Volusia County Public Library
Digital Media Catalog

E-book extras: "Martin Amis Interviews 'The Dickens of Detroit'"; Elmore Leonard's "If It Sounds Like Writing, Rewrite It"; "All By Elmore: The Crime Novels & The Westerns"; Selected Filmography

Psycho mama's boy Teddy Magyk has a serious jones for the Miami cop who put him away for raping a senior citizen -- but he wants to hit Vincent Mora where it really hurts before killing him. So when a beautiful Puerto Rican hooker takes a swan dive from an Atlantic City high-rise and Vincent naturally shows up to investigate the questionable death of his "special friend," Teddy figures he's got his prey just where he wants him. But the A.C. dazzle is blinding the Magic Man to a couple of very hard truths: Vincent Mora doesn't forgive and forget ... and he doesn't die easy.

The night Vincent was shot he saw it coming. The guy approached out of the streetlight on the corner of Meridian and Sixteenth, South Beach, and reachedVincent as he was walking from his car to his apartment building. It was early, a few minutes past nine.

Vincent turned his head to look at the guy and there was a moment when he could have taken him and did consider it, hit the guy as hard as he could. ButVincent was carrying a sack of groceries. He wasn't going to drop a half gallon of Gallo Hearty Burgundy, a bottle of prune juice and a jar of Raguspaghetti sauce on the sidewalk. Not even when the guy showed his gun, called him a motherfucker through his teeth and said he wanted Vincent's walletand all the money he had on him. The guy was not big, he was scruffy, wore a tank top and biker boots and smelled. Vincent believed he had seen himbefore, in the detective bureau holding cell. It wouldn't surprise him. Muggers were repeaters in their strungout state, often dumb, always desperate. Theycame on with adrenaline pumping, hoping to hit and get out. Vincent's hope was to give the guy pause.

He said, "You see that car? Standard Plymouth, nothing on it, not even wheel covers?" It was a pale gray. "You think I'd go out and buy a car like that?" Theguy was wired or not paying attention. Vincent had to tell him, "It's a police car, asshole. Now gimme the gun and go lean against it."

What he should have done, either put the groceries down and given the guy his wallet or screamed in the guy's face to hit the deck, now, or he was fuckingdead. Instead of trying to be clever and getting shot for it.

This guy wasn't going to lay himself out against any police car, he had done it too many times before--as it turned out--and it didn't pay. He shot from thehip and that was where Vincent took the first one, in his own right hip, through and through. The .38 slug chipped bone, nicked the ilium, missed the socketby a couple of centimeters but raised other hell in its deflected course: tore through his gluteus maximus, taking out his back pocket and wallet containingseventeen dollars and punched his gun out of the waistband of his pants, where it rode just behind his hip. The guy's second shot went through the HeartyBurgundy, passing between Vincent's right arm and his rib cage. At this point Vincent dropped the groceries and went for his piece, yelling at the guy, whowas running now, to halt or he'd fire. Here again was a lesson to be learned. When you say it, mean it. The guy halted all right, he half-turned and startedshooting again. By now Vincent was on the ground feeling for a Model 39 Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter automatic among broken glass and spaghettisauce. He found it and fired, he believed, four rounds, three of them entering the guy's body just under his right arm and passing through both lungs.

The Sinai Emergency staff tore Vincent's shirt off looking for a chest wound until one of them sniffed him and said, Christ, it's wine. They x-rayed him,closed the exit wound in surgery, attached some plastic tubes and cleaned glass out of both of his hands.

He was in Intensive Care for the night, wheeled the next morning to a private room as somebody special. The nurse who came in said, "Well, you look justfine to me." Vincent said, thank you, he was. Except for a terrible pain, down there. Pointed and said, "In my penis."

Elmore Leonard's novels include the bestsellers Tishomingo Blues, Pagan Babies, Be Cool, Cuba Libre, Out of Sight, and Get Shorty -- his "complete crime canon" is published by PerfectBound. Leonard has also written numerous screenplays. He and his wife, Christine, live in a suburb of Detroit.