“Ricky would never go for it,” Pat said. “He won’t even come out of his room except in a spacesuit or shepherd’s garb or something. Now we’re going to put him up on stage?”
“He’s always on stage,” said Marsha. “This would just be making it official. If we could just keep him safe—”
But Lenny was already souring on his own idea. “If we could keep him safe we’d be the Secret Service. Except we’re not. We’re not even the Postal Service. We’re not even service dogs. Pat’s right. He wouldn’t do it, and he shouldn’t. Way too risky.”
“But if he doesn’t do it,” Marsha said, “if we don’t try something, the threat just keeps hanging over him, and over the club, and the TV deadline comes and goes, and we’ve lost without even trying to win. I think putting Ricky up there front and center is a pretty damn good approach. Gets bodies in motion. Forces the issue.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Pat.
“I think it’s worth a shot, at least,” said Marsha. “So, Lenny, you’ll go talk to him?”
“Me? Why me?”
“It was your idea,” said Pat. “You sort of own it now. Good luck.”
PART FOUR
37
“I dunno,” Carmine said as he sipped a Mai-Tai underneath a palapa at the Flagler House’s outdoor bar. “Doin’ an end-run around Bert, it just seems sorta, whaddyacallit, disrespectful.”
Peppers took a swig of his Tabasco-spiked martini. “Ain’t disrespectful if the guy never finds out he’s been disrespected. Besides, we get this done neat and tidy, it would get us in good with Clifton.”
“Who cares?”
“Maybe you should. Future opportunities down here—”
The big man was already shaking his head. Then he pointed up at the palapa, which he’d noticed was a fake. You were supposed to believe it was made of thatch, but if you looked close you could see it was really plastic. “Don’t talk to me about opportunities in Florida. Florida’s bullshit.”
“All right,” his friend continued, “leave that onna side for now. But ten grand is ten grand. An’ all Clifton’s askin’ us to do, it’s probably where things end up anyway. Plus we don’t have to beat up the broad.”
“Look, I just don’t feel right takin’ Fat Lou’s money to do a job then takin’ someone else’s money to do the job different.”
“As long as it gets done,” argued Peppers, “what’s wrong with a little double-dippin’? Waya the world, my friend.”
Carmine folded his arms across his chest and thought it over. Then he said, “Tell ya what, let’s compromise.”
“Compromise?”
“We do like Clifton wants but not wit’out we get Bert’s blessing.”
“Bert’s blessing? Oh, great. We just tell ‘im we’ve decided to ignore ‘im—”
“No, we level with ‘im altogether. We tell ‘im we got a chance to take some money off this guy who it’s obvious he hates his guts. We tell ‘im we’re sick a sittin’ on our ass down here. And we tell ‘im this is what we’d like to do.”
“And what if he says no?”
“Then we don’t do it.”
“So we leave the money onna table and go back to sittin’ on our ass?”
“No worse off than now.” He sipped his drink. When it got near the bottom he sucked the rest up through a straw. He knew his partner wasn’t thrilled with him, but what else was new? Finally he said, “Listen, Peps. I done a lotta wrong things in my life. I’m probably gonna do a lot more before I’m through. But bein’ a sneak wit’ my own people ain’t one of ‘em. I’m not doin’ this unless we clue Bert in.”
Ricky was still mugging for the mirror when the unexpected knock came at the door.
The sound made the hunted man’s heart start racing and his first impulse was to hide in the closet or leap from the balcony and take his chances with the shrubbery below. Even after Lenny had announced himself, it took a few moments for his breathing to return to normal. He unlocked the door three different ways and let him in.
After some terse hellos, Lenny got straight to the point. “I have a hypothetical question for you. How’d you like to do a set at Titters, maybe, for instance, tomorrow night? With some Mafia in the audience.”
Ricky blinked and said, “And I have a hypothetical question for you. Are you fuckin’ nuts?”
Carla came out of the bathroom. She’d been giving herself a pedicure and had those foam toe-separating thingies on both feet. They made her walk like a duck. She said, “Did I hear right? You want Ricky up on stage with Carmine in the room?”
