Watch Your Back (11 page)

Before leaving the room, she put the wheelie on its back on the bed and opened the Velcro secret compartment to take out the manila envelope and shake from it the photos of Preston Fareweather, wanting to be certain she would close with the right man. These well–fed, self–indulgent rich men of a certain age tended to a type — round, jowly heads and round, flabby bodies, more so in bankers, a little less so in movie producers — so she wanted to be absolutely certain to dock onto nobody but her own Tweedledee among all the Tweedledums patrolling the sands here in this paradise of no consequences. There had been a number of those among the previous week’s holdovers, eyeballing the new arrivals as they moved from airport van to recreation hall to reception to the meandering paths to their rooms, but she hadn’t risked meeting anybody’s eye, hadn’t tried yet to make contact, preferring the first strike to be the finisher, like the zap the cow gets as she enters the slaughterhouse.

Yes, here he was, Preston Fareweather, with the usual deficit of hair and surplus of flesh. Even with nothing to gloat at but a camera, he still bore on his lips — virtually the only thin part of him — the hint of that sardonic smile that says, “I’m rich, and you aren’t.”

In the same manila folder was the thumbnail bio of Fareweather, but she already knew that cold. Venture capitalist from a wealthy family, all the right schools, all the wrong education, fingers in pies all across the economy from New York City real estate to second–wave California Web startups. And now here, hiding in broad sunlight.

Not from me, Roselle thought, smiling back at that smirk. Returning the photos to the envelope and the envelope to the secret compartment, off she went in her bikini, her ballet slippers, her wide–brimmed white straw hat, and her huge dark Jackie O sunglasses. On the prowl.

And there he was, eventually, after nearly an hour of strolling the paths and the beach and the resort’s central square. But there he was, sprawled on a chaise longue on the little ground–floor balcony outside what must be his room. That was Preston Fareweather, all right, garbed in nothing but the briefest possible bright red swimsuit; not so much a fashion statement as a provocation.

Protected by her sunglasses, Roselle observed Fareweather sidelong as she sashayed by. She knew he was eying her; how could he not?

Unfortunately, though, Fareweather was not alone on that porch, so she couldn’t permit connection just yet. Seated beside her man was a younger, thinner man, a narrow–headed ascetic sort that Roselle had never found of any use at all. He and Fareweather chatted together in desultory fashion — Fareweather, she knew, was saying something to him about her at that very second — and they seemed totally at ease in each other’s company.

What was that fellow there for? Fareweather couldn’t be a queen, could he? No, not with that many ex–wives. Not unless he was a demon of overcompensation.

Roselle moved on, having made, she knew, the kind of impact he would not forget. Now it was simply a matter of holding herself ready for his inevitable approach.

How would he do it, exactly? Strolling along, enjoying the sunlight, enjoying in a smallish background way the effect she had on the other males she passed, Roselle wondered what method Fareweather would choose in this odd place to attract her attention. Usually, she knew, men of his type drew notice by strewing money around themselves, the way male lions spray their urine to lure the female, but Club Med removes cash from the guests’ lives, replacing it with beads for use in the gift shop and bar and so on — a fun gimmick that makes it seem as though you’re not spending actual money at all.

How would Preston Fareweather lure the female in an environment without money?

The arrangement in the dining room was mix–and–match, with everyone expected to combine haphazardly among the large round tables, and with guests and staff all sharing their meals together. Not the native maids and gardeners, of course — no point carrying égalité
that
far — but the lifeguards, sports instructors, musicians, office staff, and other socially acceptable types mingled happily with the guests, who mingled just as happily right back.

Dining was buffet style — load your tray and take it to any table. Roselle chose a half–full table with a mix of younger and older, male and female, and a spot where she could sit with an empty chair on either side, just in case Mr. Fareweather should happen to feel the urge to introduce himself.

But who joined her, in the chair at her right, within a minute of her taking her seat, was not Preston Fareweather himself but the thin–faced man who’d been sitting with Fareweather earlier today. “Hi,” he said. “You just got here, didn’t you?”

“This afternoon.”

“I’m Alan,” he said, with a smile, as he removed plates and silverware from his tray and pushed the tray to the middle of the table with the others already there.

“Pam,” Roselle said.

“Hi, Pam. How long you staying?”

“Two weeks, I think.”

“You think?”

She shrugged. “I might stay longer, if I feel like it.”

Beneath the conversation, her mind was very busy. Why wasn’t Alan dining with his friend Preston? Was it
Alan
who hoped to pick her up? On the other hand, would it be possible to use Alan’s presence as a means of meeting his friend? Remain amiable but not quite available, she told herself, and see where it goes.

