And they certainly seemed to be falling apart for Carlo. His foray into the rum and drug businesses was turning into a debacle. He was almost out of money, and though he really didn’t care much about the things that money bought, it would be a searing humiliation to be as poor at the end of his life as when he’d started it. He’d have nothing to pass on to Anthony and, worse, he’d have wasted years of the young man’s life by steering him to a career that now would stink of failure.
It suddenly seemed to Costanza that he’d done absolutely everything wrong. Tying his star to a nut-job like Shintar. Becoming so dependent on him. Letting things slide to the point where it seemed the only options left were to close the business or have the partner killed, and become a first-time murderer at this late stage of the game. There were no good choices left after all those recent bad decisions.
But maybe the worst thing about those bad decisions was that they cast a retroactive doubt on the wisdom of decisions he’d made long before, back when he was young and cocky, unshakably confident in his judgments, a stranger to second-guessing. He’d never shrunk from making the tough calls, not only on his own behalf but also on behalf of others. He took charge, didn’t just accept responsibility but seized it, decided what he thought was best and made it happen, generally without a qualm.
But, given his recent run of unwise choices, he couldn’t quite dodge the possibility that maybe even some of those much earlier and well-intended decisions had also been unwise, and perhaps unfair to boot. Maybe he’d trusted his own judgment too much and the judgment of others too little. Maybe, in the blinding pride of being the decider and doing the right thing, he’d made some calls that really weren’t his to make. He thought about it as he looked out at the ruined grove. He stood up and paced the porch, making the spongy floorboards creak and groan. Gradually, he came to understand that there were some explanations that needed giving and some amends that needed to be made. He picked up his phone, hoping to find a number that he’d called exactly once, some weeks before.
So me and Master are at the beach. The warm and sunny weather has returned. In Key West it always does. You can pretty much count on it. Then again, it shouldn’t be taken for granted. Nothing should be. I mean, the whole beach, the whole town, could blow away or end up underwater tomorrow, who knows? The perfect weather would soon come back, I guess, but where would you go to enjoy it? That’s kind of a weird thought, really: Weather without a place to be. If there was only weather but no places, how would anybody even know what the weather was?
Anyway, no one on the beach but me seems to be troubled by such deep and probing thoughts. In fact no one seems to be thinking at all, as far as I can tell. People give off a certain smell when they’re thinking hard. It’s faint but it’s there, a kind of hot, caramel-y smell, like when a crumb gets caught in a toaster; I guess it’s brain cells cooking. Anyway, people don’t seem to think much on a beach, and I guess that’s why they go there. Although, now that I’ve said that, I have on occasion noticed people standing at the water’s edge and gazing thoughtfully out toward the horizon. What they’re looking for out there, I have no idea. Maybe they’re just trying to convince themselves the earth is really round. Or maybe they’re looking for people who’ve vanished from their lives as if they’d fallen off the edge of it.
Most people, though, are just lying there on blankets, listening to music. They bake on one side, then they turn over to bake on the other; the cheek that was face-down usually has a pattern either of terry-cloth or sand-ripples on it. Some of the young people sashay around, tempting one another with their basted bodies, their oiled belly-buttons and rippling abs, creating overlapping swirls of pheromones not quite masked by their coconut- or mango-scented sunblock. There’s the usual assortment of football throwers and Frisbee throwers. Some of them can catch and some just simply can’t; they miss the same throw over and over again, arms flailing, fingers closing on nothing. It’s pretty much the same with dogs. I’ve seen border collies and such-like breeds pluck Frisbees out of thin air while running full-tilt, and with their tails streaming back toward the thrower, no less. I envy them their skill and grace but I feel no need to compete with it. And I’m certainly not going to be one of those dogs that chase with slapstick ineptitude after some flying or rolling object, kicking it sideways, knocking it around with their nose, then finally corralling it only after it comes to a full, dead stop and the thrower has more or less lost interest. Fuck that. If someone tosses something for me to fetch, I just cock my head, lift my ears, and look at him like he’s lost his mind. Hell will freeze over before I’ll bring him back his stupid tennis ball.
