Cat Chaser by Elmore Leonard
Moran said, “You serious?”
“Put your shoes on. I’ll take you, bring you back.”
Moran said, “What about?”
Jiggs said, “George, come on. We get there you can play it any way you like. But don’t try and shit a shitter, okay?”
Moran put on his sneakers and stuck his Hawaiian shirt into his jeans. He walked with Scully in silence across the patio and through the dark office to the street. Corky was waiting by Jiggs’s two-tone Cadillac. Corky got in back as he saw them coming.
Walking around the front of the car, Jiggs said, “Sit in front.”
Moran had the door open before he saw Rafi in the back seat with Corky, Rafi hunched forward. He said, “George? I don’t want to go nowhere.” Trying to sound calm but scared to death. “George? Tell them, please.”
Jiggs said to Moran, “It’s okay. Get in the car.”
The servants would be speaking to each other in Spanish and stop when Mary entered the room. They always did this; but today, for some reason, it had an air of conspiracy. The phone would ring. Altagracia would tell Mary it was someone for Mr. de Boya. Only once did she call Mary to the phone. She spoke to a man from the company replacing the window panes, half-listened to an involved tale of glass availability, why they couldn’t come out until later in the day. Twice she tried Moran’s number and got no answer.
And after that, for no apparent reason, the phone went dead. She called the telephone company on Andres’s private line, in his den, with Corky standing by. Several times she returned to the den to try Moran again and each time there would be Corky. Finally she said, “Excuse me, will you? I have to make a call.” But he didn’t move.
Corky said, “I have to stay here if Mr. de Boya wants me. He say not to leave for any reason.”
She said, “It’ll take me two minutes.”
He said, “Yes, please,” offering the phone. “But I have to stay here until the other phone is fixed.”
She said drily, “Mr. Corcovado, if he can’t reach you while the line’s busy, why do you have to stay here?”
Corky said, “It’s what he told me.”
Is this your house? Mary thought. She said, “Well, in that case I’m going out. Do you stay by the phone or do you have to drive me?”
He said, “I’m sorry, Señora. Mr. de Boya say we not suppose to go out. Because what happen last night.”
She said, “That’s not the reason.”
Mary went into the kitchen to speak to the cook about dinner, tell her not to bother, and came face to face with two men she had never seen before. They sat at the butcher-block table having coffee. Hispanic, confident, shirts open beneath summer jackets, both wearing strings of red and white beads. They looked her over but did not get up. Mary left the kitchen.
She felt she was in someone else’s house. Corky, sitting behind Andres’s desk now, told her the two were the Mendoza brothers, Chino and Nassin. They had been hired to replace the two Mr. de Boya fired after the boat dock was exploded. He told her the Mendoza brothers were Cuban and only one of them spoke English, but not very much.
Mary said, “Do they know who I am?”
Corky said, “Yes, of course.”
“Who was it shot at the house last night?”
“We don’t know that. It happens.”
“And cut the telephone line?”
“The repairman tell the Mendozas he think it was a storm.”
“There was no storm.”
“Yes, then maybe it broke itself.”
“Why can’t I make a phone call in private?”
“I don’t know.” Corky shrugged; he seemed to be getting used to her. “Why don’t you ask your husband?”
She mixed a vodka and tonic and took it out to the sundeck, in the early evening, the sky clearing now that the day was almost past, the wind down to a mild breeze stirring the acacia trees. The two new ones, the Mendozas, watched her from the seawall, where the dock had been. They moved off in opposite directions still looking toward the house. Mary felt a knot of anger. She wanted to scream something as she sat ladylike, yell at the Mendozas, “What’re you looking at!”
And waste it, she thought, on bodyguards who wouldn’t understand or care if they did. Save it for Andres. The hell with writing down what she wanted to say—writing neatly in her precise up-and-down script. Let him have it with simple truth, you’re leaving and that’s it. Tell him right out, face to face. If he asks if it’s because of Moran say yes. Absolutely. She was in love with Moran. She was so in love with him it didn’t matter what other reasons there might be. Right now Moran was the reason. And Andres would say . . . The hell with what he’d say! Tell him and get it over with. Andres would think what he wanted to think anyway.
