Key West Luck

by Laurence Shames

  Bert shook his head unhappily. “Phoebe, try to understand. Ponte’s world, the world I used to live in, guys don’t like to give out a lot of information. All’s he said to me was that it was a kind of import-export thing. What I make of that, knowing who we’re dealing with, is that we’re talking some kind of smuggling caper. Since we’re on an island, it seems logical or let’s say just makes sense to guess that this involves a boat. More than that I couldn’t tell you.”

  Phoebe stared down at the dusty floor, at the little arced dents made by barstool legs pressed down by many years of large men drinking. Finally she said, “Bert, listen, I know the world is all

  fucked up and people do what they have to do. I get that, okay? I also know Nicky’s a big boy, he can do what he wants. But I’ve been in jail, I’ve met some criminals. Nicky’s not cut out for that. He just isn’t. It isn’t how he’s made. Whatever this is, we can’t just let it happen.”

  Bert stroked his dog and said with resignation, “Except it sounds like it is happening, Phoebe. I don’t see where there’s anything to be done.”

  She raised her voice a small but shocking increment beyond her usual tempered range. “Bullshit! I don’t believe that and neither do you. First time we ever talked, Bert, you remember what you said to me? You said it’s bullshit to roll over and accept bad stuff. You gotta fight back. You gotta try at least. Isn’t that what you told me?”

  The old man squeezed his lips together and then he didn’t exactly make a decision; it would be more accurate to say he became a decision. In what was, for him, a swift, abrupt, even an athletic motion, he stood up from his barstool, a surprised chihuahua flailing its bony legs beyond the confines of his palm. He said, “You mind waiting here a couple minutes? And babysitting the dog? I gotta go make a phone call.”

  24.

  Given the dicey and exacting caper that lay ahead for him, a smarter man than Teddy Meara might have switched off the video and gone to bed, then fired up his reflexes with a cup or two of good strong coffee. The little red-faced man took exactly the opposite approach. As soon as he got off the phone with Benavides, he headed straight to the Brigantine and started drinking heavily. He told himself he just needed to relax and everything would go fine. The alcohol would fill the gaps through which his scant and watery courage had already started to leak away, and somehow or other he’d get through this.

  Up to a point, the strategy seemed to be working. The shots-and-beers didn’t make Meara brave, exactly, but they did make him at least temporarily cocky. And talkative. And generous—generous enough, at least, to start buying rounds for the little knot of regulars that flanked him.

  Hoisting his free shot of tequila, the man with the parrot and the guano-crusted towel said, “So Teddy, what’s the occasion?”

  “Little celebration is all,” he slurred. “One of my enterprises is about to break pretty big. Yup, this is my last night in this shithole, gents. Off to Miami tomorrow. On to bigger things!”

  He raised his glass in a heartfelt and almost sentimental toast to himself. The guys whose drinks he’d paid for joined him in the gesture, though in a rather mechanical and lukewarm way. No one else cared very much about Meara’s purported stroke of good fortune or about his planned departure. At the Brigantine, in Key West, in life, people came and went. That’s just how it was. People passed through and some few were remembered; the rest just drifted away and were vaguely recalled, if at all, as one more what’s-his-name. The only person at the bar who seemed genuinely interested in Meara’s announcement was Gus Delios, who was sipping a Sambuca and eating two slices of key lime pie.

  “Miami?” he said. “I thought you said your business was in Cuba.”

  Fudging, Meara said, “Cuba, Miami, Lauderdale, Bahamas. Like I told you knuckleheads, I got a few things going on.”

  Delios had a piece of pie crust stuck between his gums and the inside of his cheek. He stuck a finger in his mouth and worked it free while he considered that. A bullshitter himself, you’d think he’d be immune to other people’s bullshit, but somehow it didn’t work that way. In fact he was easy prey to other people’s bullshit because it made his own more plausible. “Well,” he said after a moment, “too bad you’re leaving town. I had this hunch that maybe at some point, you and me, we’d do some business together.”

  That made Meara feel really good. To be sought after, regarded as substantial, treated like a person that other people hoped to cultivate and get involved with. Generously, as befit an important man with lots going on, he said, “Sorry, Gus, doesn’t look like it’s gonna happen this time around. Down the road, you never know. Cheers.”

