La Brava

by Elmore Leonard

"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 anyone 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

  You have three days to get the money. It must be used money with nothing smaller than a 20 or bigger than a $100 bill and don't say you can't get it. You are worth a sight more than that. Get 4000 100s, 3000 50s and 2500 20s. You are to put the money in a Hefty 30 gallon 2-ply trash bag. Put this one into another Hefty trash bag of the same size and tie it closed with some type of wire. Hay baleing wire is good. You will be told where to take the money. If you do not do as you are told you will die. If you try any tricks you will die. Look at your car. You know this is not just a threat. You have 2 DAYS to get the money and your car fixed. I am watching you.

  Buck Torres came with an I.D. technician, both of them in shirt sleeves, without ties, Torres with a jacket over his arm. The I.D. technician, young and respectful, brought their holstered revolvers out of a black athletic bag and they hooked them on--both at the point of the right hip--before approaching the note lying on the dining-room table, moving toward it almost cautiously.

  LaBrava, waiting a few feet away, watched them read the note, neither of them touching it. Jean and Maurice watched from the living room. Torres--white Latin male, forty-three, with hard-boned, tough-guy features that made him almost handsome--appeared older today. Immobile, lit by the hanging dining-room fixture, his face was a wood carving for several minutes, a man looking into a casket. He brought a notebook out of his hip pocket, sat down at the table and copied the typed message word for word. Then said something to the I.D. technician who used the eraser end of a pencil to slide the note and envelope into a file folder. The I.D. technician opened his black leather bag and Torres said to Jean, "Miss Shaw, we have to fingerprint you, if you don't mind, for elimination prints." He said, "You understand, if you're the only person who's touched the note."

  Jean said, "Joe made sure of that."

  Torres looked at LaBrava, waiting. "I'm glad you were here."

  LaBrava was glad too, about some things. He was glad he had felt this coming and had got the shots of Nobles and the boat-lifter. He was glad Torres was handling it; but he knew what was going to happen now and he wasn't glad about the waiting.

  There was no way to hurry it. There was no way yet to pull Richard Nobles out of a hotel room and throw him into a police car. LaBrava thought only of Nobles at this point. He believed once they had Richard they would also have the boat-lifter, the Marielito.

  The I.D. technician left. They waited for Jean to wash her hands, then waited again while she made coffee in Maurice's kitchen, LaBrava knowing he would keep his mouth shut through the next part and listen to things he already knew about.

  For the good part of an hour then, Jean told Buck Torres about Richard Nobles, Torres waiting for long pauses before he asked questions, always quietly, never interrupting, taking only a few notes. She had the photographs of Nobles ready, the ones LaBrava had given her. Torres studied them and looked at LaBrava.

  "The same guy?"

  "He's at the Paramount Hotel on Collins," LaBrava said. "Or was."

  While Torres was making a phone call LaBrava went downstairs to the darkroom. He came back with a black and white eight-by-ten of Cundo Rey standing on the beachfront sidewalk, one hand going up to his face, almost to his chin, his eyes alive, a startled expression, as he looked directly into the camera held by the guy in the curvy straw hat sitting in the wheelchair.

  "He's at the La Playa on Collins," LaBrava said. "Or was. I almost made him last night busting windows, but I wouldn't tell it in court. You don't want him for busting windows anyway. I'll give you the negatives, both guys."

  Buck Torres made another phone call. He came back and asked Jean about Cundo Rey. Jean shook her head. She stared at the photograph a long time but still shook her head. Finally Torres asked the question LaBrava had been waiting to hear:

  "Why six hundred thousand?"

  Jean didn't answer right away.

  Maurice said, "What difference does it make? It's a nice round number with a lot of oughts."

  Torres said, "So is five hundred thousand. So is a million."

  Jean said, "I've been wondering a
bout that. The only reason I can think of, my condominium is worth about six hundred." She paused, looked at Maurice as though for help, then back to Torres and said, "I hate to admit it, but I did tell him one time my apartment was paid for. Richard has a very... sort of homespun way about him."

  He does? LaBrava thought.

  "A country-boy charm."

  He remembered her saying that, in this room, telling about Nobles that first time.

