“She was already dead.”
“Well, a woman like her can’t be too choosy as to when she gets it. You know what I mean? I bet she hadn’t had any dick in years and years. Judging from the type of woman she was and her age. Old women don’t get a lot a dick. You don’t know—she might a died with a smile on her face knowing it was coming.”
Vincent had to wait a few moments. “You think so?”
“I understand it was dark under there. Who knows, ‘ey? You think you know things and you get in trouble. You think I popped that cab driver and shoved him over the cliff, so you haul my ass down here . . . Well, least it was a free ride and I don’t mind being back. I think somebody ought a pay my hotel though. I mean it’s not my fault I’m here.”
“It’s never your fault,” Vincent said. “You’re probably sick, but you still know what you’re doing. You’re a weird fucking guy, Teddy. I’ve never met anybody like you before in my life.”
“You better believe it,” Teddy said and grinned. “You’re finding out the hard way they don’t call me Mr. Magic for nothing.”
“Who’s they? I never heard anybody call you that.”
“Guys.”
“What guys? Guys at Raiford? All the winners? I wouldn’t call doing time exactly a magic act.”
“I got along fine.”
“And came out with some great ideas.”
Teddy squinted at him. “I can see that look again, man. There it is. Like you think you know something.”
“I know you ought to be taken off the street.”
“Don’t look away—look at me!”
He wanted to—Teddy was coming out, exposing himself—but Vincent’s gaze had moved beyond Teddy to pick up the round black woman in a shiny print, shades of red, coming through the opening in the hedge; the cab driver’s wife out of Africa looking around the open-air restaurant now, a big straw sunhat shading her face, worn over a red bandana.
Vincent did look at Teddy for a moment, at wide-open eyes with worry in them, something wrong, Teddy’s expression not matching his tone sounding mean, telling Vincent, “You don’t know shit, but you’re talking about me, arn’cha? Saying things that aren’t true.” Calling Vincent dumb and stupid, telling Vincent, “Look at me with your eyes!” And then, “Where you going?”
Vincent said, “I want you to meet somebody,” rising as the round black woman in the shiny print, the big straw hat, came to the table.
Vincent helped her into a chair saying their names, Modesta Manosduros . . . Teddy Magyk. A waitress came to pour water and Vincent watched Teddy looking the woman over without looking directly at her. Teddy sitting straight, his hands on his camera case. The waitress left them and Teddy eased back in his metal chair, picked up his glass of water, starting to grin and trying not to—his old self again.
“This your date?” Getting a smirky look.
“Isidro’s wife,” Vincent said.
“I know him,” the woman said. “Is the one kill my husband.”
Teddy kept his eyes straight ahead, on Vincent. “She never saw me before in her life.”
“You still the one kill my husband.” She looked at Vincent and he nodded.
“You told your husband to be careful of him.”
“Yes, but he don’ listen to me.”
“You told me to be careful, too.”
“So maybe you listen and nothing happen to you.”
“You two have fun,” Teddy said, “I’m leaving.” He gripped his camera case, put a hand on the arm of his chair.
“Look at him,” Vincent said. “Take a good look.”
“Yes?” the woman said.
“Is he magic?”
“Mr. Magic,” the woman said. “No police can catch him.”
Teddy grinned at Vincent. “You hear that?”
“What do you see? What’s gonna happen to him?”
“To Mr. Magic?”
Vincent nodded. “Look at him and tell me what you see.” He watched Teddy waiting now, Teddy getting that smirky expression again.
“Is hard to see him,” the woman said, half-closing her eyes.
“Now you see me,” Teddy said, “now you don’t.”
“He is inside something,” the woman said, raising her hands to hold them a few inches apart. “But is only this big.” She held the palm of one hand about a foot above the table. “And, I believe, this high. Like an olla. You say a pot, or a pitcher?” She closed her eyes. “I see him but I don’t see him.”
“The hell she talking about?” Teddy said.
Vincent was reaching around for the blue canvas bag hanging from his chair, Teddy watching him. Vincent placed the bag on his lap, zipped it open and brought out the stainless steel urn. “Is it like this, what you see him in?”
