LaBrava said he’d almost quit after guarding Teddy. But he hung on and was reassigned to go after counterfeiters again, now out of the Miami field office, now getting into his work and enjoying it. A new angle. He picked up a Nikon, attached a 200-mm lens, and began using it in surveillance work. Loved it. Snapping undercover agents making deals with wholesalers, passers unloading their funny money. Off duty he continued snapping away: shooting up and down Southwest Eighth Street, the heart of Little Havana; or riding with a couple of Metro cops to document basic Dade County violence. He felt himself attracted to street life. It was a strange feeling, he was at home, knew the people; saw more outcast faces and attitudes than he would ever be able to record, people who showed him their essence behind all kinds of poses — did Maurice understand this? — and trapped them in his camera for all time.
He got hot again through court appearances and was given a cooling-off assignment — are you ready for this? — in Independence, Missouri.
After counterfeiters?
No, to guard Mrs. Truman.
A member of the twelve-man protective detail. To sit in the surveillance house watching monitors or sit eight hours a day in the Truman house itself on North Delaware. Sit sometimes in the living room looking around at presidential memorabilia, a picture of Margaret and her two kids, the grandfather’s clock that had been wired and you didn’t have to wind — which would have been something to do — listening to faint voices in other rooms. Or sit in the side parlor with Harry’s piano, watching movies on TV, waiting for the one interruption of the day. The arrival of the mailman.
“Don’t get me wrong, Mrs. Truman was a kind, considerate woman. I liked her a lot.”
The duty chief had said, “Look, there’re guys would give an arm and a leg for this assignment. If you can’t take pride in it, just say so.”
He glanced at Maurice sitting there prim, very serious this evening. Little Maurice Zola, born here before there were roads other than a few dirt tracks and the Florida East Coast Railway. Natty little guy staring at this illuminated interstate highway — giant lit-up green signs every few miles telling where you were — and not too impressed. He had seen swamps become cities, a bridge extended to a strip of mangrove in the Atlantic Ocean and Miami Beach was born. Changes were no longer events in his life. They had happened or they didn’t.
One of the green signs, mounted high, told them Daytona Beach was 215 miles.
“Who cares?” Maurice said. “I used to live in Daytona Beach. First time I got married, October 10, 1929 — wonderful time to get married, Jesus — was in Miami. The second time was October 24, 1943, in Daytona Beach. October’s a bad month for me. I paid alimony, I mean plenty, but I outlived ’em both. Miserable women. In ’32, when I worked for the septic tank outfit and wrestled alligators on the weekends? It was because I had the experience being married to my first wife.”
“What about the lady we’re going to see?”
“What about her?”
“You ever serious with her?”
“You’re asking, you want to know did I go to bed with her? She wasn’t that kind of girl. She wasn’t a broad you did that with.”
“I mean did you ever think of marrying her?”
“She was too young for me. I don’t mean she was too young you wanted to hop in the sack with a broad her age, I mean to get married and live with. I had all kinds of broads at that time. In fact, go back a few years before that, just before Kefauver, when I had the photo concessions and the horse book operation. I’ll tell you a secret. You want to know who one of the broads I was getting into her pants was at the time. Evelyn, at the gallery. She was in love with me.”
“I don’t think you’ve introduced me to any who weren’t.”
“What can I say?” Maurice said.
“How old’s the woman we’re going to see?”
“Jeanie? She’s not too old. Lemme think, it was ’58 I gave her a piece of the hotel. Or it might’ve been ’59, they were making that movie on the beach. Frank Sinatra, Edward G. Robinson... Jeanie was gonna be in the picture, was why she came down. But she didn’t get the part.”
“Wait a minute—” LaBrava said.
“They wanted her, but then they decided she looked too young. She was in her twenties then and she was gonna play this society woman.”
“Jeanie—”
“Yeah, very good-looking girl, lot of class. She married a guy — not long after that she married a guy she met down here. Lawyer, very wealthy, use to represent some of the big hotels. They had a house on Pine Tree Drive, I mean a mansion, faced the Eden Roc across Indian Creek. You know where I mean? Right in there, by Arthur Godfrey Road. Then Jerry, Jerry Breen was the guy’s name, had some trouble with the IRS, had to sell the place. I don’t know if it was tax fraud or what. He didn’t go to jail, anything like that, but it cost him, I’ll tell you. He died about oh, ten years ago. Yeah, Jeanie was a movie actress. They got married she retired, gave it up.”
“What was her name before?”
“Just lately I got a feeling something funny’s going on. She call me last week, start talking about she’s got some kind of problem, then changes the subject. I don’t know if she means with the booze or what.”
“You say she was a movie actress.”
“She was a star. You see her on TV once in a while, they show the old movies.”
“Her name Jeanie or Jean?”
“Jean. Jean — the hell was her name? You believe it? I’m used to thinking of her as Jeanie Breen.” Maurice pointed. “Atlantic Boulevard. See it? Mile and a half. You better get over.” Maurice rolled his window down.
“Jean Simmons?”
“Naw, not Jean Simmons.” Maurice was half-turned now, watching for cars coming up in the inside lane. “I’ll tell you when.”
“Gene Tierney?” Laura. He’d watched it on television in Bess Truman’s living room. “How’s she spell her name?”
“Jean. How do you spell Jean? J-e-a-n.”
Jean Harlow was dead. LaBrava looked at the rear-view mirror, watched headlights lagging behind, in no hurry. “Jeanne Grain?”
“Naw, not Jeanne Grain. Get ready,” Maurice said. “Not after this car but the one after it, I think you can make it.”
Commentary on LaBrava
Elmore Leonard
The best time to begin writing a novel is when you least expect to. Otherwise you can prepare forever, plotting, researching, getting to know your characters — putting it off is what you’re doing — to the point that the act of beginning becomes a major event, if not a psychological hang-up.
On December 24, 1982, at about three in the afternoon — during a lull in preparation for Christmas Eve — and without giving it much thought, I began writing LaBrava. By five o’clock I was 2½ pages into a book I would be working on for the next four months at least, or until I had written between 350 and 400 manuscript pages. (The length isn’t planned; that’s simply the way it comes out.) I felt good about the 2½ pages in that I liked the sound, the attitudes of the two characters I had introduced, and also because I was now, unexpectedly, on my way — a week earlier than I had originally planned to begin.
“ ‘I’m going to tell you a secret I never told anybody around here,’ Maurice said...”
In that Christmas Eve opening Maurice Zola and Joe LaBrava come out of an old South Miami Beach hotel called the Delia Robbia, and I began to hear them: Maurice — a talker, an opinionated old guy; LaBrava — quiet, patient up to a point. A woman is mentioned, “The lady we’re gonna rescue...” They get in Maurice’s old-model Mercedes and drive off.