Which was pretty much what she had done six years ago. Talked herself out of all her misgivings, talked fast with the lure of everlasting security in the back of her mind and rationalized up front, telling herself marriage to Andres would be—God help her—fun. If she had known Moran then—if they’d been simply good friends, which would have been impossible, but just say they were—and she had announced she was going to marry Andres, Moran would have said . . .
With a straight face he would have said, “You’re gonna marry a general, uh?” That’s all.
And that would have done it.
She wanted to keep her anger intact, ready to level it at Andres when he got home. But she couldn’t think of Moran and stay mad. She smiled to herself for a time. She looked out at darkness smothering the sunset and felt the smile dry up within her.
Fear was something else.
She’d have to ask him: Can you be afraid of something you think is absurd? No, she wouldn’t have to ask, she knew the answer. If the thing that’s scaring you doesn’t know it’s absurd you can laugh all you want, that won’t make it go away.
Mary was upstairs when she heard the double horn beeps: Andres’s way of announcing, when he drove himself, he was home. She went into Andres’s bedroom, the lights off, and looked out a front window to see his immaculate white Rolls in the drive below. Andres was already out of the car talking to the two Mendoza brothers. She didn’t see Corky with them. After a few moments they walked off toward the side of the house. It surprised her at first; then decided Andres was showing them around the property. But where was Corky? She hadn’t seen him in some time.
Sitting in darkness her gaze moved to the massive shape of Andres’s king-size bed mounted on a marble pedestal and remembered her reaction, the first time, sitting on the edge—a waterbed?—trying not to smile. And Andres’s serious expression, Andres saying to her, “It’s more than a bed . . .”
The bed delighted him without altering his expression. He came to her sitting on the bed, raised a knee awkwardly and pushed her back. His face close to hers he murmured, “We make love on millions of dollars,” and finally smiled. But it was morning before he explained what he meant. Making love on millions . . . talking to his new bride in a boastful way, playful for Andres, but not failing to impress it was their secret, uh? His lidded gaze staring into her eyes. “No one else must know.” She wondered now if his words had implied a threat. Or if making love on millions was still possible to do.
She would make love to Moran on cement. On nails.
And began to think of another bed not so large . . . the lights going out in her hotel suite, Moran calling to her in the dark, finding her as she slipped into his outstretched arms. She thought of them falling into the bed together, Moran trying to get their clothes off as she held onto him . . .
She saw the beam of headlights in the trees and moments later Jiggs Scully’s Cadillac rolled up the drive toward the house. It came to a stop behind Andres’s car and the inside light went on as the doors opened.
Her breath caught as she saw Moran get out.
Now the others came out of the car. She recognized Rafi. The car doors slammed and they were in darkness. As Mary watched, the four figures moved off toward the north
“He asks you,” Moran said, close to Rafi, “you don’t know anything, what he’s talking about.”
“All I did,” Rafi said, his whisper hoarse, straining, “I write something, that’s all.”
“No, you didn’t. You don’t know anything.”
Corky was waiting for them at an opening in the hedge and Moran shut up. He could hear Jiggs Scully behind them on the gravel. He wasn’t worried about Jiggs. It had been a quiet ride all the way and there was no reason to start talking now. Past the hedge they followed patio lights that were hooded and eerie in the close darkness, dull spots of yellow, misty in the tropical growth. The path brought them to the swimming pool, illuminated pale green among ledge rock and palm trees, the man-made filtered lagoon that looked to Moran like a movie set. Though the figure standing at the end of the pool were real enough, de Boya and two men Moran had never seen before. The two, the Mendoza brothers, came this way as Corky turned and gestured to Rafi, saying something to him in Spanish. Rafi didn’t move.
Scully was next to Moran now. He said to Rafi, “I think Mr. de Boya wants to ask you something; that’s all.”