As for Master, his usual routine at the beach is to sit there in his yellow folding chair in a cabana jacket, a towel draped across his bony knees so they don’t end up all red and scaly, and to wait for someone to talk to him, or, better yet, to find some opening to insert himself into other people’s conversations. He is endlessly resourceful at finding ways to do this. He might overhear two strangers talking about a recent hurricane; he’ll jump right in with an account of a big one back in 1976. Or two tourists will be trying to decide which bars to hit; Master will be right there with authoritative comments as to ambience, friendliness, generosity of pours, and might even pull up a bartender’s name or two. Of course, God only knows if those bartenders would still be there from ten or twenty years before, but that’s not really the point. The point is that Master is getting his schmoozing in, being part of things, being helpful or at least trying to be.
Anyway, we’re sitting there and Master’s phone rings. This doesn’t happen very often, plus he’s still not totally accustomed to having a phone he carries around with him in addition to the one with a twisted cord that hangs on the kitchen wall, so he gets a little flustered. He’s slapping at pockets to find the one the phone is in, then he’s making random swipes and pushing random buttons to figure out how to answer it. Finally he says hello.
The speaker is turned up loud against the beach sounds and the hissing wavelets, and I hear a voice say, “Zis Bert?”
Master, of course, is way too street-smart to casually give out potentially valuable and maybe even damaging personal information such as his first name, so he says, “And just who would like to know?”
“This is Carlo. Carlo Costanza.”
At this, Master looks pleased, vindicated. Here’s this bigshot who wouldn’t return his calls a while back, and now he’s chasing him around. “Oh, hello, Carlo. How are you?”
The question goes unanswered, as it often does. So why do people insist on asking it all the time? Carlo says, “Bert, I’m hoping you can do me a favor.”
“If I can, sure.”
“I’m hoping you can tell my brother that I’d really like to see him.”
Master shoots me a look that I would characterize as pleasantly surprised. “So, you’ve had a change a heart?”
“Not sure how much longer I’ll be living down in Florida, Bert. Wouldn’t wanna leave without I see him.”
“Well, I’d be happy and honored to pass along the message. Or you could just as easy tell him yourself. I could give you his num—”
“No, Bert, thanks. Not by phone. Not after all these years. Phone, I’m not even sure I’d know exactly what to say. I wanna see him. In person. I’ll come to him, go to his place, whatever makes him comfortable. Could you please tell him that, help to set it up?”
Master promises he will, then takes a few seconds to figure out how to click out of the call. After that, he does that thoughtful-staring-at-the-horizon thing, though not for long. He sweeps the towel off his knees and drapes it around his neck instead, then presses down on the arms of his chair and begins the cautious, creaky process of rising up from it. After all the work of standing up, he has to bend back down again to lift me and snap the leash onto my collar. Although you couldn’t say he’s moving fast, there’s purpose now in everything he does as we prepare to leave the beach.
When Master has a project, when he’s made someone a promise, he always gets right on it.
28
F or months now, Mikel Shintar had been living like a hermit in a rusty single-wide trailer up on Big Coppitt Key, puzzling his few neighbors with his silent early morning departures and his brooding late night returns. A creature of routine, he’d worn a narrow path of crushed weeds and damp sand between the trailer’s screen door and his car, between the car and the screen door, never deviating from the shortest route, dressed always in his oddball doctor outfit with his bare legs and his flip-flops. He spoke to no one, though he’d occasionally been caught talking to himself. Still, in that precinct of more flamboyant eccentrics, he was basically a non-presence, hardly even worth the trouble of gossiping about. So it was barely noticed that he hadn’t used the trailer at all for the past week or so.
