Key West Luck

by Laurence Shames

  The only problem was that it was nightfall by then and there wasn’t a whole lot of detail to be seen. Once inside the breakwater, he could make out the low arc of the Malecon tracing out the curve of the shoreline. Behind it, mixed in here and there with tall and hard-edged modern hotels, there was a jumble of weighty Spanish buildings whose overhanging roofs were like frowning, disapproving brows. Farther back, on a rise, the domed and lit-up Capitolio was like an exiled piece of Washington, D.C.

  His enthusiasm rising as the city grew closer and the waters more protected, Meara said, “Will we have much time to hang out in town?”

  The Cuban said, “This isn’t a fucking Carnival cruise, cabron.” Feeling suddenly talkative, he added, “You have puke on your shirt.”

  Meara tended to his clothing and the speedboat idled along. They passed the Ensenada de Atares, where the cruise ships berthed and the tourist cafes dispensed mojitos while musicians played dented trumpets and scuffed guitars. Meara said, “Be nice to go ashore, have a couple drinks at least.”

  “Shut up.”

  Beyond Atares was another bay, Guanabacoa, where the stark outline of industrial cranes reached into the red-tinged night sky and the long spokes of container piers stabbed out into the water. Piled high like children’s blocks were trailers emblazoned with company names in Portuguese, Dutch, Chinese, Korean. But then, abruptly, just beyond the shipping docks, all the trappings of a world port disappeared as if they’d sunk into the sea and the head of the bay became as dark and unadorned as any Caribbean backwater.

  The channel grew shallow, the unlit markers few and far between, the shoreline flat and marshy. Up ahead, where it seemed like there was nothing left but some stagnant oily pools giving onto muck, a final pier, stubby, leaning, splintery, stuck out into the water. The big Cuban steered the speedboat toward it, expertly lassoed a piling, and in seconds had tied on.

  On wobbly legs, Meara climbed up onto the dock and eagerly started walking the few short steps to Cuba. He never did get there. The huge man grabbed his elbow and led him straight across the pier to where an old relic of a cabin cruiser was secured, its name, the Mariposa, barely legible on its stern.

  The cruiser had a nice line to it—a high bow, jauntily raked roof on the cabin, a broad and gracious transom somehow reminiscent of the backside of a woman with a 1940’s-style figure. Three-quarters of a century ago, it had probably been a pretty elegant boat, a plaything, maybe, of some oligarch during the Battista days. But its varnish had long ago shattered, curled, and blown away in flakes; its once-bright brass fittings now looked dull as lead. Even sitting at the dock, it creaked, with that particular creakiness of old things that have lost their stretch and their resilience.

  Meara stepped onto the boat and the big Cuban slid open a door that led into the main saloon. Inside, bathed in dim amber light, Luis Benavides was reclining on a worn settee, smoking a cigar. He said, “Hello, Teddy.”

  “Hello, Jefe.”

  To his henchman, Benavides said, “You see, Gato? Didn’t I tell you he always calls me that? Ridiculous, no?”

  To Meara he said, “How was the boat ride?”

  “Fine.”

  “He barfed like a sick dog the whole way,” said Gato.

  “Not a seamen, eh, Teddy?”

  Not wanting to linger on the subject, Meara said, “Want to tell me why you brought me here?”

  “Cigar?” said Benavides, offering the box.

  The prospect made Meara a little bit queasy again. “Not on an empty stomach. Maybe after dinner.”

  “We’re not having dinner, Teddy. Just a little chat. Leave us, Gato.”

  The big man clearly wasn’t happy to be ordered out of his adored master’s presence. He looked down at the floor, then resentfully at Meara, but did not move until Benavides motioned him out with a little sweeping gesture. The boss followed him to the door and locked it behind him. Not until he heard Gato’s footsteps retreating up the dock did he say to Meara, “Now let me show you something.”

  He snuffed out his cigar and carefully straightened the crease in his pants. Then he led the way to the rear cabin and opened its door. The room was stacked floor to ceiling with boxes. They were labeled Macanudo.

  “Ever had a Macanudo?” Benavides asked.