“Exactly.”
Ricky said, “And I’m supposed to stand there and be funny?”
“That’s your job, right? You’re a pro, you can do it. Lighten up, rise above. Have some fun with it.”
“Fun. Right.”
Carla said, “So I’m trying to picture all this. The show happens. Then what?”
Lenny couldn’t hold anybody’s gaze just then so he looked down at Carla’s toes and quietly said, “Well, um, the idea from there is that Carmine probably freaks and goes chasing after Ricky but Ricky makes a getaway.”
“A getaway,” said the comedian. “How quaint. How vintage. How Bonnie and Clyde. Just how the hell does this getaway happen?”
“Um, we don’t really know that yet. We just know we have to get Carmine out of position.”
“Oh, Christ, we’re back to fucking tennis strategy again?”
“Maybe we just hide you someplace.”
“Someplace? Maybe? This is the most half-assed thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Come on, man, you’ve done improv, you know how to wing it.”
“Yeah, when the worst that can happen is no one laughs and you feel like an idiot. This is, like, if it falls flat, my testicles are gone.”
There was a pause. Unconsciously, the three of them had been gradually leaning inward toward each other, so that by now their bodies formed a kind of teepee; the fumes from Carla’s toenail polish were wafting up between them like toxic incense from a campfire.
Finally she said, “Look, worse comes to worst, I’ll handle Carmine.”
“You’ll handle Carmine? Oh, great. Wonder Woman to the rescue.” Ricky’s tone wasn’t exactly mocking but it was skeptical enough to come close.
“Your confidence in me is touching,” Carla said, pivoting away from the group and taking a few huffy steps toward the balcony. The dramatic effect of this was somewhat reduced by the fact that she was still walking like a duck.
Backpedaling, Ricky said, “Look, no offense, but what if Carmine just doesn’t feel like being handled? What if he’s crazy enough to kill you too?”
“He had plenty of chance to do that when I told him I was leaving him. He didn’t do it then. I don’t think he’ll do it now.”
“You’re really not afraid of him?”
“For myself? No. But that’s fine. You’re afraid enough for both of us. Besides, I’d actually like to have a little chat with Carmine. There’s a couple things I’d like to say to him.”
“A chat? How cozy. How civilized. I hope its cathartic for you. I hope it’s therapeutic for you both. But if it doesn’t exactly clear the air, I’m still the one with the bull’s-eye on my chest.”
They were glaring at each other, hands on hips. Lenny, unwilling witness to the private spat, eased back into the conversation on a different tack. “Ricky, how long’s it been since you were up on stage? You know, live audience. Not counting the naked gate-crash.”
“Months.”
“Miss it?”
“You know I do.”
“You’ll be missing it a whole lot longer if you keep on hiding out. I think maybe you should face this thing while you’ve got friends around, people who can help.”
Ricky pushed his lips out and stared down at the carpet. He pawed at it a moment and watched the nap rise and fall. Then, belatedly, he said to Carla, “What kind of things you want t
o say to Carmine?”
“That’s between him and me. Maybe they’ll help, maybe they won’t. But in the meantime, I think you ought to do the show.”
38
“Fuckin’ circus down here,” said Carmine.
“Well yeah,” said Bert. “That’s kinda the idea.”
The three of them and the chihuahua were milling through the crowd at Mallory Square, where the fabled Sunset Celebration was in full swing. There were jugglers, tightrope walkers, acrobats, steel drums. Painted people pretended to be statues and a mime made you see a wall made out of nothing. People were crushed together and it was sometimes hard to tell the buskers from the spectators, what with the tats and piercings and zombie eye makeup common to both groups. Peppers thought it was a helluva place for a meeting on delicate matters, but Bert had insisted that’s where they should get together. He thought the visitors might momentarily lighten up and enjoy it, plus he liked to shmooze with the performers, most of whom seemed to know him well.
