Mr. Paradise

by Elmore Leonard

  She said, “You’re crazy if you think I’ll help you.”

  “Uh-unh, I’m desperate, so I know you will.”

  “I’m not Chloe. Anyone can see that.”

  “You close. We keep the police confused long enough, we home. You live with her, find her signature on something and learn to write it.”

  “Get another girl.”

  “It has to be you,” Montez said, almost singing it, “no other will do.”

  Kelly walked to the chair by the window and saw her reflection against a dismal view of trees and shrubbery in different shades of darkness.

  Sitting down she said, “I won’t help you,” and saw Montez appear on the glass pane, his face, and felt his hands on her shoulders.

  “Come on now, you know what bullet holes look like. You say okay you gonna do it, but then tell the police you aren’t who I say you are? I bet that ugly motherfucker be waiting for you some night you come home. Won’t say nothing to you, just shoots you in the head. You might not even see him and you’re gone. Understand what I’m saying? I ain’t asking do you want to do it, you already in, girl. Now sit down like I told you.”

  She eased lower into the chair wrapping her coat around her bare legs, a cigarette between her lips. Montez came over with the ashtray and dropped it in her lap saying, “You don’t want to burn your nice coat, do you?” Saying, “I want you to get inside your head, tell yourself, yeah, I’m Chloe. Start playing the role, babe. You in there being her when the police ask what happened and who’s this girl Kelly you live with, and they realize the sight of it, your friend lying in her blood dead, musta left you fucked up, like you’re in shock. Understand?”

  For a little while the room was quiet. She felt protected in her wool coat, Kelly sitting low between the chair’s round arms lighting another cigarette, Montez by the dresser now to fire up the bong and get into his role.

  He wanted her to work it out in her head who she was. But the weed and the alexanders were giving her a buzz, enough to boost her confidence, getting it up to where she could tell herself she was okay. Be herself and not think of Chloe in the chair. She was never self-conscious, in panties, thongs, whatever they put on her. She knew how to pose, how to get attitudes in her eyes. She was Kelly Barr and saw no reason, really, to become someone else.

  He wasn’t going to kill her.

  He needed her.

  She turned to look across the room.

  “They’re gonna smell that.”

  “Babe, homicide, they don’t bother with dope. Where your handbags?”

  “In the bathroom.”

  He got the bags, came back to the bedroom and held them up, both Vuittons. “Which is yours?”

  “The black one.”

  Montez set them both on the bed, opened the one Kelly said was hers, brought out the wallet, looked at the driver’s license inside and said, “This is Kelly’s. Don’t you know your bag from hers? You don’t get it straight who you are, girl, I’m gonna put you facedown on the floor and stomp on your head. Goodbye nose. Goodbye teeth.” He picked up Chloe’s bag, looked in it and tossed the bag to land in Kelly’s lap. “There all your things, your credit cards, your keys. Look in there and find out who you are. Learn what you don’t know about yourself. Little Kelly’s bag goes downstairs.” Montez said then, “Was something I wanted to ask you … Yeah. You know if Kelly’s ever been fingerprinted?”

  “Have I?”

  “I said Kelly.”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Never was ever picked up and printed?”

  “You mean arrested? For what?”

  “Hookin’, being a ho. You never was busted?”

  “I’m not a whore, you moron, I’m a fashion model.”

  “What they call theirselves, except the ones on the street. They selling ass and want you to know it. Listen, the police gonna ask who’s this Kelly with the man, hardly any clothes on, showing herself, they can see she’s a ho. I say yeah, but high class, you understand, or Mr. Paradise wouldn’t have nothing to do with her. You both ho’s, keep it simple in my mind.”

  Kelly said, “You know it’ll be in the paper.”

  “Yeah, I guess, and on the TV.”

  “Pictures of the famous lawyer and the prostitute. They’ll find out soon enough it’s Chloe. But while they’re still thinking it’s me …”

  “What?”

  “They’ll call my dad.”

  “He live here?”