“I’ve been here for some time,” Alan was saying, “and I must admit, I never get tired of it.”

“It’s my first time.”

“You’re going to love it,” he assured her.

The arrival of another person at the seat to her left brought that conversation to an end, at least for the moment, as the newcomer said, “
Bonsoir, madame,
” forcing Roselle to swivel her head and smile upon him, a whippet–thin Frenchman in his mid–twenties whose tray was piled high with nothing but fruit and salad and sparkling water.

“
Bonsoir,
” she agreed.

“You are new,” he said. His teeth were very white but very small. She thought he smiled like a fox.

“I am new
here,
” she said.

He chuckled; she was amusing. “I am Francois.”

“Pam.”

“I instruct in the dance.”

“Ah.”

“You perhaps,” he said, with his fox smile, “already know the dance.”

“Perhaps,” she said, with her own carnivore’s smile, and turned away to eat a dainty morsel of her own salad, during which Alan, on her right, said, as though there’d been no break in the conversation, “You know what’s the most wonderful thing about the atmosphere of this place? The absolute openness. Guests and staff eating together, for instance, everybody sharing this beautiful place. It really
is
one big happy family.”

“That’s why I’m here,” she said.

“And the best of it,” he told her, “is the lack of money. Only beads. Do you realize how democratic that is?”

“Democratic?” She affected friendly bewilderment. “I just thought it was kind of cute.”

“Well, it is. But besides that. Everywhere else you go in the world, you can tell in one second the rich people from the rest of us. But here, everybody blends in.”

“That’s true,” she said. “When you point it out.”

He gestured at the roomful of diners. “Look how we’re all alike. And yet, would you believe it, there is a multimillionaire in this very room.”

She showed a gently skeptical smile. “Oh, really?”

“I’ve gotten to know him here,” Alan said, “and he’s just like everybody else. At home, of course, he’s the center of the world.
His
world.” Smiling, he gestured again, encompassing all the tables, all the diners, all the grand egalitarian world. “Can you guess which one?”

“Of course not,” she said. “Everybody’s the same here.”

“Exactly what I’m saying.” With a wink, he said, “I’ll give you a hint.”

“All right.”

Smiling at her while he nodded his head rightward in the general direction of Preston Fareweather, he said, “He’s one of the people at that table over there.”

“With the man in the red–and–white–striped shirt?”

Alan had to look. “Yes, that’s the table.”

“But that’s not your millionaire.”

Alan’s smile broadened. “No, no,” he said, “that’s an operator of the glass–bottom boat. He’s French.”

“There are French millionaires.”

“Not working at Club Med.”

“No, I don’t suppose so.” She looked at that table over there, let her glance pass over Preston Fareweather, who was thoroughly engaged in his own conversation among his tablemates, and said, “I can’t guess.”

“In the dark blue shirt,” Alan told her. “Now he’s drinking wine. See?”

“Oh, him.” Roselle smiled, as though made happy by the look of the fellow over there. “He just looks like a very nice man,” she said.

“He is,” Alan assured her, and then, as though the thought had just that instant popped into his head. “Would you like to meet him?”

So that’s how it’s done, Roselle thought. “I’d love to,” she said.

The trouble was to get there. At first, because everything about air travel is so revolting, from the food to the security to the crowding to the simple fact of being thirty thousand feet in the sky, Dortmunder thought maybe it would be more restful to take the train from Penn Station, but unfortunately that would be a little
too
restful: two and a half hours by air, seventeen hours by rail.

Still, there had to be an overnight in it. There were no flights north in the late afternoon, and he’d have to give himself time to find the town, find the guy, and tell him the story. So it looked as though he had to fly down from Newark at nine Sunday morning and then come back from Jacksonville starting at nine the next day.

Fortunately, if that word could be used for any part of this experience, once it became clear to everyone that Dortmunder really meant to go ahead and find the O.J.’s former owner way down there in Florida, he got various kinds of help. J.C. Taylor, for instance, went on the Web and got him bargain rates for the airfare and a motel out by the airport and a rental car. Murch’s Mom offered to drive him to the airport and back without throwing the meter, but her son Stan said he could find a much more comfortable car than a New York City hack, so he’d do the driving.

Other help. Kelp, also a dab hand with the computer, got him printout maps showing exactly how to get from JAX, the airport, to 131 — 58 Elfin Drive, Coral Acres. May got him up early Sunday morning and gave him his favorite breakfast — Wheaties and milk and sugar, in a ratio of 1/1/1 — and then there was nothing to do but take the damn trip.

“Otto Medrick?”

“Maybe.”

