Debbi paused a moment because she could feel her throat clamping shut and the tears simmering behind her itchy eyes. She bit her lip, swallowed hard, but still her voice caught when she said, "Miami Beach."
"Lemme change phones," said Sandra. She slipped out of bed and went to the kitchen.
When she returned ten minutes later, she was carrying coffee mugs. Joey was awake. He'd propped himself on pillows and put on his blue-lensed sunglasses to ease the shock of the early light. "Who was 'at?" he asked.
Sandra sat down near her husband and stroked his hair before she answered. "Debbi. Gino dropped her off in South Beach yesterday and didn't come back to get her."
Joey reached for his coffee but didn't drink, just held the mug in front of him and looked past the rising steam at the window. He knew his brother was a shit with women, but the knot in his gut was telling him that Debbi's stranding meant something else entirely. Guys who lived like Gino—they had to believe that some rogue saint was looking out for them, deflecting bullets, bending enemies' knives. At the same time, somewhere at the bottom of their brains, they had to know that they were diddling death, heading crotch first toward the buzz saw.
"Where'd he go?" asked Joey. "Who'd he see?"
"She doesn't seem to know," said Sandra. "She was rambling. She's very tired and very scared."
Joey pulled a deep breath in, pushed it out, sipped some coffee. "The old man," he said. "Jesus." He shook his head and let it go at that.
"I told her to get a cab and come down here," said Sandra.
Joey just nodded.
"Look," said his wife, "why don't we try to keep it to ourselves for now, give it some time. Maybe he'll turn up, maybe he'll call."
Joey nodded again. Maybe he'd turn up, maybe he'd call. The younger brother didn't think so. He stared through his sunglasses, past the thin bedroom curtains at the brightening day, and wondered how it would be when he could no longer stall and had to tell Vincente.
25
Somewhere in the Carolinas, sometime after dawn, Pretty Boy pulled his Lincoln off the Interstate and swung into a Shoeless Jimmy truck stop. He parked in a distant comer of the lot. Not that he was seriously worried that Gino would draw attention to himself. The captive was handcuffed, his mouth sealed with duct tape, his legs bound up double so he couldn't kick against the carpeted walls of the trunk. Still, he could bounce a little, he could groan. Better to leave him where the highway hum would drown him out.
The Fabretti thugs got out of the car and stretched. Less than twelve hours from Miami, it was already a different world, an ice age. Against the red sky, frost-loving pine trees, ramrod straight, were wreathed in frigid mist, the vapor wound through the branches like a corkscrew.
Pretty Boy did a little dance, shifted his weight from foot to foot. "I hate the fuckin' Sout'," he groused. His breath showed opaque white as he said it. "You're gonna freeze your ass off, why call it Sout' to begin wit'?"
"It's called Sout'," said the philosophic Bo, " 'cause, like, back inna Civil War—"
"And they got such stupid fuckin' names for things down heah," interrupted Pretty Boy. He gestured disgustedly toward the frosty neon sign above the restaurant. "Shoeless Jimmy Truck Stop. Betty Sue Biscuit's White Trash Cafe. Whistlin' Darkie Trailer Lodge—"
"Go easy onna pills, huh?" Bo suggested. "They're makin' you, like, irritable."
Pretty Boy flapped his arms to warm himself. "What's makin' me irritable is that dog turd inna trunk. I still say we shoulda—"
"How many more states I gotta listen ta dis?" protested Bo. "Florida. Georgia. Sout' Carolina—"
"And fuck geography too," said Pretty Boy. "Ya fuck geography," said Bo, "how ya gonna know where you're at?"
His partner didn't answer, just fumbled in the pockets of his sharkskin pants for his bennies. A couple more pills, three, four cups of coffee, he'd be driving over the Verrazano Bridge, looking at the skyline, getting ready to deliver his half-dead cargo to Aldo Messina on the seafood docks in Brooklyn.
———
Over breakfast, Joey said, 'Take a ride wit' me, Pop? I gotta look at some property up the Keys, I'd like to know what ya think." The Godfather looked up from his grapefruit. He knew nothing about real estate, and his son had somehow come to be an expert, as much an expert as a briefcase guy who went to a fancy college. But it wasn't Joey's know-how that Vincente was reflecting on; it was the deeper mystery of his kindness. The kindness to coddle an old man's vanity, to let him believe he wasn't in the way, he was helping. Vincente thought, His mother was very kind. He musta got it from his mother. He said, "Sure, Joey, I'm always happy ta take a ride."