Rafi looked around, helpless, as though in pain.
One of the Mendoza brothers gestured now, pointing, and Rafi moved away from Moran to the edge of a curved section of the free-form pool, the water clearly illuminated to its tiled depths. Rafi looked down, then across the curved corner to de Boya who stood with his hands in the deep side pockets of a linen jacket.
His voice low Moran said, “Giving us the stare.”
“That’s what it is,” Jiggs said, barely moving his mouth, “the old Santo Domingo stare. Suppose to, you look at it long enough, shrivel up your balls.”
Twenty feet away de Boya stood without moving, the pale reflection of the pool lights shimmering on his white jacket, part of his face in shadow.
It began to look like the village players to Moran. Were they serious? He said, “Hey, Andres, what’s going on?”
De Boya didn’t answer.
If he gave a nod Moran didn’t see it. He was looking at de Boya in the same moment one of the Mendozas stepped in behind Rafi, gave him a hip and Rafi went into the pool screaming a sound or a word in Spanish. He came up flailing the water, gasping, trying to scream, his eyes stretched open. Moran was yelling now, “He can’t swim,” trying to get to the edge of the pool, but both the Mendozas turned to hold him off. He yelled again, “He can’t swim, goddamn it!” and tried to get through the two Mendozas with shoulders and elbows, grabbing at a shirt and feeling a string of beads come apart in his hand. As he tried to lunge past the other one stuck a gun in Moran’s stomach. He felt the barrel dig in as he saw Rafi struggling with his head thrown back, helpless, going under and coming up, going under again. Moran saw Andres watching, Corky watching, the two Mendozas turned from him watching. None of them moved. When Rafi’s arms stopped flailing and he began to sink deeper they continued to watch in silence, without moving, staring at the string of bubbles coming out of Rafi’s mouth, his body settling to the bottom now, rolling gently from side to side, eyes sparkling in the pool lights, eyes looking up at them sightless as the last air bubbles rose from his open mouth.
Moran listened to the sound of a single-engine plane in the night sky, the sound taking forever to fade. He didn’t try to think of anything to say. He felt a hand touch his arm. He saw de Boya staring at him. He heard Scully’s voice very quietly say, “Come on.”
He saw de Boya staring at him.
He felt the hand grip his arm tighter. “George? Let’s go.” Still looking at de Boya staring at him. He was thinking now, Yes, he’d better go; turned and walked off with Scully, Scully saying, still quietly, “Let’s take it easy now, George, not do anything you be sorry for, okay? Let’s just get out of here before you say anything. Then you can say anything you want, that’ll be fine, George, but not right at the moment . . .” Scully’s voice soothing him, talking him all the way out to the car.
They were on Interstate 95, heading north to Pompano before Scully spoke again. He said, “That little spic makes a point he makes it, don’t he?”
Moran was thinking of things he might have done or tried to have done. He was thinking of Mary in that house. He was thinking of what he would say when he called the police. He remembered the number, 442-2300. He wondered if the same impersonal voice would answer and if the voice would change, indicate a person inside, when he said he wanted to report a murder.
Jiggs said, “George, don’t do what you’re thinking. They get those funny calls all the time. Sergeant puts his hand over the phone. ‘Who knows a guy name Moran? Got a swimming pool murder.’ No, George, our friend Rafi Amado’s on his way to the Gulf Stream right now and I don’t mean the racetrack. The cops go to Seven hunner Arvida Parkway, nobody knows what you’re talking about there. ‘Somebody drown in the pool? Well, the pool’s right outside here, officer, you want to take a look.’ “
Moran said, “Tell me something.”
“What’s that, George?”
“How’d he know Rafi couldn’t swim?”
Jiggs took a few moments. He said, “George, in the light of eternity, what difference’s it make? The guy comes flying in from Santo Domingo with the hot setup, he’s gonna try to make a score, right? It’s called to my attention and I think to myself, What is this? This guy know what he’s doing?”
“And you hired him,” Moran said.
