"Because my brother's there. His girlfriend got knocked through a window."
Ponte folded his arms across his chest and turned a perfect deadpan toward his boys. They grinned on cue, four white Rochesters to his Jack Benny. "Come on, kid, you're Vinnie Delgatto's son, you can do better than that."
"Charlie, listen," said Bert the Shirt. "I was there when Gino called."
"So now the old lady's chimin' in," said Ponte. "Shut up, Bert. And stop insultin' my intelligence, the both of ya. Gino's been in his hotel room all fucking day, that much I know. You think he's glued to the Weather Channel? I think he's hosing that top-heavy bim he's with. Either way, he ain't inna fucking hospital, and as for her, she's probably been gettin' knocked around all right, but not tru any windows. So cut the bullshit before I get annoyed."
Joey gazed blankly at the dim yellow light bulb and tried to ignore the way the stench of garbage was poisoning his saliva. He tried to find a way to believe that his brother hadn't set him up. He couldn't.
Ponte drummed his fingers on the metal desk. The only other sound was the deranged laugh of a gull at the top of the pyramid of trash. "Gino came outside exactly once today," the Boss resumed. "Around sixthirty. Just when it was getting dark. He comes out with a little suitcase. He looks around. He puts the bag inna trunk. He looks around again, and goes back inna hotel. Coupla hours later, you guys show up. Ya take the car, come riding out here in the middle of fucking nowhere. I mean, really, gents, how does it look?"
The neat little man sprang down from the desk and his dainty shoes clicked dryly on the cement floor. He walked to the empty rectangle of the doorframe and motioned for Joey and Bert to follow. They stood close together and looked out at the alp of garbage. It had weird floodlights on it and gleamed an un-earthly pinkish orange. At half a dozen random places along the slope, parked bulldozers looked like yellow toys. Most of the mountain was not exposed but had been covered over with a heavy plastic seal. Here and there, the seal was slit by long obscene gashes oozing rot.
"Ain't it amazing," Charlie Ponte said, "the advances that have been made in gahbidge? Ya see the way they cram it in those seams there? It's like stuffing a quilt. Deep, those slits. Fresh gahbidge, it gets squeezed in there and that's the end of it."
Joey did not like the way Charlie Ponte looked at him while saying this. He could handle being called fresh garbage. But he didn't relish the thought of spending eternity with other people's coffee grounds in his ears, the rank oil from other people's tuna fish sliming through his hair. "Hey, Charlie," he croaked, "we ain't involved in this."
Ponte turned toward him, in no particular hurry and without even a hint of malice on his face, and slapped him hard across the cheek. "You don't call me Charlie. Only my old friends call me Charlie, and kid, I got my doubts about whether you and me are gonna know each other that long." He gestured toward the largest of his goons. "Bruno, bring that fucking bag in heah."
In a moment Bruno was back, carrying a small, square case covered in turquoise vinyl. He put it on the desk under the cone of yellow light.
Charlie Ponte approached it slowly and critically. "Lookit this piece a shit," he said, flicking the case's plastic handle. "No class, your brother. It don't even lock. This fucking guy don't care how he treats my stuff."
He undid the two brass clasps and opened the case. It was lined with fake turquoise silk and had a small mirror built into the top. Slowly, with the salacious care of a man nibbling his way around a piece of wedding cake but saving the flower for last, Ponte started removing items from the bag. Lipsticks. Powder. A bottle of Nair. A box of tampons. An atomizer of perfume. He even took time to have a whiff of it. "Chanel number sixty-nine," he pronounced, and his goons obediently chuckled. Then he removed deodorant, tweezers, an eyelash curler. Mascara, eyeshadow, a disposable douche. "I love messin' around a woman's things," he said. " 'Zis givin' anybody a hard-on?"
Joey, had he been able to speak, would have answered an emphatic no. His knees were weak and he was tasting garbage-tainted snot from when Ponte's slap had set his sinuses running. Bert the Shirt had turned gray as his dog but seemed oddly at ease with the idea of being dead. He'd been there, after all; for him it wasn't that big a deal.
