“The Fifth Man? What are you talking about, the Fifth Man?”
“Your back is to the camera,” I said. “You can see the other crooks—Danny Barcelona, Trammell Weems, Tiny Archibald, and Norm—”
“I’m not a crook.”
“The five of you are sitting under a green umbrella near Tiny’s pool.” My forehead began to sweat. “A party’s going on in the background. Every now and then, guests cross in front of the camera. That wasn’t so shrewd, discussing money laundering in the middle of a lawn party.” Was I pushing it too hard? A bead of sweat pooled in the inner corners of my glasses and threatened to run the length of the lenses, but I pressed on. “All we want, Crystal and I, is to be left alone. You leave us alone, and no one will ever see that tape. However, if anything happens to either of us, anything at all, then it goes straight to the newspapers, the cops, and every other law-enforcement organization in the country. I’ve already made copies of the tape and set up the machinery for that to happen if any harm comes to us.”
“There you have it,” said Norm. “Personally, I like it. Artie and Crystal will get out of the country while you clean up the mess you made. And you can rest assured that for reasons too obvious to mention, the tape won’t ever see the light of day—if you can keep Mad Dog on a stout leash.”
“You better tell him to quit that,” said DiPietro in a cold killer’s voice.
“Hey, you’re an asshole. You could fuck up an ambush,” Norm said. Then back at the hooded man, he said, “In my view that disposition of the tape serves everyone’s best interests.”
“Well, not in my goddamn view!” The hood puff ed with each syllable. “And I don’t want a business lesson from a cheap, washed-up little mercenary who had the top of his head blown off by his own goddamn wife! I don’t like it! And that’s who matters here. Concom! Not Tiny, not Trammell, who couldn’t even stay on the boat, not some dumb dago hoodlum, not these two lovebirds, and not you! That tape is a smoking gun! Here we are fourth down and short yardage, and the best you and Tiny can do is bring me Artie and Crystal—who’ve already copied the tape!”
“I didn’t bring them,” said Tiny.
“No, you didn’t, Tiny, you were too crippled with grief for a juvenile delinquent to do squat!” The Fifth Man turned to me and said, “Hey, Artie, did you know these two were working together from the beginning?
“…What?”
“What? I’ll tell you what. It was all a setup. And it was all Norm’s idea.”
“What was?” said Crystal.
“What was? All of it was. Your kidnapping, for example.”
“I don’t understand,” she said in a thick, fear-clogged voice.
“No? You don’t? Allow me to elucidate. Your pal Norman figured out a way to ingratiate himself with you. He had Tiny kidnap you, so he could help Artie rescue you—”
“He poured gasoline all over me,” said Tiny. “That wasn’t part of the script.”
“You see, Norman figured that your crazy old uncle must be connected to Trammell, and the best way to get to him was through you. So he pretended to be your friend.”
We turned to stare at Norm.
Norm didn’t look at us. He continued to stare coldly at the hooded man. Awareness, like a gob of something large and sticky, crawled up the back of my throat and began to make me sick.
“Anyway, the point is I can’t let you live, not with the smoking gun out there. And I’m the boss, right, Norman?”
“Right, you’re the boss.” Norm pulled a gun from somewhere in the small of his back. It had a long, phallic silencer on the end. Norm pointed the gun at Crystal and me. “I’m sorry,” he said. His eyes were flat and fishy. “If you shout for Calabash, I’m afraid I’ll have to shoot you both.”
“That’s the spirit, Norman,” said the hooded man. “And another thing, Norman. It’s you who’s going to get rid of these two and then clean up the mess. I mean, entirely, Norman, tape and all. Is that clear?”
“Yes, boss.”
“Norman,” I said, “you’re a scummy dwarf.”
Norm actually nodded, then he said, “There’s still the question of their bodyguard out in the hall.”
“What?” asked the Fifth Man. “Who?”
“Their bodyguard,” said Norm. “Why don’t you send Mad Dog here out to deal with him?”
“What,” said DiPietro, “you don’t think I can?”
“Sure, I think you can.”
“Then do it,” said the hooded man.
