Pronto

by Elmore Leonard

  One thing, he could talk to Torres, Torres never giving him the feeling he was wasting his time.

  "We know where he is," Torres said.

  It stopped Raylan, coming like that.

  "Harry?"

  "He went from Joe's Stone Crab to Miami International, got on a British Airways flight at seven-fifteen, and landed at Heathrow the next morning, Wednesday, November fourth, at eight-thirty."

  Raylan said, "Harry's in England?" squinting at Torres. "Wait a minute, you took his passport."

  "That's why we didn't check international flights right away," Torres said. "Soon as we did we find out a man named John Arnaud, A-r-n-a-u-d, booked the British Airway flight through a travel agent on Lincoln Road. We show the travel agent Harry's picture and he says yeah, that's John Arnaud, a customer he'd had for years. We look into this a little deeper," Torres said, "we find out John Harold Arnaud is Harry's real name. He has a birth certificate to prove it, so he's able to get a passport in that name and renew it whenever he has to. In seventy-one, when he moved back here from Chicago, he changed his name legally to Harry Jack Arno, same pronunciation of the surname but a different spelling. Don't ask me why he did it, outside of it gave him a passport in each name."

  "So he's in England," Raylan said.

  "The same day he landed," Torres said, looking at the printout, "he took off from Heathrow at eleven-thirty on British Airways five sixty-six. The flight arrived in Milan at two-twenty p. M. He stayed at the Hotel Cavour three nights and checked out on the eighth of November, a Sunday morning."

  "You don't know where he is now?"

  "As far as we know he's still in Italy."

  Raylan frowned thinking about it, until his eyes came open and he started to nod, saying, "So Harry's back in Italy," as though his being there wasn't a bad idea.

  One time the Zip and Nicky Testa got in an argument over the punk having only a few words of Italian and didn't care that he couldn't speak what the Zip called his mother tongue, the Zip saying he should learn it out of respect. Nicky said, "The only reason you can speak the language, you're from the old country, so don't fucking give me a hard time, okay?"

  This punk twenty-four years old talking like that because he was close to Jimmy Cap and felt he was privileged.

  Once in a while the Zip would call him mammoni, meaning a mama's boy, or bambolino, a doll, or the worst thing the Zip could think of to call an Italian male, frocio, a guy who was queer.

  Nicky would say, "Okay, what's that mean?"

  And the Zip would say, "You don't learn how to speak it, what do you care?"

  The afternoon of the day following the visit to Joyce Patton, the Zip arranged to have a talk with Nicky and brought him out to the lanai, the open sitting room that faced the patio, saying, "Follow me, stronzo." This time calling him an asshole.

  "Stronzo," Nicky said, fingers caressing his bare chest, "what's that mean, strong? Like referring to how I'm built?"

  "Something like that," the Zip said. This guy was so dumb you could say anything you wanted to him. Now he seemed restless, looking out at the patio where Gloria was sunning herself, lying on her stomach topless, while Jimmy Cap was upstairs taking his afternoon nap.

  "You waiting for her to turn over?"

  The punk didn't bother to answer.

  "Tell me something. You go to bed with her?"

  This time the punk turned his head to his shoulder. He said, "Jimmy's right, you got a big fucking nose," and turned his head away again.

  At that time Nicky wore his hair in a ponytail. The Zip reached over and took hold of it, brought it with him as he turned away and swung the punk screaming to hit the end of the sofa and land facedown on the tile floor. The Zip, still holding the ponytail, planted a knee on him, brought a switchblade out of his coat pocket, released the blade, and sliced up with it in a single motion to sever the ponytail. The Zip rose. He kicked the punk now, getting him to roll over, and showed him the hank of hair in his hand.

  He said, "You want to learn a word? Minchia. It means a dick. That's the Sicilian word. You say cazzo you're from someplace else. So, look. I would have your minchia in my hand instead of this hair if I was Jimmy. You understand? I'm not like him, a cornuto, wearing the horns. You know what I mean? I don't let people think they can do things behind my back. You going to be working for me now and see what I mean. No sitting around feeling yourself like you do, showing your body."

