Florida Straits (31 page)

"Sure you won't have some?" Peter offered
one last time.

"Nah," said Bruno. "But lemme try this call
again."

Joey shuffled his feet. Peter coaxed the
omelette out of the pan.
Porgy and Bess
kept playing.

"Mr. Ponte," Bruno said. "Yeah, we hooked up
O.K. . .. Nah, we're at a neighbor's. His phone, it like stopped
workin'... . Well, here's the thing, the present you wanted, he
says it's innee ocean.... Yeah, I know that sounds, like, crazy,
but that's what he says. He says he can get it, though.
Tomorrow—"

"Mind if we start eating?" Claude
whispered.

Joey made a maternal sort of gesture, like
motioning food into their mouths. He shot them a pleading look and
he knew it went unnoticed.

"And another thing," Bruno said into the
phone, "he says it's like worth more than we figured. . . . Nah, I
don't know why. . . . Nah, it can't be in Miami, 'cause the present
is down heah, ya know, like inna water. . .. Tomorrow, yeah, he
promises. . . . Sure he invited us to spend the night. . . . Don't
worry, Mr. Ponte, nobody ain't goin' anywhere. . . . Yeah, O.K.,
see ya tomorrow, bright and early."

—
44 —

"Ya think ya could maybe, like, untie her
now?"

It was full dark outside and Tony had
switched on the lamps in the Florida room. In their pools of thick
yellow light, the scene appeared not merely squalid but lewd. By
daylight, Sandra had seemed just one more bargaining chip, the
handiest object of value to grab. With the onset of night, it moved
to the forefront that she was also a woman. The fact of sex came
out like a red star and colored the room in the nastiest way. Brute
impulses hung in the air and everybody squirmed as if under a swarm
of gnats. Sandra struggled to keep her posture. She wanted to
believe that as long as she kept her shoulders back, her tummy in,
as long as she stayed within her own crisp outline, she would be
inviolable. Joey was less sure. The surrounding darkness made a
sort of firefly glow come out of Sandra, and it seemed to Joey that
with every nighttime moment she was bound, the greater the chance
that Tony and Bruno might get really crazy.

"Come on," he coaxed, "you got no reason to
keep her like that."

"Fuck you, jerk-off," Tony said. "We don't
need a reason."

He said it mildly, offhandedly, balancing
his gun on his thigh. But now, suddenly, it was Bruno who seemed
short-fused, exasperated. Maybe it was the strain of having to
speak in front of strangers that had gotten him wound up. He stood
over Joey and grabbed his hair. Then he yanked as if pulling up a
weed.

"Kid," he said through clenched teeth, "I am
really sicka hearin' your mouth. Ya talk too fucking much. In
theah"—he pointed vaguely across the compound—"in heah, all ya do,
ya talk, talk, talk. Like ya got somethin' to say, somethin' to
bargain. But ya know what, kid? You ain't got shit to say, and you
ain't got shit to bargain. No leverage. Zero. You're fucked.
Understand that. Tony, where's that goddamn tape? I'm gonna shut
this motherfucker's mouth so's I can have some peace and quiet
heah."

Tony gave a little shrug; it was all the
same to him. He reached into his jacket pocket and threw Bruno the
roll of duct tape. The big thug tore a length of it off the roll;
it came away with a sound like a ripping parachute. He slapped it
on hard enough to make Joey's teeth hurt, and Joey, though his
hands were free, didn't dare to reach up toward his face. The
adhesive had a vile taste, it was like eating a fistful of
stamps.

Bruno stepped back like a painter admiring
his work. The silver slash where Joey's mouth used to be gave him
satisfaction. But he wasn't quite ready to calm down yet. "Talk,
talk, talk," he muttered. "With this fucking jerk, everything is
talk, talk, talk."

Tony smiled at his colleague's little
tantrum, and the smile tortured his dented lip. The gun was across
his thigh, and he leaned a shade closer to Sandra, who glowed like
a firefly in the nasty light.

—

"Now who could that be?" said Bert the Shirt
d'Ambrosia to his dog.

It was twenty minutes before ten, not a time
when visitors often called. The old man zapped the volume on the
television, slowly got up out of his recliner. His chihuahua
struggled out of its velvet bed and rattled along behind. "Who is
it?"

"It's Peter and Claude. From Joey's
compound."

