“What I need, check with Hertz for me. Find out who’s driving a white Datsun, PR license number Twenty Baker Two-Eighty and where he told them he’s staying. Okay? Now close your eyes and look at a male Caucasian, mid-thirties, five-nine, a hundred and forty, dishwater straight hair, long thin nose, mole under his right cheekbone. Creepy guy, we sent him up about seven and a half years ago.”
Torres said, “I don’t see anybody.”
“Get the name from Hertz and run it. Okay? I think he was released in the past couple of weeks, he looks like shit.”
“He just got out,” Torres said, “how’d he get a credit card?”
“I don’t know,” Vincent said, “but he’s driving a rental. If he stole the I.D. all the better. Comes to Puerto Rico and does five to ten. But I’d have to canvas all the hotels to find him, wouldn’t I? And my leg hurts.”
“You saw him and you think you know him, or what?”
“He knows me,” Vincent said. “He knows where I live, he knows I was shot . . . I think I’m the reason he’s here. Because I fucked up his life.”
“Sure, it’s your fault, Vincent.”
“Can you do it now, call me right back?”
“Everybody’s on the street but me. Why don’t I call you later, at your place?”
“Where do you think I’m staying? I don’t have a phone.” He watched polished Japanese cars turning onto Ashford. The bus stop was three blocks away. The ride out to Isla Verde could take a half hour. He said, “Wait, I got a number you can use,” and took a slip of notepaper out of his coat pocket. “But you have to call within the next hour. Okay?”
Torres said, “You miss work, Vincent—is that it?”
4
* * *
THE MAID WAS NERVOUS because she had worked in this house only ten days, taking the place of her sister, and she didn’t want to do something bad and be fired. But she was so nervous she was afraid she was going to cry and not hear anything the man was saying.
She wished Mr. Donovan would be quiet.
She was talking on the telephone—the white one on the wall in the kitchen—to a man who had called and was telling her in Spanish to write something in English. She had finished high school last year, but she couldn’t think and spell the words fast enough to keep up with the man’s voice. Then she wouldn’t hear something he said, with Mr. Donovan talking at the same time.
Mr. Donovan sat at the kitchen table eating a bowl of chili made with beans, a fence of green bottles in front of him; he wore only tennis shorts and appeared naked at the table. Before, when he began eating, he drank down an entire glass of beer and said, “Oh Jesus,” his eyes wet, as though he was crying, drank a second glass without stopping and said, “Honey, you know what? I’m going to live.” He asked her to get him two more bottles of beer from the refrigerator. Eating the hot chili his eyes watered even more and he said, “Oh Christ, Oh Jesus,” using this blasphemy to show his pleasure, using the good linen napkin to blow his nose. His eyes were so strange, appearing wet with emotion but at the same time drugged, staring without seeing. His body, too, was strange. A giant man made with parts and tones of color that didn’t go together. Waves of silver hair. His face colored red and brown. A handsome man if you didn’t stand close to him and see he must be fifty years old. Suntanned neck and arms. But narrow shoulders of bone and a body so pale and softly round it could belong to a fat woman from the States with very small breasts. She had seen such women.
When the phone rang and she began to talk to the man calling from Florida, she could hear Mr. Donovan saying, “I’m not here. Christ, I’m not anywhere yet . . . Tell whoever it is I moved and left no forwarding address . . . Honey, tell ’em you’re busy . . . The hell are you writing?” Never shutting up as she tried to listen to the voice on the phone and write the information, the voice telling her a name she thought was mágico, then spelling it for her and it wasn’t like mágico at all. She was saying to the voice, “Despacio,” repeating it every moment, and Mr. Donovan was saying, “Tell them they’ve got the wrong número.” She was feeling her tears coming, not wanting to lose this job that had been her sister’s, but thinking she was going to have to run out of here . . .
When the door opened and Mrs. Donovan came in from the garage to save her.
Mrs. Donovan, beautiful in her straw hat, her white dress that was tied about the waist but loose and showed her body as she moved. A saint coming in that soft dress, saying to her husband, “You look lovely.”
