Pronto

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Authors: Elmore Leonard
Tags: Fiction, General
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removed his sunglasses and held them, still looking at her with a sleepy expression he had to believe was cool, and it wasn't bad, really. Showing her he was in control of himself, allowing this to happen.
    Raylan stood by the open front door now, suit coat unbuttoned, his gun put away. He said, "Here's the way out, Mr. Zip, and don't come back."
    Mr. Zip.
    She watched him pause to look at Raylan again before walking past him, Raylan much taller in his hat and cowboy boots. Mr. Zip was about Harry's size -- now that she thought of it -- both of them, by today's standards, little guys.
    Raylan was thin and looked tall standing alone by the door. He watched Mr. Zip walk out to his car and the Jaguar drive off before he turned to Joyce.
    "What if he comes back?"
    Joyce shook her head. "I don't know where Harry is. Really, I can't help him."
    "Maybe not, but what if Mr. Zip doesn't believe you?"
    She said, "Are you trying to cheer me up?"
    He left saying he'd see what he could do about her situation.
    Joyce made herself a drink in the kitchen, Club and water, and brought it out to the living room to stand at a front window looking at the park across the street. At the park and at her options. Leave town. Stay with a friend. Count on Raylan to arrange some kind of protection.
    He was a weird guy. He was funny and she wondered if he meant to be. There was no affectation about him, nothing put on. He sat on the gangster, told him to keep still or he'd shoot his nose off, and politely touched his hat brim and nodded to her. Mindful of his manners -- sitting on the guy on the floor and telling him to roll over on his tummy. He did look like a marshal in a Western. He could be a lawman or a cowboy with that stringy look and his Kentucky drawl. She wondered what he looked like with his hat off and wondered again if he knew he was funny.
    It was only a block to Miami Beach Police headquarters on Washington Avenue. Raylan's plan was to talk to Buck Torres, get him to put Joyce under some kind of protective surveillance. Torres would say no, because he couldn't spare the men. Not because she was uncooperative, everyone believing she knew where Harry was. Torres wasn't that kind. He'd say to Torres, "Look, I'm with you. Sure, I think she knows. I think she helped him get away. So what are you going to do, punish her? Let the Zip get hold of her and do what he wants?" Torres would say he still didn't have the men. So the next step would be, try to get Torres to go to McCormick to get McCormick to request a surveillance team from the Marshals Service. Protect an innocent woman who got trapped in a deal the Bureau put together and wasn't her fault. He could hear McCormick come back with "Why don't we let the Zip have her and then pick him up for assault with intent? What's wrong with that?" With his innocent look, to make you think he was kidding.
    Raylan came to Washington Avenue and turned left to park across the street from the Art Deco police headquarters, which Raylan thought of as some kind of religious temple with its round front rising up four stories. Crossing the street he was about run over by a girl with long blond hair riding a bicycle. There were all kinds of girls around here with long blond hair, long black hair; he had seen some on motorized skateboards cutting through crowds on Ocean Drive. South Beach was not too much like Brunswick, Georgia.
    Inside, the lobby rose three floors wide open to show railings and rows of office windows up there. It was a modern new building, the holding cells with aluminum toilets, a sally port around on the side street where they brought in prisoners. Raylan approached the information counter and told the officer there he'd like to see Sergeant Torres and gave his name.
    If you went in the holding-cell area you had to surrender your weapon. It was the cleanest city jail Raylan had ever seen in his life.
    Up on the wall here they had an American flag framed in behind glass.
    There were not too

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