Out of Sight

by Elmore Leonard

  “How you know that?”

  “I can tell.”

  “I was,” Kenneth said, moving his head in what might be a feint, “till I got my retina detached two times.” He was standing in front of her now, so close Karen had to look up at him.

  “What’d you fight, middleweight?”

  “Light to super-middleweight, as my body developed. You go about what, bantam?”

  “Flyweight,” Karen said, and saw him grin.

  “You know your divisions. You like the fights? Like the rough stuff? Yeah, I bet you do. Like to get down and tussle a little bit? Like me and Tuffy, before she got run over, we use to get down on the floor and tussle. I say to her, ‘You a good dog, Tuffy, here’s a treat for you.’ And I give Tuffy what every dog love best. You know what that is? A bone. I can give you a bone, too, girl. You want to see it? You close enough, you can put your hand out and touch it.”

  Karen shook her head. “You’re not my type.”

  “Don’t matter,” Kenneth said, moving his hand across his leg to his fly. “I let the monster out, you gonna do what it wants.”

  “Just a minute,” Karen said. Her hand went into her bag, next to her on the chair.

  Kenneth said, “Bring your own rubbers with you?”

  Her hand came out of the bag holding what looked like the grip on a golf club and Kenneth grinned at her.

  “What else you have in there, Mace? Have a whistle, different kinds of female protection shit? Telling me you ain’t a skeezer, or you don’t feel like it right now?”

  Karen pushed out of the chair to stand with him face-to-face. She said, “I have to go, Kenneth,” and gave him a friendly poke with the black vinyl baton that was like a golf club grip. “Maybe we’ll see each other again, okay?” She stepped aside and brushed past him, knowing he was going to try to stop her.

  And when he did, grabbing her left wrist, saying, “We gonna tussle first.”

  Karen flicked the baton and sixteen inches of chrome steel shot out of the grip. She pulled an arm’s length away from him and chopped the rigid shaft at his head, Kenneth hunching, ducking away, yelling “God damn,” letting go of her and Karen got the room she needed, a couple of steps away from him, and when he came at her she whipped the shaft across the side of his head and he howled and stopped dead, pressing a hand over his ear.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  Scowling at her, looking at his hand and pressing it to his ear again, Karen not sure if he meant because she hit him or because she turned him down.

  “You wanted to tussle,” Karen said, “we tussled.” And walked out.

  • • •

  MOSELLE CAME OUT OF THE DINING ROOM HOLDING HER ROBE together, shaking her head to show her brother some sympathy. She said, “Baby, don’t you know what that girl is?”

  Kenneth turned to her frowning, showing how dumb he was from getting his head pounded in the ring.

  “She some kind of police, precious. But nice, wasn’t she?”

  “You gonna tell Maurice?”

  “You the one she beat on, not me.”

  “Maurice is coming by later. We gonna do a job.”

  “If I’m upstairs, tell him I need grocery money.”

  The phone rang. Kenneth went into the den to answer.

  The doorbell rang. Moselle opened the door and there was Karen again, handing her a business card. Moselle looked at it as Karen said, “I wrote the hotel number on there—in case you run into Glenn.”

  Moselle slipped the card into the pocket of her robe. Kenneth didn’t ask who it was at the door and she didn’t tell him.

  • • •

  WHAT FOLEY COULDN’T UNDERSTAND, FOR A BIG INDUSTRIAl city like Detroit there were so few people on the streets. Sunday, Buddy said it was because it was Sunday and everybody was home watching the game. Today was Tuesday, there still weren’t many people walking around downtown. You could count them, Foley said. Buddy said he didn’t know, maybe they built the freeways and everybody left town. They were on their way out East Jefferson in the Olds, a Michigan plate on it now, Buddy the tour guide pointing out the bridge to Belle Isle, the old Naval Armory, the Seven Sisters—those smokestacks over there on the Detroit Edison power plant, they were called the Seven Sisters. There’s Waterworks Park. Buddy said, “You know Pontiac? Not the car, the Indian chief? Somewhere right around here he wiped out a column of British soldiers, redcoats, and they called the place Bloody Run.”

