Tricky Business (7 page)

“I said, OK, Bobby?” Tarant said.

“OK,” whispered Kemp.

“OK,
Lou,
” said Tarant. “I want you to call me Lou.”

“OK, Lou.”

“Good, Bobby. Excellent,” said Tarant. “I'll be back in touch with you tomorrow, start setting up arrangements.” He released Kemp's hand, went to the door, opened it, looked back.

“One more thing, Bobby.”

Kemp looked up from massaging his right hand.

“Manny Arquero?” said Tarant. “The guy you fired?”

“What about him?”

“Hire him back,” said Tarant, and left.

IN SOME WAYS, BOBBY KEMP'S NEW BUSINESS associates actually did make his life easier. He never had any trouble with labor, with suppliers, with any government bureaucracy. If a problem came up, he'd mention it to Lou, and whatever it was,
poof,
it disappeared.

But that did not make up for the things Kemp hated about the new arrangement. Mainly he hated that he was not really the boss anymore. He was most aware of this when he was on the ship, where Manny Arquero always called him “
Mister
Kemp,” acting very respectful, so Kemp knew he didn't mean it. He started to get the same feeling in his other businesses, a vibe from his employees that told him they knew that he wasn't really the man anymore, that he was taking orders from somebody, just like them.

And he was. He still made money; he still was, officially, the CEO. But Lou was the boss. Lou's people were keeping the books now; Lou's people were “helping” Kemp's people manage things. And everybody understood that if Lou's people wanted something done, it was done.

A lot of it clearly involved money laundering. Like, a guy would come on the
Extravaganza
and buy a ridiculous amount of chips—maybe $50,000 worth, way more than anybody ever spent on a sleazeball casino ship. The guy would play some blackjack, some craps, not paying attention, not caring if he was winning or losing, usually losing. At the end of the night, he'd just leave, not cashing in the rest of his chips, leaving a huge profit for the house. Except Bobby Kemp, who was supposed to
be
the house, wouldn't see that money. It'd get spent on something else, some supplier who, as far as Kemp could tell, wasn't supplying anything. Just like that, a big wad of money from God-knows-what became part of legitimate business cash flow.

That part of the operation Kemp understood right away. It took him longer to see the other thing going on. He heard about it in bits and pieces from his people who spent time with people who worked on the ship. From what he could piece together, it happened maybe one or two nights a month. The tipoff was the presence on the ship of four particular guys—guys who wore crew uniforms, but didn't perform any crew duties, just kept to themselves. When they were on board, the
Extravaganza
would, at some point, break out of its usual pattern of circling just outside the three-mile limit and move out farther from shore, the Miami skyline getting small on the horizon. It would turn north, then slow down, then stop, just drifting with the Gulf Stream, the captain using just enough throttle to keep the ship pointed steady.

Then a cabin cruiser, its lights out, would approach from the east, turn, and back up to the
Extravaganza
's stern, where the deck was low to the water. Lines would be tossed, and when the two ships were tied together, the four guys would get to work moving heavy canvas sacks. They went both ways: first, sacks from the cabin cruiser to the
Extravaganza;
then, sacks from the
Extravaganza
to the cabin cruiser. This went on for maybe ten minutes, and then the ships would untie, the cabin cruiser would head east, and the
Extravaganza
would go back to circling. The gamblers never noticed; the stern deck wasn't visible from the public area, and besides which, they were too busy yanking slot-machine handles to care what the ship was doing.

Bobby Kemp spent a lot of time thinking about it, what was going on out there. He decided it had to be drugs in the incoming sacks, most likely cocaine. The outgoing sacks had to be cash, headed for some offshore bank. That had to be it. These fuckers were bringing in coke, right past the Coast Guard station on Government Cut, in a ship with neon lights all over it. And it was
Bobby Kemp's ship.
That's what really pissed him off. Not that it was illegal, but that he, Bobby Kemp, who would surely go to jail for this if the shit ever hit the fan, wasn't getting a piece.

This gnawed at him until finally he'd found the balls to ask Tarant to come to his office for a meeting.

“Lou,” he'd said. “I realize we got off on the wrong foot, about the
Extravaganza
and all, me saying some things I shouldn't have.”

“Forget about it, Bobby,” said Tarant. “Water under the dam. The important thing is, we're partners now, everybody's happy.”

“Well, that's the thing, Lou.”

“What's the thing?”

“What I mean is, I don't feel like, don't take this wrong, I don't feel like a one-hundred-percent full partner here, in some areas.”

“What areas, Bobby?”

“Well, OK, this operation on the
Extravaganza,
which, I mean, I'm the
owner,
Chrissakes, so it seems to me . . .”

“What operation you talking about, Bobby? It's a casino ship, makes a nice profit, you get a nice taste of that.”

“I don't mean the gambling.”

“What
do
you mean?” said Tarant, looking at Kemp hard.

“You know what I mean,” said Kemp, making himself look back. “The other shit.”

“What other shit, Bobby?”

“Listen, Lou, I got no problem with, I mean, I just think, since I'm taking a certain risk here, it seems to me that . . .”

“Bobby, listen to me.” Tarant moved closer. “There's nothing else. Who told you there was something else?”