  Meara admitted that he hadn’t.

  “They’re excellent. Except these aren’t Macanudos. These are Dominican crap in Macanudo boxes. Plenty good enough for U.S. Customs. When we smuggle real Macanudos, we use the Dominican boxes. Why waste them? Now come here, I’ll show you something else.”

  Striding back through the saloon, he brought Teddy to the forepeak, crouching low to step into the V-shaped cabin at the bow. He switched on a light and asked Meara what he saw.

  “Cigars. I see more fucking cigars.”

  “Very good. That’s what you’re supposed to see. Now watch closely. Pay attention.”

  Carefully, as if in some variety show juggling act, Benavides withdrew one tall stack of boxes from the ranks. Putting them aside, he said, “Which stack did I move, Teddy?”

  “Which stack?”

  “Third from the left. Remember that. You see the planking behind there? The planks all look the same, right?”

  Meara nodded that they did.

  “One of them is not the same. Tell me which one.”

  Leaning in, Meara stared at the boards, ran his fingertips along them, dug his nails into the beveled groove between them. “I can’t.”

  “Good.” Benavides reached into a pocket, came out with a tiny chisel about the size of a dime and wagged it in front of the other man. “Titanium alloy,” he went on. “Thin as paper, strong as a crowbar. Only thing that’ll fit in there. Take good care of it. Now try it between the fourth and fifth boards up from the bottom.”

  Meara took the shim, slid it in where he’d been told, and twisted only lightly. A plank fell away and in the hollow behind it there was a safe made of pebbled steel.

  Reaching into his pocket again, Benavides came out with a pair of keys. They were strange keys, four-sided, with nubs and flanges sticking out of them at varied angles. He told Meara to take one and open the safe. Fitting the key to the lock was like one of those IQ tests administered to kindergarten students, and it took the red-faced man a couple tries to get it right. Finally the key turned and the heavy safe swung open.

  “It’s empty,” Meara said.

  Benavides said, “Your powers of observation continue to impress me. Yes, it’s empty. When the boat gets to Key West, it won’t be. There’ll be an envelope inside. Put there by the only man in Cuba I can trust. My uncle.”

  “And what’s in the envelope?” Meara asked.

  The tidy boss frowned and said, “A wise man would understand that it’s safer not to ask.”

  That didn’t seem to register with Meara. With a mulish sort of stubbornness, he said, “Only natural to be curious.”

  “Which killed the cat,” said Benavides. But then he hesitated, looked away; his usually searing gaze went vague, he seemed to be staring off at the past, at the future, at nothing. When he spoke again the sardonic edge in his voice had been replaced by the clenched but plaintive and somehow helpless tone of the obsessed. “Teddy,” he said, “can you imagine how it feels to have your birthright taken away from you? Your heritage? Your standing in the world? Something that your grandparents, your parents, always told you was rightfully yours, except it had been taken away? Can you imagine how that feels?”

  Meara had no answer, and the young Cuban boss went on as if talking to himself. “Can you imagine how badly you’d want, how far you’d go, to get it back? That’s what’ll be in the safe, Teddy. My birthright. My uncle has killed to get possession of it. I’ll kill anyone who stands in the way of my getting it delivered. You understand that, Teddy?”

  Meara’s mouth had gone dry. Too late, he wished he hadn’t asked the question. He said nothing.

  “That key I gave you.” Benavides murmured on, “Take good ca
re of it. My uncle has one, you have one, and I have one. They were made in Austria. There’s one factory that makes them. It can’t be duplicated. You know what that means, Teddy? It means that if there’s any fuck-up with the safe, you’re the only person I can blame. And if I blame you for a fuck-up, you’re a dead man. Do you understand that, Teddy?”

  Meara swallowed and nodded. He suddenly noticed that his skin was caked with salt spray. It itched like crazy and he was too transfixed to scratch.

  Benavides plucked at the already perfect crease in his pants, then led the way back to the main saloon. “Gato will bring you back to Key West now,” he said. “Not a word of what I showed you. Understood?”

  Meara nodded. The sharp edges of the key in his pocket pricked at his thigh like a cluster of thorns.