  “In Florida, he’s retired. He’ll have to come up to arrange the funeral. He was just here yesterday.”

  Montez said, “Hmmmmm.”

  “You didn’t think of that, did you?”

  “All I been doing is thinking since he flipped the fuckin coin. If I’d known you two were coming tonight … See, but nobody told me.” He was behind the chair again looking at himself in the window before he said, “Okay,” like he was starting over. “The police gonna want to know all about little Kelly. Gonna ask you what she was like. She have a boyfriend was jealous? A pimp was angry at her for something? You don’t know much about her, nothing of her family, where they might be at.”

  “Or her brother,” Kelly said, “who’d beat the shit out of you?”

  Montez grabbed a handful of her spiked hair and pulled her straight up in the chair, Kelly’s hands on the chair arms, gasping until he let go.

  “You don’t know nothing will help them,” Montez said, “and I don’t either. Kelly? Chloe? Shit, I get ‘em mixed up all the time. Names sound the same—you look enough alike it give me the idea.”

  “We’re not exactly twins,” Kelly said.

  “You got the same hair, the same cute nose—you confuse me, you gonna confuse the police.” Montez patted her on the head. “Babe, all I need is time to visit the bank and take this fuckin lawyer suit off and act my age. The time I got brought up for assaulting police officers the man represented me free of charge, put me in a cheap suit of clothes, laid a Bible on the table I read while he argued my case and showed I’d been intimidated. Set up, the man looking for a lawsuit. He got me off and I went to work for him, not knowing I’d become his monkey he dressed up and I’d perform as his cool number one and pimp for him. Understand, he’s already paid for what’s in the deposit box. What happens nobody claims it, the bank keeps it?”

  “So it’s okay to take it,” Kelly said.

  “I’m giving you a way to look at it,” Montez said. “The man’s not out anything he isn’t already out. Understand? See, but now I got to get hold of it quick.”

  “Like the guy told you,” Kelly said, feeling her buzz, “you’ve got two days, Smoke.”

  Montez said, “Uh-oh,” stared at her and said, “Letting me know you can be a cool little bitch when you feel like it. But see, what you have to remember, we partners now. We don’t come through we both get shot in the head.”

  •

  After the cop with the tobacco breath left—it made her think of her dad—she sat staring at her reflection in the window, a little girl wrapped in her coat. Lost. Alone. She wished she had another alexander. Boy, they were good. She saw herself talking to the cop in that dumb, numb voice playing Chloe in shock. Looked at it the way she would study a proof sheet of poses and thought:

  Are you nuts?

  A black dude in a pinstriped suit tells you to act like you’re in shock, never having ever seen anyone in shock before, and you do it. In front of a no-bullshit cop, not an ounce of sympathy in him, a gun on his belt, handcuffs—

  Are you fucking nuts?

  She turned halfway around in the chair to look past the back cushion to the doorway. Now there were two black women in the hall, the one in uniform and the other one, older, good-looking hair, very natural, in a long, dark quilted coat and red scarf that wasn’t bad. Kelly said, “Excuse me, but what happens now?”

  The older one, in her forties, stepped to the doorway and said, “You over your shock?”

  “I feel a little better. I don’t suppo
se I could go downstairs.”

  “Why you want to do that?”

  “I want to go home.”

  “We can take you to 1300, police headquarters, talk to you there.”

  “Jesus Christ, you think I shot my best friend?”

  “And your boyfriend?”

  “The old man? This is the first time I’ve ever been here. I met him tonight.” Getting a little frantic. She told herself to be cool, and said, “I have no idea what the fuck happened. Okay?”

  The woman in the long quilted coat came in the room now saying, “I’m Sergeant Michaels. Why don’t we turn your chair around and I’ll sit on the bed?”

  Kelly said, getting up and starting to move the chair, “Have you talked to Montez yet?”

  “We talking to everybody,” Jackie Michaels said, helping her with the chair. “The first thing I want to get straight, Chloe, are you a prostitute?”