Kemp didn't answer. It took all his willpower to keep from backing up.

“Because if somebody was to go around saying that,” said Tarant, now right in Kemp's face, “I'd want to straighten their ass out. My associates and I can't have people talking like that. You understand, Bobby? I find out somebody is spreading that shit around, believe me, it would not be good for that person. We clear on that, Bobby?”

He put his hands on Kemp's shoulders, squeezed just a little. Kemp felt some pee dribble from his dick.

“I said, are we clear, Bobby?”

“Yeah.”

“What?” A little more squeeze pressure. A little more pee.

“Yes, Lou.”

“Good,” said Tarant, dropping his arms, stepping back. “Was there anything else you wanted to talk to me about?”

“No, Lou.”

“OK, then, Bobby. I'll let you go. I know you're a busy man, got important things to do.”

As he said this, Tarant glanced down at Kemp's crotch. Kemp looked down, saw the spreading pee stain. He looked up. Tarant was watching him, not moving a muscle on his face, but Kemp could see it, deep in those dark eyes, Tarant laughing at him.

“One more thing, Bobby.”

“What?”

“Your secretary out there? With the tits? Who can't work the phone?”

“Yeah?”

“She works for me now.”

 

THAT I WAS SIX MONTHS AGO. IT HAD TAKEN Kemp that long to figure out a move he could make, gather the information, work out the plan, get everything lined up. He was very careful. He knew he had one shot at getting himself out of this situation, and that if he screwed it up, he'd be one of those people the Miami-Dade police divers find from time to time inside the trunk of a stolen car on the bottom of a canal, crabs crawling through their eye sockets.

So he couldn't afford to mess up. But things were looking good. The canvas-sack exchange was definitely on for tonight; his source on the
Extravaganza
had assured him of this. In fact, word was that this was a big exchange, which was a piece of unexpected luck. So was this tropical storm, Hector. Weather like this, nobody would see what was going on out there. That was good.

Kemp knew it was going to be tricky. People might get hurt. Probably would, in fact. Too bad. These assholes were going to find out they'd made a big mistake, fucking with Bobby Kemp.

A big mistake.

WALLY FOUND THE PIECE OF PAPER IN HIS WALLET, dialed the number.

“Yeah?” said a voice.

“Hi,” said Wally. “This is Wally.”

“Who?”

“Wally. Hartley. From the band. We're playing on the . . .”

“What do you want?”

“I was just wondering if it's going out tonight. I mean, I'm
assuming
it's not, what with this—”

“It's going out.”

“It is? Because according to the weath—”

“It's going out.”

“Well, OK, but, I mean, have you been watching the—”

“It's going out,” said the voice, hanging up.

“Shit,” said Wally. He dialed bandmate Ted Brailey.

“Hello?” said Ted.

“Hey,” said Wally. “It's me.”

“Tell me something,” said Ted. “How many shooters did I do last night?”

“I would say, conservatively, two hundred fifty,” said Wally.

“Feels like more,” said Ted. “Feels like dogs humping inside my skull.”

“Poetic,” said Wally.

“Best I can do,” said Ted. “These are
big
dogs.”

“You wanna feel worse?” said Wally.

“I don't think I can.”

“The boat's going out tonight.”

“
What?
Have you looked outside? It's a monsoon out there.”

“Technically, it's a tropical storm. Hector.”

“Whoever it is, it looks nasty. Maybe we should quit this gig.”

“Right. We can quit this gig, and since we have no other gigs lined up, we can live off all the shrewd investments we made over the years. Leather pants, for example.”

“Good point,” said Ted. “Maybe we need to rethink our careers. Use our skills, get real jobs. No, wait, I forgot. We're musicians. We
have
no skills.”

“I'm gonna break the bad news to Jock and Johnny,” said Wally. “I'll see you at the boat.”

“If I live,” said Ted. “These are
really
big dogs.”

Wally and Ted's band—which Wally had rejoined after his brief, unhappy foray into the business world—was currently called Johnny and the Contusions. For the past three weeks, they'd been playing nightly on the
Extravaganza of the Seas,
where they replaced a band whose female vocalist suffered from seasickness, as became evident when she released a major stream of projectile vomit while singing “Wind Beneath My Wings.”

The band—Wally on guitar, Ted on keyboards, Johnny Clarke on bass, and Jock Hume on drums—had been together for sixteen years. Wally was much closer to his bandmates than to either of his brothers, both of whom were older and had wives and kids and jobs involving spreadsheets.

For most of the band's existence, they'd called themselves Arrival. This was the pathetically hopeful name they'd come up with when they'd started the band in tenth grade, begging their parents for money so they could buy instruments and amplifiers, figuring out chords, playing way too loud in somebody's family room until somebody's mom made them stop, or some neighbor called the cops. But they kept practicing, because they had a dream, which was to become the first major rock stars ever to emerge from Bougainvillea High School. Or at least get laid.

By their senior year, they were semi-famous in their peer group. They won the talent show and played for a couple of class parties; on occasion, they actually did get laid. Not wanting to see this glamorous lifestyle come to an end, they decided, upon graduating, to stay together in Miami. They enrolled in community college, but only to placate their parents. What they really did was try to make it as a band.