The two men left the house around nine-thirty, comfortably before Debbi would arrive in her taxi from Miami. Sandra would have a chance to talk with her alone. Maybe Gino would call while Vincente was out.
It was a beautiful morning, with just enough breeze to animate the palms, and with scattered puffy clouds whose flat bottoms were tinged green by the reflecting water of the Straits. The old El Dorado hummed along, archaic and imperial beside the rented compacts, its enormous tires gripping the pavement like giant paws. There was something goofily erotic about the knobs and swellings of the dashboard. Vincente stroked the orifice of the AC vent. "I'm glad you kept this car," he said. "Car this nice, ya can't find 'em anymore."
Joey just gave his father an absent glance from behind his blue-lensed sunglasses.
They looked at lots on Summerland Key, three rocky parcels overgrown with grayish scrub and fronting on a silted-up canal that smelled like anchovies. While Vincente listened in with pride, Joey and the seller talked about flood plains, dredging regulations, rights-of-way. The seller wanted eighty-five a lot, and Joey said he'd think about it. He said it with a perfectly unreadable neutrality that the Godfather could only admire.
It was now eleven-thirty, and Joey suggested continuing on to Marathon, twenty-five miles farther up, for lunch. It seemed a long way to go for a bowl of chowder, but Vincente didn't argue.
They went to a place on the Gulf side of the highway and sat outside, under an umbrella made of thatch. Between spoonfuls of soup, Vincente said, "Joey, I never really thanked ya for gettin' me together wit' Ahty, for pushin' me on 'at."
"Pop, hey," said Joey, "it's—"
"It's a good thing, what ya got me ta do," the old man said. He dabbed his full lips on a napkin; his dark eyes twinkled in their deep nests of brows and wrinkles. "Ya know, it's a crazy thing: ya can be an old fart, ancient, and there's still so many things, you're like a kid, a virgin, ya just don't know how they're gonna feel. Like talking. I mean really talking, lettin' things out."
Joey broke a soggy saltine; it didn't snap, it folded. He managed only a distracted nod.
Vincente looked out across the water, at the distant mangrove islands that seemed to float a few inches in the air. "But there's somethin' I don't understand," he said.
"Whassat, Pop?"
"Writers. Ya hear about 'em, they're supposed ta be unhappy. They drink too much, they blow their brains out. ... I don't get it. I think they oughta be the happiest guys on eart'. Somethin' bothers 'em, they write it down. Someone fucks wit' 'em, they make 'im the bad guy, they make 'im an asshole. Ya know, they spit stuff out, get rid of it. They don't gotta carry shit around for forty—"
The old man broke off abruptly. Some flatness in the air made him realize, not with anger but with a slight embarrassment, that he wasn't being listened to.
"Somethin' on your mind, Joey? Somethin' botherin' ya?"
The younger man looked up from his chowder and met his father's eyes. The old man could not be lied to, lies wilted under that gaze like lettuces in August—but still, in the name of compassion, the truth could sometimes be deferred. "Yeah, Pop," Joey said. "Somethin' is. But it isn't somethin' I can go inta right now."
Vincente nodded, swallowed. He was a parent, it wounded him to be shut out from his child's pain. But Joey was a grownup, a husband, an expert in real estate
; he'd earned the right to deal with things his own way. The old man reached out and put a hand on the young man's wrist. "OK," he said. "I unnerstand. But Joey, I'm your father, you can talk to me. You know dat, right?'
———
Around two o'clock Debbi woke up from her nap.
It took her a moment to remember where she was, and then she was seized by an infinite and nameless gratitude, a gratitude like waking up in the hospital, comfortable and cared for, after thinking one would die. The clean sheets felt delicious against her skin; smells of sand and jasmine filtered through the guest bedroom window. She nestled her head against the pillow and luxuriated awhile in the pure, supreme delight of safety.
