The Hunted

by Elmore Leonard

  the Hunted (1977)

  Leonard, Elmore

  Unknown publisher (2011)

  * * *

  The Hunted (1977)

  Elmore Leonard

  *

  "THERE ARE OTHER WAYS TO GET HOME BEFORE YOUR TOUR IS UP. YOU CAN GET SHIPPED HOME IN A BODY BAG, OR YOU CAN PULL A HAT TRICK AND GET THREE

  PURPLE HEARTS. IF YOU THINK IT'S WORTH IT." --In a letter from Michael Cerre, formerly second lieutenant, 1st Recon Battalion, 1st Marine Division.

  Postmarked December 3, 1970, Da Nang Vietnam.

  *

  THIS IS THE NEWS STORY that appeared the next day, in the Sunday edition of the Detroit Free Press , page one:

  FOUR TOURISTS DIE

  IN ISRAELI HOTEL FIRE tel aviv, March 20 (AP)--A predawn fire. g utted an eight-story resort hotel Saturday , killing four tourists and injuring 46 others, including guests who leaped from upper-story windows to escape the flames. No American s were killed, but two were reported injured, including an Ohio woman who jumped from a fourth-floor window.

  The blaze swept through the 200-room Park Hotel in Netanya, a Mediterranean resort city about 20 miles north of Tel Aviv.

  About 20 Americans escaped from the fire, an American Embassy official said, includin g a tour group of 17 who arrived in Israel a week ago from Columbus, Ohio.

  According to a state radio report, the Park's management had recently considered closin g the building after receiving threats from protection racketeers who had failed to extort payments from the hotel's owners.

  Firemen extinguished the flames after a seven-hour battle.

  In a six-column picture on the news-photo page of the Free Press, several elderly tourists who had escaped the fire were gathered in a group on the street, holding blankets around hunched shoulders.

  It was raining and they looked wet and cold. A d ark, bearded man wearing white trousers, hi s chest and feet bare, stood apart from the group , somewhat in the background, and seemed to hav e been moving away when the picture was taken.

  The bearded man, glancing over his shoulder, was caught in that moment with a startled, openmouthed expression.

  The picture caption repeated most of the facts from the page-one story and quoted Mr. Natha n Fine, leader of the Columbus tour group, as saying , "It's a miracle we're alive. There was somebod y went up and down the halls banging on doors, getting people out, telling them to put wet towels over their heads and follow him--crawl along the hall t o the outside stairway in back. He must have save d the lives of twenty people. It was lucky, I'll tell you , those stairs were outside, or nobody would be her e now."

  The man who had gone up and down the halls banging on doors was not identified by name. Outside the hotel that rainy Saturday morning, no one seemed to know who he was or where he had gone.

  ROSEN FIRST NOTICED the tourist lady on Friday, the day before the fire. He saw her and said to himself , New York.

  She had the look--a trim forty-year-old who kept herself together: stylish in a quiet way, neatl y combed dark hair and sunglasses; tailored beig e sundress, about a size eight or ten; expensive canetrimmed handbag hanging from her shoulder; nothing overdone, no camera case, no tourist lape l badge that said "Kiss Me, I'm Jewish." Rosen , watching her walk past the cafe, liked her thin legs , her high can, and her sensible breasts.

  In Netanya the main street came in from the Haifa Road, crossed railroad tracks, and passe d through crowded blocks of shops and busines s places before reaching an open parkway of shrub s and scattered palm trees--Netanya's promenade.

  Beyond were the beach road and the sea. Looking down on the park were hotels and flat-faced apartment buildings. On the ground level of these buildi ngs were shops that sold oriental rugs and jewelr y to tourists, and open-air cafes with stripe d awnings. One of the cafes, on the north side of th e park, was the Acapulco. There Rosen had his midmorning coffee with hot milk, and there he was sitting when he first noticed the trim, New York looking tourist lady.

  He saw her again that evening at a quarter of ten in a beige pantsuit and red Arab jewelry, with re d earrings dangling below neatly combed dark hair.

  He imagined she would smell of bath powder.