“No violence,” squeaked Tiny. “We can’t have violence in here! How can we cope with corpses in the home office?”
“Leave it to me, lardass.” DiPietro marched around the table and out the door. He pulled it shut behind him with a pop…
No…the door didn’t pop.
Norm’s gun popped, but I didn’t exactly realize it then. Even after I saw the bullet pock the plaster portion of the wall beneath the plate-glass window, I didn’t understand what had happened, not until the Fifth Man’s hood puff ed out sharply.
The bullet had gone clear through the center of the Fifth Man’s chest and the back of his chair before it hit the wall. Maybe he never actually understood what had just happened to him. Maybe he was too dead. Somewhere, seemingly far in the distance, Tiny let out a thin squeal.
The Fifth Man sat upright for a while, as if nothing had happened. Blood had soaked the front of his shirt and was beginning to saturate his jacket when he sucked the mask to his face for the last time. Suddenly it, too, filled with blood. Only then did he flop face first onto the boardroom table. His forehead struck with a dull thud. Blood spattered, then pooled around his face and flowed off the edge of the table.
After that thud, the room was filled with a deep silence. It seemed to take days before the silence was broken—by Tiny whimpering. “Don’t shoot me, Norm, don’t shoot me, Norm, please don’t shoot me.”
“I shot him because he didn’t like the tape disposition, Tiny. But I won’t shoot you because you think it’s a good disposition, don’t you?”
“Aw, Norm, I think it’s the best damn disposition I’ve ever heard of in thirty years in the business.”
“That’s good, Tiny.”
Tiny Archibald began to weep. His jowls, like fallen breasts, trembled with his weeping. “But, Norm, what am I going to do with him dead in the main conference room!”
“Well, that’s another reason I’m not going to shoot you—so there’s somebody left to clean up the mess. But stand by, there might be another one to go with him.” Norm put his ear near the door and called, “Oh, Calabash…Hey, big guy…”
“Don’t call me dat.”
Norm turned around and grinned at Crystal and me. “Poor Bernie never had a prayer.”
Bernie? His name was Bernie DiPietro?
“Calabash,” called Norm.
“Yes?”
“The man who just came out the door—”
“Yes?”
“Is he there?”
“He tripped and hurt his neck.”
Norm opened the door, and we went out into the hall. The last I saw of that room: Tiny, weeping, was trying to wipe up about a quart of blood with a Kleenex. Out the window behind him, the lights of Queens flickered in the far distance as if from an airplane.
Bernie lay on his back perpendicular to the elevator door. His head was bent over his chest in a way no living man’s could bend. I could see only the top of his head.
“Well,” said Norm, “I guess this is good-bye.” Then he hugged us, actually hugged us, first one, then the next.
After he hugged Calabash, Calabash said, “I don’t want none of us to ever see you ever again, Norman.”
“But what if the wife and I want to stop by Poor Joe Cay as visitors on our way around the world?”
“Dot’s different. We always welcome visitors. But visitors got to mind their p’s and q’s on de Cay.”
“I hear you, big guy.”
TWENTY-FIVE
/> IT’S NOT CLEAR to me how long we’ve been here now. Nearly six weeks, I believe. One day flows seamlessly into the next without event; yet each is rich and deeply textured. At night the sky is cloudless and crystalline, the Milky Way arcing over the world with a brightness undreamed of in Manhattan. The sky is still cloudless when I awake at dawn. About nine in the morning, every morning, cumulus clouds pile to towering heights in the north and west over Young Brother and Old Brother cays. The cottony billows transform themselves into spectacular thunderheads. Their bottoms, close down on the sea, flatten, blacken, and sheets of rain obliterate the Brothers, but it seldom rains on Poor Joe Cay. If nothing more than the march of weather ever took place, that would be enough for me. Crystal feels the same way, we’ve discussed it, and I’m certain I speak for Jellyroll.
