Mr. Paradise

by Elmore Leonard

  “Let’s go do it.”

  They took Fontana’s red Chevy Tahoe across downtown to the parking lot behind Harmonie Park. On the way back to pick it up they’d stop in Intermezzo right there and have a few to unwind. They walked up to Madison and then east a short way to the Michigan Opera Theatre and stood on the empty sidewalk smoking cigarettes pinched between the fingers of their black kidskin gloves, waiting for the performance to let out.

  Art said, “Tales of Hoffman,” looking at the poster. “You ever see one?”

  “What?”

  “An opera.”

  Carl said no and that covered the subject.

  “They’re starting to come out,” Art said. “Hey, but if you rather boost one it’s okay with me.”

  Carl said, “This is too fuckin easy.”

  They put their hands in the pockets of their black raincoats and walked around to the side of the opera house where attendants were bringing cars to people coming out from the cashier’s window inside. Carl and Art stood among the dressed-up operagoers in the dark, Art with a five ready, watching headlights coming along in two lanes bumper to bumper, the attendants in jackets and gloves in a hurry, keeping ‘em coming. An attendant got out of a white Chrysler to stand waiting, holding the door open, looking at the crowd through the mist of his breath. Art said, “There it is,” and they stepped out of the crowd. Art handed the attendant the five and got in behind the wheel. Carl strolled around to the other side. Once they were out of there, working through downtown south to Jefferson Avenue, they brought Detroit Tigers baseball caps from their raincoat pockets and put them on—the Tigers road caps with the olde English D in orange—Art looking at the mirror to set his just right.

  They were quiet now coming to the house on Iroquois lit up with spots, no way to miss it. They’d checked it out earlier. Art pulled into the drive, right up to the door and cut the lights. They sat there not talking. Now they brought out semi-automatics and racked the slide to put a load in the chamber, Carl’s a Smith & Wesson, Art’s a Sig Sauer. They were told the old man would be in his bedroom upstairs, end of the hall, if he wasn’t downstairs somewhere. Avern guaranteed he’d be alone.

  Still not saying anything they got out of the car and went in, the door unlocked, and heard the TV on in the living room, directly ahead of them, a big chair facing the set. They crossed the room to come up on either side of the chair.

  The blond sitting with the old man was topless, her jugs and her face painted, looked up at them holding guns, but didn’t scream or freak or anything. She said to the old man, “Friends of yours?”

  The old man squinted at them like he was thinking. Are they? But then, trying to sound tough, in charge, he said, “Take what you want and get the hell out of here.” He said, “I don’t have a safe, so don’t waste your time looking for one,” the old man not sounding at all feeble; he knew what was going on.

  Carl pointed his Smith at the old man, shot him in the chest and shot him in the head.

  It caused the blond girl to suck in her breath, a hard gasp, and sit rigid, her painted eyes wide open—Carl and Art watching—now her mouth opened and she was touching the tip of her tongue to her lips, reached down to bring her skirt up, exposing herself—Carl and Art watching—and said, “You fellas aren’t mad at me, are you?”

  Art shot her.

  Hit her just above her breasts and in the center of her forehead. He stooped to pick up his casings and then felt around till he had Carl’s. Art stood up hearing cheers, crowd noise, coming from the TV and took a look at the football game that was on. He watched for a half minute, turned to Carl and saw him looking at the girl. “They’re watching the Rose Bowl Michigan won,” Art said. “Here, Washington State’s on Michigan’s twelve. Woodson’s about to pick off a pass in the end zone, save the Wolverines’ ass. I remember the game, I won a hunnert bucks.” He turned to Carl again and said, “She’s dead.”

  Carl could see that.

  Art said, “You know I had to do it.”

  “I know.”

  “I was afraid if we started talking to her—”

  “I know what you mean,” Carl said.

  “Man, she was cool,” Art said. “I’d like to’ve known her. Sure as hell if we started talking to her …”

  Carl turned from looking at her to see Art pointing his .40-caliber Sig at the hall.