Ponte looked happy. Even as he got near the bottom of Vicki's cosmetics kit, he seemed to have no doubt that his emeralds were inside. Finally things were falling right for him. He'd get his stones back, kill Joey and Bert, bulldoze their corpses through a gash in the mountain of garbage, then bump off Gino when the occasion offered. Only when the turquoise case was totally empty did he begin to show some slight concern. But only slight. He took a penknife from his suit pocket, slit the take silk lining, and pried off the little mirror. Finding nothing underneath, he became just one small notch more agitated. "Bruno," he said, "smash the fucking thing."
In a single motion, Bruno crossed the reeking shed, turned the empty case upside down, and clobbered it with his gun butt. The vinyl tore, and underneath it were thin layers of Styrofoam, cardboard, and Chinese newspaper. The goon dug his fingers between the layers and tore them apart, but there were no hollow places and no emeralds. Then he splintered the plastic handle, but it contained nothing. Having reduced the case to a heap of rubble, he dropped his hands and looked at his boss as if to ask, What do I rip apart next?
Charlie Ponte crossed his arms and seemed to be considering. Then, for the first time all evening, he looked angry. The skin moved on his forehead, his black eyes seemed to pull in closer toward his nose, and one side of his upper lip lifted as if he were sucking something out of his teeth. He put his forearm on the desk and brushed it clean with a vicious sweep. Vicki's jars and bottles smashed against the cinderblock wall, and far from masking the vile stink of garbage, her scents blended in to make it still more foul, adding the cloy of carnal cheapness to the general corruption and making the shed smell like a whore-house on the lowest rung of hell. "Fucking shit," said Charlie Ponte. "Enough cockin' around. Now I want some fucking answers."
He slapped the desk, walked up close to Joey, and spit in his face. The warm saliva trickled down his cheek and Joey was sure he would vomit if he didn't wipe it off before it reached the corner of his mouth. He started to lift his hand. "Touch your face and I'll break your fucking arm," said Ponte. "Now talk. What the fuck you doin' with your brother's car, and where's my fucking emeralds?"
Joey tried to speak but couldn't, and Ponte nodded at Bruno. Bruno grabbed Joey by the hair and pulled back as if to yank off his scalp. Then he put the muzzle of his gun in the soft hollow behind Joey's ear.
Joey tried desperately to say something, and when he heard a voice he thought he had succeeded, but in fact it was Bert who was talking.
"Come on, Charlie, the kid don't know shit. He don't know nothin'. He's a loser. He's a nobody."
"Yeah?" said Ponte. "Well then, what about you, old lady? You ain't a nobody. A fucking limp-dick has-been maybe, but not a nobody. You got connections. So what the fuck is what?"
Bert cradled his dog and shook his head. "Charlie, I swear on my mother, we ain't involved. I don't know any more than what we already told ya."
"I think ya do," said Ponte. "And I ain't got all fucking night." He glanced over at his troops. "Tony, take his fucking dog."
"No," said Bert.
"Shut up, old woman. Tony, take his fucking dog, put it onna desk, and get ready to blow its fucking rains out. Enougha this shit."
Almost apologetically, the thug with the scarred lip and bad toupee approached Bert and held his hands out to take the dog. The Shirt held his ground. "I'll fucking kill ya, Charlie. I swear I'll fucking kill ya."
Ponte snorted. "That's good, Bert. Very brave. But you're still an old lady, so shut the fuck up and give 'im the dog."
Bert stood there. Ponte nodded for reinforcements. Another goon came up behind the old man and jerked back hard on his arms.
The tiny dog flew out of his hands and seemed to hover in the dimness, its legs splayed out li
ke the limbs of a defrosting chicken, its paws kicking as though trying to climb the empty air. Tony caught the animal and put it on the desk. Quivering and all alone in the circle of yellow light, the chihuahua looked like it was about to be the victim of some unspeakable experiment in a Nazi operating room. It whined and its whiskers twitched like the antennae of a dying insect. Tony cocked his gun and pointed it between the animal's bulging glassy eyes.
"Charlie, for Christ's sake," said Bert, and he started to cry. Two hot tears, no more, squeezed out of his rheumy eyes and ran down his gray cheeks.
"Look at 'im," said Charlie Ponte, pointing at Bert with his chin. "Look at 'im. Bert, you look like a fucking fool. If I wasn't so pissed off, I'd be embarrassed for you."
"Be embarrassed for yourself, ya stupid dago. Be embarrassed that a fuckin' idiot like Gino Delgatto is less of an idiot than you are."