“The O.J.’s going out of business.”

Not a sound from the man under the black cloth. Dortmunder watched, and the black cloth seemed to tremble a little, but that was all. The guy must have heard; Dortmunder decided to wait him out.

What was he doing under that black cloth anyway, him and that wooden tripod standing under there with him? Dortmunder, having driven through mile after mile of suburban landscape among low flat–roofed houses full of glass — although what view did they have, except of each other?

He had found 131 — 58 Elfin Drive with far less difficulty than he’d expected, thanks to the Web maps Kelp had conjured for him. He’d parked the little yellow Nissan Pixie on the shiny black driveway in front of the little avocado–and–pink house, identical except in color scheme to every other house in Coral Acres, had scrunched up the crushed–clamshell walk to the front door, and been just about to ring a doorbell when he’d realized he was looking completely through the house, through the living–dining room, through plate glass doors at the back there, and out to the parched backyard, where a bent–kneed man in gray work pants crouched next to a tall tripod under a black cloth draped over his head and upper body. So Dortmunder had walked around the house, delivered his news, and now waited for a response.

Which at last arrived: “Gimme a minute,” snarled the man under the cloth.

“Sure.”

Dortmunder waited some more, and something said
click
under the black cloth, and then at last it was lifted and the man beneath came out from under.

He was short; that was the first thing. He was short and gristly, with wiry gray arms extruded from an ancient gray sweatshirt — YWHA, ASTORIA — with its sleeves cut off. His head was beaked, with Brillo hair and a pointy pepper–and–salt goatee that looked sharp enough to do damage, so that all in all, he mostly resembled a pocket Lenin. Or maybe a collectible Lenin doll for your whatnot shelf, except that he also wore heavy, dark–framed eyeglasses jammed up onto his forehead.

Now he glared at Dortmunder, wriggled his brows, and those glasses dropped down to his nose, so he could see through them as he said, “And who the hell are
you?
”

“I’m a guy goes to the O.J. sometimes,” Dortmunder said, “and I thought you oughta know what’s happening there.”

“I’m
here,
” Otto Medrick told him, “so I don’t hafta know what’s happening there, I got family looking after it.”

“No, you don’t,” Dortmunder said. “Your nephew Raphael, I have to tell you the truth, I met him, and I don’t think he could look after a pet rock.”

“Yeah, you met him all right,” Medrick agreed. “But there’s the rest of the family, his mother, cousins by the dozens.”

“Nobody,” Dortmunder said. “Whatever they’re supposed to be doing, they’re busy doing something else.”

“By God, that
sounds
like those useless sonsabitches,” Medrick said, and peered all at once more closely into Dortmunder’s face. “I bet,” he said, “you’re one a them back–room crooks.”

Dortmunder blinked. “One a them what?”

“You know Rollo, my bartender.”

“Naturally.”

“For years,” Medrick said, “he was my eyes and ears in that joint.”

“Then,” Dortmunder said, “he’s gone blind and deaf.”

“No, it’s not him,” Medrick said. “I told him, I’m outa here, let somebody else collect the tsouris. Rollo don’t even have my phone number. So what’s happening?”

“Raphael,” Dortmunder told him, “turned control over to a guy named Mikey, whose father’s a mob guy, who’s busting it out.”

Medrick thought hard, then said, “Remind me.”

“Buy buy buy on the store’s credit,” Dortmunder explained, “everything from booze to cash registers. Use up the credit, then some night move everything out, sell it all someplace else, let the joint go bankrupt.”

“My joint?”

“The O.J. Bar and Grill,” Dortmunder agreed, “on Amsterdam Avenue.”

“I know where it is!” Medrick squinted past Dortmunder at his house, thinking again, and then said, “What’s your name?”

“John.”

Now Medrick squinted at Dortmunder and slowly nodded. “Could be true,” he decided. “Come inside, it stinks out here.”

It did. Following Medrick through the sliding glass door into the house, Dortmunder said, “What’s with the tripod, anyway? If you don’t mind my asking. And the black cloth.”

Medrick gave him a surprised look as he slid the door closed, then nodded through its glass. “That’s my camera,” he said.

“It is?”

“I was doin a close–up,” Medrick said, pointing at his small backyard, “that sundial back there.”

“No kidding.”

“I only count sunny hours,” Medrick quoted, and shrugged. “Hah. Nice if you can get away with it. Come over and sit down. You want ice water?”

Not an offer you’d expect from a bar owner, but in fact, Dortmunder realized, he was thirsty, so he said, “Yeah, nice.”

“Take a seat there,” Medrick said, and waved a hand, and stumped away.

