Mr. Paradise

26

Montez was sitting in the lexus with a kid named Ricky, fourteen, tall with big hands, Baggies hanging on him. They were parked across the street from Kelly's building and Montez was showing Ricky signed pictures of Kelly in panties and thongs.

"You know what a small world it is?" Montez said. "I'm thinking of how I can show you Kelly so you know what she looks like, and I remember this girl Emily works at the Rattlesnake. I'd see her when I felt like some white pussy. Know what I'm saying? Something different, change my luck. I remember Emily collects autographs of celebrities come in the Snake. She ask can she shoot them with her Polaroid. They most all say yeah, smile at her and sign the picture. Now here's Kelly living a few blocks from the Snake. I'm thinking she must go there sometimes. So I call my friend Emily this morning, ask her does she know Kelly Barr. Emily says she's got more pictures of Kelly than anybody as Kelly's her favorite celebrity. She even got the latest pictures of her signed just the other day. So I go over and borrow her Victoria's Secret," Montez said, "so you know what she looks like she comes out of the building."

Fourteen-year-old Ricky said these were fine-looking bitches in here. He wouldn't mind having him some of 'em.

"Her car's over here in the lot," Montez said, "the black VW. See it? She come out and heads for the car, you get over there, start wiping off her windshield. There's a hand towel on the backseat here. You a talker, dog, turn on the personality. See can you find out where she's going and when she's coming back."

Ricky said, "What if she walks someplace?"

"Follow her."

"What if she don't come out?"

"She still at home by dark, call and tell me."

"I could be hanging here all day?"

"As long as it takes," Montez said. "Look at all the cars around here. Open one up and sit in it till she comes. You have my number-right?"

"I got it somewhere."

Montez said, "Ricky, don't lose that number. I want to hear from you, man."

This was earlier in the day, before Montez got the call from Avern and went to see him.

It was noon by the time Delsa was ready to leave the McDonald's on West Chicago. They had put out a BOLO on Gregory Coleman, also known as Big Baby, be on the lookout for this kid with a sawed-off shotgun and his buddies in a dark-colored Grand Marquis.

Now he called Kelly.

"What time will you leave?"

"By one-thirty the latest. I'm about to get in the shower."

"You can't wait till tonight?"

"We'll take another one. We can take all the showers we want, Frank."

"I'm coming to the show."

"I'll look for you, the only guy in a suit."

"I'm sorry I can't take you."

"Even if you have to miss the show, you'll come by later?"

He said, "I can't wait to see you."

She said, "I can't either, I'm dying."

"You know I forgot to pick up Chloe's license?"

"And the stock papers. They're right here."

"Why don't you put them in your bag? Give them to me tonight and I'll know I have them. Did Montez call, or stop by?"

"He didn't and I'm surprised."

"Keep your eyes open."

"Don't worry."

"He'll know by now we've identified the two guys. I told his lawyer, who's also the lawyer for the two guys, or was. I think he's in the middle of it, the lawyer, and I'm hoping he's started to think about making a deal, for himself."

"What if he doesn't?"

"It'll take a little longer."

Kelly said, "Well: maybe I should tell you what I'll be wearing tonight, so you'll know me."

He said, "I'll know you."

Montez left the car in the driveway, so he didn't see Carl and Art, and Lloyd and some gangbanger kid he'd never seen before, until he was through the swing door and in the kitchen.

This big kitchen, the commercial range and refrigerator, the long worktable in the middle of the room, another round table in the alcove of windows where Carl and Art were sitting with drinks. A bottle of Club on the worktable, an ice tray open, where Lloyd was slicing a leftover beef roast and the young gangbanger he'd never seen before, wearing a reddish do-rag that showed some style, was opening a loaf of bread, Lloyd saying to the kid as Montez walked in, "Wash your hands first."