"Ah," said Ponte, "you trying to insult me? A pathetic old fuck like you, trying to insult me? Well, you know what, Bert, I ain't insulted. At least now you're saying something. Tony, get ready to splatter the dog. Dog brains all over the place, then he goes inna gahbidge. So come on, old lady, insult me some more. Come on."
Tony's trigger hand poked obscenely into the cone of yellow light, and Don Giovanni looked up curiously at the muzzle of the gun. Joey had gone limp in Bruno's murderous embrace. The fumes from Vicki's toiletries were winding through the air in almost visible curls of sickening sweetness.
"Charlie," Bert said, "ain't it fucking obvious? He decoyed you, man. He's makin' you look stupid. You're out here fuckin' around with a nobody, an old man, and a dog, and he's getting away with your emeralds."
Ponte put his hands into the pockets of his pale gray suit jacket, and considered. Then he took them out again and tugged an earlobe. The thug called Tony took the opportunity to turn a queasy glance on his employer. "Boss, I ain't never shot a dog before. A dog, it's, like, different. I kinda like dogs."
"Fucking stinks in here," said Ponte, as if he'd just now noticed.
"Charlie, lissena me," Bert pressed. "I don't give a fuck if you get your stones back or not. But if I was you, I'd be wondering where Gino is right now."
Ponte shuffled his dainty shoes on the cement floor, then absently kicked at a scrap of the cosmetics case. Chinese newspaper came out.
"So really, boss," said Tony, "I gotta shoot the fucking dog, or what? Come on, it's making me, like, uncomfortable."
— 25 -
"You O.K.?' asked Bert the Shirt.
Joey straightened up slowly and tried to work a kink out of his neck. His right ear was ringing from the press of the gun muzzle behind it, and his scalp felt as if he were wearing a very tight hat. He found a handkerchief and wiped his face. That was the only part of the episode that would really stay with him and rankle: that he'd been spit on. Pain, people didn't remember, not really; humiliation, they did. Humiliation changed people, for better or for worse. Either it beat them down so that they stayed down, pathetic but weirdly grateful to have their spirits killed and their hopes ended, or it whipped them into a froth of defiance, sent them skittering into realms of resource they didn't know they had. "Me, I'm all right," said Joey. "How 'bout you?"
Bert was sitting on the desk. He'd half walked to it, half collapsed on it when Charlie Ponte, shrugging, had decided it would be beside the point to kill his captives just then, and the thugs had left the shed. Outside, the big tires of their two dark Lincolns had churned loose garbage; then they were gone. Now Bert was holding Don Giovanni in his lap. The dog was licking his hands and doing pirouettes around his thighs, looking for the most comfortable place to settle in. "I ain't been so worked up since the day I died," the old man said. "I almost forgot what it was like to get that tunnel vision, to feel that pounding inna neck. But I think I'm all right now."
"Then let's get the fuck outta heah," said Joey. "One more minute and I swear I'm gonna puke."
They stepped over the remains of Vicki's beauty aids and went through the doorless frame into the orange-pink light of the dump. Overhead, cackling gulls wheeled, sharply silhouetted against the sky. A whiff of salt from the Gulf sliced through the stink of trash. Some twenty yards away on the flank of the garbage mountain, Joey's Caddy and Gino's T-Bird were parked side by side. The dented, rusted Eldorado, with its smashed windshield, corroded roof springs, cracked upholstery, and dimpled fender, looked like it had reached its consummation on the trash heap.
"Come on," said Joey, "I'll drive you home."
"What about Gino's car?"
Joey, insanely glad to have some small outlet for his disgust, approached the Thunderbird and spat on its hood. "Fuck Gino," he said. "And fuck Gino's car. Let Gino tell Hertz how their new T-Bird ended up inna gahbidge."
Then he remembered that it was probably Dr. Greenbaum who would have to do the explaining. Getting even with Gino had never been easy.
On the ride back to Key West, Joey and Bert craned their necks toward the open top of the Caddy, trying to breathe in the night air rather than their clothes. When Joey turned off U.S. 1 and onto A1A, Bert worked his loose lips for a few seconds before he managed to form some words. Then he said, "Joey. I'm, like, ashamed."
"Wha' for?"
