Mr. Paradise

29

At eleven-fifteen last night Delsa drove to the loft and saw Kelly's black Volkswagen in the lot and phoned her from outside the building. Her voice said to leave a message. Okay, she didn't drive. Someone picked her up, one of the other models, and they stopped off or ran into friends and went to a party after the show. He had to remind himself she had a life he didn't know much about.

This morning, Sunday, he phoned from the squad room, putting it off until ten in case she was sleeping in, and got no response. He drove to her place again, three miles from 1300, and saw her VW still in the lot. This time he got the manager to let him into the loft. The manager stood inside the door while he listened to phone messages, all from women in the fashion business, all related to the runway show last night. No calls from Montez.

But yesterday on the phone she told him the last thing Montez had said to her when he called the night before, "You think you done with me?" and she hung up on him.

It was time to see Montez.

Last night Kelly asked Jerome how he knew Frank Delsa. Jerome was self-conscious and didn't look at her directly telling about the shooting at Yakity Yak's he'd witnessed and how he became Delsa's C.I. and how he ran into the two hit men at the house Orlando tried to burn down account of the three bodies in the basement, one of 'em cut up into six pieces. Kelly said, "Six?" Jerome said the arms and the legs were four, the head five and body was six. He said people forgot to count the body.

Kelly said, "If you work for Frank Delsa and the two hit men are here, why don't you slip out? Tell Delsa the ones who killed Mr. Paradiso and my friend Chloe are here?" Jerome said Lloyd told him it wasn't none of his bidness. He said he had to go and left, closing the door. Kelly got up and locked it. She didn't know what she was supposed to do. After a while she stretched out on the bed in her Donna Karan sweater and pants, and a little later heard the faint sound of voices in the hall. Someone rattled the doorknob. At 2 A.M. she opened it and looked down the hall toward the staircase. She saw Jerome down there in an easy chair he'd got from one of the rooms. She walked toward him, got close enough to see he was asleep, but he woke up as she started down the stairs and told her she was supposed to stay in her room.

In the morning the chair was still there but Jerome was gone. This time she got to the bottom of the stairs and was startled to see Carl sitting in the foyer in one of the upholstered straight chairs. Carl said, "Go on in the kitchen you want some breakfast. Lloyd's in there." He said, "I'm gonna talk to you later on."

She said, "About what?"

He said, "The situation."

Montez was at the round table in the alcove with a cup of coffee. She said to him, "Would you mind telling me what's going on?"

Montez said, "We gonna have a sit-down here and get things straightened out."

"When?"

"We got to get somebody first. You want some coffee? Lloyd brewed a pot."

"Where's Jerome?"

"The gangbanger? I guess he's sleeping."

Lloyd came in and asked if she'd like a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice. He could fix her eggs if she wanted.

"I've been kidnapped," Kelly said. "I'm being held against my will, and I get fresh-squeezed orange juice?"

"They do it at the market," Lloyd said. "Six-ninety-five a half gallon. It's nice and cold."

Kelly said okay, orange juice and coffee, and turned to the window. It looked like it would be a nice day.

Montez finished his coffee and left.

Nine o'clock Sunday morning Montez and Carl sat in Lloyd's car parked on 14 Mile Road at the south end of Bloomfield Hills. They watched the front yard of Avern Cohn's house, on the corner of Crosswick and 14, through a line of shrubbery, waiting for him to come out and pick up his newspapers, the Detroit News and Free Press in a plain plastic bag, the fat New York Times rolled up in a blue one.

Montez had wanted to stay home to keep an eye on Kelly. Carl was afraid she'd talk him into letting her go and he wanted to speak to her first, reach some kind of an understanding. Art wanted to come so he could walk in Avern's house, shoot him and walk out. He said what was there to talk about? Carl felt if they scared Avern enough he'd keep his mouth shut. This deal was now way out of hand; he wasn't shooting anybody 'less they got paid. Montez had asked, before, how he knew where Avern lived. "I said if he didn't tell me, we wouldn't make a deal with him to do contracts. He said, 'Why you want to know?' I told him so I'd come to the right house he ever fucked us over."

Carl said to Montez now, "We don't talk to him in the car. Don't say a fuckin word."

"How come?"

"He's gonna act surprised, want to know what's going on. You start in with him, the son of a bitch'll talk us out of what we're doing. He'll be scareder we don't say a fuckin word. He comes out to get the newspapers I'll quick pull into the drive. I'll grab Avern and throw him in the car, you pick up the fuckin newspapers."

That was how it worked. Avern came out in a pongee bathrobe, narrow blue and yellow stripes, showing bare legs and black velvet slippers with gold crests on them. Carl jumped out of the car and grabbed him, but had to yell at Montez to pick up the fuckin papers.

They brought Avern in the back way to the kitchen. Kelly looked at the guy in the striped pongee bathrobe, his skinny white legs, and said to Carl, "I bet this is your agent, Mr. Cohn."

Carl watched Avern raise his eyebrows and slide onto the bench next to her saying, "And you must be Kelly Barr."

