Primary Colors (48 page)

"But who approached you? Was it Picker himself?"

"Oh come on now! And you claim to be active in national politics?" Figueroa said. "The game has fallen on hard times."

"Did you deal with Picker at all on this?" Libby asked.

"No," he said. "Not on this. You'd see him around, though. Down in Miami. He made the scene."

"He made the scene?"

"Well, Toni's family was into everything good, if you know what I'm saying--and Freddy and Toni, you'd see them around in the mid-seventies, together and apart, sometimes very much apart." He chuckled appreciatively.

"Who was the other man?" I asked.

He looked at Judy, then Libby, then me. "Oh, you mean the guy Toni left him for?" He said. "Some Anglo attorney up there, in Tallahassee." "And the governor, what was he like? How well did you know him?" Libby asked.

"He was okay. He was smart, he could do the job. 'Course, he wasn't the saint you're seeing now--that's like, hilarious. But then, none of us were saints back then. And everybody's a saint now. At least, that's the way it looks. That's the style. I love how everyone's working so hard to be clean these days, and they're still getting scorched--and for what? For nothing, compared to what used to go on. This is a crazy business. Hard times for party animals. You should talk to Eddie Reyes, the brother-in-law. He knew Freddy real good." "Was he the guy you did business with?" Libby asked.

"Everybody did business with Eddie," Figueroa said. "He was just a real public-spirited individual."

"I need a SHOWER," Libby said as we headed south in the red Chrysler LeBaron convertible she had rented. ("Might as well live it up," she'd said. "This'll be paid off ten cents on the dollar by the defunct Stanton for President campaign.")

"Not much of a scandal," I said.

"Fucking sleazeball," she said. Her wild gray hair was blowing out behind her in the evening breeze. "I touched his hand. YUCK: COOTIES!"

"So, we go to see Eddie Reyes, if he'll see us," I said. "Then what?" "Pottsie," she said. "Lipinsky's husband. Pottsie was a statie. Staties know everything. We'll have a nice quiet dinner with the PotterLipinskys tomorrow night."

Libby had made mom reservations at a place called L'Afrique, an Art Deco hotel on the ocean in South Beach--which, it was immediately clear, had gotten high marks from Libby's favorite gay travel guide. It was a fabulous place, a carnal theme park: the bellboys were choice beefcake--dressed as native bearers, bare-chested, in loincloths and sandals (this being a politically correct theme park, they came in all colors). The lobby was fantastic, way over the top Neo-Bwana style, all palms and rattan furniture with mud cloth cushions sitting on a giant leopard-print rug. There were trickling fountains and rainforest vegetation and zebra skins, masks, spears and thatch on the walls. The lobby bar had waiters wearing pith helmets and sarongs; other servants wafted about offering party favors and waving palm-frond fans. The piped music--very low and seductive--was Olatunji and his Drums of Passion; everyone seemed to be moving to the beat. "BUMMMERRR," Libby stage-whispered.

"Too sedate, Lib?" I asked.

"I was expecting something more . . . bicoastal," she said as we followed a snaking slate path toward the registration desk. "At least, that's what the guide said."

"How disappointing," I said. "So, do we have to stay here?"

"It's late, I'm wiped," Libby said. "And this is going to cost the Stanton campaign a shitload of money. They charge whorehouse rates in this joint."

The rooms were something of a comedown after the scene in the lobby. Mine was pink and bare, with fifties motel furniture--another conceit, obviously--and jalousie windows facing the ocean. I flipped on the television, lay down on the bed and felt antsy. I called Daisy, got her phone machine and didn't leave a message.

I went for a walk. On a side street off the ocean I saw a crowd of young people--men and women, young and pretty, carrying pastel drinks in plastic glasses--spilling out from a club called the Awful Surge. I went inside and stood at the bar, which was bathed in cherry light and decorated with driftwood and seashells. I ordered a margarita with a double shot. A bar band wearing Hawaiian shirts was playing Beach Boys loud enough so that when you talked, you had to yell directly into the other person's ear.

