Pronto (28 page)

Nicky stood in the bedroom doorway holding up the gun they'd gotten for him in Italy, the .32 caliber Targa, showing it to Jimmy Cap.

Jimmy said, "Yeah, what about it?" still in his robe, getting ready to take a shower.

"It's the one I'm gonna use. Perfect kind of piece. I leave it at the scene, there's no way they can trace it back. Holds six."

"You think that's enough?"

"I put every one of 'em into him."

"How you know where he is?"

"Gloria told me."

"Gloria's a bullshitter. Where is she?"

"She left already."

"Where'd she go?"

It was unbelievable. You tell him something -- the man refused to fucking listen.

"I thought I mentioned it. Didn't I? About her helping him take out Harry Arno?"

"You believe that?" Jimmy chose a pair of Bill Blass designer briefs from the bureau, green ones, and closed the drawer. "He don't tell me, he tells Gloria?"

"He don't tell you, Gloria says, 'cause he's showing everybody what a hard-on he is on account of pretty soon, if I don't stop him, he's gonna take over. Gloria says while you're out looking at butterflies."

Jimmy was taking off his robe. "I got to have a talk with Gloria before I kick her ass out. Maybe you should squirt some gasoline on her, what do you think?"

"If I could get you to picture it," Nicky said, wanting to hit him, drive his fist into that huge gut. "The Zip's sitting there with Harry. He don't even see me. I time it. He pops Harry, I walk up and pop the Zip. Let him see me so he knows it's from you."

Jesus, he had the robe off now. All that fat, no muscle, it barely looked like a human body.

"I know you want me to whack him out, you said so. I was just thinking that right now--"

"I told you where we're going," Jimmy Cap said, walking into the bathroom.

The lobby in half light, only a few tables occupied, reminded Joyce of Italy, Harry's villa. Their table was across from the entrance, the doors standing open. The Zip walked up taking off his suit coat, held his arms outstretched, and turned around in front of Harry. "Okay?" Harry said to sit down and have a drink; Harry on his third beer, sunglasses covering his watery eyes. The Zip looked at Joyce's white wine and ordered iced tea. He slipped his coat back on saying, "How you doing? I haven't seen you in a while."

Joyce said, "Not since you were lying on my living room floor."

When the girl walked up with her straw beach bag she said, "Well, hi," to the Zip. "I just happened to come in to use the john." The Zip asked her to sit down and the girl said, "Okay, for a minute," took the empty chair across from him, and shoved her beach bag under the table. The Zip said, "This is Gloria," and Gloria said, "Boy, what a day," laying her sunglasses in her hair. "Everybody's outside, on the porch." Joyce watched the Zip. He said, "We like it in here. Harry, you picked a good table." Harry said, "What?" Joyce watched the Zip's gaze raise. She looked over to see Raylan standing in the entrance. Harry didn't see him until he was approaching the table.

The Zip glanced at his watch and said to Raylan, "I got forty minutes yet. Right?"

Harry wasn't listening. He said to Raylan, "You're late. I already checked him out and he's clean."

Raylan said, "You look in his socks? He took an ankle gun off me in Italy. I doubt, though, he's wearing it."

"Not my style," the Zip said. He seemed relaxed in his light-gray double-breasted suit, white shirt, and dark tie; in charge. "So what do you want? Is that all you have to say? I'm not going to talk to Harry about personal business in front of you. Can you understand that?"

Now Raylan looked at his watch, studying it for a moment. He said, "I don't see you're going to have time to talk much at all. You have less'n forty minutes to the deadline. Figure it'll take you a good half hour to get out of Dade County from here, that means you actually have only about eight minutes."

Joyce kept quiet. Not Harry. He said, "You know what you're talking about? If you do, let me in on it."

"What it means," Raylan said, "he can't hurt you."

Harry seemed confused now. "Why not?"

"He won't be around."

"What're you talking about?"

"He's going out of business," Raylan said, and laid his hand on Gloria's bare shoulder. "Honey, you're through here, aren't you?"

She didn't move right away, not until Raylan helped, pulling her chair back. Gloria got up and said, "Well..." She didn't seem to want to leave. Or she was waiting for the Zip to tell her it was okay.

He said, "Good to see you."

Joyce watched her walk off across the lobby: in a tank top, shorts, and high heels; only in South Beach.

Raylan was seated now across from the Zip. They seemed to be watching each other without staring directly, eye to eye. Harry said he had to take a leak and left for the men's room. Raylan said to Joyce, "Would you excuse us for about seven minutes? Wait for Harry and take him into the bar? I need to get something cleared up here."

She wanted to stay with him, not walk away now to put up with Harry, argue with him. There were so many things she wanted to say to Raylan. Joyce hesitated a moment and picked one from the front of her mind.

"I think Gloria forgot her beach bag."

Raylan said, "You bet she did."

The Zip had it upright between his legs. All he had to do was lean forward on the table, slip his hand into the straw bag, and bring out the piece with the towel still covering it. Use it below the table. Gloria did okay: pushed it over as she sat down and he got it in position right away. It would've been nothing to do Harry. It would be done by now.

This cowboy was something else. Lays it out for you, this is how it is. He remembered Nicky telling how the guy had shot Fabrizio up on the mountain and remembered Fabrizio's face against the car window with his eyes open.

This time, though, it sounded like the guy was trying to fake him out, telling the broad excuse us for seven minutes. That was bullshit. The guy was a cop, wasn't he? A fed? They had to have warrants and court papers before they made you do something. All that legal shit. Tell him, I got news for you, I ain't going nowhere. Or don't tell him nothing. Wait him out.

"You got five minutes."

"The fuck you talking about?"

"Five minutes," Raylan said.

