Florida Straits (17 page)

At White Street, Bert turned onto U.S. 1,
and Key West instantly stopped being a place and rejoined America.
Franchise restaurants and chain motels lined the highway; stacked
traffic lights said whose turn it was to pull into the six-plex
movies and the supermarket that never closed. License plates from
everywhere made it plain that you were nowhere in particular. Bert
stayed in the right lane and braked every time someone pulled off
the road for a doughnut or a hamburger.

Key West is separated from Stock Island by
the Cow Key Channel, such a narrow cut between the Atlantic and the
Gulf that Joey barely noticed he'd gone over a bridge to cross it.
Land is cheap on Stock Island; it is Secaucus, New Jersey, to Key
West's Manhattan. The help lives there, in trailer parks and in
half-painted cinder-block shacks that would not look out of place
in the deep Caribbean. People get knifed in bars there, crack is
sold on street corners, battered women now and then shoot the
hearts out of their boyfriends. The parts of Stock Island not given
over to squalor are given over to the public good. There is a
junior college at which one can study the repair of outboard
engines and get credit for scuba diving. There is the dump, Mount
Trashmore, whose incalculable tons of garbage have been heaped into
a weirdly splendid pyramid, the summit of which is the highest
point in all the Florida Keys. Along the same road that skirts
Mount Trashmore is the hospital complex, generously endowed by Key
West's most prominent families, the proud descendants of
pirates.

Bert the Shirt turned down this road, and
Joey followed. In the dim glow of headlamps and moonlight, he
noticed how the old man held his thin neck perfectly still, as
though driving a car at thirty miles an hour required his most
ferocious attention. Maybe it was this recognition of Bert's
frailty that gave Joey a sudden queasy recollection of his mother
dying and the smell of the hospital she died in. It was a smell at
once overscrubbed and putrid, bracing as ammonia yet stained with
the stench of unspeakable fluids and vomit. Please, Joey thought,
don't let this hospital smell that way; give it a different brand
of floor cleaner at least. Then he wondered if he'd actually see
Vicki, and then he was assaulted by a lewdly gruesome image of
Vicki's body going through the plate-glass window, and her wrecked
and bloody clothes being peeled off her.

Then, in the shadow of Mount Trashmore and
for no apparent reason, Bert the Shirt jammed on the brake, went
into a tiny skid, and stopped just a few inches too short for Joey
to avoid hitting him. Fenders collided, made a surprisingly soft
sound, like the crumpling up of foil, and came away not destroyed
but dimpled. The impact was not painful, just rude and startling,
as when an unseen and unwelcome friend comes up and slaps you on
the back. Joey barely had time to say What the fuck? and to put the
Caddy in reverse, before he realized that he could not back up
because a dark blue Lincoln had pulled snugly in behind him.

A big guy in a blue suit was standing next
to Joey, and he held a gun that glinted dully in the moonlight.
"Get out and hug the fucking car," he said.

Joey found he couldn't move, and so the big
guy helped him. He yanked open the door of the Caddy, grabbed Joey
by the front of his shirt, and pulled him up into the street. He
turned him with a slap of the gun muzzle across the ribs, then
pushed him down across the hood of the car and ran his hand along
his sides and up his crotch to check for weapons. Joey just lay
there. He supposed he was terrified, but mostly he was confused.
The car engine was hot under his chest, and he found this strangely
comforting. Lying there, his cheek against the warm gritty steel,
he could see another dark blue Lincoln pulled across the road in
front of Gino's rented T-Bird, and he could see that Bert the Shirt
was also being frisked. Yes, it was very confusing, and all the
while Bert's chihuahua was baying and howling like a very small and
very shrill coyote.

—
24 —

The equipment shed did not smell like
garbage, exactly. It smelled worse than that. It smelled like what
garbage is on its way to becoming as it rots, as the brown bags
soak through with the ooze of putrefying vegetables, as gristle
falls off meat bones and turns to a yellowish paste, as bacteria
eat through the membranes that have been holding the stink inside
of things, letting the foulness into the air like a filthy secret.
Added to the humid fumes of decay were the bitter tang of gull shit
and the chicken coop reek that came from the riled and oily
feathers of the carrion birds. Joey glanced around the room and
tried to figure out if anyone else was on the verge of gagging.

