Florida Straits (18 page)

He slapped the desk, walked up close to
Joey, and spit in his face. The warm saliva trickled down his cheek
and Joey was sure he would vomit if he didn't wipe it off before it
reached the corner of his mouth. He started to lift his hand.
"Touch your face and I'll break your fucking arm," said Ponte. "Now
talk. What the fuck you doin' with your brother's car, and where's
my fucking emeralds?"

Joey tried to speak but couldn't, and Ponte
nodded at Bruno. Bruno grabbed Joey by the hair and pulled back as
if to yank off his scalp. Then he put the muzzle of his gun in the
soft hollow behind Joey's ear.

Joey tried desperately to say something, and
when he heard a voice he thought he had succeeded, but in fact it
was Bert who was talking.

"Come on, Charlie, the kid don't know shit.
He don't know nothin'. He's a loser. He's a nobody."

"Yeah?" said Ponte. "Well then, what about
you, old lady? You ain't a nobody. A fucking limp-dick has-been
maybe, but not a nobody. You got connections. So what the fuck is
what?"

Bert cradled his dog and shook his head.
"Charlie, I swear on my mother, we ain't involved. I don't know any
more than what we already told ya."

"I think ya do," said Ponte. "And I ain't
got all fucking night." He glanced over at his troops. "Tony, take
his fucking dog."

"No," said Bert.

"Shut up, old woman. Tony, take his fucking
dog, put it onna desk, and get ready to blow its fucking rains out.
Enougha this shit."

Almost apologetically, the thug with the
scarred lip and bad toupee approached Bert and held his hands out
to take the dog. The Shirt held his ground. "I'll fucking kill ya,
Charlie. I swear I'll fucking kill ya."

Ponte snorted. "That's good, Bert. Very
brave. But you're still an old lady, so shut the fuck up and give
'im the dog."

Bert stood there. Ponte nodded for
reinforcements. Another goon came up behind the old man and jerked
back hard on his arms.

The tiny dog flew out of his hands and
seemed to hover in the dimness, its legs splayed out like the limbs
of a defrosting chicken, its paws kicking as though trying to climb
the empty air. Tony caught the animal and put it on the desk.
Quivering and all alone in the circle of yellow light, the
chihuahua looked like it was about to be the victim of some
unspeakable experiment in a Nazi operating room. It whined and its
whiskers twitched like the antennae of a dying insect. Tony cocked
his gun and pointed it between the animal's bulging glassy
eyes.

"Charlie, for Christ's sake," said Bert, and
he started to cry. Two hot tears, no more, squeezed out of his
rheumy eyes and ran down his gray cheeks.

"Look at 'im," said Charlie Ponte, pointing
at Bert with his chin. "Look at 'im. Bert, you look like a fucking
fool. If I wasn't so pissed off, I'd be embarrassed for you."

"Be embarrassed for yourself, ya stupid
dago. Be embarrassed that a fuckin' idiot like Gino Delgatto is
less of an idiot than you are."

"Ah," said Ponte, "you trying to insult me?
A pathetic old fuck like you, trying to insult me? Well, you know
what, Bert, I ain't insulted. At least now you're saying something.
Tony, get ready to splatter the dog. Dog brains all over the place,
then he goes inna gahbidge. So come on, old lady, insult me some
more. Come on."

Tony's trigger hand poked obscenely into the
cone of yellow light, and Don Giovanni looked up curiously at the
muzzle of the gun. Joey had gone limp in Bruno's murderous embrace.
The fumes from Vicki's toiletries were winding through the air in
almost visible curls of sickening sweetness.

"Charlie," Bert said, "ain't it fucking
obvious? He decoyed you, man. He's makin' you look stupid. You're
out here fuckin' around with a nobody, an old man, and a dog, and
he's getting away with your emeralds."

Ponte put his hands into the pockets of his
pale gray suit jacket, and considered. Then he took them out again
and tugged an earlobe. The thug called Tony took the opportunity to
turn a queasy glance on his employer. "Boss, I ain't never shot a
dog before. A dog, it's, like, different. I kinda like dogs."

"Fucking stinks in here," said Ponte, as if
he'd just now noticed.

"Charlie, lissena me," Bert pressed. "I
don't give a fuck if you get your stones back or not. But if I was
you, I'd be wondering where Gino is right now."

Ponte shuffled his dainty shoes on the
cement floor, then absently kicked at a scrap of the cosmetics
case. Chinese newspaper came out.

"So really, boss," said Tony, "I gotta shoot
the fucking dog, or what? Come on, it's making me, like,
uncomfortable."

