Elmore Leonard - Gold Coast

“Forty-five hundred dollars,” Karen said.

Maguire thinking, the first thing in his mind: There’s more. Right in the house.

“Can I ask you one more question?”

“Go ahead,” Maguire said, putting the money in his inside coat pocket. He could feel it against his ribs.

She pulled her chair closer to his and sat down before extending the tissue-wrapped package.

“What is it?”

She watched him, but didn’t say anything.

Taking it then, feeling the weight, he knew what it was. Maguire unwrapped enough of the tissue paper to see the gun, wrapped it together again and handed it back to her.

She said, “Do you know what it is, the make?”

“It’s a Beretta nine-millimeter Parabellum, holds fifteen rounds in the magazine. How much you pay for it?”

“I didn’t buy it. It was my husband’s.”

“You could get something like four hundred for it on the street.”

“I don’t want to sell it,” Karen said, “I want to know how to use it.”

“For what?”

“Protection.”

“It isn’t a good idea,” Maguire said. “People who don’t own guns don’t get shot as much as people who do.”

“Will you show me how it works?”

“If I don’t, what? You want the money back?”

“The money’s yours. You’ve already earned that.” She waited.

“It’s got a little crossbolt safety above the trigger. You push it to off, slide the top back and forward again and you’re ready to go,” Maguire said. “Which is what I’m gonna do if it’s okay. Take my money and run.”

“You’re very direct,” Karen said, and seemed to be studying him again. “You admit some things and then you stop.”

“It’s not that I have anything to hide,” Maguire said, “it’s the feeling I’m on the carpet, being questioned.”

She said, “I’m sorry, I really am.” There was a silence, but she continued to look at him.

Maguire said, “That’s okay. I guess-as you say, I walk in here, give you a story, why should you believe me?”

“I do though,” Karen said. She seemed to smile then. “Will you tell me something else?”

“Probably,” Maguire said.

“What’s the difference between a porpoise and a dolphin?”

Maguire found a note on his pillow that said, in a forward-slanting Magic Marker scrawl, “Knock if you are not mad!!!”

He reached across the bed to the wall-to a fading garden at Versailles, green-on-yellow wallpaper-and rapped on it three times.

Lesley came in wearing a short see-through nighty and several rollers in her hair, head somewhat lowered to gaze up at Maguire with a practiced, hurt-little-girl expression.

“I thought you were gonna take me out to dinner.”

“I must’ve got mixed up, who was mad at who,” Maguire said. “I had something over on the beach.”

“I was mad,” Lesley said, “but I’m not anymore.”

“How come?”

“You didn’t have to talk to me like that.”

“Did you go out?”

“No”-pouting-“I sat there with Aunt Leona watching TV all night.”

Poor little thing-he was supposed to comfort her, tell her he was sorry. He wasn’t annoyed or upset. In fact, he didn’t feel much of anything toward Lesley, one way or the other. He was catching glimpses of Karen DiCilia in the glow of the torch, part of her face in shadow, the light reflecting on her dark hair. Dark but not Italian-dark, the woman not anything like he’d imagined the wife of Frank DiCilia.

Lesley said, “Are you going to bed or you gonna read?”

It was strange, in that moment he did feel a little sorry for her, standing there in her see-through nighty and her curlers. He said, “It’s late. Might as well go to bed.”

“You want me to get in with you?”

“You bet,” Maguire said, getting undressed as she turned off the light and pulled back the green and yellow spread.

“There,” Lesley said. “God, isn’t it good?”

“It sure is.”

“Shit, I forgot my curlers.”

She sat up, took out the ones in back and got down there again.

“Ouuuu, that hurts. But it’s okay. Now it’s okay. Ouuuuu, is it ever.” After awhile she said, “Cal?”

“What?”

“If my aunt knew we did this? She’d shit. You know it?”

“I guess,” Maguire said.

“We’re watching TV? She goes on and on about in Cincinnati she’s at a picnic with this guy named Herman or Henry or something and how he grabbed her and kissed her. God, it was like it freaked her out, and she was my age. In the guy’s car. I want to say to her, ‘Aunt Leona, you ever go down on him?’ She’d actually shit, you know it?”

“I bet,” Maguire said.

“No, she was twenty- three . It was just before she got married. But not to Herman. My uncle’s name was Thomas. That’s what they called him all the time, Thomas. I can’t imagine them doing it. Can you imagine Aunt Leona doing it?”

“No,” Maguire said.

“She’s in there snoring away, all this beauty cream on. You should see her.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Well, I better get my ass beddy-by. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Night,” Maguire said.

“Don’t play with it too much,” Lesley said.

“I won’t.”

The door closed.

He could see Karen DiCilia in shadow and firelight, the clean-shining dark hair, features composed. Karen DiCilia, Karen something else, Karen Hill originally. He’d found out a few things. If she could ask questions he could, too. And then she had asked a few more. Calvin, is it? Yeah. Calvin doesn’t go with Maguire. It should be Al instead of Cal, Aloysius Maguire, a good mick name. Well, Karen doesn’t go too well with DiCilia, does it? And the good-looking woman saying, No, it should never have gone with DiCilia.

Sometimes we’re bored, willing to try something new and different. Change for the sake of change.

Maguire saying, Right.

Sometimes, then, we’re too impulsive, we make up our minds too quickly.

True.

Sometimes we talk too much, say things we don’t mean.

Very true. (Talking, but what was she say ing?)

And we get into a bind, a situation that offers few if any options and then we’re stuck and we don’t know what to do.

Maguire saying, Uh-huh.

Maguire almost saying, If you want to tell me what you’re stuck in, what the problem is, why don’t you, instead of beating around?

Almost, but not saying it. Because what if she told him? And expected him to help her out in some way; man, with the kind of people who’d been associated with her husband and were probably still hanging around-Then what, chickenfat, sit there and grin at her or get involved in something that’s none of your business?

This was a very good-looking woman. The kind, ordinarily, it would be a pleasure to help out and have her feel grateful. This one, he was pretty sure, could be warm and giving.

But right now she was in some kind of no-option bind and had a keen interest in firearms… while Maguire had a vivid memory of the six by eight cells in the Wayne County Jail and what it was like to go to trial facing 20 to life.

So he had said, when it was his turn again, “Well listen, Karen, it’s been very nice talking to you,” and thanked her again and got out of there.

Lying in bed he began to think, But maybe she just needs somebody to talk to. Somebody she feels would understand her situation. Or keep the local con artists away. It didn’t necessarily have to be anything heavy. What was the risk in talking to her, finding out a little more?

She was a good-looking woman.

He wondered how old she was.

He wondered how many more new one hundred dollar bills there were in her house.