“This was a bad idea.”
“Look. Just tell me where this source is and I’ll go talk to him,” I said.
But Joe fired a mocking look my way.
“Right.”
“I’m dead serious,” I said.
“Fine. I’ll go with you,” he said.
I wasn’t ready for the offer. I said nothing for a long while. It was Joe who broke the silence. He tamped out the cigarette and stood up in a huff.
“Let’s just forget it,” he said, heading toward the front door.
“I can’t. I need to fix this,” I said.
“Not a good idea, Mary.”
“Okay, okay,” I said.
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, come with me,” I said.
I blurted out the words without thinking. Joe seemed as shocked to hear them as I was to say them.
“When?” he said, daring me to repeat the invitation.
“Now,” I said.
“Now?”
“Right now,” I said. “Before I change my mind.”
Joe held the front door open for me, and he followed me into the stifling hot confines of the house. No glimpse of the August sun shone through the shuttered windows, leaving the place a dismal still life of ripped furniture, dark wood laminates, and randomly placed Capodimonte figurines, a setting untouched since Joe’s mother, Melba, died of a heart attack eight years earlier.
Joe headed into the bedroom and, for some reason, I followed him. But I stopped at the bedroom door when I saw the scene inside: A tangle of medical tubes were tethered to a manual-crank hospital bed. In it, a living ghost of a man, rail thin, seventy-eight years old, took sips from an orange juice carton as a fiftyish nurse in overly cheery scrubs adjusted the bedsheets. Once upon a time, Joe’s father, Antonio Pratts, was a top-notch mechanic at the busiest service station on Forty-ninth Street, a man who rarely missed a day of work. On nights when his wife worked late at her beauty shop job, it was Antonio who would cook dinner for the family, fry palomilla steak and green plantains, still wearing that smudged uniform embroidered with his nickname, “Papo.”
The sight of Papo in that bed killed me. I started to walk toward him, hoping he’d remember me. But Joe raised a hand, signaling me to stay away. I couldn’t help but eavesdrop as he spoke to the nurse.
“If you need something, Danny’s number is next to the phone in the kitchen,” he said.
“I have it, no problem,” said the nurse.
Joe leaned down, close to his father.
“How you feeling?” he asked the old man.
Papo stared ahead as if lost. His eyes flickered about.
“I have to go to work for a while, but I’ll be back soon,” Joe said.
He smoothed a hand across his father’s forehead.
“I played your combination last night,” Joe said. “We hit it on three numbers—we’re rich.”
The old man smiled up at Joe.
“Pssst. Jo Jo,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve crapped my pants.”
The nurse hurried over to check on Papo as Joe leaned over to give his father a kiss.
“Be nice to the nurse,” he said, turning to leave.
We walked out of the house without speaking another word.
NINE
WE MADE A quick stop at my house, where I called Gina to tell her I was going away for a few days to clear my head. I couldn’t bring myself to utter my real plans. I packed up my laptop and an overnight bag while Joe waited in my car. I wedged the bag between us in the car, hoping to force some distance. The scene at his house had left me feeling vulnerable, too vulnerable for my own good. It told me more than I wanted to know about Joe’s life and his reasons for remaining in a dead-end existence. I had to put it all out of my mind and stay focused. So I tried to leave the mental noise behind as I drove off to catch the turnpike south, Joe riding shotgun.
“I’ll put this in the back,” said Joe, grabbing the bag.
“No, leave it there,” I said.
Joe slouched in his seat and stared out at the traffic. The suburban landscape dissolved to a haze of mangroves as the road flowed into the northern Florida Keys. Soon we were flanked by bodies of water that shimmered in competing shades of aquamarine, the ocean to the left, Florida Bay to the right, dwarfing the narrow, two-lane highway. It is one of my favorite drives, one that rarely fails to put me at ease. And that day I might have been at ease if I hadn’t been so distracted by Joe’s antics. He grabbed my arm off the steering wheel and pulled it over to his side, a playful, daredevil move that irked the hell out of me. I tore it away and kept driving.
