Authors: Elmore Leonard

Split Images (1981) (3 page)

"I can imagine," Walter said.

"But then I sit down with her, she turns on her tape recorder--you know what she asks me?"

Walter shook his head. "What?"

"What's it like to be rich? Am I happy? She goes from that to, What do I think about abortion? What do I think about busing . . . I couldn't believe it. Or, If you can have anything you want, what turns you on more than anything? Another one, related to that. If you have all the money you could possibly spend in a lifetime, why do you keep making more?

I try to explain that the money itself is only a way of keeping score, but she doesn't understand that."

Walter didn't either.

"But then if I don't have time to sit down and talk, she gets pouty. I couldn't believe it. Really, like I'm taking up her time. She seems intelligent, you know, has some good credits, but when a broad comes on like it's the Inquisition and then gives you that pouty shit . . . I said wait a minute. I agreed to be interviewed, yes, but you could get fucking washed out to sea tomorrow and I doubt anybody'd miss you."

"You told her that?"

"Why not? She came to me."

"Jesus, that's pretty nice stuff. I thought maybe she was like, you know, a girl friend."

Robbie said, "A girl friend? You look at her close? She's okay, but she's got to be thirty years old, at least. No, what she does, she gets you relaxed, talking off the cuff like she's your buddy, but what she's doing is setting you up. She's a ball buster," Robbie said. "I told her that. I said you don't care what I think. You interview somebody with a name, you just want to cut off his balls, make him look like a wimp. You know what she said? She said, 'I don't have to cut 'em, they come off in my hand.' I said well, not this pair, love. Go fondle somebody else."

Walter Kouza said, "Jesus." He never again thought of Mr. Daniels as a cheerleader.

He considered himself an ace at sizing people up:

A guy shoots and kills an intruder. The guy seems not exactly shaken but awed by it. A bright eager good-looking guy. Sort of a millionaire Jack Armstrong but very impressionable.

Yeah?

Walter Kouza would run through those first impressions again, then piece together step by step the revelations of that afternoon in Mr. Daniels's study.

He remembered Mr. Daniels, Robbie, opening the second bottle of vodka and going downstairs for more ice . . .

Yeah, and he opened another pack of Camels while Daniels was gone. Tore off the cellophane, dropped it in the silver dish full of cigarette butts, mashed Camel stubs. He remembered seeing words engraved around the rim of the dish he hadn't noticed before. Seminole Invitational 1980 and the club crest covered with butts and black smudges.

Shit. He got off the stool to look for a regular ashtray and almost fell on his ass. There weren't any ashtrays. He was standing there looking at the inlaid cabinets--beautiful workmanship--when Daniels came back in, closing the door this time, turning the lock, and said, "While you're up, let me show you something might interest you." Took out a key and unlocked one of the cabinets.

There must have been two dozen handguns in there, a showcase display against dark velvet.

"Jesus," Walter said.

There were Smith and Wesson thirty-eights and three-fifty-sevens, in Chief Special and Combat Masterpeice models, two-and four-inch barrels. He had a Walther P thirty-eight, a Baretta nine- millimeter Parabellum. He had Llama automatics, several, including a thirty-two and a forty-five. A Llama Commanche three-fifty-seven, an Iver Johnson X300 Pony, a Colt forty-five Combat Commander, a Colt Diamondback and a Detective Special. He had a big goddamn Mark VI Enfield, a Jap Nambu that looked like a Luger. Christ, he had a ten-shot Mauser Broomhandle, nickel-plated, a Colt single-action Frontier model, a couple of little Sterling automatics. Walter's gaze came to rest on a High Standard Field King model, an ordinary twenty-two target pistol except for the barrel. The original five-and-a-half-inch barrel had been replaced by a factory-made suppressor, or silencer, that was at least ten inches long, fabricated in two sections joined together.

Walter pointed. "Can I see that one?"

Robbie handed him the twenty-two target gun.