Delsa pulled up behind a gold Mercedes convertible in the drive, a young couple getting out, going to the door. The girl in her twenties, nice-looking, turned to Delsa as he approached them.

"Hi, I'm Allegra, Tony's granddaughter, and this is my husband, John Tintinalli?"

The guy who sold bull semen. Delsa recognized the name and said, "Frank Delsa," as he shook their hands. Allegra rang the bell again. As they waited Delsa imagined Montez spotting him through a window and going out the back.

When the door finally opened there was Lloyd in a dress shirt but no tie smiling at Allegra, saying it was good to see her again.

She said, "Lloyd," hugging him, "do you know Mr. Delsa?"

Lloyd's smile faded and came back again and he said, "Yes, indeed, I know all about Mr. Delsa," looking at him now. "I bet you want Montez."

"I sure do," Delsa said.

"Lemme see can I find him."

Lloyd walked away and Allegra said, "I love Montez, he's so cool." Now she was looking at the paintings in the foyer, talking about them with her husband, Delsa listening, Allegra saying she loved them and asking her husband if he loved them-two paintings of dark woods with shafts of light coming through the trees; the third one an ocean at night, the same kind of shafts of light coming through dark clouds. Her husband said he liked them okay.

Lloyd was coming back now wearing his white butler coat and bow tie, looking at Delsa, serious, Lloyd's attention on him as he came through the hall from the living room. He said, "Montez be with you in a minute."

Now Allegra was asking Lloyd what he knew about the paintings. Lloyd said, "They always been hanging there's all I know. The man from DuMouchelle come and look at 'em but didn't tell me nothing."

"Well," Allegra said, "he told me they're the very early work of a Hungarian painter named Dizsi Korab. He used to live in Greektown and is hot right now in New York with his streaks of light. These early ones could be worth quite a bit. But that's not why I love the paintings and want to take them with us, to California. Lloyd, we're moving."

He said, "Well, yeah, it's your house, take what you want."

"No, it's your house," Allegra said, "we're giving it to you, if we can have the paintings."

Lloyd said, "You giving me this house?" Not sounding too sure of it.

"And everything in it except the paintings," Allegra said. "The other night you looked so at home, so cozy with your lady friend, Serita?"

"Yeah, she works over at Blue Cross."

"Are you serious about her?"

"I can't make up my mind," Lloyd said.

"The other night when we stopped in, you were so nice to us. I said to John, 'You have your new business-do we really need to sell the house?' He said, 'Not if you want to give it away.' John's anxious to get out of Detroit." She turned to him as he brought a deed out of his inside coat pocket and handed it to her, Allegra saying to Lloyd, "It's a Quit Claim Deed, dated and notarized, so all you have to do is sign it and have it recorded." Now she looked at the deed. "'The grantor,' that's us, 'for and in consideration of one dollar, convey and quit claim to the grantee,' that's you, and we've added, 'and everything in it except the three Korab paintings in the foyer.'" Now she was hugging Lloyd, Lloyd looking over his shoulder at Delsa, his eyebrows raised.

John Tintinalli lit a cigarette and stood looking around for an ashtray. He walked into the den and Delsa followed him, saying with kind of a smile, "Your father-in-law tells me you deal in bull semen."

"I did," John said, turning to look Delsa over. "What's your opinion of Tony?"

"He's a defense lawyer," Delsa said, "and I'm a homicide detective. But we get along okay."

"You're working on the old man's murder, uh? You know who did it?"

Delsa nodded. "It won't be long now."

"To answer your question, I did broker bull semen, sold the company and bought a vineyard out in Sonoma. A bunch of 'em are going bankrupt and I made a pretty good deal."

"What I wondered," Delsa said, "was how you get the semen."

"Everybody wonders that. There're three ways, an artificial vagina, digital manipulation-"

Delsa stopped him. "That one. How do you do it?"

"You massage the bull's pecker."

"Who does?"

"The guy who does it, the pro. He strokes the ampullae, the seminal vesicles and prostate gland through the wall of the rectum, with a collection tube slipped over the penis."

Delsa said, "That's it, huh?"

"Nothing to it," John said.

He picked up an ashtray and Delsa followed him out to the foyer where Allegra was telling Lloyd the funeral mass would be tomorrow at St. Mary's, corner of Monroe and St. Antoine, the burial at Mt. Olivet.

"Yes, indeed I'll be there," Lloyd said.

Allegra and John left and Lloyd stood there holding the deed to his house, looking at it.

Delsa said, "You gonna live here?"

"Gonna sell it and move to Puerto Rico, where you know what the weather's gonna be every day you get out of bed." Looking past Delsa he said, "Here comes Montez."

Delsa turned.

Behind him now Lloyd said, "First thing I do, I'm gonna throw his ass out of my house."

Montez was looking at the sheet of paper Lloyd was holding. "What's that you got?"

"Your eviction notice," Lloyd said.

Montez frowned saying, "What?"

Delsa said, "Montez?" and got the man in black leather looking at him. "I'm gonna ask you about Kelly Barr, and I want a straight answer."

Montez said, "Man, she's out'n the kitchen. How'd you know?"