“Yes, like that,” the woman said. “That thing, made of metal.”
“You’re sure,” Vincent said, placing the urn carefully in the middle of the table, seeing Teddy’s frown as he studied it. The woman said, yes, it was the same thing. Teddy looked up.
“You mind my asking what you got in there?”
“Iris,” Vincent said.
“Jesus Christ,” Teddy said, “you’re kidding me,” staring at the urn again, his expression changing as he relaxed and seemed to grin. “No shit, Iris is in there? What, her ashes?”
“All that’s left of her.”
“Jesus. I never saw one of those before. Did you look in it? ‘Ey, I wouldn’t mind, if you can get it open.”
Vincent said, “You’re a creepy guy, Ted.”
Teddy said, “Yeah? Well, so are you. Carrying that thing around.”
“I’m taking it to her family in Mayaguez,” Vincent said, “unless you want to. You could tell them Iris’s last words.”
“Boy, you’re really funny.” Teddy lifted his camera case onto the table. “This whole setup—trying to mess with my head, like this’s the voodoo woman and she can see into the future. I know you told her what to say. You’re dumber and stupider’n I even thought, try and pull this kind a shit. You got to realize it man, you’re dealing with Mr. Magic.”
“I see you—” Modesta began.
But Teddy, getting up, cut her off. “Not if I see you first, Mama.”
Vincent said, “Wait, listen to her.”
“She ain’t through her routine yet?”
“I see him with a woman,” Modesta said.
Teddy paused. “Well, that ain’t all bad.”
Vincent was watching the black woman’s face, her eyes closed in the shade of the sunhat.
“I see him dancing, it look like. Close to somebody.”
“Yeah? Then what happens?”
“You run away.”
“You don’t see me or her in the sack?”
“I don’t see you no more. You gone.”
“That’s fine with me.” Teddy slung the camera case over his shoulder and looked at Vincent. “Now you see me, now you don’t. Maybe you’ll see me again . . . and maybe you won’t.”
Jesus Christ, Vincent thought.
Teddy, grinning his smirky grin, raised and lowered his eyebrows, twice. He said, “Have a nice day,” turned and walked off.
Jesus Christ, Vincent thought, feeling strangely self-conscious, as though people at the other tables were staring at him, associating him with Teddy.
Look at the freak, crossing the street now in shorts, wearing white shorts, camera case hanging, the freak raising his hand with a flat palm toward approaching traffic, the freak looking straight ahead, ignoring the cars blowing their horns at him. Teddy on stage, showing off. Something a kid in junior high might do. The guy who murdered three people in the past three weeks. Look. Moving off with a jaunty stride, on the other side of the street now, with a bounce to his step that seemed to lift him up on his toes.
This isn’t what you do, Vincent thought. Play games with weird kids. You can’t do it. You have to get out.
Still, he continued to watch Teddy, who had killed three peop
le in the past three weeks, until he was out of sight and Modesta Manosduros said, “I think I am hungry.”
Vincent turned to her. “When you looked at him, did you really see him dancing?”
“With a woman, I think,” Modesta said. “But is hard to see it because is dark in that place.” She said, “I wonder if I could have an ‘amburgesa.”
* * *
He was aware of himself winding down, worn out.
They drove Modesta home in the limo, music and cool air turned up. Then turned them down to quiet sounds to drive out of the city toward Isla Verde; a nice ride, DeLeon relaxed, Vincent trying not to think.
“I’m going home.”
“Can’t fake your injury no more?”
“Can’t play his game.”
“How ’bout I put him on the ground and you drop something heavy on him?”
“I’m tired.”
“Doesn’t matter or not he still wants you?”
“He does, he’ll have to come to Miami Beach.”
“This living on comps and good looks is gonna arrive at a screechy halt anyway, anytime now. Nothing is free, is it? Shit,” DeLeon said, “I’m gonna have to get a job.”
They came to the mosque on the beach. A gambler’s mecca—was that the connection? Vincent still wasn’t sure. They left the car at the main entrance . . . Vincent winding down finally to reach bottom after days of dead ends, tired to death of thinking.
