Gino returned with three fingers of Jack Daniel's in a smudged glass and sat down heavily on the bed. Either he sighed or some air came out of the mattress. "Awright, Joey," he began. "Awright. Now the first thing ya gotta know is that nunna this was my idea." He swigged half his drink. "But O.K. There were these two guys, Vinnie Fish and Frankie Bread. They were, like, a little bit attached to my crew, a little bit attached to Ponte, but it was, ya know, a vague kinda thing, nothing really solid. Ya follow?"
"Yeah, Gino. I follow."
"Well," Gino continued, "these guys knew about the stones, they knew about the drop. So they come to me, they wanna be partners, and Joey, I swear to God, I tell 'em it is a very fucked-up idea. I tell 'em no way. But these guys, Vinnie and Frank, they're like very persuasive guys. They say, look, who's Ponte gonna suspect-his own paisans or the fucking spicks? It's a piece a cake, they say. Lift the stones, Ponte decides the Colombians fucked him, and that's the end of it."
Dried salt made Joey's scalp itch and he gave it a luxurious scratch. "Then wha'd they need you for?"
Gino drank. "They figured they'd walk away with like a million and a half each. How can they spend that kinda money without it lookin', ya know…? So the deal was this: They cut me in, I get them made, so then it looks like they're earning good with us, and that's where the cash is coming from."
Joey tapped his fingers on the blond wood arms of his chair. "Except Ponte doesn't believe it was the Colombians."
Gino tugged at the lapel of his bathrobe and gave a bitter laugh. "Ain't that fucking sad? I mean, what's the fucking world coming to when a guy would trust the spicks before his own friends? Who knows, maybe Vinnie and Frank fucked up. Maybe they left a trace, maybe they acted guilty. I dunno. I wasn't in on that part of it." He lifted his glass and, unwilling to admit it was empty, turned it upward until he was looking through the bottom of it as if it were a telescope. Then he got up and plodded toward the table.
Vicki looked at his wide back and spoke for the first time. It was not the voice of someone who had found the key to perfect patience. "Bring the bottle, Gino, you'll save steps."
"Shut up, Vicki," he said without turning around. But he took her advice.
"So what part are you in on, Gino?"
Gino sat down and poured himself another bourbon before he answered. He stashed the bottle between his thighs, and the neck protruded unattractively. "Vinnie and Frank got whacked. You know that, right?"
Joey nodded.
"Well, before they did, we made up a place where they would leave the emeralds. My part of the job was to pick 'em up, bring 'em to New York, and get 'em sold."
Joey realized quite suddenly that the flickering, voiceless images from the television were driving him nuts. He got up, turned the set off, and paced the room. "Gino, lemme make sure I got this right. Your partners get clipped. Which obviously means that Ponte knows what's what. And you still come down here to cop the stones? You gotta be a total asshole."
The older brother hunched forward, looking more than ever like a tired fighter who puts his head down and bulls off the ropes for one last and desperate offensive flurry. "Joey, tree million bucks, and no one left to split it with-could you just walk away and leave that sittin' onna table? Huh?" He sipped bourbon. "So O.K., things ain't workin' out so good, now I gotta sit here and get insulted. All of a sudden it's O.K., it's safe to dump on Gino. Even you, Joey, you're the big man all of a sudden. But what if it worked? Would I be an asshole then? Bullshit. I'd be a hero."
"Some hero," said Vicki. It didn't seem like she'd meant to speak. It just came out like an ill-timed fart.
"Shut up, you bitch. Yeah Joey, I'd be a hero, and we both know it. I'd lay some money on Pop, I'd spread some around, I'd take on some new guys, and even if, sometime downa road, Ponte figured things out, you think he'd have the balls to touch me? Nan. I'd be too big by then."
Joey reached out and grabbed his brother by the arms. "Gino, there ain't gonna be no then. Can't you see that?" He gave Gino a shake, but the bigger man seemed to have gone limp; it was like shaking a bag of cotton. "So where're the emeralds now?"
Gino looked down and said nothing. Vicki cracked the silence with a tittering and demented little laugh. "He don't know," she said.
Joey was not aware of starting to pace again but found himself treading the narrow runway between the dresser and the foot of the bed. "You don't know?"
