Split Images

by Elmore Leonard

  Walter said, "You must read a lot."

  Robbie Daniels said, "When I'm not busy."

  They drank Russian vodka on the rocks, Walter perched on a stool with arms, Daniels behind the bar--long-legged guy--one tennis shoe up on the stainless-steel sink. Hardly any sunlight now: track lighting, a soft beam directly above them and the rest of the room dim. Walter wanted a cigarette more than ever. There was a silver dish on the bar, but he didn't know if it was an ashtray.

  He said, "Detroit, I had a bar down in the rec room, all knotty pine, had these ashtrays from different hotels, you know, different places."

  "That's right," Robbie said. "I forgot, you're from Detroit."

  "As a matter of fact born and raised in Hamtramck," Walter said. "Twenty-three sixteen Geimer.

  Went to St. Florian's, Kowalski Sausages right down the street if you know that area, or you happen to like kielbasa. Yeah, my old man worked at Dodge Main thirty-two years. You know they're tearing it down. GM's putting up a Cadillac assembly plant, buying all that land around there from the city. The city tells the residents, a lot of them these old people, what they're gonna give them for their houses, that's it, take a hike. Ralph Nader, you say GM to him he gets a hard-on, he's mixed up in it now . . . Yeah, technically I was born in Hamtramck, been a Polack all my life." Walter Kouza paused. His eyes, deep beneath his brows, showed a glimmer of anticipation.

  "You know who lived not too far away? John Wojtylo." He waited. "The pope's cousin. Yeah, you know. John Paul the Second?"

  "Is that right?" The cheerleader gave him an interested little grin.

  "Yeah, the cousin use to work over to Chrysler Lynch Road. He was a sandblaster. Only the pope spells it different. Wojtyla. With a a on the end 'stead of a o. He's a Polack too. Hey, and how about that other Polack, Lech Walesa? He something? Doesn't take any shit from the communists."

  Walter's blunt fingers brought a pack of Camels and a green Bic lighter from his shirt pocket. "And you live, your residence is in Grosse Pointe, if I'm not mistaken." He looked again at the silver dish on the bar; it was within reach.

  The cheerleader was nodding, very agreeable.

  "Right, Grosse Pointe Farms."

  "I could never keep those different Grosse Pointes straight. You live anywhere near Hank the Deuce?"

  "Not far."

  "There Fords all around there, uh?"

  "A few. Henry, Bill, young Edsel now."

  "They got, in the barber college right there on Campau near Holbrook? Heart of Hamtramck, they got a chair Henry Ford sat in once, got his haircut. I don't mean at the barber college, when the chair was someplace else."

  "That's interesting," Robbie said. He took a drink and said, "You mentioned the other day you were with the Detroit Police."

  "Nineteen years," Walter said. "Started out in the Eleventh Precinct. Yeah, then I moved downtown, worked Vice, Sex Crimes, Robbery . . ."

  Walter lighted his Camel and pulled the silver dish over in front of him. Fuck it. "It was never boring, I'll say that."

  "You ever shoot anybody?"

  "As a matter of fact I have," Walter said.

  "How many?"

  "I shot nine people," Walter said. "Eight colored guys, one Caucasian. I never shot a woman."

  "How many you kill?"

  "I shot nine, I killed nine." Walter let himself grin when he saw the cheerleader begin to smile, eating it up.

  "They were all DOA except this one guy, a jig, hung on three hundred sixty-seven days, if you can believe it. So technically his death wasn't scored as a hit. I mean he didn't die of gunshot, he died of like kidney failure or some fucking thing. But it was a nine-millimeter hollow nose, couple of them, put him in the hospital, so . . . you be the judge."

  "How about down here?" Robbie said.

  "The guy was a quadriplegic, I mean when he died."

  "Have you shot anyone down here?"

  "In Palm Beach? I don't know if I tried to draw my piece it would even come out. No, I haven't, but the way things are going, all these fucking Cubans and Haitians coming in here . . ." Walter stopped.

  "I got to watch my language."

  Robbie gave him a lazy shrug, relaxed.

  Walter said, "Anyway, with the refugees coming in, lot of them jerked out of prison down there in Cuba . . . I know a gun shop in Miami I mentioned to you, guy's got three outlets, he's selling five hundred thousand bucks worth of handguns a month.