  Having left Phoebe waiting back at the Eclipse, Bert, walking as quickly as he could, went maybe fifty yards along the sidewalk then ducked into an alley that was overgrown with thick and spiky weeds that stabbed at his thin shoes and threatened his unsteady balance. A stink of decay spilled forth from a neglected dumpster, but the alley was a quiet and a private place to talk. He took out an old flip-phone and squinted through the dimness to find a number. With gnarled fingertips he punched it in, and after a few moments the gruff and now impatient voice of Charlie Ponte came on the line. “Yeah, Bert. What?”

  Bert jumped right in. “I got a bone to pick with you.”

  Up in Miami, oddly perhaps, Ponte smiled at that. He was back in business, back in control. He didn’t care if other people were mad at him. In fact it made him feel kind of good, struck him as an emblem of his station. “So pick it,” he said.

  “I told you not to get that guy involved.”

  Innocently, Ponte said, “What guy?”

  “Come on, Cholly, don’t be cute.” Then he ventured a bluff. “I know he left Key West with you.”

  Ponte considered lying then decided not to bother. Bert, after all, was no threat, just an old has-been who on very rare occasions had proved useful. “Okay, maybe he did. What of it?”

  “I told you not to mess with him.”

  “Come on, Bert, get real. First of all, you’re not in a position to tell me anything. You asked me not to mess with him. I never promised what I would or wouldn’t do.”

  “Same old Ponte,” Bert said. “Twisting words then doing whatever the fuck you please.”

  “Damn right I’m the same old Ponte. But listen, you’re making it sound like I kidnapped the fucking guy or something. I didn’t. I offered him an opportunity.”

  “What kind of opportunity?”

  Ponte went on as though he hadn’t heard. “He jumped at it. He’s hard up for cash, your buddy. Needed ten grand right away. He practically begged me for the job.”

  “So what’s the job, Cholly?”

  Savoring his power, his newly refreshed mastery, Ponte paused a beat before saying, “You don’t need to know that, Bert. There’s nothing you can do about it anyway.”

  “You don’t think I realize that? So what’s the job?”

  “Why you wanna know?

  “Because I’m nosy, okay? Isn’t that what you always say about me, Cholly? That I’m just a nosy old man? Turns out you happen to be right. I’m just plain curious. What’s the job this guy’s doing?”

  Ponte should have kept his mouth shut then, but being who he was, he couldn’t. He was taking a kind of junior high school pleasure in knowing something the other guy didn’t, in teasing Bert with molecules of information. “Like I told you before,” he said. “Just a little import/export thing.”

  “A.k.a. smuggling,” said Bert.

  “Now you’re making a value judgment.”

  “Smuggling what?”

  “You’ll read about it in tomorrow’s paper.”

  At that, standing there in the stinking, buggy alley, Bert smiled to himself. Suddenly there was hope. Ponte had just handed him a card, the I’m-a-bigshot card. It was a card he knew exactly how to play. “Wow,” he said, “in the paper? Like front page, maybe?”

  In a feeble attempt at modesty, Ponte said, “Well, front page, I don’t kn
ow—“

  Bert jumped back in at once, shoveling more bullshit into the insatiable maw of Ponte’s vanity. “I shoulda figured this was something big,” he said. “I shoulda told myself, Cholly’s involved, this must be important.”

  Through the phone, Bert could almost hear the stretch and crackle of Ponte’s ego inflating like the bag around a batch of microwave popcorn. His voice suddenly friendlier, confiding, the Miami mobster said, “Yeah, Bert, it’s pretty important. But here’s the thing–not even the papers are gonna know how big it is. Not at first. That’s the beauty part. It’s like a scam within a scam, the important part doesn’t even show.”

  Improvising, Bert said in a tone of admiration, “Like a fucking iceberg, just a teeny part of it is visible.”

  “Something like that,” said Ponte. “It’s very complex. Your buddy boy, he’s just a small part of it, a decoy.”

  “Decoy? Elegant. I like it. Decoy for what?”

  “Never mind for what. That’s the secret part. All anybody’s gonna know is that some poor shnook got caught with a boatload of cigars.”

