Native Tongue (41 page)

“I don’t get it,” said Danny Pogue. “I thought the FBI paid big bucks—what’s a baby Magnavox go for, two hundred retail? You’d think he could spring for color.”

“Who knows, maybe he spends it all on clothes. Come on, let’s
take off.” Bud Schwartz wanted to be long gone before the mailman arrived and noticed what had happened to the front door.

Danny Pogue turned on the portable TV and said, “That’s not a bad picture.” The noon news was just starting.

“I said let’s go, Danny.”

“Wait, look at this!”

A video clip showed a heavyset man in golf shoes being hoisted on a stretcher. The man’s shirt was drenched in blood, but his eyelids were half open. A plastic oxygen mask covered the man’s face and nose, but the jaw moved as if he were trying to speak. The newscaster reported that the shooting had taken place at a new resort development called Falcon Trace, near Key Largo.

“Lou! He did it!” exclaimed Danny Pogue. “You were right.”

“Only trouble is, that ain’t Mr. Kingsbury.”

“You sure?”

Bud Schwartz sat down in front of the television. The anchorman had tossed the sniper story to a sportscaster, who was somberly recounting the stellar career of Jake Harp. The golfer’s photograph, taken in happier times, popped up on a wide green mat behind the sports desk.

Danny Pogue said, “Who the hell’s that?”

“Not Kingsbury,” grunted Bud Schwartz. The mishap confirmed his worst doubts about Lou’s qualifications as a hit man. It was unbelievable. The asshole had managed to shoot the wrong guy.

“Know what?” said Danny Pogue. “There’s a Jake Harp Cadillac in Boca Raton where I swiped a bunch of tape decks once. Is that the same guy? This golfer?”

Bud Schwartz said, “I got no earthly idea.” What was all this crap the TV guy was yakking about—career earnings, number of Top Ten finishes, average strokes per round, percentage of greens hit in regulation. To Bud Schwartz, golf was as foreign as polo. Except you didn’t see so many fat guys playing polo.

“The main thing is, did they catch the shooter?”

“Nuh-huh.” Danny Pogue had his nose to the tube. “They said he got away in a boat. No arrests, no motives is what they said.”

Bud Schwartz was trying to picture Lou from Queens at the helm of a speedboat, racing for the ocean’s horizon.

“He’s gonna be pissed,” Danny Pogue said.

“Yeah, well, I don’t guess his boss up North is gonna be too damn thrilled, either. Whackin’ the wrong man.”

“He ain’t dead yet. Serious but stable is what they said.”

Bud Schwartz said it didn’t really matter. “Point is, it’s still a fuckup. A major
major
fuckup.”

The Mafia had gunned down a life member of the Professional Golfers Association.

Pedro Luz finally emerged from the storage room, where he had been measuring his penis. He rolled the wheelchair out to Kingsbury Lane for the morning rehearsal of the Summerfest Jubilee, a greatly embellished version of the nightly musical pageant. Pedro Luz needed something to lift his spirits. His leg had begun to throb in an excruciating way; no combination of steroids and analgesics put a dent in the pain. To add psychic misery to the physical, Pedro Luz had now documented the fact that his sexual wand was indeed shrinking as a result of prolonged steroid abuse. At first, Pedro Luz had assured himself that it was only an optical illusion; the more swollen his face and limbs became, the smaller everything else appeared to be. But weeks of meticulous calibrations had produced conclusive evidence: His wee-wee had withered from 10.4 centimeters to 7.9 centimeters in its flaccid state. Worse, it seemed to Pedro Luz (although there was no painless way to measure) that his testicles had also become smaller—not yet as tiny as BBs, as Churrito had predicted, but more like gumballs.

These matters weighed heavily on his mind as Pedro Luz sat in the broiling sun and watched the floats rumble by. He was hoping that the sight of Annette Fury’s regal bosom would buoy his mood, and was disappointed to see that she had been replaced as Princess Golden Sun. The new actress looked familiar, but Pedro Luz couldn’t place the face. She was a very pretty girl, but the black wig needed some work, as did the costume—buckskin culottes and a fringed halter top. Her singing was quite lovely, much better than Annette’s, but Pedro Luz would’ve preferred larger breasts. The lioness that shared the Seminole float was in no condition to rehearse; panting miserably in the humidity, the animal sprawled half-conscious on one side, thus thwarting the catstrad-dling exit that culminated the princess’s dramatic performance.

