Cat Chaser

by Elmore Leonard

  They talked while they were getting dressed.

  She told him the police were in and out of the house all day yesterday investigating the explosion, questioning her, the help, Andres, mostly Andres. Their tone wasn’t suspicious but their questions were, trying to find out what Andres was into, if Dominican revolutionary or anti-government factions had ever threatened him before. Moran let her tell what she knew, Mary standing at the mirror brushing her hair.

  Then he told her about Jiggs Scully in the Mutiny Bar, and she put the brush down and stood very still. Moran ended with a flat statement.

  “He knows Andres has at least a couple million hidden in the house. He wants us to tell him where it is. If we do he’ll go in, take the money and he’ll kill Andres, as a favor.”

  She said, “A favor,” wide-eyed.

  “We sail off into the sunset and live happily ever after.”

  The room was as silent as he could remember a room being silent, going back to when he was a little boy lying in bed during his afternoon nap, wide awake. Mary walked to a chair but didn’t sit down; she turned to Moran again. He was sitting on the side of the bed with a tennis shoe in his hand.

  “I have to tell him,” Mary said.

  He gave her time.

  “You understand that, don’t you? I have to.”

  “The only thing I’m sure of,” Moran said, “somebody’s trying to use us. A guy talks to me out of the side of his mouth like I’m one of the boys. Why? As far as he knows I’m a decent, law-abiding citizen. It’s true you and I happen to have something going—”

  “That’s quaint, George. Something going.”

  “Something special, soon to be—you know—out in the open, aboveboard. Let me just tell you the rest, okay? The question is, first, why would he think we’d go along?”

  “That’s right, he’d be taking a chance,” Mary said.

  “A big one. But let’s say we do. We tell Jiggs where the money’s hidden and close our eyes. What happens then?”

  “You just said—he’ll kill Andres.”

  “Are we positive?”

  Mary frowned, shaking her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “What if the whole thing’s your husband’s idea?”

  She hesitated now. “You think Andres is using Scully?”

  “You go to your husband and tell him his life’s in danger. What’s the first thing he asks you?”

  “God, you’re right.”

  “You didn’t hear it at the Dadeland shopping mall. But say you tell him,” Moran said, “and now it’s confirmed, Andres knows we’ve been seeing each other. What does he do then?” He saw a different look come into Mary’s eyes. “You know him better than I do, but he doesn’t seem the type that loses gracefully. What does he do to you when you tell him?”

  Mary’s reaction surprised him: the look of calm that came into her eyes as she listened.

  “You’re right, it sounds like him. It’s the roundabout way he thinks . . . the son of a bitch.” She sat down in the chair, thoughtful.

  “But we aren’t sure,” Moran said. “There’s the matter of your dock blowing up. Would Andres go that far?”

  Mary shook her head. “No, he’s not gonna do something that makes him look vulnerable. Unless—why would it have to be part of Andres’s scheme?”

  “All I know is,” Moran told her, “Jiggs said he’d make the hit look political. Like some revolutionary group out to get your husband . . . But why does he tell me all this if there’s a good chance I’m gonna tell you and you’re gonna tell Andres?”

  She said, “He must be awfully sure we’d go along. Or it’s worth the chance. He can always deny it. Which brings us back to the only question that means anything. Do I tell Andres or not?”

  Mary looked like a young girl sitting in the chair, biting her lower lip now, though more preoccupied than frightened: an imaginative girl wondering how to tell her parents she was pregnant.

  She said, “If something did happen to Andres . . .”

  He said, “Mary, we don’t need help. We don’t have to hope he gets a heart attack or falls off his boat. All we have to do is walk away.”

  She said, “I know. I’m not hoping for anything like that,” and looked at him with clear eyes. “But it would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

  14

  * * *

  NOLEN AND RAFI HAD BEEN DRINKING the better part of two days and were both drunk when Moran found them in the early evening. Nolen was keeping it going. Moran saw it right away: Nolen had to stay up there because if he came down now he’d crash and burn.