The ear I chose belonged to a woman who would have been one of my classic thermonuclear-holocaust fantasies on the E train. Her name was either Claudia or Gloria. She was Latino, copper-skinned
,
wearing an aquamarine halter top and black bicycle shorts. She smiled at me; I smiled at her. I bought her a drink. We chatted, rudimentarily. She worked in a hotel. She asked me what I did. "ESTATE SALES," I yelled. "WHAT?" she asked. "I SELL DEAD PEOPLE'S PROPERTY," I said. "YOU FROM HERE?" she asked. "New York," I said, less confidently. "You want to dance?"

We danced: "Little Deuce Coupe" and "Surfer Girl." I am not a big Beach Boys fan--they'd always seemed an apotheosis of Caucasian dorkiness--and "Surfer Girl" may well be the stupidest song ever written, but it is very, very slow. And Claudia-Gloria snuggled close, her hands up my neck; and I put my hands down by the small of her back, just where her hips flared, touching the soft skin between her halter top and bicycle shorts. "Where you staying?" she whispered, her lips and a tiny hint of tongue on my ear.

"Uhhh . . . L'Afrique," I said.

"That's the faggot hotel," she said, pulling back, looking at me. "Are you?"

"No," I said, "And I can prove it."

I proved it, then promptly fell asleep. And awakened in the darkness, Claudia-Gloria sleeping softly, facing me, her mouth slightly open, a complete stranger. I shoved back, toward the edge of the bed, and stared at her, searching for signs of familiarity. There were none. I was wide awake now, feeling slightly freaked--not quite guilty, but alone, and the aloneness was a physical state, a dull ache--and claustrophobic, too, in that bed.

I got up and went to the windows. They were locked shut. I fumbled about, trying to crank them open; no luck. I could see occasional ruffles of white along the inky beachfront: waves breaking. I couldn't hear the ocean; I was cut off from it. Each of Claudia-Gloria's breaths seemed to fill the room, pressing against me, pushing me out. I threw on my clothes and whipped through the lobby--mostly empty now, though several bearers and bwanas were engaged in heavy petting on the rattan couches in dark corners--and I went out to the ocean, tremendously relieved by the warmth of the air and the fact that I could now hear the waves. I took several steps out into the sand, bu
t i
t was squishy and uncomfortable-too much of an effort-and so I retreated to a bench on the grass strip near the sidewalk, beneath the palms, and I sat there, watching the ocean, watching the dawn come, my mind frozen, except for thoughts of Daisy and the sudden, intolerable emptiness of being alone.

Eddie Reyes was a very busy man, but he agreed to see us late that afternoon. Libby also arranged for us to have dinner with Judy Lipinsky and her husband, Ralph Potter, that evening, at Joe's Stone Crab. "So who was the girl?" Libby asked, as we drove across the causeway to Miami that afternoon.

"What girl?"

"Henry, you've known me for how long? We're fucking partners in crime. And you're still trying to GAME ME? For God's sake, little man-you sit:elflike sex. I got a nose for nookie."

I looked at her.

"Okay," she said. "I called your room this morning. She answered. She said, 'Tell your friend he's a nice guy, but it's only polite to say thank you and good-bye.' You booked on her, Henri? You fled?" "Do we have to talk about this?" I asked.

"What else IS there?" Libby screeched. "You don't have much of a conversational repertoire, Henry. There isn't too much we can talk about-you don't know shit about music, I've never heard you discuss science or philosophy, or the wonders of East Asia. You're a stunted fucking little guy-politics, politics, politics. And there ain't much politics left for us now, is there? We are at the END of politics. So what you got without politics, Henri?" she said, suddenly quieting down-for effect. "You don't even have the courage to tell Daisy you love her."

"Jesus, Libby," I said.

"Pathetic, Henry."

I would like to be able to report that Eddie Reyes's office didn'
t l
ook like something lifted directly out of Miami Vice; I would like t
o r
eport that it wasn't all angles and starkness. But I can't. It was, an
d s
o was he. His bare rectangular desk, green marble on thin legs, stood in front of a dramatic isosceles triangle window; the room was irregularly shaped, acute and unpredictable--the art, clashing with itself elegantly on soft, charcoal-gray walls, was solid geometry: a tangerine circle, a cerulean rhombus, a royal purple square. The floor was highly polished onyx plastic. Libby, in a fuchsia-andchartreuse tie-dyed muumuu, fit this place perfectly. I felt lost and a little giddy. Had serious, sentient humans ever conducted business here? Then again, I imagined how we--Libby and I--probably looked to Eddie Reyes: several exits past serious, that was for damn sure.