Joe leaned back into his seat with a cocky air, like a guy getting his power back. He tried to grab me again, but this time I slapped him with the back of my hand.
“What am I doing?” he said.
“Stay on your side,” I said.
Joe fired up a cigarette.
“You miss me?” he said.
I shot him a blank look.
“Yeah, you miss me,” he said.
“It’s not going to be like that,” I said.
“Like what? Are you lecturing me? I’ll turn this bougie-ass car around,” he said.
“You never change, do you?”
“I swear I’ll do it,” Joe said, eyes narrowed on me.
I jerked the car to the side of the road with a burned-rubber screech.
“Don’t fuck with me. It won’t work this time. I’m not the same girl,” I said.
Joe’s eyes lit up in a manic flash. It was the first flicker of life I had seen in him in years.
“That’s right,” he said. “You’re someone else now. I read about it in the paper.”
I fired a nasty look at him, and he looked away to avoid me. I could have said so many things to him right then. He had no right to draw conclusions about my life, no right to assume he knew the independent person I had become, the mother and businesswoman. But I got back on the highway without saying another word to him. The truth is, I was beginning to wonder if, indeed, I was someone else now.
ISLAMORADA DOCKS—DAY 29
Mary and Joe pull up into a small marina just south of Mile Marker 82.
Under a blazing sun, I followed Joe past a motley collection of boats. Crawling atop them were gypsy souls long ago swallowed by the tempting fringes of the Overseas Highway. They had drifted here to escape, to hide, to spend an endless summer, and they had stumbled upon a paradise of barefoot living and rum-enhanced sunsets. Everybody here has a used-to-be story, some of them jarringly different from their present-day scenario.
We walked up to an aging but sturdy thirty-foot fishing boat docked by a sign that read TARPON HUNTERS OF ISLAMORADA. On board, a leathery man in his late fifties polished the wood-grain details of his open cabin. This was Captain Nick, a reinvented menswear salesman who had lost a fortune in the market crash of 1987. He squinted in our direction and waved us over.
Moments later, he and Joe were drinking longnecks on the deck, trading fishing stories, and commiserating about financial woes. I took the opportunity to flip through the missed calls log on my cell phone—there were none that couldn’t wait. I put the phone away and tuned in to the conversation just as Joe was asking Captain Nick about some guy named Gus.
“Sorry, man, I don’t remember him,” said the captain in a rather cautious tone.
“Of course you do—you remember Fat Gus. Big, hairy jerk from Gainesville,” said Joe.
“Doesn’t ring a bell. Then again, I’ve been out of the loop for a while,” said Captain Nick. “But if you want a good deal on some hog snapper, I’m your dude.”
“Screw the hog snapper, Nick. What the hell’s wrong with your brain these days?” said Joe.
“My life’s real simple right now, and I’d like to keep it that way,” said the boat captain. He downed the rest of his beer with a bit of an attitude.
Joe walked away, frustrated. But I wasn’t ready to give up on f
inding this Gus character, whoever he was.
“I’ll take the hog snapper,” I said.
“Coming right up. How much you want?” said the captain.
“Give me the smallest one you’ve got,” I said.
Captain Nick opened up a large cooler and grabbed a thirteen-inch, reddish-coral fish. He wrapped it in a sheet of plastic and tossed it in a grocery bag for me.
“How much?” I said.
“Twelve bucks is good.”
I held up a one-hundred-dollar bill. He stared at it but wouldn’t take it.
“Got no change, honey.”
“I don’t want change,” I said. “I don’t want the fish, either.”
“So what the hell’s the money for?” the captain said.
“For you,” I said. “Consider it a thank-you present for helping us find my cousin. Gus.”
Captain Nick thought about it for a second before he snatched the hundred. He jammed the bill into a pocket of his shorts.
“You didn’t hear this from me,” he said. He glanced back as if hog snapper could eavesdrop. “He hangs out at the Dune Dog, off Duval Street.”
We left the captain where we found him, one fish-smeared Benjamin richer, and we hit the highway south to Key West.
