Scarface (33 page)

They ordered up a Roman feast. Caviar to start with and a bottle of the best champagne, here only $280 a crack, since it didn’t have the Babylon Club’s markup. Tony seemed visibly disappointed not to be paying five hundred. Then they had steaks and french fries, spurning all the sauces and medallions and game birds on the menu. The chef nearly wept at steak and french fries, but he served them up. Everyone at The Beachhead, in fact, was going out of his way to accommodate Tony and his arrogant desires. He sent a hundred-and-sixty-dollar bottle of brandy to Victor Shepard’s table, which Shepard returned untouched.

Tony laughed at the tension he caused, and Manolo and Elvira laughed along with him, in a vague gesture of moral support but with less and less conviction. By the end of the meal the men were sated, weary after all from the trip to New York the day before, the buzz of the coke wearing off besides. Elvira got higher and higher, meanwhile. Surreptitiously she would bring the vial up to her nostrils wrapped in a hanky, as if she was suffering from some pesky allergy. She did it every ten minutes. Tony didn’t think twice about it, she did it all the time, but tonight he sat there stuffed with food and looked over irritably at her untouched plate.

“Why don’t you eat?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“So what’d you order it for?”

“I didn’t. You did.”

Silence. It was usually about this time that Manolo would break in and shift the mood, deflecting Tony’s anger, soothing Elvira’s feathers. But he didn’t seem to have it in him tonight. He tossed down another belt of the brandy Shepard had spurned. He figured they’d go at each other for another minute or so, and then Elvira would stalk out, and finally they could leave. But Tony did not fire back at Elvira. Instead he gazed out at the gilded room where the laughing crowd exulted and paraded. His eyes were dead and melancholy. There was no anger now.

“Hey, Manolo, is this it? Is this
all
of it? Eating and drinking and tooting and fucking? And
then
what? You’re fifty before you know it, and you got a bag for a belly and your tits sag and your liver’s got spots and you look like a mummy. Just like these guys.”

“You shouldn’t talk like that, Tony. You’re gonna bring bad luck.”

“You think so, chico? You think Chango the god of fire and thunder’s gonna dump two shits on me?” Tony laughed out loud, as if the knot of rage in his chest had finally broken. He reached into his pocket and drew out his vial. He tapped it and flicked the opening and snorted. He didn’t bother with a hanky. Then he seemed to drink the crowd in even deeper. “But can you dig it, chico,” he said, his voice so soft for a moment they had to hold their breath to hear him. “This is what we worked for. Right here. This is what we kill guys for. For this.”

He turned a stony gaze on Elvira. “How many guys did I kill so I could live with a junkie? Who never eats nothin’. Who can’t wake up till she’s had a Quaalude. Who sleeps all day with black shades on. Who won’t fuck me any more ’cause she’s in a coma.”

“Can it, Tony,” said Manolo. “You’re drunk.”

Elvira’s eyes were sharp with fury. “Let’s not get into who’s good in bed, okay? You haven’t been winning prizes in that department for some time now.”

But he couldn’t stop. It was like he had a speech to give. Diners at the tables around them were beginning to cast embarrassed glances in their direction. It wasn’t loud enough for them to hear every word yet, but it was wonderfully embarrassing. Tony splashed the last of the brandy in his snifter, filling it half full. Neither he nor Manolo could have said how they drank the whole bottle. Indulgence was second nature now. The razor edge of the coke was fighting the blur of the liquor. It was all a losing battle.

“Is this the American dream, chico?” he asked, a wave of mawkish sentiment welling up inside him. “Is this what happens to Bogart at the end?” He laughed bitterly, staring out at a desert space where the gold had turned to dust. “Fuck it man, I can’t even have a kid with her. She’s got a womb like a sewer from all the dope. Can’t even have a nice little kid.”

Perhaps he would have broken down and cried just then, but now it was Elvira’s turn. She stood up from the table, lifted the untouched plate of steak and fries, and heaved it at him. It slopped all over his shirt and spattered his face. “You asshole,” she said with huge contempt. “You stupid sonuvabitch spic asshole.”

They had a black-tie audience now. The diners at The Beachhead, discreet before all else, made no pretense now of trying to listen with half an ear. They dropped their forks and gawked. The waiter—a fine upstanding Cuban-American with a wife and three kids and a mortgage and a Cutlass—hovered near the table, making ineffectual hushing sounds. He had a towel in one hand which he’d have gladly used to wipe up the mess if they’d only stopped and let him.

