Mr. Paradise

  “We use semi-automatics,” Art said. “Use ‘em one time only. Throw ‘em away and get new ones for the next job. All the contracts are drug dealers.”

  “A couple weren’t,” Carl said.

  “No, but all the rest were,” Art said. “We don’t give a shit what they do. It just happens they deal drugs.”

  Jerome said, “You do this for money, huh?”

  “Fifty gees a pop,” Art said.

  “Man, that sounds high. How you get jobs like that?”

  “Drink up,” Carl said, “we’re outta here.”

  Art wanted to take some of the booze and Jerome said he’d like to run upstairs, have a quick look around. Carl gave him five minutes.

  Jerome went straight to the master bedroom hoping, looked in the drawers of the night tables on both sides of the bed, nothing, then under the king-size mattress along the edge and found a pistol: Sig Sauer three-eighty, loaded, seven in the magazine. He wrapped it in a dark red scarf he got from the bureau he could use as a do-rag and shoved it in the back pocket of the cargo pants falling off his ass.

  •

  Driving south on Woodward again toward Eight Mile and Detroit, Art called home.

  He listened to Virginia and said, “Honey, nobody from the lawyer’s office calls me on the house phone, I never gave ‘em the number. If the woman called ain’t selling something she’s likely the police.” He said, “Now don’t get nervous on me—Jesus. What you do is walk up to Rite Aid on Campau and buy a pack of cigarettes. See if there’s anybody sitting around in a car. Virginia? Look without them noticing you’re looking. I’ll call you later.”

  Jerome, sitting behind them, listened to Art and heard Carl say, “Shit,” and Art say, “I’ll check on Connie, see if anybody’s been there.”

  He said, “Hey, Con, how you doing? It’s Art.” He listened and said, “Yeah, the old man’s busy driving. We got you another couple bottles of vodka.” He said, “Oh, is that right?” and listened for a couple of minutes before saying, “Here, I’ll let you tell Carl.”

  Jerome watched him hand Carl the phone.

  Carl said, “Hi, sweetheart, what’s going on?”

  Jerome heard him say yeah and uh-huh a few times as Carl listened to Connie, Carl finally saying, “They come by again, tell ‘em you have no idea where I’m at, ‘cause I sure as hell don’t know where I’ll be. I’ll call you later on, let you know.”

  He said to Art, “They took the vodka bottle, the one from the old man’s house. These others come in the back with their guns out. She tell you that?”

  Art said, “There’s no fuckin way they could be on us.”

  Jerome watched Carl turn his head to look at Art and say to him, “That fuckin Montez. He gave us up.”

  They were both quiet now staring at the road, coming up on Eight Mile, the city limits.

  Jerome said, “Now where we going?”

  Neither one answered him.

  23

  THE SOUND WAS DETROIT HIP-HOP, A GRITTY energy that wrapped itself around Kelly walking into Alvin’s, the crowd wall-to-wall waving, bobbing their heads in that funky way as if they were plugged in, wired to the hypnotic beats coming out of a white emcee called Hush, guys prowling the stage in wife beaters and sock hats delivering their message, in-your-face lyrics that got Kelly’s attention. Big security hunks in black T-shirts faced the crowd looking mean, daring anybody to get out of line. The scene made her think of Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room, from a poem in a schoolbook her dad had kept, Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom, but couldn’t think of what the poem was called. She moved through the pack to stand behind two young guys at the bar in caps turned backwards, Kelly waiting for the bartender to see her. The young guy on her left pressed his chin against his shoulder and asked how she was doing. Kelly raised her voice to ask him what they were playing. He said, “‘Get Down,’ from Hush’s album Roses and Razorblades.” Kelly shrugged. “He’s okay.” The other guy put his chin on his shoulder and said, “You like to come here?” Kelly said, “I’m here, aren’t I?” He asked if he could buy her a drink. Kelly said, “Scotch with a splash would be nice.” The first guy turned on his stool to ask if she knew Hush’s dad was a homicide cop. She said, “Really?” He told her the other emcee up there was Shane Capone, does the track with Hush on Detroit Players. And asked if she’d seen Bantam Rooster here. Kelly said one of the guys in that band worked at Car City Records, where she bought her tunes, but the only punk in her book was Iggy. The other guy at the bar handed Kelly her scotch. She thanked him. The first guy offered her his seat. Kelly thanked him too and that was the end of the bar conversation. She said, “I’m meeting someone,” and left them, moving into the crowd.

