Pronto Page 21

  "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."

  Torres said, "You believe what you read in the paper, huh? 'Warns U. S. Marshal...'?"

  "'Warning Alerts Federal Marshal,' with one of those lines over it, 'He's got a gun!' The last time in the paper I was 'South Beach Resident Charged in Fatal Shooting,' page three. I've moved up to the front page, but I'm still South Beach Resident in the story."

  "That was a weird investigation," Torres said. "There still some questions haven't been answered. We going to bring up this Gloria Ayres, accessory to attempted murder of a federal officer? Or was the Zip after you? You're not saying. What about this kid Nicky Testa? Is there some kind of connection? Says he's lifting weights when two guys come in wearing ski masks, pop Jimmy, and run out. McCormick wants to talk to him, somebody he thinks he can take. He says he might reopen the racketeering investigation. I told him Nicky Testa won't last three weeks running that show. Crimes Persons talked to him, they said he's in a daze, Gloria's leading him around by his dick."

  "I don't know him or want to," Harry said. "McCormick mentions my name, tell him I'm leaving town any minute."

  "I hear you're back running the sports book."

  "Just till after the Super Bowl."

  "Then what?"

  "I don't know. I may give Italy another chance. Find someplace a little farther south. See what Joyce's doing, if she's still with the Lone Ranger. She wants to come along to Italy, fine. She doesn't, that's okay too."

  "Just a sweet old guy," Torres said, "aren't you?"

  Harry shrugged, eating his Jell-O.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

  Elmore Leonard was born in 1925 in New Orleans. He lived in Dallas, Oklahoma City and Memphis before his family settled in Detroit in 1935. He served in the US Navy during the Second World War and afterwards studied English literature at the University of Detroit, graduating in 1950. From 1949 to 1961 he worked as a copywriter in various advertising agencies and, apart from a few book reviews, he has been writing only novels and screenplays since 1967. LaBrava won the 1983 Edgar Allan Poe Award for the best mystery novel and in 1992 Elmore Leonard was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.

  His books, most of which are available in Penguin, include Glitz, The Switch, The Hunted, Unknown Man No. 89, Cat Chaser, Split Images, City Primeval, Bandits, Gold Coast, Touch, Freaky Deaky, Killshot, Get Shorty, Maximum Bob, Rum Punch, Pronto, Riding the Rap, Out of Sight, Cuba Libre, and Be Cool.

  Many of his novels have been filmed, notably Get Shorty, Rum Punch (as the movie Jackie Brown), Touch and Out of Sight. His most recent book, The Tonto Woman and Other Western Stories, is available in Viking.

  Elmore Leonard is a member of the Author's Guild, The Writers' Guild of America, Western Writers of America and Mystery Writers of America.