  They were having a private party in oceanfront Number One with scotch and rum, Coke cans, a bowl of watery ice and potato chips on the coffee table and the smell of marijuana in the room. There was no sign of Loret. They were wound-up drunk: Nolen bare to the waist, stoop-shouldered skin and bones, his slack cheeks sucked in on a joint; Rafi wearing a scarf rolled and tied as a headband, the ends hanging to his chest, his sporty Dominican shirt open all the way. Nolen was calling him Ché.

  “You meet Ché? George, shake hands with Ché Amado, one of your premier fanatics, brought here by special request to combat the toadies of oligarchic imperialism, but don’t ask me what it means.”

  “You didn’ know that,” Rafi said to Moran. Rafi sat slumped in a plastic chair, feet extended in glistening, patent-leather zip-up boots. “You think I come here to bite you for money. It work pretty good, didn’ it? I had you fool.”

  “You had me fool, all right,” Moran said. “I thought you were just a pimp. Which one of you did the job on the boat dock?”

  “That was him,” Rafi said, “he’s the powerman.” He squinted up at Moran and said, “What did you say before it?”

  “That’s powderman,” Nolen said, “in the trade,” and gave Moran a sly look. “I hear we’re in business. Is that right? I heard it from a certain party, but I’d rather hear it from you . . . Where you going?”

  Moran got a glass from the kitchen and came back to sit at the opposite end of the sofa from Nolen. He poured himself a scotch; he would probably need it.

  “You’re over your head,” Moran said. He drank the scotch and poured another one.

  Nolen was grinning. “So what else is new?”

  “Stick to acting.”

  “It’s what I’m doing, man. What’s the difference?”

  Aw shit, Moran thought.

  He wondered why he’d ever had a good feeling about Nolen, why he’d been comfortable with him and went for that grunts together, old war buddies grinning their way through life bullshit; he wasn’t anything like Nolen. Nolen was pathetic trying hard to be tragic and any more of him, Moran knew, would be a bigger pain in the ass than he could bear. He wanted to hear about it though, what they were into. He would hardly have to encourage them and it would come sliding out of their mouths with alcohol fumes.

  “What’d you use,” Moran said to Nolen, “on the boat dock?”

  Nolen said, “On the dock?” focusing his eyes. “I was gonna go with ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, little dynamite, and light up the sky. But if these people’re suppose to be pros, I thought no, you gotta go with a nonhydroscopic plastique, you dig? Slip in there in a Donzi, half-speed all the way. Me and my shipmate, this spic that steared—excuse me, Ché—guy was wearing sunglasses at night. You head due south from near Dinner Key where we launched till you get the Cape Florida light off your port bow, then hang a right and there you are. Drift in . . . I’ve already run the det-cord through the blocks, they got adhesive backing on ’em now, stick ’em flat under the boards but use a linear-shape charge on the pilings so it’ll cut ’em off clean. Twelve pounds of plastique, could’ve done the house. I’m scared of timers, so we drifted down by Matheson Hammock and I blew it remote control.” Nolen made an elaborate exploding sound on the roof of his mouth with his jaw clenched. “The dock’s gone.”

  Moran said, impressed, “You remember all that from your paratrooper days?”

>   “No, I did a bit in A Bridge Too Far and hung around with the special effects guys. It’s all make-believe, George.”

  “What’d you blow it for?”

  “Show him somebody means business.”

  “Who did the lettering?”

  “Ché. Right, Ché?”

  “De nada,” Rafi said.

  “Don’t put yourself down,” Nolen said. “You did it, man. Our silent partner goes, ‘What’s he gonna write?’ I told him don’t worry about a thing, this man’s been writing on walls all his life, fuera or muerte to whoever happens to be around that pisses him off. The man’s ace of the spray paint. You see his work?”

  “Your silent partner,” Moran said. “Who you talking about, Scully?”

  Moran saw Nolen’s fuzzed gaze shift to Rafi and return to stare at him. Nolen shook his head from side to side. The drunk being secretive. But Rafi was even drunker and didn’t notice; he was eating his ice. Nolen pulled himself out of the sofa, took Rafi’s glass from him—Rafi still holding his hand up, cupped—fixed another rum and Coke and put the glass back in Rafi’s hand. Nolen stumbled sitting down. They were both in bad shape.

