"You're crazy," said Ray Yates, to which Robert Natchez gave a satisfied smile.
They went back to their drinks, and the smell of the air changed. Suddenly it was carrying salt and iodine and a suggestion of dry shells. Clay Phipps poured the last of his unshared wine and turned the empty bottle upside down in the bucket of long-melted ice. "S'gonna storm," he said.
"S'gonna be weird," Yates mused, "if Augie really is alive."
"Wouldn't be hard to find out," Natchez said.
Phipps regarded this as a challenge aimed squarely at him, and he hid his eyes in his glass. He wanted no more than the others to be the one to ask Nina Silver if Augie had returned. He could think of no delicate way to phrase the question, and he didn't want to confront her redoubled grief if the rumor turned out to be false. But Phipps had once upon a time been Augie Silver's best friend. He'd been his eulogist; he'd tried, albeit feebly, to seduce his presumptive widow. "All right," he said, in the tone of a guilty man taking on a debt of penance. "I'll find out. I'll stop by. Tomorrow."
*
The rain came just as the three friends were parting on the sidewalk.
It came down heavy but slow, in fat warm creamy drops driven now and then by soft gusts that blew sheets of it sideways past the streetlights while other parts rained down straight as tap water. Ray Yates was soaked before he'd even reached his scooter; his pink and lime-green shirt wrapped him like a tattooed second skin. He kick-started the little bike; the gears clattered unpromisingly, then a spark survived the deluge and the motor whined, making a sound like a mosquito in your ear while you're asleep.
Key West is very flat and almost all of it is paved; the place drains about as well as a concrete basement without a sump, and a heavy downpour turns it almost instantly into a paddy-like landscape of uprooted garbage cans and fallen palm fronds scudding by like rafts. Yates drove slowly. Water came halfway up the scooter's spoked wheels; water streamed down his legs and between his toes, over the oozing leather of his open sandals. He wound his way through the narrow streets of Old Town, then was able to go just a little faster on the stretch of A1A along Smathers Beach. Dollops of rain pelted his forehead. A pickup truck went by too fast and threw an arcing wave that broke at shoulder height. By the time he'd reached his home on Houseboat Row and locked the scooter to a No Parking sign, his hands and cheeks had been slapped pink by shards of water and three postage stamps buried deep in his wallet had glued themselves to the back of his library card.
His head was down against the rain as he bounded soggily along his gangplank. He didn't see the large dark figure waiting for him there. " 'Lo, Ray," it said.
Yates recognized the voice and instantly felt his bowels go soft, a jolting knife-edged heat suffused his cool soaked khaki shorts. He stopped walking and stood there breathless in the rain.
"You're late onna payment again, Ray," the figure said. "Tha' shit gets old."
There are moments in life when anything you do or say is wrong, and if you do and say nothing, that's wrong too. Yates wrestled with the question of meeting his accuser's eyes, though he knew that nothing better or worse would come of it. There were no excuses to be made and no sympathy to be found: This was Bruno. Bruno was a bagman and enforcer for a Miami-based loan shark, bookmaker, and drug pusher named Charlie Ponte, and he was very good at his job. He was loyal as a Doberman and neutral as a snake, unburdened by intelligence and built like a pizza oven. 'Twice I let ya go already," Bruno said. "It don't look right, like I'm fucking off. Ya got twelve hunnerd bucks for me?"
The two of them stood there in the pouring rain and neither seemed to notice it was raining. The ocean was pocked, curtains of wet swirled in front of the headlights of the occasional passing car. Ray Yates was into Charlie Ponte for forty thousand dollars. The interest rate was 1.5 percent a week, and Yates had punted on two payments. The gambler had had losing streaks before, but never like this. This was the kind of losing streak from which people sometimes did not recover. "Bruno," he said, "I got like forty dollars in my pocket. Friday I get four hundred something. You can have it all, every penny."
"Ya don't take me serious," Bruno said.
"I do. I do," said Yates.
"Nah," said Bruno. He sounded sad and neutral. "On'y way you're gonna take me serious is if I hurt ya."
