Sunburn (16 page)

Debbi gave a sleepy smile. "I can make it. Bring you some too?"

They took their mugs and sat on lounges near the pool. The afternoon sun had lost most of its bite; its heat was not searing but cozy. The breeze picked up a hint of coolness from the surface of the water and tickled ankles as it skittered by. "Feeling better?" Sandra asked. Debbi nodded, her lips against her cup. "I don't know what I would've done if you hadn't—"

The other woman shushed her with a wave of her hand, and for some moments the two of them sat in silence. Then Sandra said, "Debbi, I hate to ask you to go through this again—"

"No, I understand," said Debbi, and she reviewed her awful sojourn in Miami. But there was no more she could explain. Gino never told her anything; he didn't believe she could keep a secret.

He said he had to see a guy, that's all. He said he'd be back in an hour, hour and a half.

Sandra looked down along her legs to the shimmer in the pool. She said softly, "He might be dead, you know."

Debbi held her coffee mug in both her hands. It made her look very young. She only nodded.

After a moment Sandra said, "Debbi, can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"In your own mind, you were finished with him, weren't you?"

The other woman hesitated, glanced at the flickering tops of the aralia hedge. "I think I was. I hope I was."

"Stick to that," said Sandra. "Dead, alive—don't remember him as better than he was, more than he was to you. Don't do that to yourself."

Overhead, a flight of ibis went past. They seemed to be scudding lazily but their tiny shadows on the apron of the patio went by very fast.

"And you?" Sandra resumed. "What'll you do?"

Debbi gave a shrug that brought her freckled shoulders almost to her ears. "Scrape together some money and go back home, I guess."

"Back to Queens," said Sandra. It was not a question, more like a sentencing.

Debbi nodded.

"That what you wanna do?"

"I dunno. There's my job and all."

"You care about the job? The job make you happy?"

"I like dogs," said Debbi.

"That isn't what I asked you," Sandra said.

Debbi kept quiet. She couldn't put her finger on it, but something was making her afraid again. She recalled the nasty stylishness of Bar Toscano, how glum and lonely it had made her feel. She pictured the lost souls and the creeps who stalked the night, and the world beyond her old neighborhood seemed a difficult and thankless place.

"Debbi," Sandra said, "you and I once had a talk about what it takes for a person to change. Remember?"

Debbi swallowed, looked down at the pool. She remembered. But that had been a safer subject when the person who needed changing was someone else.

"Why don't you stay with us awhile?"

Redheads blush easily, and now Debbi felt her skin grow warm, the spaces between the freckles were colored in. "Sandra, I couldn't—"

'Take a break. Give yourself some time to think things through."

Debbi inhaled, and the breath didn't seem to want to come out again. She lifted a slender eyebrow, and the eyebrow hung suspended. She remembered the nice feel of the wicker bureau, the grooves in the paneled walls. "I don't know what to say."

"Say yes," said Sandra, "and let's get you some breakfast."

———

Joey dragged Vincente on some errands and managed to stay away from home till five o'clock. But as he drove the El Dorado up the gravel driveway and underneath the carport, his stomach clamped down and started to burn, and his fingers began to tingle with the first squirts of unwanted adrenaline.

Father and son walked into the living room.

Vincente saw Debbi, glanced quickly at Sandra, and understood at once that something bad had happened, Joey's distraction instantly made sense to him. The old man held himself very straight. This was a vintage trick, an act of bravado that sometimes worked: you took the bad news full on an unbent chest, and if it didn't knock you down, if it didn't bowl you over, you were ready to straighten your collar and press forward.

Joey looked at Sandra and knew beyond a doubt there'd been no word of Gino.

For a moment no one moved and no one spoke. The ceiling fan turned very slowly; the air pushed in gentle viscous waves. Joey dropped his sunglasses in the pocket of his shirt. "Pop," he said, "we gotta talk."

"Hour, hour an' a half," murmured the Godfather.

"How long's it take to get from Sout' Beach ta Coconut Grove and back?"

"About that long," said Joey.