  "Who says I work for you?"

  The kid with all those muscles, getting some of his nerve back. Or he saw Gloria watching them, sitting up now on the lounge, not bothering to cover herself as the Zip looked over.

  "I say it, stronzo. I have something for you to do and Jimmy says okay."

  "Like what?"

  "Watch this woman for me, see where she goes. Harry Arno's girlfriend."

  "Why can't you handle it?"

  The punk lying on the floor, looking right at him past the knife in his hand. It meant Gloria was watching too. This time the Zip didn't bother to look over. She was there if he wanted her.

  He said to Nicky, "Man, that attitude you have," making a face that was kind of a puzzled frown. "While I have the knife, maybe I should cut your minchia off anyway. How do you think about that?"

  Chapter Eight.

  The ABC Bail Bonds woman's name was Pam. She had worked with her husband and then taken over the business when he was shot and killed by one of their clients. Pam explained this to Raylan when he asked what an attractive young woman like herself was doing in the surety business, mixing with undesirables. This was after he had shown his ID and marshal's star and she seemed impressed.

  ABC was in a storefront on NW Seventeenth in downtown Miami, two blocks from the Justice Building and the courts. A message in gold paint on the window outside said:

  GETTING YOU OUT IS EASY AS ABC!

  There was an old guy working here part-time, a former licensed bail bondsman who chewed his cigar and looked right at home in this kind of office. And there was a stocky black guy named Desmond that Raylan met who went after offenders who missed their court dates. Pam told him one out of every three defendants she wrote never showed up in court when they were supposed to. Raylan didn't ask many questions, he knew how the business worked. He noted that Desmond did not appear qualified to go after Harry Arno. The cigar-chewer surely wasn't going to and it didn't seem likely Pam would, since she was running the business.

  Raylan felt sorry for her, the poor woman working in this rat hole and trying to appear attractive. He judged her heavier than his wife, Winona, who went about one thirty. This woman had a rounded figure in her white V-neck outfit, black beads and earrings and a black velvet bow in her blond hair, a feminine touch, or else it was holding her swept-up hairdo together.

  He got around to the subject of Harry Arno, asking if she had heard.

  Yeah, someone from Miami Beach PD had called her to say a fugitive warrant had been issued. Pam shook her head. "That's all I need, a hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar forfeiture."

  "He hasn't missed his appearance yet," Raylan said. "And you even have time after that, don't you, before you have to pay the court?" Showing her he knew how the system worked. "Up to as long as a year after, you only stand to lose ten percent."

  "That's if I get him back," Pam said. "And if he's over in Italy or some goddamn place it doesn't seem too likely, does it?"

  Raylan said, "You want me to go get him for you?"

  She said, "Yeah, sure."

  He said, "Ma'am, look at me." When she did he said, "I'm serious. You want me to go get him?"

  Now she had to reconsider.

  "But you're working." She gave him a suspicious look then. "Are they sending you over there anyway? They're extraditing him?"

  "He skipped on a state charge," Raylan said. "I'm federal. I've checked, Miami Beach PD has no plans to bring him back."

  "This would be on your own?"

  "My own time. I have some coming and I can get off if I
want."

  Now she was busy thinking of all the reasons she believed it wouldn't work -- without telling him any of them.

  "Don't you know," Raylan said, "that fugitive investigation is one of the main duties of a U. S. marshal? Rounding up offenders and taking them to court?"

  Pam stared at him for a minute, he believed entertaining the idea of using him.

  "I imagine it would cost me an arm and a leg."

  "His ex-wife," Raylan said, "signed a contingent promissory note, didn't she?"

  "You better believe it."

  "Guaranteeing if he skips she'll pay the expenses to get him back."

  "I'm not worried about expenses," Pam said. "I want to know what you'd charge as a fee."

  Raylan held up his hands, showing her his open palms. "Nothing. Pay my way and I'll bring him back for you."

  "Why would you do that?"

  "I need to prove I can. You give me airfare and I'll use my own money for hotels and meals till I get back and you reimburse me. You get a U. S. marshal for two weeks, though I doubt I'll need more than a few days over there."

