Tropical Depression (27 page)

Ponte's silence turned interested. Then he said, "How you know about my Indian?"

"Your Indian is about as secret as your password, Cholly."

"Where is he?" demanded Ponte.

"Your boys already asked me that," said Bert. "I wouldn't tell them either."

"Whose side you on?"

"Right now I'm onna side a no one gettin' hurt. Here's the message: The Indian's ready to sign."

In his large bare office, Ponte tugged at the zipper of his silver jacket and almost smiled. "He's finally wising up."

"He's got a coupla conditions," said Bert.

"He ain't in a position to have conditions."

"He has them anyway. Up front he wants fifty grand to replace his houseboat."

"Fuck his houseboat," Ponte said.

"Come on, Cholly. What's fifty grand? You'll give 'im the money, you'll let 'im save face."

"And that's it? Fifty and he signs?"

"He wants one other thing. He wants LaRue to bring the contract and to witness it."

There was a pause.

Bert explained. "He thinks his friend, the Jewish guy, would be safe if LaRue's name was on the paper. Ya know, implicated, like."

The little mobster found this droll. "Like I'd hold off doin' what I gotta do for the sake a that douchebag politician?"

"What could I tell ya?" said the Shirt. "The Indian, he's got this sense a loyalty, he thinks that other people have it too."

"Asshole," Ponte said.

"So it's a go, or what?" pressed Bert.

Ponte thought it over, not for long. "Yeah. Okay."

"I'll call LaRue," said Bert. "I'll tell 'im what he's gotta do. He isn't gonna like it, Cholly."

"Fuck what he likes," Ponte said. "I'll make sure he does it."

*****

"I have no idea what you're talking about," said State Senator Barney LaRue, speaking from his apartment in the capital. It was a discreet one-bedroom where he behaved discreedy, as was demanded in that part of the state.

"Look," said the Shirt, "Ya helped Tommy get this island, ya wanna make a couple bucks off it yourself. Waya the world. I unnerstand. But inna meantime, the only way the deal is gonna happen—"

"The deal has nothing to do with me," the senator insisted.

"If that's your story," Bert said, "you stick to it. But Tommy Tarpon will only sign if you are there to witness, and if you bring a hundred thousand dollars to replace his houseboat, which got sunk to the bottom a the ocean during a period when negotiations weren't going well."

"Bert, listen," said LaRue, his mellifluous baritone getting slightly pinched, "I couldn't possibly lend my name—"

"Bahney, I'm not here to convince you. I'm delivering a message, this is all. There's a gentleman I'm sure you've never met, even though his colleagues are camped out in your penthouse. His name is Cholly Ponte. He feels very strongly that this contract should be signed."

The senator sat up straighter in his chair, tried to muster a stentorian tone. "I will not be put in a position—"

"I'm sure you won't," said Bert. "But Mr. Ponte has the papers and the cash, and I think it would be best for everybody if you could bring them to the Cow Key Bridge tomorrow at five."

"There is no way," the politician began. But he was interrupted by a soft click on the line. "Shit," he said, "I've got another call coming in."

"I'm sure it isn't Cholly Ponte," said the Shirt, "because I know you do not know the man. But just in case it is, explain the conditions, ask him to front the hundred grand, and give him my regards."

Next morning on Kilicumba, four badly rested people waded, washed, and wallowed in the muck. Above them, frigate birds wheeled with the tiniest adjustments of their long forked tails, flocks of ibis commuted from the secret precincts of their rookeries to their daily business of finding food.

Back in the clearing, Tommy took himself to the far side of the middens and scrawled on the notebook pages borrowed from Arty Magnus. Max Lowenstein discreetly withdrew into the mangroves to attempt to move his bowels.

Murray Zemelman tried to start a fire. He'd seen Tommy do it, he didn't understand why he was having so much trouble. He made a teepee of sticks; the sticks fell down. He got some twigs to light, they gave off soft puffs like someone smoking a cigar and then they died.

Franny was measuring water and coffee into a dented can. She looked over her shoulder to make sure Tommy was out of earshot, then whispered, "Murray, d'you think he knows what he's doing?"