Mr. Donovan said, “Sit down and have one. It’s cocktail time.”
Please, the maid thought, not having to say it because she could see Mrs. Donovan’s eyes, shaded by the straight line of the hat brim, so calm, and knew she was saved.
In her quiet voice: “Who is it?”
“I don’t know what he’s telling me I’m suppose to write.” She believed she could let her tears come now and it would be all right.
Mrs. Donovan removed one of her earrings. She took the phone, covering it with her hand. “Someone’s at the front door.” Almost as she said it the maid’s eyes widened with the sound of the chimes and Mrs. Donovan smiled with her kind eyes. “I saw him as I drove in.” As the maid walked off she heard Mrs. Donovan say, “Yes, can I help you?”
She wished she could stay and listen to Mrs. Donovan talk to the man on the telephone. Her sister had told her she could learn amazing things working in this house and the house up north in New Jersey, where they lived most of the year.
Watch the way Mrs. Donovan treats the great Mr. Donovan, her sister said. It’s better than the television. They’re both married for the second time, to each other less than three years. Does she love him? See if you can tell. They sleep in different bedrooms. She’s more intelligent than he is, but he doesn’t know it. Watch out for him when he’s drinking, which is every day. Watch out for him late at night. He believes all women are in love with him. Her sister, who left this house to be married and live in New York, said, Never lie to Mrs. Donovan. Never tell anyone what you see and hear. Some of it you won’t believe.
The maid’s name was Dominga. As she reached the front door the bell chimed again.
Vincent said, “Hi, how you doing?” He told her he’d like to see Mr. Donovan.
Dominga paused a moment. “Can I say to him who you are?”
“I want to surprise him.”
“Yes, but I’m suppose to ask your name.”
He could use his shield and I.D., but it could complicate matters once he was in. “Okay. Tell him Vincent Mora.”
The maid came to life. She said, “Mr. Mora—yes, please, come in.”
He waited in a sitting room he believed no one had ever sat in: wondered about the Taino Indian bowl on the marble table, the primitive displayed in the formal setting; wondered why the maid had looked so surprised; wondered if this piece of pottery was more authentic than the ten-buck Taino stuff and if it was, how could you tell. He heard the sound of narrow heels in the tiled hall that was big enough to hold the rooms he lived in. The sound coming, echoing. Not the maid . . .
The woman in the Mercedes who had turned into the drive as he approached the house. Not wearing the wide-brimmed straw now . . . He liked her hair. Sun-streaked, natural looking, sort of parted and almost to her shoulder. Mid-thirties, five-five, slim, one-ten—his cop mind filing it away—movie star teeth, brown eyes that were calm, quietly aware, measuring him, maybe curious, maybe not.
“Mr. Mora?”
She came from the doorway onto the oriental rug, but only so far, a piece of plain white notepaper in one hand, the other closed around a small object that made the hand a delicate fist.
“I’m Nancy Donovan . . . your answering service.”
Vincent said, “Let me explain that, okay? It took me longer to get here than I thought it would.”
Nancy Donovan waited.
“I don’t have a phone.”
She said, “Oh, I see.”
“I thought, if I’m he
re and I get the call you wouldn’t mind. Except I didn’t make it in time. I had to take a bus from Candado.”
She said, “You don’t have a phone, you don’t have a car either.” She was looking at his cane now. “I’m sorry—here, let’s sit down.” Coming over to the marble table. “I’ll give you your message, if I can read my own writing. What’s your friend’s name, Torres?”
“Buck Torres.”
He liked her. He liked her quiet tone, her eyes. He liked her a lot. They sat across from each other at the marble table, cool to the touch. A conference in a room at the Institute of Culture. He watched as she opened her hand to place a pearl earring on the table, then move the Taino centerpiece out of the way, carefully. Maybe he should ask her about it; learn something. He watched her place the sheet of notepaper between them, turning it to him. He caught the scent of her perfume, saw her straight-up-and-down handwriting, saw the name on the first line jump out at him, printed in capital letters.
