LaBrava

by Elmore Leonard

  Send Cundo back too when they were through with him.

  He heard Cundo’s voice before he saw him—like a dago prayer shouted to heaven. The next thing, Cundo was feeling his car, running his hands over it in the streetlight, asking had he hit anything, had he stripped the gears, had he got bugs on it. Try to get a word in about something important. Nobles had to wait and found it was worth it. For once Cundo saw his car was okay the little fucker was so grateful he nodded yes, right away, and kept nodding yes to everything Nobles told him.

  Go see Uncle Miney and give him a story. Yes. Tell him Richard’s moved and nobody knows where. “Convince him or he’ll ruin this deal we got. You understand?” Yes, of course. “Send him on his way or he’ll mess us up good.” Don’t worry. Still looking now and again at his black Pontiac.

  “The woman’s car’s over there at the ho-tel. Eldorado parked on the street.” Yes? “Smash the windows with something. Windshield, headlights, ‘specially the window on the driver side.” Yes, okay. “Later on tonight I’ll tell you the rest, what you’re gonna do, then we don’t see each other for a while. You understand?” Yes. “You gonna miss me?” Of course.

  “Something else. Shit, I almost forgot. There’s a typewriter in your trunk I want you to throw in the ocean, in Biscayne Bay. You hear me? Not in a garbage can or out in some alley, it’s got to be sunk for good.”

  Yes, of course. Not even asking why—the little booger was so grateful to see his car again.

  Sitting in the middle of the sofa LaBrava would lose himself for a time, watching Jean Shaw on the television screen and feeling her next to him. He could turn his head and see her, right there, the same face in profile. In the darkness of the room the two Jean Shaws were nearly identical, pale black and white. But he would not lose himself for long, because Franny Kaufman sat close on his other side and he was aware of her too. He would hear her, soft sounds in response to what she was watching, and feel her leg and sometimes her hand. She was here because Jean Shaw had invited her. Maurice, in his La-Z-Boy, paid no attention to Jean’s whispers to be quiet. If he felt like making comments he made them.

  “I’m gonna tell you something. Guys that ran dice games never looked like Dick Powell.”

  “Shhhh.”

  “I never knew a good-looking guy ran a dice game. I tell you about a guy named Peanuts?”

  “Maury—”

  “Edmund O’Brien was starting to get fat even then, you notice?”

  At one point Franny’s voice in the darkness said, “Hey, Jean?” a tone of mild surprise. “I’ve seen you before . . . I can’t think of the name of the picture.”

  LaBrava was aware of the silence until Maurice said, “Jeanie, you still know how to deal cards like that?”

  Cundo Rey said to the old man he understood from the guy over at the desk, the hotel guy, that he was looking for Richard. Cundo watched this Uncle Miney take the stick out of his mouth, almost gagging as he saw the dirty brown end of it.

  “You a friend of Richard?”

  Like he was accusing him. From the sound and the look of the man, another strange creature from the swamp, Cundo didn’t believe he should tell him yes. He said he knew Richard, he had seen him around here.

  The old man said, “Where?” He said, “Take me where I might find the son of a bitch.”

  They got in the old man’s pickup truck and the old man began talking about Richard Nobles, saying he had “fell from grace once he got his ass up against hard work.” Saying he had become nothing but a mean rascal who would sell his friends and blood kin to save his own hide, or maybe just for fun—Cundo understanding only some of what the old man said, but getting enough to hold his interest and want to keep the old man talking. Miney saying there was a time he himself was “wilder’n a buck and went looking for women and to do some drinking,” but a man had to reach a point where he left that behind him. Richard’s appetite was such he must be “holler to his heels.” The old man said Richard—maybe what was wrong with him—had never looked up to nobody. He said to Cundo, “Who’s you all’s hero? People like you.”

  Cundo had to think. Fidel? No. Well, yes and no. Tony Perez? Of course. Roberto Ramos, if he was still playing in the big leagues. But he didn’t know if the old man had ever heard of Tony Perez or Roberto Ramos, so he said, “The President of the United States.”

