LaBrava

by Elmore Leonard

  First there was the big blond creep with the Mickey Mouse badge and the very real gun. (The Delray cops were good guys; they did think it was sort of funny, but only after informing Mr. Richard Nobles that if he ever came in here and bothered Jill again they would fucking break his jaw on both sides of his you-all mouth and that was a promise.) Then Earl, smoking, had set fire to a mattress during the night—after they were absolutely sure he had no cigarettes or matches on him. Walter continued to drive them nuts asking if they’d ever seen an eagle, until he was finally shipped off to Crisis Stabilization. A girl who had shaved her hair back to the top of her head, shaved off her eyebrows too, locked herself in the john most of the morning while two alcoholics threw up in wastepaper baskets. A consumer waiting to be interviewed got into the case of john paper stored in the counseling office (there was no room for it anywhere else) and streamed several rolls of it around the office. And then there was the smiling Cuban who gave his name as Geraldo Rivera and walked into the center naked except for sporty perforated shoes and tan silk socks. He was sort of cute.

  At first he said he had no English. Jill picked up the phone to request a bilingual Delray Police officer and he said wait, some English was coming back to him. He said perhaps he was suffering from amnesia. He remembered dressing to go to the jai alai, but must have forgotten to put his clothes on. He said this is the fronton where they play, isn’t it? Jill told him they played just about everything in here except jai alai. She left him for a minute and he wandered through the offices, God, with his limp dong hanging free. The new girl, Mary Elizabeth, said wow, she had never seen one like that before, so dark compared to the rest of him. The drunks opened watery eyes to watch without comment. What else was new? Walter, who had not yet been shipped off when Geraldo arrived, asked him if he had ever seen an eagle. The Cuban said yes, in fact his mother was an eagle. He said he had been stolen by an eagle when he was a small baby, taken to its nest and fed the regurgitated meat of rabbits. They wrapped the Cuban in a sheet, which he seemed to like, rewrapping himself different ways until he settled on leaving one arm free, toga-fashion. He seemed to quiet down.

  Then their twenty-year-old potential suicide, manic depressive, climbed up on a file cabinet and punched through the screen to shatter the glass of the ceiling-high window in the main office. They brought him down bloody, blood smearing the wall, an arm gashed from wrist to elbow. Sometime while the paramedics were taking him out to the van, the naked Cuban disappeared.

  They called Delray Police to report a missing consumer who might or might not be running around their catchment area wrapped in a South County bed sheet and might or might not answer to the name Geraldo. They would take him back whoever he claimed to be.

  There was no positive response from the police.

  About five o’clock, when first Jill fantasized going home at a normal hour, seeing herself barefoot, alone, sipping chilled Piesporter, she discovered her wallet and ring of something like a dozen keys missing from her bag. The only person she could think of responsible was the naked Cuban.

  Mary Elizabeth left about 6:45. She came back in with Jill’s ring of keys and wallet, the wallet empty. Found them, she said, right out in the middle of the parking lot. She had kicked the keys, in fact, walking to her car.

  Something was strange. Jill had looked outside earlier, front and rear. If the keys and wallet weren’t there a few hours ago, how could they be there now?

  Well, if the guy was chronically undifferentiated enough to walk naked into South County thinking it was a jai alai fronton . . . yes? . . . play with a bed sheet, rip off her wallet and keys . . . who knows, he could have sneaked back during a lucid period, basically a nice guy, thoughtful, knowing she would need her keys, her driver’s license . . .

  It was a guess that she could accept.

  Until she was driving home to Boynton Beach—FM top-forty music turned low, the dark, the muted sound relaxing—and began to wonder if there might not be more to it.

  What if that whole number, the guy walking in naked, had been an act? To get her keys, find out where she lived . . . imagining the naked, possibly-undifferentiated Cuban now as a thoughtful burglar. Did that make sense?

  None.

  Still it was in her mind, the possibility, as she mounted the circular cement stairway to the second floor, moved along the balcony walk past orange buglights at the rear doors of the apartments and came to 214.

  Would it be cleaned out?