DUNE DOG TAVERN—DAY 29
A badly lit, beer-soaked hangout for locals. Classic rock and wood slab tables carved up with decades’ worth of initials, dedications, and drunken shout-outs. Mary and Joe drink longnecks at a corner booth.
We had been at the bar for a good hour, but there was no sign of Gus—not that I would have recognized him anyway. In fact, I knew I could sit there for days and never recognize a soul among the rough-hewn, tattooed clientele. Joe, on the other hand, seemed to know at least one other customer, a scruffy guy at the bar. He kept his eye on the guy as we waited for Gus.
“You know him?” I said.
“Nope,” he said.
The entire drive from Islamorada, Joe had kept conversation to a minimum. He seemed distant, aloof. Maybe he didn’t like the fact that Captain Nick had blown him off yet had given me the lead on Gus. Or maybe he didn’t like the fact that I had stopped to call Tony. Not that the call had yielded any kind of meaningful conversation—Tony, his usual prick self, hung up on me.
Maybe Joe was having second thoughts about introducing me to his sources and possibly revealing some details of his past he preferred to keep hidden from me. He had done his best to shield me from his delinquent associations throughout the years we were together. But, of course, I knew he was getting too close to some unsavory characters—how could I not know? The wads of cash, the hand-scribbled contact lists, the Saturday-night special tucked in the dresser drawer—all those things told the story Joe didn’t have the guts to tell me himself. I’m sure he would have argued that those characters who drifted in and out of his life were not associates but simply friends of friends, the cousin of a guy he owed a favor to, the ex-brother-in-law of some dude he grew up with, the uncle of a kid who was like a brother. Joe had no boundaries in his life, no desire to draw lines of distinction between family and random acquaintances. Every joker who stumbled into the Rapture Lounge on nights when Joe was tending bar—years before he bought the place—found a friend in Joe. He could look a coke dealer in the eye and see not a convicted felon but a poor slob just trying to hustle a few bucks to support his kids. To Joe, the drug trade possessed a kind of gravitational pull, like a massive high tide, dragging in thugs and innocents alike. It was never the fault of these jokers—they merely were swept up by a powerful phenomenon they could not control. And I believe it was this putrid environment of nonexistent boundaries that killed Joe’s life ambitions and his dreams. Once upon a time, he had dreamed of opening his own cigar shop—and this was years before the ’90s cigar rage hit the retro-glam, fabulous set. There would be cigar rollers, custom-blended varieties, classes for the connoisseur, a cigar lounge streaming vintage Cuban music and Rat Pack standards, and even a midmorning cigar reader to lavish upon the old-timers, rollers and visitors alike, their favorite paperback Westerns. Joe knew his cigars. He had fallen in love with the culture as a boy, watching his maternal grandfather roll them for tourists on Calle Ocho and falling asleep at night to his stories of what life was like on the tobacco plantations of Pinar del Río. This is what he wanted, an establishment he would call Dulce Maria Cigars. This is what he wanted when he had dreams, and when he was in love with me, before he gave in to the undertow of inevitability.
But that was a lifetime ago. Now, in Key West, I had no inten tion of looking the other way and playing dumb. I had everything to lose if I did.
Joe had sweet-talked Darlene, the bartender, into giving up the scoop on Gus, one of her hardest- drinking regulars. In fact, she had his address and phone number tacked up beside the cash register for those nights when she had to tell the cabbie exactly where to drop off his wasted remains. Joe asked Darlene if she’d call him and let him know his favorite Cuban was waiting for him at the bar. And, amazingly, she did.
“Tell me about Gus. Is he a friend of yours?” I asked Joe.
“Was a friend of mine,” said Joe.
But we were cut off when he spotted a familiar figure ambling toward our table. I turned to find an enormous man, thirty-two or so, in grungy jeans and a Grateful Dead T-shirt. Gus was a bear of a guy, and he seemed ecstatic to see Joe.
“Hey, man. I couldn’t believe it when Darlene called,” said Gus. He squeezed himself into the booth next to me. “I was like, ‘That can’t be, bro. This dude’s been AWOL from my life.’ Man.”
“How you been?” said Joe, a little distracted.
