I told him me and Billy had been down Nuevo Laredo when the tragedy occurred. Told him about the Cadillac Bar, and about drinking tequila and teasing the girls in Boys Town. ‘Course, I left out a few thousand details I didn’t think was any of his business. Old Junior’s eyes got paler still, and his jaw was clenched up to where his lips didn’t hardly move when he talked. He didn’t ask but two or three questions, and looked satisfied with what I answered.
Fixing to leave, Junior said, “Seems like some’s got to learn good sense the hard way.”
Once Junior’d gone, talk started up in the gym again and ropes got jumped. Fight gyms from northern Mexico all up through Texas knew what happened to Coyle. Far as I know, the cops never knocked on Billy Clancy’s door, but I can tell you that none of Billy’s fighters never had trouble working up a sweat no more, or getting up for a fight neither.
I was into my third cup of coffee when I saw old Dee-Cee get off the bus. He was same as always, except this time he had him a knobby new walking stick. It was made of mesquite like the last one. But as he come closer, I could see that the wood on this new one was still green from the tree.
I said, “You hear about Coyle?”
“I jus’ got back,” said Dee-Cee, “what about him?” One of the colored boys working out started to snicker. Dee-Cee gave that boy a look with those greeny-blue eyes. And that was the end of that.
2002
ELMORE LEONARD
WHEN THE WOMEN COME OUT TO DANCE
Elmore Leonard (1925-) was born in New Orleans and educated at the University of Detroit, where he received a PhD in 1950. He worked in advertising for the next sixteen years before becoming a full-time writer. He wrote numerous short stories, mostly westerns, for men’s magazines, and his earliest novels were in that genre, including The Bounty Hunters (1953), Escape from Five Shadows (1956), and Hombre (1961), which became a successful 1967 film starring Paul Newman, Fredric March, and Richard Boone. When mystery stories superseded westerns as the preferred fiction, Leonard switched genres to become one of the greatest crime writers in history.
His earliest work included The Big Bounce (1969), filmed disastrously — twice; The Moonshine War (1970), filmed the same year with Richard Widmark and Patrick McGoohan; Fifty-two Pickup (1974), filmed in 1986 with Roy Scheider and Ann-Margret; Cat Chaser (1982), filmed (1990) with his own screenplay; and Stick (1983), filmed in 1985 with Burt Reynolds starring. His later work, much of which has also been filmed, notably the excellent Get Shorty (1990), filmed in 1995 with John Travolta, has been less plot-driven, more character-based. Leonard is justly regarded as the modern master of dialogue, with never an extraneous or superfluous word, his vivid characters engaging in what appears to be normal speech patterns for them, their easy acceptance of understated threats of violence and retribution making their positions utterly realistic. Critics and reviewers failed to appreciate, or even discover, Leonard until he won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel in 1984 for La Brava; since then he has been among the most beloved crime writers of our time—both by critics and by the readers who have made his books perennial bestsellers. He was given the Grand Master Award in 1992 by the Mystery Writers of America for lifetime achievement.
A cautionary tale about being careful what you wish for, “When the Women Come Out to Dance” was first published in the author’s short story collection of that name (2002); it was selected for The Best American Mystery Stories 2003.
Lourdes became mrs. mahmood’s personal maid when her friend Viviana quit to go to L.A. with her husband. Lourdes and Viviana were both from Cali in Colombia and had come to South Florida as mail-order brides. Lourdes’s husband, Mr. Zimmer, worked for a paving contractor until his death, two years from the time they were married.
She came to the home on Ocean Drive, only a few blocks from Donald Trump’s, expecting to not have a good feeling for a woman named Mrs. Mahmood, wife of Dr. Wasim Mahmood, who altered the faces and breasts of Palm Beach ladies and aspirated their areas of fat. So it surprised Lourdes that the woman didn’t look like a Mrs. Mahmood, and that she opened the door herself: this tall redheaded woman in a little green two-piece swimsuit, sunglasses on her nose, opened the door and said, “Lourdes, as in Our Lady of?”
“No, ma’am, Lourdes, the Spanish way to say it,” and had to ask, “You have no help here to open the door?”
The redheaded Mrs. Mahmood said, “They’re in the laundry room watching soaps.” She said, “Come on in,” and brought Lourdes into this home of marble floors, of statues and paintings that held no meaning, and out to the swimming pool, where they sat at a patio table beneath a yellow and white umbrella.
There were cigarettes, a silver lighter, and a tall glass with only ice left in it on the table. Mrs. Mahmood lit a cigarette, a long Virginia Slim, and pushed the pack toward Lourdes, who was saying, “All I have is this, Mrs. Mahmood,” Lourdes bringing a biographical data sheet, a printout, from her straw bag. She laid it before the redheaded woman showing her breasts as she leaned forward to look at the sheet.
“‘Your future wife is in the mail’?”
“From the Latina introduction list for marriage,” Lourdes said. “The men who are interested see it on their computers. Is three years old, but what it tells of me is still true. Except of course my age. Now it would say thirty-five.”
Mrs. Mahmood, with her wealth, her beauty products, looked no more than thirty. Her red hair was short and reminded Lourdes of the actress who used to be on TV at home, Jill St. John, with the same pale skin. She said, “That’s right, you and Viviana were both mail-order brides,” still looking at the sheet. “Your English is good —that’s true. You don’t smoke or drink.”
“I drink now sometime, socially.”
“You don’t have e-mail.”
“No, so we wrote letters to correspond, before he came to Cali, where I lived. They have parties for the men who come and we get — you know, we dress up for it.”
“Look each other over.”
“Yes, is how I met Mr. Zimmer in person.”
“Is that what you called him?”
“I didn’t call him anything.”
“Mrs. Zimmer,” the redheaded woman said. “How would you like to be Mrs. Mahmood?”
“I wouldn’t think that was your name.”
She was looking at the printout again. “You’re virtuous, sensitive, hardworking, optimistic. Looking for a man who’s a kind, loving person with a good job. Was that Mr. Zimmer?”
“He was OK except when he drank too much. I had to be careful what I said or it would ‘cause him to hit me. He was strong, too, for a guy his age. He was fifty-eight.”
“When you married?”
“When he died.”
“I believe Viviana said he was killed?” The woman sounding like she was trying to recall whatever it was Viviana had told her. “An accident on the job?”
Lourdes believed the woman already knew about it, but said, “He was disappeared for a few days until they find his mix truck out by Hialeah, a pile of concrete by it but no reason for the truck to be here since there’s no job he was pouring. So the police have the concrete broken open and find Mr. Zimmer.”
“Murdered,” the redheaded woman said.
“They believe so, yes, his hands tied behind him.”
“The police talk to you?”
“Of course. He was my husband.”