Dortmunder sat in a living room that was small, neat, and impersonal, as though Medrick had brought none of his possessions south with him but had started afresh, in discount stores. After a minute Medrick came back with two glasses of water, no ice, sat facing Dortmunder, said, “Use the coaster,” and then said, “This isn’t supposed to happen.”

“You thought the family was gonna cover you.”

“Years ago,” Medrick said, “when the issue first come up, I told Jerry, whadawe want with a bar?”

“Jerome Hulve,” Dortmunder said. “Your partner.”

“Well, you do your homework,” Medrick said, “What it was, for forty–two years I had a camera store on Broadway. Jerry was the dry cleaner next door. He’s the one found this tavern was up for sale, got all its licenses, the bar and the fixtures all in place, the price is right, just open it up and that’s it.”

“I never saw you there.”

“You never saw either of us there.” Medrick shook his head. “I was reluctant to get into it, but I have to admit, up to now, Jerry was right. The place was never a big problem. On the other hand, it was never a big earner, either.”

“It gets a lotta trade,” Dortmunder suggested.

“If you call that trade.” Medrick shrugged. “At the start,” he said, “we thought we’d do a dinner business, it’s a neighborhood, all apartments around there. We had waiters, cooks, silverware, the whole thing. Never happened. The
trade
we got, it was a bar trade.”

“That’s true.”

“In all the years we had the place,” Medrick said, “nobody has ever seen any of our customers eat.”

“No, I haven’t, either.”

“But at least no trouble.” Medrick made a disgusted face. “But now,” he said, “if it all goes to hell, it doesn’t just land on Raphael. That piece of paper between us, he still pays me off,’ I still got the responsibility. These mob guys, they’re gonna what–you–say bust it, that comes to
my
doorstep. How’d you like it, a dozen New York City wholesalers, coming after you?”

“I wouldn’t like it,” Dortmunder said.

“These are guys,” Medrick opined, “don’t
want
you to return that deposit bottle, they got uses for that nickel. Florida is not far enough away,
Mars
is not far enough away, you stiff those guys, they’ll eat your flesh, a little more every day.”

“Then,” Dortmunder said, “I think you gotta do something about it.”

“I’m in Florida,” Medrick pointed out. “Raphael is in cyberspace. What am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know things like that,” Dortmunder said.

“I had a cat once,” Medrick told him, “used to bring dead things into the house — this is after we moved out to the Island — she’d bring them to wherever I was, drop them at my feet. I’d say, ‘Hey, what’s this? I don’t want no bloody corpse,’ she’d give me a look: ‘Not my problem.’ Stroll back outside.” Medrick lowered a dissatisfied brow in Dortmunder’s direction. “Now,” he said, “I wonder what made me think of Buttercup after all these years?”

Dortmunder said, “What would you do with the bodies?”

Medrick sighed, looked exasperated, looked at his watch, said, “Rollo, on a Sunday, he comes in at four. I used to have a home number for him, but I didn’t bring it south. I can call him then, see what he says. You had lunch?”

Remembering the flight down, Dortmunder said, “No.”

“I ate a little before twelve,” Medrick said, “but I could have a soup with you.”

“A little before twelve?”

“When you’re very young or very old, you get to eat whenever the hell you feel like it, which, when you’re very old, is just a little bit earlier every day. Six o’clock, five forty–five … I figure, the day you sit down to supper at four o’clock, that’s God saying hello. Will that car of yours seat two?”

“Well,” Dortmunder said, “you’re short.”

Medrick led him to a no–name eatery in a sprawling one–story half–empty mall where most of the parked cars were the largest Cadillacs made twelve years ago. Over lunch in which the only thing Dortmunder recognized was mashed potatoes, Medrick explained that he’d been a widower for six years — “Esther was a wonderful person until the end, when there was nothing good about it” — and he’d been in a relationship with a widow named Alma the last two and a half years. “We don’t live together,” he said, “we aren’t gonna get married, but we hang out, we kanookie.”

“How come you aren’t gonna get married?”

“The government,” Medrick said. “If you’re on Social Security and you get married, it costs you actual money out of your benefits, so what you got down here, you got an entire state here of people, been upright citizens their entire lives, in their golden years they’re living in sin, because the government’s got these rules. The government. These are the same people talk about the sanctity of marriage.” Medrick rubbed a thumb and forefinger together. “We know what sanctity they care about.”

During dessert — key lime pie should sue for libel — Medrick explained about the camera in the backyard. Having spent all those years selling cameras and camera equipment, he finally got the shutterbug bug himself and started taking nature pictures around and about, figuring he’d found a hobby that would satisfy him for many years of retirement.