Cat Chaser

by Elmore Leonard

  “I don’t want you to go to a lot of trouble though,” Moran said. “I’m curious about her, that’s all. She seemed like a nice girl. Very eager, you know, full of life. I hope nothing happened to her.”

  Rafi looked at his watch. “Let me make phone calls, see what I can do.”

  As he finished his drink and got up Moran said, “Really, it’s not that important to me.”

  Rafi said, “Put it in my hands,” gesturing, glancing at his watch again. “Now I have business to do. I’ll call you later.” He gave Mary the hint of a bow. “And I hope to see the buddy of the Marine again. It was a pleasure.”

  He was walking off. Moran rose. He said on impulse, “How about dinner later? If you’re free . . .”

  Rafi made a circle with his thumb and index finger. He waved and was gone.

  Moran sat down.

  Mary said, “I’m surprised he didn’t click his heels.”

  “Your Dominicans are very polite people,” Moran said.

  Mary gave him a look. “Tell me about it.”

  “That’s right, you have one at home, don’t you? You see his Rolex?”

  “He’d like you to think it’s a Rolex, but it’s not.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know gold, George. I have some of that at home too.”

  He sipped at his beer in silence.

  “If she’s in Santo Domingo, fine. But I don’t want to go chasing all over the country.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “Yeah but, what if he busts his ass, goes to a lot of trouble, finds out she’s in Puerto Plata . . . I don’t want to go to Puerto Plata. I’m really not that hot about taking him to dinner.”

  “But you don’t want to seem ungrateful.”

  “You shoot a guy’s left nipple off,” Moran said, “I think you ought to buy him dinner, at least. Especially if you’re the owner of a swank resort.”

  “I couldn’t help it,” Mary said. “Are you mad at me?”

  “The Fontainebleu. Jesus, can you see me running a place like the Fontainebleu?”

  “You can’t say he wasn’t impressed.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. I’m his new buddy.”

  Mary waited a moment.

  “You don’t seem to be as anxious about finding Luci. What happened?”

  “Nothing. It was an idea, that’s all,” Moran said. “Something that happened a long time ago. Sixteen years.” He looked at Mary. “What were you doing sixteen years ago? . . . What were you doing last week? The week before? . . . What’re we doing sitting here?”

  Rafi said to the desk clerk in English, “Let me see it again. The woman’s.”

  The clerk looked past him at the lobby before taking out the registration card and laying it on the counter.

  Rafi studied the card without picking it up. “I don’t know if that’s a one or a seven, in the address.”

  “Siete,” the clerk said.

  “All right, take it. I’ll fix it up when you want to score, man. Let me know the room and what time.”

  “Speak so I can understand,” the clerk said.

  “I’m practicing my American,” Rafi said.

  He walked past the uniformed guard into the hotel casino where there were players at the first roulette table and at several of the blackjack tables, though not much of a crowd this early in the evening. Rafi nodded to the young American in the three-piece gray suit, pointed to the telephone on the stand by the entrance and the young American, the casino assistant manager, gave him the sign, okay, though he seemed to hesitate and have doubts. Rafi picked up the phone and told the hotel operator the number he wanted, then turned his back to the room, hunching over the stand that was like a podium.

  “It’s Rafi again.” He spoke in Spanish now. “Mary Delaney. Seven hundred Collins Avenue, Miami Beach.”

  The woman’s voice on the phone said, “Wait.”

  Rafi turned to look over the room, though with little interest; he drum-rolled his fingernails on the polished wood of the stand. The woman’s voice came on. “Rafi?”

  “Yes.” He turned his back to the room again.

  “It’s a jewelry store, that address, and there is no Mary Delaney in Miami Beach.”

  “Hiding something,” Rafi said, pleased. “Can you look her up some other way?”

  The woman’s voice said, “I have directories—what do you think I am, the FBI?”