  Moran could not see Jiggs Scully bringing these two into the game. Unless he had a special use for them.

  “We’re gonna publicize Mr. de Boya’s past sins,” Nolen said and gave Moran a stage wink, obvious enough to be seen in the back row, “unless he comes across with a generous piece of change . . . Isn’t that right, Ché?”

  “ ‘Less he pays,” Rafi said.

  “Tell George what the man did,” Nolen said, “when he was in charge down there.”

  “What he did?” Rafi said. “He was the head of the Cascos Blancos, he sent out the death squads to get people he don’t like or people who talk against Trujillo. He take them to La Cuarenta in Santo Domingo for the torture. Sometime he take them to Kilometer Nueve, the army torture place at San Isidro.”

  “Tell him what de Boya did to people,” Nolen said.

  “Well,” Rafi said, “he like to sew the eyelids to the eyebrows and put them in a light. He like to beat them with Louisville Sluggers. He like to put acid on them sometimes. He like to castrate people. He like to take the nipples and pull them out and cut them off with scissors.”

  Moran said, “Is that what happened to you?”

  “No, no, he do that to girls. Cut the nipples off. Men he cut everything off with—how do you say it, these big tijeras?”

  “Shears,” Nolen said.

  “Yeah, chears. Cut off your business with them. I had a uncle that happen to. Then when General de Boya finish with them he have them killed and thrown from the cliff into the sea to be eaten by the sharks. You want to find out what happen to somebody, you ask, nobody knows. They say he’s gone to Boca Chica to visit the tiburones, the sharks. Or sometime to Monte Cristi. That was twenty years ago—the sharks still come looking for General de Boya to feed them. He like to put ants on people, too.”

  Rafi rolled his eyes back.

  “I don’t like to think about it.”

  “Have a drink,” Nolen said. The answer to most things.

  Rafi took a drink. “I don’t feel so good. Maybe I go lie down; I’m feeling tired.” He stood up unsteadily, spilling some of his drink.

  Moran watched him. He wanted to get up but didn’t have the energy; the scene was depressing. He watched Rafi shuffle into the bedroom, Nolen calling after him, “Don’t throw up on the floor, Ché. You hear? Go in the baño.”

  He said to Moran, “I don’t know what it is about them, partner, those people just don’t hold the juice.”

  Moran watched Nolen pour himself another scotch.

  “What’re you gonna use him for?”

  “He’s our spray painter, man. You see his work?”

  “But he doesn’t know Scully.”

  “Jiggs wants to see how he works out first. So I told Rafi we got a guy on the inside, but he doesn’t want his identity known just yet.”

  “I don’t imagine he would,” Moran said. “All right, what’s the deal? What’re you going after?”

  “Jiggs says he told you.”

  “Come on, this isn’t your kind of a thing.”

  “Is that right? Tell me what I’m saving myself for. It’s the best part I’ve read for in ten years. Shit, I don’t even have to act tough.”

  “He’s using you,” Moran said.

  “Jesus, I hope so. I need to be used, man.”

  “You know what he asked me to do?”

  “I sent you to him, didn’t I, for the interview?”

  “Come on—you know what he wants?”

  “Yeah, he wants you to ask your lady where her husband hides his cash. What’s hard about that? Shit, call her up right now.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Moran said. He drank down his scotch and sat back. “How does he know . . . Hey, you listening?”

  “Yeah, I’m listening. What?”

  “How does Jiggs know she won’t tell her husband what’s going on? How does he know I won’t tell him?”

  “Well, shit,” Nolen said, “because I told Jiggs you’re my bud, we see eye to eye. I said sure, George’s the old Cat Chaser, we served down in the D.R., man. I told him it was me almost put out your lights with the one-oh-six and Jiggs got a kick out of that. He sees the humor in life, everybody busting their ass trying to score off each other. I told you he’s a funny guy and I was right, huh?”

