Gold Coast

by Elmore Leonard

  Or, Brad Allen would say:

  “The Flying Dolphin Show, you keep leaving out the Mopey Dick part.”

  “I forget.”

  “He lays up on the ledge on his side, doesn’t move a muscle. Wait for the laughs. Then you say, ‘And that’s’ pause ‘why we call him Mopey Dick.’ ”

  “I’ll try to remember,” Maguire would say.

  Five months of it, January through May.

  Brad Allen waiting for him when he first walked in, pale, a Wayne-County-Jail pallor, carrying his lined raincoat and suitcase, right off the Delta flight. Brad Allen glancing at a letter the Seascape Management Company had sent him, holding the sheet of paper like it was stained or smelled bad.

  “It says you’ve had experience.”

  “A year at Marathon,” Maguire had said, adding on five months.

  “What’ve you been doing since?”

  “Well, traveling and working mostly,” Maguire had said. “Colorado, I worked for the Aspen Ski Corporation, also at the Paragon Ballroom. I worked at an airport, a zoo, a TV station. I was the weatherman. I tended bar different places. Let’s see, I was an antique dealer. Yeah, and I worked a job at a country club.”

  “Well, this is no country club,” Brad Allen had said. The serious tone, making it sound hard because he had to hire the guy. “How old are you?”

  “Thirty,” Maguire had said, subtracting six years—after walking in and seeing how young the help was. Like summer-camp counselors in their sneakers and white shorts, red T-shirts with a flying-porpoise decal and seascape lettered in white. (Brad Allen wore white shorts and a red-trimmed white T-shirt with the porpoise and seascape in red. He also wore a white jacket and red warmups and sometimes a red, white, and blue outfit.)

  “How long you been thirty?”

  What was Brad Allen? Maybe thirty-two, thirty-three. The guy staring at Maguire, suspicious, wanting to catch him in a lie. For what?

  “What difference does it make?” Maguire had said. “I’m an out-going person, I like to be with people, I don’t mind working hard and”—laying on a little extra—“I’m always willing to learn if there’s something I don’t know.”

  It took him a few days to get used to the white shorts and the red T-shirt—thinking about what Andre Patterson would say if he saw the outfit; like, man, you real cute. Within two months Maguire was as brown as the rest of them, and his sneakers were beginning to show some character. He did believe he could pass for thirty. Why not? He felt younger than that. He was out in the sunshine. The work was clean, not too hard. He was eating a lot of fruit. Smoking a little grass now and then with Lesley. Not drinking too much. The pay was terrible, two-sixty a week, but he was getting by. Living in a one-room efficiency at an Old-Florida-looking stucco place called The Casa Loma, fifty bucks a week, next door to Lesley who lived in the manager’s apartment with her Aunt Leona. What else? Air-conditioned, two blocks from the ocean—

  The people he worked with—R.D. Hooker, Chuck, Robyn and Lesley—reminded him of high school.

  Hooker, a strong, curly-haired Florida boy, twenty-three years old. A clean liver, dedicated. Hooker would go down into the eighteen-foot tank, Neptune’s Realm, with a face mask and air hose and play with the porpoise even when he didn’t have to, between shows. One time Hooker said to Chuck, the custodian-trainee, “I don’t know what’s wrong with Bonnie today. First she won’t let me touch her, then she butts me. Then she comes up and starts yanking on my goddarn air hose like to pull it out of my mouth. Knowing what she was doing.”

  Chuck listened to every word and said, “Yeah? How come she was doing that?”

  Maguire said, “It sounds like she’s getting her period.”

  Hooker said, “What’s it got to do with her acting nasty?”

  Maguire would listen to them talk, amazed, nobody putting anybody on or down. Maguire said, “R.D., you ever talk to them? I mean understand them?”

  “Sometimes,” Hooker said. “Like I’m getting so I can understand Penny when I ask her a question?”

  “No shit,” Maguire said. “What do you ask her?”

  “Oh, feeding her I might say, ‘You like that, huh? Isn’t that good?’ ”

  “And what does she say?”

  “She goes like—” Hooker did something with the inside of his mouth and made a clickity-click, kitty-cat, Donald Duck sound.

  “Oh,” Maguire said.

  Hooker came on his day off and worked with the two young dolphins in the training tank, hunkered down on the boards for hours, talking to them gently and showing them his hands. Dedicated.