  He could see the woman, imagine her sitting in her room that was like a gallery of photographs of important people: some of the pictures framed and enscribed, “To La Perla, with love,” or “fondest regards,” though most of the pictures, the ones in color, had been cut from magazines twenty or thirty years ago. La Perla had written about parties and scandals and was said to have been an intimate of Porfirio Rubirosa, the world’s greatest lover. Now she sold pieces of her past and somehow remained alive.

  “You have to see this one,” Rafi said. “Anyone who looks like she does has to be somebody. I think I’ve seen her picture, but I’m not sure. I don’t have your memory, like a recording machine.”

  “What does she look like?”

  “An ice cream. I had a spoon I would have eaten her,” Rafi said. “Listen. Be at Mesón de la Cava, nine o’clock, you’ll see her.”

  “You’re taking me to dinner?”

  “Sit at the bar. Look at her and tell me who she is.”

  “I have to take a taxi there, five pesos,” the woman said, “for you to buy me a drink?”

  “I’ll pay for the taxi,” Rafi said. “You can have two drinks.”

  “I hope I don’t become drunk,” the woman said.

  “Tell me what would make you happy,” Rafi said.

  “I want three daiquiris, at least,” the woman said, “and I want the large shrimp cocktail.”

  “If she’s somebody, you can have a flan, too. Nine o’clock,” Rafi said, looking at his watch. He hung up and walked over to a blackjack table where the dealer, a light-skinned Dominican who wore the casino’s gold jacket and vacant expression, stood alone waiting for players. Rafi hooked his leg over a stool and gave the dealer a ten-peso note for ten pink chips. As they began to play Rafi touched his chin and worked his jaw from side to side.

  “My face hurts from smiling.”

  “All the sweetness gone out of it,” the dealer said. “You want a hit?”

  “Hit me . . . That’s good.” He watched the dealer turn over his cards, totaling fifteen. “Take one yourself.”

  “I know how to play,” the dealer said, putting a card down. He went over twenty-one and paid Rafi his chips.

  “I’m letting it ride,” Rafi said. “Deal.” They continued to play, Rafi winning again. “You think of her husband’s name?”

  “Who?”

  “Who have we been talking about? Luci Palma.”

  “I still don’t remember it,” the dealer said. “They live in Sosua. That’s all I know.”

  “I don’t like her having a husband,” Rafi said. “She have a good-looking sister?”

  “Some brothers.”

  “Pay me again. I’m letting it ride,” Rafi said. “I know she has brothers. Hit me. It was a brother I talked to. He knew the one who was with her that the Marine shot. I think I need a younger sister if I don’t find a good Luci Palma.”

  “You’re crazy,” the dealer said, paying him for the third straight time.

  “How do you know? Have I told you anything?”

  “I don’t want to know,” the dealer said.

  “Hit me,” Rafi said. “Does the Marine come in here?”

  “I haven’t seen him.”

  “Again . . . What about the woman that’s with him?”

  “I don’t know his woman.”

  “You haven’t seen her? Once more. You’re missing it. She’s an ice cream. Butter almond. I look at her . . .”

  “You wish you had a spoon,” the dealer said.

  “I think I need a girl about twenty. Very beautiful
, very innocent. I mean with the appearance of innocence. I don’t have that in my stable right now.”

  “Your girls look like the hotel maids,” the dealer said, paying Rafi for the fourth straight time.

  “I’m riding one hundred and . . . seventy pesos,” Rafi said, holding out his original ten. “If I win this one then I’m going to win something else very big, maybe the jackpot of my life . . . Come on, give it to me.”

  The dealer gave him an ace and a queen. Blackjack.

  “There,” Rafi said, like there was nothing to it.

  He watched the dealer turn up his own cards. Another ace, another queen. The dealer raised his eyes.

  “The thing about it is,” Rafi said, “you have to know what is a sign and what isn’t. You can be wrong about signs, sometimes interpret them the opposite of what they mean.”

  “You’re still crazy,” the dealer said.

  Rafi used restraint. He said, “Am I?” and left the dealer with that, a secret smile that told nothing because it had nothing to tell. At least for the time being.

  He would have to be more attentive in reading signs.

