29
“What if it’s a trap?” said Lenny, at the breakfast table set for four late next morning.
In front of him was a gorgeous poolside spread of melons and juices and cereal and muffins, all put together by Sam and Marsha, who’d been awake for hours. Envious flies hovered near the goodies and people brushed them casually away. The pool pump softly hummed. The air was fresh and smelled not of flowers but of the green and milky buds that flowers sprang from.
Pat, badly rested and still on her first cup of coffee, said, “Look, all I’m going to do is call him on the phone.”
“I’ll bet he doesn’t say much on the phone,” said Marsha. Her thick reddish hair had frizzed out in the Keys humidity, but the frizz looked good on her, made her seem less formal, looser, even playful. Light came through the edges of her hair and made her hazel eyes look brighter. “They never say much on the phone,” she went on. “Not in the movies, at least. They don’t trust the phone. Always want to meet in person.”
“I don’t think you should meet in person,” said Sam. She wasn’t wearing the desert commander hat that she wore on court but she still had that tone of quiet authority. “The people he deals with—just isn’t worth the risk.”
“If you do decide to meet him,” Marsha put in, “don’t go to his place. Whatever you do, don’t go to his place.” She said it in a level tone, but still, the words conjured images of ambush, thugs crouching in hallways with blunt objects, unconscious bodies being carried out and stuffed in car trunks. “Make sure it’s in public at least.”
Pat, more awake from moment to moment, her gray eyes gathering focus, said, “Aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves? I’m only talking about a phone call.”
Lenny put down the slice of honeydew he’d been nibbling. “Well, call him then. A dollar says he wants to meet in person.”
Pat had a couple bites of a mango muffin, refreshed her coffee, and went into the house to try Bert’s number. She was back outside in about two minutes. “He says we should meet in person,” she announced.
“Figures,” Marsha said. “Where?”
“His place.”
Sam said, “But you didn’t—”
“No, I didn’t agree. I said I’d be more comfortable out in public. We settled on Smathers Beach an hour from now.”
There was a brief pause then Lenny said, “All of us should go.” He was a little surprised at himself for saying it, but, once he had, he had no choice but to continue. “Look, if it’s a set-up, there’d probably be three of them. If we all go, that makes four of us. We’d have them outnumbered.”
Marsha rolled her eyes. “Yeah, we’d be really intimidating.”
“I’m just saying it seems safer. Anybody disagree?”
The patio of the Flagler House hotel was topped by a vine-draped trellis that broke the filtered sunlight into a pattern of stretched rectangles stamped with shapes of leaves. At a table cooled by squirts of mist from overhead spigots, Carmine was drinking a Bloody Mary and eating scrambled eggs. Through a mouthful of egg and toast, he said, “Ya know, there isn’t one damn thing I like about this job.”
Peppers was having an omelet with extra peppers in it, in this case jalapenos. He’d also shaken a bunch of pepper sauce on top, and now his skin was flushed from the spice, but the flush was more a dyspeptic yellow than a robust red. He said, “There hasn’t been one damn thing you liked since we crossed the state line.”
“And you know why?” the big man shot right back. “Because it’s all been bullshit. The strip club, bullshit. Our local bigshot, a creep. Plus I really don’t like it that the target’s a woman. Plus now we got this old man who it takes him four minutes to say one simple thing and on top of that he’s tryin’ to run the show.”
“That’s a good thing,” Peppers said, savoring the zing of his omelet, tingling with a light sweat in spite of the misters. Almost daintily, he dabbed some moisture from his hairline. “Less responsibility for us.”
Carmine yanked the celery stalk from his glass and savagely bit into it. “Good thing,” he mimicked. “Less responsibility. Fine. But don’tcha ever get sick of bein’ bossed around? Bossed around by Lou. Bossed around by this little shit of a business guy. Now the fossil with the stupid little dog is actin’ like our boss. Don’tcha ever just get sick of it?”
Peppers decided he simply wouldn’t answer. He ate his omelet and kept his eyes down on his plate. Truth was, his buddy’s endless pissing and moaning was finally wearing him down. It was exhausting always being the one to stay positive, to do the cheering up. So he just kept quiet.