The reason was that he just couldn’t bring himself to leave the lab. He was zeroing in on his great discovery, closer every day, and going back and forth between home and work just burned up too much time, even though the commute itself took maybe twelve minutes, fifteen, tops. But the driving time was not the problem. The problem was the time and trouble it took to lock up and unlock the fortress-like lab each and every time he left and returned. There were the inner locks, the outer locks, the lock on the safe where he stashed his notebook, the alarms on the door and on the one barred window. An hour of potential breakthrough was squandered with every coming and going.
And on top of that, the truth was that Shintar’s security system, while formidable, was not sufficient to quell his paranoia, which was growing more virulent every day. As numb as he was to the emotions of others, he certainly understood that his partner Costanza was thoroughly exasperated with him. What had begun as a hopeful and high-spirited jailhouse alliance had devolved into a cold war full of taunts and threats both spoken and implied. Each side had its leverage. Costanza had the muscle, but Shintar had the fortress, and he damn well meant to defend it. The fortress housed the formulas, and the formulas were pure gold. Costanza didn’t want to make the killer drug? Fine. A time would come quite soon when he, Shintar, wouldn’t need Costanza, when he’d be able to leave this lame distillery and bring his genius notes to a more ambitious partner who would see the payoff and begin to make the stuff. Assuming, of course, the notes still belonged to Shintar and to no one else. Safeguarding them was job one.
Accordingly, he’d gradually moved into the lab and eventually stopped leaving altogether. He’d borrowed the skinny mattress from the trailer’s bed and installed it in an alcove on the tiled floor. He’d brought in a microwave and a set of plates and bowls. He laid in a supply of coffee and beer and canned goods. He bought a 9 mm Luger from one of the pawns shops on Macdonald Avenue and kept it handily tucked under a corner of his slightly rancid pillow.
Once he’d settled in, the days and nights started running together with little change in the pitiless lighting. Too gradually to notice, the lab smells of acetone and aldehydes became blended with the homey aromas of beef stew and pork and beans and farts. Shintar went unshaven and unwashed and nearly sleepless, honing his formulas, polishing his diagrams, listening suspiciously to any small sound that penetrated through the doors and thick walls of his sanctum.
Except for things like Christmas presents or surprise birthday reservations at their favorite steakhouse, Max hated keeping any kind of secret from Rocco. What was the point of having a partner if you couldn’t confide in him, if you couldn’t tell him everything?
Still, there were certain times when you simply couldn’t. And this was one of those times. Max had a plan and he needed to execute it by himself and it had to stay a secret in the meantime.
So, at around eleven on a sunny morning, he told Rocco he was running down to Publix. He considered himself a terrible liar, and even in his own ears, his voice sounded thin, unnaturally chipper, transparently dishonest.
Rocco didn’t seem to notice. He just said, “Whadda we need, baby boy? I think we’re pretty good on food.”
“I just felt like some…um, crab cakes.”
“I was planning on making tuna melts for lunch. On Cuban bread. We got all the stuff.”
“I don’t know, Rock. I mean, I love your tuna melts, don’t get me wrong. But I sort of have a yen for crab cakes. Maybe with some slaw. Whaddya think, side a slaw?”
Every syllable was ringing false for Max, plus now he was concerned that maybe he’d hurt Rock’s feelings about the tuna melts. But the man with the squashed nose didn’t seem to take offense, and the weak fib worked just fine. “Okay,” he said indulgently. “You got a yen, you got a yen.”
Max grabbed the car keys and headed out the door. Driving very slowly, considerate of geriatric neighbors with their poodles and terriers and spaniels, he wound along the crushed-shell driveways that crossed and re-crossed Buttonwood’s canals. Reaching the junction with US 1, feeling furtive but purposeful, he turned south, away from Publix and toward Home Depot.
By the time he guided his crammed shopping cart up to the checkout line, its wheels were jamming and side-slipping under their burden. In the basket was a whole family of crowbars—the smallest almost dainty enough to pick your teeth with, the largest stout enough to bend the door of a rail-car. There was also an assortment of oak-handled sledgehammers—a nimble eight-pound model, the versatile twelve-pounder, and a Bunyanesque sixteen-pound bludgeon that seemed suited to knocking down a bridge. An array of tempered steel screwdrivers was nested in its plastic packaging. Chisels in graduated sizes were twist-tied onto cardboard backing, their beveled edges glinting under the fluorescent lights. Max paid in cash. It pretty well emptied out his wallet.