  Guy's making a fortune. He's got a range, he's teaching all these housewives come in how to fire threefifty-sevens, forty-fives . . . Can you see it? Broad's making cookies, she's got this big fucking Mag stuck in her apron. But that's what it's coming to. It didn't surprise me at all a man of your position would have that Python. It's a very beautiful weapon."

  The cheerleader was pouring them a couple more. "What do you carry?"

  "Now? A Browning nine-millimeter." Walter laid his cigarette on the silver dish, raised his hip from the stool as he went in under his suit coat, pulled the weapon from the clip-on holster that rode above his right cheek and placed it on the bar, nickel plate and pearl grip sparkling in the cone of overhead light.

  "Nice," the cheerleader said.

  "Detroit I packed a forty-four Mag and a thirty- eight Smith Airweight with a two-inch barrel. But that's when I was working STRESS. As a matter of fact, eight of the guys I took out it was when I was with STRESS."

  "I sorta remember that," Robbie said.

  "Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets."

  "I'm not sure I ever knew what it meant."

  "Yeah, Stop the Robberies . . . and so on. That was . . . let me see, I was on it back in '72,'73. We'd go in teams in a hot street-crime area, inner city.

  Dress like you live around there. One guy's the decoy, the target. Stroll down the street maybe act like you're drunk or you're a john looking for some quiff. The other guys lay back, see if you attract anything. See, we used teams of four. That would be your decoy, your backup, he'd be like another bum or civilian of some kind, then you'd have two more guys in the car, they covered you. We cut street crime way down, confiscated something like over four hundred guns. We had to shoot some people to do it but, well, it's up to them."

  The cheerleader seemed to smile as he frowned, liking the idea but with reservations. "Isn't that entrapment?"

  Walter said, "Hey, they named the game. All we did, we played it with 'em."

  Robbie said, "May I?"

  Walter said, "Sure." If the guy owned a Python he could handle a Browning. He watched Daniels heft the nickel-plated automatic, extending it now to take a practice sight. But then looked up, lowering the gun.

  A woman's voice said, "Don't shoot. I'll leave quietly."

  Walter made a quarter turn on his stool.

  The houseguest, Angela Nolan, stood in the oval doorway. She was wearing a long navy blue coat with her jeans, over what looked like a workshirt and a red neckerchief. She said, "I'm on my way."

  Robbie raised his eyebrows. "You're finished with me?"

  "No, but . . ." the girl paused. "Could I talk to you for a minute?"

  Robbie said, "Maybe some other time."

  "I've got a plane. I just want to ask you something."

  "Yeah . . . Go ahead."

  "Could you come downstairs?"

  "Not right now," Robbie said.

  It was the girl's turn. Walter Kouza waited, feeling something now, a tension that surprised him: the two of them trying to sound polite, but with an edge, Mr. Daniels's edge just a hint sharper than the girl's.

  She said, "Thanks, Robbie, I'll see you."

  He said, "Angie? Don't go away mad."

  The doorway was empty. Walter swiveled back to the bar as Robbie added, "As long as you go," and shook his head, patient but weary.

  Walter said, "Gee, she walks out--I thought you extended her every courtesy. She's a writer, uh?"

  Robbie was fixing up their drinks.

  "Suppose to be doing a piece for Esquire, par
t of a book. At least that's what she told me. Like, 'The Quaint Customs of the Rich' or some goddamn thing. She tells me go ahead, do whatever I do, she'll observe, take some pictures and we can talk later. Fine. I'm on the phone most of the time I'm down here."

  "I can imagine," Walter said.

  "But then I sit down with her, she turns on her tape recorder--you know what she asks me?"

  Walter shook his head. "What?"

  "What's it like to be rich? Am I happy? She goes from that to, What do I think about abortion? What do I think about busing . . . I couldn't believe it. Or, If you can have anything you want, what turns you on more than anything? Another one, related to that. If you have all the money you could possibly spend in a lifetime, why do you keep making more?

  I try to explain that the money itself is only a way of keeping score, but she doesn't understand that."

  Walter didn't either.

  "But then if I don't have time to sit down and talk, she gets pouty. I couldn't believe it. Really, like I'm taking up her time. She seems intelligent, you know, has some good credits, but when a broad comes on like it's the Inquisition and then gives you that pouty shit . . . I said wait a minute. I agreed to be interviewed, yes, but you could get fucking washed out to sea tomorrow and I doubt anybody'd miss you."