  She hesitated, as though being careful about what she'd say next. "All they know is he's in Italy somewhere. How do you expect to find him?"

  "Because one time he said to me..." Raylan paused. "This was six years ago but I'll never forget his exact words. We're spending some time together waiting for a flight, talking, he's having a few drinks. He says, 'Raylan, I'm going to tell you something I've never told anybody before in my life.' He said then, 'On the tenth of July, 1945, I killed a man in the town of Rapallo in Italy. Shot him dead.'"

  Pam said, "Yeah? You mean that's where he is?"

  "I'd bet every cent I have," Raylan said, "he's over there taking it easy, right this minute sipping coffee at a sidewalk cafe -- he doesn't drink anymore -- pretty sure nobody'll ever find him."

  The woman seemed confused again.

  "He's gone back to this place 'cause it's where he killed somebody?"

  "You could say that," Raylan said. "Except there's more to it."

  Chapter Nine.

  The woman Harry sat with Saturday afternoon at the Gran Caffe Rapallo looked like Gina Lollobrigida. Well, somewhat. That type, with short dark curly hair and a full figure, big ones; Gina Lollobrigida in her forties. They sat among palm trees and potted plants beneath an orange awning on Rapallo's Via Veneto. The woman said her name was Maura. "Maura," Harry said, "that's a nice name." The woman said, "Not Mawra. Mau-ra, like you say ow. You know how to say ow?"

  She spoke right up in a voice that was hoarse, maybe from talking so much. She had large thighs in stone-washed jeans, her legs crossed at the table. Maura told Harry she was from Genova. Not Genoa, Genova. She was part owner of an industrial film company in Genova, where her husband had died of a heart attack in the editing room two years ago. Maura had an apartment here, up the hill where people from Genova and those stuck-up Milanese have bought places for weekends and for retirement. She asked if he had seen the Lina Wertmuller film Swept Away. She said the stuck-up rich woman in it -- that was the way the Milanese spoke, trying to sound better than everyone. She said she came here every weekend -- Genova less than a half hour away on the autostrada -- except in the winter. This would be her last visit until spring.

  "But it's still warm," Harry said, believing the weather here much the same as South Florida's. It seemed tropical, all the palm trees, flowers in bloom.

  "Wait till next month," the woman said.

  She had worn a fur jacket, coyote or lynx, Harry wasn't sure, draped over one shoulder when he first noticed her on the cable car this morning, descending from Montallegro, and then later, Maura strolling along the seafront promenade, hips working in the tight jeans. The jacket now hung over the back of her chair.

  When she asked why he had come to Rapallo, Harry said it was his fifth visit in the past forty-seven years and this time he had made up his mind to stay. Last year he had bought a car, he'd found a place up in the hills... Harry sounding at peace.

  "Why on earth," Maura said, "you pick this town? Why not Roma? Sit at a cafe on the real Via Veneto, the center of the world."

  "I've been there," Harry said. "I like it here because it's off-center, off the beaten track. You don't see tourists everywhere with cameras. The only tourists, as you say, are from Genova, Milan, I suppose Turin? This is your Riviera and it appeals to me, the tropical setting, the olive trees. I like the promenade along the seawall where everyone strolls."

  He heard himself speaking, sounding like someone else.

  She told him it was called the lungomare, not the promenade, and said, "Are you hiding from someone? Your wife?"

  Harry smiled, patient with her, approaching this woman with care. He said he liked the old castle sitting out in the water. He liked the palm trees and the color, the wooden shutters on the buildings, clotheslines four stories up, underwear hanging to dry. He thought of the words picture postcard and quaint but didn't use them.

  Maura said, "Are you serious? Why?" She said the buildings, the hotels and apartments along the seafront, were crumbling with age. The ones up the hill, where people from Genova and the stuck-up Milanese had their apartments, were much better, with air-conditioning.

  Harry said, "I have a villa."

  He believed he had stopped her, because she looked surprised and was quiet for a moment. She sipped her wine. Harry, in no hurry, finished his espresso. He liked espresso and wished there was a way to make it last. Two sips, it was gone.