  “Yeah, he’s funny,” Moran said. “But I still don’t understand. Why would he trust me? Tell me a story like that?”

  “I just told you. And you want the husband out of the way, don’t you? Jesus Christ, or else I came in late and missed something.”

  “Look,” Moran said, trying to keep Nolen’s attention. “You listening to me?”

  “Yeah, I’m listening.” Pinching the roach, sucking his cheeks in with a sound like the north wind.

  “I’m not in it,” Moran said.

  “What happened?” Nolen grunting the words as he held his breath. “You change your mind? There’s nothing to be scared of.”

  “I never was in.”

  Nolen expelled smoke in a long sigh. “Well, Jiggs says you gave him a hell of an idea. He told me. Make the man run and head him off at the pass. I said to Jiggs, I told you he’s good, he’s a fighting leatherneck. Jiggs says he didn’t think much of the idea at first, frankly, ‘cause what if the man took off in his boat? Jiggs doesn’t like to have anything to do with boats. He goes, ‘I don’t want no parts of them fuckers.’ He gets seasick he goes out. But then, hey, with the dock gone the man can’t bring his boat in, can he? He runs, he’s got to go by car. And when he does, Jiggs says he’ll be way ahead of him . . . He likes you,” Nolen said.

  Aw shit. Moran felt heavy, out of shape, and the scotch wasn’t helping at all. He said, “Nolen?”

  “What?”

  “I’m not in. I didn’t give Jiggs anything. You understand? What he’s doing, he’s using you. I don’t know for what, but when he’s through he’ll dump you. He can’t afford not to.”

  “We made a pact,” Nolen said. “Us against them.”

  Moran tried again. He said, “You told me who he works for, what he does for a living, right? He leans on people. He breaks their bones. Isn’t that right? That’s what you told me.”

  “He used to.”

  “Okay. But does he sound like the kind of guy you can trust? You can put your life in his hands?”

  “Jiggs says we’re his kind,” Nolen said. “He’s sick and tired of the guineas and the spics raking it in, taking everything, guys like de Boya sitting on top. Look at the guy. He’s a fucking death squad all by himself. And he’s married to your lady. What more like incentive you want, for Christ sake?”

  “Don’t call her my lady, all right?”

  “What should I call her?”

  It annoyed him, “my lady.” He never liked the expression; but that was something else. “Think a minute,” Moran said. “What if somebod
y else put Jiggs up to this and he’s playing a game with you?”

  “That’s it, man, a game.” Nolen was half-listening. “It’s us against them. Shirts against the skins, man. They’re swarthy fuckers, but they got white legs . . . if you know what that means on the basketball court can figure it out.” He gave Moran a feeble grin. Then came alive again. “We’ll get little Loret some pom-poms, she’ll be the cheerleader. Muerte a de Boya, Fight! The old locomotive. M-U, M-U, M-U-E-R; T-E, T-E . . . What do you think? Get her a short little red and white pleated skirt . . .”

  “Where’s Loret?”

  “Jesus, that’s right. She hooked up with some guy at the Fontainebleu, guy in the lounge smoking a cigar. She gives him the eye, says excuse me, going to take a leak and I haven’t seen her since. I know, you told me. But don’t say it, all right? I hate guys like that. Have to rub it in.”

  Moran said, “What am I gonna have to do to get you to understand something? You dumb shit.”

  Nolen grinned, eyes out of focus. He held up the dirty stub pinched between his fingers. “How ’bout a smoke? Good stuff.”

  “It makes me hear tires squeal when I’m barely moving,” Moran said. “No, this’ll do me.” He raised his glass. “Like it’s doing you in. I don’t want to sound preachy—”

  “Then don’t.”

  “But I got to tell you. You’re in a no-win situation. The best you can get out of this if you’re lucky, I mean if you come out alive, would be something like fifteen to twenty-five at Raiford. Hard time.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” Nolen said. “I’m having fun.”

  Moran stared at him before easing back in the sofa. All right then. Okay. . . .