52 Pickup by Elmore Leonard Page B

after the shift. Right?”
    Eleven and a half years, Mitchell was thinking, seeing himself in the green bathing trunks that were too big for him because he had lost fifteen pounds in one month after meeting Cini.Eleven years and seven months exactly. Two-eighty an hour when he quit.
    He saw the beach again, deserted now in the early evening. Their last day. He had stayed in the room to take a nap and she had gone for a walk.
    â€œAnd as the sun sinks slowly in the west . . . we leave the beautiful Bahamas, isles of intrigue and plenty of extracurricular screwing, and get back to real life.”
    He saw his car on a street, moving, the bronze Grand Prix.
    â€œWe spliced this in with the other,” the voice-over said, “so we wouldn’t waste your valuable time changing film. You recognize it, sport? That’s you. Now watch where you go.”
    Mitchell knew where the car was going. He remembered the day and the time and the street and the Caravan Motel.
    There it was.
    A zoom lens on the camera got him coming out of the motel office and driving over to unit number 17. There was a good shot of him looking out toward the street before he opened the door and they went inside.
    Fifteen bucks. Not a bad place. It had been their third time. They had taken a shower together and drunk a bottle of champagne in bed, before, during and after, with a lot of kissing and squirmingaround, kissing the way he hadn’t kissed in twenty years. She had said to him, “I think I’m falling in love with you. If I’m not already.” But he did not say anything about love to her that time.
    Over footage of them coming out to the car the narrator said, “I like this one, the expression. Mr. Casual. We cut to . . . suburbia.”
    Now Mitchell was looking at his home in Bloomfield Hills and saw himself in a tennis warm-up suit jogging down the driveway past the big red-brick colonial to the street.
    â€œKeeping fit,” the voice-over said. “You start chasing twenty-one-year-old tail you got to stay in shape. Mile-and-a-half jog every morning before going to . . . the plant.
    â€œHere we are. Ranco Manufacturing near Mt. Clemens. Gross sales last year almost three mil. Forty-something employees working two shifts. You bank at Manufacturers, you pay your bills on time and you have a very clean D and B. I like that. I also like the hundred and fifty grand you make a year on the patent you hold. What is it, some kind of a hood latch? Doesn’t cost two bits to stamp out, but all the cars got to have one and, man, you own it.”
    Mitchell had never seen his plant before on a movie screen. It didn’t look bad: the front ledge-rock and Roman brick, and the aluminum sign that read, RANCO .
    â€œOne of your trucks going out on a delivery,” the voice-over said. “Or is it making a haul to the bank? We like your style, sport, so we’re gonna make a deal with you.”
    The film stopped, holding on the plant that was now slightly out of focus.
    â€œThe deal is, you get to buy this complete home movie for only a hundred and five grand. Not a hundred and fifty, no, we’re not greedy and we know you got to pay capital gains on your patent royalties. So we’ll let you pay it and give us approximately what’s left. That’s all, one year’s royalty check. You won’t even miss it and you’ll have this fun movie for your very own. Nice color footage of what must be the most expensive piece of ass you ever had in your life.”
    There was a silence before Mitchell spoke.
    â€œIs she part of this?”
    The narrator paused. “Well, I wouldn’t say she’s a hundred-percent pure. We had a talk and the chick is not dumb. She decided to move out, figuring fun and games were over.”
    Mitchell sat in the chair, not moving, realizing he was calm and in control and this surprised him.
    â€œWhat happens if I