Even Carmine could tell that the lack of a response was a kind of silent scolding. Feeling rebuked, he finished his drink and wagged his glass in the air to order another. When he’d slurped down half of it he started in again, but this time in a very different tone, quiet, almost sheepish. “Peps,” he said, “can I ask you something, just totally, absolutely between the two of us?”
Softening in turn, the other man said, “Sure, Carmine. Sure.”
The big guy lowered the angle of his neck and brought his voice down almost to a whisper. “Y’ever have a whaddyacallit, a hallucination? Like you see somethin’ but it isn’t there? Hear somethin’ but there’s nothin’ to hear?”
“Ya mean, like, a fantasy, a daydream?”
“Nah, not really. It’s more, I don’t know…more exact. Like what you’re hearing or seeing, there’s only one thing it could be, except it isn’t real.”
Peppers just pushed his plate aside and looked at his friend.
“Just between us, right?”
Peppers nodded.
“The other night, at the club, just for this one crazy second, I thought I heard her laughing. I was sure of it.”
Peppers didn’t need to be told who he was talking about. He said, “Lots of people have nice laughs.”
“Not like hers. It cut right through me. Can’t get it out of my mind.”
Peppers kept quiet for a moment, then said, “Carmine, she’s fifteen hundred miles away. You know that, right?”
The big man paused and chewed his lip before finally nodding. “Yeah,” he said. “I know it.” He picked up his glass, put it down again without drinking from it, and kept his eyes on the patio’s splotches of sun and shade. “Peps, listen, I know I’ve been a pain in the ass. I don’t even know how to say I’m sorry for it. Can’t even promise that it’s gonna stop. I just want you to know I know, okay?”
“Okay,” said Peppers. “Nice a you to say. Don’t worry about it. You’ll put this behind you, Carmine. I know you will.”
30
“Jeez,” said Bert, “I didn’t expect ya’d bring a delegation.”
He was sitting on Smathers Beach in an aluminum folding chair with yellow nylon webbing, wearing a cabana set in Kelly green terry-cloth and sunglasses with blue reflective lenses that perfectly matched the small pair that was perched on the nose of his dog.
“I was nervous coming alone,” Pat admitted, though she felt a little sheepish saying it, considering that the beach was fairly crowded with women in thongs and young guys throwing footballs and even a few older people reading books.
“Ya don’t trust me.” This was not voiced as a question and Pat didn’t answer it. “But okay, you’re smart not to,” the old man went on. “I’ll take that as a compliment on my acting.”
Pat said, “So the tough talk last night, you were faking it?”
“I had to.”
At that, a feisty woman with sunlight streaming through her nimbus of reddish hair spoke up. “So how do we know you’re not faking it now?”
“Excellent question and very a propos. I guess you don’t. And who the hell, if I may make bold to ask, are you?”
“Marsha.” Then, with a pride and conviction she hadn’t let herself feel in quite a while, she added, “Lenny’s wife.”
“Ah, very nice. And who the hell is Lenny?”
�
�That would be me,” he said.
“Oh yeah, the bartender who doesn’t know how to make an Old-Fashioned. Hope you have a day job.”
“Comedy writer.”
“Guess I shoulda figured,” the old man said. Then, shielding his eyes from the sharp glints off the ocean, he turned toward Sam. “And you, you look familiar. The tennis teacher, right? I’ve seen you in the park.”
“Name’s Sam.”
“And this here is Nacho. And now that the introductions have been dispensed with, could I please ask youse to sit down? Sorry I can’t offer chairs, but it’s a little tough onnee the arthritis in my neck, lookin’ up like this all day.”
More or less in sync, the four of them dropped down onto the sand in a semicircle around him. The group now looked like an improv parody of a kindergarten class or a tableau from the ashram of an obscure sect being granted an audience with its guru. Bert said, “Okay, so let’s start at the beginning. Last night, you thought I was the wingman for the pricks, pardon my French, who wanna take your club away. Am I right?”
Pat just nodded.