  “You won’t fail me Teddy. I know you won’t.”

  15.

  Piped music was playing when Phoebe pushed open the door of the Eclipse Saloon and stepped inside.

  This in itself did not worry her; piped music generally filled in the awkward silence during breaks and the sometimes even more awkward silences in meandering conversations between inebriated patrons at the bar. But then she saw that the low stage where Nicky had performed was dark. There was no microphone, no guitar propped on a stand. There was no tip jar waiting to be fed. Given her frazzled state of mind, these small subtractions from what she had expected seemed bewildering and somehow cruel. Trying not to look upset, she walked up to the bar and asked what time the music started.

  “No live music tonight,” said the bartender.

  Wrestling with confusion, Phoebe said, “But it’s Tuesday.”

  The bartender, not one of Key West’s friendliest, said, “Yeah, I know it is.”

  “Isn’t Nicky playing?”

  “Nicky left.”

  “Left?”

  “Left. Listen, I have customers. Is there something I can get you?”

  Distractedly, Phoebe said, “No. No thank you.” Then, feeling lost, she just stood there for a moment. It was not easy to be a person alone, and upset, and to muster the resolve to go somewhere, choose a destination, and then to have the whole plan thwarted. She needed to regroup. While she was regrouping she heard a voice off to her left.

  “You like his playing?”

  “Hmm?” she said, turning to see an old man in a canary yellow shirt with dark green piping on the placket and the collar. The man had a banana nose that took up a large part of his face and fleshy lips that seemed to massage each syllable he spoke.

  “The guy who left. You like his music?”

  “Yeah. I do.”

  “Me too. The singing, I mean, let’s face it, the guy’s no Frank Sinatra. And the guitar, I mean, come on, we’re not talking Les Paul. But when he plays, what I like is that it’s from the heart. At least that’s how it seems to me. Ya know, it’s not just notes and words, it’s like he’s trying to tell you something, think something through, get something across. I like that. You a friend of his?”

  “Sort of. Yeah. I am.”

  “Well, you see him, tell him that old Bert from the tavern hopes he’ll come back.”

  “I’ll tell him that. He’ll like it.”

  “And inna meantime,” the old man went on, “can I offer you a drink?”

  Phoebe, by habit, was already starting to say no—no to a drink, no to a gift, no to a man—when she paused to reconsider. The man was kind and by himself and very old. She was hungry and thirsty and almost upset enough to admit that she was lonely.

  While she was considering the old man said, “Look, don’t worry, I’m not looking for a…whadda people call it these days when a man and woman get together just quick, just casual?”

  “A hook-up,” Phoebe said.

  “Hook-up,” Bert echoed. “Ya know, I think that’s kind of funny. My day, we called it a pick-up. Things never change. People change the words a little bit and they think they’re doing something that no one’s ever done before. Anyway, I’m not looking for a hook-up. In fact even just the idea of a hook-up is giving me angina. But if you’d like to have a drink…”

  Two beers and a cheeseburger later, Phoebe and Bert were getting to know each other reasonably well. She’d met his chihuahua, Nacho, who’d remained still and hidden under the lip of the bar until Phoebe’s burger was delivered, at which point the dog sprang up and started dancing all over the old man’s crotch. She fed it a morsel and it licked her fingers extravagantly, whether from gratitude or greed to capture a bit more juice would be impossible to say. Asked what had brought her to Key West, Phoebe, with her unsparing and somewhat defiant candor, had given Bert a capsule account of her life so far. She was almost daring him to flinch at the drugs and prison part, but he did not.

  When she got to the part about buying the Sno-Cone truck, the old man said, “Hey, I’ve seen that truck. Parked on Smathers, right? Just before the bathrooms. I live almost right across the street. In that condo there, the Paradiso. Know which one I mean?”

  Phoebe tried to picture it. “Pink?” she said. “Three buildings?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one. Stop by sometime. Use the pool, ya like. Or I’ll stop by the truck. I walk the stupid dog right past there every day at sunset. I’ll come by for an ice some time.”

  “On the house,” said Phoebe. “But do it soon.”

