Scavenger Reef

by Laurence Shames

  "But Joey, your old man: you really think he has a story?"

  "Yeah," said Joey. "I really do."

  Arty gave a noncommittal nod and tried to picture what Joey Goldman's father must be like. What would his name be? Abe Goldman? Sol Goldman?

  A little old Jewish guy not unlike Arty's own father, a retired CPA, warm, decent, unfascinating, a man of lengthy anecdotes and jokes with forgotten punch lines, who at that moment was either playing rummy, striving for a bowel movement, or watching the market final up in Vero Beach.

  "Why?" said Arty. "What makes you think he has a story?"

  But now Joey got shy. He had dark blue eyes that were a little surprising against his jet-black hair, and when he got to feeling bashful they narrowed down; the long lashes shaded them like awnings. "I dunno. Maybe he doesn't."

  Arty Magnus, reluctant newspaperman, had done a one-eighty, had come to feel that maybe he did. "His background? War experience? Wha'?"

  "I dunno, Arty. Let it go, it's probably a dumb idea."

  "Nah, come on, Joey," the editor coaxed. "If there's really something there—"

  Joey Goldman sighed. He leaned a little lower across the padded bar, twined his fingers, and cast wary upward glances over both his shoulders. He pursed his lips, then gave an instant's worth of nervous smile that was erased almost before it could be glimpsed. "Arty, are we, whaddyacallit, off the record heah?"

  "Of course we are," said Arty Magnus, but he said it a little too blithely for Joey's taste. Joey raised a single finger, and his face took on a look that Arty had never seen before. It was a look not of threat, exactly, but of purpose and of a solemn pride that carried with it a burden and a sadness. The slight cleft in Joey's chin grew suddenly deeper, his skin appeared suddenly more shadowed with the full day's growth of beard.

  "No shit now," he said. "Off the record?"

  Magnus, slightly chastened, slightly rattled, said, "Yeah, Joey. Yeah."

  Joey Goldman sat up straight, gently tugged the placket of his shirt, gave his neck a rearranging twist. He put his palms flat on the bar, leaned close to Arty Magnus, and softly said, "My old man, he's the Godfather."

  The blender was slushing up a batch of frozen daiquiris. The air conditioner was whining. There were conversations all around them, and here and there cigarette lighters were rasping into flame.

  "Excuse me?"

  "You heard me."

  "Cut it out."

  But Joey just looked at Arty, and Arty understood he wasn't kidding. He drained his beer, held the empty bottle against his lips an extra second, and tried to think. Then he said, "Goldman?"

  "Try Delgatto," Joey said. "Vincente Delgatto."

  "Holy shit," said Magnus.

  Joey lifted an eyebrow. The momentary hardness had gone out of his face, was replaced by a wry look, a little bit self-mocking but tempered by years of settling into the oddness of his beginnings and making a life that by now felt hardly odd at all. "So whaddya think?" he said. " 'Zere a book there?"

  "Jesus Christ," said Magnus.

  "Well, do me a favor," Joey said. "Fuhget we talked about it. It's a very dumb idea."

  "It isn't dumb—"

  "It's impossible. It's against everything the old guy thinks is right. He'd never do it. It's just tavern talk."

  "But—"

  "Nah, I shouldn'ta brought it up. I guess I figured, Hey, you work for the paper, you probably know guys who write books."

  Magnus put his bottle down and twisted it against his soggy coaster. The noise of the bar flooded in on him, surrounded him like puffs of cotton, both buffered him and kept him pinned. "Guys who write books," he said. "Yeah, I know a few."