  Miney said, “Shit, that scudder—they’s people eating nothing better’n swamp cabbage, he don’t give a shit.”

  Cundo asked him what he wanted Richard for and Miney said, “You shake him out of the tree and I’ll take care of the rest.” Yes, as Nobles had said, it sounded like this old guy could make trouble for them. Cundo gave him directions. Take a left. Take another left. They were on Ocean Drive now coming up on the Della Robbia from the south.

  Cundo touched the old man’s arm. “You see that white Cadillac there? That’s Richard’s car.”

  Jean got up to turn the lights on. It was her show, she had insisted on turning them off. Maurice, trapped in his recliner, extended his empty glass, and LaBrava got up to make drinks, remembering a Bogart line to the question, “How do you like your brandy?” Bogart, as Sam Spade: “In a glass.” In that frame of mind after seeing Jean’s picture. Hearing Franny say, “Well. I loved it. I loved your part especially. Lila. She was neat. Wonderful situation, if she wins the money she loses the guy, but she has to go for it. Say the line again.”

  Jean: Let it ride?

  Franny: Yeah. Like you did in the movie.

  Jean: Let it ride.

  Franny: Perfect. I love it.

  LaBrava poured drinks with his back to the room, listening to movie voices.

  Franny: I wasn’t sure, but I had the feeling Lila was getting a little psycho.

  Jean: No, not at all. It’s more an obsession. She’s in a hopelessly corrupt situation, she’s disillusioned, but you know she has to play the game.

  Franny: It’s the lighting and composition—

  Jean: That’s part of it, the ominous mise en scène.

  Franny: I mean if she’s not psychotic then it’s the look of the picture, the expressionistic realism that gives that feeling.

  Maurice: You two know what you’re talking about?

  Jean: You do see a change. She’s essentially content in the beginning, an ordinary young woman . . .

  Franny: I don’t know. I think subconsciously she’s looking for action. Like in that other picture I saw of yours . . .

  Jean (pause): Which one?

  Franny: I only saw like the last half, but the character was a lot like Lila. Your husband’s gonna die, he knows it and also knows about this shifty business you have going with the private eye—

  Jean: Oh, that one.

  Franny: So he kills himself, commits suicide—shoots himself and makes it look like you did it. I mean, what a guy. He was a lot older than you.

  LaBrava turned with Franny’s and Maurice’s drinks. In almost the same moment, with the sound of glass shattering outside, he was moving toward the nearest of the front windows.

  Cundo Rey used the blunt side of the ax head, smashed the windshield of the Eldorado first, hitting it three times thinking the whole thing would shatter, fly apart, but it didn’t; the ax punched holes and the windshield looked like it had frost on it, ice. He smashed the headlights, one swing for each, and remembered Richard saying the driver side window too, ‘specially for some reason. He swung the ax like he was hitting a line drive and that window did shatter, fly all apart.

  “Let’s go, man. Come on.”

  He had to shove the old man, still looking out the back window of the truck, to get him to drive off. “Left. This street, left. Keep going . . . Go past Collins Avenue. Go on, keep going.” The old man didn’t know what was happening.

  “Somebody’s gonna call the police.”

  Listen to him. “That’s why we want to get away from here.”

  “That was Richard’s car?”

  “Yeah, see, now you know he is
n’ going to leave. He has to get it fix.”

  “But where’s he at?”

  “I’m going take you where I think he is.”

  “Why’s he leave his car there?”

  “He has a girlfriend, you know, live by there.”

  “Well, if his car’s setting there—”

  “No, he leave it on the street there.” Jesus Christ. “See, is more safe for the car there than where he live. Yeah, he leave it there all the time.”

  “We going back to the ho-tel?”

  “We going to another place where I think he is.” Jesus, this old guy with his questions. “You know, where he like to go sometime. We maybe have to look for him different places.”

  The old man turned the snuff stick in his mouth as he drove. They went over Thirteenth Street to Alton Road, on the bay side of South Beach, turned left and drove in silence until Cundo told him to go slow, to turn right on Sixth Street and then left on West Avenue. “Right here. Stop,” Cundo said. “The Biscaya Hotel. Yes, this is good.”