It was weird seeing Jimmy Cap naked from behind, as big and fat as he was his ass was a normal size. Jimmy was in there brushing his teeth, in the pink glow of the bathroom. Nicky was still in the doorway, across the bedroom from him.

"I don't see where you need me, if all you're going to is this butterfly place."

"They got a moth there, great big fucker, that don't have a mouth."

"I heard about it."

"Can't eat."

"I mean if Jack's driving he'll be with you."

"You're driving. I gave Jack the day off."

Nicky moved across the bedroom toward the pink glow repeating what Jimmy said, that he'd given Jack the day off, but sounding amazed.

"He asked me last week."

"You could've changed your mind." Nicky was in the doorway to the bathroom now. "What I want to do isn't way more important? Christ, whack a guy for you? I got the piece" -- the Targa, still in his hand -- "the perfect time to do it, and you give him the day off instead of me?"

Jimmy was shaving now.

"They got an insectarium there with bugs in it you wouldn't fucking believe. Grasshopper as big as a fucking bird. You know stick bugs, they look like sticks? They got one must be a foot long. They got these big fucking beetles with horns--"

Nicky shot him in the back of the head. He didn't say to himself, I'm going to shoot this son of a bitch. He didn't have to think. He aimed the Targa at the back of Jimmy's head, saw Jimmy in the mirror holding the razor to his face looking at him and then with the noise didn't see him as the mirror turned red and shattered, both at the same time.

They had eye contact now, not more than five feet between them. A waiter came over and asked the Zip if he'd like another iced tea. The Zip shook his head. The waiter asked Raylan if he'd like something. Raylan said, "Give me about three minutes and come back."

They still had eye contact.

"You don't look at your watch," the Zip said. "How do you know it's three minutes?"

"I'm estimating. Now it's two minutes."

"You don't know that!"

"Why's it upset you?"

"You don't have the permission, what you're doing, the authority."

"An officer of the law tells an undesirable like yourself to get out of town. It's done all the time. If you don't choose to leave, then we have to play by your rules."

"I don't have rules."

"That's what I mean. You have one minute."

"You just got done saying two minutes."

"Time flies, huh? Make up your mind."

"You're crazy, you know it?"

"Get up and leave, that's the end of it. I'll tell Jimmy Cap you quit the business."

"I'm not going anyplace."

"You still have thirty seconds."

"You're trying to fake me out or else you're crazy. No cop I ever heard of does this."

"Twenty seconds," Raylan said.

"Harry told you, I don't have a gun."

"Look in the bag."

"Come on, cut the shit. You want me to leave Harry alone? I don't care, he's nothing to me."

"He ain't much to me either," Raylan said. "Ten seconds."

The Zip didn't say anything. He nodded, taking his time. When he spoke again his tone was different, quieter. He said, "Okay," face-to-face with Raylan across the table. He said, "You're going to get what you want."

Joyce saw it.

She was a few steps behind Harry coming out of the bar into the lobby, leaving because the bartender was taking all day to mix a row of pastel-colored ladies' drinks. Didn't have time to open a beer? For a regular customer? Harry said fuck it, in his hung-over state, he had a beer on the table over there where nobody had asked Raylan to sit down. Harry said, "I don't need him. What do I need that redneck for?" and walked out of the bar. Joyce hoped to catch up and grab him by the arm, keep him away from the table.

She saw the Zip from the front, Raylan more in profile, his left side.

Just as she caught up with Harry she saw the Zip pulling something red from under the table. A towel? That was what it looked like. Now his other hand came up and Harry stopped short. He yelled out, "He's got a gun!" Loud, but sounding more surprised than to mean it as a warning. Joyce saw it, dark metal, an automatic. And saw the same kind of gun already in Raylan's hand aimed point-blank at the Zip, butt resting on the table. She had time to wonder which one Harry meant. He's got a gun! What she saw then might have taken three seconds, no more, from the time:

Raylan shot him.

Bits of glass and china flew and the Zip hunched over with the sound of it, punched against his chair. Raylan had to bring his gun up again to lay the barrel on the edge of the table.

Raylan shot him again.

Jolting him, causing the Zip to fire into the table, and more glass and china flew.

Raylan shot him again and this time sat waiting, the butt of his gun still resting on the table.

The Zip looked at him, stared before letting his shoulders go slack, and appeared then to lower his head to the table.

Joyce was aware of the sound fading and a silence before she heard voices coming from outside, the hotel porch. Raylan had turned his head and was looking at her with a solemn expression in his eyes, beneath the cocked brim of his hat. She watched him lay his gun on the table before he rose and came over to her.

Chapter
Twenty-Eight.

Harry said to Torres, "I don't get it. This is a pretty sharp young lady we're talking about here, knows the score. Right? I wouldn't have been going with her all these years."

"She's intelligent," Torres said, "she's aware," and bit into his pastrami sandwich.

They were at Wolfie's, a bowl of cherry Jell-O in front of Harry. "Then why does she ride off with the Lone Ranger, somebody she's got nothing in common with?"

"They're around the same age," Torres said.

"So? They're not going to raise a family. She used to talk about her biological clock? Well, that stopped ticking some time ago. Raylan's got two kids they're going to stop off and see in Brunswick, Georgia, Ricky and Randy, named after a couple of country music hotshots. I said to her, 'What's all this you-all shit? You don't go for that, you like Frank Sinatra, Count Basic' She says, 'Yeah, but I was born in Nashville, don't forget.' She says she thinks that side of her is starting to come out, like she's a latent redneck. She tells me he's taking her home for Christmas. I'm thinking, Harlan County, Kentucky, Christ, they're going to have Christmas in a coal mine. No, it's Detroit, where they all move to from Kentucky. I save the guy's life and he takes my girlfriend of long standing to Detroit to meet his mother."