  Jill held her breath opening the door. She had paid almost seven hundred for the stereo and speakers, God, over three hundred for the color television set. Her two-hundred-dollar bike was on the front balcony . . .

  The apartment was dark. A faint orange glow in the kitchen window showed the sink and counter. She moved past the kitchen, along the short hallway to the living room. Saw dim outside light framing the glass door to her private balcony. Saw her bike out there. Felt the television set sticking out of the bookcase. She let her breath out in a sigh, feeling exhaustion, relief. Thought, Thank you, Jesus. Not as a prayer but a leftover little-girl response. And sucked her breath in again, hard, and said out loud, “Jesus!” Still not as a prayer. Said, “What do you want!” with her throat constricted. Seeing part of an outline against the glass door. Only part of the figure in the chair, but knowing it was a man sitting there waiting for her.

  She turned to run out. Got to the hallway.

  And a light came on behind her.

  A lamp turned on in her own living room. The goddamn deceiving light that made her stop and turn, feeling in that moment everything would be all right because, look, the light was on and the unknown figure in darkness would turn out to be someone she knew who would say gee, hey, I’m sorry and offer an incredible explanation . . .

  She knew him all right. Even in the two shades of blue uniform. The blond hair . . . Coming toward her, bigger in this room than he had looked last night, not hurrying. Still, it was too late to run.

  Nobles said, “Bet you’re wore out. I swear they must work you like a nigger mule at that place, the hours you put in. See, I figured you wouldn’t want me sitting out in the car, so I come on in. I been waiting, haven’t had no supper . . .” He stretched, yawning. “I was about to go in there, get in the bed. How’d that a been? You come home, here I’m under the covers sleeping like a baby.”

  That thin coat of syrup in his tone.

  Jill concentrated. All the words, the dirty words, the sounds in her mind, screaming obscenities, she kept hold of them as he spoke, as he grinned at her; she knew words would be wasted. She concentrated instead, making an effort to breathe slowly, to allow the constriction in her body to drain, and said nothing. She would wait. As she had waited nearly a half hour for the police while a psychopath dumped over file cabinets, tore up her office . . . She knew how to wait.

  Nobles said, “Yeah, you’re wore out, aren’t you? Come on sit down over here”—taking her to the sofa, easing her down—“I’ll get you a cold drink. I notice you have a bottle of something there in the icebox. Look like piss in a green bottle, but if it’s your pleasure . . .” Standing over her now, towering. “How’s that sound?”

  She stared at his hips, at dark blue, double-knit material worn to a shine, a belt of bullets, a holstered revolver. She said nothing.

  Nobles said, “Cat got your tongue? . . . Hey, you mad at me? Listen, I’m the one should be angry here, way I got treated last night. I’d had a few, but I wasn’t acting nasty or nothing, was I? Just fooling around, giving you a flash of my I.D. I was about to show it to you and this boy I never seen before whomps me a good’n, blindsides me while I ain’t looking. All I see’s this flash of light, wham bam. I still don’t know what it was he hit me with. Must a been like a two-b’-four.”

  Nobles waited. There was a silence. He hooked his thumbs in his gunbelt, looked about the room idly, taking his time, and came back to Jill.

  “Who was that boy, anyway? Friend of yours?”

  She s
aid nothing.

  “I know he said he was with one of the newspapers. I was wondering which one he worked for.”

  She said nothing.

  “Hey, I’m asking you a question.”

  Jill eased back against the cushion. She looked up at Nobles. Saw his expression, the lines along both sides of his nose drawn tight. His face seemed to shine.

  Sociopathic, if not over the edge.

  She said, “You know more about him than I do.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Low impulse control.

  “I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”

  “Well, what was he doing there?”

  Anger threshold you could poke with an elbow.

  “I really don’t know. I think he came with someone.”

  “With who?”

  “We have people in and out all day. I don’t remember their names. I don’t meet half of them.”

  “You see what that scudder hit me with?”

  It caught her by surprise. She said, “He didn’t hit you with anything, he put you down and sat on you,” and wanted to bite her tongue.