We’ve taken a simple three-room pink bungalow with a white tile roof. (Sadly, the hut on the beach that Jellyroll and I stayed in last year, that I’d hoped to share with Crystal, is gone, blown away by Hurricane Carmen.) Owned by another one of Calabash’s uncles, named Lightbourne, the pink house perches on a scimitar-shaped spit of land, a fragment from an ancient coral reef that, like the rest of these islands, emerged from the sea during the last Ice Age. A hundred yards beyond the house, the scimitar’s point dips back beneath the surface. Lightbourne is a dedicated gardener. The house is surrounded by poinciana, frangipani, jacaranda, bottlebrush, coral trees, pitch apple, African tulips, kapok, papaya, about eight different kinds of palms, and other things I’ve only seen on the Discovery Channel.
Uncle Billy stays at the little hotel called the Pink Conch on the other end of Poor Joe Cay. It is owned by Calabash’s uncle Angus. Uncle Billy goes grouper fishing with the young guys from Poor Joe and the Brothers, whom Calabash refers to as “the hardboys.” They stay out on the shallow banks for days at a time, living on their own bait. He looks like a pirate. The hardboys call him Crazy Billy, but he loves it. I don’t think he’ll ever go back to Sheepshead Bay. I think he’s out of the billiards business.
Crystal’s body has grown burnished and sinewy, a source of almost constant arousal for me. She’s seldom fully clothed in the house and, having grown used to nudity, she’s sometimes surprised to find me coveting her, leering at her from across the living room. We live in sunshine and sexual torpor. We discuss matrimony in our spare time.
Jellyroll is turning feral. He has taken up fishing. For hours on end he stands at the point staring motionlessly at the multi-hued fish going about their ancient business below. Then suddenly he strikes, spearing his head into the water, snapping and growling atavistically. He’s never successful as a fisher. Since the water is gin-clear, the fish he seeks are often swimming eight feet or more beneath the surface. That’s a hard concept for a dog to grasp, but he never tires of fishing. He often swallows too much saltwater, and he turns away from the sea to throw it back up. Then he goes right back to fishing. Does this constitute retirement? Before we fled, I called his agent, Shelly, at an hour I knew he wouldn’t be in. I left a message saying hold all calls, we were taking a trip. I said I’d call later to explain. I haven’t yet.
If nothing happens here on Poor Joe Cay, much has happened at home. We didn’t search out knowledge of events at home. We stumbled upon it. An unappetizing British ex-patriate named Drake—Crystal and I call him Lord Haw-haw—who wears the same grubby clothes every day and who always goes barefoot despite or because of a savage case of hammertoes, has the New York Post delivered every day to the little s seashell bar in the Pink Conch Hotel. We read the front-page headlines over his shoulder:
ATTORNEY GENERAL DECLARED MISSING
When Haw-haw finished the paper, we borrowed it from him. He tried to look down Crystal’s top as we read:
Matilda Laxley, wife of U.S. Attorney General Gerald Laxley, told Washington police that her husband had failed to return from an August 18 meeting in New York. Justice Department officials refused to confirm or deny knowledge of his whereabouts.
Attorney General Laxley had fallen under increasing criticism over allegations of conflict of interest in connection with certain failed savings and loan institutions in California and Florida. The President affirmed his continued support of Mr. Laxley.
Naw, we said, couldn’t be, not the attorney general of the United States, he couldn’t have been the Fifth Man. Another coincidence. They happen all the time to anyone over the age of six.
Lord Haw-haw made self-satisfied noises about American violence. “That kind of thing happens every day on the streets of New York.”
“What kind of thing?” I said.
“Mayhem.”
“It doesn’t say he was killed. It says he’s missing.”
“Isn’t that where you’re from? New York?”
Crystal and I trudged home, shed our clothes, and went swimming. Jellyroll went fishing.
Several days later we made the mistake of returning to the bar for some conch fritters and a rum swizzle. Lord Haw-haw was (still?) there, muttering smugly about Dodge City, USA. I’m no patriot, but I didn’t want to hear that from some odiferous Brit with deformed digits, so I ignored him. But Lord Haw-haw wouldn’t leave it alone. He edged nearer, dragging his gin along the bar, and said, “Heard the latest?”
“What latest?”
He spread the front page out in front of us:
CONCOM LINKED TO GUN BATTLE
Crystal and I must have gone simultaneously ashen, because Lord haw-haw blinked and said, “You know about—?”