  “Poor shnook,” Bert echoed sympathetically. “Small-time cigar smuggler.” Then he hesitated, as though puzzling something out. “But wait a second. What if he doesn’t get caught?”

  Smugly, serenely, Ponte said, “Oh, no worries there. He’ll definitely get caught.”

  “You’re tipping off the cops?” said Bert. “Ratting out your own caper? Cholly, that’s brilliant!”

  The little mobster could almost be heard beaming through the phone, almost as if the labyrinthine twists of the plan had been his own idea rather than Benavides’.

  Bert paused a moment then said, “Where?”

  “Where what?”

  “Where’s he get caught?”

  Beginning to sound just the slightest bit suspicious, Ponte said, “Fuck’s it to you, Bert? You’ll be miles away. On land. In bed.”

  “That’s right, Cholly. That’s exactly it. I’ll be home. In bed. Thinkin’ about how old and out of it I am. Can’t do nothin’ no more. So I’m just hoping to have the small pleasure of admiring from afar, ya know, vicarious like, the brilliant details, even the whaddyacallit, the artistry, of your virtuoso caper. So where’s he get busted?”

  Virtuoso. Artistry. Ponte really liked those words. They made him feel collegial. He said, “Come on, Bert, use your noodle. Guy’s coming straight shot Havana-Key West in an old hulk of a boat at night, where’s the safest place he can get across the reef?”

  “Ah, the safest place,” Bert mused. “Guess that’d be where the big lighthouse is.”

  Ponte said nothing. Nothing was plenty.

  Bert decided to put a cherry on top of his three-scoop sundae of flattering bullshit. “I gotta hand it to ya, Cholly. The decoy, the tip-off, the place. Ya really thought of everything.”

  “Wasn’t easy,” Ponte admitted.

  “And to think that just yesterday you were talking about retiring, about whether you still had the touch, the fire in the belly.”

  “Retiring?” said Ponte. “Bert, I was never serious about retiring. You thought I was serious about that? I was a little down for a minute or two. But I still got the touch, the drive. Retire? Shit, man, I’m still in my prime. You can see that for yourself.”

  25.

  “Can’t happen,” said Ozzie Kimmel. “Totally crazy idea.”

  “Has to happen,” Phoebe said. “Crazy or not, it has to happen.”

  They were standing on the scuffed and balding Astroturf deck of the Sea Queen. The light around them was grainy, the powdery orange of streetlamps throbbing against the velvety purple of the evening sky. On the roads that flanked Garrison Bight, traffic was thinning but the whine and grind of high-revving scooters seemed only to get louder.

  Ozzie said, “Look, we take the dock-lines off this tub, I’m not even sure it’ll float.”

  “It’ll float,” said Phoebe. “It’s a boat. That’s what boats do. They float.”

  “Most boats maybe. Until they don’t. But Feeb, this isn’t a real boat. It’s a houseboat. It’s way more house than boat. Houses, you don’t just take ‘em for a ride.”

  “This isn’t a ride. It’s a rescue mission.”

  “It’s a kamikaze mission,” Ozzie said, pointing vaguely toward the ocean. “There’s waves out there. There’s reefs, there’s current. Houses don’t really do so well in waves and current.”

  Phoebe said, “Fine. So your best friend Nicky—you gonna leave him out there all alone? To get arrested? To have his life destroyed?”

  “I think maybe you’re over-dramatizing.”

  “I’m not over-dramatizing. I’m telling you what Bert told me five minutes ago. He knows these people. They’re criminals. Nicky’s been set up. We warn him or he goes to jail.”

  “Okay,” Ozzie conceded, “Agreed, we have to warn him. May I suggest a somewhat more practical way of doing that? How about we call him on the phone?”

  “We don’t where he is,” said Phoebe. “He might be in the middle of the ocean. Do cell phones work in the middle of the ocean?”

  “How about we try?”

  He pulled his phone out of his pocket and speed-dialed his roommate. A silent, hopeful moment passed, then Nicky’s phone started ringing inside the Sea Queen’s cabin. It was next to Nicky’s pillow, where he’d left it so that well-meaning friends would not be able to reach him. He didn’t want to make trouble for anybody else.