So they wandered among the guitarists and magicians and guys up on stilts. Peppers, at moments, caught himself almost having fun but Carmine remained resolutely stone-faced. Not even the famous cats that leaped from ladder to ladder through hoops of bright green flame seemed to impress him. “Ain’t they somethin’?” Bert coaxed.
“They’re okay,” Carmine said warily and without enthusiasm. In his limited exposure to Florida attractions, he’d already noted a pattern of fraud. Places with strip club names that turned out not to be strip clubs; Polynesian tiki huts that featured plastic fronds. He was tired of feeling suckered. “That fire they’re jumpin’ through,” he groused, “I’ll bet it’s not even real fire.”
“Not real fire? Whaddya want, napalm? Ya wanna see the cats get fried? You want a barbecue? Course it’s real fire, same kind fire-eaters eat. We got one a those too. Wanna see ‘im eat fire?”
“Not really,” said the big man.
“Look, Bert,” said Peppers, “no offense against your freak show, but what we’d really like to do is discuss some pressing business. Can we please leave the carnival and talk?”
Bert just shrugged and led the way toward a relatively quiet place where a cruise ship had steamed off, leaving a long stretch of empty concrete dock. He put Nacho on the ground and let the creature choose which giant bollard it preferred to pee on. Then he carefully sat himself down on one nearby. “Okay, what’s the pressing business?”
Peppers and Carmine looked at one another and realized there wasn’t any tactful way to broach the subject. So Peppers just blurted it out. “Clifton’s offering us a bonus of ten grand each to ignore you altogether and just torch the fucking club asap.”
If the goombahs were braced for an angry reaction, they were disappointed. Bert’s reply was mildness itself. “I’m not surprised. He’s a sneaky little twat, let’s face it. And it’s a fairly generous offer. Ya gonna take it?”
Fumbling a bit, Carmine said, “Hey, we ain’t gonna do nothin’ wit’out we talk to you first.”
“I appreciate that. And now you’ve talked ta me. An’ I think y’oughtta take the offer.”
“Ya do?” said Peppers. The approval should have made him happy but instead it made him nervous. It shouldn’t have come this easily.
“Sure, why not take the money? As for Lou, what’s he care? Long as things work out, he doesn’t even have to know. So when ya plannin’ on doin’ it?”
The question caught the two thugs unprepared. They hadn’t expected things to move so quickly. They thought there’d be some hemming and hawing, more complications, more delays. Suddenly the game was speeding up on them. Peppers cleared his throat and said, “Um, late tonight I guess.”
“Tonight,” echoed Bert. He slowly bent down to pick up his dog and began meditatively stroking its head. “Tonight. Okay, the sooner the better. But can I make one small recommendation based on local knowledge that you’d have no way of otherwise possessin’? I don’t think it should be tonight.”
“How come?” said Carmine.
“It’s Friday.”
“What of it?” Peppers asked.
“Friday night there’s extra cops around the docks.” This was not true, but it was the first thing the old man thought to say. Feeling that he could do better, he went on, “Plus the fishing boats come in on Friday night with those big whaddyacallits, the big arc lights they use. Friday night’s a bad idea.”
“Tomorrow night at the latest then,” said Peppers.
“Yeah, tomorrow night would definitely be better,” Bert agreed. He petted the chihuahua. He gazed appreciatively off to the west, where the vanished sun had left behind a few pink clouds stretched out against a swath of yellow sky. Then he said casually, “Ya given much thought to your alibis?”
“Alibis?” said Carmine. “Our alibi is that no one’s gonna see us and by the time the fire trucks get there we’re gonna be halfway up the Keys.”
The old man squinted toward the horizon. “Excuse me, but that does not constitute an alibi. That’s just wishful thinking that everything comes off perfect. Look, I don’t wanna see you guys get in any trouble. So let’s think a couple things through, okay? Gas. Ya got the gas yet?”
“Nah, we’ll pick it up tomorrow,” Peppers said.
“In what?”
“Whaddya mean, in what? We’ll buy a gas can when we buy the gas.”
Bert peered at the water. There were coppery glints on the tops of the wavelets, long troughs of glassy black between them. “Nah,” he said, “this I don’t like.”