  •

  She found Montez on the other side of the stage from the entrance, came up behind him, stuck her finger in the small of his back and said, “Stick ‘em up.” Montez came around and Kelly was looking at herself in his sunglasses.

  He said, “Don’t ever do that to me, girl.” And said, “Why you want to meet here? Watch these white boys trying hard to be black.”

  She said, “Did you get it?”

  “This morning soon as they opened the bank. It’s a stock certificate.”

  Shouting at each other, frowning to hear in the heavy beat pumping out of the stack of woofers.

  “For what?”

  “I just told you, a stock certificate.”

  “What’s the company?”

  “Out in Texas, I think it’s oil.”

  “How many shares?”

  “Twenty thousand. It says it in statements the old man put in with the certificate.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t hear what you said.”

  “Come on,” Montez said, taking her by the arm away from the stage to the wall along the side. “We can’t talk in here. Let’s go to your place. Hear some of those dirty girls doing their rap? Have us a beverage?”

  Kelly saw one of the security guards, his back to the stage, watching them. A big white guy with a beard.

  She said, “I worked all afternoon getting ready for a fashion show, I’m too tired to party. All I want to do is go home—” She stopped. “You brought it, didn’t you?”

  Montez, still holding her arm, put his free hand on his cashmere coat. “Got it right here.”

  “Let me have it,” Kelly said. “I’ll check it out and give you a call tomorrow.”

  Montez made a face, frowning, straining to hear over Hush.

  Kelly leaned close to him. “I said I’ll find out what it’s worth and give you a call.”

  The bouncer, the security guy, was still watching them, staring hard.

  Montez brought a manila envelope folded in half out of his coat. He held on to it as Kelly tried to take it from him, Kelly saying, “Just let me see what it is.”

  “I told you, I think it’s a big oil company out in Texas. Has DRP in a fancy style on the folder.”

  She saw the security guy coming toward them and tugged at the envelope and gave Montez a shove and stepped back as the security guy caught Montez, took the envelope from him and gave it to Kelly, Montez trying to twist out of the guy’s tattooed arms, yelling at him in the band racket, wanting to know what the fuck he was doing—Kelly pretty sure that’s what he was saying.

  She edged along in front of the stage past the pack waving, moving, Kelly moving toward the entrance on the other side, looking up at Hush in his sock hat, close enough to hear lyrics about sticking a condom in your ear to fuck what you heard, Kelly thinking it almost made sense, thinking that Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room would work in here, the first rap, and remembered part of another couple of lines from the poem, something about the crowd—that was it—gave a whoop and a call and danced the juba from wall to wall, and walked out of Alvin’s.

  •

  A lot of the time she was restless. She liked to take chances and liked to bet on things and drive fast, run through red lights late at night on the way home. There was a
lways a carton of Slims in the loft. She’d look at Chloe’s pack on the coffee table and bet her ten bucks there were exactly ten cigarettes in it. Chloe said okay that time and shook out eleven. Kelly loved to drink cocktails, almost any kind, and talk, alexanders, Sazeracs, daiquiris in different flavors she had in the liquor cabinet. She brought home a pair of sealskin mukluks from a shoot in Iceland, seeing herself posing in them for a panties shot, but none of the catalogs went for the idea.

  Driving home she thought of her dad, wondering what he would do in this situation: if he were a girl and had a stock certificate in Chloe Robinette’s name, could fake her signature and had her driver’s license. He asks how much the stock is worth and she tells him possibly a million six hundred thousand. He’d clear his throat and say:

  “Or more if the value went up?”

  Her dad was a gambler who always had his trade, scissors and a comb. When she was sixteen, talking about getting into modeling, he’d said, “Sweetheart, go to barber college and get a trade first. You ever see me I don’t have money in my pocket?”