  Seeing his expression again, the sheen of anger. She saw him draw his revolver and saw his knuckles and the round hole of the barrel come toward her face, close, almost touching her.

  He said, “Open your mouth.”

  “Why do you want to do that?”

  He said, “Open your goddamn mouth!”

  Hunched over her to grab a handful of hair as she tried to turn her face, yanked her up tight against the cushion. With the pain she gasped, wanting to cry out, and he slipped the tip of the revolver into her open mouth.

  His expression changed, the grin coming back. He said, “Hey, puss, you give me an idea.”

  8

  * * *

  THEY HAD DINNER AT PICCIOLO’S on South Collins, Maurice telling them what it used to be like before the lower end of Miami Beach went to hell; LaBrava watching Jean Shaw raise her fork, sip her wine, coming to believe she was more attractive now than she had been in black and white, on the screen.

  Picciolo’s, Maurice said, height of the season you couldn’t get near the place, the cars lined up outside. Now you could shoot a cannon off in here, maybe hit a waiter. Notice they still wore black tie. LaBrava studying her profile as she looked off across empty tables, head held high, purity of line against the dark color of the booth done up as a gondola, head turning in time back to Maurice next to her; he would shoot her in profile, either side flawless in restaurant light, this lady who had played spider women, enticed second leads to their death and never got the star. Maurice saying Picciolo’s and Joe’s Stone Crab were the only places left on the south end, the neighborhood taken over by junkies, muggers, cutthroats, queers, you name it. Cubans off the boat-lift, Haitians who had swum ashore when their boats broke to pieces, old-time New York Jews once the backbone, eyeing each other with nothing remotely in common, not even the English language. The vampires came out at night and the old people triple-locked their doors and waited for morning. Ass-end of Miami Beach down here.

  Remember the pier? Look at it. Used to be nice. They sell drugs out there now, any kind of pills you want, take you up or down. (The old man of the street speaking.) Bar around the corner there, guys dress up like girls. Lovely place. “I’m telling you,” Maurice said, telling them, giving his friend Jean Shaw a slow tour of the old neighborhood on the thirteen-block drive from the restaurant to the Della Robbia Hotel. The three of them in the front seat of the Mercedes. LaBrava inhaling without sound but deeply, his thigh touching hers, filling himself with her scent.

  “You remember the kind of people use to come down for the season? Now we got three hundred bums, count ’em, three hundred, show up every winter. Look. Over there on the bench, look, the bag lady. That’s Marilyn. Says she used to be a movie star, a singer and a gourmet cook. Look at her. She’s got a shopping cart she pushes down Lincoln Road Mall, it’s fulla plastic bags, bottles, old copies of The Wall Street Journal. Marilyn. Maybe you knew her back when.”

  “Go slower,” Jean Shaw said. “Where does she live?”

  “You’re looking at it, on the bench. They live in alleys, the bums, they live in empty buildings. The respectable people, they work in a garment loft forty-five years, come down here, put their life savings in a co-op and have to triple-lock their doors. Afraid even to look out the window.

  “They were suppose to start redeveloping the whole area ten years ago, put in canals, make it look like Venice. Nobody’s allowed to fix up their property, they got to wait for the big scheme. Only the big scheme went bust, never happened. The boat-lifters and dopers come in, half the neighborhood’s already down the toilet.

  “I know a guy lives in a place called the Beachview on Collins. Listen to this, Collins Avenue, he pays four hundred seventy-five bucks-a-year rent. You know why? He’s got a seven-by-ten room, no bath, newspapers on the floor, no air, no stove even. Joe, is that right? Joe took some pictures of the guy in his room he’ll show you. Looks like a gypsy wagon, all the crap piled up in there. Four-seventy-five a year on Collins Avenue, you think it hasn’t changed?

  “Show her the La Playa.”

  Why would she want to see a run-down fleabag hotel?

  “We already passed it.”

  “Show her,” Maurice said.