  The Cat Chaser’s notice in the paper and the business about it on the radio had alerted Rafi, immediately captured his interest. He talked to people who referred him to others who had taken an active part in the rebellion and there it was, once he put the pieces of the story together: an approach, a way to play a feature role in this, using an old knife scar to represent a bullet wound. He saw in his mind a crude scenario that went:

  RAFI: I’m the one you shot sixteen years ago.

  MARINE: Oh, I’m so sorry. What can I do to make amends?

  RAFI: Please, nothing.

  MARINE: I insist.

  RAFI: Well, as one businessman to another (assuming the marine was now a businessman), I could tell you about a most unusual investment opportunity. . . .

  Something, in essence, like that. Make it up, get his check; gone. But now the mystery woman had entered the picture and the scenario was changing before Rafi’s eyes, the woman the Marine called Mary emerging to become, possibly, the key figure. So far it was only a feeling Rafi had. But to a man who lived by signs and instinct, what else was there?

  8

  * * *

  THEY DESCENDED a spiral iron stairway fifty feet into the ground to dine in a cave, a network of rooms and niches like catacombs where tables were set with candles and white linen and Dominican couples danced to the percussion sounds of merengues. The old city and this place, no Coca-Cola or Texaco signs, Rafi said. This is Santo Domingo.

  He told them he had begun to make inquiries about Luci Palma, but so far had learned nothing. It might take a little more time.

  Moran tried to convince him it wasn’t important, but Rafi insisted; he was curious about Luci now himself. What could have happened to her? He ventured the possibility she had become a full-time revolutionary and fled the country. Like Caamaño, who had led the revolt in ’65; he left the country, returned and was shot. It happened.

  They talked about that time sixteen years ago, the situation. Moran said it had been impossible to understand, being here in the middle of it. The rebels kept saying to them, “Can’t you tell your government we aren’t Communists?” It didn’t begin to make sense. Almost all the people were friendly; still, guys he knew were getting killed. He read about the situation later and decided they had helped the wrong side—just as they’d been helping the wrong side in Latin America for eighty years. Like Nicaragua, helping that asshole Somoza against the Sandinistas, the good guys. Except look at the good guys now. They just shut down a newspaper for criticizing them; they were doing the same thing Somoza did. What happens to good guys once they get control?

  Mary said they have the right to make mistakes like anyone else. Don’t assume anything; don’t label people. She said, What if a skid-row bum asks you for a handout? Are you going to qualify him, give him the money only if he promises not to spend it on booze? No. Once you give him the money—and it’s your choice whether you do or not—then it’s his, with no strings. He can spend it on anything he wants. He can screw up or not screw up, that’s his choice. Unless you’re buying him. That’s something else.

  Wine with dinner conversation: a bottle of red with the sopa Dominicana that was like beef stew with noodles; white wine with the sea bass simmered in a peppery tomato sauce . . . Rafi hanging on every word: Moran’s basic sympathy with the underdog, the revolutionary, maybe with a few minor doubts; while the woman’s analogy said don’t expect too much, don’t be surprised. Interesting; what Rafi considered the usual man-woman positions reversed. The woman using reason—at least, he assumed, until one got inside her pants. The man asking questions of what he’s learned—but essentially, typically, an American bleeding heart.

  Yes, it looked good.

  Rafi excused himself. He visited the men’s room, came out and entered the bar area that was set apart, like a passageway in the cave, only a few couples here having drinks. At the far end of the bar was La Perla with her daiquiri, holding the big snifter glass in both hands beneath a pink glow, staring into the glass, an old woman in theatrical makeup, amber costume jewelry; a gypsy fortune-teller, a magic act waiting to go on.

  “Tell me,” Rafi said, tense now, expectant.

  “Yes, I have her picture.”

  “I knew it! Who is she?”

  “You don’t know anything,” the woman, La Perla, said. “We have to negotiate this some more. The shrimp cocktail isn’t going to do it.”