  She pretended to be interested in looking at things--at signs, at the bill of fare on the stucco wal l of the cafe--smiling a little now at the way "Blood y Mery" was spelled, and "Manhatan" and "te." Sh e needed something to look at, Rosen decided, because she was self-conscious, feeling people at the tables looking at her and making judgments in Hebrew and in foreign languages. She maintained a pleasant expression, wanting people to like her.

  Rosen never worried about what people thought. Years ago, developing confidence, yes , he'd used to say, "Fuck 'em." Now he didn't eve n think about people thinking. He felt good and h e looked good, a new person: face deeply tanned, ful l beard with streaks of gray in it. Hair a little thin o n top, but the way he combed it across on a slant , curling over his ears, his scalp didn't show. He never wore suits anymore. Dark blue knit shir t open to show the pale blue choker beads and som e chest hair. Contrast was the key. The faded , washed-out safari jacket with short sleeves and th e fifteen-hundred-dollar gold wristwatch. The outdoor look. The sun-blackened forearms and hands.

  Authentic casual. Off-white trousers, lined, seventyfive bucks in the U. S., and ten-dollar Israeli sandals.

  (There were other combinations: fifteen-dollar faded Levi's with two-hundred-dollar Swiss boots; cashmere sportcoat and French jeans. But no business or even leisure suits, no matching outfits.) He felt that he looked very good, in fact, down to one-forty-nine from the hundred and sevent y pounds he had carried for more than twenty years.

  He was also down to five-nine from the five-ten he had measured when he'd gotten out of the service , but that didn't bother him. He still considered himself five-ten and tried to remember not to let his shoulders droop or his gut hang out.

  He could hold himself up and in and still sit low, relaxed--the quiet man who knew where he was--a thumb hooked in a tight pants pocket and a pencil-thin Danneman cigar between the fingers o f his hand on the metal table. The thumb remaine d hooked; he would use his cigar hand to raise th e demitasse of Turkish coffee.

  Rosen was always comfortable in his surroundings. A few days in a new place, like Netanya, and he was at home and would never be taken for a tourist. And after three years in Israel--three year s next week--he felt he might even pass for a Sabra.

  Rosen was forty-nine and had been forty-nine for the past year and a half. Sometimes he was younger.

  For the neat-looking tourist lady, if age came up, he would probably be around forty-six.

  He did not change his position, but looked up and gave her the one, "Did you know that if you si t at the Acapulco Cafe in Netanya long enoug h everyone you know will pass by? How about a cu p of coffee?"

  Her smile was natural and she seemed relieved, saved, though she glanced around before sittin g down in the chair Rosen offered.

  "Are you meeting someone?"

  "No, I was just . . . taking a walk." She smiled again, looking toward the open front of the cafe.

  "I've been wondering--why do you suppose this place is called the Acapulco? I can't figure it out."

  "The owner," Rosen said, "is an immigrant, a Mexican Jew. He came here from Mexico." It wa s probably true.

  "That's interesting. You don't think of Mexico."

  She hunched over the table, holding her arms.

  Good rings, a diamond, no wedding band. "I was reading; I think it's eighty-two different nationalities are represented in Israel. People who've come here to live."

  "Eighty-three," Rosen said. "The latest figure."

  "Really?" She believed him. "Do you, I mean, are you Israeli?"

  "I liv
e here. Actually, I live in Jerusalem about eight months--"

  "I'm dying to see Jerusalem."

  "About eight months out of the year. I spend some time up in the Golan, in the mountains. Usually a couple of months in the winter I go down to Eilat." Carefully, as he spoke, feeling her watchin g him, Rosen turned the demitasse upside down o n the saucer. "It gets too cold in Jerusalem, so I g o down to Eilat, the Red Sea area, do some skindiving around Sharm el Sheikh." The names sounded good, they were coming out easily. "Yo u been to the Sinai?"

  "We just got here the day before yesterday.

  We've been to Tel Aviv, Jaffa--"

  "And today was a rest day, uh?"

  "Most of the people in the group are a little older. So they set the pace, you might say."

  Rosen turned the demitasse cup upright and looked into it, the cup white and fragile in hi s brown hand. He said, somewhat surprised , "You're with a group?"

  "Yes; from Columbus, Ohio. What are you doing?"