  Foley was half listening, looking around but seeing Karen, Karen’s picture in the paper, Karen in real life coming out of the trunk saying, “You win, Jack,” his favorite picture of her in his mind.

  It was snowing now, pretty hard.

  “We’re coming to it,” Buddy said, “there’s the fire station.” Now he was frowning, sitting up straight behind the wheel, windshield wipers going, Buddy squinting, trying to see through the snow coming down. He said, “Where’s the plant? It use to come all the way out to the street, with a bridge across to the offices, the administration building; it’s gone. There’s something way over there. Jefferson North. You see the sign? Yeah, way over there, some stacks. It must be the new one. I mean this was a big fucking plant, took up blocks around here, six thousand hourly, and it’s gone. You want to see where I lived?”

  “That’s okay,” Foley said.

  “We may as well turn around,” Buddy said, guided the Olds into a gas station and came out again to go back toward downtown. “It keeps coming down they’ll get the salt trucks out. The job I had in the old plant, I hooked up transmissions to the engines.”

  Foley had torn the picture out of the paper, Karen with her shotgun in the black outfit that looked familiar. He had it in the inside pocket of his suitcoat. He was imagining what would happen if he phoned her. She says hello and he says . . .

  “The engine comes down the line, let’s say it’s for an automatic. Okay, I take this brace in my left hand—it’s hanging from a track—work the hoist button with my right hand, get it in position so the pins in the brace line up with the holes they have to fit into in the transmission, jockey it around . . .”

  He’d say his name. Hi, this is Jack Foley, how you doing? Like that, keep it simple. She’d ask where he was or how he knew she was here. No, she’d say she was surprised, or she’d say something he wouldn’t expect. Either way he’d listen to her tone of voice.

  “Then you hit the button on the hoist again and swing the transmission over to the line, rock it, get it in position with the engine. You let go of the hoist then and pick up your air gun and run four bolts into the top of the housing—tsung tsung tsung, fire ’em in.”

  Or go over to the Westin and call her room. She’s not there, watch for her to come in the lobby. She had to come back sometime from whatever she was doing here. Unless she was through and she’d already left.

  “But let’s say you have the transmission on the hoist and the engine has moved past and it’s already out of reach. You had to pick the transmission up in your two hands—honest to God, you pick up this fucker weighing close to two hundred pounds—hump it over to the engine and run it on to the shaft.”

  Foley saw her crossing the lobby, coming toward him. She looks up. She sees him and stops and they stare at each other and it would be up to her if there was such a thing in this kind of situation as taking time to talk, taking a time-out, and he thought of making the sign for it, one hand flat on top of the raised fingers of the other hand, whether it made sense or not, letting it happen.

  “While I was working there the one-millionth car rolled off the line, a Chrysler Newport, buy one for forty-one hundred. It sounds like a deal, but that was a lot of dough then.”

  Foley listened to the wipers whacking back and forth.

  “Man, it’s coming down,” Buddy said. “You can barely see the RenCen, just the lower part.”

  “There stores in there, shops?”

  “Yeah, different ones.”

  “I think I’ll go over and look
around, maybe get a pair of shoes for this weather, some high-tops.”

  “It’s easy to get lost in there. You have to watch or you’re walking around in circles without knowing it.”

  “The hotel’s right in the middle, huh?”

  “Yeah, the tallest one there. The cocktail lounge I told you about’s on top. Revolves around. You can eat up there. Or there’re fast-food joints all around inside. You hungry?”

  “I may just get a drink.”

  “I got to call Regina,” Buddy said. “She’s not praying for the Poor Souls since you don’t hear that much about Purgatory anymore. She’s still saying rosary novenas I don’t fuck up. Twenty-seven days petition, what you’re saying the beads for, and twenty-seven days thanksgiving, whether you got what you’re praying for or not. I call, it means I haven’t been arrested. I called her one time on the twenty-seventh day, she goes, ‘See?’ Regina’s way of thinking, if I haven’t been busted I must not’ve done any banks. In other words her prayers have been answered and I’m not going to hell. So, as long as she knows I’m out it gives her something to do. Hey, but who knows? Maybe what she’s doing is saving my ass, or I should say my soul. Even though I’m not sure if there’s a hell anymore or not. You think there is?”