  Now Rafi had to decide whether to give in to his impatience or play with the old woman, croon a few false notes to her, put his hand on the curve of her narrow back. But he was tired and he didn’t care to feel old bones. He said, “Buy your own rum,” and started away.

  “She comes to Casa de Campo . . .”

  He paused. “Yes?”

  “. . . for the polo. But without her husband.”

  “Ah, she’s married; I knew it. And he’s rich, uh?”

  “I’m starving,” La Perla said. “I want the entrecote, asparagus with hollandaise . . .”

  Rafi raised a hip to the empty stool next to her, her perfume overpowering him as he leaned close.

  “Why don’t you order whatever you like.”

  “I still want the large shrimp cocktail.”

  “You should have it,” Rafi said. “Who’s her husband?”

  “You won’t believe it when I tell you.”

  “I promise I will,” Rafi said.

  “He’s Dominican.”

  There was a pause between them; silence.

  “But he can’t come here with her,” La Perla said.

  “Why is that, if he’s Dominican?”

  “Somebody would shoot him. Many people would shoot him if they could.”

  It was a game. Rafi tried to think of names—expatriates, political villains—anxious now, trying too hard, as though a buzzer were about to go off and he’d lose.

  “He’s rich, isn’t he? He has to be, with an American wife who likes the polo.”

  “You won’t believe it when I tell you,” the woman said again. “I think I want a bottle of wine also. A full bottle of Margaux.”

  “When you tell me who it is,” Rafi said, “have whatever you like. With my love.”

  The woman tapped the bar, rings rapping on the varnished wood. “Put the money here for my taxi and my dinner,” she said. “But keep your love. I don’t want to destroy my appetite.”

  There was not a noticeable change in Rafi when he returned to the table; they talked about Reaganomics and taxes and the price of automobiles. In Rafi’s own mind, though, he was at once more cautious, even more observant. If the woman had turned out to be a film star or an international jet-setter he would be coming on to her now with subtle masculine moves, signs that he was available, a man who viewed pleasure as a way of life; far more sensitive than this former Marine who wiped his salad plate with his bread. Take him on mano a mano and go for th
e woman with nothing to lose.

  But this woman was a celebrity in a much different light. Married to a man who was at the same time rich and a son of a bitch, accredited in both areas; a man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people, perhaps thousands. (How many were thrown from the cliffs during Trujillo’s time? The sharks still came to Boca Chica.) Married to the butcher and having a love affair with the bleeding heart.

  Rafi was quiet now, cautious, because he saw himself in the presence of his future, the opportunity of a lifetime. Here you are. What can you do with this situation? The obvious, of course. But wait and see.

  Though not for long. The conversation wound down and the woman covered yawns, smiling at the Marine with sleepy bedroom eyes, the idiot Marine sitting there fooling with his coffee spoon. In these moments, in the Mesón de la Cava, Rafi began to feel contempt for the Marine; he should take the woman away from him. A lovely woman wasted on a man like this was a mortal sin. Move in . . . She’ll buy you gifts.

  But on the other hand . . .

  It was an either-or dilemma. Go for the woman, get her to turn those eyes on him and have her. Or, use the affair with the Marine to score far more in the long run.

  Or do both. Was that possible? Bleed the bleeding heart. Yes? And then take the woman? It was a shame she wasn’t married to the Marine and having the affair with de Boya. As it was there were interesting possibilities to think about.

  Rafi cautioned himself again to go slowly and said, “I think I should see you two back to your hotel.” There was no argument. “I’ll call you tomorrow if I learn anything, all right?”

  What else? It seemed enough for now. Don’t be eager. At least don’t appear eager.

  They got into bed in Mary’s suite and held each other in silence, tired and wanting nothing more than this closeness, until Mary said, “It’s coming to an end. I can feel it.”

  He said, “Are you a worrier?”

  She said, “No, not usually.”

  He said, in a soothing way, “You know what’s coming to an end and what isn’t. I don’t think we have a choice, we’re stuck with each other. But it’s gonna be a lot harder for you than it is for me. I mean if we plan to see each other.”