Elmore Leonard - Gold Coast

“Why?” Karen said.

“To wait for you.”

“Unh-unh, to wait for you ,” Karen said. “That was the whole idea.”

“Wait for me? Why would he do that?”

Jesus Christ, Maguire thought.

“To kill you,” Karen said.

“Shit, he don’t even have a gun.”

“I do,” Karen said.

Her hand came out of the straw bag gripping the Beretta and fired it point blank at Roland’s bright-blue suitjacket and fired it again and fired it again and fired it again, until Roland stumbled against the file cabinet and went down on top of his shotgun, tried then as if to do a pushup and fell heavily and didn’t move again.

Karen stood up, watching Roland. After a moment she laid the gun on the desk. She said to Maguire, who was staring at her, “How did you get in?”

“I broke in. The glass door in the sitting room.”

“No, that’s how he broke in,” Karen said. “You weren’t here.”

“Look, I’ll tell what happened, or anything you want. I’m not worried about being involved.”

“You weren’t here,” Karen said again. “So you’d better leave, okay? I have to call the police.”

“Wait a minute,” Maguire said, getting up. “This was my idea, right? The whole thing.”

“It wasn’t a very good one,” Karen said. “What did you expect to get out of it?”

Maguire was confused now, frowning. Was she kidding? She couldn’t be. “What’d we talk about all the time? Getting him off your back, going away, traveling together.”

Karen picked up the lighter, flicked it once, and lit her cigarette. Looking at him she said, “Did I promise you anything?”

“It’s all we talked about.”

“We did?”

“Jesus Christ, I paid Jesus five grand-”

“Of my money. Don’t you think I checked it? With you two in the house.”

“Jesus Christ,” Maguire said. He couldn’t believe it. “ Us two-I paid Lionel a grand out of my own money.”

“And I believe I saved your life,” Karen said. “But I’ll pay you whatever you spent out of pocket.” She walked to the file cabinet, stepping over Roland, and opened it.

Maguire watched her. He said, “You didn’t want to get out of this at all, did you? You get some kind of a kick out of it, playing a role. Like the dolphins-they’re putting up with all that shit, you turn ’em loose. What do they do? They come back to the phony world to play games. You’re just like the fucking dolphins, you know it?”

“Here’s your thousand,” Karen said.

“You’ll get your picture in the paper again, act mysterious-you gonna have room to put it up?”

“I enjoyed meeting you,” Karen said. “Now beat it. Okay?”