  9

  DELSA STOOD IN THE DOORWAY. HE TURNED ON the overhead light. The girl in the chair, facing him, looked up with her Halloween eyes and they stared at each other until Jackie came out to the hall and closed the door.

  “Frank, that girl’s no more in shock than I am. She’s stoned. Musta toked her way out of her condition. You can smell it out here.”

  “You feel her up?”

  “I lifted her mini.”

  “Yeah …?”

  “She has on a pair of bikinis I couldn’t of got into when I was ten years old. She ask me what I was looking for. I told her a gun. I went right at her and she got a little excited, but just for a minute. It was like she caught herself and turned it off. She seems alert, then acts a little goofy, like maybe she’s stoned.”

  “Maybe she’s pretending.”

  “Well, at times she seems over the top, if you know what I mean. You wonder if she’s acting.”

  “She a hooker?”

  “She says no, and never was. You’re gonna like her, Frank.”

  •

  Alex, the evidence tech, came along the hall with his camera and his kit. Delsa said, “Let’s get it out of the way,” and brought Alex in with him.

  She was standing now, hands on her coat draped over the back of the chair. She looked around and said, “I didn’t expect to be searched.”

  “Now you’re having your picture taken. Miss Robinette, I’m Sergeant Frank Delsa, with Homicide. I’m sorry about your friends.”

  She said, “Only one was a friend,” and looked at Alex. “Can I wash up first?”

  “After,” Delsa said. “We’d like to get you the way you are, part of the scene, the two of you dressed alike.”

  “Not quite.”

  “Were you topless, earlier?”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Had your underwear on?”

  The ceiling light went off.

  Alex, his hand on the switch, said, “This is better. Five minutes, I’ll be out of the way.” He motioned to the girl and Delsa watched her cross from the chair to the dresser. Bare legs and sneakers, the sweatshirt covering her skirt. He watched her take her spot and look at the camera over her shoulder, knowing how to do it.

  She said to Alex, “Like this?”

  “I could sell that one,” Alex said. “What I need is a straight front view, arms at your sides.” He got ready to shoot and lowered the camera. “Frank, the bong. It’s up to you.”

  Kelly stepped to the side. “How’s this?”

  Alex raised the camera again. He said, “That’s good,” snicked off three exposures and said to his model, “You have any tattoos?” She shook her head. “Then that’s it.”

  “Why don’t you do the bathroom,” Delsa said, “and a G.S.R. test on her as long as you’re here.”

  She was getting a pack of cigarettes from her coat.

  “What’s G.S.R.?”

  “Gunshot Residue,” Delsa said.

  “You guys are serious, aren’t you?”

  “Step in the bathroom and Alex’ll take care of it.”

  She lit her cigarette and then stood listening as Alex said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you, Frank, if you watch any of the crime scene shows, like CSI. All this time I thought we worked for you. No, I see Homicide works for the techs.”

  “I saw one,” Delsa said, “but I never took chemistry so I didn’t know what was going on.”

  “I watch them,” the girl said. “I think they’re great.”

  •

  Alex gone, the weird-looking cheerleader back in her chair, Delsa came over to stand by the bed.

  “Where were we?”

  “You wanted to know if I was wearing panties. No, you said underwear.”

  “Were you?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “The whole time?”

  “What whole time?”

  “When you were doing the cheerleading.”

  “I’d jump up as we finished one and Mr. Paradiso would say, ‘I see London, I see France …’”

  “What’d he say when your friend jumped up?”

  She drew on her cigarette before saying, “What’s your point?”

  “You call him Mr. Paradiso?”

  “I don’t think I called him anything.”

  “You’re one of his girlfriends, aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Are you a prostitute?”

  “No.”

  “An escort?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Was Kelly?”

  “A hooker? No.”

  “Montez says you both are.”

  “You believe him?”

  “I can find out if it’s true. Have you ever been arrested?”

  She said, “For what, being a ho?”

  And kept staring at him through her makeup.

  “I don’t get it,” Delsa said. “You’re playing with me?”

