52 Pickup (8 page)

I think the guy in the street thinks that the novelist, first of all, decides on his subject, what should be addressed; then he thinks of his theme and his plot and then jots down the various characters that will illustrate these various themes. That sounds like a description of writer's block to me. I think you're in a very bad way when that happens. Vladimir Nabokov, when he spoke about
Lolita
, refers to the “first throb” of
Lolita
going through him, and I recognize that feeling. All it is is your next book. It's the next thing that's there for you to write. Now, do you settle down and map out your plots? I suspect you don't.

Leonard:
No, I don't. I start with a character. Let's say I want to write a book about a bail bondsman or a process server or a bank robber and a woman federal marshal. And they meet and something happens. That's as much of an idea as I begin with. And then I see him in a situation, and I begin writing it and one thing leads to another. By page 100, roughly, I should have my characters assembled. I should know my characters because they've sort of auditioned in the opening scenes, and I can find out if they can talk or not. And if they can't talk, they're out. Or they get a minor role.

But in every book there's a minor character
who comes along and pushes his way into the plot. He's just needed to give some information, but all of a sudden he comes to life for me. Maybe it's the way he says it. He might not even have a name the first time he appears. The second time he has a name. The third time he has a few more lines, and away he goes, and he becomes a plot turn in the book.

When I was writing
Cuba Libre
, I was about 250 pages into it and George Will called up and said, “I want to send out forty of your books” — this was the previous book [
Out of Sight
] — “at Christmastime. May I send them to you and a list of names to inscribe?” I said, “Of course.” He said, “What are you doing now?” I said, “I'm doing Cuba a hundred years ago.” And he said, “Oh, crime in Cuba.” And he hung up the phone. And I thought, “I don't have a crime in this book.” And I'm 250 pages into it. [Laughter] It was a crime that this guy was running guns to Cuba, but that's not what I really write about. Where's the bag of money that everybody wants? I didn't have it. So, then I started weaving it into the narrative. I didn't have to go back far, and I was on my way.

Amis:
I admire the fluidity of your process because it's meant to be a rule in the highbrow novel that the characters have no free will at all.
E.M. Forster said he used to line up his characters before beginning a novel, and he would say, “Right, no larks.” [Laughter] And Nabokov, when this was quoted to him, he looked aghast, and he said, “My characters cringe when I come near them.” He said, “I've seen whole avenues of imagined trees lose their leaves with terror at my approach.” [Laughter]

Let's talk about
Cuba Libre
, which is an amazing departure in my view. When I was reading it, I had to keep turning to the front cover to check that it was a book by you. How did it get started? I gather that you've been wanting to write this book for thirty years. It has a kind of charge of long-suppressed desire.

Leonard:
In 1957, I borrowed a book from a friend called
The Splendid Little War
. It was a picture book, a coffee-table book of photographs of the Spanish-American War — photographs of the
Maine
, before and after; photographs of the troops on San Juan Hill; newspaper headlines leading up to the war; a lot of shots of Havana. I was writing Westerns at the time, and I thought, I could drop a cowboy into this place and get away with it. But I didn't. A couple of years ago, I was trying to think of a sequel to
Get Shorty
. And I was trying to work Chili Palmer into the dress business. I don't
know why except that I love runway shows. I gave up on that. And I saw that book again,
The Splendid Little War
, because I hadn't returned it to my friend in '57. And I thought, “I'm going to do that.” Yeah, the time has come. So, I did.

Amis:
In a famous essay, Tom Wolfe said that the writers were missing all the real stories that were out there. And that they spent too much time searching for inspiration and should spend ninety-five percent of their time sweating over research. The result was a tremendously readable book,
The Bonfire of the Vanities
. Now you, sir, have a full-time researcher.

Leonard:
Yes, Gregg Sutter. He can answer any of your questions that I don't know.

Amis:
Were you inspired by the research he put into this book?

Leonard:
He got me everything I needed to know. I asked him to see if he could find out how much it cost to transport horses from Arizona to East Texas and then to Havana. And he did. He found a cattle company that had been in business over
100 years ago and was shipping cattle then. He found an old ledger book and copied it and faxed it to me.

Amis:
Among the differences from your earlier books, this book is more discursive, less dialogue-driven and, till the end, less action-driven. Toward the end, you get a familiar Leonard scenario where there's a chunk of money sitting around, and various people are after it and you're pretty confident that it's going to go to the least-undeserving people present. And it's not hard-bitten; it's a much more romantic book than we're used to from you. Could your Westerns have had such romance?