"I do know," Gino protested. He half swiveled and looked at Vicki with a face full of loathing. Then he added, in a softer voice, "I just couldn't find em."
"Couldn't find 'em when?"
Gino was seeking distraction in the bourbon bottle between his thighs, toying with it like a masturbating chimp. "The night I set up you and Bert," he said. "This is what I'm tryin' to tell ya, Joey. I didn't do it so I could run, I did it so I could cop the stones."
"But you didn't cop the stones."
Gino shook his head forlornly and came as close as Joey had ever seen to looking embarrassed. "I couldn't find the fucking place. Then I ran outta time. I barely made it back here aheada Ponte. Maybe I shoulda just said the hell with it and bolted. But tree million dollars! I wasn't ready to walk away."
Joey suddenly felt very tired. It was the kind of melting fatigue in which the most familiar things no longer seem familiar. Was this fat drunk guy in the bathrobe a relative of his, someone he was supposed to care about? This woman under the sheet-who the hell was she? "So Gino," he said very slowly, "where — are-the emeralds?"
Gino opened his mouth, then abruptly stopped himself, like a card player who realizes he is on the brink of throwing in what could yet be a winning hand. "Joey, I ain't sure I oughta tell ya."
Joey sucked his teeth, crossed his arms, and leaned back against the dresser. "Gino, asshole, you're a walking dead man because of those fucking emeralds. You don't see that?"
"What kinda split you looking for, Joey?"
"Split? Split? You think this is about a split? Jesus Christ, Gino, you really are a putz." Joey looked at his watch on its arrogantly inexpensive plastic band. "Look, it's late. I don't need this shit. Either you tell me what I need to know in the next thirty seconds, or I'm outta here and you're on your own."
Gino stared at the carpet but found no answers there. Vicki's foot moved under the sheet and kicked him in the kidney. "Awright, awright. Supposedly the stones are stashed at this place called Sand Key Marina. It's about ten, twelve miles up, and that's all I know about it. Drove me bullshit tryin' to find it. There's no signs, no streetlights, you like go down these tiny roads that turn into gravel and then dead-end at these swamps. Over and over again, fucking swamps. Mosquitoes. Fire-flies. Things croaking. Anyway, there's an old wreck of a fishing boat at this marina. Just, like, tied up there, ya know, it can't be used no more. It's called the Osprey. So Vinnie and Frank, they scoped it out, and they put the stones in this wreck, under a plank inside with like a little X marked on it. And that's as much as I know, I swear to God."
Joey nibbled a thumbnail and glanced at the dirty dinner dishes. "You got cash?"
Gino nodded.
"Gimme a thousand."
"Wha' for?"
"I don't know yet," Joey said. "I gotta think."
Gino leaned over, put die Jack Daniel's on a night table, took a wad of bills out of a drawer, and gave his kid brother some money.
"Tomorrow at midnight," Joey said, "go down to the basement, up the service ramp, around the pool, and out to the dock. No luggage, no nothing."
"What about my stuff?" said Vicki.
"Shut up," said Gino.
And Joey left. He saw no one in the elevator or in the basement kitchen, and when he encountered a security guard on the private beach, he just walked past him like he owned the joint and went out to his boat.
— 31 -
There is a kind of preoccupation that makes people muddled, absentminded, out of rhythm, but there is also a kind that hones them, makes them as taut yet supple as a child gym
nast. The next day Joey was riding the crest of this second kind of preoccupation. He had a golden day at work. No one could say no to him. He patrolled his corner of Duval Street with the loose-limbed confidence of a great outfielder, and with similarly uncanny anticipation. He just knew what people needed to hear. One couple he won over with a winged spiel about award-winning resort design. Another couple-how could he tell they were starving? — signed on at the promise of a meal voucher for an oyster brunch. Then there was the older gent with the gold chains, the silver belt buckle, and the pebbled ring. This was a man who liked shiny things, an easy mark for the free passes to the Treasure Museum. By noon Joey had made half as much money as he had the entire week before.
Yet never for a moment was the Gino situation off his mind. It kept nagging at him like a bad but catchy tune replayed in a dozen different versions, and every time Joey ushered customers into the Parrot Beach office, he took the opportunity to pick Zack Davidson's brain.
"Hey, Zack," he asked at around nine-thirty, "they got this thing, right, like a mappa the water?"