"You turning pro?" Walter said and chuckled.

He looked at the suppressor closely. "Jesus, ParkerHale. You mind, Rob, I ask where you got it?"

"I'll tell you this much. The guy who sold it to me," Robbie said, "has a metallic gold-flocked sawed-off shotgun that matches his Cadillac."

Walter remembered saying, "Well, this little number right here," hefting the twenty-two, "this is the one the pros use, not to mention the CIA."

Robbie said, "Wait." He unlocked the cabinet beneath the handgun cabinet and said, "I've got some pieces here might surprise you, to say the least. The thing is, I'm not supposed to have them."

Even at this point he would seem naive and trusting, looking at Walter with his earnest niceguy expression.

Walter said, "Rob, this is my day off. I don't run anybody in when I don't have to and I haven't been surprised at anything since I found out girls don't have weenies."

Robbie said, "I trust you, Walter," and brought out a forty-five U. S. Army submachine gun with a wire stock. He said, "M-three."

Walter said, "Jesus Christ."

Robbie was bringing out more submachine guns.

"Sten, very old. Uzi, the Israeli number, needs some work but usable. German machine pistol . . . Ah, but here's my favorite . . ." It was MAC-ten with a thirty-two-round clip, all cammied-up for field duty. The compact little submachine gun was painted with free-form shapes in rose and dark blue on a light blue background, like a wallpaper design.

Walter stared. He took the weapon in his hands, caressed the pipelike attachment screwed onto the barrel stub.

"Silencer's bigger'n the gun, isn't it? Jesus. How much you pay for this?"

"Fifteen hundred," Robbie said, "in Miami."

"With the silencer?"

"No, the suppressor was five hundred extra."

"I could've got you the piece in Detroit for a K,"

Walter said. "The suppressor--yeah, that's about five anywhere you shop." Walter started to grin.

"What're you doing, Rob, going to war?"

Robbie said, "Nothing that big."

Walter was sitting at the bar again when he explained about the trial coming up next month in Detroit: this family bringing suit against the police department and Walter Kouza for something like five million bucks. "Remember I said I shot a guy but he didn't die right away? . . . Rob?"

"I'm listening."

"Well, this was only a couple years ago, not when I was in STRESS. The guy I shot's got a brother was in Jackson, was in Marquette, and learned a few things there talking to the jailhouse lawyers. Comes out, he files this suit in his mother's name. Like by shooting her son I denied the family all the millions he would have made at the car wash, plus another few million pain and suffering, even though the guy's fucking paralyzed from the neck down, can't feel a thing. Me and the department, we denied the mother all the benefits she would have gotten if the asshole had not been shot.

Yeah, they come all the way down here, give me a subpoena."

He remembered saying, "Hey, come on, Rob, bullshit. We're about as much alike . . . listen, I'll tell you something. I was six-two and had curly hair and I had a name like Mark Harmon, Scott Hunter . . .

Robbie Daniels, shit, and I had money? I'd be fucking dead by now. I'd have burned myself out by the time I was thirty. No. I'm Walter Chester Kouza and there isn't a fucking thing I can do about it."

He said, "Can I drive a limousine? Rob, you drive a car you can drive a limo. I'll tell you what, though, I would never wear any chauffeur's uniform, fucking hat with the peak. . . . Bodyguard, that's something else. Sure, I'd drive you though. Like around Detroit? Sure."

He remembered Robbie saying, "You sound like someone--yeah, you sound just like him. What's his name, you know . . ."

"Is this fellow, he's got an orchestra, he goes aone and a-two and? . . ."

"Karl Malden. That's who you sound like."

Walter said, "Karl Malden?"

He could see Robbie over by a wall of books. Slim guy, standing hip-cocked. One hand, he's like rubbing his stomach underneath the white sweater, stroking himself. The other hand, he's pointing to different books, taking some of them partway out and shoving them back in.

