Pronto

Pronto Read Online Free PDF Page A

Book: Pronto Read Online Free PDF
Author: Elmore Leonard
Tags: Fiction, General
"You're telling me she came down here and gave you a check for fifteen grand? The day I went in business for myself she stopped cooking, refused to go in the kitchen unless I got a real job. We ate out every night for the next nine years. When I couldn't live like that anymore I gave her the house, a four-bedroom Tudor in Palos Heights, outside Chicago, and came back here to live."
    Joyce said, "You still eat out every night."
    Looking for a fight because he had a wife at one time he hadn't told her about.
    The ABC Bail Bonds woman, who was blond, maybe thirty-five and not bad-looking for someone in that business, said a man named Tomasino Bitonti had brought her the check and a quit-claim deed to the Palos Heights property as collateral, signed by Teresa Ianello, back to using her maiden name.
    Now it made sense. Jimmy Cap wanted him on the street. He'd never use his own money, so he must have sent the Zip to intimidate Teresa, get her to put up the bond. What bothered Harry, How did Jimmy know he had an ex-wife up there? Unless they kept a file on him: knew he was from Miami originally, worked on the Beach in the fifties, got married and moved to Chicago, Teresa's home, following the Kefauver crime investigations in Miami. They'd know he came back in '71, without Teresa, and set up his sports book, because that's when they went into business with him.
    He explained all this to Joyce driving back to the beach over the MacArthur Causeway: telling her general facts about his past and interrupting himself to say, Jesus, he could never do serious time. "There's nobody to talk to in jail you have anything in common with."
    "I don't understand that," Joyce said. "You break the law every day of your life, you should expect to do some time."
    Still peeved over finding out he'd had a wife. By the time they got to Harry's apartment, Joyce was asking direct questions about his ex. Where he'd met her. The Roney Plaza, Teresa down for the winter. How long they were married. Almost ten years. What she was like. An alligator. Harry wanting to know what difference did it make? No kids, that part of his life was behind him.
    For the first time in over twenty years he phoned the house in Palos Heights and said to Teresa, as a courtesy, "I want to thank you for putting up my bond. I'll send a check for the fifteen thou as soon as I move some dough around. I sincerely hope it didn't inconvenience you any."
    Teresa Ianello said over the phone, loud enough for Joyce to hear, "You coward, you two-bit bookmaking son of a bitch, you sent that muscle here to threaten me? You know what would happen to you if Papa was still alive? I say the rosary every night, praying they send you up and lose the fucking key."
    Harry said, "Nice talking to you, Teresie," and hung up. He said to Joyce, "You think I could live with a woman like that? She had five o'clock shadow all day. She could teach a course in ball-busting to women that, for one reason or another, don't instinctively have the knack. Listen, all her life she believed her dad was in the pepperoni business. I had to get permission from him to divorce her. You know what he said? He said, 'Ten years, Christ, you have a lot more patience'n I would've.'"

    Chapter Four.
    Harry's phone rang all day Monday and Tuesday, friends, players, calling to say what was this they heard or read in the paper, asking if he was okay, if he was still in business. A short piece in The Miami Herald said:
    SOUTH BEACH RESIDENT CHARGED IN FATAL SHOOTING
    On page three, buried. That's all he was, a resident? Why not Popular South Beach Figure, or Personality? Christ, resident. He told friends and players it was all a mistake and would be straightened out before too long. When his runners and sheet writers called he told them to sit on their totals another day or so and he'd get back to them.
    The Zip phoned late Tuesday afternoon. Harry wasn't ready for him. He heard the Zip say, "What're you doing, Harry, going around shooting
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