  "He gives you the feeling you can confide in him, trust him," Jean said. "I think I told him the apartment was really the only thing I had, making a point that appearances can be misleading, that a lot of wealth down here is like a Hollywood set, a facade." She said, "Now that I think of it... I remember one day in the parking lot I ran into him. He mentioned a couple in the building had their condominium up for sale and were asking four hundred and fifty thousand. I told him they ran from about four to six hundred, as you go up. He knows, of course, I live on the top floor, oceanfront."

  LaBrava listened to her quiet delivery, Jean Shaw being contrite, owning up. He wondered if it was hard for her to tell it.

  "Obviously I misjudged him. As I told Maury, and Joe, you were there"--looking at him for a moment--"Richard comes on as a friendly, honest guy; so I was nice to him, I didn't treat him like one of the help."

  "But he intimidated you," Maurice said. "Kind a guy, you give him a hand he grabs it, he wants more. What'd I tell you you first mentioned the guy? I said he's out for something, he's gonna take you for all he can get."

  "You did," Jean said, "I know."

  "I told you, guys like that, they been working Miami Beach since the day they built the bridge. Now they hop on the freeway, go up to Boca, Palm Beach."

  Torres said, "Did he ever come right out and ask for anything?"

  Jean said no. "But he seemed to take for granted he could stop by whenever he felt like it. After a while he became--the only word I can think of is possessive."

  LaBrava remembered her saying, that first night, when she had told them about Nobles, The way he walks around the apartment, looks at my things.

  But she didn't say it this time.

  Torres said, "Have you seen him since you've been staying here at the hotel?"

  "No."

  "But he knows you're here."

  She said, "That's fairly obvious, isn't it?"

  Torres was thoughtful, arranging information in his mind and coming down to: "Six hundred thousand, it's a lot of money."

  And LaBrava remembered her saying that first night, Then there's nothing to worry about, because I don't have any.

  But this time she didn't mention that either.

  In the afternoon LaBrava took Maurice's car and drove past the Paramount Hotel and the La Playa. The Miami Beach detectives were hard to spot using confiscated cars rather than the plain unmarked Dodge and Plymouth models they drove on duty. He made one cop doing surveillance in a red Chevy cab, No. 208, knowing that official Central Cab numbers were in the 1100s or higher. When he returned to the Della Robbia a Southern Bell truck was parked in front.

  Torres was going according to the handbook: he'd got State Attorney OK for a wire tap on Maurice's line and was letting the telephone company do the installation. They would put a second phone in Maurice's apartment along with the tap. If a call came for Jean Shaw Maurice would use the second phone to call Southern Bell security and they'd trap Maurice's line to get the source of the incoming call. At the telephone switching office they would install Pen Registers on the lines of both the Paramount and La Playa hotels to record the numbers of all out-going calls; no court approval required. A police command post, with phones and a recorder, was located in an area that used to be part of the Della Robbia kitchen, next to the darkroom. LaBrava believed the taps and traps would prove to be a waste of time.

  Torres knocked on his door a few minutes past six. Torres said they had the Eldorado towed to a Cadillac dealership, dusted it for prints and left it to have the glass replaced. For a while then they sat with cans of beer, Torres quiet, tired; LaBrava patient, still in his waiting period. He had resolved, as a civilian, not to ask questions or offer opinions unless asked. But when Torres said, "Well, all we can do now is wait."

  LaBrava said, "For how long?"

  "There you are," Torres said. "Do it right I need almost half the Detective Bureau, pull three shifts a day at three locations. They're sitting in cars, hotel lobbies--all the bad guys hanging out would love to hear about it. See, if it goes down soon, right away--get the money in two days, deliver on the third--we're all set. Otherwise I have to bring in the federales."

  "He's not gonna call," LaBrava said.

  "You don't think so."

  "He was a cop. He knows about traps and voice prints."

  "Yeah, but he's strange," Torres said. "You ever hear of one like this? The guy wants a garbage bag full of money. He says, use hay-baling wire, it's good. Guy's right off the farm. Look how he tried to intimidate, use that old protection shit. Like he was trying to get caught."

  "You know where he is?"

  "Sure, he's at his hotel. He walks up to Wolfie's, walks back. Only place he's gone."

  "You got a tap on his room phone?"

  "His Honor the judge said no. So all we got is the Pen Register. He calls her we'll know it."

  "What about the boat-lifter?"

  "He hasn't been home."