But Elvira had just gotten started. “How dare you talk to me like that!” she shouted. “You think you’re better than me? What the hell do
you
do? Deal and kill, right? Oh that’s real creative, Tony, that’s just wonderful isn’t it. A real contribution to human history. Well, let me tell you something—I don’t
want
a child with you. It’s the least I can do for the future, you know? At least I won’t bring another fuck-up into the world who might grow up like you!”

“Siddown before I kill you,” said Tony without emotion. He picked the steak up off his lap and set it on his plate. Then he accepted the towel from the waiter and began to brush at his shirt. He even managed to flash a grin as he said: “Maybe we can have a doggie bag, huh?” It was as if he’d put the whole problem aside. He would just stay drunk and stoned right now.

This only made Elvira madder—and louder. “What kind of home life’s a kid going to have with us, huh? With your thugs around all the time, carrying machine guns. Is Nick the Pig gonna be his uncle? Is Chi-Chi the dope fiend gonna take him to the zoo? Oh yeah, I forgot we got our own zoo.” Now the maitre d’ padded over, and he touched Elvira’s elbow gently, murmuring that perhaps if she was feeling ill she should think about going home. She leaped away from him with a hiss, as if he’d burned her. Her voice was a little softer, though, as she turned to Tony again. There was almost a pleading quality as she said: “Oh Tony, don’t you see? We’re losers, honey. We’re not winners.” She made a vague and tragic gesture around at the stunned and silent room. “These are the winners, Tony. Not us.”

The fury was over for both of them. A curious awkwardness settled on them now. They looked like two actors who’d lost their lines, who had no skill for improvising. Tony said gently: “Go on, get a cab and go home. You’re stoned.”

“Not as stoned as you are, honey. You’re so stoned you don’t know it.” She stumbled as she reached into the booth to grab her bag. Manolo stood up dutifully and moved to help her. She shook her head firmly, and he stayed away. Without another glance at Tony she turned and wobbled across the restaurant. A hundred eyes were on her, moving back and forth between her and Tony. Once again Manolo moved to follow, as if he couldn’t bear to see her watched.

“Let her go,” said Tony. “Tomorrow’ll be the same old shit. She’ll pop another Quaalude and love me again.”

She disappeared into the foyer and was gone. Suddenly it was as if the room had had enough of silence. They turned back to their meals with redoubled vigor, buzzing with conversation. Presumably there was but one thing they were talking about, but they couldn’t stand to watch it any more, so naked out there in the middle of things. They wanted to turn it into gossip now. They wanted Tony to disappear, the way Elvira did.

Tony stood up and reached in his pocket. He pulled out a roll of cash and peeled off several hundreds. He tossed these on the littered table. As he stepped from the booth he brushed once more at the front of his shirt. Perhaps he was going to leave quietly after all. Manolo waited patiently. The maitre d’ and the waiter managed to pull to attention, in case one of those hundreds had a chance of coming their way. Tony took a long look around the room, like he wanted to commit it to memory.

Then he shouted: “You’re all fulla shit!”

The room lurched into another silence, this time red-faced and shy, with perhaps an undercurrent of wounded dignity. He had gone way too far. They were not amused any more.

“You know why?” cried Tony. “ ’Cause none of you got the guts to be what you wanna be! You’re too fuckin’ scared. You need people like me so you can point your finger and say, ‘Hey, there’s the bad guy.’ So what does that make you? Good guys?” They were listening hard, he could tell. Right then he wished he had an education, so he could show them the kind of hell they were in and make them cower in their seats. He shouldn’t have worried. His words were only the half of it. What they could not turn away from was his passionate conviction. “Don’t kid yourself, folks. You’re no better than a dealer just because you’re buyin’. You get along okay, huh? You know how to hide, you know how to lie. I ain’t so lucky. Me, I always tell the truth—even when I lie.”

He began to walk out, past the maitre d’ and the waiter, past the pastry cart and the Irish Coffee bar. Manolo kept pace with him, two or three steps behind. The crowd had not recovered from the second silence. They would recover by being offended, if only he would leave. He turned at the door and smiled, then gave them a kind of Sinatra wave.

