Sandy said, “right now.”

“I’d like to, hon, but we got some problems. Those goddamn Albanian undertakers shot your Montego all to hell-no, that’s something I’ll tell you about after,” Clement said, Sandy frowning up at him. “First thing, we got to get shuck of the gun.”

“Why? Why not just walk away from it?” Sandy was still frowning. This was not turning out simple at all.

“Cause I don’t leave behind anything might catch up with me later,” Clement said. “If I don’t get rid of the gun then I got to be rid of anybody could take the stand against me. I don’t think you’d care for that.”

“Yeah, but you know I wouldn’t testify.”

“Hon, I know it but I don’t know it. People change their mind. The only thing perfectly clear in my mind, I ain’t gonna do time. So the gun goes or you and Marcus Sweeton go. Which’d you rather?”

“I thought everything was gonna be good now.” Sandy’s voice was faint, sounding as far away as her gaze, the little girl wishing she was out there somewhere, even out beyond the lights of Canada.

“We’ll make her,” Clement said. “I’m gonna call Sweety back, tell him the arrangements.”

“But you said if you picked the gun up-”

“Trust the good hands people,” Clement said. “You feel that good hand on you there? Here comes another good hand-close your eyes. Here comes another good hand… closer… closer… Where is it going to land?…”

Doing was more fun than thinking. But sometimes thinking made the doing more worthwhile. Like if he had known he was going to do the judge he would have thought something up to make it pay more and the doing would have been more satisfying. When he tried to explain this to Sandy, she said she would just as soon not know what he was thinking, if it was all the same. She turned on the television set and he turned it off.

“What am I saying?”

“I don’t know what you’re saying, or want to.”

“I’m saying like in this deal here,” Clement said, “there are ways to skin by. Shit, lay in the weeds and let it pass over. Like that Grand Trunk railroad train passed over me. But there also ways of doing it with some style, so you let the other party know what you think of their chicken-fat scheme. You follow me?”

“No,” Sandy said.

“Then keep your eyes open,” Clement said, “and see if your old dad ain’t a thinker as well as a doer.”

RAYMOND THOUGHT OFMadeline de Beaubien, the girl who overheard the plot and warned the garrison Pontiac and his braves were coming to the parley with sawed-off muskets under their blankets and saved Detroit from the Ottawas.

The house could have belonged to one of her early descendants, an exhibit at Greenfield Village that people walked through looking into 19thcentury rooms with velvet ropes across the doorways, a cold house despite amber reflections in the hall chandelier and a rose cast to the mirrored walls. The house was too serious.

That was it, Raymond decided. The house didn’t see anything funny going on or hear people laugh. Marcie told him solemnly, a funeral-home greeter, Ms. Wilder was waiting for him in her sitting room.

An audience with the queen. No more, Raymond thought, mounting the stairway, not surprised to find her in semidarkness, track lighting turned low, directed toward squares of abstract colors, Carolyn lying on the couch away from the lights. She told him he was late and he asked, For what?

He let himself relax and said, “Let’s start over.”

“You were going to leave in a few minutes,” Carolyn said. “That’s what you told me.”

“I know, and then we got into something. What’s the matter with your voice?”

He did not see her face clearly until he turned on the lamp at the end of the couch away from her and saw the bruise marks and swelling, her mouth puffed and slightly open. Carolyn’s eyes held his with a quiet expression, her eyes blinking once, staring at him, blinking again, waiting for him to speak.

“I told you,” Raymond said.

Her expression began to turn cold.

“Didn’t I tell you? No, you can handle him, no problem.”

“I knew you’d have to say it,” Carolyn said, “but I didn’t think you’d overdo it.”

“You didn’t? Listen, I’m not through yet,” Raymond said. “If I can think of some more ways to say it I’m going to, every way I know how.”

She said, “You’re serious…”

“You bet I am. I told you, don’t fool with Clement, but you did anyway.”

“I misjudged him a little.”

“A little …”

She began to smile and said, “Do you feel better now?”

He said, “Do you?” Then surprised both of them.

He went to one knee to get close to her and very gently touched her face, her mouth, with the tips of his fingers. He said, “You don’t want to be a tough broad.” She said, “No…” and slipped her arms around him and brought him against her. The faint sound that came from her might have been pain, but he didn’t think so.

He said, “I want to tell you something. Then we’ll see if we’re still friends, or whatever we are. I didn’t plan this. As a matter of fact, I came here I was a little on the muscle. I was gonna listen, try to be civil and get out.”

“What happened?” Carolyn said.

He liked the subdued sound of her voice.

“I don’t know. I think you’ve changed. Or I’ve changed. Maybe I have. But what I want to tell you, I think you’re too serious.”

She didn’t expect that, or didn’t understand what he meant. “He beat hell out of me…”

“I know he did,” touching her face again, soothing her with his voice and his fingers. “I’m not gonna say it any more, you know who he is… Tell me why he’s going to the bank tomorrow.”

“He made me give him a check. All the money I had in the account.”

“How much is that?”

“Over six thousand.”

“What did you say one time, he’s fascinating? I’m sorry, I’ve got to quit that… Did you stop payment?”

“No, I’m going to file on three counts and get him for assault, extortion and probably larceny from a person. He took more than a hundred in cash.”

“Hold off on it,” Raymond said. “Let me bring him up on the homicides, then you can file all the charges you want.”

“You’ll never convict him,” Carolyn said, “unless you have more than I know about.”

“Did he have a gun?”

“Not when he was here; at least he didn’t show it. But when I heard shots and looked out the bathroom window-I thought it was the police and I remember thinking, Wait, as I went to the window, I want to see him killed.”

“Really?”

“It was in my mind.”

“Did he have a gun then?”

“Yes, shooting back at them. It was an automatic, a fairly good size. But who are they?”

He told her about Skender, Toma. She knew something about Albanian blood feuds and now wasn’t surprised. “On the phone you thought I wanted to file against them on behalf of Clement, while I’m thinking of all the ways I want to see him convicted.”

“Let me do it,” Raymond said. “I’m close. In fact, it could happen tonight, as soon as I hear something.” Looking at her, thinking of Clement, he said, “Did he… molest you?”

Carolyn began to smile again, her eyes appreciating him. “Did he molest me?…

“Come on-did he?”

Her mood became quiet. “Not really.”

“What does that mean, not really?”

“He touched me…”

“Make you take your clothes off?”

“He opened my robe-” Carolyn stopped, she seemed mildly surprised. “You know what I’m doing? I’m being coy. I’ve never been coy in my life.”