  “I thought you might think it was funny.”

  “Your friend’s dead and you want to entertain me?”

  She said, “I don’t know what I want.”

  “Are you stoned?”

  “I’ve had three drinks, good ones, crème de cocoa and gin, and a couple of hits on the bong. I’m trying to be careful and sound normal at the same time. I’ve got a buzz that makes me talkative, so right now I have to watch my step.”

  He said, “What’re you trying to tell me?”

  She said, “I’m not sure, Frank. I’m feeling my way along.”

  It stopped him, the way she said his name so easily. He waited a moment before saying, “You saw the guy who did it.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You saw him or you didn’t.”

  “I’m not ready to talk about it.”

  “Montez says it was a black guy.”

  She smoked her cigarette.

  “Was he?”

  “I’m not saying any more.”

  “You want a lawyer?”

  “I want to go home.”

  “You saw your friend—how’re you handling that?”

  She said, “How do you think?” Picked the ashtray up from her lap and stubbed out the cigarette. “Can I wash my face now?”

  “If you leave the door open.”

  She said, “I’m not gonna kill myself, Frank. I have to pee.”

  He watched her walk around the bed to the bathroom, then glance back at him as she went in and closed the door.

  Delsa picked up her handbag from the bed and brought it close to the lamp to look at her Michigan Operator License: Chloe Robinette, 6-12-1976, F, 5-8, BLU, Type O, Restrictions: Corrective Lens, a pair of glasses in the bag, an American Express credit card, several other cards, all platinum; a blue bandana; a packet of condoms; cologne, hand cream, lipstick, blush-on; four hundred-dollar bills, eight fifties and five twenties folded in a silver money clip; loose fives and ones in a pocket; sales receipts from Saks, a hairbrush, a cell phone, a ring of keys. He looked at the photo on the license again that said this was Chloe Robinette. He looked closely at the eyes, the l
ong blond hair. He looked at the bathroom door as it opened. She stood in the light, cream on her face, hair wrapped in a towel, still wearing the skirt but not the sweatshirt, a thin white bra covering her breasts.

  “Could I have the bag, please?”

  Delsa stepped to the doorway, the operator license still in his hand. They looked at each other. He didn’t say anything. She took the brown Vuitton bag from him and closed the door.

  •

  He sat at the dining room table going through Kelly’s handbag, identical to Chloe’s except it was black.

  Michigan Operator License: Kelly Ann Barr, 9-11-1976, F, 5-8, BLU, Type A, no restrictions, sunglasses in the bag, an ATM card, Visa, Saks, Neiman Marcus, Marshall Field’s, the Detroit Zoo, Detroit Public Library, AT&T, Blockbuster, more cards than Chloe carried, but not anywhere near as much cash, eighty dollars in the wallet, loose change in a pocket, keys. No condoms.

  He brought Chloe’s operator license from his pocket and laid it on the table next to Kelly’s, both laminated plastic cards.

  Here, tonight, both girls had the same mess of semi-spiked hair, and both were blond, right? In real life?

  But in the license photos Kelly had light-brown hair that flipped up, and Chloe’s was long and blond. The photos, taken two years ago according to the license expiration dates, could be of the same girl wearing different wigs.

  He studied the photos again side by side. Good shots for driver’s license I.D.’s. Or these two couldn’t take a bad picture.

  He looked at Kelly.

  He looked at Chloe.

  He looked at Kelly again and remained staring at her eyes. They looked alike when you weren’t looking at them together. But Kelly’s expression was more appealing to him, something familiar in her eyes he didn’t see in Chloe’s and it made him think of the Halloween eyes upstairs, eyes peering out from all that makeup, watching him with a quiet expression … The same eyes he saw when the bathroom door opened, cream covering her face but there were her eyes.

  Delsa picked up both plastic cards from the table and went into the living room where an M.E. investigator, Valentino Trabucci, at one time with Homicide, an older guy in a jacket and wool shirt was taking pictures of the victims.

  He said, “What’ve you got, Frank, anything?”