Then starting up again gradually, not yet aware of it, as he said, “Let’s have a few in the lounge, while I can still sign.” The idea picking him up a little but not much. The black doorman in cape and turban grinned with teeth like old piano keys, giving it all he had. And it picked Vincent up some more. The put-on. The man making a living, playing his part. And DeLeon playing with him, saying, “Allah is God, my brother.” The doorman grinning his ivory grin back, “And Jackie Garbo is his prophet. Say tell you he’s in the lounge. Anxious to see you two.”
It stopped DeLeon. “Uh-oh.”
But lifted Vincent even higher, the prospect of seeing Jackie again, the idea of buying him a drink. “Come on.” Amazing, though maybe not so amazing. Because Jackie was real and good or bad you could read him and be entertained. Jackie was Jackie . . . Who was Teddy? You couldn’t say Teddy was Teddy . . . Teddy in and out of Vincent’s mind, never completely gone, as he walked through the lobby with DeLeon and into the lounge. Dark, but there he was, at the bar.
A half-grown bear in a silk suit, raising his glass, white cuff gleaming, pinky ring winking . . . Vincent walked toward him. He would shake his hand, slap him on the shoulder, get him off stride and listen to his assumptions and raw asides and enjoy it. He heard a cord struck softly on the piano, another and another . . .
Jackie was looking this way, Jackie saying, “It works. Somebody sent in the fucking clowns. Where you going?”
To the bandstand—was he kidding? Through the tables to the small stage, one step up and across to the piano where Linda stopped playing as she saw him. Was she sad or smiling? Or both. He wasn’t sure. He said, “You’re here . . .”
And she said, “I missed you, Vincent. Boy, did I miss you.”
27
* * *
AS LONG AS HE COULD LOOK at Linda Moon, close enough to touch, he could be patient and courteous and listen to Jackie, at least while the champagne lasted. Vincent’s whole outlook had changed. He sensed there was even something different about Jackie. Listen.
“When you know you’re getting it up the kazoo but you allow it, then it’s not what you ordinarily call forcible entry. You know what I’m saying?”
Sort of.
“I was hurt. Lemme tell you something, ladies and gentlemen, I can’t remember in my experience ever being more deeply hurt . . .”
Actually on stage. He stood at the edge directly above them, a dead mike in his hand as a prop, his audience two light faces and one dark face in the gloom of the nearly empty noontime lounge: Linda, Vincent, DeLeon seated with Jackie’s offering, the bottle of champagne, Jackie the good guy continuing:
“. . . I couldn’t believe it. Here’s this honest cop, supposedly, using what he calls leverage, holding my old sidekick, my confidant, the Moose, over my head as a threat. When all he had to say was, ‘Mr. Garbo, you mind if we use your company plane? It’s very important.’ I mean that’s all you had to do, ask.” Jackie paused, lowered his head, raised it slowly. “Moose, am I a reasonable guy? Relatively you’d say easy to get along with?”
“Kindest man I know,” DeLeon said, back in his old job under new conditions, a favorable location.
“Thank you.”
“He’s a peach,” Linda Moon, Now Appearing in the Sultan’s Lounge, said. “Has a great ear for music.” And looked at Vincent. His turn.
But he couldn’t think of anything to add until DeLeon said, “Man’s wise, too. Knows when to bail out,” and Jackie hooked the mike onto the stand and stepped down to the table.
“He’s an entertainer at heart,” Vincent said. “Should have a stage in his office.”
Sitting down with them Jackie said, “I wanted to I could work this room right here, get a routine together. It’s a gift, you got it or you don’t. Confidence, presence . . .” Turning to DeLeon. “But I didn’t bail out up there, the inference being I ran out on the Donovans . . .”
“Uh-unh,” DeLeon said, “I know you wouldn’t do that.”
“What I did, I excused myself,” Jackie said. “Left Dick and Jane playing cutthroat with each other. She is, he’s thinking up catchy names for the sandwiches in the deli or he’s playing with his Wang. Hey, they want to run the casino and the hotel, good luck, they’re principal stockholders. I’ll run the show here from now on, that’s the understanding. Some morning four A.M. I’ll get a frantic call, hop back up there and straighten things out. Otherwise I’m here and I love it.”