TEDDY MAGYK.
“Teddy,” Vincent said. He sat back and seemed relieved. “It’s funny, on the bus that name went through my mind, Teddy Magyk, but I didn’t recognize him. I don’t know why.” He had to think about that for a moment, seeing Teddy again in the Datsun—something different about him, more grown up.
Nancy Donovan looked up and Vincent saw those eyes again. Confident, not the least self-conscious. He hunched over the table as her gaze returned to the note.
“This word—I forgot what Mr. Torres said. Is it Ranford?”
“Raiford. The Florida state penitentiary.”
She said, “Yeah, Raiford. Teddy Magyk—I love the name—was sentenced to ten-to-twenty years and released after seven and a half. For first-degree sexual battery?”
“Rape,” Vincent said. “The first time he went up, also for rape, I think he did a couple years in Yardville. That name comes to mind.”
“I know about Yardville,” Nancy Donovan said, “it’s in New Jersey.” Looking at him again. “I assume you’re with the police. In Florida?”
“Miami Beach.”
“And you came here after Teddy?”
“I think it’s the other way around,” Vincent said. “He wants me to know he’s here, worry about him, what he’s up to.”
She was looking right at him again, those brown eyes patient, waiting.
“They come out of Raiford, quite a few of them, they think they’re pretty tough guys. After all, they made it. Or they learn how to survive as snakes. Never confront a problem, someone giving you a hard time, if you can stick him in the back. Which I think is Teddy’s classification. He’s the kind of guy, he’ll do time, never lay the blame on himself for being there. Or any trouble he was in, it was always somebody else’s fault. The guy who stuck the gun in his ear and put the cuffs on him.”
She said, “And you were the arresting officer.”
“The Nemo Hotel in South Beach, a room on the third floor. I pulled him out of bed—” Vincent paused. “I almost threw him out the window. Teddy raped a seventy-year-old woman. Beat her up, she was in the hospital I think nine weeks.” He saw Nancy Donovan staring at him in silence, into his eyes. “You look at him you think he’s harmless. Kind of guy, you can see him riding a three-wheel bike selling ice cream. But he’s nasty and I don’t think he’s been rehabilitated. Not after two falls. Sooner or later he’s gonna try for three.”
She said, “How do you know?”
And Vincent said, “It’s the way it is.”
They stared at one another across the marble table and he felt she was going to ask him about himself, something about his personal life. But after a moment she looked at the note again. “He’s staying at the DuPont Plaza.” Her eyes raised. “That’s a pretty expensive hotel. If he just got out of prison . . .”
Vincent was nodding.
She said, “Wait,” and looked at the note again. “He put down a cash deposit for the car.”
“So he’s got money,” Vincent said, “but hasn’t had time to earn any, at a job.”
She was giving him a funny look. It surprised him because it was so intent. Wanting to ask a question but not wanting to. Finally she said, “This is getting close to home.”
He didn’t know what she meant.
“Are we coming to my husband now? I’ve been trying to figure out how he could be involved with Teddy.”
Vincent had to smile. “No, no—this has nothing to do with your husband.”
She said, “Are you sure?”
He would remember that. Are you sure? And the look in her eyes. “No—I came to see him about something else.”
She said, “Well, I’m glad to hear that.”
He would keep that one, too. A dry offhand remark, not trying to be funny. He said, “Is your husband around?”
She hesitated now. “I’m afraid not.”
Vincent didn’t believe her. “All I want to do is ask him something. He hires a girl as a hostess, what exactly does that mean?”
“A hostess . . . This is a friend of yours?”
“Her name’s Iris Ruiz. She’s twenty years old,” Vincent said, “she’s been out of the country once, spent two weeks in Miami and thinks she knows everything.”
“But basically she’s a decent girl,” Nancy Donovan said, “and you don’t want to see her get into something she can’t handle.”
