Shadowland (42 page)

 
   'This is really the place,' Bobby said during dinner. 'You got the greatest weather in the world, you got the water, you got business opportunities up the old wazoo. No shit, this place is paradise. I wouldn't go back to Arizona if you paid me. As for living up North-wow.' He shook his head. Bobby at thirty-two was pudgy, soft asa sponge. A diamond as big as a knuckle rode on one sausagy hand. He still had his perpetual smile, which was not a smile but the way his mouth sat on his face. He wore a yellow terry-cloth shirt and matching shorts. He was enjoying his wealth, and I enjoyed his pleasure in it. I gathered that his wife's family had given him his start in the business, and that he had rather surprised them by his success. Monica, his wife, said little during the meal, but jumped up every few minutes to supervise the cook. 'She treats me like a king,' Bobby said during one of Monica's excursions to the kitchen. 'When I get home, I'm royalty. She lives for that boat — I gave it to her for Christmas last year. Squealed like a puppy. What do I know from boats? But it makes her happy. Say, if you play golf we could go out to the club tomorrow. I got an extra set of clubs.'

 
   'I'm sorry, but I don't play,' I said.

 
   'Don't play
golf?'
For a moment Bobby seemed totally perplexed. He had taken me into his world so completely that he had forgotten that I was not a permanent resident there. 'Well, hell, why don't we go out in the boat? Laze around, have a few drinks? Monica would love that.'

 
   I said that I might be able to do that.

 
   'Great, kiddo. You know, this is what that school of ours was all about, wasn't it?'

 
   'What do you mean, Bobby?'

 
   His wife came back to the table and Bobby turned to her. 'He's coming out on the boat with us tomorrow. Let's toss some lines overboard, catch dinner, hey?'

 
   Monica gave a wan smile.

 
   'Sure. It'll be great. Now, this is what I'm saying — our old school had one goal, right? To get us to where I am now. And to know how to live once we get here. That's the way I see it. To make us into the kind of people who could fit in anywhere. I want to write in to the alumni magazine and say that you can travel all over the Southeast and see my name whenever you stop to take a leak. And that's almost true.'

 
   Monica looked away and turned over a lettuce leaf on her salad plate to peer at its underside.

 
   'Do you ever see Marcus Reilly?' I asked. 'I understand he lives here.'

 
   'Saw him once,' Bobby said. 'Mistake. Marcus got involved in some bad shit — got disbarred. Stay away from him. He's a downer.' 'Really?' I was surprised.

 
   'Oh, he was a big deal for a little while. Then I guess he got weird. Take my advice . . . I'll give you his phone number if you like, but stay away from him. He's a failure. He has to stick his nose above water to suck air.' The next morning I called the number Bobby had given me. A man at the other end of the line said, 'Wentworth.' 'Marcus?' 'Who?'

 
   'Marcus Reilly? Is he there?' 'Oh, yeah. Just a second.'

 
   Another telephone rang. It was lifted, but the person at the other end said nothing. 'Marcus? Is that you?' I gave my name. 'Hey, great,' came the breezy, husky voice of Marcus Reilly. 'You in town? How about we get together?' 'Can I take you to lunch today?' 'Hell, lunch is on me. I'm at the Wentworth Hotel on Collins Avenue, just up on the right side from Seventy-third Street. Tell you what, I'll meet you outside. Okay? Twelve o'clock?'

 
   I called Bobby Hollingsworth to say that I would not be able to go out on his boat. 'That's fine,' Bobby said. 'Come back next time, and we'll go out with a couple of girls I know. We got a date?'

 
   'Sure,' I said. I could see him lolling back on a deck chair, propping a drink on his yellow-terry-cloth belly, telling a good-looking whore that whenever you took a leak in the Southeast, you could read his name just by looking down.

 
   There was nothing splendid about Collins Avenue up where Marcus Reilly lived. Old men in canvas hats and plaid trousers below protruding bellies, old women in baggy dresses and sunglasses crawled beneath the sidewalk awnings of little shops. Discount stores, bars, cut-rate novelty shops where everything would be an inch deep in dust. At the Wentworth Hotel, the motto
Where Life Is a Treat
was painted on the yellow plaster. Thelobby seemed to be outside, in a sort of alcove set off the sidewalk.

 
   At five past twelve Marcus came bustling out, wearing a glen-plaid suit, walking quickly past the rows of old people sitting in aluminum-and-plastic chairs as if he were afraid one of them would stop him.

 
   'Great to see you, great to see you,' he said, pumping my hand. He no longer resembled the young Arnold Palmer. His cheeks had puffed out, and his eyes seemed narrower. The moisture in the air screwed his hair up into curls. Like the expatriate novelist's, his suit was much too warm for the climate, but he had none of the novelist's internal air conditioning. Marcus snapped his fingers, smacked his palms together, and looked up and down the street. I could smell violence on him, as you sometimes can on a dog. 'Jesus, hey, here we are. What is it, fifteen years?'

 
   'About that,' I said.

 
   'Let's move, man. Let's see some sights. You been here long?'

 
   'Just a couple of days.'

 
   Marcus rolled away from me and began bustling down the street. 'Too bad. Where you staying?'