“So lemme tell you why I struck that pose or adopted that stratagem or however you wanna put it. I did it because it’s the only way I could think of to have some influence and maybe help steer the situation away from some really bad things happening.”
Lenny said, “Like what kind of things?”
“Better not t’ask. Nothing you’d find comical.”
The seated people started squirming. Smathers was not a comfortable beach to sit on, even without the threat of bad things happening. The top layer of sand barely covered the sharp nubs of coral that the Florida Keys were made of, and tormenting little arrowheads of rock were always poking upward into thighs and backsides.
Subtly shifting her position, Marsha said, “If it’s really that bad, maybe we should contact the authorities.”
“Here?” said Sam. She’d lived in Key West twenty years. “In this town? Against the bubbas? Please.”
“Plus which,” Bert put in, “it’s not like anyone’s done anything illegal yet. So it’s like a whaddyacallit, a catch-22. Can’t run to the cops until somethin’ bad happens, and once it happens, what the hell can the cops do except draw that chalk outline onna floor? Sorry, I’m just speakin’ figurative. But anyway, this is why we gotta handle it ourselves.”
“Handle it ourselves?” murmured Lenny. The notion struck him as both terrifying and preposterous. In the left-hand corner, an entrenched local bigshot and the Mob; in the right-hand corner, a geriatric, two comedy writers, a tennis coach, and an associate literature professor. Not a bad set-up for a joke, maybe, but very unpromising for a battle.
Ignoring the dubious tone, Bert petted his dog and went on. “Look, forget about muscles and physiques and such. When it comes to dealin’ wit’ people like this, it’s mostly a matter of understandin’ their mentality. And I like to think we have an edge in the mentality department.”
“I would certainly hope so,” Marsha said.
Bert let that pass. “So look, when people like this want something, it usually starts off they want it for the money. But then it gets to be a game. So now they want it for two reasons. For the money and because they like to win and hate to lose. So it’s very difficult, once they want something, to make them give up on having it. You with me so far?”
The people on the sand shifted and squirmed. No one said a word. Spent wavelets hissed at the water’s edge. Kids kept throwing footballs.
“So basically,” Bert went on, “there are several approaches to making them stop wanting something. One, let’s call it the direct approach, is you make them feel that having this thing would not be worth the cost of getting it, because of, say, loss of manpower due to job-related injuries such as rubouts. I don’t think that’s the right approach for us.”
“So glad we agree on that,” said Pat.
“Another approach is what I think of as the-dog-with-the-pair-of-socks-and-piece-of-liver approach.”
“Excuse me?” Marsha said.
“Like, you know the way some people like to roll their socks into a ball? Makes them very attractive to a dog. So the dog grabs the socks and is chewing them all to hell. The dog’s having fun. But the guy wants his socks back. But he knows that if he just tries to grab ‘em outa the dog’s mouth, the dog’ll think it’s a tug a war and the socks’ll be destroyed. So instead of doin’ that, he lets the dog keep the socks but he dangles a piece of liver, too. Capeesh? He shows the dog something he wants even more than the socks, and the socks fall outa his mouth. Course, in real life, with real people, the hard part is comin’ up with something they want even more than what they already think they want.”
There was a pause. The heightening sun went from yellow to white and the day slipped seamlessly from warm to hot. A small plane flew by, trailing an ad banner. Lenny said, “Well, there’s always Ricky.”
Pat and Sam and Marsha glared at him.
Bert said, “Who’s Ricky?”
Backpedalling, fending off disapproving looks from the faces all around him, Lenny said, “Nah, forget it. I was just being a jerk. Looking for a cheap laugh, some gallows humor.”
The old man said, “Be that as it may, who’s Ricky?”
Pat cleared her throat and said, “He’s a friend of ours who your buddy Carmine wants to kill.”
“Come again on that?”
“The guy who ran in naked the other night,” the club owner explained. “You remember him, right?”
“How could I forget?”
“Well, his name’s Ricky Reed and he bolted to Key West because, up in New York, he stole Carmine’s girlfriend and Carmine has promised to cut his heart out.”
“Up in New York?” Bert mused. “And now the both of ‘em end up here?”
