Mr. Paradise

by Elmore Leonard

“Have I thought about it—all I keep thinking, I never should’ve been there in the first place.”

  “Chloe asked you to come and you couldn’t say no?”

  “She talked me into it. Help her out with the fucking cheerleading because the old man loved it.”

  “Were Chloe and Montez friends?”

  “She said they got along okay.”

  “They have something going?”

  “No. She would’ve told me.”

  “You were close? You confide in each other?”

  “We were good friends.”

  “But she was a prostitute.”

  “She gave it up for Mr. Paradise.”

  “There was a time before that—”

  “She never brought them home. She told really funny stories about weird things that guys liked. I asked if she ever beat them. She said, ‘Hon, I even pee on some.’” Kelly picked up her pace saying, “We met doing a runway show for Saks. I’d see her at studios—photographers loved her hands—or we’d meet for a drink. We laughed a lot and she invited me to move in.” Kelly took hold of Delsa’s dark eyes saying, “She got tired of fucking strangers, especially the regulars. Mr. Paradise made her an offer and she quit being a ho.”

  This time he did smile, though she didn’t.

  Smiled and let it fade and said, “How’d you happen to be upstairs with Montez?”

  She told about the old man flipping the coin. “To share his ladies with Montez—his exact words—and not play favorites.”

  “He thought you were a hooker. Did you tell him you weren’t?”

  “I didn’t want to start anything with the old man, Chloe in the middle. I’d go upstairs with Montez, and as soon as he had his pants off, I’d run. Out of the house.”

  “What about Chloe?”

  “She’s okay. It’s her boyfriend’s party.”

  “What’d Montez say?”

  “Upstairs?”

  “Before, when you got him.”

  “He got me. Took me upstairs by the arm.”

  “What’d you do then?”

  “I smoked a cigarette and went to the bathroom.”

  “Did you talk?”

  “Nothing that I remember.”

  “He take his pants off, undress?”

  “I came out of the bathroom and that’s when we heard the shots. Two and then two more.”

  “They all sound the same?”

  “I think so.”

  “What’d Montez do?”

  “Ran out of the room. I put on my coat, picked up Chloe’s and started down the hall. He was at the top of the stairs, so I hung back, I didn’t want him to see me.”

  “Why not?”

  “I wanted to leave, not be involved.”

  “You knew they were dead?”

  “No. It was like I knew it without actually knowing it. All I wanted to do was leave, get out.”

  “You said not get involved.”

  “With the police, as a witness.”

  “Don’t you want to help us?”

  “Of course, yeah, now. But when it was happening, no. I wanted to go home.”

  “You say Montez was at the top of the stairs. What did he do then?”

  “He went down to the first floor.”

  “How? I mean, was he cautious after hearing the shots? Not knowing who was in the house?”

  “He ran down the stairs.”

  “He call out anything, a name?”

  Kelly shook her head. “I went to the railing and looked down. He wasn’t in the foyer.”

  “You hear anything?”

  “I might’ve heard voices, but I’m not sure. I thought about running out of the house.”

  “What stopped you?”

  “I didn’t have my bag, goddamn it. I forgot it.”

  “Why didn’t you get it?”

  “I heard voices and looked down. Two men I’d never seen before, in dark coats and baseball caps, were in the foyer.”

  “White or black?”

  “White. Not young, not old, both average height—it was hard to tell looking down at them. One was heavyset. He had a gun in his hand, like an automatic. The other one was holding a bottle of vodka.”

  “What kind?”

  “Christiania, what the old man was drinking.”

  “And you and Chloe had alexanders,” Frank said. “How’re you feeling?”

  “I’m worn out.”

  “Starting to droop a little. What’d the two guys do?”

  “They left, out the front.”

  “Was the glass in the door already broken?”

  It surprised her. “No, they did it when they were outside, smashed it with something. I suppose so you’d think that’s how they came in.”

  “How did they?”

  “I have no idea. Unless they broke in.”

  “Or the door was unlocked,” Delsa said. “The two guys are in the foyer, where was Montez?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You didn’t see him with the two guys or hear them talking?”