Carmine had propped a beefy leg on a bollard and was leaning his thick torso across it. “What? What don’t you like?”
“You guys buyin’ a gas can. I mean, think about it. Two guys who obviously do not live here and therefore have no need of, say, a generator or a lawn mower, buy a brand new gas can in full view of several employees plus the security camera that every retail place in town has one, then a joint mysteriously burns down, and the strangers don’t even have an alibi for where they were except now they’re haulin’ ass in the opposite direction from the scene of the crime. That’s what I don’t like.”
This was hard to disagree with. Peppers pinched his lips together tightly. Carmine rubbed the stubble on his chin.
Bert said, “So I’ll bring the gas can.”
“You?” said Carmine.
“I always keep a spare inna garage. We do get hurricanes here, ya know. Outages. Shortages. Nothin’ suspicious about an old local wit’ a gas can.”
Peppers ran a hand across his concave face. With rather grudging gratitude, he said, “Okay Bert, good thinkin’, thanks. We’ll pick it up from you tomorrow.”
“No you won’t. Don’t you guys listen? I said I’d bring it.”
“Bring it?” Carmine said. “Bring it where?”
“To the club. Where else? I’ll stash it. You guys shouldn’t be seen with it. You won’t touch it till it’s time to do the deed. Much safer that way.”
Peppers said, “Listen, Bert, that’s awful nice but you don’t have to—”
“Yeah, I do have to,” the old man interrupted. “Look, I still got an obligation here, a promise to Lou to help you guys. An’ there’s still some details that have to get worked out. But we’ll figure on late tomorrow night, once the joint is closed. No more stalling and no more complications. Agreed?”
39
Bert lingered a while at the Celebration after Peppers and Carmine had peeled off and headed back to their hotel. Then he strolled through downtown and up to Titters. It was around nine o’clock when he arrived to swap updates and plan strategy with his unlikely allies. He was still there, his dog asleep on a table, at two in the morning.
By that time, Marsha had filled up half a yellow pad with notes and diagrams. She and Pat and Lenny had gone over every square inch of the cluttered old club—the stage, the bar, the disused engine room, the entrances and exits. They’d checked out every nook and cranny and lookout spot and hiding place; they�
�d considered escape routes and where the gas can could most conveniently be stashed. Pat had walked and gestured through various scenarios like a director blocking out a theater piece. Lenny had stood in as Ricky up on stage; Marsha counted the number of steps it would take for his would-be assassin to close the distance between them; Bert guesstimated how many chairs and tables would be turned over in the process. They considered how to assure a good turnout and how to include in the festivities a certain person they didn’t much like.
When they were all too tired to see straight, Bert stood up to end the meeting. “Well,” he said, “it ain’t the tidiest plan I ever saw. In fact, it’s kind of a mess. But it’s a start. Course, there’s more details to be worked out.”
With Bert there were always more details. He roused his snoring dog and left.
Outside, on US 1, he stood at the curb and waited for a taxi to come by. None did at that late hour. But after a couple of minutes a pink Pedi-Cab appeared. He hailed it and climbed in.
The Pedi-Cab’s back seat was curved and cozy and lushly padded. The quiet residential streets south of the highway were fragrant with the ripening of next day’s flowers and the light from the streetlamps was softened into lavender globes by the mild and humid air. It should have been a very relaxing ride, but Bert could not relax. He was bothered by certain aspects of the so-called plan that just hadn’t been resolved up to his standards. Mulling, he absently stroked Nacho between the ears and watched the regular, hypnotic motion of the driver’s legs pumping up and down as he pedaled the bike. The legs were clad in a purple leotard and were beautifully muscled like the legs of a ballet dancer.
At some point, seemingly out of nowhere, Bert said to the driver, “’Scuse me, buddy, but how fast can this thing go?”
The driver kept pedaling as he looked back across his shoulder. He had a pleasant boyish face whose most natural expression seemed to be a playful if not flirtatious smile. “Why, you in a hurry?”
One Big Joke Page 15