  Chuck was on his way to becoming dedicated. He personally wrote two hundred post cards to Star-Kist Tuna, Bumble Bee, VanCamp, Ralston Purina, and H.J. Heinz, telling them to quit murdering dolphin or he would never eat their products again.

  Robyn was dedicated, though didn’t appear to be. She was a serious girl and didn’t smile much or seem to be listening when you said something to her. Unless it was Brad Allen who said it. Brad Allen could tell Robyn to dive down to the bottom of the show pool with Dixie, shoot up over the twelve-foot bar and do a tailwalk across the pool, and Robyn would try it. When Brad Allen told her she was doing a good job, Robyn became squirmy and maybe wet her white shorts a little. Nice tight shorts—

  Though not as tight or short as Lesley’s. Lesley’s showed a little cheek. She never pulled at them though, the way Robyn did when she got squirmy. What Lesley got was pouty. She’d put on her hurt look and say, “It’s not my turn to feed the sharks, it’s hers. If you think I’m going in there every day you’re out of your fucking mind.” Lesley was dedicated, but not to nurse sharks. She didn’t think it was funny when she was standing hip deep in the pool trying to feed a hunk of bluerunner to a shark, and Maguire, on the platform above, would say to the crowd, “Let’s give Lesley a nice hand”—pause—“she may need one some day.”

  Lesley had a pile of wavy brown hair she combed several times an hour. One night, during Maguire’s fourth month, Lesley said to him, “I think I’m falling in love with you.” She looked so good lying there in the dim light with her hair and her white breasts exposed, Maguire almost said he loved her, too. But he didn’t.

  Brad Allen was very dedicated. Brad Allen was also serious and tiresome. He made Maguire tired. Maguire wondered why Brad Allen didn’t get tired of being Brad Allen. Once, Maguire took a couple of puffs on a joint before announcing the show and said, over the P.A. system, “Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere’s Brad,” holding the “here’s” almost as long as he could. And after the show Brad Allen said to him, “Now that’s a little better.”

  Seascape, the layout, reminded Maguire of a small tropical World’s Fair; round white buildings, striped awnings, and blue and yellow pennants among shrubs and royal palms.

  There was Neptune’s Realm you could walk into and look through windows to watch the porpoise and sea creatures glide past, underwater. Topside they put on the Flying Dolphin Show.

  There was Shark Lagoon, a pool full of brown nurse sharks and a few giant sea turtles.

  There was the Porpoise Petting Pool, where you could touch Misty and Gippy’s hard-boiled-egg skin and feed them minnows, three-for-a-quarter.

  At the Grandstand Arena Brad Allen put on the main event, the World-Famous Seascape Porpoise and Sea Lion Show: “where these super-smart mammals perform their aquatic acrobatics.”

  Back in the Alligator Pit a Seminole Indian used to wrestle twelve-foot gators, but the Seminole quit and went to Disney World, and R.D. Hooker only tried it a couple of times; so the alligators and a crocodile were there if you wanted to look at them.

  Yellow- and white-striped awnings covered the refreshment stand and gift shop. A fifty-cent Sky Ride in two-seater gondolas gave you a low aerial view of the grounds, the tanks and pools of blue water, the white cement walks and buildings among the imported palm trees: a clean, manicured world just off the S.E. 17th Street Causeway.

  “If you don’t
like it, why don’t you quit?” Lesley said, getting a little pouty.

  “I didn’t say I didn’t like it, I said it wasn’t real,” Maguire said, Maguire driving Lesley’s yellow Honda, heading home to the Casa Loma. “It’s like a refuge. Nothing can happen to you there, you’re safe. But it’s got nothing to do with reality. It’s like you’re given security, but in exchange for it you have to give up yourself. You have to become somebody else.

  Lesley said, “Jesus, what’s safe about getting down in the water, feeding those fucking sharks? I’ve done it every day this week, you know it? Robyn’s off probably giving Brad some head.”

  Maguire said, “Come on, the sharks feed all night. You jiggle a piece of fish, it’s for the tourists. I’m not talking about that kind of being safe. I mean here, you live in a little world that’s got nothing to do with the real world. You’re sheltered—”

  “I’m sheltered?”