  Flummoxed, Ozzie dragged the toe of his sandal over a place where the Astroturf had been worn off and you could see the loose weave of the burlap underneath it. Finally, feeling cornered, he said, “Shit, I don’t even know how many years it’s been since this fucking scow’s been moved. I don’t know how much fuel we have. I don’t even know if the engine still works.”

  “It’s a diesel, right? Diesels never die.”

  “Maybe. But—“

  “Try the engine, Oz. If it doesn’t start, you’re off the hook.”

  They went into the cabin. It had once been known as the pilot house but for as long as Ozzie could remember it had been called the living room. The steering wheel had been regarded mainly as a quaint decorative touch and had long been used as a vertical rack for drying clothes; even now its spokes were beribboned with damp dish towels and a couple pairs of socks. Ozzie tossed aside the laundry and brushed some dust balls and cracker crumbs from the helmsman’s seat. On the faded engine panel, a rusted and long-ignored key was stuck in the ignition slot. He turned it to the start position. A feeble red light turned on and a pathetic little beep issued forth.

  He pressed the starter button. For a moment nothing happened, nothing whatsoever, except that the cabin lights dimmed a notch. Then there was a single labored cough like the last weak hack of a dying consumptive. After another pause there came a sudden chorus of clanking, as though a drawerful of spoons had been dropped into the gearbox. A vile puff of blue exhaust farted from the stern and blew back through the cabin. The engine grunted like a sleeping bear, hiccupped like a drunk, clattered some more, then gradually found its heartbeat and smoothed out into something almost like a normal idle.

  Calmly, Phoebe said, “I’ll throw off the dock lines.”

  She was already busy doing it when Ozzie muttered, “We’re gonna drown.”

  Nevertheless, he very slowly backed the Sea Queen out of its slip. The rudder was dragging long beards of algae and responded only grudgingly to the turning of the wheel. The bottom was freighted with barnacles and all along the waterline there was a thick coating of furry blue-green scum. Out on deck, Phoebe gave a last push to move the sluggish craft beyond its pilings. Once it was free, the boat could be seen to be listing quite jauntily to starboard; the angle suggested a fedora.

  Committed now, resigned, Ozzie shifted into forward and edged away from the familiar coziness of the marina, soon leaving it behind like a half-remembered dream of peace and safety. He was terrified but he was proud of himself. True, it had taken
some urging, he’d put up some resistance, but the bottom line was that he was doing what a good friend ought to do and he believed that

  this earned him at least the prerogative of complaining bitterly. As the houseboat sputtered and rocked, he muttered over and over again, “We’re gonna drown. We’re definitely gonna drown…So this is how it ends. I’m gonna drown in my own fucking kitchen.”

  From a dark and blighted corner of Havana harbor, another, only slightly less dubious, craft was heading out. The superannuated cruiser Mariposa, with Nicky at the wheel, chugged out of the headwaters of Guanabacoa, slipped past the shadowy dreariness of the container terminal, then followed the snaking pink ribbon of light that spilled forth from the noisy brightness of the Malecon. Beyond the Plaza de Armas, where the fabled bay showed off its grandest sweep, the waterway narrowed, becoming a deceptively calm channel that connected Havana to all the roiling, surging, terrifying oceans of the world.

  His damaged hand clinging tightly to the unfamiliar wheel, his eyes panning back and forth at the Cuban patrol boats that seemed to have no interest in him, Nicky steered toward open water and what he hoped would be the final episode of his puny, reluctant, and shamefaced criminal career. He understood, though not in words, that he was scudding toward punishment, toward expiation. This made him almost happy. The only problem was the reek of the cigars. He’d always hated cigars and the concentrated stink of them was giving him a headache. He took only shallow breaths as he plowed on through the quiet water.

  26.

  At the Brigantine bar, Teddy Meara kept drinking till he started seeing double, then treated himself to one more round. Happy hour had ended long before. The ill-assorted group of men with whom he had begun his evening had drifted off to do nothing someplace else. Meara kept glancing left and right to find someone else to talk at, but a sort of moat or dead zone, two stools wide, had opened up around him; scanning for faces he saw nothing but backs. At length he gathered up what was left of his damp and soggy cash and headed out into the night.