Heart of Palm (11 page)

By the time Gooch rose, stretched, and made his way back from the edge of the deck, Sofia had finished cleaning and departed on her bike, and Frank and Morgan had filled the three stainless-steel refrigerators with the day’s preps. They poured two steaming cups of coffee and sat down at the picnic table outside the kitchen door. Morgan lit a cigarette.

“I got a call this morning,” he said, looking at the land next door, where his own profitable restaurant had stood many years ago, before the fire that claimed it. Morgan never voiced suspicion that the fire had been set, though Frank would not have blamed him if he had. Utina was not a place to appreciate even the most modest forms of prosperity, especially that which belonged to a black man.

“Imagine that,” Frank said. “Who’d wanna call you?”

Morgan flicked ash onto the deck, narrowed his eyes.

“Man wants to build a fancy marina,” he said.

“A marina?”

“Docks. Big boats. Yachts. You know. Rich people stuff.”

“Where?”

“There,” Morgan said, waving his hand toward his own parcel of land. “And here,” he said, continuing the motion with his hand to wave toward the restaurant.

“He wants our land?”

“Look like it. Yours and mine both.”

“Shit.”

“That’s what I said.”

“You tell him where to get off?”

“Started to.” Morgan stubbed out his cigarette, looked out across the water, where a gray egret dropped down from an overhanging live oak bough and waded gracefully into a patch of reeds. “But . . .”

“But what?”

“But I think he mighta been serious,” Morgan said. “And I think he mighta had money.”

“Then he’s not from Utina.”

“Nope. Atlanta.”

“No shit?”

“Atlanta, Georgia,” Morgan said. “A man with money, from Atlanta, Georgia. Susan Holm was right.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was the one said the Atlanta people wanted to come and build a marina right on this spot. Don’t you remember nothing? She was telling us about it last Friday in here.” Frank did not remember anything about last Friday night, other than the feeling of Susan’s thigh pressing against his under the bar.

“Why would he want to do that, Morgan?”

“Beats me. He’s a developer, he says. Alonzo Cryder. That’s his name. Can you beat that name?”

“And he flat out told you he’s got money?”

“Nah. But that’s what Susan says she heard. Don’t you remember?”

Frank sighed. “Morgan, Susan says a lot of stuff. And some of it is even true. But you know what I think? I think this guy is probably just like all the other people who’ve told me they want to buy this place through the years. They think they’ve got all they need to make it run like we do. They’ve got everything except one thing. Cash.”

And it was true. Frank had heard all this before, always from some broken-down Utinian who looked at Frank from the other side of the bar and seemed to come to the notion that Frank Bravo had it made, that the restaurant was a steady paycheck and a solid place to land in a local economy that relied heavily on beer sales, shrimp consumption, and bootlegged Lynyrd Skynyrd albums. Even Carson had made a crack or two—Carson, with his investment practice in St. Augustine, sitting pretty all those years and now, with the recession in full swing and his clients panicking, looking at Frank as though
Frank
was the lucky one,
Frank
was the big winner. Shit. It infuriated him. As if Carson didn’t have it all. The house. The job. The beautiful little girl. And Elizabeth. Carson had Elizabeth. Wasn’t that enough?

The phone inside the restaurant began to ring. Frank got up.

“That’s him,” Morgan said. “That’s the man with the money, I bet you.”

“Morgan,” he said. “Didn’t your mama ever tell you if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is?”

Morgan got up to follow Frank into the restaurant. The phone continued to ring.

“I smell something, Frank,” he said. “And it ain’t just fish.”

“What’s that?”

“I smell money.”

Frank rolled his eyes, picked up the phone.

“Mr. Bravo?” The voice on the line was measured, confident.

“Speaking,” he said.

“And how are you today, sir?”

“Been better. Been worse.”

Chuckling on the line. Too agreeable, Frank thought. He’s humoring me. Already he didn’t like this guy.