  “We are, working there. What’s a really big problem? Misty eats some popcorn, gets constipated. Pebbles is grouchy, won’t imitate the Beatles. Everybody’s going, ‘Christ, what’s the matter with Pebbles?’ Spend months, maybe a year training a dolphin to jump through a hoop, come up seventeen feet in the air and ring the school bell.”

  Lesley said, “Yeah?” She still didn’t get it.

  “They’re doing something that dolphins don’t normally do, right?”

  Lesley thought a moment. “Yeah—but they jump. Out in the wild they jump all the time.”

  “They shoot baskets? They bowl out there?”

  “It’s to show how intelligent they are,” Lesley said, “how they can be trained.”

  “Here’s the point,” Maguire said, wishing the Honda was air-conditioned, wishing the lady in front of him would turn, for Christ sake, if she was going to turn, turn. “They don’t normally, the dolphin, they don’t pretend they’re playing baseball out in the ocean or jump up and take a piece of fish out of somebody’s mouth, right?”

  “If you don’t like it,” Lesley said, “what do you do it for?”

  Jesus, Maguire thought. He said, “Just follow the point I want to make, okay? I’m not saying I don’t like it. I’m only saying it’s like playing make-believe. The dolphin wouldn’t be here, they wouldn’t be doing the tricks if we didn’t teach them. You see what I mean? They’d be out there doing something else, we’d be doing something else. But no, we made this up. The dolphins and us, we’re playing with ourselves. We’re going through the motions of something that doesn’t have anything to do with reality.”

  “So?”

  Oh, Christ. “So—if they’re not real dolphins doing all that kind of shit, what’re we? Reciting the canned humor, throwing them pieces of codfish—what’re we?”

  “I was a waitress, a place on Las Olas,” Lesley said. “That was real, real shit. You like to ask me what I’d rather do?”

  “I’d like to borrow your car this evening,” Maguire said. “What’re the chances?”

  He poured himself a white rum with a splash of lemon concentrate, left the venetian blinds half closed and sat for awhile, the room looking old and worn-out in the dimness. Fifty bucks a week including black and white TV, it was still a bargain. He could hear the hi-fi going next-door, Lesley boogying around the apartment to the Bee-Gees, ignoring her aunt, who was a little deaf. A nice woman, Maguire would sit and talk to her sometimes, listen to episodes from her past life in Cincinnati, Ohio, until he’d tell her he had to go to bed, wake up early. Lesley never sat and listened even for a minute. Lesley would roll her eyes when she saw an episode coming and get out of there. Lesley had no feelings for others; but she sure had a nice firm healthy little body.

  Maguire showered and had another rum and lemon while he put on his good clothes. Pale beige slacks, dark-blue sportshirt and a skimpy dacron sportcoat, faded light-blue, he’d got at Burdine’s for forty-five bucks. He loved the sportcoat because, for some reason, it made him think of Old Florida and made him feel like a native. (A Maguire dictum: wherever you are, fit in, look like you belong. In Colorado wear a sheepskin coat and lace-up boots.) He got the Detroit Free Press clipping out of the top drawer, from under his sweat socks, and slipped it into the inside coat pocket. He then went next door and asked Lesley’s aunt if he could use the phone; he’d be sure to get the charges and pay for it.

  He said to Lesley, “You want to turn that down a little?”

  Lesley said, “Who’re you calling, your hot date?”

  “I don’t have a hot date.”

  “I thought you were going out.”

  “Turn the music down, okay?”

  Maguire gave the operator the Detroit number and waited. He felt nervous. He wished Lesley would quit watching him.

  “Aren’t you gonna clean up?”

  “You want me to leave, say so.”

  “I get back, I’ll take you out to dinner.”

  In the phone, Andre Patterson’s wife said, “Hello?”

  “Okay?” Maguire said to Lesley. “Go on, get cleaned up.” Then into the phone:

  “Hi, this is Cal Maguire. How you doing?” He had to listen while Andre’s wife told him she was piss-poor, if he really wanted to know about it, having trouble getting her ADC checks, had her phone disconnected for a while. Maguire said yeah, he’d been trying to get hold of her, calling information. He said, “Listen, you know the deal at the club? . . . The country club, Andre and I and Grover. I asked you the man’s name? Remember? . . . No, I’ve got it. What I was wondering, you know, Andre said the man was paying them back for something? At the club, something happened there to the man. I wondered if Andre ever spoke to you about it . . . If he mentioned to you what it was happened out there. Like maybe the man’s wife was involved, you know, maybe she was insulted or something and that’s what got the man upset.” Christ, upset—willing to pay them forty-five hundred to go out there and hit the place. “Uh-huh, yeah, that’s right . . . But he never said anything about the man’s wife, huh? . . . No, I was just wondering. Hey, well listen, tell Andre I’m gonna write to him, okay? . . . Fine, I’ll be talking to you.” Shit.