  "You told her that?"

  "Why not? She came to me."

  "Jesus, that's pretty nice stuff. I thought maybe she was like, you know, a girl friend."

  Robbie said, "A girl friend? You look at her close? She's okay, but she's got to be thirty years old, at least. No, what she does, she gets you relaxed, talking off the cuff like she's your buddy, but what she's doing is setting you up. She's a ball buster," Robbie said. "I told her that. I said you don't care what I think. You interview somebody with a name, you just want to cut off his balls, make him look like a wimp. You know what she said? She said, 'I don't have to cut 'em, they come off in my hand.' I said well, not this pair, love. Go fondle somebody else."

  Walter Kouza said, "Jesus." He never again thought of Mr. Daniels as a cheerleader.

  He considered himself an ace at sizing people up:

  A guy shoots and kills an intruder. The guy seems not exactly shaken but awed by it. A bright eager good-looking guy. Sort of a millionaire Jack Armstrong but very impressionable.

  Yeah?

  Walter Kouza would run through those first impressions again, then piece together step by step the revelations of that afternoon in Mr. Daniels's study.

  He remembered Mr. Daniels, Robbie, opening the second bottle of vodka and going downstairs for more ice . . .

  Yeah, and he opened another pack of Camels while Daniels was gone. Tore off the cellophane, dropped it in the silver dish full of cigarette butts, mashed Camel stubs. He remembered seeing words engraved around the rim of the dish he hadn't noticed before. Seminole Invitational 1980 and the club crest covered with butts and black smudges.

  Shit. He got off the stool to look for a regular ashtray and almost fell on his ass. There weren't any ashtrays. He was standing there looking at the inlaid cabinets--beautiful workmanship--when Daniels came back in, closing the door this time, turning the lock, and said, "While you're up, let me show you something might interest you." Took out a key and unlocked one of the cabinets.

  There must have been two dozen handguns in there, a showcase display against dark velvet.

  "Jesus," Walter said.

  There were Smith and Wesson thirty-eights and three-fifty-sevens, in Chief Special and Combat Masterpeice models, two-and four-inch barrels. He had a Walther P thirty-eight, a Baretta nine- millimeter Parabellum. He had Llama automatics, several, including a thirty-two and a forty-five. A Llama Commanche three-fifty-seven, an Iver Johnson X300 Pony, a Colt forty-five Combat Commander, a Colt Diamondback and a Detective Special. He had a big goddamn Mark VI Enfield, a Jap Nambu that looked like a Luger. Christ, he had a ten-shot Mauser Broomhandle, nickel-plated, a Colt single-action Frontier model, a couple of little Sterling automatics. Walter's gaze came to rest on a High Standard Field King model, an ordinary twenty-two target pistol except for the barrel. The original five-and-a-half-inch barrel had been replaced by a factory-made suppressor, or silencer, that was at least ten inches long, fabricated in two sections joined together.

  Walter pointed. "Can I see that one?"

  Robbie handed him the twenty-two target gun.

  "You turning pro?" Walter said and chuckled.

  He looked at the suppressor closely. "Jesus, ParkerHale. You mind, Rob, I ask where you got it?"

  "I'll tell you this much. The guy who sold it to me," Robbie said, "has a metallic gold-flocked sawed-off shotgun that matches his Cadillac."

  Walter remembered saying, "Well, this little number right here," hefting the twenty-two, "this is the one the pros use, not to mention the CIA."

  Robbie said, "Wait." He unlocked the cabinet beneath the handgun cabinet and said, "I've got some pieces here might surprise you, to say the least. The thing is, I'm not supposed to have them."

  Even at this point he would seem naive and trusting, looking at Walter with his earnest niceguy expression.

  Walter said, "Rob, this is my day off. I don't run anybody in when I don't have to and I haven't been surprised at anything since I found out girls don't have weenies."

  Robbie said, "I trust you, Walter," and brought out a forty-five U. S. Army submachine gun with a wire stock. He said, "M-three."

  Walter said, "Jesus Christ."

  Robbie was bringing out more submachine guns.