Leonard:
No. In my Westerns there was little romance except in
Valdez Is Coming
, which is my favorite of the Westerns. No, I just wanted to make this a romantic adventure story.

Amis:
And there's a kind of political romanticism, too. You've always sided with the underdog, imaginatively; one can sense that. And who could be more of an underdog than a criminal? And your criminals have always been rather implausibly likable and gentle creatures. What is your view about crime in America?

Leonard:
I don't have a view about crime in America. There isn't anything I can say that would be interesting at all. When I'm fashioning my bad guys, though (and sometimes a good guy has had a criminal past and then he can go either way; to me, he's the best kind of character to have), I don't think of them as bad guys. I just think of them as, for the most part, normal people who get up in the morning and they wonder what they're going to have for breakfast, and they sneeze, and they wonder if they should call their mother, and then they rob a bank. Because that's the way they are. Except for real hard-core guys.

Amis:
The really bad guys.

Leonard:
Yeah, the really bad guys. . . .

Amis:
Before we end, I'd just like to ask you about why you keep writing. I just read my father's collected letters, which are going to be published in a year or two. It was with some dread that I realized that the writer's life never pauses. You can never sit back and rest on what you've done. You are driven on remorselessly by something, whether it's dedication or desire to defeat time. What is it that
drives you? Is it just pure enjoyment that makes you settle down every morning to carry out this other life that you live?

Leonard:
It's the most satisfying thing I can imagine doing. To write that scene and then read it and it works. I love the sound of it. There's nothing better than that. The notoriety that comes later doesn't compare to the doing of it. I've been doing it for almost forty-seven years, and I'm still trying to make it better. Even though I know my limitations; I know what I can't do. I know that if I tried to write, say, as an omniscient author, it would be so mediocre.
You
can do more forms of writing than I can, including essays. My essay would sound, at best, like a college paper.

Amis:
Well, why isn't there a Martin Amis Day? Because January 16, 1998, was Elmore Leonard Day in the state of Michigan, and it seems that here, in Los Angeles, it's been Elmore Leonard Day for the last decade. [Laughter]

[Applause]

Editor's note:
Martin Amis is the author of many novels — including Money: A Suicide Note; London Fields; and Night Train — and many works of nonfiction,
including a collection of essays and criticism, The War Against Cliché, in which may be found other interesting observations on the work of Elmore Leonard.

HE COULD NOT GET USED TO GOING
to the girl's apartment. He would be tense driving past the gate and following the road that wound through the complex of townhouse condominiums. Even when it was dark he was a little tense. But once he reached the garage and pressed the remote control switch and the double door opened, he was there and it was done.

It was cold in the garage, standing in the darkness between his car and Cini's, feeling for the key on the ring that held all the keys he had to carry. He didn't like keys and wished there was another way to do it. He wished he didn't have so many doors that had to be kept locked.

It was warm in the kitchen, with a warm glow coming from the light over the stainless steel range. Shiny and clean, nothing on the sink or the countertop. She was neat, orderly, and for some reason that had surprised him.

The rest of the apartment was dark, though dull
evening light was framed in the sliding glass door across the living room. To the right was the front entrance and a suspended stairway that made one turn up to the hallway and two bedrooms. Beyond the stairway the door to the den was closed.

He called out, “Cini?”

Usually music was playing and in the silence the place seemed empty. But she was here because her car was in the garage. Probably in the shower. He listened another moment before going back into the kitchen to the wall phone.

The sound of the plant came on with the voice answering and he said, “This is Mr. Mitchell, see if you can find Vic for me, will you?”

The ice bucket wasn't on the counter. Usually there were the ice bucket and two glasses, ready. Maybe at other times when he came in they weren't on the counter, but tonight he was aware of it.

“Vic, it's Mr. Mitchell. I'm not going to be back today . . . . No, I'm tired. Son of a bitch has four vodka martinis, shish kebab, coffee and three stingers. We go back to his office and I have to listen to all this shit about delivery dates.”

He was patient for almost a minute, leaning against the counter now, at times nodding, looking at the window over the sink where a stained-glass owl hung from the shade string.

“Vic, I'll tell you what. You call on the customers
and eat the lunch every day, I'll run the shop . . . . Victor . . . All right, you got a problem, but we know weeks ahead when we have to deliver, right? We take into account the chance of screw-ups, breakdowns and acts of God. But, Victor, we deliver. We deliver, we pay our bills and we always take our two-percent ten days. That's what we always do, as long as I've been in business. If you've got a machine problem then fix the son of a bitch, because I'll tell you something, I'm not going to go out every day and eat lunch, Vic, and run the shop too. You see that?”