  “They left and a few minutes later he came upstairs. He could’ve been hiding—I don’t know.”

  “Didn’t you say anything?”

  “I asked him what happened, if he saw the two guys. But he didn’t say a word until he took me downstairs. In the living room he said, ‘You know what you’re gonna see. They’re both dead, Mr. Paradise and your friend Kelly.’ I thought he had us mixed up. I said I’m Kelly, and he said, ‘Uh-unh, you’re Chloe.’”

  “Then what?”

  “He made me look at the bodies.”

  “Was Chloe’s skirt raised?”

  Kelly nodded. “I was about to pull it down and he stopped me.”

  “He told you you were Chloe and you said okay?”

  “Montez said, ‘You know what bullet holes look like.’ He said if I don’t do what I’m told, that ugly motherfucker will be waiting for me some night.”

  “Who’s the ugly motherfucker?”

  “Someone who’ll shoot me in the head.”

  “You’re sure you saw two white guys.”

  “Positive.”

  He asked if there was anything unusual about them. Kelly said she thought of them as workingmen, blue-collar. He asked about their baseball caps and she remembered the orange D and he said they were the caps the Tigers wore on the road. He told her to go to bed, he’d call her in the morning.

  She said, “What if Montez calls during the night?”

  “He won’t, I’m gonna have him picked up.” Delsa said, “Anything else you want to tell me?”

  •

  Not right now.

  Kelly didn’t say that. She said, “Not that I can think of,” with a little shrug. She had decided there was more to think about here than just getting it over with. Montez would deny everything she told Frank. Her word against his. In a corner Montez might even say it was her idea. It was kind of cool to be in this with your eyes open, letting it happen. Maybe she should try acting, modeling with lines, hitting marks … Frank Delsa looked at you with those quiet eyes asking questions, and you answer, you know he’s getting more out of it than what you’re saying. She wondered when he first knew she wasn’t Chloe. Before she fumbled the keys, probably in the bedroom. He listened, he paid attention … For the next two days she’d hold off saying anything more and see what happened next.

  She loved his eyes.

  12

  AUTOPSY ATTENDANTS WERE PREPARING FOUR bodies this morning for pathology: Tony Paradiso, Chloe Robinette, and the two guys from Orlando’s basement who’d been shot but not dismembered.

  Delsa, hospital booties covering his shoes, watched the diener working on Mr. Paradise, snipping free the old man’s rib cage with a long-handle pruner. Chloe’s organs had been removed, weighed, tissue samples taken, the organs returned to her body in a plastic bag. Chloe was now being stitched back together, the section of skull refitted, her blond hair in place again. They had traced her to Montreal, to strip clubs in
Windsor, a Web page on the Internet, this girl who’d made nine hundred dollars an hour lying naked on an autopsy table, a weak sun shining on her through the skylight.

  She didn’t show up on LEIN; neither did Kelly. Montez and Lloyd both had sheets. They’d pick at Lloyd, see about tying him in, but concentrate on Montez. Throw the two white guys at him. Get a copy of his 9-11 call.

  He noticed a note on the board that said, handprinted, “Howard, you will be responsible for brain bucket cleanup Monday.”

  Richard Harris tapped on the glass partition of the observation room, Richard on the other side where you could watch autopsies from a distance and not become too grossed out. Delsa went out to him because Richard refused to come anywhere near an autopsy. He said, “We got an I.D. on the one was cut up. His name’s Zorro, the fox, with the Cash Flow Posse.”

  “How’d you get it?”

  “The man’s family, his mom and daddy, they both in the business. Zorro didn’t call when he was suppose to. You understand this was a dangerous man, knows this other posse wants him out of business. If he doesn’t follow up and call by a certain time? He must be dead. They’re out in the viewing room, the family. The M.E. photo guy’s trying to shoot Zorro’s face without it looking so burnt.

  “And, Mr. Tony Jr.’s in the lobby bitching. Wants to know what all the fuckin Chicanos are doing in the room, the viewing room, where they show the complainant on that monitor. Tony wants to talk to you. I mean he’s demanding to speak with you.”

