Pronto (5 page)

"We moved, Harry, when I was two years old."

"Yeah, but once a you-all, you're one for life," Harry said. "Look at him licking his cone."

When they were silent and it was quiet in the room they could hear faint sounds from outside, a car starting, voices raised. Out on the beach a photographer and crew were shooting a ninety-pound fashion model in after-swim wear, a girl fifteen or sixteen. Models now were babies. Joyce had three catalog jobs lined up for the winter and was pretty sure of doing aerobic outfits in the sexy underwear book. She looked okay as long as she could wear a stocking to cover her veins and bumps. She didn't mind Harry seeing them.

They went out weekdays during the football season, saw a movie and had dinner and sometimes she'd stay over. Harry became horny about once a month, always in the morning. Toward the end of his drinking days, a few years ago, he was horny every morning, especially hung over. But he was only normally horny, years before that, when she was dancing topless and he would take her out after to get something to eat. He didn't seem to know what kind of attitude to have about her. Or he was self-conscious about being seen with her in public; though there was little chance anyone on the beach would recognize her. The clubs she worked were in Miami. Harry was prudish, while she didn't feel that dancing with her breasts exposed, when she was doing it, was that big a deal. She said to him once, "You wait for what seems like forever to see what kind of tits you're going to have. Then once you have them, whatever shape or size they are, you're stuck. Mine are o-kay, they're not showstoppers by any means, which is fine with me. I've never ever thought for one minute about getting them augumented, or envied girls who had big ones -- no thanks, have to carry around the load some girls do. Of course, guys love big ones." At least guys who came to topless clubs seemed to. They'd ask why she wore glasses while she performed and she'd tell them so she could see where she was going and not fall off the stage. She told Harry the horn-rim glasses gave her a friendly rapport with the audience. Here was a girl being herself and they loved it, they could relate to her. "Like I was the girl next door." And Harry said, "Or their fifth-grade teacher they used to fantasize about, wonder what she looked like naked." There could be something to that. He asked about guys who ran these clubs hitting on her. She told Harry they weren't her type. As Joy she'd open her act with Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog," do funky moves to the intricate guitar riffs between the lyrics and get the room's attention fast. Her glasses would slip and she'd push them back up while she danced. The idea was not to look too professional. When she finally quit Harry said, "Well, you don't have to do that anymore." She told him she didn't ever have to do it, she liked it, all that attention. Harry told her she should be ashamed of herself. He didn't get it, because in his business the idea was not to call attention to yourself. They split up. She worked in the chorus aboard a cruise ship that toured the Caribbean, choreographed routines a couple of years, got into catalog modeling. About this time she began to hear her biological clock ticking and married a guy who sold real estate. He said he wouldn't mind a couple more kids. "I thought I was going to be a mommy," Joyce told Harry a few years later, when he was back in her life. "Until these two little girls he already had, not even in training bras yet, made him choose between them and me." Harry said, "You're not the mommy type, kiddo." Making it sound like a compliment. They'd go to movies, to Wolfie's, to Joe's Stone Crab. Have Chinese in. ... All those years, it was funny, she always felt she could do better than Harry Arno, twenty-five years older than she was, on Medicare. Though he never took advantage of the senior citizen's discount at the movies.

Joyce said, "You're getting ready to take off, aren't you?"

Looking out the window he didn't answer right away. When he did he said, "I've been ready."

She moved her hand across his shoulders, over and back again. "You know where you're going?"

"Of course I do." He said, "I may need your help to get started."

It surprised and scared her a little. "What would you want me to do?"

"I'll let you know." Another minute went by before he said, "I think tomorrow will be the day. Why hang around."

"But if you testify," Joyce said, "and they put Jimmy away--"

"It wouldn't matter, he could still get people to do a job on me."

"If you talked to him? Look at how long you've known each other."

Harry said, "I have bags packed ready to run and I shot one of his guys. As far as he's concerned I skimmed on him, the same as stealing money, and there's no way to convince him otherwise."

"The FBI, they'll be after you, too, won't they?"

Still looking out the window he said, "I doubt it. They'd have to justify the expense and I don't think they'd be able to."

She said, "Can I ask where you're going?"

Harry turned his head and she was looking into his eyes, a bright clear blue with light reflecting in them through the window.

He said, "If I'm the only one who knows, I should be okay." He touched her face then, caressing at first, then fooling with her ear and the curly ends of her hair. "I'll tell you something I've never told a soul," Harry said, this time sure of it. "I actually have been skimming off those people over twenty years. You can't imagine how much money I've put away."

Chapter
Five.

After that business at the Atlanta airport, losing a federal witness in his care, Raylan Givens was assigned to the academy at Glynco, Georgia, where future marshals got their training.

He told Harry Arno, the two of them having an early dinner at Joe's Stone Crab, the training center was south of Savannah toward Brunswick and that guys applying as Treasury agents, ATF and Secret Service, also Customs, were trained there too. Raylan said what it was, you go through a Criminal Investigator course with the emphasis on PT, physical training. He was a firearms instructor. He said it wasn't a put-down to be assigned there; most guys liked the duty. It was just they knew he wanted field work, fugitive investigation, so he felt that in a way it was like a punishment.

"One thing they knew I could do without messing up was shoot. So I taught the care and use of basic firearms. Like that Army-issue .45 you used, developed about a hundred years ago to stop the fanatical Moros during the Philippine Insurrection. It stopped them too."

When Raylan said, "Hey, I'm doing all the talking," Harry Arno told him no, go on, it was interesting. Harry busy cracking those crab claws and dipping them into butter or a kind of mustardy sauce. The hash browns were good; everything was good here. Harry said to have the Key lime pie after.