He listened again, giving his plant superintendent equal time. “All right, I'll talk to you first thing tomorrow . . . . Right . . . All right, Vic. Listen, if anybody wants me I'm there, I'll call them back, right . . . . Okay, so long.”

He hung up, took time to light a cigarette and dialed his home. Waiting, he was thinking he could have handled that a little better with Vic, not sounded so edgy.

“Barbara, how you doing? . . . No, I'm back at the plant. Finally. Spent the afternoon at the Tech Center . . . . No, you better go ahead, I'll probably be late. Vic's got a problem I have to look into . . . . I know it. That's what I told him. But getting somebody else doesn't turn out a job that's due tomorrow. Listen, if you want me for
anything and my night line doesn't answer, I'm back in the shop somewhere. Leave a message, I'll call you . . . . Okay, see you later.”

He wasn't finished with the cigarette, but didn't need it now and stubbed it out as he hung up.

In the living room he turned on a lamp. He liked the furniture, all the orange-and-white stuff and abstract paintings and plants that were like trees. He had paid a decorator to pick them out and they were his. He was finally starting to get used to the place; though he still had the feeling, most of the time, he was in a resort hotel suite or someone else's house. At the foot of the suspended stairway he looked up and called the girl's name again.

“Cini?”

He waited, “Hey, lady, I'm home!”

It sounded strange. He said it and could hear himself, but it sounded strange, not something he would say. He stood there, listening.

But the sound he heard, finally, did not come from upstairs. It came from the den, the faint, whirring sound of a motor, and he looked toward the closed door.

He identified the sound as he opened the door and there it was, the movie projector going, lamp on, illuminating a hot white square across the room; the screen, set up, waiting. There was the sound and the shaft of light. Nothing else, until
the figure moved out of the darkness to stand in front of the screen: a man he knew immediately was a black man, though he wore a woman's nylon stocking over his face that washed out his features. At the same time he knew that the revolver in the man's hand was a .38 Colt Special.

Even with the stocking over his face the man's words were clear. He said quietly, “Take a seat, motherfucker. It's home movie time.”

Later, he remembered saying, “What do you want?” and “Where is she?” and then half turning as he heard the sound behind him. Later, he tried to concentrate on what he saw in the moment before the living room lamp went out: two men, seeing them as a heavyset guy and a skinny guy with long hair, but not seeing their features or even their clothes, only remembering an impression, the contrast of a thin guy with bony shoulders coming toward him and the thick-bodied guy hunched over the lamp. That was all he saw of them. The black guy poked him with the revolver, moving him to a chair, and Mitchell said, “You mind telling me what's going on?”

The skinny guy, in the room now at the projector, said, “No talking during the show, man. Just watch, and listen.”

The black guy pushed him into the chair and moved around behind him. Mitchell sat staring
at the screen. He leaned back and felt the barrel of the revolver press against his head. In a moment he saw the countdown of numbers as the film started through the projector.

“You've seen some of this before,” the skinny guy said. “Stuff your girlfriend shot. I want you to know what we know, so it'll be clear in your head. You dig?”

Mitchell saw himself on the screen in full color, green bathing trunks and suntan lotion shining on his arm. He was reclined in a lounge chair reading
The Wall Street Journal.
The projector hummed in the dark room. After a moment he saw himself lower the newspaper and look up and shake his head and then smile patiently. He remembered the moment. He remembered almost telling her for Christ sake,
no.
But he had not said anything because no one but the two of them would ever see the film.

As he watched himself the skinny guy's voice-over said, “Lucayan Beach. Grand Bahama, March seventeen through twenty-one, while your wife thought you were at a convention in Miami. You rascal. The broad's shooting you. Now here's you shooting the broad.”

Cini came glistening out of the surf in the tan bikini he remembered very well, and from this distance, for a moment, she looked naked. Now she was closer, smiling, smoothing back her wet blond hair.

The voice-over said, “A nice body, but a little weak in the lungs. What do you think?”

He remembered Cini going over to the hairy bald-headed guy and talking to him and handing him the camera.

“Now you and the broad together. There he is, Mr. Clean. Member of the Urban Renewal Committee, Bloomfield Village Council, Deprived Children's Foundation and the Northwest Guidance Center. You don't mind my saying, for a successful businessman and generally active in all that community bullshit, I think you got fucking rocks in your head, man, to let yourself get put on film. I mean, as you can see it's plain fucking dumb.

