Free Pronto by Elmore Leonard

to lose ten percent."
    "That's if I get him back," Pam said. "And if he's over in Italy or some goddamn place it doesn't seem too likely, does it?"
    Raylan said, "You want me to go get him for you?"
    She said, "Yeah, sure."
    He said, "Ma'am, look at me." When she did he said, "I'm serious. You want me to go get him?"
    Now she had to reconsider.
    "But you're working." She gave him a suspicious look then. "Are they sending you over there anyway? They're extraditing him?"
    "He skipped on a state charge," Raylan said. "I'm federal. I've checked, Miami Beach PD has no plans to bring him back."
    "This would be on your own?"
    "My own time. I have some coming and I can get off if I want."
    Now she was busy thinking of all the reasons she believed it wouldn't work -- without telling him any of them.
    "Don't you know," Raylan said, "that fugitive investigation is one of the main duties of a U. S. marshal? Rounding up offenders and taking them to court?"
    Pam stared at him for a minute, he believed entertaining the idea of using him.
    "I imagine it would cost me an arm and a leg."
    "His ex-wife," Raylan said, "signed a contingent promissory note, didn't she?"
    "You better believe it."
    "Guaranteeing if he skips she'll pay the expenses to get him back."
    "I'm not worried about expenses," Pam said. "I want to know what you'd charge as a fee."
    Raylan held up his hands, showing her his open palms. "Nothing. Pay my way and I'll bring him back for you."
    "Why would you do that?"
    "I need to prove I can. You give me airfare and I'll use my own money for hotels and meals till I get back and you reimburse me. You get a U. S. marshal for two weeks, though I doubt I'll need more than a few days over there."
    She hesitated, as though being careful about what she'd say next. "All they know is he's in Italy somewhere. How do you expect to find him?"
    "Because one time he said to me..." Raylan paused. "This was six years ago but I'll never forget his exact words. We're spending some time together waiting for a flight, talking, he's having a few drinks. He says, 'Raylan, I'm going to tell you something I've never told anybody before in my life.' He said then, 'On the tenth of July, 1945, I killed a man in the town of Rapallo in Italy. Shot him dead.'"
    Pam said, "Yeah? You mean that's where he is?"
    "I'd bet every cent I have," Raylan said, "he's over there taking it easy, right this minute sipping coffee at a sidewalk cafe -- he doesn't drink anymore -- pretty sure nobody'll ever find him."
    The woman seemed confused again.
    "He's gone back to this place 'cause it's where he killed somebody?"
    "You could say that," Raylan said. "Except there's more to it."

    Chapter Nine.
    The woman Harry sat with Saturday afternoon at the Gran Caffe Rapallo looked like Gina Lollobrigida. Well, somewhat. That type, with short dark curly hair and a full figure, big ones; Gina Lollobrigida in her forties. They sat among palm trees and potted plants beneath an orange awning on Rapallo's Via Veneto. The woman said her name was Maura. "Maura," Harry said, "that's a nice name." The woman said, "Not Mawra. Mau-ra, like you say ow. You know how to say ow?"
    She spoke right up in a voice that was hoarse, maybe from talking so much. She had large thighs in stone-washed jeans, her legs crossed at the table. Maura told Harry she was from Genova. Not Genoa, Genova. She was part owner of an industrial film company in Genova, where her husband had died of a heart attack in the editing room two years ago. Maura had an apartment here, up the hill where people from Genova and those stuck-up Milanese have bought places for weekends and for retirement. She asked if he had seen the Lina Wertmuller film Swept Away. She said the stuck-up rich woman in it -- that was the way the Milanese spoke, trying to sound better than everyone. She said she came here every weekend -- Genova less than a half hour away on the autostrada -- except in the winter. This would be her last visit until