They were in his study, Vincente sitting at the limestone desk, Joey pacing in front of him. Through the glass block wall gleamed the lavender light of dusk. The Godfather reached up to fidget with an absent necktie and tried without success to find an alternative to believing his son Gino had disobeyed him. To be disobeyed—it made him angry, of course, but more than that it disgraced him; it showed that he had failed in his authority and therefore failed in his ability to protect.

"Joey, can ya think of any other—"

His son was already shaking his head, and now a kind of embarrassment was heaped on top of the old man's shame. He was losing his grip, getting soft. He shouldn't need to consult. He shouldn't need help or confirmation. It was his place to know, to act. He reached for the phone and dialed a number from memory.

After a moment the line was picked up and an oily voice said, "Martinelli's. Good evening."

"Do you have gnocchi?" asked the Godfather.

"No," said the maitre d'. "No gnocchi."

"Then lemme get a calf's head."

"How you like it, sir?"

"Eyes open, facing forward."

"Hold on," said the oily voice. "I'll put you through."

Bad music played through the phone. Joey paced. The light outside went gray. Then Charlie Ponte picked up the line.

"Yeah?"

"Where's my son?"

The voice was like a rumble underground, it seemed to come from everywhere at once. For a moment Ponte didn't answer; then he sounded knocked off stride, confused.

"Vincente—"

"Where is 'e, Cholly?"

Again there was a pause, a clinch, but this time Ponte came out of it swinging. "How da fuck should I know?"

"Don't bullshit me. I know he was there."

The Miami boss chewed a thumbnail and tried to figure out what else his adversary knew. "Yeah, he was here. And he left."

"Who wit'?"

"Some friends from New York."

"Wha' friends, Cholly?"

Ponte sighed, sucked his teeth, and when he spoke again his voice was harried, whiny. "Vincente, I'm just a guy tryin'a make a living. Don't put me inna fuckin' middle a this."

"You ain't talkin' nothin' so far," Vincente said, but a dread suspicion was clawing at him, it raked over him the way a dull knife frets the surface before it slashes through.

"Look," said Ponte, "ya wanna change the game wit' the Fabrettis, I don't give a fuck, it's alla same ta me. But work it out with the Fabrettis, don't send me Gino ta tell me things are back the way they were."

The Godfather held the phone a few inches from his hairy ear. The nostrils flared in his bridgeless nose, his thin cheeks went sickly yellow. He found he had nothing more to say; there was nothing more he could ask. To ask more would be to let this stranger know that his own son had lied to him, misrepresented him, had borne false witness to his words and wishes. It would be both useless and impossibly humiliating to let Charlie Ponte, or anyone beyond the tight circle of family, find that out.

Slowly, dazedly, Vincente put the phone back in its cradle.

———

"Pop?" said Joey Goldman. He said it very softly, the way you talk to someone when you're not sure he's awake. A minute had passed since the old man hung up the phone, and his lean form had remained unnaturally rigid, his sallow face impassive.

"Hm?" The Godfather gave a little jerk, then turned his head slowly toward the younger man and spoke in a quiet monotone. "He went against me, Joey."

" 'Zee alive?"

His father took a deep breath. It seemed to be the first air he'd had in a while. "I don't know. I don't think Ponte clipped 'im. Doesn't have the balls. I think it's like he says—he just passed 'im along ta the Fabrettis."

Joey paced. The evening light had faded, the study was nearly dark, but he didn't turn a light on. "Should we call New Yawk?"

In the dimness the Godfather allowed himself the beginnings of a bitter smile. He shouldn't need to consult, he shouldn't need advice, but there was something sweet as well as galling in this talking as equals in judgment, equals in bafflement, with his younger son. "Ya know somethin', Joey?" he murmured. "I just don't fuckin' know. I need ta go outside."

He put his palms flat on the desk and used his arms to help him get up from the chair. Less than steadily, he moved to the door, opened it, and went down the hallway to the living room.

The light there seemed very bright after the dimness of the study. It was mostly a white room to begin with, and now everything looked bleached out, as in an overexposed snapshot. It took the old man a moment to realize that Arty Magnus was sitting there, along with Debbi and Sandra.