Zack looked up from some papers on his desk. "Yeah, Joey, it's called a chart."
"Like, whadda they put on it?"
Zack shrugged. "Depths, buoys, lighthouses, landmarks-"
"Marinas?"
"Not usually. Not unless there's a big tower or water tank or something. Why?" Zack laughed at himself for asking this. He seemed to know by now that Joey wasn't going to tell him why.
"Just curious," said Joey. He put his sunglasses back on, let the earpieces slide through his hair with a feeling smooth as sex, and returned to his post on the sidewalk.
At around ten-fifteen he shepherded in another couple, deposited them in the waiting room, and was ready to resume the conversation exactly where he'd left off. Time was running on two tracks for Joey. There was the thick, slow time of his salesman's skill, then there was the urgent yet strangely serene count-down toward his midnight date with Gino. At moments the two times ran parallel, but then one would stop, freeze, wait for the other to have its say. "So, like, if you're looking for a marina and it ain't onna map-"
"Chart," corrected Zack.
"Whatever. How d'ya find it?"
Zack ran a hand through his sandy hair. "Well, there's gotta be a channel to get to the marina. So if you know roughly where it is-"
"Ah," said Joey, and hit the street again.
At midday he jogged to the Habaneras Marine Supply store and bought a nautical chart of the lower Keys. He brought it back to the office, unfurled it on top of the Plexiglas case of the Parrot Beach scale model, examined it with frank befuddlement, and experienced an emotion he couldn't quite place. It was humility. Bafflement, helplessness, littleness, shame — all of those he'd felt before. But this was different, rounder. Humility required a certain amount of confidence, a little bit of knowledge and pride, to give it a place to nest, and these parts of the mix were new. " Marrone," he said, "what is all this shit?"
Zack Davidson leaned over the chart and pointed with a pencil. "Latitude. Longitude. Loran lines. Compass rose. Shoaling. Harbor ranges…"
Joey scanned the paper for an easy place where his eyes could rest. "And what's this blank part over here?"
Zack was momentarily thrown by the question and shook his wrist to rearrange his watch. "That? That's the land."
For some reason this struck Joey funny: a map where all the important stuff was in the water and the nothing part was the land. This he'd never heard of in Queens. The idea pried open his imagination, turned everything superbly upside down. He scratched his head, dashed outside, and within an hour had chalked up two more commissions.
"Reefs?" he said when he came back into the office. "They put reefs onna chart?"
"Sure," said Zack. "This parta the world, that's like the most important thing on there."
"Right," said Joey. "And onna land part, they show where the bridges are, right?"
"Yeah," said Zack. "With the clearances."
"Right."
He returned to his post and realized for the first time that it was an extremely hot afternoon. The breeze had stalled and the palms, so lazily efficient at husbanding their strength, let their fronds hang as limp and seemingly weightless as flags. The yogurt eaters bent their necks to lick drippings from their cones, and young women in undershirts had beads of sweat at their hairlines. Joey sold one last tour with a heartfelt pitch about the gorgeous pool at Parrot Beach.
"Hey Zack," he said, " 'zere an airport between here and Miami?"
'Yeah," he said, "at Marathon. Fifty miles up."
"Great. And what's a rowboat cost?"
Zack Davidson folded his hands on top of his blotter, unfolded them, tugged an ear, and yawned. The heat and his younger colleague were making him tired. "Joey, you're awful hyper today."
"Yeah, I guess I am. Sorry."
"Hey," said Zack, gesturing toward the stack of tour chits Joey had amassed, "don't be sorry. It works. But Joey, man, aren't you getting exhausted?"
He let the question slide. "Zack, listen. I need your boat again tonight. I gotta keep it overnight, and I need tomorrow off. I know it's a lot to ask, but after this, I'm through with this craziness, I swear to God."
Zack shrugged. If Joey didn't wreck his boat the first time, odds were he wouldn't wreck it the second. Besides, the kid was on a salesman's roll, in that zone where no one could say no to him. Far be it from his boss to break the trance. "O.K.," he said, "you got it."
"And there's one other thing," Joey said. He leaned across Zack's desk and wagged a finger under his chin. "You gotta promise you're gonna lemme make this up to you sometime."
"Joey, hey, it's no big deal."
"It is to me. Come on, Zack, I'm serious. Don't insult me."