“Well, actually I never met the guy in my life till tonight. He was Nolen’s boy.”
“You’re using Nolen,” Moran said. “What’s the difference?”
“George, you got a suspicious mind and now you’re getting off on something else,” Jiggs said. “What we’re talking about here, all the guy does is spray-paint some bullshit on de Boya’s gatepost. It doesn’t matter the guy can swim or not, what I want you to look at here is the way de Boya handled it. He call the cops? It’s an act of vandalism, you get a fine, maybe ninety days chopping weeds for the county—uh-unh, de Boya believes in capital punishment.”
“You delivered him,” Moran said.
“You want to look at it that way,” Jiggs said, “I offered him up, like a sacrifice so you can see where we’re at here.”
Moran opened the car door.
“George, just a minute. Let’s consider the documented fact you got something going with the guy’s wife.”
Moran slammed the door closed and Jiggs raised his hand, a peace sign.
“I’m not questioning your intentions, George. Where I live down on the South Beach—Hotel Lamont, sounds like class, uh? You should see it—down there you fall in love with some old Jewish broad on food stamps or you go uptown a mile and find a hooker. No, true love is beautiful, George; but in seeking it you got to be sure and keep your nuts outta the wringer.” Jiggs paused and the inside of the car was quiet except for a faint ticking sound, the engine cooling down. “I’ll bet you asked his wife—I’ll bet it came up in conversation and you asked her where the general keeps his going-away money. Am I right?”
Moran opened the car door again.
“The only point I want to make about this evening, George—de Boya does that to a spray-painter, what’s he gonna do to a guy he finds out’s been jazzing his wife, room one sixty-seven the Holiday Inn? He’s already pretty sure. The man’ll believe anything I tell him.”
Moran got out of the car this time. He said, looking in at Scully, “You want to tell him, Jiggs? Tell him.” He swung the door closed and walked off toward the motel office.
Maybe it was the only way. Let it happen.
16
* * *
TRUJILLO HAD SAID he was riding a tiger and if he ever fell off the tiger would devour him.
“Please don’t talk like that; put it out of your mind,” Andres had told the old man, the Benefactor, who not only ruled his country for thirty years he owned it and was wor
Andres had tried for the next few days to transfer bank accounts and titles to property, searching for people he could trust to help him, and finally had to run for his life to Miami by way of San Juan with less than twenty thousand in cash and a cardboard box of photographs.
They hung in his study, all that was left of that time. Photos in black and white of Andres with Trujillo, with Peron, with Batista, with Anastasio Somoza, with Pérez Jimenez of Venezuela. A photo with U.S. Marine officers taken when U.S. Marines maintained tranquility and could be trusted. There was the photo of Andres holding the submachine gun that belonged to Trujillo’s brother, Arismendi. They would go out on Trujillo’s yacht—Andres and Arismendi, who was called Petán—and fire the submachine gun at the sharks off Monte Cristi, the sharks gorging on the rotten meat the sailors threw over the side, the two of them having a splendid time blowing the man-eaters to pieces.
Here it was another kind of boat-ride with a different species of shark circling, waiting for the boat to tip over. Riding this boat or riding a tiger it was the same end if you weren’t careful. Trujillo had got old and failed to listen, failed to keep his enemies frightened of him. Which was easy enough to do.
Choose one from a group of suspected enemies and shoot him. Or drown him, it didn’t matter. The others would look at the ground or close their eyes, not wanting to meet the eyes that would choose the next one.
But he had stared at Moran and Moran had not looked at the ground or at the man drowned in the pool. Moran had stared back at him. Perhaps he should have given Moran to the Mendoza brothers to be taken to sea with Rafi. It was possible Moran was not involved in the plot, but Jiggs Scully had made a point saying, “Either way you got to do Rafi. So let Moran watch and have second thoughts in case he is involved. Give him pause, as you say.” Jiggs said he had questioned Rafi and there was nothing to learn from him, he was a “third stringer.” Whatever that meant.