Free Pronto by Elmore Leonard Page A

spring.
    "But it's still warm," Harry said, believing the weather here much the same as South Florida's. It seemed tropical, all the palm trees, flowers in bloom.
    "Wait till next month," the woman said.
    She had worn a fur jacket, coyote or lynx, Harry wasn't sure, draped over one shoulder when he first noticed her on the cable car this morning, descending from Montallegro, and then later, Maura strolling along the seafront promenade, hips working in the tight jeans. The jacket now hung over the back of her chair.
    When she asked why he had come to Rapallo, Harry said it was his fifth visit in the past forty-seven years and this time he had made up his mind to stay. Last year he had bought a car, he'd found a place up in the hills... Harry sounding at peace.
    "Why on earth," Maura said, "you pick this town? Why not Roma? Sit at a cafe on the real Via Veneto, the center of the world."
    "I've been there," Harry said. "I like it here because it's off-center, off the beaten track. You don't see tourists everywhere with cameras. The only tourists, as you say, are from Genova, Milan, I suppose Turin? This is your Riviera and it appeals to me, the tropical setting, the olive trees. I like the promenade along the seawall where everyone strolls."
    He heard himself speaking, sounding like someone else.
    She told him it was called the lungomare, not the promenade, and said, "Are you hiding from someone? Your wife?"
    Harry smiled, patient with her, approaching this woman with care. He said he liked the old castle sitting out in the water. He liked the palm trees and the color, the wooden shutters on the buildings, clotheslines four stories up, underwear hanging to dry. He thought of the words picture postcard and quaint but didn't use them.
    Maura said, "Are you serious? Why?" She said the buildings, the hotels and apartments along the seafront, were crumbling with age. The ones up the hill, where people from Genova and the stuck-up Milanese had their apartments, were much better, with air-conditioning.
    Harry said, "I have a villa."
    He believed he had stopped her, because she looked surprised and was quiet for a moment. She sipped her wine. Harry, in no hurry, finished his espresso. He liked espresso and wished there was a way to make it last. Two sips, it was gone.
    Maura said villas, unless you had the money to modernize, fix them up, were all right to look at from a distance, but were drafty and damp in the winter.
    Harry told her he had central heating. He had leased it furnished and was looking for a cook and a maid.
    That did stop her. She said, "Oh."
    He didn't tell her he was living at the Hotel Liguria and hadn't moved into the villa yet. Two weeks now. He would go up there and stroll through the rooms, the grounds, look out at the view. The villa needed a comfortable chair and a good firm bed, lamps with hundred-watt bulbs. Also someone who knew how to use the kitchen.
    "This morning," Harry said, "I saw you on the cable car coming down from Montallegro."
    "The funivia," Maura said.
    "The funivia. If I don't drive," Harry said, "I take the funivia to Montallegro and then walk down the hill to my villa. It's near Maurizio di Monti."
    He had gone up this morning to check for leaks following a heavy rain the day before.
    "I have my car here," Maura said. "I much prefer to drive from Genova than take the train."
    "You were smoking on the funivia," Harry said, wanting to stay on the cable car.
    She was smoking a cigarette now with her glass of wine. She seemed always to be smoking, blowing it out in quick gusts, as though in a hurry to finish. She said, "Yes?"
    "There was a sign in the funivia, I believe it said no smoking."
    "I didn't see it."
    "A man kept waving his hand in the air and saying in a loud voice -- I think he was saying -- 'There's no smoking in here.' Very upset. And you said something to him."
    "That one," Maura said. "I told him to mind his own business. Listen, I was in Barcelona during the summer to see the