Zack looked at the younger man and blinked his sandy eyelashes. Skeptical crinkles bunched up at the comers of his hazel eyes, as if he had a tough time imagining Joey in a strong enough position to do much of anything for anybody else. "Whatever, Joey. When you can. If you can. No pressure."
"Soon," said Joey. "It's gonna be soon. And if things go right, Zack, you're gonna see that I'm a guy who knows how to return a favor."
— 32 -
In the screened gazebo at the Paradiso condominium, the late afternoon gin game was just breaking up, the players about to go their separate ways for the rituals of cocktail hour and sunset. When Joey arrived, Bert d'Ambrosia was gesturing through a final kibitz with the retired judge, his colleague in age, assets, and the respect accorded to each. Bert wore a pale yellow shirt whose weave was almost as thin and open as cheesecloth; the fabric nearly disappeared against his bronze, stretched skin. Don Giovanni perched on his forearm like an acrobat, seeming to use his whiskers as a kind of balance pole.
"Hi, Bert. Got a minute?"
The old man flashed him a wry look that said that was exactly what he had. Minutes. Hours. Days. Maybe even a few years yet.
Joey motioned him outside, and the two men sat down under one of the steel umbrellas by the pool.
Bert put his dog on the table, and although Joey didn't say a word about it, the old gangster seemed to feel called upon to explain. "The other owners don't like it," he said, "and I don't blame 'em. A dog onna table-it ain't, like, whatchacallit, sanitary. But this dog, ever since the night with the gahbidge, he don't like to be out of my sight. Like, under the chair, that's too far away now. Fucking dog's a royal pain innee ass. Ain't you a pain innee ass, Giovanni? I shoulda let that little scar-faced fucker blow your brains out."
Joey looked through his blue lenses at the blue shimmer of the pool. "Yeah, Bert," he said. "Well, speakin'a pains innee ass, I took a boat, slipped inta the Flagler House, and wenta see Gino last night."
The Shirt took the news in stride. "And how's he doin'?"
"He's fallin' apart," said Joey. The statement came out oddly neutral because in it sympathy was balanced with rage, letdown canceled out vindication.
"Figures," said Bert. "Soft
inna middle, Gino is. If things don't fall his way, if he can't play the big shot-"
"Well, I'm gettin' him outta town tonight. I got it mostly figured and I think it's gonna work."
The old man reached up and stroked the strands of flesh that were like the rigging for a double chin that wasn't there. "You think it's gonna work?"
"It'll work," Joey said softly. He looked out through the open side of the Paradiso quadrangle, across the bustle of A1A to the imported sand of Smathers Beach and the green Atlantic beyond. "But I'm gonna need some help."
"Like?"
"Like I need you to drive about twelve miles up the Keys and meet me at dawn at this little bridge between Big Coppitt and Saddlebunch."
"That I can do," Bert said. "It's not like I sleep good anyway."
"Then I need you to take Gino and Vicki to Marathon airport and get 'em onna first flight out. But not to Miami. I think it'd be better to avoid Miami. Where else they fly to outta there?"
"Prob'ly West Palm, Tampa."
"Yeah," said Joey, "someplace like that. Soon as possible. Then fuck it, we're done."
Bert scratched his chest through his cheesecloth shirt, and with his other hand he scratched the dog's. "Joey, ain'tcha forgettin' something?"
"Whassat?"
"What about the emeralds, Joey? Gino have the emeralds?"
Joey drummed his fingertips on the white enamel table and slowly shook his head. "The two guys that got whacked? They stashed 'em. And my genius brother, the night he almost got us killed, he went to cop 'em and couldn't find 'em."
"So that's that?" said Bert the Shirt. He was retired, more than comfortable, he had no use or even desire for extra money, but still, the idea of three million dollars going unexploited seemed to offend him profoundly. "So the stones'll just sit somewhere and rot?"
"Emeralds don't rot," said Joey. "That's the beauty part."
Bert paused. Back when he was active in the business, he'd been one of the better pausers in New York. He'd squint, toy with his collar, reach ever so slowly into his monogrammed pocket for a smoke. So supple were his pauses that they were equally suited to exuding menace or concealing knowledge or simply shaving parts of beats off the rough jazz of his speech. "Giovanni," he said at last to the dog, "you think this kid's holdin' out on us?"
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