  At a dressed-up black dude saying, “Don’t shoot, man, I’m the one paying you.” Coming toward them now, his eyes on the chair till he reached it and was looking at his boss and the girl. His eyes closed and he said, “Oh, shit,” sounding like a groan dragged out of him. He said, “You didn’t have to,” shaking his head now. “I mean it, you could’ve let her go and she wouldn’t of said one fuckin word. Man, you don’t know what you did.”

  Art looked at Carl staring at Montez, Carl saying, “He was suppose to be alone.”

  “And you suppose to be where I can reach you,” Montez said. “I call the number, this angry woman hangs up on me.” He looked at the dead girl shaking his head again. “You blew it’s what you did.”

  Carl raised his Smith, putting it in the guy’s face.

  “You want to fuck with us?”

  Montez said, “You want to get paid?”

  Art said, “You have it?”

  Montez said, “You get it when you suppose to.”

  Art walked up to him raising the Sig Sauer in his right hand, got Montez looking at it and hit him in the face with a left hook, hard. It staggered Montez but didn’t put him down. Art said, “You don’t show up with it the day after tomorrow, Smoke, we’ll find you.”

  Montez worked his jaw but didn’t touch it with his hand, staring at them like he was deciding whether to stay in the game or get out. What he said was, “Go on take something, the silver, those old paintings, take something, anything you want.”

  Carl had that feeling again that bothered the hell out of him. “You want it to look like a robbery.”

  “A home invasion,” Montez said, “that went bad. You come in thinking nobody’s home—”

  “Come in,” Carl said, “and a fuckin party’s going on. A surprise party. Nothing wrong with the old man. Has a broad with him. You show up in your pinstripe suit, start telling us what to do … Why you want him dead anyway?”

  “‘Cause he’s old, tired of his misery. You want the truth, it was his idea. Go out with a bang.”

  “I get old, I hope I’m this fuckin miserable,” Carl said. “Watch a football game with a naked broad. What do you get out of this? You don’t pay fifty grand to get hold of his suits.”

  “How about the next time,” Montez said, “we skip the conversation. I hand you the money, you don’t even have to thank me.”

  Carl wanted so bad to shoot him he had to keep the Smith stiff-armed at his side, telling himself to take it easy. The sound from the TV went off. He heard Art say, “Twenty-one sixteen,” and then, “there’s your vodka,” and Carl grabbed it out of the ice bucket, a brand he’d never heard of.

  Going out to the hall Art said, “I remember that Rose Bowl like it was last week, Michigan finally taking one.”

  Carl said, “I almost shot that jig.”

  “I know what you mean,” Art said. “He sure has a mouth on him.” At the door he aimed his piece at Montez, still in the living room, and reminded him of the day after tomorrow. Montez yelled at them to break the glass. Outside, Art smashed a pane with his gun and said to Carl, “You think the cops’ll buy it?”

  Carl said, “It ain’t our problem.”

  11

  DELSA SAID, “YOUR DRIVER’S LICENSE,” HANDING it to her in the foyer. They both had their coats on now; he was taking her home.

  She said thanks, but didn’t look at it until Delsa turned to the door as the uniformed cop, the one who first questioned her upstairs, came in from outside and she checked the license, Chloe’s, and slipped it into her coat pocket. She heard the uniformed cop say now was a good time, the chief had shown up and
the TV crews were all over him. Delsa told her to stay close to him.