Vincent said, “Let’s just say a young, very pretty girl who has her heart set on going to the States, but isn’t really experienced enough—”
“Wait. I thought she was offered a job here.”
“No, Atlantic City. Spade’s Boardwalk.”
“Oh, she’s something special.”
“Ask her, she’ll tell you,” Vincent said. “She’s not going to New York and live with her cousins and she knows she’s not going with me, if I ever go back to Miami Beach”—he saw the lady’s eyebrows raise at that—“because I won’t take her. You have to understand, there’s nothing between us. So, she’s going to Atlantic City.”
“Out of spite.”
“Out of dying to dress up and be a hostess. What I’d like to know, is if a hostess does what I think she does.”
“Tell you the truth,” Nancy Donovan said, “I’m not sure myself what a hostess is. Unless you’re using the term loosely.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“We have hosts, all of them men who know the business inside and out. Their job is to bring in the elite customers, the high rollers, and take care of them, keep them happy. Arrange transportation, tickets for shows, introduce them to celebrities, entertainers, maybe throw a cocktail party . . . Now there are girls at the parties you might consider hostesses, some who work at the hotel. They’re more decorative than anything else. They mingle, smile a lot.”
“If one of the special customers,” Vincent said, “the high roller, invites the girl up to his room, then what?”
“You mean his suite. Well, she can always say no.”
“And keep her job?”
Nancy Donovan hesitated. “Do you know anything about casino gambling?”
“The first week I was here,” Vincent said, “I lost sixty dollars playing the slots.”
“Well, when you’re willing to play with five thousand or more the hotel will comp you for just about anything you want. Your room, your food, your drinks are all complimentary, as long as you gamble. You can win, everything is still on the house. We want you to keep coming back. Because if you do, in the long run we’ll take about twenty percent of whatever your line of credit is, or the amount you deposit with us.”
“So the hostess,” Vincent said, “is there for any crapshooter you want to keep happy.”
Nancy Donovan said, “You’re very serious about this, aren’t you? But whatever the girl does, it’s still her choice. No one forces her to dress up and smile and be charming. Some girls love it.”
“No one’s forcing her,” Vincent said, “but to me, you know what it is? Take a girl like Iris, born in M
ayaguez in a barrio? Dress her up, dazzle her with all that glitzy bullshit? It’s entrapment, the same thing, and entrapment’s against the law.”
Nancy shrugged. “What can I say? Her choices may be limited, but it’s still a choice. Unless there’s something you’d like me to do, speak to my husband.”
“No, you’re right,” Vincent said, “it’s up to her. She’s like a little kid, but I can’t force her.”
Nancy Donovan seemed relaxed, her gaze lingering on him, almost but not quite amused. “Teddy and now Iris,” she said. “You keep pretty busy, don’t you?”
“I’m not even working,” Vincent said. “I mean I’m not supposed to be. I’m on a medical leave.”
Her gaze moved to his hand on the curved end of the cane. “What happened to you?”
“I got shot.”
She said, “You did? Where?”
“In Miami Beach,” Vincent said, and saw a glow in those brown eyes, the lady of the house, Mrs. Donovan, looking at him the same way he was looking at her.
She said, “And what happened to the man who shot you?”
Nancy sat on the patio deck, in the glow of a citronella candle. She watched Tommy swimming lengths of the illuminated pool, his flesh shining in the pale green oval. She could hear his wet breathing, his labored slapping strokes. Beyond the pool and the amber insect lights in the garden, beyond the hedge of hibiscus and the row of palm trees and the chainlink fence, the beach stretched flat to the Atlantic and the Atlantic reached into the night. She could hear her husband but not the ocean.
She watched him rise out of the pool, naked, lumber over to the umbrella table to his towel and can of beer. She would cast him as a politician, or a New York City judge, on the take. His favorite line, looking over his domain: “Who would’ve ever thought a Mick from Columbus Avenue would someday own a layout like this?” At either of the hotels he might recite the line looking over the casino floor. She had the feeling he couldn’t believe it himself, that it all had to do with luck.
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