Without hurry, he moved through the rain toward Ray Yates, and Ray Yates didn't budge. There is a pathetic inevitability in a confrontation between someone who is tough and someone who is not. It is not a struggle but a ritual, the weak one keeps his anguish to himself and goes down with the humble and defeated silence of some toothless creature being gutted alive by a lion. Yates blinked water off his lashes and peed in his pants. Then Bruno smashed him between his left cheekbone and the socket of his eye. The blow came so quick that the debtor didn't know if he'd been hit with a fist, a forearm, or an elbow. His head snapped back and he turned half sideways, and Bruno pummeled the exposed flank with a punch that shook blood out of Yates's lung. He went down on one bare knee and covered up as best he could. Rain and snot poured down his throat as he labored to get back his wind.
Bruno stood over him, patient as death. He reached into a pocket for his cigarettes, then seemed to notice for the first time that he was soaking wet. He threw the ruined smokes into the water and found a stick of gum instead. He unwrapped it, folded it into his mouth, then gave his quarry a casual kick in the ass. "More?" he asked. He asked as casually as if he were offering a second helping of potatoes.
"No, Bruno," Ray Yates whispered. "No more."
"Stan' up like a man then. Ya look ridiculous."
Yates got to his feet. The left side of his face was already beginning to swell, the eye squeezing shut at the outside corner. His knees were jelly and he leaned against the frail wooden railing of his walkway.
"Sataday it goes ta eighteen hunnerd," Bruno said. His face was close to Yates's now, and the gambler smelled spearmint gum and garlic through the salty rain. "Fuck we gonna do about that, Ray?"
Yates's throat clamped shut, and for a while he couldn't speak. "Bruno," he rasped at last, "I don't know. The truth, Bruno? Short of a miracle, I'm not gonna have the money for another three, four weeks."
The enforcer spit his gum. It hit Yates in the forehead then bounced into the ocean. "That stinks. My business, that's a long time in my business."
"Look, tack on a penalty, double the interest, anything you want. Like I told you, Bruno, it's about those paintings. Once they're auctioned there'll be plenty of cash, I'll pay off in full, I swear."
Bruno put his hands on Yates's shoulders. The gesture was almost friendly, until he started pushing with his ramrod thumbs into the soft places behind the other man's collarbones. "How long's it been since you won a fucking bet, Ray?"
It was a gauche question and Yates didn't answer.
"What if you lose this next one too? What then?"
"Those pictures aren't a bet, Bruno. They're money in the bank."
The tough guy dropped his hands, moved his tongue around inside his cheek, and seemed to be considering. Then he looked up at the sky. Rain was still pouring down in big frothy drops, it ran in rivulets between his oily bundles of slick black hair. "Gonna catch cold on accounta you," he said, suddenly taking things personally. "I hate that, a summer cold."
He grabbed the front of Yates's tropical shirt, pulled him forward, then thrust him backward against the wooden rail. The rail was nothing more than a two-by-four nailed onto posts, and the beefy Yates crashed through it like a bowling ball through pins. The water next to the seawall was too shallow to break his fall; knobs of coral racked his legs and slammed against his back and he lay there stunned amid the beer cans and the condoms, the turds and tampons shot out the bottoms of people's boats.
Bruno looked enormous standing on the gangplank. "I'll see what Mr. Ponte wants to do with you," he said.
He walked off slowly through the rain, and Ray Yates lay dead still in the slimy water until he was very sure the big man wasn'
t coming back.
19
Jimmy Gibbs took up his position on the port side of the Fin Finder near the stern and got ready to loop his heavy line around the bollard. It was June 1. Supposedly the season was over, yet these goddamn know-nothing idiot tourists kept showing up at the charter-boat docks and saying they wanted to go out fishing. Bargain hunters, cheapskates—that's what you got this time of year. Fat guys who drove straight through from Georgia with miniature beer cans in their hatbands; guys whose shirttails wouldn't stay tucked in and whose fumbling fingers would screw things up if they so much as tried to put a shrimp on a hook. They said they liked the heat, these out-of-season visitors, but that was so much bullshit—nobody liked it ninety-two and hazy, with last night's puddles turning to steam that made your legs sweat like hot breath on your crotch. What they liked was the cheap motel rooms, the greasy free tidbits at happy hour, the twofers in the restaurants.