Bert felt a quick clutch of dread, a feeling
he remembered too well from his working years. It grabbed at his
windpipe and made his rib cage squeeze down on his heart. He opened
the door.

The bartenders stood close together in the
bright light of the hallway. It was Leather Night at Cheeks, and
they were wearing matched calfskin vests fastened in front with
links of chain. "Hi, fellas," said Bert the Shirt. "Come on
in."

"Just for a sec," said Claude. "What
beautiful pajamas." They were plum-colored satin, piped with sky
blue, and the buttons were made of shell.

"My wife bought 'em. Used to pick out all my
clothes. Except shirts. Shirts, I had made. So what is this, guys,
a social call?"

Peter and Claude stood there in the dim
foyer and looked down at their feet. They'd argued a little about
whether they should stop by at all. They had a certain tendency,
they knew, to blow things out of proportion, to take a scrap of
gossip and raise it to the level of tragedy. That happened in Key
West, where life could be so placid, so restful, that people
imagined upheavals, disasters, just to exercise their nerves.

"Bert," said Claude, "did you know Joey has
friends down from Miami?"

Bert bent down and picked up Don Giovanni.
"Why would I know that?" he said, and the bartenders had to start
over.

"He came to use our phone before," said
Peter. "Said his was on the blink. He had this guy with him—"

"Wha'd he look like?" asked the Shirt.

"Big, with 1950s hair," said Claude.

That described most of the people Bert knew.
"He have a name, this guy?"

"Bruno," Peter said.

"
Marrone
," said Bert the Shirt.

"So Bruno used the phone," said Claude, "and
Joey, well, from some things Joey was saying, we sort of got the
feeling, we could be wrong, it might just be our imagination—"

"Spit it out," said Bert.

"We thought maybe he's in trouble and he
wanted us to let you know," said Peter.

Bert absently stroked Don Giovanni and the
dog put its cool nose between the buttons of his pajamas. "Well, ya
did right comin' to tell me. I appreciate it."

The bartenders had expected more of a
response. "Is there something we should do?" Claude asked. "Should
we call the police?"

"No."

Bert volunteered nothing further, and now
Peter and Claude couldn't help feeling gypped. It seemed only fair
to them that they should be given some information in exchange for
theirs.

"Maybe we shouldn't ask this," Claude said
at last, "but Bert, is this, like, Mafia?"

The Shirt launched into a mellifluous pause.
He glanced from Claude to Peter, up at the crystal chandelier, down
at the rug. He petted his dog, started to smile, erased the smile
and put on a look that used to carry menace but had now become an
expression of gentle warning. "You're right," he said softly. "Ya
shouldn't ask."

—

It was midnight. Tony and Bruno had taken
out huge black cigars and the Florida room was wreathed in smoke.
Joey and Sandra faced each other across the width of the sisal rug
and struggled not to gag on the stink of tobacco and the taste of
tape. Outside, the air was heavy, moist, the palm fronds barely
scratched against each other. Good conditions, if they held, for
Clem Sanders to make his dawn departure. If they didn't hold? Joey
chased the thought from his head. He was out of chances. Either the
emeralds appeared tomorrow or everything was over.

Tony yawned. It was a profound yawn that
twisted his scarred lip until it was almost folded double.

A moment passed, then Bruno caught the
contagion. He stretched like a grizzly bear and gave off a sound
like some large thing mating in the jungle. "Fuck I'm tired."

"Take a nap," said Tony. He was showing off,
like he had better stamina. But then he yawned again.

"What about duh lovebirds heah?" Bruno
gestured vaguely toward Joey and Sandra, and in the gesture it was
terrifyingly clear that the captives had stopped being human in his
eyes. They were freight, furniture, mute parcels that needed
guarding and were keeping him awake.

"Duh lovebirds," Tony echoed. He was getting
slaphappy with fatigue, and the word tickled him. "Duh lovebirds,
fuck 'em, whyn't we just tie 'em up together inna sack. Good and
tight. Pack 'em away, forget about it, you and me can take turns
sleeping."

Bruno took a puff of his cigar, then nodded
agreement. He went to untie Sandra just long enough to move her
into the bedroom and truss her up again. He got down on one knee
like a grotesque troubadour and fiddled with the knots at her
ankles. Then he muttered a curse, pulled a knife out of his sock,
and cut the ropes. He did the same with the loops around her
midriff, and the sight of his meaty hand against her body made Joey
feel faint with rage.

