Tropical Depression

by Laurence Shames

  "Exactly," Ponte said. "Pain innee ass. An' what's this ex-husband bullshit? You're living with the man."

  "Visiting," she said. "And, for your information, sleeping in a guest room."

  Ponte frowned down at his small expensive shoes, the liverish sacs beneath his eyes got darker. He was suddenly exasperated, felt that he was losing the momentum.

  "Lady," he said, "I don't care if you're sleepin' inna fuckin' shithouse. The point is this: This husband, ex-husband, whatever—y'ever wanna see the man again?"

  "Funny you should ask. That's the exact question I've been thinking about all week."

  There was a pause. Behind Charlie Ponte, tiny translucent windows let in faint smears of red and green light. Muted by thick walls, a tray clattered to the tiled floor of the restaurant kitchen. The boss took a deep pull on his cigar, then got down from his desk, walked toward Bruno, and belted him again.

  "Ya see why I don't want ya bringin' me no fuckin' woman?"

  "Boss, hey," protested Bruno. "I tried ta do good."

  "Well, ya did lousy. Pain innee ass broad. The two a them, they deserve each other."

  Franny winced at the remark, it had a distressing and insulting ring of truth.

  Ponte started pacing, cigar smoke plumed out behind him like steam behind a locomotive. "Now I got this fuckin' broad," he thought aloud, "now I gotta keep 'er... Squeak, anybody inna Odds motel right now?"

  The skinny thug said there was not.

  "Awright, you'll take 'er to the Odds motel."

  "Odds motel?" said Franny. Her voice was letting go, the words came out in a raspy whisper.

  Ponte stepped in close to her, put his knees between her knees, leaned down in her face. His eyeballs were yellow and his clothes stank of tobacco.

  "Shut up, Franny Rudin. Zipper that fuckin' smart mouth shut."

  She did, and Ponte almost smiled, gratified and maybe a little surprised that he could cow her.

  "This husband of yours," the boss went on, "ex- husband, whatever, who you are not living with, only visiting and I gather not fucking—let's see how eager he is to see your smart ass again."

  30

  Numb, despairing, Murray trudged through the glare and noise and beery crush of bodies on Duval Street. Tommy held him by the arm, but still he lumbered into people, stumbled stepping bleary- eyed off curbs. Infernal music knifed into his ears, hard women and gaudy men spun like dervishes before his unfocusing eyes. By the time they reached the scratched-up Lexus, he felt that he had left the earth and landed on some crasser and lewder and more uncouth planet.

  "How about I drive?" said Tommy.

  Murray just handed him the key. But then, a few blocks off Duval, on the quiet streets that flanked the ocean, he said suddenly, "Wait a second, what we goin' home for? What we gonn' accomplish home?"

  Tommy hadn't driven in years. He drove slow but jerkily. Without taking his eyes off the road, he said, "We're gonna see LaRue."

  Murray's elbow was propped up on the window frame, breeze was worrying his forearm. Dazedly, he said, "LaRue. That's good, Tommy. We'll see LaRue, we'll give 'im what he wants, he'll get us Franny back."

  The Indian said nothing.

  The Bra King looked out the window, at ice- white moonlight that spilled across the water and tracked them as they drove.

  They arrived at the Paradiso, Tommy almost managed to park between the lines.

  Inside the privileged quadrangle, they skirted the pool and the palms, smelled chlorine and closed- up flowers. They went to the East Building, stood in the vestibule. Murray reached for Barney LaRue's buzzer on the intercom.

  Tommy deflected his hand. "Use your key," he said. "He doesn't need to be too ready."

  They let themselves into the inner hallway, rode the elevator to the penthouse floor, Murray reliving the bafflement and humiliation of his first day in town. The door opened, he saw the nightmarish flopped familiarity of the corridor, everything the same as his but backwards: the same fluorescent fixtures spotted with the same dead bugs, the same number of steps from the elevator to the door, the same vacant little nameplate underneath the peephole.

  The doorframe had a bell on it, but Tommy didn't use it. He knocked, hard. He badly wanted a drink and his hands were feeling feisty.

  After a moment they heard the whisper of steps on carpet, to their surprise the door opened without an inquiry. Pascal was standing there in his splendid red kimono, his face had the off-balance look of a man who was expecting someone else.