Montez said, "Before anybody says anything," raising his hands to hold off whatever he thought might be coming, "let me tell you what Avern said to me just a little while ago. One, there is no way their witness, Kelly Barr, can identify you," wanting to call them "assholes," but keeping it simple. "And two, Avern thinks you should leave town, go to Florida or someplace, get lost in a crowd of people." He said, "Now let me tell you what I think, being closer to the situation," and paused looking at Lloyd. "Who's this gangbanger, your grandson come to visit? Y'all best get out of here."

Lloyd waved the carving knife toward Carl and Art at the breakfast table. "Your friends say they hungry. Want something to eat."

Art said to Montez, "You want to tell us what you think, go ahead. Or save it till Lloyd makes us some sandwiches. That boy there is Three-J. He's with us, so don't fuck with him."

"Wait a minute," Montez said. "You two are hiding out? Here?"

"We was at a Ramada last night," Carl said. "I could see staying at motels wasn't gonna work out. We want to talk to you anyway, so we thought, hell, come here. Art and I want to know did you make some kind of deal with them."

Montez knew they were dumb, but not this dumb. How could they believe: "You think I gave you up? Tell me how I can do that without giving myself up? Was me hired you. You think they gonna let me out on the street?" He said, "Listen to me. You swear your nines are clean, can't be traced to some other deed, they's only one way the police could get after you. Kelly Barr, man. She told me she didn't see you good, but she must've and they showed her pictures. Saw you by the front door, Art with a nine-you'd of shot me you'd been paid. And Carl with the bottle of vodka."

Art said to Carl, "Connie told you they took the bottle, the same one? With your prints on it?"

Montez said, "You gave it to Connie? Man, it's got my prints on it, too. I poured the old man his drinks. Kelly Barr saw me doing it. Understand what I'm saying? And she saw you walk out of the house with the bottle."

Art said to Carl, "The fuck you take it for?"

"You said there's some vodka for Connie-in an ice bucket."

"You're crazy, I never fuckin said that."

"I was there," Montez said to Art. "You told him to take the bottle, and he did. And Kelly can say yeah, that's the bottle the old man was drinking from. Before you shot him and she sees you two leaving the house. You want to hear her tell about it in court?"

Lloyd listened to them getting to it as he carved the leftover roast beef he'd served last night to his friend Serita Reese. She was somewhere in her fifties, worked in the Blue Cross office and wore big pearl earrings with her satin dress, always satin when she went out. Last evening an aqua color. Lloyd called her his Satin Doll. He asked Serita did she want to go to Puerto Rico. "Oh, would I." But wouldn't dare leave her job at Blue Cross. He asked Jackie Michaels did she want to go. She was hipper than Serita, younger, and said, "You mean it?" He said why would he ask her if he didn't mean it? "An old broad like me?" Fishing. He told Jackie Michaels she stirred him, got him thinking about living with a woman again. The only reason he hadn't jumped her, he had trouble working up intimate feelings about a woman on the police. Jackie Michaels said, "But you're thirty years older than I am."

He said, "Who told you that?"

Last night he and Serita were having their coffee and Remy, chocolate sauce on raspberry sorbet, and Allegra, the old man's granddaughter, stopped by from the funeral home with her husband, the one sold bull come, to show him the old paintings in the foyer. She kept apologizing for interrupting their evening till Serita, good at talking to white people, invited them to sit down and have some dessert. It was all right, but you had to talk on their level and laugh at things that weren't funny. Jesus, but he was tired of doing that.

Jerome turned from washing his hands at the sink and started making ugly sandwiches with the meat hanging out. Lloyd said, "Here," and took over the job. He said to Jerome, aside, "Listen to some of the Dumbest Criminals I Have Ever Known, and learn something."

All three of them sitting now at the round table by the windows.

The cheap phone inside Montez' leather coat came on playing "How High the Moon" and he brought it out and walked through the swing door into the pantry saying, "Ricky?: Yeah? Tell me." He came back after a few minutes and sat down at the table again with Carl and Art.