They were seven altogether: Joey and Bert;
the two toughs from Duval Street and two of their sturdy
colleagues, all of whom, like players in a second-rate orchestra,
had suits that almost matched, but not quite; and a small neat man
who was clearly the guy in charge. He sat on a scratched metal desk
in the middle of the shed. Above him was a single yellow bulb
tucked into a dented metal cone, and at his back a frame without a
door outlined part of the slope of Mount Trashmore. He wore a pale
gray suit over a white silk turtleneck, and even in the feeble
light his patent leather pumps could be seen to gleam. His feet
were very small, and the shoes' tall heels made his arches look
impossibly dainty and high, like the arches of a leprechaun. His
black hair was swept straight back on the sides and stood in ridges
like the gunwales of a boat; on top his hair was thinner and less
perfectly trained. His face was unlined but his eyes looked tired;
under them, there were sacs the color of raw liver and the texture
of poultry skin.

" 'Lo, Bert," he said. He said it almost
fondly but distractedly, like someone running into an old
acquaintance at the racetrack.

"Charlie," said Bert the Shirt, "where's my
dog?"

"Your dog? Your fucking dog?" Charlie Ponte
glanced at his crew as if to say
, Didn't I tell ya?
"Jesus
Christ, Bert, you really have become a fucking old lady."

"You're right, Charlie. I'm a fucking old
lady. But please, do me a favor, have my dog brought in."

Ponte shrugged and nodded to one of his
flunkies, who vanished through the doorless frame. "And you're Joey
Delgatto."

"Joey Goldman."

Ponte shrugged again. It was his most
characteristic gesture, but it didn't mean for him what it meant
for most people. For most people, a shrug suggested a kind of
helplessness, a lack of knowledge or clarity that stymied them. For
Ponte, the shrug meant simply that he didn't know, he didn't care,
it made no difference, he would do what he felt like. "I know who
you are," he said.

The flunky returned, carrying Don Giovanni
at arm's length, as though he feared some exotic Mexican disease.
At a nod from Ponte, he passed the quivering dog to Bert, and Joey
could see that the old man's fingers were trembling. He hugged the
animal to his belly, and the chihuahua flicked out a white- coated
tongue and lapped at his wrist. Now that he had his dog back, Bert
was bolder. "Charlie, what the fuck is this all about?"

Ponte, the only one sitting, settled himself
more comfortably on the metal desk, crossed his ankles, and said,
"Bert, I called the meeting, I'll ask the fucking questions. For
starters, Joey whatever the fuck your name is, whyn't you tell me
what the fuck you're doin' out heah, with your brother's car, going
to the dump when the fucking dump ain't even open?"

Joey took a deep breath. He shouldn't have.
The smell of rotting garbage became as solid as a piece of
half-chewed steak sitting on top of his windpipe. "I wasn't going
to the dump," he managed to say. "I was going to the hospital."

"The hospital," said Charlie Ponte. He
mugged toward his crew. "O.K., let's try that one. Why were you
going to the hospital?"

"Because my brother's there. His girlfriend
got knocked through a window."

Ponte folded his arms across his chest and
turned a perfect deadpan toward his boys. They grinned on cue, four
white Rochesters to his Jack Benny. "Come on, kid, you're Vinnie
Delgatto's son, you can do better than that."

"Charlie, listen," said Bert the Shirt. "I
was there when Gino called."

"So now the old lady's chimin' in," said
Ponte. "Shut up, Bert. And stop insultin' my intelligence, the both
of ya. Gino's been in his hotel room all fucking day, that much I
know. You think he's glued to the Weather Channel? I think he's
hosing that top-heavy bim he's with. Either way, he ain't inna
fucking hospital, and as for her, she's probably been gettin'
knocked around all right, but not tru any windows. So cut the
bullshit before I get annoyed."

Joey gazed blankly at the dim yellow light
bulb and tried to ignore the way the stench of garbage was
poisoning his saliva. He tried to find a way to believe that his
brother hadn't set him up. He couldn't.

Ponte drummed his fingers on the metal desk.
The only other sound was the deranged laugh of a gull at the top of
the pyramid of trash. "Gino came outside exactly once today," the
Boss resumed. "Around six- thirty. Just when it was getting dark.
He comes out with a little suitcase. He looks around. He puts the
bag inna trunk. He looks around again, and goes back inna hotel.
Coupla hours later, you guys show up. Ya take the car, come riding
out here in the middle of fucking nowhere. I mean, really, gents,
how does it look?"