“Small world,” said Lenny.
“And with a fair bit of lousy luck in it,” Marsha added.
Bert took a moment to sift through all that. While he was sifting, he stroked his dog’s head like he was stroking his own chin. Finally he said, “I’m not so sure it’s a piece of lousy luck. Might actually be a break. Carmine wants to cut his heart out? That would suggest some strong emotion. Strong enough, maybe, to distract him from—”
“Now wait a second, Bert,” said Pat. “Our friend Ricky is not a piece of liver. We’re not going to dangle him—”
“Hol’ on, hol’ on,” Bert interrupted in turn, raising a large and age-spotted hand. “No one’s talkin’ about danglin’ anybody. But let’s be realistic. What we got here is a ticklish situation. Ticklish for you. Ticklish for this Ricky guy. If we’re gonna get through it, we gotta use what we can use. Like, whatever we can use. Can ya set me up a meeting with this Ricky?”
“Um, I don’t know,” Pat said. “I can ask. Not sure he’ll do it. He’s feeling a little bit paranoid.”
“Paranoid, not paranoid, tell ‘im to wear clothes. I don’t sit down wit’ naked guys. Make sure he unnerstands that. And inna meantime, I’d say we all got some good hard thinkin’ to do.”
31
At Kruzer King on Truman Avenue, two decidedly downmarket-looking tourists were trying to rent bicycles and making the transaction a lot more complicated than it needed to be. That was always the way, mused the clerk, who had grommets in his earlobes, studs through his lip, and who’d learned to pass the time at his incredibly boring job by making judgments about the different categories of customers who wandered in. He’d noticed that it was always the trashy ones, like these two, who hemmed and hawed about leaving a driver’s license or credit card as collateral. The well-to-do, in their neat khakis and pastel polos—the ones whose Visa numbers and personal information might actually have been worth stealing—were always so blasé about putting their spending power and their identities into the hands of total strangers while they took a carefree spin around the island.
In any case, these scruffy-looking customers declined to leave ID. In a slow, thick Southern accent, the one who’d b
een doing the talking said, “Nah, ah don’t b’lieve ah’d care to do that. Ah prefer cash money.”
The clerk frowned at him, noticing the missing teeth, the dorky hat that looked like an upside-down flower pot with a chin strap, and the cheap mirror-lensed sunglasses that shot back broken prisms. He said, “If you leave cash, I’ll have to put it in the safe and write out a receipt.”
“Tha’d be fahne. We ain’t in no hurry.”
“But maybe the people behind you are.”
“No they ain’t. Not unless they’s Yankees.”
At that, the other would-be renter gave a low gruff chuckle. He was wearing a baggy sweatshirt with the sleeves hacked off at the elbows, cutoff jeans with loose strings dangling, and an Atlanta Braves baseball cap with the brim pulled very low.
Grumpily, the clerk took the cash and filled out the receipt and the trashy pair wobbled off on their blue beach cruisers. When they’d gone a block or so, Carla said, “Maybe you laid it on a little thick with the Southern accent.”
Ricky said, “Did ah? Ah only got ta practice it but oncet.”
“Maybe you could turn it off now.”
“Ah guess. But gosh, sometahmes it’s harder ta get outta character than inta it. Anyways, how you doin’, Sugar? You doin’ okay?”
“My boobs are feeling a little squished. Other than that I’m fine.”
They pedaled through the jam-packed business district with its crush of bodies and roar of Harleys, then into a cozy but still cramped neighborhood of skinny residential streets whose sun-softened asphalt tugged like taffy at their tires. Low, small houses peeked out shyly from between rampant blocs of bougainvillea; leggy allamanda vines crawled up and over chain-link fences, their sinewy tendrils sealing off front yards. Closer to the ocean, the streets got wider, the houses bigger, the landscape more open; the sky itself seemed gradually to grow higher and more roomy, and by the time this burgeoning expansion of space reached its climax at the beach, with its limitless light and sparkling empty air stretching out forever, Carla was almost giddy with excitement and a kind of nameless letting go.
One Big Joke Page 12