"She's in a fashion show tonight at the Detroit Institute of Arts. I told you about my man Ricky, fourteen years old? Sweet boy, can talk about fashion. He got that for me wiping off her windshield and made a buck."

Art said, "That's all you pay the kid?"

"What Kelly gave him. I owe Ricky another twenty's all. She told him she be home about nine-thirty. We get over there around nine, wait till she gets out of the car: I think as she's crossing the street to her building we roll up and snatch her, put her in the Tahoe."

Carl said, "We use your car."

"Man, you got more room."

"You got a trunk, don't you?" Carl said. "The Tahoe stays in the garage."

Art said, "We gonna shoot her?"

Montez said, "If that's how you want to do it. You the pros."

"Well, shit," Art said. "She gets back, walk up to her car and pop her."

"She has to disappear," Montez said. "Like she left town and didn't tell nobody."

"Take her out'n the woods?"

"I was thinking bring her back here," Montez said, "till we work out what to do with her. You know you could stick her head in a plastic bag. That way there won't be no blood."

Art said, "Shit, drop her in the river."

"You have a boat?"

"Off the Belle Isle bridge. Weight her down."

Carl said to Montez, "You ever kill anybody?"

Montez said, "I'm gonna talk to you about it?"

Art said, "I think he's cherry, never done it in his life."

"I doubt he has," Carl said. "Tells us we're the pros and stays out of it. Tells us, stick her head in a plastic bag, like he knows these different ways he saw in the movies, but won't do it himself." He said to Montez, "How come you didn't take the bag off your suit from the cleaners and suffocate the old man with it? He's sleeping, nobody around. We walk in the other night, a party's going on."

"I tried to call you," Montez said. "Ask Connie."

Carl said to Art, "You think he should do the girl? Since he's the one fucked up the deal, bringing her in?"

Art said, "We do it, he'll have to pay us."

"He already owes for the old man," and looked toward the worktable. "Lloyd, you getting all this?"

Lloyd turned his head to one side. "I didn't hear you. What'd you say?"

Now Montez looked over at him. "You don't hear these guys fuckin with me?"

"I'm making y'all sandwiches," Lloyd said, finishing up the last one. "Anything you want to put on them's in the refrigerator. Horseradish, pickles, chili sauce, ketchup, mayonnaise-"

Art said, "You got any mustard?"

"We have yella mustard, Poupon mustard, whatever kind pleases you, Pelican mustard," Lloyd said, motioning with his head for Jerome to leave the kitchen, saying when he didn't move, "Go on, they don't care." Then raised his voice to tell the three mutts deciding on who was going to kill the girl, "Me and Jerome gonna be in the den watching TV."

Mr. Paradise had liked to watch it in the living room saying the den was too small, crowded with the big brown leather chairs and the couch. There were three walls of Book-of-the-Month Club books in their jackets, fifty years of book selections in all colors from the counter to the ceiling. Against the fourth wall was where Lloyd put the TV, the guy who replaced the glass helping him.

Lloyd came in to see Jerome punching numbers in a cell phone, got to him and snatched the phone out of his hands.

"Who you calling?"

"A homicide detective, man. I'm his C.I."

"You mean his fink."

"You didn't hear them, they talking about killing some girl."

"I heard everything was said. It ain't your bidness."

"You don't care they gonna kill her?"

"I said it ain't your bidness," Lloyd said. "They got to pick her up first, bring her here."

"They gonna put a plastic bag over her head. Man, what's going on in this house?"

"You don't read the paper, watch the news? You running with those mutts, they haven't told you what they did here?"

Jerome looked like he was beginning to understand, nodding his head. He said, "I know they hit men. They whack somebody here and come here to hide out?"

"You want to read about it," Lloyd said, "I've saved the papers. They by the chair."

Jerome turned and Lloyd stopped him, taking hold of his arm.

"Lemme have your gun."

Jerome frowned at him. "Man, I need it."

"I told you this ain't your bidness," Lloyd said. "You won't need it, but I might."