  Tonight he’d say, “What’s the stock?”

  “Del Rio Power.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “But you’re not in the market.”

  “Not as long as you can bet at a casino.”

  “I’m about to look it up. But tell me what you’d do.”

  “I’d check to see what it’s actually worth. See, then you have to decide what your price is. If you get caught for stock fraud or forgery, I doubt you’d do more than a year, if that. Get a dress at St. Vincent de Paul to wear to court. What’s the risk of having a sheet worth to you? Assuming you can handle your conscience okay. Think of it as nobody’s money. What’s wrong with putting it in the economy?”

  She’d lay it out before him to see what he’d say, not to take his advice.

  “Okay, what’s your price?”

  Her dad would say, “You kidding? At a million six I’d go for it. Wouldn’t you?”

  •

  Kelly sat at the computer in the study with a Slim and a scotch. The stock certificate and statements from Del Rio Power came in a green folder with DRP in an elaborate design on the cover, the folder open now next to the computer. The statements told that the original 5,000 shares of stock were purchased in 1958 at eight dollars a share. Since then the stock had split twice, making Anthony Paradiso the owner of 20,000 shares. A form, signed by Paradiso, would transfer the stock to Chloe Robinette once she added her signature.

  Okay, he’d paid forty thousand for the stock forty-five years ago, no doubt on an inside tip. Let’s see what it was worth now.

  Kelly keyed in the Web address for the New York Stock Exchange, got the home page, and in the SYMBOL LOOKUP window entered DRP and clicked the QUICK QUOTE button.

  It came back with “Error: Symbol Not Found.”

  She said, Uh-oh, entered “Del Rio Power” into another window and clicked SEARCH. Now she got a headline that read “NYSE to suspend, apply to delist Del Rio Power, Inc.”

  Shit.

  She got out of the Stock Exchange and found Del Rio’s Web page through Google. It told her the company was a North American provider of natural gas … has a core business in the production, gathering, processing … and was committed to developing new supplies and blah, blah, blah … Kelly clicked on MARKET DATA and got the company’s fifty-two-week history, the price of Del Rio stock one year ago was $81.40 a share, making the whole load worth $1,628,000. She clicked on CURRENT VALUE and looked at it, sat back in her chair and said, “Shit,” feeling let down, even though she wasn’t that surprised.

  The current price of Del Rio stock was 53 cents a share.

  She heard her dad say, “Yeah? What’s wrong with ten thousand six hundred?”

  Kelly went back to the Google search list and clicked on a Business Week story about “Fraudulent energy trading … Could be looking at bankruptcy proceedings … Trying to work out a settlement with states where they owe money …” and heard her dad calling them a bunch of crooks.

  Now she tried to imagine what Chloe would say, hanging in as the old guy’s mistress for almost a year, for what she made in two weeks. She wouldn’t throw a fit. She’d say, “Fuck,” and let it go. But then she might play with it, say something like, “Maybe it’ll come back,” in an innocent tone of voice. Or, “Maybe I should sell before it goes any lower.” Kelly loved her, loved to sit with Chloe, both sunk in the sofa with drinks and Slims, talking about movie stars, about Iraq, Chloe saying, “Throw out Saddam, you get one of those guys wears his turban on the back of his head.” Or she’d say, “It takes a heartless dictator to handle those nuts over there.”

  She missed Chloe and her stories about guys trying to act cool and did everything she could not to see her sitting in the chair in her blood. She would think of Chloe, feel herself moments from tears, and would think of Frank Delsa and the way he looked at her. He was almost always on her mind.

  She knew Montez would phone from downstairs on his cell, wanting to come up. When he called, he had to first tell her what the bouncer did. “The man threw me out on the street in my good coat.”

  “You sound like it’s my fault.”

  “What’d you say to him? Nothing, not a word.”

  “You mean I should’ve explained we’re friends, working on a fraud scheme? Getting thrown out of Alvin’s isn’t your problem. You want to know what the stock’s worth?”

  He paused before saying, “All right, how much?”