  "We need to see your boss," said Tommy.

  "You can't," the houseboy said. It took only a second for his expression to change to superior and petulant.

  The Indian wedged his foot against the door. "We can."

  "You can't. He isn't here."

  "Where is he?" Murray said.

  "None of your business," said Pascal.

  Pascal had lots of muscles, he oiled himself and worked out every other day. But he was not a fighter and he did not react when Tommy reached out hard and quick and grabbed two hot handfuls of his robe. The Indian jerked him forward through the doorway, then slammed him back and upward against the corridor wall. He held him pinned up there, his feet barely in contact with the floor. "Where's LaRue, you fucking geek?"

  The man in the kimono wriggled like a burned moth, looked down at the mangled silk in Tommy's fists. He seemed more concerned about the garment than himself. "Let me go," he whined.

  Tommy pulled, pushed, heard things move inside the houseboy's chest as his back once again collided with the wall. "Where's your fucking boss?"

  "He's in Tallahassee. It's where he works, for God's sake."

  "When did he go there?" Murray asked.

  "Tell this beast to let me go."

  Tommy backed away. Pascal slid down the wall like egg, straightened his kimono. "He left at noon. And now I'm calling the police."

  "Do that," Tommy said. "Great idea. And be sure and tell your boss you're doing it. Tell 'im the cops are coming after us and we have a lot to talk with them about."

  *****

  The two friends rode the elevator to the courtyard, didn't speak till they were out in the night air that was as moist as fruit and the temperature of skin. Tommy sat on the edge of a webbed lounge near the pool. Murray fell into a plastic chair across from him and glanced down at his own soft arms.

  "Me, I've never been in a fight," he absently remarked.

  Tommy didn't answer, he was thinking. His pulse was slowing, sweat was drying on his back, and his hands felt somehow better, a brief and rough serenity spread upward from them to his wrists, his elbows, his shoulders.

  "Maybe we should talk to Bert," he said.

  The Bra King didn't answer right away, and when he did, it was in a hopeless monotone. "Bert's not gonna help us out. Push comes to shove, Bert's still an old colleague of Ponte's."

  Tommy disagreed, but let it slide. "And I thought maybe we'd get in touch with that reporter guy."

  Murray pushed some air out past his lips. "Like he gives a shit about anything except his story."

  Tommy looked up at the sky, wondered at, without examining too closely, his sudden fragile calm, this tranquility of sober action. Very softly he said, "And there's that bitter thing again. Murray, when ya gonna stop thinkin' the worst about everybody?"

  The Bra King didn't answer, just crossed his ankles and slumped down in his chair, dejected in the starlight.

  After a moment Tommy said, "Come on, let's go see if Bert's around."

  He rose, and Murray followed; he didn't know what to do, except to follow.

  They wove through palms and oleanders to the North Building, buzzed the old man on the intercom. It was ten o'clock, he sounded wide awake but deeply surprised to be getting visitors.

  He met them at his door in gorgeous silk pajamas, maroon with pale pink piping. He held his dog one-handed, the dog flopped double, like an under- stuffed sausage. He saw Murray's and Tommy's clenched faces and he didn't greet them, j
ust gestured them into his living room.

  It was a busy, cluttered room, unchanged since his wife had died a dozen years before. A brocade sofa was guarded by a glass and marble coffee table with lion's feet. There were China lamps whose shades had pom-poms on them. Gewgaws were strewn everywhere: cut-glass candy dishes, a crystal ball from Lake Tahoe, an ashtray that said Cincinnati. Scattered on the pee-stained carpet were squeak toys that the ancient chihuahua was now too blind to find and too weary to chase around or hump.

  The old man motioned his visitors toward the sofa. Murray stepped on a plastic hot dog with a lightning bolt of yellow mustard; it gave a tortured squeal. Bert took a long moment settling into his oxblood BarcaLounger, pushing downward on the arms until the footrest swung up to meet his wizened ankles. Then he said, "What gives?"

  Murray tried licking his lips but his tongue was just as dry. "They got Franny," he said. The words freshened his fear, his throat was slamming shut before he'd finished saying them.

  "Who got Franny, wha'?"

