Authors: Elmore Leonard
"I'm breathing out of both ends," Rosen said.
He rinsed his mouth with water and spit it in th
e pan Davis had placed next to him. There was a milk bottle for when he had to take a leak, but h e hadn't used it yet.
"I'm not supposed to drink, how about if I
s moke?"
"Your lung's got enough trouble," Davis said.
"I won't inhale. No, it'd be a good time to quit.
You know how many times I've quit in the las
t year? That goddamn fire--you know, I starte d smoking again right after that. Pack and a half a day . . . hey . . . what's gonna happen?"
"I'm going out when it gets dark," Davis said.
"Get help? The police?"
"It'd take too long, a couple hours or more. I jus
t want to look around. I've got some plastic in m y car, but not much wire and no way to fire it, unles s we hook it to a light switch. But that would be if w e were pretty desperate. Get them coming in. You r car's sitting out there. Tali says she left the key in it.
Maybe that's a way, if we can get you to the car.
Shoot out through the back. But I don't knows hit, there isn't any road back there. It's all rock s and gullies. The other thing, one of them was b y your car and he might've rigged it with a charge. I d on't know, but I better find out."
"Or tell them okay, you'll leave," Rosen said.
"Take Tali and get out of here. I appreciate it--listen, you don't know, but this doesn't have anything to do with you."
"You want them to shoot Tali?"
"That's what I'm talking about, if she stays here.
If you stay," Rosen said.
"You think we walk out there they won't shoo
t us? Alive, we're witnesses. Dead, we go in the sam e hole you do."
"We're gonna get out," Rosen said. "Right?"
Davis nodded.
"I mean what I said--I'm gonna give you something," Rosen said. "In fact you can name it. Anything I've got, you can have." Rosen was silent a moment. "Listen, if I die . . ."
"If you want to live, then live," Davis said.
"That's what you do. You don't think about anything else."
"It's funny the things you do think about."
Rosen smiled. "Dr. Morris comes home--holy shit
, what happened to my house? I keep seeing his face.
Thinking about the expenses I'm gonna have, the
n it isn't so funny."
"You need a couple of windows in your car,"
Davis said.
"And the other one, the gray one--Christ, ho
w about those guys using my car?--I imagine it's al l shot up." Rosen shook his head. "It's funny wha t you think about. It's funny I'm not more scared.
But I think, well, whatever happens--it's interesting because something like this, you can imagine, has never happened to me before. Like watching i t and not being in it. Is that how you look at it? I wa s thinking how it might be in combat. It's always th e other guy who's gonna get hit, isn't it? Well, okay , whatever happens. It's interesting . . . I know a gu y had a lung collapse on him. He said it hurt like a sonofabitch, something about the lining--I didn'
t understand that part--but he said they pumped i t back up. I guess I got some broken ribs, too. Well, I h ad that before in a car accident. Rear-end collision, I went into the fucking steering wheel. But they're all broken off, aren't they?"
"The wound's clean," Davis said. "We keep i
t clean, everything else can be fixed."
"I'm glad you know what you're doing," Rose
n said. "You may not feel the same way, but I'm gla d you're here. As I told you once before--Christ, jus t last night, it seems like a week ago--you'll make it.
You've got a nice natural style."
"How do you spell it?" Mel said to the girl sittin
g next to him at the Pal Hotel bar. She was fairl y good-looking--dark skin, rosy makeup, and blac k black hair. Mel figured she would have a very heav y black bush. He liked that.
When she had spelled her name for him he said
, "That's Guela. Ga-way-la."
"No, no," the girl said. "Geh-oo-lah. Say it."
"Gay-woo-la," Mel said. "That's Jewish, huh?"
"Yes, Hebrew."
"I never heard it before. Isaac?"
Itzak, the barman, came over. "Yes, please, Mr.
Bondy."
"Same way. Campari and soda. Give her one."
The girl smiled and thanked him and moved
a little closer, hanging her hip off the stool to touc h his thigh.
"Save it," Mel said. "I'm buying a drink. W
e haven't agreed I'm buying anything else. Ho w much?"
"Four hundred lira." Quietly, close to him.
"Your ass."
"Yes?"
"That means you're high. It's too much."
"Too much? The same as fifty dollar."
"The same as fifty dollar is three hundred lira,"
Mel said. "Today's rate of exchange at the Bank o
f Israel, determined by the devaluation of th e common-market dollar discount. And if you believe that, we can go upstairs and fall in love."
"All right," the girl said. "Three hundred lira."
"How many times?"
"How many times? One time. How many time
s you good to do it for?"
That's how it happened that Rashad found Me
l with his white ass up in the air, his face buried in a pillow, and Guelah doing her routine, moaning an d gasping with her eyes open.
Rashad pressed the barrel of the Beretta int
o Mel's left buttock and said, "Now, if you can kee p going, my man, that's savoir faire."
Rosen said to Tali, who was sitting close to him i
n the darkness, "I'm gonna tell you something I neve r told anybody before."
"Yes?"
"I'm part Jewish." He waited.
Tali said again, "Yes?"
"Well, are you surprised?"
"I always think you are a Jew," Tali said. "Wha
t does it mean part? Part of what?"
"You thought I was? Why?"
"I don't know." Tali shrugged. "I always thin
k it. Your appearance . . ."
"Come on."
"Your name . . ."
"My name, I made up the name. You know wh
o I really am? Baptized? James C. Ross. Jimmy Ross.
But most people, even my wife, called me Ross."
