'Okay,' Gabby said decisively, 'we'll take yours and share it around evenly. Is that what you want, grandma?'
Molly closed her mouth and closed her hands about her ten thousand.
'lust one thing,' Ossie said, looking around warningly. 'Don't everybody go out splashing this stuff around. Sit on it for a while. Nobody buys a car or a mink. Okay? Just let the situation cool. If we don't, somebody's going to get wise. I vote we split up now. Just disperse quietly and say nothing. We'll have another operation for you before long.'
Zaharran remained after the others. He sat there, a large hunched figure, his ten thousand dollars in his lap. 'Well, George,' breathed Bruce gratefully, 'we're sure glad you
176
joined. You brought us some know-how and some luck. I hope you feel the same about it.'
'Sure, sure,' answered Zaharran. His wig slipped forward as he nodded and, since his hands were full of money, he indicated to the young man that he would be glad of some assistance in putting the hairpiece back in place. Bruce obliged. 'I never had so much dough,' said the older man. 'And it was all so easy.'
He rose and went to his small suitcase which he had left in the room. He opened it and stowed the money carefully. Then, like some unkempt roadside salesman, he went out into the close, star-lit night. His mind was travelling like a roundabout. Then he patted his little case reassuringly and laughed to himself all the way down Ocean Drive.
nine
Zaharran was asleep on the floor of his little office when Salvatore came in after knocking once. The knock was insufficient to wake the big man and the policeman stood looking down at him as God might look down from heaven upon an extinct volcano. The visitor however was not, at the best of times, given to poetic reflection and especially not today. He nudged Zaharran with first one foot and then the other.
One eye opened down there. 'I ain't no football,' said Zaharran. 'I don't like folks kicking me.' With heavy difficulty he levered himself up on to his elbows and worked his face about to try and settle it into its daytime creases. 'You're living dangerously, Salvatore,' he continued as he tried to get up from the floor. The policeman got his arm and helped him with a heave. 'Have a care with the back,' warned Zaharran. He did a cumbersome swivel movement and his backside closed with the chair. He sat down and looked at Salvatore.
177
'Living dangerously,' he repeated. 'You should know better than to creep up on a guy in my line of work when he's sleeping. I might have knocked you over with my forty-five.'
'With your snore, maybe,' sighed Salvatore. 'You heard the news? They did it again, the bastards. They robbed a bank this time.'
'Sure, I heard the radio before I went to sleep,' nodded Zaharran. 'They seem like they're getting better.'
'Jesus Alvin Christ,' said Salvatore. 'Is that the best you got for me? They're getting better! Do I need a detective to tell me they're getting better?'
'An elementary deduction,' admired Zaharran sagely. 'While I ain't retained on a financial basis, what do you expect? So what gives?'
'They took a girl, a secretary from the bank, to cover themselves. They said they would leave her on the Tuttle Causeway, but instead they just pushed her into the strongroom with all the rest of the staff.' Salvatore sighed deeply. 'And get this, he said. 'They stole a funeral!' Zaharran's eyebrows ascended and he whistled. 'Yeah they hi-jacked a funeral,' said Salvatore. 'There's a funeral parlour right across the street from the bank and they got away in a hearse. They took it -with the guy in the coffin - to Hialeah.' He put his head in his hands. 'I need help, Zaharran. I was hoping you might have come up with something.'
'Not much,' lied Zaharran. This was it, he thought. From now on the die was cast. He'd never had ten thousand dollars in cash before. 'I've been circulating down on Ocean Drive. It's real nice down there on the beach. The ocean's kind of lazy and they have some funny pelicans and lots of ..'
'Stop!' howled Salvatore. I don't want a guided tour around the district! Fuck the pelicans!'
'That's an indictable offence, I shouldn't wonder,' said Zaharran. He leaned forward. 'Okay, listen Salvatore. It's no consolation to you, I know. But I'm watching. That's all I can tell you. I'm watching.'
'Great,' sighed Salvatore. I get a grant for you - a hundred and fifty dollars no less - from the pension fund and all you
178
can tell me is you're watching. That's big dough for watching, Zaharran.'