After a time she got up and dressed. She found herself wanting to touch things. She ran her fingers across the weave of the wicker bureau, traced out the grooves in the paneled walls. Everything about this airy house seemed a pleasure and a solace; it seemed a house where a person could be happy.
She left her room, went to look for Sandra, and found her sitting on the patio, the low metal table now a makeshift desk littered with ledger books and yellow pads. Sandra wore big square glasses as she did accounts; the lenses smeared her eyes when she looked up at her guest. "Good morning. Coffee?"
Debbi gave a sleepy smile. "I can make it. Bring you some too?"
They took their mugs and sat on lounges near the pool. The afternoon sun had lost most of its bite; its heat was not searing but cozy. The breeze picked up a hint of coolness from the surface of the water and tickled ankles as it skittered by. "Feeling better?" Sandra asked. Debbi nodded, her lips against her cup. "I don't know what I would've done if you hadn't—"
The other woman shushed her with a wave of her hand, and for some moments the two of them sat in silence. Then Sandra said, "Debbi, I hate to ask you to go through this again—"
"No, I understand," said Debbi, and she reviewed her awful sojourn in Miami. But there was no more she could explain. Gino never told her anything; he didn't believe she could keep a secret.
He said he had to see a guy, that's all. He said he'd be back in an hour, hour and a half.
Sandra looked down along her legs to the shimmer in the pool. She said softly, "He might be dead, you know."
Debbi held her coffee mug in both her hands. It made her look very young. She only nodded.
After a moment Sandra said, "Debbi, can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"In your own mind, you were finished with him, weren't you?"
The other woman hesitated, glanced at the flickering tops of the aralia hedge. "I think I was. I hope I was."
"Stick to that," said Sandra. "Dead, alive—don't remember him as better than he was, more than he was to you. Don't do that to yourself."
Overhead, a flight of ibis went past. They seemed to be scudding lazily but their tiny shadows on the apron of the patio went by very fast.
"And you?" Sandra resumed. "What'll you do?"
Debbi gave a shrug that brought her freckled shoulders almost to her ears. "Scrape together some money and go back home, I guess."
"Back to Queens," said Sandra. It was not a question, more like a sentencing.
Debbi nodded.
"That what you wanna do?"
"I dunno. There's my job and all."
"You care about the job? The job make you happy?"
"I like dogs," said Debbi.
"That isn't what I asked you," Sandra said.
Debbi kept quiet. She couldn't put her finger on it, but something was making her afraid again. She recalled the nasty stylishness of Bar Toscano, how glum and lonely it had made her feel. She pictured the lost souls and the creeps who stalked the night, and the world beyond her old neighborhood seemed a difficult and thankless place.
"Debbi," Sandra said, "you and I once had a talk about what it takes for a person to change. Remember?"
Debbi swallowed, looked down at the pool. She remembered. But that had been a safer subject when the person who needed changing was someone else.
"Why don't you stay with us awhile?"
Redheads blush easily, and now Debbi felt her skin grow warm, the spaces between the freckles were colored in. "Sandra, I couldn't—"
'Take a break. Give yourself some time to think things through."
Debbi inhaled, and the breath didn't seem to want to come out again. She lifted a slender eyebrow, and the eyebrow hung suspended. She remembered the nice feel of the wicker bureau, the grooves in the paneled walls. "I don't know what to say."
"Say yes," said Sandra, "and let's get you some breakfast."
———
Joey dragged Vincente on some errands and managed to stay away from home till five o'clock. But as he drove the El Dorado up the gravel driveway and underneath the carport, his stomach clamped down and started to burn, and his fingers began to tingle with the first squirts of unwanted adrenaline.
Father and son walked into the living room.
Vincente saw Debbi, glanced quickly at Sandra, and understood at once that something bad had happened, Joey's distraction instantly made sense to him. The old man held himself very straight. This was a vintage trick, an act of bravado that sometimes worked: you took the bad news full on an unbent chest, and if it didn't knock you down, if it didn't bowl you over, you were ready to straighten your collar and press forward.
Joey looked at Sandra and knew beyond a doubt there'd been no word of Gino.
For a moment no one moved and no one spoke. The ceiling fan turned very slowly; the air pushed in gentle viscous waves. Joey dropped his sunglasses in the pocket of his shirt. "Pop," he said, "we gotta talk."