 
   I named my hotel.

 
   'A dump. A dump, believe me.' We rounded the corner and Marcus opened the door to a green Gremlin with a big rusting dent on its right-rear fender. 'A word I could use to describe this whole town.' We got into the Gremlin. 'Just toss that stuff into the back.' I removed a stack of old Miami
Heralds
and a ball of dirty shirts. 'You want lunch first, or a drink?'

 
   'A drink would be fine, Marcus.'

 
   'Beautiful.' He raced the motor and sped away from the curb. 'There's a good joint a couple of blocks away.' We raced around the corner, Marcus talking like a man possessed the entire time. 'I mean, it's got its good points, and I'm not counted out yet, but a dump is what you'd call a place full of ingrates, right? Am I right? And that's what we gothere — wall to wall. People I brought along, got started right, did everything for . . . you know I was disbarred, don't you? You must have got my number from Bobby?'

 
   'Yes,' I said.

 
   'The shit king. 'In six states, you can take a dump on my name,' right? Bobby's so goddamned cute these days. And I helped
him
when he first came to Miami.' Marcus was sweating, moving the car as if it were heavy as a truck. His curls tightened up a notch. 'You don't get contracts like he got, no matter what kind of rich dope-fiend gash you married, without help from people who know people. Not in Miami. Not anywhere. And now he treats me like scum. Ah, screw Bobby. The way he puts on flab, he'll drop dead when he's forty. Here we are.'

 
   Marcus banged the Gremlin against the curb and rocketed out of the seat. He half-ran into a bar called the Hurricane Pub. It was so open to the street it seemed to be missing a wall.

 
   'Counselor!' the bartender shouted.

 
   'Jerry! Give us a couple beers here!' Reilly bounced onto a stool, lit a cigarette, and started talking again. 'Jerry, this guy here's an old friend of mine.'

 
   'Real nice,' Jerry said, and put the beers down before us.

 
   Marcus drained half his glass. 'In this town, you see, it helps to know everybody. That way you know where the bodies are buried. I'm not through yet. I got deals cooking like you wouldn't believe. Hell, I'm still a young guy.' I knew his age because it was mine. He looked at least ten years older. 'And I got the right mental attitude — you're not counted out until you count yourself out. And believe it or not, I get a bang out of being here — I even get a bang out of the Wentworth. Collins Avenue addresses are gold in this town. Two, three years, I'll have my license back. You'll see. And what do you bet friend Bobby will come around looking for a favor? I know everybody,
everybody.
I can get things done. And that's one thing people in this town respect, a guy who can deliver.' The rest of his beer was gone. 'How about something to eat?' He slapped two dollars down on the bar and we rushed back out onto the street.

 
   A few blocks down, he opened the door of Uncle Ernie's Ice Cream Shop. 'You get great sandwiches here.' We sat at a table in the rear and ordered our sandwiches. 'That school we went to — that
place —
boy, Ican't get it out of my mind. For one thing, Hollingsworth's always talking about it — like it was Eton or something.' Even sitting and eating, Marcus was a congeries of small agitated movements. He worked his elbows, drummed his fingers, unscrewed his hair, rubbed his cheeks. 'You remember Lake the Snake and that chapel?'

 
   'I remember.'

 
   'Stone crazy. Wacko. And Fitz-Hallan and his fairy tales. Man, I could tell him a few fairy tales. Last year, when I still had my license, I got involved with these people —
heavy
people, you know? These were serious people. Maybe I wasn't too swift, who knows, but people like that always need lawyers. And if I want somebody to get hurt, he'll get hurt, you know what I'm saying. And at the same time, through connections of these serious people, I got next to some folks from Haiti. This city is full of Haitians, illegals most of them, but these people were different. Are different. You done with your sandwich yet?'

 
   'Not quite yet.' Marcus had vanished as if he had taken it in one gulp.

 
   'Don't worry. I want to show you something. It's in your line — I know your work, remember. I want to show you this. It's connected to these people from Haiti.'

 
   I finished off my sandwich and Marcus jumped up from his seat and tossed money on the table. Out on the sunlit, shabby street, Marcus' big florid face came up an inch away from my own. 'I'm in tight with them right now, these guys. Disbarred, who cares if you're a Haitian? They got a flexible notion of the law. We're going to do big things. You know anything about Venezuela?'

 
   'Not much.'

 
   'We're into buying an island off the coast — big old island, classified as a national park. One of these guys knows the regime, we can get it reclassified in a minute. That's one of the things we're talking about. Also a lot of
odd
stuff, you know,
odd?'
He took my elbow and hauled me across the street. 'Mind if we stop at McDonald's? I'm still hungry.'

 
   I shook my head, and Marcus led me into the bright restaurant. We had been standing directly in front of it.

 
   'Big Mac, fries,' he told the girl. 'Next time you're here, we'll go to Joe's Stone Crab. Fantastic place.' He took his order to the window and began to bolt the food standing up. 'Okay, let's talk. What do you think about that stuff Fitz-Hallan used to say?'

 
   'What stuff?'

 
   'About things being magically right? What does that mean?'

 
   'You tell me.'