  “Just the one out in Palm Beach County that I know of,” Foley said. “I doubt anybody’s saying novenas for me, but I’m sure as hell not going back there.”

  “You can’t be that sure,” Buddy said.

  “Yeah, well, that’s the one thing I’ve made up my mind about.”

  “They put a gun on you you’ll go back.”

  “They put a gun on you,” Foley said, “you still have a choice, don’t you?”

  EIGHTEEN

  * * *

  THREE IN THE AFTERNOON, A SNOWSTORM BLOWING OUTSIDE, the restaurant on top the hotel was nearly empty, only one waitress, it looked like, on duty. Karen was ready to bet anything the waitress would seat her at a table near the three men in business suits having lunch, and she did: the young executive-looking guys talking away, laughing at something one of them said until Karen walked past, and then silence. Karen glanced over as she sat down next to the outside window wall of glass; for a moment she thought of asking for another table, not so close. But they were finishing with coffee and cognac, or something like it, and she was only going to have one drink. “Jack Daniel’s, please, water on the side.” She turned to see her reflection in the glass against an overcast sky, snow swirling, blowing in gusts, seven hundred feet above the city, down there somewhere. She heard one of them say, “Why not,” and then to the waitress, “Celeste, do us again, please, and put the young lady’s drink on our bill.”

  Karen remembered her dad reading a book, years ago, called Celeste, the Gold Coast Virgin. She turned to see them raising snifter glasses to her, smiling, pleasant-looking guys thirty-five to forty in dark business suits, two white shirts, the third one blue, as deep blue as his suit. She said, “Thanks anyway,” and shook her head.

  The waitress drifted back to Karen’s table. “They want to buy you a drink.”

  “I got that. Tell them I’d rather pay for my own.”

  “They’re okay,” the waitress said, getting girl-to-girl on her, “they’re celebrating a business deal.”

  “I’m not,” Karen said. “But listen, make it a double while you’re at it, Celeste. Water on the side.”

  She watched the three guys looking up at the waitress delivering the message. Now they were looking this way. Karen gave them a shrug and turned to watch the snow, thinking it was like the snow in a globe you shake and it swirls around, except that here you’re in the globe looking out. Ten minutes passed before her drink arrived. She splashed it with water from a small carafe, took a good sip and the one with the shirt as dark as his suit and a pale, rust-colored tie was standing at her table.

  He said, “Excuse me.”

  She liked his tie.

  “My associates and I made a bet on what you do for a living.” He smiled.

  Not his friends or his buddies, his associates.

  “And I won. Hi, I’m Philip.”

  Not Phil, Philip. Karen said, “If it’s okay with you, Philip, I’d like to just have a quiet drink and leave. Okay?”

  “Don’t you want to know what I guessed? How I know what you do for a living?”

  “To tell you the truth,” Karen said, “I’m not even mildly curious. Really, I don’t want to be rude, Philip, I’d just like to be left alone.” She turned again to the snowstorm.

  “You’re having a bad day, aren’t you? I understand,” Philip said, “and I’m sorry.”

  She watched his reflection turn and leave. The gentleman, polite, concerned, understanding—all she’d have to say is let’s go and they’d be out of here.

  The next one said, “I think I know why you’re depressed—if I may offer an observation.”

  So fucking sure of themselves.

  “You called on an account today, asked for the order and they said well, they were going to have to think about it.”

  It was her black suit; she had to be here on business, but didn’t look too happy about it.

  “I have a hunch you’re the new rep and your customer isn’t exactly knocked out by the idea of a young lady, even one as stunning as you, handling the account.”

  Yeah, it was the black suit.

  “Am I close?” Smiling. “Hi, I’m Andy.”

  Like that commercial on TV. Do you suffer the embarrassment of wetting your pants a lot? Hi, I’m June Allyson.

