Elmore Leonard - Maximum Bob

“I do it a lot,” Kathy said, “keeping track of my cases. Okay, where were you? The drugstore, had to get some medicine. Why didn’t you come in today? I was sick. The same thing over and over.”

“You’re bored.”

She wanted him to touch her and they’d kiss. She was dying to kiss him. She said, “No, this is different.”

The idea was to see if Elvin was around. He wasn’t home in Delray Beach and he wasn’t using Dale’s pickup. Yesterday he’d left it in Boynton. This morning TAC pulled off its surveillance and gave the job to Boynton PD. Well, requested they keep an eye on the truck. Elvin could be here, at Dr. Tommy’s. But if he was, Gary said, it didn’t make sense.

He had looked up Dr. Vasco. Key witness in a homicide. Almost implicated. Fingered his houseman, Sonny, who was convicted and drew twenty-five to life at FSP.

“Where Elvin was,” Kathy said.

Gary said he’d thought of that, wondering how Elvin had found Dr. Tommy. So he called the prison and what do you know. Elvin and Sonny were sweethearts. Elvin would cut anyone who even looked at Sonny with lust.

“With lust? A corrections officer said that?”

“I think it was ‘looked at Sonny’s ass.’”

“That’s more like it.”

“Sonny tells Elvin about Dr. Tommy, who fingered him and, for all we know, might have been implicated.”

“As an accessory?”

“Sonny claims he killed the girl trying to protect the doctor. They got in a fight, the doctor accusing her of blackmailing him with some home movies, and Sonny hit her over the head with an iron poker. The doctor says no, it was Sonny who wanted to blackmail him, but not with home movies, something else, writing phony prescriptions. They had him on that anyway. He said on the stand the girl told him what Sonny planned to do and that’s why Sonny killed her.”

“What were the home movies?”

“Porno stuff, the doctor and different girls. Sonny’s lawyer wanted them admitted as evidence, but the judge ruled against it. They had Sonny cold, picked him up driving the girl’s car, her body and the murder weapon in the trunk. The funny thing is, the tapes are still in our evidence room. Never returned because the doctor said they weren’t his. Sonny must’ve taken them without his knowledge.”

“Did you look at them?”

“There must be at least a dozen tapes.”

“What are they like?”

“The usual, mostly kinky sex. I only saw a couple.”

She said, “What’s kinky to some people isn’t to everybody.”

“These were kinky.”

“I’ll have to take your word.”

“Well, like in some of them the doctor had more than one girl in bed with him.”

“I thought you only saw a couple of tapes.”

“I might’ve looked at three or four, to get an idea.”

“Yeah? You learn anything?”

“I meant get an idea what they were about.”

“They turn you on?”

“You’re not serious.”

“Yes or no.”

“Is this another test?”

“Come on, I won’t tell anybody.”

He said, “Well, they weren’t bad for home movies.”

Was he smiling a little? She wasn’t sure.

“Even the kinky ones?”

“I mean the camera work.”

She said, “You’re not shy, are you?”

“I never thought I was.”

“But you’re steady, always composed?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“You don’t like to take chances. You’re cautious.”

“I suppose, up to a point.”

“Really? You let go sometimes?”

“If I know what’s gonna happen.”

“You’re safe,” Kathy said, moving close enough to take his face in her hands. She kissed him on the mouth, lingered and said, “Relax, okay?” She kissed him again, staying on it longer this time before she said, “I’ve had enough surveillance for one night. How about you?”

Elvin brought the go-go whore in the front way, opening the door with a key on the ring that had the keys to the Lincoln, the car he was driving since Dale stole the Cadillac this afternoon.

Elvin’d had to argue Dr. Tommy out of reporting it. “You want police coming here while we’re working our deal? My nephew won’t hurt your car. By the time they pick him up the job’ll be done.” Then had to argue the doc into letting him use the Lincoln, a big gray one. “You want me to ride in taxicabs while I set up the judge?” Dr. Tommy had seemed nervous at the way things were going, not as cocky, but stoned and half drunk was easy to handle. He might not like it, but what could he do?

Booger music was coming out of hidden speakers and the go-go whore was moving to it on the terrazzo floor, looking around bug-eyed like she’d died and gone to whore heaven. “Mumbo on down the hall,” Elvin said. He followed her cute butt sliding side to side in a little skirt that barely covered it, no backs to her high heels clicking on the marble. She wasn’t too bad looking for a crackhead junkie. Had her G-string on under the skirt to give Dr. Tommy a show.

There he was in his den, lamps shining on the gold wallpaper that looked like stucco: the doc crapped out in a fat sofa full of pillows, swallowed up in there, his drink on the round gold-metal table: the doc a drunk prisoner among all this glitter shit, eyes closed… Elvin said to the go-go whore looking over the den, hand on her hip the same way she’d checked out Dale’s house, “See that rug? It’s the hide off a skinned zebra. Feel the wallpaper.”

Elvin noticed Dr. Tommy had his eyes open now but didn’t seem about to move, bent low in the sofa with his legs sticking out, barefoot and glassy-eyed. “Sunday night,” Elvin said, “how come you aren’t watching TV?”

The doc blinked his eyes and then rubbed them. He was looking at the go-go whore now.

“Doc, this here is Earlene. She’s gonna do her go-go number for you and then I’m on take her upstairs. You want, you can have a turn after. Hey, Earlene?”

She came over from feeling the wall, hips sliding, eyes sparkling with crack.

Elvin grinned at her. “Honey, show the doc your little G-string.”

It was good to see a guy in his underwear again, a nice guy this time, not anything like Keith. Keith, taking his clothes off, would be looking at himself in the mirror on the door to the closet. The mirror still there, full-length. Gary, taking his clothes off, looked at her taking hers off. She pulled the dress over her head and he was motionless, looking. Even when they were in bed Keith, the catalogue model, would watch himself in the mirror, very serious. Gary came over to the bed in his shorts, pushed them down and said, “I’m on the wrong side.” She said, “There is no wrong side.” There was to him. He crawled over her as she squirmed her way to the middle of the double bed and now he was on the left side. “Is that better?” She could see him in faint light, the bed close to the window. He seemed happy. He said, “From driving a car…” She didn’t ask what he meant and he didn’t say more than that because it was getting good now, doing all the things with a man she had not done in a long time, getting to the best part, letting go and letting him hear small private sounds come out of her until, finally… silence.

It was nice.

It wasn’t the kind where you get totally carried away, lost in it or quite like falling off the edge of the world. It wasn’t sweaty.

It was… nice.

He said, “When you made out in a car the guy’s on the left, because usually he drove.”

“You like to do it in a car?”

“I mean when you’re younger.”

“Or on surveillance,” Kathy said, getting out of bed. She stepped into white panties.

“Is that it for tonight?”