“There’s something different about you,” Vincent said.
“You notice ’cause you got an eye, you don’t miss anything.”
“What is it?”
“I’m gonna pay you the highest form a compliment,” Jackie said. “You came in my office when we met, sat down, didn’t say much . . .”
“Got carried out.”
“That was your own fault. You should a stated your business, not led me on like that. But I should a paid more attention to you at the time, your style, the way you handle yourself. You know why? ’Cause I thought about it later. I realized something. I said to myself, this guy’s got nice easy moves, never pushes, he listens and he learns things. Which is how you found out all you did, right? I said to myself, that’s the way to do it. Don’t get excited, lay back. But listen, that’s the key to it I learned from you. Listen and don’t talk so fucking much. See, guy like you, you prob’ly think you don’t have any effect on people. Well, don’t sell yourself short, my friend, you got a very nice way about you. Stay with it, you’ll do okay.”
“Thanks,” Vincent said.
In the lobby he said, “I’m not gonna be able to keep my hands off you.” She said, “I hope not.” In the elevator he said, “I can’t wait,” and she said, “I can’t either.” So they took hold of each other and began, their mouths not able to get enough, and didn’t come apart when the door opened. They went all the way to the top and had to come down to Vincent’s floor to hurry through the hall and into his room, no words between them now, nothing in the way of “I can’t wait I can’t either” once she stepped out of her pants and raised her dress as he shoved down his jeans and they joined together across the bed, not a moment too soon, breathing into each other until it was done and with immense relief they could again smile, speak.
Teddy was worried he’d have trouble staying on Vincent’s tail in this automatic Chevette he’d rented. Some piece of equipment—it took about twenty minutes for the son of a bitch to lug out of low gear and get moving. When he saw Vincent also had a Chevette he had to laugh. Here they were playing a deadly game in a couple o
f kiddie cars. The red one following the white one from Isla Verde through the busy Condado Beach section and across the bridge to Vincent’s old neighborhood. In fact, it looked like he and Linda—wherever the hell she had come from—were going into the same place where he’d stayed before. The Carmen Apartments above the liquor store. The cop sure had a lot of class, didn’t he? Moving in, it looked like, both of them with suitcases. Well, wasn’t that cute?
What he’d do, work something like the idea he had in Atlantic City but never got to use. Follow Vincent to get Vincent to follow him. Come up next to him at a light. Let him see you. Maybe make some remark to the girl, or to Vincent about the girl—she wasn’t bad looking—and then lead them out in the country somewhere. Have a place picked out. Stop off the road in some trees and wait for Vincent to come up to the car to chat or whatever—look up in his police rule book to see what he could do and what he couldn’t, as dumb and stupid as he was. Time it, pull out the new stainless steel Smith & Wesson .38 they said was a military weapon, stolen from the army depot; it was okay, nothing fancy. Mr. Magic would do a job with it—pop the cop between the eyes looking in the car at him and then give old Linda a pop, hey, give her two pops for one, both at the same time, Jesus—and bid adieu to sunny Puerto Rico on the first plane out. Get back to Atlantic City and see what was cooking.
His mom had said on the phone nothing was. She said the police had not stopped by or called, not even that nice colored man who had admired her parrot stuff so much. He’d told her, “Mom, the jig ain’t a cop he’s a goddamn kidnapper.” His mom said, “You didn’t learn language like that in my house.” He asked her to send him a check on account of lawyers didn’t take VISA and he was going to sue the ass off the police here for persecuting him. His mom said, “What? I can’t hear you so good, this connection . . .” Teddy said, “Sure, Mom. All I can say is, you got a pretty shitty attitude for a mom.” His mom said, “What? What’d you say?”
Parked across the street and down a bit toward the Hilton, Teddy looked up at the Carmen Apartments, three floors of windows and tiny balconies, an old building on a street named after an Indian, Calle Geronimo. Which didn’t make much sense. He didn’t believe Geronimo had been a PR. He wondered what apartment they were in . . . And just like that stopped wondering, as Linda appeared on a second-floor balcony, right above the liquor store.
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