  "He check out?"

  "No, he just hasn't been around. We had a guy owes us one go in and ask for him."

  "Why don't you take a look in his room?"

  "His Honor the judge said no."

  "What about the boat-lifter's car?"

  "Nowhere around. You can't miss that kind of car, but it's no place we've heard, Dade, Broward or Palm Beach."

  "What bothers you the most?"

  "About what?"

  "The whole thing. How it looks."

  "Is the guy this dumb? That's what I keep asking," Torres said. "You say he was a cop, he was a gypsy. Then a rent-a-cop, four bucks an hour. He's got a license for a three-fifty-seven, that's pretty interesting. But does he know how to work extortion or is he dreaming?"

  "What else?"

  "I don't believe he knows what he's doing."

  "Thank you, Jesus--you hope and pray. Please let him fuck up, quick. What if nothing happens?"

  "The Major says after three days we bring in the Bureau. Let the college boys run it. Send the letter to Washington, they analyze it sideways, upside down and tell us it's a Smith-Corona on steno notebook paper, done with a black ribbon. Oh, is that right? Hey, thanks. Let's go, boys, get out there and find that fucking Smith-Corona. The guy moves, Joe, or he's full of shit and he doesn't."

  "Maybe waits till some other time."

  "I got three days, that's all."

  "He contacts her again. Then what?"

  "She makes the delivery, we go with her."

  "With the six hundred thousand?"

  "There's no other way."

  "You can cut up paper."

  "What did the note say, Joe? You try any tricks you will die. We have to believe that. If we say, 'Oh, he's full of shit, don't believe it,' and it turns out the guy's crazy and he whacks her? We don't look so good. The woman, she looks terrible. Maybe the way it has to be, the way it turns out, he has to see the money before we can touch him. It has to look real. You know that. Long as we don't let the movie star or the money out of our sight. Then it's up to him, how good he is. But nobody's that good and can sound so fucking dumb."

  "You ever see one of her movies?"

  "I probably did, I don't remember. I know her name and she looks kind a familiar, that's all. Was she a big star?"

  "No, but she was good. I mean she was good."

  "I like to see her sometime."

  "What about the money? Where's she getting it? Six hundred thousand in cash?"

  "You kidding? Miami banks, they got that lying around in boxes. Same ones the dope guys used."

  LaBrava
didn't say anything for a moment. "She tell you she could get the money?"

  "I asked her, I said I don't want to get personal, but are you able to put up that much? She said yes. She said since we know who it is she doesn't consider it much of a risk. Also, considering the fact the guy's a dummy."

  "She said that?"

  "Words, you know, like that. She seems pretty sure Richard's going to fuck up."

  "But first she has to come up with the money," LaBrava said.

  "Where she gets it," Torres said, "she could have it under her bed, it's none of my business."

  "You're gonna copy the serial numbers."

  "Photograph the bills. I assume at the bank, I don't know yet. But if the guy gets away with them, they're gone."

  LaBrava was silent. He sipped his beer, looked out the window at the sky over the ocean, all that space in fading light; it was pure out there, nothing going on. Dirty ideas came about indoors. Now Torres looked out the window. He saw no answers there and turned back to LaBrava.

  "What bothers you the most?"

  "Same thing you're wondering. Is he that dumb?"

  "I have to believe it."

  "Or does he want you to think he's dumb?"

  "He doesn't have to try very hard."

  "But what if he's not the guy in charge?"

  Torres had to think about that one. He said, "Who, the boat-lifter?"

  "Cundo's been around a few days looking things over," LaBrava said. "The note's delivered, he drops out of sight. He gives you Richard to watch. Maybe to keep you busy while he operates."

  "I wish we could check him out, see what he did in Cuba."

  "He did time. According to David Vega by way of Guilli and Paco Boza."

  "You got more informants than I do."

  "I don't bust them."

  "Maybe you can find out some more about the boat-lifter, what he did."

  "Maybe all you have to do," LaBrava said, "is pick up Richard. Are you smarter than he is?"

  "Jesus, I hope so."

  "Put on a show, like you got hard evidence. Then tell him you'll trade off for the boat-lifter. Richard loves to make deals with policemen. Pick up the boat-lifter and put 'em in a room together. The one that comes out alive gets ten to twenty-five."