“Who is this?” he said.

“Mr. Bravo, my name is Alonzo Cryder. I am the acquisitions director for a real estate development company called Vista Properties. We’re out of Atlanta. Mr. Bravo, may I have a few moments of your time?”

“You out of it? Or in it?”

“Beg pardon?

“Atlanta. You said you were out of it.” Frank always hated that expression. How could you be out of something if you were in it? God knows he was never out of Utina, no matter how much he wanted to be. Morgan waved to catch his attention, then scowled and shook his head at Frank. “
Be nice
,” Morgan mouthed silently. He raised his right hand, rubbed his thumb against his fingers.

“Oh, no, we’re here
in
Atlanta,” said Cryder. “Quite. We’ve been here for nearly thirty years. We’re specialists in Georgia and Florida development, Mr. Bravo.”

“You don’t have to keep calling me Mr. Bravo. I go by Frank.” He didn’t want to give this guy the wrong idea, make him think they were chums, but being called Mr. Bravo always rankled him. It made him think of Dean.

More chuckling. “Oh, thank you, Frank. You know, I never like to presume.”

“So what can I do for you, Alonzo?” Frank said.

“Well, I will cut right to the chase, Frank. I would like to come see you to discuss the possible acquisition of your restaurant property.”

“It’s not for sale.”

“Well, I realize it’s not presently on the market. But I thought you might be interested in having a discussion about the potential opportunity we might be able to offer you.”

Frank looked out through the back door of the kitchen. It was nearly noon, and the sun was bright across the water, making diamond tips and sequins across the surface.

“Why?” he said, after a solid pause.

“Why what?”

“Why do you want to buy it?”

“It’s a lovely piece of land,” Cryder said.

“Yes, I know that.”

“And our company’s president—he has some fondness for your area. He is thinking of acquiring the property as a pet project—something to just hang on to for a while, maybe one day turn into a retreat for his family.”

What was this asshole talking about? “A retreat?”

“Yes, something simple. A place to take the grandkids, get away from the rat race, you know. It’s so far away from everything. It’s so quiet there. Maybe not the best place for a business, as you may be aware, but a nice place to get away from it all. You know what I mean, Frank.”

Frank did not know. But he was beginning to suspect. Cryder was trying to devalue the place, make it appear that the only sensible use for a spot of land like this was for some rich old fart to sit around with his grandkids and pretend to be an outdoorsman. As if.

“It’s pretty hot here,” Frank said.

“Oh, well, yes. It’s hot everywhere in Florida.”

“No, I mean business. We’re hot. We’re busy. The restaurant is worth good money as it is.”

“But you’re not making money, Frank.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Not real money.” Alonzo paused. “Have you ever thought about real money, Frank?”

“Money’s money, Mr. Cryder. It’s all real to me.”

More chuckling. “Alonzo. It’s Alonzo. Well, we’ll see. We’ll see. I think you and I should sit down and talk about real money one day. One day soon. Can I come down to see you?”

“No need,” Frank said. He was suddenly angry, irrationally angry, with a juvenile feeling that felt something like petulance. “I told you, it’s not for sale. It’s my restaurant.”

“Don’t you mean it’s your mother’s restaurant?”

Frank felt a twinge at the top of his spine.

“You seem to know a lot about this property, Mr. Cryder.”

The man on the phone chuckled again. “Oh, it’s easy, you know, we look these things up in the tax rolls. It’s all right there. Your mother owns the restaurant. And your mother and father own the adjacent property to the south, isn’t that right? Your parents’ home? I’ll definitely be interested in speaking with them, as well.”