  “Hon, I’m almost ninety. Soon is all I got. But you, you’re young, you got all kinds of time.”

  “Not with the truck I don’t.” She put her beer down as she said that and stared for a long moment at the ring of condensation that was spreading from the bottle to the bar.

  Bert said, “What, there’s a problem with the truck?”

  She told him about the missed payment and the fine print in the contract.

  He said, “That kinda stinks.”

  “Yeah, it does. My own fault. Small-town girl. Pretty naïve, I guess.”

  Bert paused to contemplate. His way of contemplating was to stroke the skull and ears and whiskers of his dog. This helped him think, as if he was stroking his own chin. Finally he said, “Well, I guess it’ll play like it was meant to play. That’s the way life is. Stuff happens. Things either work out or they don’t.”

  Phoebe pressed her lips together, lifted the eyebrow with the stud in it, and leaned forward with her cheek against her fist. “Guess you’re right,” she said. “And maybe sometime I’ll be old and wise enough to deal with that, accept it, take it calmly.”

  Bert thought a moment more then said very softly, “Naw, don’t bother.”

  Phoebe said, “Excuse me?”

  “Accepting bad stuff. Taking it calmly when something isn’t right, isn’t fair. Don’t bother trying to do that. It’s total bullshit. I don’t believe it either.”

  “But—“

  “Nah, even while I was saying it, I didn’t believe it. The whole time I’m thinking, Bert, you old fraud, this is not what you believe, this is not the way you ran your life. You’re just saying what you think an old man’s supposed to say so a beautiful young woman will think he’s wise. But come on, taking bad stuff lying down, getting pushed around and smiling, that’s not wise, that’s giving up. Things don’t happen like they’re meant to happen. That’s the kind of thing a priest would say. It’s a load of crap. Things happen like people let them happen, make them happen. And if they happen all fucked up, pardon my French, then it makes ya mad. There. So much for being calm and wise. You wanna know what I really believe? That’s what I really believe.”

  Surprised by the old man’s vehemence and a little worried by the sudden flush in his loose and crinkled skin, Phoebe put a cool hand on his arm. In a voice that stayed level and mild even through her agitation, she said, “So I guess you and I agree. But it doesn’t feel good, does it?”

  “Getting bullied? Getting outmaneuvered? Feels lousy. Always has and always will. That’s why ya gotta push back, why ya gotta try to win.”

  “I can’t win, Bert. I don’t have the mone
y.”

  “So maybe you don’t win,” the old man conceded. “Maybe you lose. Maybe this scumbag gets his truck back. The way it turns out, that’s only half of what matters. The other half is how it happens. Did you just roll over or did you try, at least? Truck, no truck, ya gotta keep your self-respect, ya gotta be able to sleep at night.”

  “I know, but—“

  “Think it over. Take a shot, at least. You’ll come up with something, I know you will. There’s any way I can help, you just let me know.”

  16.

  Up in Miami, Charlie Ponte was having troubles of his own. The Mob business just wasn’t what it used to be. Mafia. The word itself used to inspire fear, and the fear made it pretty easy to do business. But now? Mafia inspired…what? A so-so Hollywood movie now and then. Less terror than nostalgia. Mafia conjured images of pebbled green phone booths and a time when a password was something you used to gain entrance to a speakeasy, not to hack into someone’s bank account. And meanwhile other gangs had gotten tougher, meaner, and most of all disrespectful. They horned in on rackets; they didn’t ask permission. They honored no tradition, they changed rules as they went along. Worst of all, Ponte no longer had the manpower to fight those other guys. In his secret heart he wasn’t even sure he had the will.

  So he was already feeling sort of low when Luis Benavides called him up to make him feel worse.

  “Hello, Charlie,” said the younger boss. “You found me a pigeon yet?”

  “No,” admitted Ponte, “I haven’t.”

  “You haven’t?” Benavides sounded very surprised, though Ponte doubted this was genuine and figured it was a subtle form of mockery. “That’s very disappointing, Charlie.”

  The only possible response to that would be an apology that the Mafia boss was not about to offer, so he kept quiet.