—
25 —

"You O.K.?' asked Bert the Shirt.

Joey straightened up slowly and tried to
work a kink out of his neck. His right ear was ringing from the
press of the gun muzzle behind it, and his scalp felt as if he were
wearing a very tight hat. He found a handkerchief and wiped his
face. That was the only part of the episode that would really stay
with him and rankle: that he'd been spit on. Pain, people didn't
remember, not really; humiliation, they did. Humiliation changed
people, for better or for worse. Either it beat them down so that
they stayed down, pathetic but weirdly grateful to have their
spirits killed and their hopes ended, or it whipped them into a
froth of defiance, sent them skittering into realms of resource
they didn't know they had. "Me, I'm all right," said Joey. "How
'bout you?"

Bert was sitting on the desk. He'd half
walked to it, half collapsed on it when Charlie Ponte, shrugging,
had decided it would be beside the point to kill his captives just
then, and the thugs had left the shed. Outside, the big tires of
their two dark Lincolns had churned loose garbage; then they were
gone. Now Bert was holding Don Giovanni in his lap. The dog was
licking his hands and doing pirouettes around his thighs, looking
for the most comfortable place to settle in. "I ain't been so
worked up since the day I died," the old man said. "I almost forgot
what it was like to get that tunnel vision, to feel that pounding
inna neck. But I think I'm all right now."

"Then let's get the fuck outta heah," said
Joey. "One more minute and I swear I'm gonna puke."

They stepped over the remains of Vicki's
beauty aids and went through the doorless frame into the
orange-pink light of the dump. Overhead, cackling gulls wheeled,
sharply silhouetted against the sky. A whiff of salt from the Gulf
sliced through the stink of trash. Some twenty yards away on the
flank of the garbage mountain, Joey's Caddy and Gino's T-Bird were
parked side by side. The dented, rusted Eldorado, with its smashed
windshield, corroded roof springs, cracked upholstery, and dimpled
fender, looked like it had reached its consummation on the trash
heap.

"Come on," said Joey, "I'll drive you
home."

"What about Gino's car?"

Joey, insanely glad to have some small
outlet for his disgust, approached the Thunderbird and spat on its
hood. "Fuck Gino," he said. "And fuck Gino's car. Let Gino tell
Hertz how their new T-Bird ended up inna gahbidge."

Then he remembered that it was probably Dr.
Greenbaum who would have to do the explaining. Getting even with
Gino had never been easy.

On the ride back to Key West, Joey and Bert
craned their necks toward the open top of the Caddy, trying to
breathe in the night air rather than their clothes. When Joey
turned off U.S. 1 and onto A1A, Bert worked his loose lips for a
few seconds before he managed to form some words. Then he said,
"Joey. I'm, like, ashamed."

"Wha' for?"

The old man rested his long hands on his
bony knees, and his dog propped its chin on the inside of his
elbow. "Ya know," he began. "That I broke down, that I cried." But
then he changed his mind. "Nah, fuck it, not that I cried. But that
I was, like, selfish. Like, I made it sound like I care more about
my dog than about your brother."

"Well, you do, Bert. I don't blame you for
that."

'Yeah, but it ain't right. I mean, a human
being, a relative."

"He ain't your relative," Joey said.

"Even so," said Bert. "Taunting Ponte like
that. O.K., our ass was in a sling, it was a gamble. You and me, we
ain't inna gahbidge. But I feel like I sold Gino out."

"Bert, hey, let's keep things like in
proportion heah. Gino sold us out. Besides, he has any brains, he's
half-way back to New York by now."

The retired mobster absently stroked his dog
and looked out the window at the Florida Straits. There was just
enough doubt in his face so that Joey said, "You think he isn't
halfway to New York?"

Bert shrugged. He was barely equal to the
effort of lifting his shoulders. "Me, I'm too tired to figure. My
nerves are shot and I wanna go to bed."

Joey drove. A line of mild moonlight tracked
the Caddy as it lumbered along the water's edge, but Joey was
damned if it seemed to him that the moon was picking him out for
anything special. "Shit," he muttered. Then he pushed out a furious
breath. "Goddammit, Bert. I'm like finally gettin' my legs under me
heah, finally gettin' a little bit comfortable—"

He shook his head, slapped the steering
wheel, and left it at that.