It was funny, Jimmy Gibbs hazily reflected as he tightened down his line with his scored and grizzled hands: You might have thought these people, being less unlike himself, would be nicer to him, less demanding; you might have thought too that Gibbs would feel less touchy taking care of them. But somehow it didn't quite work out that way. There was no bigger pain in the ass on earth than a workingman on vacation. Worried about every dollar; his whole year spoiled if the sun didn't shine or if, God forbid, the fat fuck didn't catch a fish; always suspicious that he wasn't being treated royally enough, that the next guy up the ladder was getting treated better. Rich northerners were wimpy bastards, but Gibbs somehow found them less galling to work for. Maybe it was just that it was less hot when they were here, he didn't end the day quite so wrung out, sweat-soaked, thirsty not in his throat but in some unreachable place halfway down his gullet.
Matty Barnett, looking fine and dignified at the wheel of his boat, cut the engines. In the sudden silence you could hear the whoosh of the pelicans' wings as they gathered to beg for their loops of gut, their fish stomachs full of littler fish.
There were four clients, burned red and swollen with beer, milling around the cockpit, antsy to get off. They filed past Gibbs like he was one more piece of docking hardware, then lolled on the pier, their caps pushed back on their shiny heads. The mate cleated off his dock line and regarded them from under his damp eyebrows: four fat cheapskates waiting to be served.
The skipper stepped down from the steering station. "Give 'em a beer," he told Gibbs mildly.
So easygoing, Matty was. So calm, so diplomatic. It's a hot day and they're waiting for their fish; give 'em a beer and keep 'em happy.
It was just the kind of chore, having nothing to do with fishing or the business of running the ship, that Jimmy Gibbs most hated. He delivered the beers and kept his mouth shut. Then he lifted the ice chest, jackassed it over the gunwale and onto the dock, and got ready to clean the fish.
He hosed down the cleaning board so that the splintered wood gleamed darkly in the sun, then reached into the cooler and grabbed a hogfish. Its tail was curling upward and its eye had the surprised look dead fish often have, a look of disappointment, of having been betrayed.
"Whole or fillet?" asked Jimmy Gibbs.
The four fat fishermen looked over at him and sucked their beers. Then one of them said, "Hey, that's mine. That sumbitch had some fight in 'im, wuddn't it? Took line, lotta line. That drag screamin', oh shit."
Gibbs stood there in the sun. His short gray ponytail lay like a rotting log against the back of his neck and dammed up the sweat coming down from his head.
"Fillet, I guess," the fisherman finally said.
Gibbs shoved his knife in and tried to think of other things. Like money. Soon he was going to have some. The painting Augie Silver had given him was on its way to New York, and it was going to fetch a bundle. The Sotheby's people had no doubt of it. They even arranged the crating, shipping, insurance, said they'd take the cost out later. Pretty decent of them, Gibbs thought. He reached into the hogfish and disassembled it. The guts were cold from the ice and felt almost good squishing through his fingers. He spread the creature like an open book and cut the flesh away from the backbone and the skin.
Then he pulled a small yellowtail, barely legal, out of the cooler. Its stripes were still bright, its brick-red gills fanned out in search of something they could breathe.
"Whole or fillet?" asked Jimmy Gibbs.
Three of the four fat fishermen laughed. The fish guts dried on Gibbs's hands. They itched. Flies came to the dead fish and landed on the first mate's wrists.
"Ain't nothin' t'fillet on that baby," said one of the laughing clients.
"Leave 'im whole, I guess," said the one who wasn't laughing.
Gibbs worked. His blue shirt was soaked under the arms and along the spine. A drop of sweat fell into his eye and he had no way to rub it.
When he was halfway through the chestful of fish, one of the clients said to him, "Yo, friend, grab us another beer."
Gibbs just stared at him, then went back to his gutting.
Now the clients were offended, they weren't being treated well enough. You could see all four of them turn sulky, just like that. Let 'em, thought Gibbs. The trip was over, and if at the end the four fat fucks got pissy and didn't tip him, who the hell cared? He'd be well off soon, he'd be a captain, and when he was, he'd dock his boat and go sit in the shade, like Matty Barnett was doing now. No more gutting, no more scaling, no more playing barmaid.
He reached into the fish cooler again and told himself to think about the future and be happy. But he wasn't happy. There are two things that drive a poor man crazy. One is feeling that there's no way out and the other is feeling that there is. What used to be just miserable suddenly becomes unbearable. The last grains of patience slip through the glass the fastest.