“Outrageous. Thanks for asking,” said Gus. He turned to give me an awkward pat on the shoulder. “Where are my manners, bro? Hi. I’m Gus.”
“This is my wife. Janet,” said Joe, nodding at me. I gave him an unflinchingly believable smile.
“Wow. She’s really hot,” said Gus, before taking a slurp of his beer.
“I know. She is,” said Joe.
“She is. For real. Congrats, man,” said Gus. “When did you get married?”
“Three months ago,” Joe said.
“Big wedding, huh?” said Gus.
“Nah. We went to Vegas,” said Joe.
“No shit. I never been to Vegas,” said Gus, flashing a stupid grin my way, as if waiting for me to say something.
“Vegas is great,” I said.
“So this is why you’ve been hiding, Jose,” said Gus. “Can’t say I blame you.”
“Yeah. Been out of touch for a while,” said Joe. “But I’m trying to hook up with people again. Get some business going. Except I don’t know how to reach anybody anymore.”
“You need a Palm Pilot, bro,” said Gus.
“Exactly. Maybe I wouldn’t lose Jimmy’s number again,” said Joe.
Gus sobered up a bit.
“You know Jimmy? I guess I had forgotten that,” said Gus. “Then again, Jimmy’s a celebrity, like Steven Seagal.”
“Is he still working out west?” said Joe. “Arizona…”
“Not so much anymore,” said Gus.
“Not Arizona. I’m sorry. New Mexico,” said Joe, tapping his temple. “Your brain on drugs.”
Gus let out a belly laugh and raised his beer in a mock toast. But Joe’s mood darkened when he spotted the scruffy guy pushing back from the bar. He kept a casual eye on the derelict as he kept the conversation going.
“So why do you think Jimmy called me?” he asked Gus, bluffing.
“No idea,” Gus said. He chugged his beer.
Joe tracked the scruffy man as he made his way to the bathroom. As soon as he lost sight of the guy, Joe signaled the bartender over for another round.
Ten minutes later, Gus teetered on drunk.
“I know why Jimmy was trying to reach you,” he said at last. “The big man’s making a comeback.”
From the look on Joe’s face I could tell he had no idea who this “big man” was. But he
fronted well.
“I heard about that,” said Joe. “Where can I see Jimmy?”
“Wanna see him tonight?” Gus blurted.
“Yeah, where—” Joe started to say. But he was interrupted when the scruffy guy from the bar appeared and gave him a shove from the back.
“Let’s go have a conversation,” said the derelict.
“I’m already having a conversation,” said Joe. “So you need to get out of here.”
“I ain’t going anywhere without you, my friend,” said the scruffy guy. He lifted his shirt slightly to reveal a black Glock 9 mm handgun tucked into his belt. “So let’s go outside, you and me.”
I reached out to grab Joe’s arm, but he pulled it away with a look of caution.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, nudging the scruffy man out of the bar.
The exchange made Gus queasier than the beer.
“What’s going on here?” I asked him.
“I don’t know, but I need to get out of here,” he said, scrambling out of the booth.
“Wait—you can’t leave,” I said, going after him.
I chased Fat Gus down a short alley but stopped when I heard screams and the crash of metal around the corner. Someone was getting his ass kicked. Joe. I was sure of it. I raced around the corner, but I stopped when I saw the bloody mess behind the Dumpster: Joe, his face cut and bruised, pointed a gun at the derelict, now crumpled up and whimpering on the pavement.
“I want to hear it again,” Joe said, giving the man a shove in the rump.
“You don’t owe me,” the man mumbled.
“What’d you say? Say it again,” Joe said.
The derelict coughed and clutched his stomach. Joe went to pistol-whip him but stopped when he saw me.
“Nothing. You don’t owe me a damn thing…,” the derelict said.
“Yeah? So why’d you pull a gun on me in front of my wife?” said Joe, glancing back at me.
“I’m sorry, man,” the derelict said.
“Sorry isn’t sorry enough,” said Joe. He signaled me over.
I went over, hoping to pull Joe away from there. But before I could grab him he shoved the Glock into my hand.
“Keep it on him,” Joe said.
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