For a moment Sandra sat as rigid as she'd
been before she was unbound. Tony leaned over her and looked at her
hard, the way a referee looks at a beaten fighter to see if there
are any brain connections left, any sanity. "Listen, lady," he
said, "you want I should untape your mouth?"

Sandra was afraid to nod. She felt that
anything she did would be the wrong thing, would lead to some
horrendous and perverse response. She just sat.

Tony wagged a warning finger in her face.
"Any noise, any trouble, you're in deep shit, lady. You got
that?"

He grabbed a corner of the duct tape and
ripped it away. The skin around Sandra's mouth seemed to draw into
itself like the foot of a probed clam. She licked her lips and felt
a rough white residue of glue. "I have to pee," she said.

Tony followed her to the bathroom and
guarded the door.

"And you, peckerhead," Bruno said to Joey.
"You gonna be quiet, or do I gotta cut your fucking tongue
out?"

Joey stayed still. It had worked for Sandra.
Bruno grabbed the tape and yanked like he was starting a lawn
mower. Joey's lips felt gone, his teeth felt suddenly as naked as
those of a skeleton. Bruno stared at him with his oil-puddle eyes
and seemed to be daring him to speak. He didn't.

"Get inna bedroom, Romeo."

"Lay down," Tony ordered when they were all
assembled.

Joey and Sandra got into bed, and the thugs
stood over them in some hell-born parody of putting the kids to
sleep. Bruno had loops and scraps of rope slung over his shoulder
like a cowboy. Tony slipped his gun in his pocket to free up his
hands. He tied their outside ankles to the legs of the bed and
their outside wrists to the comers of the headboard. Their inside
wrists he tied together.

Then he brandished the gun. "Listen, you
pains innee ass. One of us is gonna be sittin' right outside heah.
Any noise, any aggravation, we break heads. Got it?"

The thugs turned off the bedroom light, and
half closed the door behind them as they left.

For a few moments Joey and Sandra lay
silent, trying to let some of the fear seep out of them. It was a
moonless night and dim suggestions of starlight came in blue slices
through the louvered windows.

"I hate sleeping on my back," Sandra
whispered.

"Baby, I'm so, so sorry," Joey said. "I
never meant—"

"I know you didn't."

She rubbed the back of her hand against his.
It was almost the only thing she could move. There was love and
forgiveness in the gesture and it put a lump in Joey's throat.

"If they killed us," Sandra went on, "they'd
get away with it, wouldn't they?"

Joey nodded.

"Will they? Will they kill us, Joey?"

"I don't know."

"Why? It's not gonna get them their money,
their jewels, whatever."

"It's not about that, Sandra. It's about not
being made a fool of. It's about winning. They wanna win."

Sandra considered this, then tried without
success to turn onto her side. "And you, Joey, whadda you
want?"

He looked up toward the ceiling. It seemed
very far away. He felt the back of his hand tied against Sandra's.
It was hard to tell whose veins, whose pulse, was whose. What did
he want? He wanted an honorable truce with his old life, and
something like a fair start in the new one. He wanted a kitchen
like Peter and Claude's, one that didn't look like the last tenants
had bolted an hour ago leaving their dishes still in the sink. He
wanted, he admitted now, a normal job, some normal friends who did
normal things. He lay there trying to figure out how to explain all
this to himself, how to sum it up to Sandra, and suddenly the
thread, the cord that held the whole package together, seemed
utterly clear to him. "I want you to marry me," he said.

For a while Sandra said nothing. She was not
the type who fantasized about marriage proposals, and if she had
been, she would not have fantasized being proposed to while her
limbs were tied to bedposts and her free hand was bound with a
greasy rope to that of her betrothed. Besides, was Joey full of
love or just remorse? Maybe, for him, a proposal stood mainly as
the biggest apology he could think of.

"Joey," she finally said, "I've been waiting
a long time to hear you say that."

He gave a little laugh that was full of sad,
sudden, and useless knowledge. "I been waiting a long time to get
ready to say it."

"But listen," said Sandra. "Not tonight. Not
with the state we're in. I'm not gonna hold you to what you say
tonight."