"Whole or fillet?" asked Jimmy Gibbs.
The fish on the board was the biggest of the day, a grouper maybe thirty-three, thirty-four inches, ten, eleven pounds. It was a nice fish, but the fishermen were grumpy now, they didn't whoop about it or slap each other on the back. For a few seconds no one spoke, then a loud old car went past in the parking lot and over the noise of it Jimmy Gibbs heard someone say fillet.
He put down his knife, picked up the cleaver and the mallet, and with a single blow that sent loose scales jumping he chopped the head off the fish. Grouper have massive heads, heads like bison, and once this one was severed past the hump, it no longer looked big.
"Fuck you doin'?" one of the four fat fishermen said. He said it loud enough so heads turned three, four slips away, and a lot of people Jimmy Gibbs knew were curious to see what happened. "I said whole, goddamnit. That one was to show the wife."
Gibbs looked down at the decapitated fish. The face was at a funny angle, there was an inch or two of blood-smeared plywood between it and the body. The cleaver blow had made the jaws spring open and the tongue was sticking out. Gibbs felt bad. He'd heard wrong, O.K., it was his fault. He was choking down some evil-tasting stuff and working up the breath to say that he was sorry.
But the fat fisherman wouldn't leave it alone. He threw his beer can down and stomped it. It wasn't quite empty and some foam shot out. "Goddamn fuckin' people roun' here," he said. He said it loud. "Fuckin' locals can't do nothin' right."
A trickle of sweat loosed itself down Jimmy Gibbs's back. Late afternoon sun glared orange on the water, a half-circle of crews and tourists seemed to be drawing closer. Gibbs itched everywhere, his hands balled up and he felt his fingernails clawing at his palms. His knife was on the cutting board in front of him, flecked with gore and sharp as a razor. He'd used a knife once on a man, many years ago. He remembered the weird red pleasure of it, the sucking resistance of flesh to the blade, the fish-eyed surprise on the face of the one stabbed. To kill someone, Gibbs had learned, was less difficult than people thought. All it took was singlemindedness and a burst of raging purity.
Sun glinted off his knife, but when Gibbs made his lunge at the fat fisherman it was
the oozing fish head he picked up.
He came quickly around the table, threw himself chest-to-chest against the man who had insulted him, and thrust the amputated grouper head against his cheek. The fisherman stepped clumsily back, warding off the slime with his sunburned elbows. The head slipped out of Jimmy Gibbs's hand and skipped along the pavement; gulls swooped down on it instantly and pecked away its eyes. People sprang toward Jimmy Gibbs to fend him off, but before they grabbed him the fisherman fell backward over the curb and Gibbs pancaked down on top of him like a lineman. He managed one weak punch against the ear, one backhand slap across the jaw, and was working his slime-covered hands toward the other man's throat when two guys grabbed him by the armpits and pulled him off. Gibbs jerked his shoulders and kicked the air. The fat fisherman got up spluttering. His three buddies made a token gesture to hold him back, one of them handed him his cap.
A gull tried to fly away with the grouper head, but it was too much weight, the big bird couldn't get it off the ground.
The first thing Gibbs saw as the blind white rage began to dim was the pink and mild face of Matty Barnett. He was speaking calmly to the four fat fishermen, trying to persuade them not to call the cops. "It's the heat," he said. "Guys get a little crazy. Listen, trip's on me, how's that? Someone else'll finish your fish, you'll take the resta the beer . . ."
Gibbs pawed the ground. Cheapskate fat-fuck white-trash tourists: They even found a way not to pay to go out fishing.
Barnett walked slowly to where Gibbs was being held. His crinkly Santa Claus eyes were looking down, his posture was weary. He spoke very softly because there were a lot of people standing by. "Jimmy," he said, "I can't have this. You're fired."
An unfinished fight leaves a man like Jimmy Gibbs as jumpy as unfinished sex. His muscles were twitching, his insides knotted up for battle, and there was no one left to battle but himself. "I'm not fired," he said. "I quit. Fuck this." He was not in control of his voice and it got louder and rougher as he thrust his chin toward the Fin Finder. "Next month I'm buyin' the fuckin' boat and you can all kiss my hairy ass."
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