  The old man was looking up at the building enclosed behind a chainlink fence. “I don’t see no lights on in there.”

  “Is nobody live there anymore,” Cundo said. “Is all a wreck. People go in there and wreck it. One time the Biscaya Hotel, now is nothing.”

  They got out and Cundo led the way through an open gate in the fence, in close darkness through rubble—just like buildings he had seen in Cuba in the revolution—through overgrown bushes and weeds choking the walk that had once led through a garden along the side of the hotel. There were rusted beer cans and maybe rats. As they reached the open ground behind the hotel, Cundo watched the headlights on the MacArthur Causeway off to the left, not far, the cars coming out of darkness from the distant Miami skyline. The old man was missing it. His head was bent back to look up at all those dark windows—hotel this big and not one light showing. He should go inside and see the destruction, like it was in a war.

  “How come nobody stays here?”

  “It’s all wrecked.”

  “Well, how come it closed up?”

  Cundo said he didn’t know, maybe the service was no good. He said, “Come on, we take a look. Be careful where you walk, you don’t hurt yourself,” leading the old man through weeds, out beyond the empty building that seemed to have eyes, following a walk now that led down to the seawall—the old man turning to look up at the nine stories of pale stone, black windows, staring, like he couldn’t believe a place this size could be empty, not used for anything.

  “Some bums stay there,” Cundo said, “sometime.”

  “What’s Richard do around here?”

  “I tole you, didn’t I? He has a boat,” Cundo said. “See, he like to go out in his boat at night, be at peace. When he come back he come here. See? Tie it there by the dock.”

  “Richard drives a boat?”

  “Yeah, a nice boat. Look out there in the water. You see a light moving?”

  “They’s about five, six of ’em.”

  “Those are boats. One of them I think is Richard.”

  “How you tell?”

  “Well, he isn’t no place we look and his boat isn’t at the dock over there. Tha’s how you can tell. Yeah, I think one of them is Richard. Watch those lights, see if one it comes here. He would be coming pretty soon.”

  Cundo pulled his silk shirt out of his pants, reached around to the small of his back and felt the grip of the snubbie, the pistol Javier had sold him for one hundred and fifty dollars. Man, that gun kept pressing into his spine, killing him.

  Miney said, “That’s Miami right there, is it?”

  “Tha’s a island right in front of you,” Cundo said. “Way off over there, that’s the famous city of Miami, Florida. Yes, where you see all those lights.”

  “There’s an airplane,” Miney said. “Look at it up there.”

  “Take you far away,” Cundo said. He raised the .38 Special and from less than a foot away shot Miney in the back of the head. Man, that snubbie was loud. He didn’t think it would be that loud. It caused him to hesitate and he had time to shoot Miney in the head only once more as he pitched forward into Biscayne Bay.

  There was something he was supposed to throw in there, Richard had told him. He was right here looking at the water, but he couldn’t think of what it was.

  19

  * * *

  BUCK TORRES SAID TO THE MAN who had waited in Mrs. Truman’s living room for the mailman and in unmarked cars among empty paper containers, waited in Mrs. Truman’s piano parlor watching movies and in more unmarked cars, “Wait while I talk to the Major.”

  So LaBrava waited. Holding the phone. Staring at a photograph of an elephant named Rosie pulling a cement roller over a Miami Beach polo field sometime in the 1920s.

  Jean Shaw and Maurice waited, seated at Maurice’s dining room table where the note waited, open, out of its envelope but creased twice so that it did not lie flat.

  Buck Torres was talking to his superior, the major in charge of the Detective Bureau, Miami Beach Police. When Torres came back on he said, “It wasn’t mailed, right? She found it in her car.”

  “This morning,” LaBrava said. “The windows were broken last night at ten past ten, that’s the exact time. But the note wasn’t found till this morning.”

  “You went out to the car last night . . .”