  There, corner of Collins and First. Two blocks from the Miami Beach Police station, they had over two hundred assaults, shootings, knifings, rapes, ripoffs and what have you in that one hotel alone last year. You believe it? Look. What’re we on? Washington Avenue. They got video cameras mounted up on cement poles, close-circuit TV, so the cops can watch the muggings, the dope transactions, and not have to leave the station. Look. Right before our eyes, two young girls beating the shit outta each other on the street. Nice? I’m telling you . . .

  But why was he telling her? His good friend the once-famous movie star. To frighten her? So she’d stay in the hotel and never go out alone?

  No, LaBrava decided. It was to impress her. The old man was showing off. Letting her know, yeah, it was a rough place, but he knew his way around. Ballsy little eighty-year-old guy. What it came down to, Maurice loved South Beach.

  Jean Shaw said she would join them in a few minutes, she wanted to change. LaBrava watched her walk down the hall to the guest suite.

  She had long thin legs, still a good figure. He had liked blonds with coppery tans but was coming to prefer dark hair parted in the middle, pale skin.

  He took off his sport coat following Maurice into his apartment, the gallery, a photographic record of what Maurice had witnessed in his life covering most of three walls. The rest of the room was crowded with hotel-lobby furniture, a sectional sofa, Maurice’s La-Z-Boy recliner. Maurice went to his bar, a credenza by the formal dining-room table, and got ready to pour their nightcaps. Tighteners. LaBrava hung his coat on the back of a dining-room chair and, as he always did, began looking at photographs.

  The way it went most times, Maurice would pretend not to notice. LaBrava would study a row of framed black-and-white prints. And finally Maurice would say:

  “Terpentine camp, wood smoke and backyard cauldrons, men working that sticky mess for a dollar a day . . . and dance with their women at a jook place called the Starlight Patio, way in the piney woods . . . Sniff, you can smell the coal-oil lamps, look at the eyes shining, dirt rings on the neck of that lovely woman . . .”

  LaBrava would move a step, concentrating, not looking around, and Maurice would say:

  “Georgia road gang, 1938. They wore stripes till ’42. That’s the captain there. Gene Talmadge, used to be governor, said, ‘You want a man knows how to treat convicts, get you somebody who has et the cake.’ Somebody once a convict himself. Eugene believed in whipping and the use of the sweatbox.”

  LaBrava would move on, gaze holding, and Maurice would say:

  “That’s Al Tomani, known as the next-to-tallest man in the world. His wife was born without legs and
together they were billed as the World’s Strangest Couple. About 1936.”

  And LaBrava would move on to be told about men digging mole drains in canefields, migrants cutting palmetto, boy sitting under a tung tree, Miccosuki Indians drinking corn beer, called safki . . .

  But not this evening.

  Maurice came out of the kitchen with an ice tray, glanced over to say, “Arrival of the Orange Blossom Special, January 1927 . . .” and got a surprise. LaBrava stood with his back to the Florida East Coast Railway shots.

  He said to Maurice, “I don’t think she has a problem at all. She had two drinks before dinner, couple of Scotches, she didn’t finish the second one. I think all she had was one glass of wine . . .”

  Maurice slid the ice cubes into a bowl. “What’re you talking about?”

  “You said in the car yesterday, going to get her, she had a problem.”

  “I told you she called me up . . .”

  “You said she sounded strange.”

  “I said she sounded funny. She tells me she’s got a problem, I ask her what it is, she changes the subject. So I don’t know if it’s booze or what.”

  “You seemed to think it was.”

  “Well, it still could be. You throw a drink at a cop car, that’s not exactly having it under control. But today she’s fine.”

  “You ask her why she did it?”

  “She says she was in a bad mood, should a stayed home. The cop gets out of the car, says something smart . . . she throws the drink.”

  “Yeah, but what was she doing out on the sidewalk with a drink in the first place?”

  “Getting some air—who knows. She was a movie star, Joe. They’re all a little nuts.”

  She sat with them in Maurice’s living room wearing slacks and a white cotton sweater now, sandals; she sipped her Scotch with a squirt of soda and struck LaBrava as a person who was courteous and a good listener. But then what choice did she have once Maurice got started?