  Murray tried to talk, could not. Tommy took over, told as much as he knew.

  "We just tried to see LaRue," he finished up. "LaRue's in Tallahassee."

  "Course he is," said Bert. "He's thinkin' alibi already."

  "I got a little physical with the houseboy," said the Indian. "He says he's calling the police."

  "He won't," the old man said.

  "Should we?" said Murray.

  The former mobster didn't hesitate. "Ya get the cops involved, Ponte's only play is to make sure the body is never found."

  Murray looked like he'd just eaten a bad clam.

  "Sorry," the old man said to him. "You asked."

  "Then there's this newspaper guy," said Tommy, "this Arty Magnus. Anything he can do for us?"

  The host crossed his hands on the front of his pajamas, thought that over. "Sometime maybe. Sometime, if, ya know, you're in a stronger position, ya got a shot at hitting back. But now . .. now ya don't do anything to force his hand."

  "So whadda we do?" said Murray.

  "Ya go to sleep."

  "Fat chance."

  "Ya wait," the old man counseled. "You'll hear from 'im, that's how it works. He'll tell ya what he wants, you'll give it to him, chance is not too bad you'll get your wife back. Maybe, if you're very lucky—"

  "I'm not feeling very lucky—"

  "—If you're very lucky, maybe you'll get your wife back wit'out ya have to give 'im what he wants."

  Murray sighed, he sounded like a tire with a nail in it. "I can't imagine," he began.

  "Look," Bert interrupted, "ya said you're not gonna be able to sleep. Course you're not. So you'll lay there, you'll think, you'll scheme, you'll try to come up with some way to beat this thing, to win. Innee end, ya won't be able to do it, you'll come up one jump short, like Chinese checkers. But inna meantime it'll make ya feel less bad. It'll help to pass the time, believe me."

  "Pass the time," said the Bra King dazedly.

  "Like Chinese checkers," said Bert the Shirt. He raised a hand and moved it like a man conducting music. "Jump by jump by jump."

  32

  Bruno had taken Franny's shopping bag and now, blindfolded again and being led along the splintery catwalk that flanked the Intracoastal, she heard a splash. She pictured neatly folded pants and shirts, their tags and pins still on, darkening with oily water before they sank into the muck.

  Waste appalled her, waste was death for things exempt from ordinary dying. "Wha'd you do that for?" she said.

  "I got smacked because a you," said Bruno. He pushed her through the alley with its greasy stinking cardboard boxes, its slick crustacean rot underfoot.

  "You big baby," she could not help saying, and Squeak came forth with a scraping, tooting laugh, a laugh like the shriek of a gull.

  They bundled her back into the car, drove her somewhere, it took maybe half an hour. She saw nothing except, at the very outside corners of her eyes, where the sash gapped against her temples, a maddening zip and flash of pinkish street lamps streaking past.

  They got on a highway and left it again, she could tell by the lean of the ramp and the different sound the tires made when they were going slower. They stopped for traffic lights, roared off, the acceleration pressed her back against the seat. After a time they went quite slowly and crunched briefly over gravel. Then they rode on something soft and silent; then they stopped. She felt the car lock into Park, but Bruno didn't turn the engine off.

  Squeak got out and opened up her door. She emerged into a fragrant blankness, it felt like she was on a farm. She smelled fresh sweet water and cut grass and animals and leather and manure. The skinny thug prodded her in some direction, she was walking on a lawn. Bruno drove away. The air got very silent except for the buzz of locusts.

  "Three steps up," chirped Squeak. "Then there's a landing."

  Her toe found the first stair and she climbed, wondered vaguely if the steps were leading to a precipice, a tiger cage, a shark tank. She felt Squeak brush against her, the nearness of his body was like a lick of clammy water. She heard a key in a lock, the complaint of a rusty hinge.

  "Now there's a staircase," said her captor. "Spiral. Narrow. Hold the railing."

  The rail was metal, it was cool in her hand, the paint was lumpy. She climbed, reached a platform. Her feet told her it was slatted, like a fire escape. Squeak reached around her, opened up a door, pushed her through it.

  "Welcome to the Odds motel," he said.

  He flipped a light switch, closed the door behind them, slid a couple of bolts. He took the sash off Franny's eyes.