  "Hadassah ladies?"

  "No--"

  "United Jewish Appeal."

  "No, a group from our temple, B'nai Zion."

  "But your husband's not along?"

  "What are you doing? Tell me."

  "Reading your fortune." He showed her the shapes formed by the wet chocolaty sludge, th e residue of the Turkish grounds that had ooze d down the insides of the cup while it was inverted.

  Their heads were close. Rosen caught a hint of perfume with the bath powder. He raised his eyes. Very nice skin, no blemishes. He didn't even see an y pores.

  "Hmmmm," Rosen said, looking down again.

  "You're with a group, uh?"

  "Why, what do you see?"

  "Are you in show business? An actress maybe, or a model?"

  "God, no. I work in a medical lab."

  "You're a nurse?"

  "I used to be, before I was married."

  "See that, right there, it looks like a statue? Like Venus, no arms but all the rest. That's you."

  "It is?"

  "Like you're posing or on a stage, all by yourself."

  "I've got two teenaged daughters at home, and I'll tell you, that's not being all by myself."

  "But no man around."

  "We were divorced."

  "How long ago?"

  She hesitated. "Three years."

  The next question in Rosen's mind--"You fool around?"--remained there. "I see the trip, all thos e thin lines there, but I don't see you with a group. I s ee you as sort of a loner."

  "If it's your cup," the tourist lady said, looking at him now, "shouldn't it be your fortune?"

  Rosen gave her a nice grin. "I didn't think you'd notice that."

  "So it's not me who's the loner, it's you. Am I r ight?"

  "Well, in some ways, maybe. But I'm very friendly and easy to get along with." He smiled an d offered his brown hand. "Al Rosen."

  And the nice-smelling divorced lady on a tour with an elderly group from Columbus, Ohio, wa s Edie Broder; in Israel for twenty-two days, her firs t vacation in three years, more interested in the life o f the country today than in looking at old stone s from Biblical times, though she was dying to se e Jerusalem.

  And Rosen actually lived there?

  Most of the time.

  It must be tremendously exciting, being here with all that's going on. It must be fascinating.

  That's why I've stayed, Rosen said.

  It was something she could already feel, the vitality of the people, their purpose.

  It's something, all right, Rosen said, thinking she should see them getting on a bus in Dizengoff Street.

  When you consider all that's been accomplished since just '48. It's fan tas tic.

  Unbelievable, Rosen said. Maybe she'd have a cocktail?

  Edie Broder hoped she didn't sound like a tourist. She couldn't help it. It was what she felt , being here, experiencing it in the light of Judaic history, witnessing the fulfillment of a four-thousandyear-old dream. And on and on for several minutes, Edie Broder from Columbus letting out what she'd been feeling about Israel for the past few days.

  Rosen wasn't sure he followed all of it. He nodded, though, paying attention, seeming to enjoy her enthusiasm.

  She was kind of sorry now she was stuck with the tour group, when there was so much to see.

  Rosen followed that all right. He straightened in his chair, waiting.

  She would like to see more of how the people lived and learn what they thought. Maybe eve n stay on a kibbutz for a few days, if that was possible. Talk to the real people.

  "How about a drink?" Rosen said. "Or a glass of wine?"

  "Israeli wine?"

  "Of course." Rosen raised his cigar to the owner or manager, who was standing inside the cafe. "Th e Grenache rose, Car-mel. Nice and cold, uh?"

  The manager came out to them. "Please, you want the rose wine?"

  "Car-mel Avdat," Rosen said, in front of the tourist lady. "Israeli wine."

  "Yes please. For two?"

  "For two," Rosen said, and he smiled. See? He was patient, very easy to get along with.

  Edie Broder leaned toward him on the table again, holding her arms. "Do you speak Hebrew?"

  "Oh, a little. Actually, there's only one word you have to know, at least when you're driving.

  Meshugah."

  "Meshugah?"

  "That's it. It means 'Idiot.' You yell it at the other drivers," Rosen said and smiled to show h e was kidding. "You feel they have spirit, wait til l you drive against them."

  "Well, I won't have to worry about that," Edie said, almost with a sigh. "I'll be on the big red tou r bus."