Raylan said, "It wasn't too tough at the academy, but if you weren't used to it, it could be stressful. There was one trainee, he threw his suitcase over the fence and was climbing it when they pulled him off and asked him, 'What are you doing?' He said, 'I've had enough, I'm leaving.' They said to him, 'Well, why don't you use the front gate?' This trainee had the feeling he was in prison and to get out he'd have to escape."

"When you were a trainee," Harry Arno asked, sucking on a claw, "did you have that feeling?"

"No, I liked it," Raylan said. "I was in the Marines before that, so it wasn't anything new. I mean physical training." He said, "I had a roommate, though," and had to grin recalling the guy, "who couldn't wait to get out. He'd sit there in the room looking at a map of the United States he had Scotch-taped to the wall? He'd say, This is how I'm going home, this road here and this one,' showing me how he'd get to St. Louis, Missouri."

Harry said, "Is that right?"

You could see he was interested and enjoying himself.

"Then the next time, the guy would ask me what I thought of the route, a different one. He had roads traced with a colored pencil that were like the straightest lines to where he wanted to go, but without taking interstates if they weren't direct routes. You know, that might be longer but would be quicker? It was like he was on the run, using back roads and such."

Harry touched his napkin to his mouth, put it on the table, and said, "Excuse me a minute, Raylan."

Raylan gripped his chair arms, ready to get up.

Harry said, "I'm just going to the men's. I'll be right back." He was up now but paused to smile.

And Raylan knew he was thinking about that time in the Atlanta airport. Raylan grinned back at him.

"It seems to me you said that once before."

Harry raised one hand, the way you might interrupt someone to say good-bye, and walked off around the tables -- just about all of them occupied now -- toward the men's room over on the other side.

Raylan was thinking that when Harry came back he'd tell him the other thing the map reader did. How he went to bed real early every night, around eight, instead of going into town for a few beers. Raylan would come back around midnight and if he was quiet, the roommate would be quiet the next morning when he got up about an hour early. But if Raylan accidentally made any noise at night when he came in, bumped into his locker or knocked something off the desk? The roommate would make the exact same noises the next morning.

He could tell Harry that one. He could tell about guys he knew from his training he ran into in the field.

He'd ask Harry if he did any fishing. Explain how he'd only been in the Miami Marshals Office since last spring and had not done any fishing around here. Growing up he'd fished mostly for catfish in ponds and streams that were contaminated and had hardly any fish in them. Then, instructing at Glynco and living in Brunswick, Georgia, he'd fished in the ocean, out in St. Andrew Sound off Jekyll Island. Ask Harry about bonefishing down in the Keys; he might know.

Now he wondered if Harry had fallen in.

He hadn't shown Harry pictures of his kids yet, his two boys, Ricky, nine, and Randy, three and a half.

If he did, though, he'd have to mention that his wife, Winona, was still in Brunswick with the two boys, but not go into any detail unless Harry asked why they weren't with him. How did you answer that in a few words and not bore him with a long, involved story? Well, you see, Winona's divorcing me. I left to report here, she stayed to sell the house, see if we could get sixty-seven nine, what we paid, and fell for the real estate salesman who sold the house and didn't even get our price. Let it go for sixty-five five, took his commission and also Winona. Like I'd call her up during that time? "Well, how we doing, hon?" "Oh, okay." She wouldn't say much till finally this one time she goes, "I have some good news," meaning the house was sold, "and some I know you won't like, so I expect you're going to give me a hard time." That was how Winona talked, always a little smart-alecky. If Harry wanted to hear about it... Harry had been divorced and might offer tips on how to accept what you saw coming and not take a baseball bat to that real estate salesman up in Brunswick. The thing was, he didn't especially miss Winona. The two boys, yeah, but not Winona. Raylan put his napkin on the table, got up, and followed Harry's route to the men's room. Pushed open the door and went in.

Okay, he wasn't here. Nobody was, the doors to the stalls were partway open and no feet showed underneath.

He's around, though, Raylan told himself. He's having a little fun with you, that's all.

Boy, did he want to believe it.

Torres got to Joyce Patton the next afternoon and talked to her in her apartment, Torres looking around the living room as he asked her, "Why don't you tell me where he went? Save us a lot of trouble."

She said she had no idea.

Torres said, "You know I'm a friend of his. I don't want to see him become a fugitive. But if he's left town or fails to show up for his arraignment, that's what he is."

She didn't say anything.

"At least he can't leave the country. We made him hand over his passport."

She was composed, standing with her arms folded waiting for him to finish and leave. A good-looking woman, nice figure.

"They know him at Joe's Stone Crab," Torres said, "he's been going there, what, twenty years? The hostess said he left about ten to six, as they were starting to fill up. A few minutes later the marshal he was having dinner with came looking for him. The valet parking kid told us Mr. Arno came out and got in his car. He didn't drive it there, the marshal who was with him drove. But it was his Eldorado pulled up on the other side of Biscayne the exact moment Harry came out the door. He walked across the street, got in, and the car left. The valet kid didn't notice who was driving."

"I don't know anything about it," Joyce said.

She looked right at him, Torres thinking, Like she might have prepared herself for this knowing it was coming. He said, "Wherever Harry went, he didn't drive. So I'm thinking he flew, but didn't want to leave his car at the airport." He waited a moment. "We're checking all the flights that went out yesterday." He paused again. "You understand I think you drove him to the airport and brought his car back to the lot where he keeps it."

She didn't move or say anything. If she had made up her mind to outwait him she was doing okay.

"I bet you have his car keys," Torres said, "in your purse."

Her expression changed slightly, eyebrows raising.

"That would prove I drove him to the airport?"