Blithely the Bra King said, "I have no idea."

Franny shook her head, mud cracked into facets on her neck. "That goddam casino."

Murray tried to strike another match, it made a soggy squeak against the phosphorous. "Franny," he said, "if it wasn't for the casino and everything that's happened, you and me, we wouldn't have gotten together again."

She blinked silt from her eyelashes. "And what a tragedy that would be."

A fast and deep emotion knifed through Murray, filled him like a flash flood in a canyon. "It
would
be," he said. "A tragedy is exactly what it would be. Fighting fate. That's tragedy, right?"

His former wife started to say something, then bit her lip and went back to her coffee grounds and water.

Murray said, "At least give me the satisfaction of saying you're glad you came to see me."

She put the can down on the ground, stood there with her hands on her hips. She looked at her ex, this man no longer young, hardly handsome, covered in limestone. He looked like an animate boulder, a rock formation come to life. Except rock formations weren't needy, whiny, grandiose, hypochondriacal lunatics. "I am glad," she said. "That's the sick part."

"Did someone say sick?" Max Lowenstein asked, emerging from the foliage in his underwear, an unrelieved look on his face and a blur of flies around his matted beard.

*****

Flaco appeared around nine. He brought real coffee in a thermos, and salty Cuban bread still warm from the oven. He took the pages Tommy Tarpon had written on, and he shuttled back across the flats to town.

The sun moved up the sky. Birds and bugs and gators eased into a breathless stillness, hoarded their strength against the heat of the day. The island captives hunkered down and chatted in shrinking scraps of shade.

At some point Max Lowenstein said, "So level with me, Murray—how many pills you taking?"

"Two a day," the Bra King said. "Sometimes, I feel stressed, exhausted, three."

The psychiatrist said, "
Oy
. Murray, three is not for a human being. Three is for a catatonic horse."

Tommy didn't meet his eye. "For now."

"There," said Franny. "You see?"

"See what?" Murray said. "Now wait a second. You can't compare—"

"Of course you can," said the psychiatrist.

"Why is everyone ganging up on me?" the Bra King said, and he went into a sulk that no one had the energy to pull him out of.

He was still pouting when, shortly after two, the skiff returned, bringing Arty Magnus.

The gangly reporter had a paramilitary look about him. He was wearing stout black boots and camouflage fatigues; in a small pack he carried a helmet of mosquito netting, his spiral notebook, a miniature cassette recorder held together with duct tape, and a manila envelope, which he handed over to Tommy.

"Find out anything about First Keys Casinos?" the Indian asked him.

"Registered in the Cayman Islands," Arty said. "Officers include a lawyer who once defended Trafficante, and an accountant who was questioned but never indicted on a charge concerning a loan from the Teamsters' pension fund. The Teamsters, it so happened, were big donors to LaRue's campaign that year."

"Convinced?" said Tommy.

"Intrigued," said Magnus.

Flaco interrupted. "The
pendejo senatore
," he said. "I go back for heem now?"

*****

Cow Key Bridge was part of the only road that linked Key West to North America, and at five p.m. it carried heavy traffic. Rented convertibles and hand-buffed Harleys and hollowed trucks sped by, making I-beams tremble and rivets sing. Beneath the modest span, timeless currents spilled between the ocean and the Gulf; pelicans and egrets, oblivious to the clamor and the stink, fished the fertile shallows in the slanting sun. Flaco leaned across a gunwale and staked his boat at the base of the embankment that sloped down from the roadway, and waited for Barney LaRue.

Soon a car pulled onto the shoulder, and the politician—tall, annoyingly handsome, wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase—appeared above the guardrail. Unexpectedly, he was sandwiched between two other men, nasty men, men that Flaco recognized from the big dark Lincoln parked outside the Paradiso. The boatman, with a subtle shifting of his weight, leaned in against his push-pole, said, "One man only goes."

Squeak said, "Don't tell us, ya fuckin' spick."

"Then no one go," said Flaco.