  “What about Tyrell?” Delsa said. “You take him down?”

  “Him and two of his crew with outstanding warrants, violated their probation. Yeah, I went in and ordered breakfast—give me time to check the place out, glance in the kitchen. Sit at the counter you can watch the activity, Tyrell in there frying eggs. I got him lined up, my phone nudges me. It’s Manny outside with Violent Crimes. ‘Is he there? What’re you doing? We going in or not?’ I told him soon as I finish my breakfast.”

  “Manny Reyes.”

  “Yeah. The way it went down, Manny comes in and we approach Tyrell in the kitchen. He sees us and runs out the back to a car, his baby’s mama and his baby sitting in the front seat, like they waiting for him to get off work. Now he sees our guys, he snatches up the baby and runs around to the driver’s side, using the child as a shield, his own baby girl. You hear what I’m saying? We ganged on him fast. After, Manny said, ‘I learn something today. You can fit a Glock Forty up a guy’s nose.’”

  Delsa had called Richard last night, still at the Paradise scene, told him the girl in the chair with the old man was Chloe, not Kelly, and to house Montez for questioning about the false I.D. Delsa said last night, “But don’t tell him we know.”

  Today at the Medical Examiner’s he said, “Pick up Montez when you’re finished here and I’ll see you up on five.”

  Richard said, “You gonna run into Tony in the lobby.”

  “How’s he know I’m on the case?”

  “Must keep track of you, man, since you beat him on that wrongful death. I remember I was with Violent Crimes at the time, everybody talking about it. What was it the man was asking, thirty million?”

  •

  Late November four years ago at Eastland with Maureen, ten past eight driving up and down aisles in the dark, headlights looking for a parking space—one close to Hudson’s, before it became Marshall Field’s. Maureen said, “There’s one,” but Delsa had to creep behind two lanky, slow-moving guys walking up the aisle.

  They turned into the open space—scruffy-looking white guys, mid-twenties—maybe to cut through to the next aisle, the parking space facing this one also open, and Maureen said, “Move, will you?” Out loud but for her own benefit, Maureen not the most patient woman, high on energy, worked out with weights while Delsa watched television. She reached over and blew the horn at them.

  As Delsa expected, the two guys turned and stared into the headlights—at that time a black Honda Accord with 94,000 miles on it—one of the guys calling to them, “You in a hurry?”

  Delsa remembered Maureen saying, “What do you bet you get a LEIN hit on both of them.” And telling her, “That’s why I wish you hadn’t blown the horn.”

  She said, “You know what they’re doing, looking for a car to boost.” Then reminded him that the Honda Accord was the most frequently stolen motor vehicle in the U.S.

  Delsa remembered saying if they didn’t get to Hudson’s soon it would be closed. They were here to buy her dad a couple of sweaters, one for his birthday and one for Christmas, kill two birds.

  But now the guys were coming toward the car, grungy jackets hanging open, caps on backwards, and that vacant stare that made them rockheads.

  “‘Night of the Living Dead,’” Maureen said. “Let’s roll down the windows. I want to see what these assholes have to say.”

  Delsa had to agree, these guys could be dirty, looking for action. He released his seat belt, zipped open his jacket and reached inside to unhook the snap on his holster, the Glock resting against his right hip, part of him. Maureen’s was in her handbag, open on her lap.

  The guy who came up on Delsa’s side laid his arms on the sill and hunched over to get in Delsa’s face. He said, “You drive like a fuckin nigger.”