As the parade disbanded, Pedro Luz eased the wheelchair off the curb and approached the Seminole float. The pretty young singer was not to be seen; there was only the driver of the float and Dr. Kukor, the park veterinarian, who had climbed aboard to revive the heatstruck lioness. Dr. Kukor was plainly flabbergasted by the sight of Pedro Luz.

“I lost my foot in an accident,” the security chief explained.

Dr. Kukor hadn’t noticed the missing foot. It was the condition of Pedro Luz’s face, so grossly inflated, that had generated the horror. The man looked like a blowfish: puffed cheeks, bulging lips, teeny eyes wedged deep under a pimpled, protuberant brow.

To Pedro Luz, Dr. Kukor directed the most inane inquiry of a long and distinguished career: “Are you all right?”

“Just fine. Where’s the young lady?”

Dr. Kukor pointed, and Pedro Luz spun the wheelchair to see: Princess Golden Sun stood behind him. She was zipping a black Miami Heat warm-up jacket over the halter.

Pedro Luz introduced himself and said, “I’ve seen you before, right?”

“It’s possible,” said Carrie Lanier, who recognized him instantly
as the goon who shot up her double-wide, the creep she’d run over with the car. She noticed the bandaged trunk of his leg, and felt a pang of guilt. It passed quickly.

“You sing pretty nice,” Pedro Luz said, “but you could use a couple three inches up top. If you get my meaning.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

“I know a doctor who specializes in that sort of thing. Maybe I could get you a discount.”

“Actually,” said Carrie, patting her chest, “I kind of like the little fellas just the way they are.”

“Suit yourself.” Pedro Luz scratched brutally at a raw patch on his scalp. “I’m trying to figure where I saw you before. Take off the wig for a second, okay?”

Carrie Lanier pressed her hands to her eyes and began to cry—plaintive, racking sobs that attracted the concern of tourists and the other pageant performers.

Pedro Luz said, “Hey, what’s the matter?”

“It’s not a wig!” Carrie cried. “It’s my real hair.” She turned and scampered down a stairwell into The Catacombs.

“Geez, I’m sorry,” said Pedro Luz, to no one. Flustered, he rolled full tilt toward the security office. Speeding downhill past the Wet Willy, he chafed his knuckles trying to brake the wheelchair. When he reached the chilled privacy of the storage room, he slammed the door and drove the bolt. In the blackness Pedro Luz probed for the string that turned on the ceiling’s bare bulb; he found it and jerked hard.

The white light revealed a shocking scene. Someone had entered Pedro’s sanctuary and destroyed the delicate web of sustenance. Sewing shears had snipped the intravenous tubes into worthless inch-long segments, which littered the floor like plastic rice. The same person had sliced open every one of Pedro’s unused IV bags; the wheelchair rested, literally, in a pond of liquid dextrose.

But by far the worst thing to greet Pedro Luz was the desolate sight of brown pill bottles, perhaps a half-dozen, open and empty on the floor. Whoever he was, the sonofabitch had flushed Pedro’s anabolic steroids down the john. The ceramic pestle with which he had so lovingly powdered his Winstrols lay shattered beneath the toilet tank.

And, on the wall, a message in coral lipstick. Pedro Luz groaned and backed the wheelchair so he could read it easier. A wild rage heaved through his chest and he began to snatch items from the storage shelves and hurl them against the cinder block: nightsticks, gas masks, flashlights, handcuffs, cans of Mace, pistol grips, boxes of bullets.

Only when there was nothing left to throw did Pedro Luz stop to read the words on the wall again. Written in a loopy flamboyant script, the message said:

Good morning, Dipshit!

Just wanted you to know I’m not dead.

Have a nice day, and don’t forget your Wheaties!

It was signed, “Yours truly, J. Winder.”