The neat little man sprang down from the
desk and his dainty shoes clicked dryly on the cement floor. He
walked to the empty rectangle of the doorframe and motioned for
Joey and Bert to follow. They stood close together and looked out
at the alp of garbage. It had weird floodlights on it and gleamed
an un-earthly pinkish orange. At half a dozen random places along
the slope, parked bulldozers looked like yellow toys. Most of the
mountain was not exposed but had been covered over with a heavy
plastic seal. Here and there, the seal was slit by long obscene
gashes oozing rot.

"Ain't it amazing," Charlie Ponte said, "the
advances that have been made in gahbidge? Ya see the way they cram
it in those seams there? It's like stuffing a quilt. Deep, those
slits. Fresh gahbidge, it gets squeezed in there and that's the end
of it."

Joey did not like the way Charlie Ponte
looked at him while saying this. He could handle being called fresh
garbage. But he didn't relish the thought of spending eternity with
other people's coffee grounds in his ears, the rank oil from other
people's tuna fish sliming through his hair. "Hey, Charlie," he
croaked, "we ain't involved in this."

Ponte turned toward him, in no particular
hurry and without even a hint of malice on his face, and slapped
him hard across the cheek. "You don't call me Charlie. Only my old
friends call me Charlie, and kid, I got my doubts about whether you
and me are gonna know each other that long." He gestured toward the
largest of his goons. "Bruno, bring that fucking bag in heah."

In a moment Bruno was back, carrying a
small, square case covered in turquoise vinyl. He put it on the
desk under the cone of yellow light.

Charlie Ponte approached it slowly and
critically. "Lookit this piece a shit," he said, flicking the
case's plastic handle. "No class, your brother. It don't even lock.
This fucking guy don't care how he treats my stuff."

He undid the two brass clasps and opened the
case. It was lined with fake turquoise silk and had a small mirror
built into the top. Slowly, with the salacious care of a man
nibbling his way around a piece of wedding cake but saving the
flower for last, Ponte started removing items from the bag.
Lipsticks. Powder. A bottle of Nair. A box of tampons. An atomizer
of perfume. He even took time to have a whiff of it. "Chanel number
sixty-nine," he pronounced, and his goons obediently chuckled. Then
he removed deodorant, tweezers, an eyelash curler. Mascara,
eyeshadow, a disposable douche. "I love messin' around a woman's
things," he said. " 'Zis givin' anybody a hard-on?"

Joey, had he been able to speak, would have
answered an emphatic no. His knees were weak and he was tasting
garbage-tainted snot from when Ponte's slap had set his sinuses
running. Bert the Shirt had turned gray as his dog but seemed oddly
at ease with the idea of being dead. He'd been there, after all;
for him it wasn't that big a deal.

Ponte looked happy. Even as he got near the
bottom of Vicki's cosmetics kit, he seemed to have no doubt that
his emeralds were inside. Finally things were falling right for
him. He'd get his stones back, kill Joey and Bert, bulldoze their
corpses through a gash in the mountain of garbage, then bump off
Gino when the occasion offered. Only when the turquoise case was
totally empty did he begin to show some slight concern. But only
slight. He took a penknife from his suit pocket, slit the take silk
lining, and pried off the little mirror. Finding nothing
underneath, he became just one small notch more agitated. "Bruno,"
he said, "smash the fucking thing."

In a single motion, Bruno crossed the
reeking shed, turned the empty case upside down, and clobbered it
with his gun butt. The vinyl tore, and underneath it were thin
layers of Styrofoam, cardboard, and Chinese newspaper. The goon dug
his fingers between the layers and tore them apart, but there were
no hollow places and no emeralds. Then he splintered the plastic
handle, but it contained nothing. Having reduced the case to a heap
of rubble, he dropped his hands and looked at his boss as if to
ask,
What do I rip apart next
?

Charlie Ponte crossed his arms and seemed to
be considering. Then, for the first time all evening, he looked
angry. The skin moved on his forehead, his black eyes seemed to
pull in closer toward his nose, and one side of his upper lip
lifted as if he were sucking something out of his teeth. He put his
forearm on the desk and brushed it clean with a vicious sweep.
Vicki's jars and bottles smashed against the cinder- block wall,
and far from masking the vile stink of garbage, her scents blended
in to make it still more foul, adding the cloy of carnal cheapness
to the general corruption and making the shed smell like a
whore-house on the lowest rung of hell. "Fucking shit," said
Charlie Ponte. "Enough cockin' around. Now I want some fucking
answers."