  "Sten, very old. Uzi, the Israeli number, needs some work but usable. German machine pistol . . . Ah, but here's my favorite . . ." It was MAC-ten with a thirty-two-round clip, all cammied-up for field duty. The compact little submachine gun was painted with free-form shapes in rose and dark blue on a light blue background, like a wallpaper design.

  Walter stared. He took the weapon in his hands, caressed the pipelike attachment screwed onto the barrel stub.

  "Silencer's bigger'n the gun, isn't it? Jesus. How much you pay for this?"

  "Fifteen hundred," Robbie said, "in Miami."

  "With the silencer?"

  "No, the suppressor was five hundred extra."

  "I could've got you the piece in Detroit for a K,"

  Walter said. "The suppressor--yeah, that's about five anywhere you shop." Walter started to grin.

  "What're you doing, Rob, going to war?"

  Robbie said, "Nothing that big."

  Walter was sitting at the bar again when he explained about the trial coming up next month in Detroit: this family bringing suit against the police department and Walter Kouza for something like five million bucks. "Remember I said I shot a guy but he didn't die right away? . . . Rob?"

  "I'm listening."

  "Well, this was only a couple years ago, not when I was in STRESS. The guy I shot's got a brother was in Jackson, was in Marquette, and learned a few things there talking to the jailhouse lawyers. Comes out, he files this suit in his mother's name. Like by shooting her son I denied the family all the millions he would have made at the car wash, plus another few million pain and suffering, even though the guy's fucking paralyzed from the neck down, can't feel a thing. Me and the department, we denied the mother all the benefits she would have gotten if the asshole had not been shot.

  Yeah, they come all the way down here, give me a subpoena."

  He remembered saying, "Hey, come on, Rob, bullshit. We're about as much alike . . . listen, I'll tell you something. I was six-two and had curly hair and I had a name like Mark Harmon, Scott Hunter . . .

  Robbie Daniels, shit, and I had money? I'd be fucking dead by now. I'd have burned myself out by the time I was thirty. No. I'm Walter Chester Kouza and there isn't a fucking thing I can do about it."

  He said, "Can I drive a limousine? Rob, you drive a car you can drive a limo. I'll tell you what, though, I would never wear any chauffeur's uniform, fucking hat with the peak. . . . Bodyguard, that's something else.
Sure, I'd drive you though. Like around Detroit? Sure."

  He remembered Robbie saying, "You sound like someone--yeah, you sound just like him. What's his name, you know . . ."

  "Is this fellow, he's got an orchestra, he goes aone and a-two and? . . ."

  "Karl Malden. That's who you sound like."

  Walter said, "Karl Malden?"

  He could see Robbie over by a wall of books. Slim guy, standing hip-cocked. One hand, he's like rubbing his stomach underneath the white sweater, stroking himself. The other hand, he's pointing to different books, taking some of them partway out and shoving them back in.

  Robbie saying, "A guy is hired to kill somebody, a woman, and falls in love with his intended victim.

  A man with no money, no known enemies, is murdered. Who did it?"

  "Guy's wife," Walter said.

  "Lot of who-done-its," Robbie said, "But I'm not talking about that. Here's one. A famous hunter risks his life simply to put his sights on Adolf Hitler.

  Great book. Here, another one. The hired assassin is out to kill de Gaulle. This one, Winston Churchill.

  Here, the president's daughter is shot."

  "His daughter?"

  "Ah, but were they aiming at the president? Presidents are always good."

  "Like Abraham Lincoln," Walter said. "Guy pulled that one didn't know what the fuck he was doing."

  "Here, the victim's J. Edgar Hoover. This one, Martin Bormann."

  Walter had never heard of Martin Bormann.

  "An African dictator . . . A right wing newspaper columnist. Here, a guy running for president . . .

  Another African dictator. Dictators are fun. Murder in Moscow, a triple with the victims' faces removed.

  Beauty."

  "Who's behind all this?" Walter said. "I mean in the books."

  "Who's paying for it? Big money, big oil, the CIA. Self-appointed world savers . . ."

  He remembered Robbie sitting next to him at the bar, in the cone of soft light.

  Robbie saying, "I didn't say who do you think deserves to be killed. It's not a moral question I'm asking. I said who would you like to kill, anybody in the world, assuming you have the resources, whatever you need. You can go anywhere, hire anyone you feel can be trusted, like that."