At the front gate of the Paradiso
condominium, Bert the Shirt got slowly out of the car, his dog
nestled in the crook of his arm. "Joey," he said, "what's goin' on,
it's all fucked up, but it ain't your problem, don't let it poison
your life. And another thing—I swear to God I hope I'm wrong, but
I'm apologizing in advance. If your brother Gino gets whacked
tonight, I'm really, really sorry."

—
26 —

But Gino Delgatto did not in fact get
whacked that night, nor did he head back to New York.

By the time Charlie Ponte and his boys
retraced their steps from Mount Trashmore, Gino, for reasons known
only to himself, was back at the Flagler House hotel. He'd let the
valet park his second rented car, and had locked himself in his
room, where he remained effectively barricaded for the next week.
He saw no visitors and took no calls. He ordered room service meals
three times a day, and kept his hand on his pistol in the pocket of
his bathrobe when they were delivered. With dinner came a bottle of
Jack Daniel's. He slept with the gun under his pillow, and kept a
small revolver near the toilet.

After three days of nonstop television,
paranoia, drunkenness, and Gino's increasingly perfunctory
embraces, Vicki announced that she'd had enough and was going back
to Queens. She did not believe Gino when he told her that she would
surely be kidnapped on the way to the airport, and that, at the
very feast, she would be strip-searched by a rough-fingered bunch
who would diligently probe every orifice where emeralds could
possibly be hidden, and would detain her until, with the help of
strong laxatives, her lovely young innards had been purged of all
precious stones.

"They'll make you shit in a strainer, Vicki.
You wanna shit in a strainer with five guys watching?"

"This is some vacation, Gino," she groused.
"I shoulda stood in Queens."

He swilled whiskey and didn't answer.

"They wouldn't do that," she resumed after a
moment's pondering. "You're just trying to get me to stay."

"No I'm not," said Gino. He was unshaven,
jowly, his color was bad, his eyes were bloodshot, and he gave off
the yellow smell of bourbon filtered through an overtaxed liver.
"I'm fuckin' sick of ya, ya want the truth. Ya wanna go, go."

She got as far as the swath of shade thrown
by the hotel awning. Then she saw the dark blue Lincoln. It was
parked not more than thirty yards from her taxi. Ponte's crew
wasn't even bothering to be stealthy anymore; in Key West, where
private life was public and strange behavior was the norm, they
didn't need to be. They were just waiting, and they had the whole
world to wait in. Gino and Vicki had their hotel room, a cubicle
maybe twenty feet square, with a rumpled bed, a television set, a
chair that skin stuck to when sweaty, and a tiny balcony that Gino
was now afraid to go out on. Vicki went back upstairs, stopping
only at the hotel pharmacy to buy some fresh cosmetics and a stack
of magazines.

By day five Gino was drinking bourbon with
his breakfast grapefruit and talking back to game-show hosts. He
could barely bring himself to touch his girlfriend, and she could
barely stand to be touched, but there was nothing else to do.
Outside, the sun moved across the sky, glared through the windows,
turned the walls orange at sunset. Food arrived. Sleep came
fitfully.

"Gino, this is really fucking crazy," Vicki
said, lying naked and bored after a passionless poke. "I mean, like
psychotic. When can we get outta here?"

He lifted himself on an elbow, scratched his
hairy belly, and swirled his Jack Daniel's in the smudged glass. He
couldn't bring himself to say so, but he didn't think they'd ever
get out of there, unless he came up with a plan. And after a week
of thinking about it night and day, while drinking, while screwing,
while dreaming frenzied and terrifying dreams, he didn't have so
much as a shred of an idea.

—

"So Joey," Sandra asked, "what's really
going on with Gino?"

They were in bed at the compound. A light
breeze puffed out the curtains and a waning moon threw just enough
light so that dim stripes were cast across the quilt by the slatted
blinds.

"You really wanna know?"

A week before, she hadn't wanted to, or
maybe it had just seemed to her that Joey didn't want to tell her.
Couples must conspire to hide things from one another; it's too
difficult for either party to do alone. Joey had come home clearly
shaken and reeking of garbage. Sandra said she'd been worried, had
called the hospital, didn't know Vicki's last name, asked about a
young woman who'd been knocked through a window by a moped; the
emergency room had handled no such case, and Sandra had felt like a
fool. Joey said that Gino had lied, it was one of Gino's crazy
schemes. And that was all he said. Sandra, as happened not
infrequently, was faced with the choice of pressing or changing the
subject. But where was the line between pressing and nagging? So
she asked him if he wanted some crab claws. He wasn't hungry. He'd
put his clothes in the trash, taken a long shower, and sat up
drinking the wine meant for dinner while Sandra had gone to
sleep.