“Shots of the pool now . . . and all the schmucks lying around in their resort outfits. Hot shit, huh? Seventy-five bucks a day, couple hundred bucks for the jazzy outfits . . . . Here comes sport now, rum collins for the broad and a Heineken. Loaded and he still drinks beer. That's your background showing, man. Eleven years on the line at Dodge Main. Couple of shots and a beer every day after the shift. Right?”

Eleven and a half years, Mitchell was thinking, seeing himself in the green bathing trunks that were too big for him because he had lost fifteen pounds in one month after meeting Cini.
Eleven years and seven months exactly. Two-eighty an hour when he quit.

He saw the beach again, deserted now in the early evening. Their last day. He had stayed in the room to take a nap and she had gone for a walk.

“And as the sun sinks slowly in the west . . . we leave the beautiful Bahamas, isles of intrigue and plenty of extracurricular screwing, and get back to real life.”

He saw his car on a street, moving, the bronze Grand Prix.

“We spliced this in with the other,” the voice-over said, “so we wouldn't waste your valuable time changing film. You recognize it, sport? That's you. Now watch where you go.”

Mitchell knew where the car was going. He remembered the day and the time and the street and the Caravan Motel.

There it was.

A zoom lens on the camera got him coming out of the motel office and driving over to unit number 17. There was a good shot of him looking out toward the street before he opened the door and they went inside.

Fifteen bucks. Not a bad place. It had been their third time. They had taken a shower together and drunk a bottle of champagne in bed, before, during and after, with a lot of kissing and squirming
around, kissing the way he hadn't kissed in twenty years. She had said to him, “I think I'm falling in love with you. If I'm not already.” But he did not say anything about love to her that time.

Over footage of them coming out to the car the narrator said, “I like this one, the expression. Mr. Casual. We cut to . . . suburbia.”

Now Mitchell was looking at his home in Bloomfield Hills and saw himself in a tennis warm-up suit jogging down the driveway past the big red-brick colonial to the street.

“Keeping fit,” the voice-over said. “You start chasing twenty-one-year-old tail you got to stay in shape. Mile-and-a-half jog every morning before going to . . . the plant.

“Here we are. Ranco Manufacturing near Mt. Clemens. Gross sales last year almost three mil. Forty-something employees working two shifts. You bank at Manufacturers, you pay your bills on time and you have a very clean D and B. I like that. I also like the hundred and fifty grand you make a year on the patent you hold. What is it, some kind of a hood latch? Doesn't cost two bits to stamp out, but all the cars got to have one and, man, you own it.”

Mitchell had never seen his plant before on a movie screen. It didn't look bad: the front ledge-rock and Roman brick, and the aluminum sign that read,
RANCO
.

“One of your trucks going out on a delivery,” the voice-over said. “Or is it making a haul to the bank? We like your style, sport, so we're gonna make a deal with you.”

The film stopped, holding on the plant that was now slightly out of focus.

“The deal is, you get to buy this complete home movie for only a hundred and five grand. Not a hundred and fifty, no, we're not greedy and we know you got to pay capital gains on your patent royalties. So we'll let you pay it and give us approximately what's left. That's all, one year's royalty check. You won't even miss it and you'll have this fun movie for your very own. Nice color footage of what must be the most expensive piece of ass you ever had in your life.”

There was a silence before Mitchell spoke.

“Is she part of this?”

The narrator paused. “Well, I wouldn't say she's a hundred-percent pure. We had a talk and the chick is not dumb. She decided to move out, figuring fun and games were over.”

Mitchell sat in the chair, not moving, realizing he was calm and in control and this surprised him.

“What happens if I don't pay?”

“We get stills made of you and the broad—on the beach, the motel—and pass them around. A set to your wife. Set to your customers at G.M.
Maybe a newspaper. I don't know, we'd think of ways to mess you up. Maybe it's no big deal, but you don't seem like the kind of guy who'd want to get smeared around. On the Keep Michigan Beautiful Committee, you go to church every Sunday, all that shit.”

Mitchell thought about it. “You think I just go to a bank and draw a hundred and five thousand dollars?”

“No, it could take you a little time. But we want ten grand tomorrow. Like a down payment. Show us you're acting in good faith. You dig?”

“Give it to you where, here?”

“I'll call you at work, let you know.” The voice paused. “Any more questions?”

“I'll have to think about it.”

“You got all night, sport. We'll pack up and leave you alone.”

“When do I get the film?”

“After the last payment. When'd you think?”

He sat in the dark room for perhaps a half hour after they had left. Finally he went into the kitchen and poured Jack Daniels over ice, took a drink of it and thought of something. He opened the door to the garage and saw that Cini's car was no longer there. Then he called his lawyer.