  “By the way, we’re simple ad guys. We flew in from New York this morning to pitch a major account.” Andy hunched over to look out at the storm, maybe to get closer, be able to see through it. “Hiram Walker Distillery, it’s right across the river, if Canada’s in that direction. There’s no way to tell, is there? Anyway, we presented a test-market campaign for their new margarita mix. We show this guy who looks like a Mexican bandido, the big Chihuahua hat, crossed bullet belts, and the headline says, ‘You don’t need no stinkin’ bartender.’ The client flipped. So, we’re having a little celebration here before going back tomorrow.”

  Karen listened. She said, “Andy? Really. Who gives a shit?”

  He frowned, and it was kind of a sympathetic expression, as he asked, “Why are you on the muscle? Want to tell me what happened?”

  With these guys it had to be about business.

  Karen said, “Beat it, will you?” and stared at Andy until he turned away. All she had to do was give in and they’d ask her to join them and she wasn’t in the mood. Sit there and smile. Okay, what do you do if you aren’t in sales? I’m a deputy U.S. marshal and you assholes are under arrest. No, they’d like that, so she’d have to keep it simple: tell them she was in law enforcement, a federal marshal, and they’d say wow, no kidding, and act sincere, interested—You’re packing?—until they began to play off whatever she said, show her how clever and entertaining ad guys were, finally getting to: Are you staying at the hotel?

  She was pretty sure the third guy would feel he had to make a pitch, or the other two would egg him into it. Sooner or later he’d be along.

  Karen drank with friends. Alone, she might once in a while accept a drink from a guy she didn’t know if he wasn’t an obvious geek. She had met Carl Tillman that way. He bought her a drink and turned out to be a bank robber: the one she told her dad about—after Burdon let her know they had Tillman under surveillance—asking her dad what she should do, and he said get a new boyfriend. She would have learned soon enough, though, Tillman wasn’t her type—even if he didn’t rob banks. It was the little annoying things about him, like saying “ciao” instead of so long or see you later, or the way he called her “lady” and it made her think of Kenny Rogers.

  If they’d leave her alone this wouldn’t be bad, a new experience, to sit warm in the middle of a snowstorm, a blizzard, sipping sour mash. But as she thought this, and felt it, slipping into a relaxed mood, another dark suit appeared, r
eflected in the window wall, the third guy here to try his line. Karen waited for his opener. Finally he said:

  “Can I buy you a drink?”

  Without turning to look she knew who it was.

  • • •

  EVEN HER INSIDES KNEW, A MUSCLE OR SOMETHING IN THE the middle of her body had grabbed hold and wouldn’t let go. What she had imagined and played with in her mind was happening, and she was afraid if she turned her head he wouldn’t be there or it would be one of those guys. She stared at his reflection until she had to find out and turned her head. Karen looked up at Jack Foley in his neat navy-blue suit, his hair not quite combed but looking great. She said, “Yeah, I’d love one,” and it was done, that easily. “Would you like to sit down?”

  He pulled the chair out looking at her. Now he was across from her, close, his arms resting on the edge of the table, neither of them saying anything, not even about the weather, the three ad guys watching—Karen knew it without looking at them—wondering what was going on here. They see a man walk in: white male, forty-seven, six-one, one-seventy, hair light brown, eyes blue, no visible scars . . . No, they didn’t, they saw a guy who looked a lot like them. Only different. Something about him . . . She had to try not to think of him with any reference to the past if this—whatever they were doing—was going to work. Not the past or anything happening beyond right now. But it was a fact, whether learned from reading his sheet or looking right at him, his eyes were a vivid blue. His teeth were white, white enough . . .

  He offered his hand saying, “I’m Gary,” and smiled.

  She hesitated for a moment and then went along, said, “I’m Celeste,” and had to smile with him, their smiles coming easily, in the mood to smile, sharing a secret no one else in the world knew.

  When she lowered her hand to the table, his hand came down to cover hers. She watched his expression as she brought her hand out slowly, his eyes not leaving hers, and laid her hand on his. The tips of her fingers brushed his knuckles, lightly back and forth. She said, “It takes hours to get a drink around here. There’s only one waitress.”