'Did you bring the money with you?' asked Zaharran practically. 'I mean now?'
'No,' Salvatore snapped. 'It has to go through channels. You know that. Maybe it will get through by the end of the month.'
Zaharran sighed. 'By which time I am lying down there on the floor and when you come in and kick me, I don't move. And why don't I move? Because I'm lying dead, that's why.'
'I'm going,' said Salvatore. I really am. I come out of that crazy goddamn office, with everybody yelling on my head, and come here hoping to get some good news, or maybe even a little sympathy, and all you can tell me is that I might find you lying dead. A great big deal that would be. What sort of sympathy have you got? What sort, I ask you?'
Zaharran regarded him with a face crammed with sorrow. I'll tell you what I'll do, Salvatore,' he said. 'I'll sell my novelty business to you. And the astrology by mail, cheap. That could be a winner. All it needs is a Little foresight. You could quit the force and put all your efforts into it
Salvatore regarded him balefully. 'I'm going home,' he said. 'I'm going home to my wife and family. They don't love me either, but I got a roof and a door there. I'm protected.8
'Listen, pal,' said Zaharran. He was genuinely sorry for Salvatore, but he kept thinking that he had never seen ten thousand dollars before. 'Listen, I'm working on it, okay? That's the best news I've got for you.'
Loose Bruce and Gabby were sail-surfing off Key Biscayne, balanced with young grace on the fibreglass hulls while the fresh wind pushed into the vividly striped sails. They were half a mile out and the sea was vacant. Neither wore any clothes, his shorts and her bikini were tied each to the single masts of their craft. The wind and the sun whirled about them. Their browned bodies bent easily as they manoeuvred the sail-boats. They laughed with exhilaration. Td like to get to know you better, lady,' called Bruce as he
179
curled his craft closer to hers. He bent it away again before she had time to answer.
'Never better than you do,' she called after him. She watched him dip into the side of an ambitious wave and brace himself as the sail-board met the challenge and rose triumphantly.
'You're crazy,' she yelled happily. 'Mad!'
A long wild sand spit ventured out into the sea from Key Biscayne with a group of palms standing on it like marooned folk waiting for rescue. The white houses and other buildings on Key Biscayne, beyond the spit, were just visible among the greenery as they moved towards it and cars moved busily across the causeway and along the ocean front.
They both knew where they were heading. They shifted their weight and coaxed the single sails of their novel craft with the wind. Now with its strength right behind them they headed at speed for the beach. They both began to shout, feeling the naked exhilaration. Gabby's blue and white striped sail stretched taut beside her and over her head and Bruce's red diamond on a white sheet was in the full swell of the sea wind. They rode over the waves like two horsemen bearing banners.
The sail-boards sliced fast over the last remaining water and the pair turned them expertly at the optimum moment, so that they slid beautifully on to the low shelf of beach. They kept the momentum and tumbled ashore, rolling delightedly on to the easy white sand. Bruce turned and caught the girl in his brown arms and they rolled across the beach. They lay laughing at the end of it, covered with spray and with sand adhering to the spray. They kissed and parted laughing because their lips were sandy. Bruce rose and took the girl's hand. They went back to the fringe of the water and caught the sail-boards which were fidgeting in the lo
w water, trying to free themselves from the beach. They pulled them clear, then bent and rolled into the sea again to wash away the sand.
They stood up in the shallow water and admired each other's nakedness. Her hand went out and caught hold of him. His head dropped forward when she touched him and he pushed his fair rough hair into the smooth vale between her large
180
breasts. His hands went to their flanks and he pressed them to his cheeks. They looked up at each other and grinned now, the time for laughter having gone. 'I've been getting hungry for you, Gabby," he said seriously.
He picked her up and put her across his hard shoulder, smacking her buttocks playfully as he did so. She giggled and returned the smack, hanging down his back like a large shining fish. 'No fighting,' he warned. 'If there's any fighting, I do it. Okay?'
'Okay,' she said. 'I'll go along with that.'
Bruce unloaded her none too gently on the sand. 'I've got sand all stuck to me again,' she whispered as he knelt over her.