Still, he was pleased with his purchases and with the thinking and emotion behind them. Those crowbars and sledges had been bought for love. Rocco had offered to kill for Max, to spare him from conspiring in the hideous chore of icing Shintar; to sacrifice his own conscience and whatever was left of his innocence so that the two of them could move on together to a future without violence. It was an incredibly generous and romantic offer, and it was completely unacceptable. Max knew he couldn’t love a murderer. He just couldn’t. If Rocco killed Shintar, he’d be killing Max’s heart and his own chance for happiness as well. There’d be one corpse but three lives would be destroyed. Max couldn’t let it happen.
And why did it have to happen? There was no vendetta here. Shintar was no threat. The issue was not really with Shintar at all, but only with his notes. So why not stage a simple, old-fashioned break-in and grab them? Do it at night when the chemist was not around. Avoid a confrontation. Avoid bloodshed. Just force the door, smash the alarm, bust open the safe, take the notes, and scoot. It would solve so many problems. He, Max, would present the precious notebook to Costanza. Costanza would pat him on the cheek, reward him with enough cash to open the flower shop, and wish him well. Best of all, he would have reciprocated Rocco’s loving offer to shoulder a burden alone, to do a hard job for both their sakes and to present it as a gift.
To Max, it seemed a perfect solution. Mainly just a matter of picking the right time. And hiding his excitement in the meanwhile.
At the moment, though, his excitement seemed to be getting the better of him, because he drove home having forgotten altogether about his cover story. He fumbled for an answer when Rocco asked him where the crab cakes were.
“Um, I changed my mind.”
“But you had a yen. Usually when you get a yen—”
“Yeah, but the line was so long at the deli counter, I started thinking about a tuna melt. The way you make ‘em, Rock. No one makes a tuna melt like you. Still feel like makin’ ‘em?”
The man with the squashed nose feigned vexation but deep down he was pleased. “Sure, I’ll make ‘em, that’s what you’d like.” He went to the kitchenette and rolled up his sleeves. “You, Maxie, are a funny individual.”
29
A couple of mornings later, Rita w
as sitting at her accustomed spot in the compound courtyard, eating cereal from her usual cracked bowl. The sun was shining, the pool pump was clicking on and off. Hummingbirds nosed into hibiscus blossoms, drank their fill of nectar, and backed out again; when they hovered, you could see flecks of golden pollen on their backs. A light breeze made the palm fronds rasp. In Key West, that sound was so familiar that it came to seem a perfected form of silence.
Across the way, on his own side of the pool, Albin was pouring tea from his elegant Chinese pot. He’d gone back to wearing his lighter robe; the panels of it were primly tucked between his knees. His toast rack was near his left hand, his suicide journal near his right, the fountain pen idle but ready in the gutter of the open pages.
“Whatcha writing about this morning, Albin?”
“Suspense,” he said.
“Like, you’re writing a suspense story?”
“No, no, I wouldn’t know how to do that. I’m just thinking about suspense itself. The concept. What it is. Why it affects us as it does.”
She drank some coffee from her chipped mug. “Well, it’s because everyone just wants to know what happens next. Only natural.”
“Yes, of course. But why? We can hardly ever change what happens next. So why do we care so much about it? Besides, what does next mean, anyway?”
“What’s it mean? It means…well, there’s before, there’s next, and then there’s after.”
“Not necessarily. Some religions say there’s no before and after. Everything’s already happened, we just don’t know it yet. A lot of scientists agree. Past and future just depend on where you’re standing. Time’s a fraud. What we see is just sort of a rehash. So why do we get so worked up, why do we feel like it matters so much?”
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