  Delsa didn’t know what he meant and didn’t ask. He said, “You’re almost in serious trouble.” He said, “Step away from the car,” and shoved the door open in the next second, putting his shoulder into it, the top edge of the door frame hitting the guy in the face and he went down. Delsa was out of the car by the time he heard Maureen—“Frank, he’s got my bag!”—and saw the other guy running with the brown leather shoulder bag through the open parking spots and across the next aisle to the rear end of a pickup truck, headlights on him as a car approached and went by. Now the one Delsa had flattened was up and running toward the pickup. He stopped in the next aisle, looked back and yelled, “You’re fucked now, man.” Delsa was out of the car and heard Maureen—“He’s got my gun!”—but kept his eyes on the one who’d yelled, letting Delsa know it wasn’t over. The guy was at the pickup cab now, the inside light coming on. Delsa pulled his Glock and racked the slide. The light in the cab went off as the door slammed and the guy was in the aisle again with a shotgun, pumping it with that ratchety sound as Delsa raised his Glock and took aim the way he was taught and shot the guy in the chest, sure of it, the shotgun going off at the sky as the guy dropped to the pavement. Delsa put the Glock on the other guy shoving his hand in Maureen’s bag, the hand coming out of the bag with her .40 caliber and shot him dead center and he went down. Delsa walked over with Maureen to stand looking at them as Maureen checked each one for a pulse. It was the first time he had fired his weapon at anyone. Maureen called 9-11 while he drove the Honda around to that aisle and put his headlights on the scene.

  The two were brothers, convicted carjackers on lifetime probation, six months in violation for not reporting, high school dropouts … “So the boys could find work and support their mom while their old man was doing mandatory life,” Anthony Paradiso Jr., representing the mom, told the press. He had filed a wrongful death suit in civil court against the City of Detroit, the police department and Frank Delsa, asking thirty million in restitution. Tony’s argument: Delsa’s action was overly aggressive, irresponsible in the excessive use of deadly force. Aside to the press Tony said, “It’s okay to kill two young boys trying to jack an old Honda? Ninety thousand miles on it?”

  Civil court reviewed Tony’s suit and threw it out. A board of police executives looked at evidence prepared by Central Affairs, determined that Delsa had gone by the book and returned him to active duty. The department psychologist said that Delsa’s reaction was positive, he wished he hadn’t had to fire his weapon. He did express some relief that the two he shot were “white guys” and there was no chance of it becoming a “racial thing.”

  •

  Both of the wide, curving benches in the Medical Examiner’s lobby were done in a bright b
lue fabric within a bright yellow wood frame—that Delsa thought of, for some reason, as high school colors. He could imagine a banner on the wall that said “Home of the Fighting Pathologists.” He saw Tony Paradiso right away:

  Tony occupying a section of the closer bench, arm extended along the backrest, Tony at ease, comfortable, a guy who was pleased with the way he looked, wore expensive suits and boots with a heel that would get him up to five-ten; a guy who could tuck a dinner napkin in his collar with a certain flair and get away with it. Delsa ran into him at Randy’s after the wrongful death suit was thrown out and Tony bought the lunch. He had personalities to fit the occasion, able to soothe the wives and mothers of the dead, scream in the face of an opposing witness. Delsa thought he overacted and didn’t care for his type, but got a kick out of watching him show off in court and didn’t mind talking to him. Tony was a lawyer, so you had to accept the fact he was opinionated and full of shit. Delsa had never thought of him as a prick, though he probably was if you got to know him. He was a high-priced defender, fifty-three, with dark hair carefully combed and a big ass.

  He saw Delsa and said, “Frank, come here, will you? Help me out.” But didn’t get up. Delsa walked over. Tony said, “They won’t let me see Dad.” A solemn tone but hope in his eyes looking up at Delsa.

  “I guess the viewing room’s in use.”

  “Bunch of Mexicans. Who’s dead?”

  “Guy named Zorro, with one of the posses.”

  “Never heard of him. Was it a cop pop?”

  Delsa shook his head. “Nothing there for you.”

  Tony said, “Is that resentment I hear? You still holding a grudge against me?”

  Delsa said, “I never did.”

  Tony said, “Frank, it wasn’t personal, I explained that to you after. We could’ve settled, the city pays out a few bucks, it wouldn’t of cost you a dime.”

  “You didn’t offer me a cut.”

  “Come on, you know I don’t do that. The only reason I thought you were quick on the trigger, you weren’t gonna let that asshole shoot you with your wife’s gun. But I didn’t bring that up, did I? Listen, I was sorry to hear about your loss, Frank. Now I’ve lost Dad, and they won’t let me in to see him.”