  "I suppose it's comfortable," Rosen said, "but a little slow, uh? I mean a lot of waiting around."

  "It takes them forever, the older folks, to get on the bus. But they're dear people and I love them."

  "One of them slips and breaks a hip, you've got another delay," Rosen said. He eased lower in th e hard chair, getting comfortable. "I think the way t o see Israel is in an air-conditioned Mercedes. Start i n the north, in the Galilee. There's a little town u p there built on a cliff, Sefad, with a great artis t colony. And a kibbutz near there, at Sasa. Com e down to Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee. Visit Jericho on the Dead Sea, the oldest city in the world.

  Hebron, the city of patriarchs, where Abraham's buried. Maybe Ramallah--"

  "You make it sound fascinating." Giving him her full attention.

  "Spend a week in Jerusalem, then drive through the Negev to the Red Sea, follow the Sinai coast t o an oasis on the southernmost tip, Sharm e l Sheikh." There, he'd gotten it in again. He pause d and looked at her and said quietly, "Why don't yo u let me be your tour guide?"

  She hesitated, knowing he wasn't kidding.

  "You're serious, aren't you?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "But you must be busy, have things to do," Edie said, staring back at him.

  "Nothing I can't put off." He hoped she wouldn't laugh and say something dumb, like the y hardly knew each other.

  She didn't. She didn't say anything, in fact, but continued to look at him.

  Rosen decided to push on. He said, "I've got an idea. I'm at the Four Seasons. Why don't we tak e the wine and go sit by the pool, get away from th e commercial atmosphere?"

  "I'm at the Park," Edie Broder said after a moment. "Why don't we go to my room instead?"

  "Well now," Rosen said, straightening.

  "I mean we aren't getting any younger," Edie Broder said.

  In room 507 of the Park Hotel, at two-twenty in the morning, Rosen said, "I'll tell you something.

  Nothing surprises me anymore. You know why?

  Because I'm never disappointed, no matter what happens."

  "You weren't shocked?" A subdued voice coming from the bed. Rosen was over by the bank of dressers in the lamp glow, looking for cigarettes i n his super-brief white Jockeys.

  "No, I wasn't shocked. Not at all."

  "I was," Edie said. "Hearing myself. I've
never done that before in my life. But I thought, It's goin g to happen. I was sure it was because I felt comfortable with you. So I thought, why be coy about it?

  Like not kissing on the first date."

  Rosen was feeling through the pockets of his safari jacket. Passport, sunglasses, a disposable lighter but no cigarettes. "Listen, I thought it wa s great, except for the last part--'We're not gettin g any younger.' Don't put yourself down like that."

  "I'm facing facts," Edie said.

  "Fine, but don't use facts as a putdown. We all have a birthday every year, fine," Rosen said. "I'm forty-five and there's nothing I can do to change it , but so what? Why would I want to?" Rose n paused. "I've got a new theory and I don't kno w why--it's amazing--I never thought of it before.

  You want to hear it?"

  "Sure."

  "You believe in God?"

  She took a moment. "I suppose I do."

  "This has to do with God's will," Rosen said, "and you either get it right away, what I'm talkin g about, or you don't."

  Edie pushed up on her elbow to look at Rosen in his Jockeys. "Are you a religious person?"

  "No, I never was what you'd call religious."

  "But you went to temple once in a while, you were Bar Mitzvahed."

  "No, as a matter of fact I never was. But listen, living in Jerusalem three years--the Jewish, Christian, and Moslem religions all jammed together there in the Old City--all these holy places, everything directed to the worship of God--maybe some of it rubbed off on me. I started thinking about Go d and what it might do for me. Then I started thinking about God's will and how people referred to it.

  Somebody dies, it's God's will. Somebody gets wiped out in business--God's will. You find ou t you've got cancer or multiple sclerosis--you kno w what I'm saying?"

  "I know," Edie said. "It's supposed to make it easier to accept those things when they happen."

  Rosen was ready. "Fine, but nobody says, a person swings a million-dollar deal, it's God's will. It's always something bad. So I decided, wait a minute.

  Why can't the good things that happen to you also be God's will? Like making a couple hundred gran d a year tax free."