  Maura said villas, unless you had the money to modernize, fix them up, were all right to look at from a distance, but were drafty and damp in the winter.

  Harry told her he had central heating. He had leased it furnished and was looking for a cook and a maid.

  That did stop her. She said, "Oh."

  He didn't tell her he was living at the Hotel Liguria and hadn't moved into the villa yet. Two weeks now. He would go up there and stroll through the rooms, the grounds, look out at the view. The villa needed a comfortable chair and a good firm bed, lamps with hundred-watt bulbs. Also someone who knew how to use the kitchen.

  "This morning," Harry said, "I saw you on the cable car coming down from Montallegro."

  "The funivia," Maura said.

  "The funivia. If I don't drive," Harry said, "I take the funivia to Montallegro and then walk down the hill to my villa. It's near Maurizio di Monti."

  He had gone up this morning to check for leaks following a heavy rain the day before.

  "I have my car here," Maura said. "I much prefer to drive from Genova than take the train."

  "You were smoking on the funivia," Harry said, wanting to stay on the cable car.

  She was smoking a cigarette now with her glass of wine. She seemed always to be smoking, blowing it out in quick gusts, as though in a hurry to finish. She said, "Yes?"

  "There was a sign in the funivia, I believe it said no smoking."

  "I didn't see it."

  "A man kept waving his hand in the air and saying in a loud voice -- I think he was saying -- 'There's no smoking in here.' Very upset. And you said something to him."

  "That one," Maura said. "I told him to mind his own business. Listen, I was in Barcelona during the summer to see the Olympics. I'll tell you something if you don't know it. Everyone smokes in Barcelona."

  "I quit last year," Harry said.

  She inhaled and blew a stream of smoke at him as she said, "So, you saw me on the funivia. All the years I come here, when my husband was alive and now, I never visit the Santuario di Montallegro. So I went there today." She stubbed out the cigarette and sat back against her fur jacket.

  "The Sanctuary of the Holy Virgin of Montallegro," Harry said. He paused and said, "At first, when I came back here to visit, I thought I wanted to live in Sant'Ambrogio. You know where it is?"

  "Of course. Not far from here."

  "Where the poet Ezra Pound lived."

  Maura nodded. "Yes, I heard of him."

&n
bsp; "During the war, in 1944, the Germans made him move out of his apartment, number twelve Via Marsala. There's a plaque on this side of the building." Harry pointed. "Down there, near the bandstand. He was living there with his wife."

  "Yes?"

  "The Germans were fortifying against the American Army coming up the coast from Rome. And they made Ezra and his wife move in with Ezra's mistress, Olga Rudge, in Sant'Ambrogio."

  "You serious?"

  "She had a house there. Olga did."

  "His wife and his mistress under the same roof?"

  Harry was nodding, yes, that's how it was.

  "It could never be," Maura said.

  "I don't imagine it was easy."

  "The wife," Maura said, "did she kill the mistress or her husband? Or both?"

  "They made do."

  "I don't believe it."

  "The house in Sant'Ambrogio also has a plaque on it that says Ezra Pound lived there. Last year when I was looking for a place the house was being renovated, fixed up, painted. ... It was raining the day I saw it."

  "You wanted to live in this house?"

  "I thought it might be possible. The first time I saw the house was in sixty-seven, but I wasn't looking to buy it then. Ezra Pound was living here again and I came to see him."

  "He was someone you admired?"

  That was a good question. Harry said, "I did meet him the first time I was here, during the war. It was in 1945. I was between here and Pisa, back and forth, and I got to meet him."

  "Ezra Pound," Maura said. "I know the name, but I don't think I read any of his poetry."

  "At the time I met him," Harry said, "they had him in a cage. They called it the gorilla cage. He was being held on a charge of treason. For making radio broadcasts in Rome during the war."

  "Yes? What did they do with him?"

  "He was brought home.... It's a long story. But, I met him. I talked to him. I saw him here again in sixty-seven. Then last year when I looked at the house in the rain... It was in August and it rained most of the time I was here. The next day I went up to Montallegro for the first time and decided to look for a house around there instead."