“Of course not.”
Crystal yanked the paper away from him:
AUGUST 28. In a hastily called news conference, police disclosed some details of the mysterious gun battle on New York’s Upper West Side that left one officer wounded and two men dead. Police refused to identify the dead men except to say that they were the operators of a moving van police stopped for a minor traffic violation. Shooting ensued.
Police returned fire, killing the two men. In the rear of the van police found the body of free-lance journalist Chester Bream. Police refused comment as to the cause of Mr. Bream’s death.
However, an exclusive source close to the investigation has told the Post that t the word CONCOM was scrawled in blood on the walls of Mr. Bream’s apartment.
We rode our bicycles to the Pink Conch bar every day, because every day something new happened. But now we were much more casual about our visits. Lord Haw-haw had taken to watching us read his paper with his right eyebrow arched suspiciously. I pretended to be a crossword-puzzle fan…
SENATE CALLS FOR CONCOM SPECIAL PROSECUTOR
MRS. LAXLEY FEARS FOUL PLAY
GERALD LAXLEY PRESUMED DEAD
REGINALD ARCHIBALD LINKED TO CONCOM
REGINALD ARCHIBALD VANISHES
PSYCHOLOGIST: NATION DEPRESSED BY CORRUPTION:
And every day after we read we’d go home for a naked swim in the sunset.
Tomorrow we go get the money, almost thirty-five-million-dollars’ worth. I’m not certain of the wisdom of that move. What if some other Chet Bream manages to follow the money? But I have a feeling that thirty-five million is chump change in this business. And besides, Uncle Fergus and Calabash, who have set things up in Nassau, feel confident about their arrangements. They’ve gathered six fishing boats at the town dock for tomorrow’s predawn departure. We sail to Eleuthera, where two twin Otters will airlift us to Nassau. We need that many boats and planes to accommodate the small force of hardboys recruited to throw a cordon of muscle around Crystal as she enters the bank in downtown Nassau, where Fergus’s friends in high places have assured him there will be no questions asked.
Crystal and I have discussed that money at some length and agree that we don’t want it, that it would poison our lives. Besides, we don’t need it. However, we also agree that we have to get it. We can’t just leave it. Crystal, particularly, feels we have an obligation to try to do something good with it. I like that idea in principle, but I’m still scared of that much hot money.
I want to go swimming and afterward position myself between Crystal’s thighs and forget the whole thing. But I can’t. We’re going after the money.
What are we going to do with it? Certainly our hosts deserve a good chunk for their help, and there are many things that need doing here on Poor Joe. Beyond that, we’ve talked about setting up some kind of charitable trust. One thinks $34.8 million is big bucks until one starts thinking about something “good” to do with it. It goes fast.
Neither of us knows anything about the machinery of charitable trusts. Nor do we know anyone qualified or honest enough to run one. We certainly can’t be directly involved, as I constantly stress. I think Crystal is getting sick of me constantly stressing that, but I’m frightened. We finally have what I wanted from the outset—a romantic relationship with nothing to fuck us up. Sure, we had to flee to a tiny island to have it, but that’s cool. At least we have it now, and this is a lovely little island on which to have it.
We have to go home someday, though I know that will depress Jellyroll and me deeply. This is not our home. We know we can’t stay forever. If we tried, we’d end up like Lord Haw-haw. No, our relationship has to be able to travel, otherwise it’s just a summertime thing.
However, right now, I can’t wait for the Nassau trip to be over, to return to Poor Joe Cay, where—when Crystal is swimming in the sea—I’m the best pool player on the island. That can’t be said of the island Manhattan.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DALLAS MURPHY is the author of Lover Man, a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year (1987), which was also selected as one of the Year’s Best by Publishers Weekly and nominated for a coveted Edgar Award. His second novel, Apparent Wind, was hailed by The New York Times Book Review as “a flamboyant comic nightmare…There is fun here, but also real fury in Mr. Murphy’s raging imagination.” Dallas Murphy grew up in south Florida and now lives in New York City.
Lush Life: An Artie Deemer Mystery Page 24