“Say goodnight to the bad guy now,” he said. He sounded so much like a man in a show, you wished he had a straw hat. “Take one last look, ’cause chances are,” and he laughed like a mad king, “you ain’t gonna see him again.”

And he stepped out into the foyer, and Manolo shuffled after. The room was soundless for one beat more, then it fell into furious protest. Tony hardly saw where he was walking. If he could just get into the car now, he thought, he could have a double toot and clear his head and then they could go where they liked. To the circus or something.

He stood waiting under the awning while a gusty rain swept over the pavement, shiny like diamonds under the streetlights. Palm trees whirred above him.
Make it stop
, he thought, his hands in his pockets because they were shaking. He wasn’t cold, he was burning hot.

Make what stop?

He didn’t know what. His heart was racing, as if somebody was after him. Any other time he would have just pulled a gun, spun around and faced them. But he knew, with a sickening curl of panic in his gut, that if he turned around there wouldn’t be anyone there. He reached in his pocket and grabbed his coke, and it slipped through his fingers and fell to the pavement, just as the carhop sailed up in the Corniche. The bullet of coke rolled under the car. As the carhop got out to hold the door for Tony, Tony dropped to his knees and started to crawl under the Rolls. Manolo yelled at him.

“Leave it alone, for Chrissake! We got more in the car!”

And he gripped Tony’s shoulder and dragged him up. Tony’s face was white. His teeth were chattering as if he’d caught a bad chill in the rain. He stared at Manolo, then at the carhop. The latter was built like a wrestler, so energetic he seemed to be dancing on his feet. He looked like he meant to conquer the world. He was Tony’s age exactly, though he looked a good five years younger. Tony smiled in recognition, and the irony seemed to bring him to his senses. He reached in his pants pocket and drew out his wad of cash. It must have been three or four thousand dollars. He handed it over to the carhop, who looked down stunned at the money, as if a magician had snapped it out of the air.

Tony climbed in the Rolls and took off. The back tire crushed the bullet on the pavement. But like Manolo said, there was more where that came from. Manolo groped in the glove compartment and brought out a five-gram vial. He dumped out a gram in the palm of his hand, pinched some up like snuff, and reached over and held it under Tony’s nose. Tony snorted. By the time they’d gone six blocks they were rocking again. The whole episode at the restaurant was forgotten. So was the panic. The night was young and they had no plans. Everything seemed the way it used to be, as long as they didn’t stop.

It was as if he’d made a conscious decision: from here on in he would not stop. No matter how many red lights there were. No matter how many roadblocks. Now he was on a roller coaster, reckless and headlong. He speeded the rain-whipped streets like he planned to ride to the end of the world.

Alone.

The next day was Wednesday, and they were booked to fly to New York about six. The Shadow worked on his bomb all day, putting it together and taking it apart, making endless tiny adjustments to the radio transmitter and encoding device. Nick and Chi-Chi watched in a daze, till the bomb didn’t even seem dangerous any more. It began to seem like the very abstract invention of an eccentric tinker, and when it was done it would do something very practical, maybe drink in the sun and power a turbine.

Tony got ripped over his morning coffee, laying out long lines on the glass-top table on the balcony above the zoo, and he stayed as high as a kite all day. He made a couple of trips out to the boathouse to check on the progress, but he was annoyed that it took so long, and the fussing over details only made him irritable. Besides, they had just brought a shipment into Nashville, and two of the local dealers there had slaughtered each other over who controlled it and who should cut it. Tony had no choice but to send Manolo up there to take charge of the distribution, which meant that Nick the Pig would have to take Manolo’s place for the New York run. In addition, Sosa was on the phone fifteen different times that day—just checking in, he said. It made Tony spit with rage.

Elvira slept in the guest room Tuesday night, after the scene in the restaurant. They passed in the house a couple of times on Wednesday, but in spite of being ’luded out she didn’t profess her undying love. Mostly she froze him, but about three o’clock they met on the stairs. He was just getting dressed to go to the airport. He wasn’t feeling angry any more, he was too wired. As she passed him he reached out and tried to clasp her hand. “Hey Elvira,” he said softly, “why don’t you think of a place you’d like to go. We’ll go there, huh? Just as soon’s I get back from New York.”