Robbie saying, "A guy is hired to kill somebody, a woman, and falls in love with his intended victim.

A man with no money, no known enemies, is murdered. Who did it?"

"Guy's wife," Walter said.

"Lot of who-done-its," Robbie said, "But I'm not talking about that. Here's one. A famous hunter risks his life simply to put his sights on Adolf Hitler.

Great book. Here, another one. The hired assassin is out to kill de Gaulle. This one, Winston Churchill.

Here, the president's daughter is shot."

"His daughter?"

"Ah, but were they aiming at the president? Presidents are always good."

"Like Abraham Lincoln," Walter said. "Guy pulled that one didn't know what the fuck he was doing."

"Here, the victim's J. Edgar Hoover. This one, Martin Bormann."

Walter had never heard of Martin Bormann.

"An African dictator . . . A right wing newspaper columnist. Here, a guy running for president . . .

Another African dictator. Dictators are fun. Murder in Moscow, a triple with the victims' faces removed.

Beauty."

"Who's behind all this?" Walter said. "I mean in the books."

"Who's paying for it? Big money, big oil, the CIA. Self-appointed world savers . . ."

He remembered Robbie sitting next to him at the bar, in the cone of soft light.

Robbie saying, "I didn't say who do you think deserves to be killed. It's not a moral question I'm asking. I said who would you like to kill, anybody in the world, assuming you have the resources, whatever you need. You can go anywhere, hire anyone you feel can be trusted, like that."

"I already got one," Walter said, "the Ayatollah.

What's his name, Asshollah Khomeini, take that sucker out."

"Not bad," Robbie said, "but I think we should be a little more realistic. I mean you land at Tehran, but where are you? I think it's got to be someone who's relatively accessible."

Walter thought some more, smoking, drinking his vodka. He wished he had a beer to go with it.

He said, "This is fun, you know it?"

Robbie grinned. "I thought you'd like it."

"Jesus--Fidel Castro!"

"You want a challenge, uh?"

"Slip into Cuba by boat," Walter said, "wait for the sucker to drive by someplace."

"I think you're into a storybook situation there," Robbie said. "You're right, there're some good ones. Yasir Arafat, the PLO guy. Qaddafi in Libya. I don't know what you might think of Ahmed Yamani." Robbie paused. "No, I guess Yamani's all right."

Good. Because Walter had never thought one way or the other about Ahmed Yamani in his life.

Robbie said, "But those are the kinds of names that are done in books and the situations are about as real as the heroes. You know what I mean? The hero's a superstar. Former Green Beret, CIA, KGB double agent, colonel in Army Counter-Intelligence.

Can speak about seven languages including Urdu and Tamil. Expert with any kind of weapon ever invented and has a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. His hands are lethal weapons, ah, but manicured. You know the kind of guy I mean?"

"Sure, very cool. Has all these broads around--"

"But grim," Robbie said. "The serious type."

Walter was nodding. "Yeah, dedicated. Never looks around--wait a minute, the fuck am I doing here? Like any normal person."

"That's what I mean," Robbie said. "Looking at it realistically . . . and we put our minds to it, decide to take somebody out . . . who would it be?"

"Somebody who's a real asshole," Walter said, thinking hard. "In fact this fellow--tell me if I'm wrong, Rob--he's not only a rotten son of a bitch should be put away, he's fucking evil. Hey, and he can be dangerous. You don't just walk in and do him."

Robbie was nodding. "That's the guy."

Walter thought some more; he looked up.

"You got one?"

"Well . . . I might."

"Who is it?" Walter waited.

Robbie smiled. "Not yet."

"Come on, Rob, you can tell me."

Robbie said, "I'm not even sure you want to make the move. You've been a cop a long time."

Walter said, "You kidding? I'll quit today."

"What about your wife?"

"She can stay in Florida, get a job wrestling alligators. No--Irene'll be fine. Don't worry about it."

Robbie nodded. For a moment there was silence.