  “Very mysterious,” Lesley said, holding a beach towel wrapped around her. “Who’s Andre?”

  “Friend of mine.”

  “What’d somebody get upset about?”

  Maguire said, “I know it’s your aunt’s phone and you’re letting me use you car and all, but how about if you keep your nose out of my personal business, okay?”

  “Yeah,” Lesley said, “well, how about if you keep your ass out of my car, you want to get snotty about it.”

  “You’re a beauty,” Maguire said. “You got the maturity of about a five-year-old.”

  “Keep thinking it,” Lesley said, “walking to work every day.” She turned, letting the towel come open, giving him a flash as she went into the bedroom.

  There you are, Maguire thought, walking up the street toward A1A. The kind of question you’d climb all the way up the mountain to ask the old man sitting there in his loincloth.

  In the light of eternity, is it better to sell out and ride or stand up and walk?

  And the old man would look at him with his calm, level gaze and say—

  He’d say—

  Maguire was still trying to think of an answer, standing on the oceanfront corner, when the girl visiting from Mitchell, Indiana, picked him up, said, “Heck, it’s nothing,” and went out of her way to drop him off at Harbor Beach Parkway.

  7

  * * *

  AN APPRAISER FRIEND OF MAGUIRE’S, a guy who bought and sold pretty much out of his backdoor, once said to him, “You walk out with a color TV, you realize the mirror hanging on the wall there, gilded walnut, might be a George II? Early eighteenth century, man, worth at least three grand.” Maguire went to the library, looked through art books, made notes and lifted a copy of Kovel’s Complete Antiques Price List from the reference shelf. In his work—during the short periods he was into B and E, usually to pick up some traveling money
—he’d come across a few antiques and art objects of value.

  But nothing like the display in Mrs. DiCilia’s sitting room. He was looking at a Queen Anne desk—four drawers, stubby little pedestal legs, worth at least four grand—when the maid came in again, a dog following her, and told him to please be seated, Missus would come to him very soon. A sharp-looking Cuban girl, nice accent. Maguire said thank you and then, as the maid was leaving, “How you doing?”

  Marta stopped. She said, “Yes?”

  “How’s it going? You like it here?” Always friendly to the help. “I think it’d be a nice place to work.”

  Marta, still surprised: “Yes, it is.”

  “But I wouldn’t want to have to dust all this,” Maguire said.

  The maid left, but the little gray and white dog remained, watching Maguire apprehensively, ready to bark or run.

  “Relax,” Maguire said to the dog and continued looking around the sitting room.

  Bird cage table, not bad. Worth about seven and a half.

  Pair of slipseat Chippendale chairs in walnut. Now we’re getting there. Seventy-five hundred, maybe eight grand.

  Hummel figurines, if you liked Hummel. Fifty bucks each. A couple that might go as high as a hundred and a quarter.

  Plates—very impressive. Stevenson, Enoch Wood’s shell-border pattern. Six, seven thousand bucks worth of plates on one shelf.

  And yes, Peachblow vases, the real thing. Creamy red-rose and yellow. Jesus, with the gargoyle stand. Name your price.

  A picture of Pope Pius XII. The Last Supper. And some real paintings, old forests and misty green mountains, a signed Durand, an Alvan Fisher, nineteenth-century Hudson River school. A few others he didn’t recognize—sitting down now as he studied the painting—

  And jumping up quickly to look at the chair—Jesus, feeling the turnings of the arms. Louis XVI bergère, in walnut. Pretty sure it was a real one.

  He sat in the chair again, carefully, and began thinking about the woman who lived here and owned this collection. Before, he had pictured a dumpy sixty-year-old Italian woman in the kitchen, rolling dough, making tomato paste, a woman with an accent. He’d lay it out to her: Your husband owes us money. She’d pay or she wouldn’t, and he could forget about it.