  “As of the closing bell today, fifty-three cents a share.”

  “Hey, come on—I don’t believe you.”

  “Down from eighty-one forty a year ago.”

  “You’re playing with me, aren’t you?”

  “It comes to ten thousand six hundred. Not worth your time, Chops. You want the stock certificate? I’ll mail it to you.”

  Montez said, “Now wait a minute, hold on. I want to talk to you.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Come on, babe, buzz the door for me.”

  “I would,” Kelly said, “but there’s nothing you can say that I want to hear.”

  Now a pause before Montez said, “Turning on me, huh? The money ain’t what you expected.”

  “I told you from the start I wouldn’t help you,” Kelly said. “Why can’t you understand that?” She said, “Listen, Frank Delsa’s on his way over. You want the certificate or should I give it to him?”

  “How you explain you have it?”

  “I tell him you gave it to me. I’ve told him everything else. What’s the difference?”

  Montez said, “You’re fuckin with me, aren’t you?”

  “You don’t believe me, look it up. Or I can e-mail you the story, if you want—why Del Rio Power, already in the toilet, is about to go down the drain.”

  Montez said, “You gonna hear glass breaking out here, you don’t open the door.”

  Kelly reached in her bag for her cell and said to Montez, “And you’ll hear the nine-eleven operator on my cell ask what’s going on.” She said, “I forgot to mention, Delsa has the two white guys staked out. If I were you, Chops, I’d get out of town.”

  Kelly heard him say, “You think you done with me?”

  She hung up the phone, got Delsa’s card out of her bag and called his cell number and heard his voice say, “Frank Delsa,” in that quiet way of his.

  Kelly said, “I’m home and Montez is downstairs.”

  •

  Delsa stepped inside the loft and turned to Kelly, her back to the door. He said, “He wasn’t outside,” and hesitated, barely, before she was in his arms and they were kissing in that dark hallway like they would never get enough of each other, her hands slipping inside his jacket, sliding over his ribs. They kissed and held each other and he told her, “I’ve been wanting to do this since the other night.”

  She said, “Love at first sight?”

  He said, “Almost. It was when you came out of the bathroom with your
face washed.”

  “It’s working out,” Kelly said. “I planned to jump you if you came over tonight. I’m not a witness anymore, I’m out of it,” and told him about getting the stock certificate while a homicide cop’s son was rapping—Delsa saying, “Hush”—and about looking up the stock and telling Montez the million six was now ten six and going fast. “You want the certificate?” She said, “I have it,” leading him to the counter in front of the kitchen where the papers were lying.

  She asked him what he wanted to drink. He said anything and she poured them each a scotch. They touched glasses eye to eye, put the glasses on the counter and took hold of each other and got into more of that first-time kissing, neither of them getting enough of the other until he whispered to her, “You’re no longer a suspect. But you’re still a witness.”

  She stood in her wool socks looking up at him.

  “But you don’t care.”

  “This is bigger.”

  She was nodding. “You’re sure I’m not a suspect?”

  “I think you were tempted, so you played it out.”

  Still looking up at him she said, “‘If you want me to, I’ll love you. I know you better now.’”

  He remembered the key word but not the line he’d have to make positive. He said, “And I’ll be glad to reciprocate,” and had to smile. “Who wrote that?”

  “John O’Hara.”

  “I thought he was supposed to be good.”

  “He was. I love his short stories, especially the ones set in Hollywood. O’Hara drank a lot and was near the end when he wrote this one. It’s called The Instrument. But he also wrote Appointment in Samarra, about not being able to escape your fate.”

  “Like Montez,” Delsa said. “No matter what he does to slip out of this one, he’s going down.”

  She said, “I was thinking more of us.”

  “I know what you mean. There’s a lot we haven’t said.”

  “We’ve barely said anything.”

  “See, but Montez still might want the ten six. Try to get you to sign the paper.”

  “I’m giving it to you,” Kelly said, “and the driver’s license. There won’t be any way I can help him. But you’re probably right. The last thing he said to me, on the phone, ‘You think you’re done with me?’”