  They went out the door and walked past the police cars in the drive to the street where video cameras were aimed at the Chief of Police of the City of Detroit and round black microphones were held in front of him. Kelly said, “What’s he doing here?” Still feeling a confident buzz, talkative. Delsa said he was making an appearance. Kelly said, “Yeah, but why?” Delsa said she’d have to ask the chief that one. They walked past the TV news trucks to a dark blue four-door facing this way. Delsa unlocked his door and she walked around to the other side and got in. They were quiet until Delsa turned onto Jefferson, heading toward downtown now. Kelly said, “It’s not far.” He said River Place. They were quiet until he turned toward the river. Coming to the complex of old buildings revamped, headlights on red brick walls and tall oval windows, he said the Stroh Brewery headquarters was right here. He said Stroh’s used to be the most popular beer in town but he never cared for it much. “You want history?” Kelly said. “The building I’m in used to be Parke-Davis, where aspirin was first made. I could use a couple right now.” Delsa said he was thinking of looking for an apartment downtown, closer to the job. Kelly said, “You have a family?” He said no. Then told her his wife had passed away. Kelly said, “Oh, I’m so sorry,” and wanted to ask about her but wasn’t sure how to do it. They stopped in front of her building and he said he’d like to go in with her, look at her friend’s things if it was okay. Kelly said, “Of course.” He said he needed to learn everything he could about her. She said, “Well, if I can help …” She had to remind herself Frank Delsa was a homicide detective and quit thinking about his cool dark eyes and the quiet way he spoke. They got out of the car that was like an icebox, the heater still blowing cold air. Kelly opened Chloe’s bag now to find the keys.

  Her hand came out with all kinds of keys and a St. Christopher medal on a silver ring. She fingered through them wanting to see a front door key, please, that looked like hers. She found it, walked up to the entrance with him, put the key in the lock, tried to turn it … She said, “I must still be a little blitzed, I can’t even pick the right key,” and knew it was the wrong thing to say. Delsa waiting, watching her, Delsa saying why not let him try, and took the keys from her. He chose one, slipped it in the lock and opened the door. Kelly said, “Hey, you’re good with keys.” Sounding stupid and thinking, Keep your fucking mouth shut, okay? Jesus. They rode the elevator to the fourth level. In front of Kelly’s door now he wanted to see if he could do it again. He unlocked the dead bolt, no problem; Kelly not exactly wide-eyed, more like the dumb girl watching. He tried two keys in the spring lock before the door opened. She said, “How do you do that?” Sounding amazed, still the dumb girl. She couldn’t help it. He told her you try to match the key to the lock. “And if that doesn’t work,” Kelly said, “kick the door in?” He was a nice guy, he smiled. But then asked why she had so many keys. Yeah, well … “They seem to accumulate,” Kelly said. “Two or three, I don’t even remember what they’re for. Well, I do—one’s for the locker downstairs, but I don’t store anything in it. Another one gets you up on the roof. There’s a sundeck …” Talking to be talking, filling the silence as he watched her.

  He held up the ring of keys and picked out the ones he had used. “This is your front door key, and these are for your apartment, your loft. Okay?”

  Smiling again, still the nice guy.

  But the smile this time telling her he knew who she was.

  Then why didn’t he come out and say it?

  •

  Delsa, in no hurry, wanted her to tell him.

  He followed her into a brick foyer and along a hall of closets, doors to a study, a bathroom. She snapped a switch and track lighting came on over the living area. She said, “Both the bedrooms are over here. The kitchen’s over there and everything else is in between.”

  Everything being whatever two girls with style and money wanted, half a basketball court in muted tones and splashes of bright color, plants and weird paintings, a soft look to the rumpled sofa, chairs with bamboo arms, bare windows in brick walls, red Orientals on the tan-painted concrete floor, a ficus that filled a corner and reached almost to the ductwork in the fifteen-foot ceiling, a round dining table with a slate top, an exercise bike, a tiled counter separating the kitchen. Delsa took it all in before his gaze returned to the dining table and the mail and magazines waiting there.

  “You don’t have a computer?”

  “In the study.”

  He had to ask, “How much does a loft this size go for?” She told him four hundred, and he said, “Four hundred thousand?” even though he knew it was what she meant—for the corner of an old laboratory where they used to make aspirin. He said, “It’s nice,” nodding his head.

  She said, “You live in the city?”

  “Cops had to until a few years ago. I’m still here, on the east side.” He walked over to the slate dining table.

  “Which one of you owns the place?”

  The table held a few magazines, a pile of catalogs, a Victoria’s Secret, a few bills, a large black envelope, ten by twelve. He turned to see her with a bright expression, eyebrows raised as she worked on an answer that should be easy, but having a tough time being Chloe.