'We're stuck with it,' he said. He kissed her on the face and then on the lips. 'Want to come on top?' he inquired.
'Sure. Today I want to be boss lady.'
'Right, start climbing,' said Bruce. He lay back into the warmths of the beach, feeling it across his shoulderblades and his backside and the backs of his legs. She climbed on him, an immediate dreaminess overcoming her so that her movements were at once slowed, her face taking on an uncertain smile as if she did not know what was to occur next, her eyes half closed. Bruce grinned with anticipation, his hands went about the deep indentations of her waist and he eased her into position. Her face broke into a series of small spasms as she settled on him. Then, when they were together, she fell carefully forward and rested her breasts against his tight chest and her thick hair against his face.
They lay on the beach and the sun lay on them. The considerate frond of a palm tree occasionally stretched itself in the breeze to give them some momentary shade. Its shadow fanned across their forms as they moved slowly. It was no time for passion. It was too hot. They took it easily and quietly like young people do who feel there might be many more times ahead. Gabby groaned as she rode him at a little under a canter. He lay easing himself up to her and down into the sand again in compliment to her movements. The whole time they did not alter their pace, not even hurrying, as so many do, towards the end. They came as they went, almost idly.
Afterwards they lay for several minutes, dopey against each
181
other, a few small movements coming from her in a lazy effort to gain another sensation. Their bodies were sweating, glistening like lizards. Their eyes remained closed, their skin relaxed.
It was while they were in this semi-embrace that they were spotted by a large Florida crab, staggering like an afternoon drunk along the usually deserted shoreline. He had little experience of humans and their habits, even less their sexual fashions, and the entangled limbs and adjacent trunks lying so quietly on the sand took his curiosity.
He advanced without fear or caution and upon reaching the side of the girl's thigh took a deep crablike breath and began to climb. Gabby, believing the touches came from Bruce's fingers, remained placid and it was only when the crab mounted the back of her thigh and was there resting that she demurred. 'Baby,' she whispered. 'You've just got to cut those fingernails.'
Bruce who had one hand on her naked backside and the other trailing idly in the sand moved both hands to her waist and half opened his eyes. 'Is that two hands you've got around my middle?' asked the girl half rising and waking rapidly. 'Two?'
'Two,' he confirmed, puzzled but unworried. 'Sorry about the fingernails.'
'Bruce, there's something on my leg,' she muttered. Her eyes widened and she looked backwards over her shoulder to see the crab's bright black eyes regarding her with the insolence of the conqueror. For a second she was immobilized, then she flung herself sideways from Bruce with a cry that set the gulls and pelicans wheeling in worried circles in the sky.
The crab, self-preservation rating higher even than curiosity in its priorities, slid from her leg like a sailor abandoning a ship. It scampered away to the familiarity of the sea. Gabby screamed again and Bruce, after sitting up in alarm, began hooting with laughter as the hind quarters of the crab scuttled away across the sand.
'This is station WAIA, Miami, serving the golden coast from the Palm Beaches to the Florida Keys. Here is the weather for
182
twenty-four hours to six p.m. tomorrow. It's getting hotter folks. Tonight there will be clear skies and a high of seventy-five degrees, a low of sixty-two, and a ten per cent chance of rain. Tomorrow a high of eighty-five and clear skies, little breeze and a calm sea. Today is April fourteenth and this is WAIA your music way ...'
After Easter, in those latitudes, the sun gets hotter along the southern ocean coast, the humidity thickens and the wintering people go away. During the torrid summer the Florida beaches are left to the everyday inhabitants and those who cannot afford to move.
Along Ocean Drive in that month, competition among the retired people for a place in the shade of the sea-grape trees increased and there were occasional arguments and disputes in the vivid dialects that so many of the denizens could summon, sometimes even involving the use of fists and what force could be fired in the elderly breasts. It was not easy to keep a temper in that off-season heat,
Ari the Greek got up very early on those days for his run. The sun was just swelling from below the Atlantic when he trotted from the front porch of the Sunny Gables Hotel and went on his jogging journey along the amber beach and eventually along Ocean Drive and the streets back to the hotel. He was so early these mornings that the Washington Avenue store was not open when he passed it so he could not go in for a blood pressure test. He needed to make a special journey late in the day.