Eddie was wearing a white linen suit and a creamy white silk shirt, opened several buttons down, a gold cross nestled in his hairy chest; he had a slight paunch. His hair was dark and straight but not oiled; his sideburns were bushy and turning gray. He wore a Rolex with a heavy gold band, a wedding ring, a diamond stud earring.

His secretary, a tall woman impeccably dressed in a white blouse, tight gray skirt (the color of the walls) and black heels, served us Perrier in triangular glasses. We sat in two very austere chrome-and-black leather chairs facing the desk; Eddie stood. There was no chair behind the desk. This was a room for audiences, not paperwork.

"So," Eddie said, with the confidence of a man used to being the smartest person in a room. "Rusty Figueroa has spilled the beans. He once took a campaign contribution from Sunshine Associates. Shocking, don't you think? I hope you won't be too disappointed if I confess everything immediately. A terrible crime, giving campaign contributions."

"It's not the money," Libby said. "It's who gave it. And why."

"I gave it," Eddie said, "because I found Rusty Figueroa's philosophy of governance enlightened. Oh, there were some specific policy differences, but . . ."

"You were in business with the governor's wife and the governor's brother," Libby said. "You were trying to get action on a specific project from the state."

"Yes, I was in business with my sister and the governor's idiot brother," Eddie replied sharply. "As for the 'action,' prove it."

"I don't have to," Libby said. "It's gonna look like shit."

"I am absolutely heartbroken about that, Ms. Holden," he said derisively. "I had so wished that Freddy would get to be president." Then, diving into a cruder, faster tone: "But, I most say, if the motherfucker has to go down, it would be just too fucking perfect that he go down over a nothing piece of shit like this. It would be more appropriate than you can imagine. I'll even tell you why: Yes, Toni and I had this business. Yes, we hired that idiot Andy Picker after he drove his family business into the ground. And yes, I hoped that having the governor as a brother-in-law wouldn't be a . . . liability. But it was." Eddie Reyes sat down on the edge of his desk, leaned toward us. "See, the Pickers were broke. Andy was as bad at trading leases as Freddy was good. Poppy didn't want Toni to be broke too, so he told me to take care of her, and yeah, I thought I'd be able to make a little dough for myself in the process. Money was falling from the clouds in those days. But Senor Recto--Mr. Righteous, Governor Picker--he wouldn't cut me any slack. There was a shitload of Section Eight money just lying around. I had a fucking consortium ready to roll--and Freddy said, 'No way.' " Reyes got up off the desk, began prowling the room. "So, yeah, we did do Tidewater. We did it straight up. We did it like every other fucking condo--and that motherfucker still wanted to line item veto it. I'll bet Rusty didn't tell you that. It was just fucking spectacular that Freddy could be so straight and so bent at the same time. It was practically acrobatic, a wonder of modern science. And so, yes--yeah, absolutely--Toni did eventually convince him to treat Tidewater just like every other fucking project. But I gotta tell you, the story here isn't what we did--but what we didn't do, what he stopped us from doing."

There wasn't much we could say to that. Eddie seemed almost disappointed that we didn't have more questions. He stopped pacing, shook his head. "Senor Recto. Mr. Rectum. Mr. Asshole." He laughed. "Mr. President? This is one fabulous fucking country, you know that?"

"But he didn't stop you from going into business like that," Libby tried, flustered for once, groping. "You hired his wife, his brother--and he didn't stop you. He must have known . . ."

"Known?" Eddie scoffed. "What the fuck did he know? He was half stoned most of the time."

"Stoned?" Libby blurted.

"Oh, dear," Edgardo Reyes said, putting his hands beside his cheeks and rolling his eyes, viciously mocking Munch. "I really have gone and said something I oughtn't. Haven't I?"

"Stoned how?"

"Toot toot tootsie goodbye," Eddie sang. "Toot toot tootsie don't cry. . . . You look disappointed," he said, reading our faces too well. "Fucking tnaricon cokehead."