  “We heard it, glass breaking. We went out, but didn’t see the note. It was on the front seat. The car was locked, the guy had to break the side window to drop the note inside. This morning, when the lady went out to her car, she found the note.”

  “Nothing came in the mail.”

  “I just told you,” LaBrava said, “it was in the car.”

  “This’s the first one.”

  “Right.”

  “Nothing in the mail, no out-of-state phone calls.”

  “Look, it’s yours,” LaBrava said. “You want to bring the FBI in that’s up to you.”

  “The Major isn’t sure.”

  LaBrava shifted his weight from one foot to the other, looking at the elephant named Rosie pulling the cement roller. There were small figures, men wearing blazers and white trousers in the background of the photograph. He said, “Well, it wouldn’t be a bad idea if somebody looked at the note. You know what I mean? Got off their ass”—getting an edge in his tone—“since it’s a murder threat if the money isn’t paid.” He had to take it easy, stay calm, but it was hard. He knew what Torres was up against.

  Buck Torres said, “How much was it?”

  “I told you, six hundred thousand.”

  “I thought you said six thousand,” Buck Torres said, calm, and was silent.

  “You gonna choke?” LaBrava said. “If you’re gonna choke then get some help.”

  “Take it easy,” Torres said. “I’ll be over in a few minutes.” He paused and said, “Joe, don’t let anybody touch the note.”

  “I’m glad you mentioned that,” LaBrava said and hung up. He was on edge, out of practice. Or on edge because he felt involved in this, a personal matter. But he shouldn’t have said that about choking, or any of the dumb things he said. He said to Jean and Maurice, looking at Jean, “They don’t know if they should call in the FBI.”

  Jean straightened. She said, “Well, I do.”

  “Or if they should come here or you should go there,” LaBrava said, approaching the dining room table. “This’s a big one and it caught them by surprise. I can understand that, they have to stop and think for a minute. But Hector Torres, I know him, he’s very good; he’s their star, he’s closed homicides over a year old. He’ll look it over and then decide about the Bureau, whether they should bring in the feds or not. But technically it’s not their case—at least not yet. I think, the way Torres sees it, it would be better if he came here—and I mean without any show, no police cars—than if we went down to the station. In case the hotel’s being watched.”

  Jean said, “Well, it’s fairly obvious who to look for. It can’t be a
nyone else.”

  “Last night,” Maurice said, “I thought it was some kids got high on something. You see in the paper this morning, Beirut, they blew up a Mercedes this time with a car bomb. A white one. You wonder why they didn’t use a Ford or a Chevy.” He looked at LaBrava. “You didn’t see anybody?”

  “It was too dark.”

  “It’s Richard Nobles,” Jean said. “As soon as I read the note—I can hear him, the way he talks.”

  “The hay-baling wire,” LaBrava said. “His uncle, Miney Combs, when I was talking to him yesterday he mentioned hay-baling wire. He said Richard’s dad used to twist a few lengths of it together and beat him with it when he was a boy, to teach him humility.”

  “It didn’t work,” Jean said.

  “I looked at the note, that word jumped right out at me,” LaBrava said. “He doesn’t know how to spell it though.”

  He leaned over the back of a chair to look down at the typewritten message, a man who had experienced a great deal of waiting, a man who had read several thousand threatening letters at a desk in the Protective Research Section, Washington, D.C. This one was typed single-spaced on ruled steno notebook paper, a vertical red line down the center of the sheet, the top serrated where it had been torn from a spiral binding. The type was elite in a common serif-ed face. There were typos, capital letters struck over lowercase letters, as in the words Hefty and Hay. Only the one word, baleing, was misspelled. The type was clear, without filled-in or broken letters, or irregularities; though the touch of whoever had typed the note was not consistent, there were dark letters and several very faint ones. The I.D. technicians would photograph the note, print blow-ups, then check for latents with an iodine solution that would stiffen the paper and turn it a tie-dyed purple.

  LaBrava pictured Nobles hunched over a portable typewriter pecking the note out slowly, painfully, with two fingers. The message read:

  Your Life is Worth $600,000