Elmore Leonard - Gold Coast

“He just loaned you his car a week ago, didn’t he?”

“Hey, Lesley,” Maguire said, “you’re gonna be late for work. Tell him, okay?”

“Brad’s pissed at you anyway for not coming back yesterday. He’s gonna want to know where you went.”

Maguire reached the end right there. He said, “Tell him whatever you want. I don’t give a shit.”

“Ca-al!”

She never called him Cal. Did she? What difference did it make? He went into his apartment, leaving Lesley standing by her yellow Honda. (The Mercedes was parked two blocks away.)

Jesus, hunched in front of the television set, adjusting the picture, said, “Look, the house on Monegro.” A covered human form on an ambulance stretcher was being carried down the front steps as the voice-over newscaster described the mysterious shooting, the murder of a woman named Epifania Cruz. The newscaster said the police were now looking for the woman’s daughter and son-in-law, the last tenants of the house.

Vivian Arzola, holding a coffeepot, watched from the stove. She said, “You know what it’s like?” Neither Maguire nor Jesus looked at her, watching the woman’s body being lifted into the van now. “Like in a movie, the people run out of the house, they reach safety just in time and the house blows up.”

They were looking at a commercial now. When Maguire realized it he turned off the television set. Next thing they’d be watching Dinah Shore and Merv Griffin. He said, “We got to do it tonight. Figure out how and set it up-”

“If we’re sure we’re gonna do it,” Jesus said.

They had gotten Vivian out of the house on Monegro yesterday. They weren’t going to sit around here or take her from place to place. Vivian had said she wanted to get far away from here. It wasn’t worth it, looking over her shoulder all the time. She had to go someplace else.

“It’s how we do it, not if ,” Maguire said. “It’s got to be at the DiCilia house.”

“Why?” Jesus said.

“Because the police were there already”-Maguire speaking quietly, wanting Jesus to relax and listen-“when Roland tried to grab your sister. Okay, he comes to try again, armed, huh? Only this time we’re there. You’re defending your sister, you shoot him.”

“ Me? I thought you were gonna shoot him.”

“One or the other,” Maguire said. “You know how to fire a gun, don’t you?”

“Sure, I know that. But I never shot at anybody.”

“Let’s talk about-first, how do we get him there?” Maguire said. “He comes because he thinks Vivian’s in the house.”

“You’re crazy you think I’m going there,” Vivian said.

“You don’t have to go there. I’m saying he thinks you’re there because we get him to believe it. Like, say I call you from there later. I say, ‘Okay, Vivian, it’s all set. We’ll pick you up, you spend the night here and take you to the police first thing in the morning.’ You say something, he hears your voice, he knows it’s you.”

“I don’t understand,” Vivian said, then began to nod. “Yeah, the tap on the phone. I can’t even think straight.”

“What if he don’t?” Jesus said. “If he’s busy looking for Vivian and he don’t listen to it?”

“I don’t know,” Maguire said, wondering if he had to tell Karen about it and not wanting to. Though if they had to wait around a few days until Roland picked up the tape-it might turn out he’d have to tell her. But he didn’t want to bring her into it. He wanted to get it done and present her with it. There, the guy’s off your back. Making it look, not easy exactly, but not too hard either. There. You have any other problems?

He said to Jesus, “What’s the guy’s name working for him?”

“Lionel Oliva.”

“Okay, you tell Lionel you know where Vivian is. You say you found out Vivian’s gonna be there tonight. Your sister told you.”

“What if he asks why I’m telling him?” Jesus said. “He knows I won’t do any favor for Roland.”

“Tell him-what if you tell him you’re setting Roland up for somebody?”

“Then what’s Lionel get out of it? He says bullshit. If he tells Roland and Roland gets taken out, who’s gonna pay him?”

“You tell him you’ll pay him,” Maguire said. “What’s it worth to him?”

“He’s gonna be scared. You miss, the first one Roland go sees is Lionel, knowing he was set up.”

“How about a grand?”

“You kidding? He’d do it himself for a grand.”

“And get some more stitches in his head,” Maguire said. “I’ve seen Lionel. That Lionel? No, we do it. But he sets it up. All he has to do, tell Roland he knows Vivian’s gonna be there tonight. That’s all he knows. He heard it from you and you told him not to tell anybody, acting very mysterious about it. You think he can do it?”

“Yeah, he can do that.”

“And act dumb?”

“Easy,” Jesus said.

“Then Roland gets the tape, hears Vivian’s voice, he knows it’s true. Even if he doesn’t get the tape, he’s got to go find out after Lionel tells him. But it’s better if he does, because then he hears Vivian’s voice, hears she’s going to the police-it’s much better that way. We don’t want Lionel telling him all that and mess it up.”

Jesus said, “Okay, but what gun do we use? I don’t want to use mine, have to get rid of it after.”

“No, we don’t get rid of it,” Maguire said. “That’s what I’ve been talking about. We call the cops, we have to have a gun to show ’em, right?”

“You want to call the cops?”

Jesus, Maguire thought. He said, “Look. The guy comes in to rape your sister. You shoot him. Some body shoots him. You don’t throw his body in the Intercoastal, you call the cops and give ’em the gun. That’s what you do . Okay, then Vivian reads about it in the paper. Roland Crowe killed in rape attempt. Vivian goes to the police, tells ’em she knows Roland killed Ed Grossi. The police let the other guy go.”

“I’m telling you, he better be dead,” Vivian said, “or I don’t say a word to them, not even my name.”

“He’ll be dead,” Maguire said. He looked at Jesus. “You don’t want to use your gun-okay, tell your sister there’s a gun upstairs in Karen’s bedroom, top dresser drawer. Tell her to sneak it out of there, bring it down to her room. We slip in the house after dark, she gives it to us. It was Frank DiCilia’s gun. They want to bust somebody for possession they can dig up Frank. But bring your own anyway, just in case.”

“Then what?” Jesus said. “He comes in-when do we do it?”

“That part, we’ll have to wait and see,” Maguire said.

Karen watched him coming out from the house. She stood at the shallow end of the pool drying herself lightly with a beach towel. He was putting on his sunglasses now, taking her all in.

“Do you really have that much nerve,” Karen said, “or’re you showing off?”

“What nerve?”

“Using the phone. You know he’s going to hear it. You disguise your voice or what?”

“He’s got to do more’n hear me, he’s got to catch me.”

“Who were you calling?”

“The guy I work for. Find out if I still have a job.”

“Does it matter?”

“Well, I guess I’d rather quit than be fired. But I don’t feel like working. He was busy, so I still don’t know.”

“I can’t imagine you being worried about it,” Karen said, “the job.”

“I’m not worried, I want to know how he feels.”

Karen said, “I saw the news this morning… the house. Strange, the woman wasn’t Vivian.”

“No, we got her out of there. I forgot to tell you.”

“Something’s going on,” Karen said. “In fact I think there’s quite a lot you haven’t told me.”