"Ahty," said the Godfather, "I fuhgot all about—"

"No problem," said the ghostwriter. "If it's a bad time—"

Joey had followed his father down the hall and now stood at the old man's shoulder. "Maybe it is, Arty. 'S'been kind of a hectic day."

"No problem," the writer said again, and he stood up with the blushing quickness of a man who's just walked in on someone naked. "We can talk tomorrow, whenever."

"Hey," said Sandra, "we're not chasing you away. Sit awhile, have a glass of wine."

Arty stood with his calves against the couch and did an awkward little pirouette. Too many people were talking at once and in his shy desire to get along he wanted to please them all.

A long and indecisive moment passed and then a low rumble moved the air, got it ready to carry sound. "Nah, stay," said the Godfather. He'd realized that he wanted, needed, to sit quietly under starlight with a sympathetic or at least a tactful listener and to think aloud, to open the valves and tell his version of how things should be. Too much evil stuff had been forced into him today; he doubted whether his insides were still elastic enough to contain it. He had to bleed some pressure out, stay within a certain range, like an old and rusty boiler. "If Joey and the ladies will excuse us, Ahty, you and me, we'll sit outside and talk awhile."

The Godfather dove into his ramblings the way some other men, faced with grinding insurmountable sorrows, dive into drink.

"So here's the difference," he was saying, when he and his ghost had setded in around the low metal table on the patio. "Most people—prob'ly you too, Ahty—they believe that friends, associates, come and go, but what's right is always right and what's wrong is always wrong. Am I right?"

Arty was scrawling in his private shorthand in his cheap hlue spiral notebook. Without lifting his eyes from the page he gave a noncommittal nod.

"Sicilians," Vincente went on, "we believe the opposite. Laws could change tomorra. Ya could have a different cop onna beat, a different judge inna courtroom. The whole fuckin' government could change. But your friends, they ain't goin' nowhere. World ain't that big. Where they gonna go? You'll be dealin' wit' 'em next week, next year; ya couldn't shake 'em if ya wanted to, believe me.

So the bottom line? If ya gotta do somethin' wrong to keep things easy wit' your friends, ya do it."

Arty looked up from his notebook. "We saying wrong or illegal?"

"An excellent question!" said Vincente.

He raised a finger, his cavernous dark eyes picked up glints from the stars and the floodlights; for the moment his grim preoccupations seemed to fall away, the relief was like a cramp letting go. He came forward to the edge of his seat, and despite the wrinkles he seemed suddenly young, as spry and bold as a sophomore in a dorm, talking philosophy in his pajamas.

"Wrong or illegal?" he parroted with zest. "Who's ta decide where one stops and th' other starts? Fuckin' government, they want ya ta believe the laws are right, period. Ya think about it, ya know that's bullshit. Prohibition—right one day, wrong the next? Gambling—wrong for four guys inna back of a candy store, right for four thousand ol' ladies in a casino? Obvious bullshit."

He broke off, sipped some wine, wiped his full lips with the back of his hand.

"But there's gotta be some way—" Arty put in.

"Some way a what?" Vincente interrupted. "Some way a keepin' things orderly? Which is another way a sayin' keepin' people in their place? I agree. But my point is this: ya got blond hair, ya been ta college, y'own stock and got a house inna country, then yeah, the laws look pretty reasonable; ya say, Hey, I'm playin' by the rules and I'm winning, so this must be a fair game and I must be a helluva fella. Ya got black hair, ya start off broke, ya talk funny—it all looks a little different, don't it? And this is where your friends come in. Ya see what I'm sayin'?"

Arty wasn't sure he did, but he nodded and kept scrawling. He thought vaguely of the terrifying day when he would have to sit down with this jungle of notes and bushwhack a trail that a reader could follow.

"Mafia," Vincente rolled on. "In Sicily, ya know, it goes by a lotta different names. I'll tell ya my favorite:
gli amici degli amici
. The friends of friends. That says it all. It's an us-and-them kinda thing, that simple—a system outside the system."

The Godfather paused for a sip of wine. Crickets rasped, blue light shimmered softly above the pool.

"Not that the system runs perfect," the old man acknowledged. "The legit world has its fuckups; so do we. And this is where it comes back to right and wrong."