26
"Hour, hour an' a half," murmured the Godfather.
"How long's it take to get from Sout' Beach ta Coconut Grove and back?"
"About that long," said Joey.
They were in his study, Vincente sitting at the limestone desk, Joey pacing in front of him. Through the glass block wall gleamed the lavender light of dusk. The Godfather reached up to fidget with an absent necktie and tried without success to find an alternative to believing his son Gino had disobeyed him. To be disobeyed—it made him angry, of course, but more than that it disgraced him; it showed that he had failed in his authority and therefore failed in his ability to protect.
"Joey, can ya think of any other—"
His son was already shaking his head, and now a kind of embarrassment was heaped on top of the old man's shame. He was losing his grip, getting soft. He shouldn't need to consult. He shouldn't need help or confirmation. It was his place to know, to act. He reached for the phone and dialed a number from memory.
After a moment the line was picked up and an oily voice said, "Martinelli's. Good evening."
"Do you have gnocchi?" asked the Godfather.
"No," said the maitre d'. "No gnocchi."
"Then lemme get a calf's head."
"How you like it, sir?"
"Eyes open, facing forward."
"Hold on," said the oily voice. "I'll put you through."
Bad music played through the phone. Joey paced. The light outside went gray. Then Charlie Ponte picked up the line.
"Yeah?"
"Where's my son?"
The voice was like a rumble underground, it seemed to come from everywhere at once. For a moment Ponte didn't answer; then he sounded knocked off stride, confused.
"Vincente—"
"Where is 'e, Cholly?"
Again there was a pause, a clinch, but this time Ponte came out of it swinging. "How da fuck should I know?"
"Don't bullshit me. I know he was there."
The Miami boss chewed a thumbnail and tried to figure out what else his adversary knew. "Yeah, he was here. And he left."
"Who wit'?"
"Some friends from New York."
"Wha' friends, Cholly?"
Ponte sighed, sucked his teeth, and when he spoke again his voice was harried, whiny. "Vincente, I'm just a guy tryin'a make a living. Don't put me i
nna fuckin' middle a this."
"Middle a what?"
"This New York bullshit."
"Explain 'at, Cholly. You're talkin' out your ass."
"I'm talkin' unions, jurisdiction," Ponte said.
"You ain't talkin' nothin' so far," Vincente said, but a dread suspicion was clawing at him, it raked over him the way a dull knife frets the surface before it slashes through.
"Look," said Ponte, "ya wanna change the game wit' the Fabrettis, I don't give a fuck, it's alla same ta me. But work it out with the Fabrettis, don't send me Gino ta tell me things are back the way they were."
The Godfather held the phone a few inches from his hairy ear. The nostrils flared in his bridgeless nose, his thin cheeks went sickly yellow. He found he had nothing more to say; there was nothing more he could ask. To ask more would be to let this stranger know that his own son had lied to him, misrepresented him, had borne false witness to his words and wishes. It would be both useless and impossibly humiliating to let Charlie Ponte, or anyone beyond the tight circle of family, find that out.
Slowly, dazedly, Vincente put the phone back in its cradle.
———
"Pop?" said Joey Goldman. He said it very softly, the way you talk to someone when you're not sure he's awake. A minute had passed since the old man hung up the phone, and his lean form had remained unnaturally rigid, his sallow face impassive.
"Hm?" The Godfather gave a little jerk, then turned his head slowly toward the younger man and spoke in a quiet monotone. "He went against me, Joey."
" 'Zee alive?"
His father took a deep breath. It seemed to be the first air he'd had in a while. "I don't know. I don't think Ponte clipped 'im. Doesn't have the balls. I think it's like he says—he just passed 'im along ta the Fabrettis."
Joey paced. The evening light had faded, the study was nearly dark, but he didn't turn a light on. "Should we call New Yawk?"
In the dimness the Godfather allowed himself the beginnings of a bitter smile. He shouldn't need to consult, he shouldn't need advice, but there was something sweet as well as galling in this talking as equals in judgment, equals in bafflement, with his younger son. "Ya know somethin', Joey?" he murmured. "I just don't fuckin' know. I need ta go outside."
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