  “Whose name is it in?”

  She said, “Mine,” right away this time.

  “You hold the mortgage?”

  Delsa waited.

  She said, “It’s paid for.”

  Delsa let it go. She was probably telling the truth. Chloe owned the place—not out of reach for a nine-hundred-an-hour call girl; he assumed that, too—and Kelly, who hadn’t moved from that spot since they came in the loft, shared expenses.

  He said, “You get a lot of mail, don’t you?”

  She said, “Mostly junk.”

  He picked up the Victoria’s Secret catalog and showed her the cover. “Are you in here?”

  She said, “Kelly is,” and after a moment, “page sixteen.”

  Delsa found it and looked at the girl in the black bikini panties well below her hip bones, brown skin, no stomach. None.

  She came over in her coat and looked at the page. She said, “Yeah,” in a quiet voice, close to him, “that’s Kelly. It was shot last summer.”

  Delsa leafed through the magazine—she was playing with him again, wanting him to see her—and stopped. He said, “Here’s Kelly again. In her underwear. Wait a minute. Or is it you?” Offering her a break.

  She looked at herself wearing low-rise panties and thongs. “Yeah, I forgot, that is me, right.”

  “The thong,” Delsa said, “doesn’t look too comfortable.”

  She said, “I can’t wait to get it off.”

  Delsa told himself she was agreeing that it was uncomfortable, not making a move on him, putting anything into what she said. Otherwise he’d get out of here now and come back with Jackie Michaels, not take a chance fucking up seventeen years on the job. She was a witness. Maybe the best-looking girl he had ever seen this close, or outside of the movies, or even counting the movies, but she was still a witness.

  He picked up the black envelope and looked at the label, addressed to Kelly Barr, from a photographic studio. He turned to Kelly-as-Chloe, almost as tall as he was.

  “You think this will tell me something about her?”

  “They’re just photos.”

  He walked away, bringing the catalog and the black envelope to the counter, took a kitchen knife from a rack and slit the envelope open.

  “We’ll need pictures of the complainant.”

  “The what?”

  “The victim.”

  “They’re swimsuit shots.”

  “Taken recently?”

  “Last week.”

  Delsa pulled out a half dozen color prints and a proof sheet and laid them on the counter: Kelly full length in bikinis, tiny ones.

  •

  She came to the counter to look at herself, leaning in on her arms to study the
proof sheet.

  She heard him say, “Your glasses are in your bag. You don’t need them?”

  She straightened and turned to him.

  “You figured it out.”

  “Even without the glasses.”

  “You saw her in the chair, her skirt up. You look at these shots …”

  “And I know Chloe doesn’t model swimming suits,” Delsa said.

  “Yesterday we happened to be looking at this catalog and she said, ‘If you want to know why I never wear a thong, ask Mr. Paradise.’ You know what she meant?”

  “He didn’t go for the Hitler look,” Delsa said. “Just an old-fashioned guy. Are you gonna tell me who you are?”

  “You already know.”

  “I’d like to hear you say it.”

  She shrugged in her cinnamon coat.

  “Okay, I’m Kelly Barr. Now what?”

  •

  He told her she had gone through enough for one day. He’d pick her up in the morning and take her statement at 1300, police headquarters.

  She didn’t like the sound of that. Take her statement? She said did he mean, like, what she was doing when it happened? He said, from the time she arrived at the house. Okay? He hadn’t taken his coat off, he was ready to go …

  Later, it reminded her of the thing Peter Falk used to do playing Columbo. Gets to the door and turns with one more question.

  Delsa was still at the counter fastening his toggles. He said, “The main thing we’ll get into, why you wanted us to think you’re Chloe.”

  She knew it was coming and had to say something because he was looking at her, waiting. She had to give him an answer and had made up her mind to tell the truth. Up to a point.

  “Montez threatened me. He said I had to do it if I wanted to stay alive.”

  “What was his reason?”

  “He didn’t tell me.”

  “All that time you were together—you didn’t ask him why?”

  “Of course I did. He still wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Have you thought about it since?”