  At first she saw nothing but a hot white glare, then she took in the bleak contours of the chamber she was standing in.

  It was not a room, exactly, more like a swollen conduit, a bubble in a metal artery, maybe ten feet long and eight feet wide, with a low oppressive ceiling that bore down like a mortgage. Every surface was painted the same dark dusty green, you couldn't tell where the corners were. Big bundles of wires were strung along the ceiling, tied up with plastic clamps. One entire wall was a grid of peculiar sliding shutters, all of them closed tight, insane in their inscrutable monotony. There was a toilet bowl placed nowhere in particular; it was stained with rust and lacked a seat. There were two cots. One of them was braced against a heavy-gauge chain- link door that led God knew where; the other was snug to a wall into which a pair of thick metal rings were bolted.

  "That one's yours," said Squeak, following her eyes. "I lock a wrist and ankle so I can get some sleep."

  Franny tried to hold her face together. Her composure was about used up. She wanted some vitamins, some minerals, a soothing cup of tea. She wanted to be home in Sarasota, discussing novels with the ladies. She wanted, even, to be arguing with Murray. Anything but this. "I have to pee," she said.

  "So pee," said Squeak. A standoff. Then he said, "Okay, I'll turn around." He made it sound like the most magnanimous thing he'd ever done.

  Afterward, he led her to her cot. She lay down and he hovered over her, unlocking the metal rings. He smelled like clothes that have been worn a day too long, there was something talon-like about his thin and veiny hands. His shadow stretched across her like a flight of buzzards.

  "You remind me of my son," she said. She didn't have a son, she said it to make herself sound old, to make him feel unsexy.

  Clinically, dispassionately, as if he were trussing a veal, he clamped her wrist and ankle, locked the rings around the slender bones.

  "You do bondage with your kid?" he said, and he came forth with a demented cackle that rang like a warped gong off the metal walls and floor and ceiling.

  Franny turned her face away, closed her eyes, and tried to make herself invisible.

  *****

  Murray made the water very hot and took a long soak in the Jacuzzi. Steam swirled up around him, sweat dripped from his eyelashes.

  The bath left him faint but not the least bit sleepy. Woozy, wrapped in rented towels, he lay down o
n his bed and closed his eyes. The room rocked like a boat, his mind sailed along. He pictured Tommy, thought about the brave and sudden purpose in his strength. He thought about Franny, her neat suitcase in the now-vacant guest room, and his eyes filled up with tears. He thought about what Bert had said. Plot, scheme, think. The old man was right—there was a kind of tentative salvation in being able to imagine oneself on top, to entertain notions of triumph, of revenge.

  But Murray didn't know how to start. Obstacles were everywhere. His enemies were ruthless, while he was a cream puff and a coward. His enemies had weapons, were weapons, and he hadn't thrown a punch since junior high. His enemies were holding Franny, and he was holding nothing.

  This mortified him as he lay there: He was wretched, but for the moment he was safe, while his wife, guilty of nothing but coming to visit, was in jeopardy whose grim specifics he couldn't bring himself to think about. Then there was Tommy. When, inevitably, they caved in and gave Ponte what he wanted, it would be Tommy who'd be stuck with the Mafia for a partner, Tommy who would be used, humiliated, eventually squeezed out or even killed. Murray would lose ... what? Only a diversion he no longer needed. His life had somehow gotten full enough without the new challenge of the casino business.

  Still, the whole disaster was his fault, he was like the guy who got a bar brawl going then sat under a table while others got their teeth kicked in. It wasn't fair. He made the problem, he had to fix the problem. He accepted that.

  The night dragged on. He tried to think. He pulled the sweat-soaked towels out from underneath him. His stupor deepened and he may have dozed.

  Around three A.M., he sat bolt upright, totally awake. A window had shattered. It was a big window and it was very close, the sound was no mere tinkle but a symphony of wreckage, it hit several notes at once and lingered in a brittle echo.

  The Bra King threw a towel around himself and ran into the living room. Tommy Tarpon was already there, kneeling in his underwear above a brown manila envelope wrapped around a rock. The rock was near the bottom of the curtain that covered the sliding door to the third-floor balcony. The carpet there was strewn with shards and spears of glass.