Pedro Luz emitted a feral cry and aimed himself toward the executive gym, where he spent the next two hours alone on the bench press, purging the demons and praying for his testicles to grow back.

Somehow Charles Chelsea summoned the creative energy necessary for fabrication:

Kingsbury approved the press release with a disgusted flick of his hand. He drained his third martini and asked Chelsea if he had ever before witnessed a man being shot.

“Not that I can recall, sir.”

“Close up, I mean,” Kingsbury said. “Dead bodies are one thing—car wrecks, heart attacks—I’m not counting those. What I mean is,
bang!”

Chelsea said, “It happened so damn fast.”

“Well, you know who they were aiming at?
Mot
, that’s who. How about that!” Kingsbury pursed his lips and drummed his knuckles.

“You?” Chelsea said. “Who would try to kill you?” He instantly thought of Joe Winder.

But Kingsbury smiled drunkenly and began to hum the theme from
The Godfather
.

Chelsea said, “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“Of course there’s something I’m not telling you. There’s tons of shit I’m not telling you. What, I look like a total moron?”

Watching Francis Kingsbury pour another martini, Chelsea felt like seizing the bottle and guzzling himself into a Tanqueray coma. The time had come to look for another job; the fun had leaked out of this one. A malevolent force, unseen and uncontrollable, had perverted Chelsea’s role from cheery town crier to conniving propagandist. Reflecting on the past weeks, he realized he should’ve quit on the day the blue-tongued voles were stolen, the day innocence was lost.

We are all no longer children, Chelsea thought sadly. We are potential co-defendants.

“No offense,” Kingsbury was saying, “but you’re just a flack. I only tell you what I’ve absolutely got to tell you. Which is precious damned little.”

“That’s the way it should be,” Chelsea said lifelessly.

“Right! Loose dicks sink ships. Or whatever.” Kingsbury slurped at the gin like a thirsty mutt. “Anyhow, don’t worry about me. I’m taking—well, let’s just say, the necessary precautions. You can be goddamn sure.”

“That’s wise of you.”

“Meanwhile, sharpen your pencil. I ordered us more animals.” Kingsbury wistfully studied his drink. “Who’s the guy in the Bible, the one with the ark. Was it Moses?”

“Noah,” Chelsea said. Boy, was the old man smashed.

“Yeah, Noah, that’s who I feel like. Me and these fucking critters. Anyhow, we’re back in the endangered-species business, saving the animals. There oughta be some publicity when they get here. You see to it.”

The woman named Rachel Lark had phoned all the way from New Zealand. She said she’d done her best on such short notice, and said Kingsbury would be pleased when he saw the new attractions for the Rare Animal Pavilion. I hope so, he’d told her, because we could damn sure use some good news.

Fearing the worst, Charles Chelsea said, “What kind of animals are we talking about?”

“Cute is what I ordered. Thirty-seven hundred dollars’ worth of cute.” Kingsbury snorted. “Could be anything. The point is, we’ve got to rebound, Charlie. We got a fucking void to fill.”

“Right.”

“Speaking of which, we also need another golfer. In case Jake croaks, God forbid.”

Chelsea recoiled at the cold-bloodedness of the assignment. “It
won’t look good, sir, not with what happened this morning. It’s best if we stick by Jake.”

“Sympathy’s all fine and dandy, Charlie, but we got more than golf at stake here. We got waterfront to sell. We got patio homes. We got club memberships. Can Jake Harp—don’t get me wrong—but in his present situation can Jake do promotional appearances? TV commercials? Celebrity programs? We don’t even know if Jake can still breathe, much less swing a fucking five-iron.”

For once Francis Kingsbury expressed himself in nearly cogent syntax. It must be excellent gin, Chelsea thought.

“I want you to call Nicklaus,” Kingsbury went on. “Tell him money is no problem.”

“Jack Nicklaus,” the publicity man repeated numbly.

“No,
Irving
Nicklaus. Who the hell do you think! And if you can’t get the Bear, try Palmer. And if you can’t get Arnie, you try Trevino. And if you can’t get the Mex, try the Shark. And so on. The bigger the better, but make it quick.”