The old man rested his long hands on his bony knees, and his dog propped its chin on the inside of his elbow. "Ya know," he began. "That I broke down, that I cried." But then he changed his mind. "Nah, fuck it, not that I cried. But that I was, like, selfish. Like, I made it sound like I care more about my dog than about your brother."
"Well, you do, Bert. I don't blame you for that."
'Yeah, but it ain't right. I mean, a human being, a relative."
"He ain't your relative," Joey said.
"Even so," said Bert. "Taunting Ponte like that. O.K., our ass was in a sling, it was a gamble. You and me, we ain't inna gahbidge. But I feel like I sold Gino out."
"Bert, hey, let's keep things like in proportion heah. Gino sold us out. Besides, he has any brains, he's half-way back to New York by now."
The retired mobster absently stroked his dog and looked out the window at the Florida Straits. There was just enough doubt in his face so that Joey said, "You think he isn't halfway to New York?"
Bert shrugged. He was barely equal to the effort of lifting his shoulders. "Me, I'm too tired to figure. My nerves are shot and I wanna go to bed."
Joey drove. A line of mild moonlight tracked the Caddy as it lumbered along the water's edge, but Joey was damned if it seemed to him that the moon was picking him out for anything special. "Shit," he muttered. Then he pushed out a furious breath. "Goddammit, Bert. I'm like finally gettin' my legs under me heah, finally gettin' a little bit comfortable-"
He shook his head, slapped the steering wheel, and left it at that.
At the front gate of the Paradiso condominium, Bert the Shirt got slowly out of the car, his dog nestled in the crook of his arm. "Joey," he said, "what's goin' on, it's all fucked up, but it ain't your problem, don't let it poison your life. And another thing-I swear to God I hope I'm wrong, but I'm apologizing in advance. If your brother Gino gets whacked tonight, I'm really, really sorry."
— 26 -
But Gino Delgatto did not in fact get whacked that night, nor did he head back to New York.
By the time Charlie Ponte and his boys retraced their steps from Mount Trashmore, Gino, for reasons known only to himself, was back at the Flagler House hotel. He'd let the valet park his second rented car, and had locked himself in his room, where he remained effectively barricaded for the next week. He saw no visitors and took no calls. He ordered room service meals three times a day, and kept his hand on his pistol in the pocket of his bathrobe when they were delivered. With dinner came a bottle of Jack Daniel's. He slept with the gun under his pillow, and kept a small revolver near the toilet.
After three days of nonstop television, paranoia, drunkenness, and Gino's increasingly perfunctory embraces, Vicki announced that she'd had enough and was going back to Que
ens. She did not believe Gino when he told her that she would surely be kidnapped on the way to the airport, and that, at the very feast, she would be strip-searched by a rough-fingered bunch who would diligently probe every orifice where emeralds could possibly be hidden, and would detain her until, with the help of strong laxatives, her lovely young innards had been purged of all precious stones.
"They'll make you shit in a strainer, Vicki. You wanna shit in a strainer with five guys watching?"
"This is some vacation, Gino," she groused. "I shoulda stood in Queens."
He swilled whiskey and didn't answer.
"They wouldn't do that," she resumed after a moment's pondering. "You're just trying to get me to stay."
"No I'm not," said Gino. He was unshaven, jowly, his color was bad, his eyes were bloodshot, and he gave off the yellow smell of bourbon filtered through an overtaxed liver. "I'm fuckin' sick of ya, ya want the truth. Ya wanna go, go."
She got as far as the swath of shade thrown by the hotel awning. Then she saw the dark blue Lincoln. It was parked not more than thirty yards from her taxi. Ponte's crew wasn't even bothering to be stealthy anymore; in Key West, where private life was public and strange behavior was the norm, they didn't need to be. They were just waiting, and they had the whole world to wait in. Gino and Vicki had their hotel room, a cubicle maybe twenty feet square, with a rumpled bed, a television set, a chair that skin stuck to when sweaty, and a tiny balcony that Gino was now afraid to go out on. Vicki went back upstairs, stopping only at the hotel pharmacy to buy some fresh cosmetics and a stack of magazines.
By day five Gino was drinking bourbon with his breakfast grapefruit and talking back to game-show hosts. He could barely bring himself to touch his girlfriend, and she could barely stand to be touched, but there was nothing else to do. Outside, the sun moved across the sky, glared through the windows, turned the walls orange at sunset. Food arrived. Sleep came fitfully.
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