Free 52 Pickup by Elmore Leonard Page B

Listen, if you want me foranything and my night line doesn’t answer, I’m back in the shop somewhere. Leave a message, I’ll call you . . . . Okay, see you later.”
    He wasn’t finished with the cigarette, but didn’t need it now and stubbed it out as he hung up.
    In the living room he turned on a lamp. He liked the furniture, all the orange-and-white stuff and abstract paintings and plants that were like trees. He had paid a decorator to pick them out and they were his. He was finally starting to get used to the place; though he still had the feeling, most of the time, he was in a resort hotel suite or someone else’s house. At the foot of the suspended stairway he looked up and called the girl’s name again.
    “Cini?”
    He waited, “Hey, lady, I’m home!”
    It sounded strange. He said it and could hear himself, but it sounded strange, not something he would say. He stood there, listening.
    But the sound he heard, finally, did not come from upstairs. It came from the den, the faint, whirring sound of a motor, and he looked toward the closed door.
    He identified the sound as he opened the door and there it was, the movie projector going, lamp on, illuminating a hot white square across the room; the screen, set up, waiting. There was the sound and the shaft of light. Nothing else, untilthe figure moved out of the darkness to stand in front of the screen: a man he knew immediately was a black man, though he wore a woman’s nylon stocking over his face that washed out his features. At the same time he knew that the revolver in the man’s hand was a .38 Colt Special.
    Even with the stocking over his face the man’s words were clear. He said quietly, “Take a seat, motherfucker. It’s home movie time.”
    Later, he remembered saying, “What do you want?” and “Where is she?” and then half turning as he heard the sound behind him. Later, he tried to concentrate on what he saw in the moment before the living room lamp went out: two men, seeing them as a heavyset guy and a skinny guy with long hair, but not seeing their features or even their clothes, only remembering an impression, the contrast of a thin guy with bony shoulders coming toward him and the thick-bodied guy hunched over the lamp. That was all he saw of them. The black guy poked him with the revolver, moving him to a chair, and Mitchell said, “You mind telling me what’s going on?”
    The skinny guy, in the room now at the projector, said, “No talking during the show, man. Just watch, and listen.”
    The black guy pushed him into the chair and moved around behind him. Mitchell sat staringat the screen. He leaned back and felt the barrel of the revolver press against his head. In a moment he saw the countdown of numbers as the film started through the projector.
    “You’ve seen some of this before,” the skinny guy said. “Stuff your girlfriend shot. I want you to know what we know, so it’ll be clear in your head. You dig?”
    Mitchell saw himself on the screen in full color, green bathing trunks and suntan lotion shining on his arm. He was reclined in a lounge chair reading The Wall Street Journal. The projector hummed in the dark room. After a moment he saw himself lower the newspaper and look up and shake his head and then smile patiently. He remembered the moment. He remembered almost telling her for Christ sake, no. But he had not said anything because no one but the two of them would ever see the film.
    As he watched himself the skinny guy’s voice-over said, “Lucayan Beach. Grand Bahama, March seventeen through twenty-one, while your wife thought you were at a convention in Miami. You rascal. The broad’s shooting you. Now here’s you shooting the broad.”
    Cini came glistening out of the surf in the tan bikini he remembered very well, and from this distance, for a moment, she looked naked. Now she was closer, smiling, smoothing back her wet blond hair.
    The voice-over said, “A nice body, but a little weak in the