His blood pressure was all right but Ari's conscience was bothering him. He had not spent a cent of the illicit money that had come his way. It remained in a box hidden at the back of the cupboard in his room. It seemed to call in an increasing nagging voice, calling out that he had, at his age, committed a major felony. Bootlegging was different and it was so long ago.
He even confided these misgivings to Molly, who at that season took her metal detector to the beach as early as Ari went on his run. 'Maybe I'm old fashioned or crazy,' he sighed, 'but I get all that loot out and I say to myself, "Ari," I say, "who needs it!".'
Molly nodded, for she understood him well. Without looking
183
up but continuing to weave her curved patterns with her metal detector, even obliging Ari to move his sneaker-clad feet out of the way, she said: 'It didn't seem so bad when we were losing, if you get what I mean, Ari. When we made a hash of the jobs it seemed to be okay. Kinda square and fair. But I got to tell you I've been worried too. It ain't the thought of getting caught. I keep wondering if that poor guy at the bank got into trouble. The manager, I mean. He seemed such a nice man, just like my Melford, I thought, and he was just about due to retire.'
'Nearly one of us,' said Ari sadly.
'Not the sort at all we should have threatened with that rocket firer,' she continued pensively.
The machine she was using gave a whirr in her ears. Ari heard it and his face sharpened with interest. 'What is it, Molly?' he asked. 'Something big?'
'A quarter at the most,' she shrugged. 'Probably a dime. I can tell by the tone.' She produced a small garden fork and proceeded to prod and scrape the sand. Ari watched with interest. Eventually the now rising sun touched off a glint of silver and Molly bent and recovered a coin, a dime, from the sand.
'It ain't much,' she said, looking at it fondly, 'but at least it's lost - not stolen.'
Ari's face clouded and she looked • up and saw he was troubled. 'I'd better be on my way,' he said. 'Once the sun gets up this running ain't so funny. 'Bye, Molly.'
' 'Bye, Ari. Have a nice day.' She smiled her motherly smile and Ari, after glancing
at the sun as if it .were particularly pursuing him, jogged away.
'Keep running,' she called, beginning to sweep the sand with the detector again. 'lust keep running, Ari.'
'Sure,' he called back over his shoulder. 'While I'm running I'm living.' He did a quick spasm of shadow boxing. 'It won't make me rich, but I'm living,' he said to himself. He wondered, once again, what the hell he was supposed to do with ten thousand dollars.
Lou the Barbender and K-K-K-Katy sat holding hands at the Parrot Jungle watching a bright cockatoo pedal a tiny cycle
184
along a tightrope. 'That's so cute,' sighed K-K-K-Katy. 'Makes you feel you want children of your own.'
'I hope they don't look like parrots,' put in Lou gently. 'I'm allergic to feathers.'
She laughed her silvery girl's laugh and nudged him. 'I mean seeing all the children enjoying this,' she said. 'I didn't mean they would be like the parrots.'
'I liked the little one on the roller skates best,' said Lou. 'The parrot. That's real neat'
They watched the remainder of the novel performance and then went unhurriedly from the amphitheatre to walk around the tropical gardens alive with shouting birds. Lou bought two ice-creams and they sat admiring a row of exquisitely-hued cockatoos, large as chickens, who perched and posed for round-eyed photographers and cackled: 'Watch the birdie.'
'I know we won't have children,' said Katy, patting his hand and speaking carefully. 'We're just a little too late. But if we did I wouldn't want them to know their parents robbed a bank.'
She was looking at his big cheek, his strong nose and his suntanned forehead. His eyes remained forward, staring as if he was trying to identify one cockatoo especially. 'Nor me, honey,' he said gruffly. 'I'd like them to tell the other kids that their daddy, was the strongest man in America and their mommy had the prettiest legs. But not that we robbed a bank. No, I don't go for that.'
'It don't seem right getting married on stolen money either, Lou,' she whispered. Now she wanted to get it all off her conscience. 'It won't help us to be happy. We'll always have to live with it.’
That Old Gang Of Mine Page 20