Your parents’ home
. The twinge increased, a prickling feeling at the nape of Frank’s neck. It was his
mother’s
home. Arla’s. He knew she’d paid off the mortgage with the money left to her from her parents after their deaths. He knew it was Bolton money behind the deed at Aberdeen, and he knew it was Arla’s sweat—and his own and Carson’s too, come to think of it—that had kept the old place standing in the years since his father left. His father. For all Frank knew he could be dead. A vision of Dean’s face appeared before him: dark haired, blue eyed, his skin grown leathery and worn through the years. Even twenty years ago he’d looked beaten. Frank could only imagine what he looked like today. There once was a time when Frank had wished Dean would come back. Now he didn’t know what he wished for.

“Mr. Cryder?”

“Yes, Frank?

“Can I tell you something?”

“Why, of course.”

“Man to man?”

“Yes.”

“You listening?”

“Yes, Frank.” Frank pictured him. Though he’d never met the man, he conjured an image and would have bet money on its accuracy—pallid skin, rubbery jowls, a too-tight oxford shirt with monogrammed cuffs. Hard-soled shoes. Soft hands. He could almost see the man leaning forward, clutching the phone to his ear, an expression of expectancy in his small eyes.

“You talk to my mother about this, or my father for that matter, if you can even find him, and I will kick your fat greedy ass from here to Welaka. The restaurant is not for sale.”

A pause. Then: “Mr. Bravo, I do believe it’s a free country.”

“Not here in Utina, it isn’t. Ain’t nothing free here, asshole.”

Frank hung up the phone.

Three hours later, Uncle Henry’s was hopping. The thin early-lunch crowd had dispersed, displaced by the crack-of-noon late risers looking to drown their previous night’s indiscretions in a plate of fried shrimp and a cold draft. On the back deck, Irma wrestled with bunting, trying to give the place an air of festivity for the evening’s fireworks. Frank had left Morgan in the kitchen and had taken up his usual post behind the bar, where he could survey the restaurant and keep a steady eye on things.

He didn’t hate the bar. He’d built it himself, in fact, had torn out the original Uncle Henry’s bar more than twenty years ago when it had begun to buckle from the weight of so many bent elbows, so many come-ons and boasts and debates, so many memories. He was glad to have it gone. The new bar, Frank’s bar, was made of soft yellow pine but coated with a layer of resin thick as a man’s thumb, so rather than nicks or cuts in the wood the bar had, over time, collected soft dips and creases that gave it a comforting, welcoming appearance, like a down duvet. Frank tended it alone, always, even in the busiest parts of the night, when the patrons stood three deep before him, calling his name and waving bills in the air. He couldn’t stand anyone behind the bar with him, so he compensated for the lack of help by becoming faster, faster, faster, a master of efficiency and consolidation of effort. He liked the busy times best of all. He didn’t have to talk with anyone then.

Except that strategy was failing this afternoon with Mac Weeden, who sat on his usual stool and insisted on keeping up a running conversation with Frank no matter how many times the latter had to duck back and forth along the inside of the bar, hitting the taps, pouring whiskey and gin, clearing the empties. Mac was a tidy, compact man with close-cropped hair that had turned a premature gray when he was in his early thirties but which actually served, today, as a not-unpleasing complement to his pale blue eyes, at least judging by the number of women Frank had seen Mac successfully chat up at the bar. Frank had known Mac since kindergarten, had shared a locker with him at Utina High. A University of Florida College of Law graduate, Mac had been, for a time, Utina’s only lawyer until an unfortunate episode with the teenaged daughter of a client had cost him his law license and his reputation, for what little that was worth in Utina. He was both smart and garrulous, qualities which, in Frank’s view, did not always come in equal measures within one person, but Mac was an anomaly, likeable in spite of himself. At one time, he probably could have set himself on a professional path that would have taken him out of Utina, out of North Florida, hell, even out of the South had he been so inclined. As it was, Mac was a lonely, disbarred attorney headed down a slippery slope toward alcoholism. He was Utina’s default consultant for spot-on but unlicensed law advice, was the not-so-proud proprietor of Utina’s only Bait/Karaoke business, and was, Frank admitted now as he regarded Mac’s bright eyes and open smile on the other side of the bar, a damn good friend.