Bruno, half-lunging, half-sliding down the gravel incline, made a move for him. With an astonishing lack of hurry, Flaco poled away from shore, just far enough to be unreachable. "We waste time," he said to LaRue.

The politician looked sour and disgusted. On the flight from Tallahassee to Miami, he'd been assailed by misgivings that put a bad taste in his mouth, a taste of blood and chalk. In Coconut Grove, he hadn't liked the look on Charlie Ponte's face when the gangster handed over the briefcase full of cash, hadn't liked the way his upper lip twitched back from his teeth. Nor did he like the sprawl and smell of Ponte's thugs camped out in his apartment. Now LaRue was abashed and weary; that was as close as he would come to admitting he was scared. "He's right," he said to Squeak and Bruno.

"Don't fuckin' tell us who's right," said Squeak. "You got that briefcase, we're supposed ta go along."

Discomfort put a snide edge on the politician's arrogance. Recklessly he said, "Look, you tried it your way, you fell on your face. Now back off and let me settle this."

The two goons, balancing with difficulty against the slope, looked at each other, unable to think themselves beyond the stalemate. Slow but resolute, Flaco poled back to the shore. As traffic whined and herons flicked their snakelike necks for fish, Barney LaRue angled down the gravel in his expensive shoes and stepped alone into the skiff.

Bruno sat on the embankment, balled his right fist, nestled it in the vastness of his left palm. "Don't tell Ponte," he said to Squeak, beneath the roar and ring of traffic, "but I almost hope that fucker fucks it up."

On Kilicumba, they heard the little boat approaching across the still and echoing flats. They heard the motor cough and die, heard the soft scratch of fiberglass on marl.

Arty Magnus tied his helmet of mosquito-netting securely over his head and face, and buried himself in the dense light-blotting mangroves that edged the clearing.

Murray and Franny and Max looked to Tommy for instructions. But he had nothing to say to them. He stood there in his crusty clothes, he inhaled concentration and exhaled silence. He crossed his arms against his chest, spread his feet out shoulder-wide, set his mouth and turned down his eyes in an expression that was solemn, judging. Very Indian. Except now it was no pose put on for the tourists, but the stubborn core of something desperate, undaunted and unyielding.

Flaco led LaRue to the middens.

It was just after six. The light was soft and golden, shadows were long, distorted, with fainter shadows stretching from their edges. Under his poplin suit LaRue was wearing a blue oxford shirt and a yellow silk tie, he looked like what he was—an ambassador in time of war, dispatched under deep duress from a very different nation.

He glanced quickly at the island exiles caked in mud, made no effort to mask his civilized contempt. Briefly he stared at Max Lowenstein, smoking his pipe in his unspeakable boxers. "And who the hell are you?"

The shrink said, "I'm visiting from New York."

"Crazy goddam Yankees," said the senator. He handed over the briefcase that held the contracts and the cash, said, "All right, let's get this over with."

Tommy put the satchel on the ground beside him. "Why?" he said. "You in a hurry?"

Bugs, waking up hungry as pygmy bears, were beginning to swarm into their sunset orgy. Mosquitoes flocked to the senator's unprotected neck,
wakita malti
tapped into the faint blue veins of his slender wrists and elegant hands.

"This is sordid," he hissed.

"You don't like being Ponte's errand boy?" said the Indian.

LaRue felt tiny punctures in his flesh, tried very hard to hold on to his self-possession, to resist the urge to swat and shimmy. "I don't like being used," he said.

"No one does," said Tommy. "Funny you never noticed that before."

The politician said, "Take out the contracts, please. Two copies. You sign, I witness."

Tommy picked up the briefcase, opened it. In the silence the snap of the clasps was very loud. He looked with no great pleasure at the bundled fifties, then removed a manila envelope that lay on top of them. Setting the briefcase down again, he slid out the contracts and started to read.

Tommy finished reading. Still clutching the papers, he started stomping softly on the ground, sending forth a high and reedy humming as he did so.

"Just sign the goddam contracts," said LaRue.

Tommy stood still and stared at him. "You're in my country now," he said. "Here we have respect for certain ceremonies."