Swag: A Novel by Elmore Leonard

Author:Elmore Leonard [Leonard, Elmore]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, Private Investigators, Thrillers, Espionage, Noir
ISBN: 9780062268860
Google: Tp_yv1cC4HAC
Amazon: B009R55IFG
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-12-25T11:00:00+00:00

16

At one point in the evening there were fifteen people in the apartment. Frank found most of them; others dropped in. They’d come and go.

The way it started, Frank went out for a couple of hours in the afternoon – Stick didn’t ask where – and when he got back he brought four of the career ladies up from the pool, Karen, Jackie, Mary Kay, and Arlene, and started making them drinks. Stick got out the grapefruit juice for the Salty Dogs and Arlene came over to help him. Even Mary Kay said she’d have one. It was strange to see four girls sitting around the apartment in swimming suits. Frank said they dressed up the place. Stick thought it looked like a Nevada whorehouse, the way he imagined one would look. Frank had had a few – wherever he’d gone – and was already a little high. He told Stick to come on and quit moping around. Stick decided, Why not? He’d have some fun and quit thinking about the two colored guys.

Then Frank told him Marlys was going to try and stop by later, and winked, and Stick thought about the two guys again. He wondered if Marlys knew them.

A little later Stick asked Mary Kay, didn’t she have to go to work? And was surprised when she told him she was going to call in and say she was in bed with the curse. It was amazing, one and a half Salty Dogs.

Still a little later Frank went down to the ice machine, ran into Barry Kleiman in his white belt and white loafers talking to Sonny The Model and one of the young married couples, the Kaplans, and got them to come up. Frank went in and put on his safari jacket and wore it with a chain he borrowed from Arlene, no shirt. Barry Kleiman said, Hey, cool.

They weren’t sure when Donna, the dental hygienist, and her boyfriend came in; but they were there and after a while seemed like they’d always been there. Donna’s boyfriend, Gordon, was working on his PhD in something that had to do with clinical psychology and he spent a lot of time with Karen.

Every time Stick looked around, Arlene seemed to be watching him. That was the feeling he got. Like he was committed to her. She seemed to want to talk and finally steered him toward the balcony. But when they were out there, he spotted three of the junior executives down on the patio drinking beer and yelled at them to come up and be sociable.

The junior executives came in cautiously, like gunfighters in their tight Levi’s, and slouched around awhile; but pretty soon they were mixing it up with the others and Stick was glad he had invited them. It didn’t hurt to be friendly. He told Arlene to be nice to them. The poor assholes were giving their lives to IBM and the Ford Motor Company and they deserved a little fun.

They were good-looking young guys with families in Bloomfield Hills, two of them named Ron and one named Scott.

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