"It's a nice name, Ross. It's not Hebrew?"
"I don't know, I guess some people named Ros
s are Jewish, but I didn't know that, because m y mother was Irish, her name was Connelly, and sh e was always talking about the Irish, like there wa s something special about them, a gift, or talkin g about her people coming from Cork. So I though t Ross was Irish almost all my life. Then when m y dad died--I was nineteen, I came home from th e service for the funeral--I found out our name originally was Rosen. My dad's grandfather changed it when he came over from England. But see, nobod y on my dad's side ever practiced the Jewish faith, s o I didn't know anything about it till I came here.
And you know what? It's interesting. I don't buy al
l the kosher business, Christ, the diet laws. Wha t does Almighty God care if you eat butter wit h steak? He's got enough to think about, all the fuckups in the world. But the history and all, it's interesting."
"My name, Atalia, is from the history time."
"Is that right? I thought it meant from Italy."
"No, it's from very far back, but I don't rea
d about it in a long time."
"See, you're the new breed," Rosen said. "Yo
u can't be bothered with religion, all the ceremony."
"We have our meal together, the family, on Friday evening," Tali said. "I still want you to meet my mother sometime."
"What do I want to meet your mother for? Sh
e fool around?"
"No, of course not."
"What do you mean, of course not. You probably don't even know her. You ever talk to her about what she feels and thinks, what you feel? Kid s don't know their parents. They grow up and star t thinking about them as real people after they'r e dead. People waste time, years, playing games wit h each other--who am I?--and never get to kno w anybody."
"Is this true?" Tali said.
"Yes, it's true," Rosen said. "I think I'm gettin
g close to something, a truth about how to live lif e and not waste it or mess up. I'll get it clear in m y mind and tell you about it."
"I would like to hear that," Tali said. "Lear
n what to do with my life before I get old."
"It's simple," Rosen said. "It's not easy, but it'
s simple."
When Tali rose and moved away he could hear th
e Marine talking to her. Then the Marine cam e over--feeling his steps on the floor--and crouche d down next to him. He could see the Marine's fac e in the light from the window as the Marine stare d outside. Looking down at him, the Marine's features vanished in the dark.
"You want to know something?"
"What?" the Marine said.
"I never told anybody this before and you ma
y not believe it, but I'm part Jewish."
"Yeah?"
The Marine didn't seem impressed.
"I don't mean I'm a convert. I mean I was bor
n part Jewish, on my father's side."
"Is that right?"
"You don't believe me."
"I never thought you weren't Jewish," the Marine said. "Listen, I'm going out again. I looked around back, there's nobody there, like they don'
t think we'd try to leave that way. I don't know if i t does us any good, I've got to see if we might us e your car first. Or see if I can catch them asleep o r looking the other way. I don't think they're muc h for watch-standing. You hang in there and we'll ge t this thing done soon as we can."
"Why'd you think I was Jewish?" Rosen said.
It was not the same darkness as Indochina. The sk
y seemed wider and closer here because of the desert.
The shadows seemed different, or there were fewe
r shadows because there was less vegetation. H
e would have to get used to the shadows. Then h e hoped he wouldn't be here long enough to learn a new set of shadows.
Going out of the doctor's house was not th
e same as going out of a helicopter after sitting wit h his eyes closed during the fifteen-or twenty-minut e flight, opening his eyes and going out blackface d with a recon patrol. It was different. But he was no t afraid of being alone in dark places. The differenc e here was that he knew what the enemy looked like.
They had faces. And they knew what he looked lik
e and could be expecting him, even dressed in Dr.
Morris' black coat sweater and dark gray trousers.
He had taken his cap off for the first time in tw
o days.
It was three-twenty a
. M
. when he left the house.
He moved around back, past the dry stock tan
k that might have been used at one time for goats o r sheep. Or maybe the doctor had kept horses. Th e blades at the top of the windmill structure stoo d motionless. The desert was empty, its shadows motionless. People were close, but there were no sounds and nothing moved. He had said to Tali , "Don't shoot me when I go by a window or when I c ome back."
From the side of the house he moved into th
e carport, working his way along between the tarpcovered Camaro and the cement wall. He thought about going under the tarp to get the C4 on th e back seat. But what would he do with it if h e couldn't run out a line and explode it? Shooting th e plastic with a bullet wouldn't set it off. It took a n electrical charge. Or what would he do if he got under the tarp and they knew he was there? They'd wrap him up in it. So leave the C4.
The black Mercedes was down the drive abou
t twenty meters, almost halfway to the gate in th e stone fence. (He remembered Tali stopping ther e when they arrived, wondering why she hadn'
t driven up to the house. But then he remembered sh e had seen Rosen coming from the patio and ha d stopped abruptly and jumped out to run to mee t him.) From the carport he studied the black Mercedes gleaming in the darkness, about forty thousand dollars' worth of car in Israel. Rosen had a pretty good life. It wouldn't be hard to get to th e car. Davis slipped his hand into the unbuttoned to p of the coat sweater and drew his Colt.
On his belly now, using elbows and knees, h
e moved from the carport to the front bumper of th e Mercedes. He listened. He rolled to his back an d inched under the car, using his heels now, movin g close to the wheels on one side because the spine o f the driveway was high between the wheel ruts. Hi s hand moved over the underbody and frame. H
e didn't think he would find anything. The one wit h the hair hadn't had time to get underneath. The gu y hadn't opened a door, Davis was pretty sure of that.