Florida straits kwm-1

by Laurence Shames

  The coast guard guys from the chopper hadn't lowered their rifles. One of the men from the marine patrol, a beefy guy with a crew cut and Ray-Bans, said in a surprisingly squeaky voice, "You wanna tell us what this is all about?"

  "Just wanted to see how the search was going," Joey said. "My brother's one a the investors."

  The marine patrolman looked dubiously at the boatload of thugs, sizing them up while they fried in the sun. Charlie Ponte with his soaked silver jacket and hair spiked around his bald spot like a crown. Tony with his evil lip, his toupee blown cockeyed; Bruno with the blank dumb gaze of the enforcer; the two from Miami dressed in blue suits and shiny black shoes in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. " 'Zat so, Clem?" he asked.

  The treasure hunter shot a hard look at Joey before he answered. " 'Tis," he said.

  The cop frowned down at his fingernails. The boats and the chopper rocked lightly together in the morning's weak breeze. "Then why the hell'd ya call us?"

  For an instant Sanders looked almost sheepish. "Didn't know they'd be here," the salvor said. "Didn't recognize the craft."

  "It's my fault," Joey offered. "I shoulda let 'im know. But it was like, ya know, a whim."

  "A whim," the cop with the Ray-Bans repeated. The boatload of thugs did not strike him as a whimsical group, and he managed to look skeptical behind his opaque glasses. But no crime had been committed as far as he could tell. "So Clem, whaddya want us to do?"

  Clem Sanders savored the moment. His boat was taller than the others, and he loomed on the deck like a preacher casting his blessing across the waters. He didn't need to look down to know that the desperadoes in the cigarette were going through a purgatory of helplessness: the ocean revealed guilt even as it offered absolution, and Sanders let the guilty squirm. He cleared his throat, scanned the sky. To the north, the low land of the Keys was just barely visible, a smudge on the horizon. To the south was the indigo ribbon of the Gulf Stream, winding its way to the ends of the earth.

  "No need to trouble about these people," he said at last. "But if you'd be so kind as to cruise on in with us-"

  Sandra suddenly got up from the stern settee. Her hair was mussed, her pale skin was splotched pink with sun and fear, but she managed to sound calm and self-contained, poised within her own crisp outline. "Mr. Sanders, would it be O.K. if Joey and I rode in with you?"

  The little flotilla bobbed in the water, the guardsmen finally brought their rifles to their sides, and Clem Sanders smiled like a politician pinching babies. "Well, of course, little lady. If you like."

  Sandra smiled as one of the marine cops reached a hand to help her over the gunwale. Joey followed. But if he felt relief, Charlie Ponte squelched it in a second.

  "See ya later," the little mobster said. He tried to make it sound casual and friendly. It didn't. "We got a date."

  Joey just nodded, then trailed Sandra as she climbed a rusty ladder that brought them to Clem Sanders's side. Lines were uncleated, fenders brought in. Above the noise of starting engines, the treasure hunter said to Joey, "Kid, what the hayle you doin' here? You said you wanted to stay outta the public part."

  "Those guys," said Joey, by way of answer, "they like persuaded me to change my mind."

  Very Key West. The scene at Mallory Dock was very Key West.

  As the crew was tying up, Joey looked out from the deck of the salvage craft. Pier bums, their beards stiff with salt and old food, were milling around, sucking their gums. Aging hippies with gray feet swarmed toward the spectacle like pigeons to a tower. But mostly Joey saw cameras. Local cable crews, network gangs from Miami, tourists with video zooms-they were all there to document this old Key West tradition, this miracle of money coming out of the water.

  A line of city cops had cordoned off the gangway. County sheriffs made a gauntlet to the armored car. Highway cops on Harleys sat in a chevron formation in front of the mayor's ancient but gleaming Imperial convertible. Meek visitors edged cautiously closer, not sure where they were allowed to stand, not sure if what they were gawking at was interesting. Key West-a town of people passing through, looking around, waiting, hoping for something special to happen, then not having a clue what was going on when it did.

  Clem Sanders, his sun-crevassed lips spread into his best television smile, his gold doubloon flashing on its leather necklace, led the triumphant procession down the ramp. He waved, shook hands, tantalizingly dangled the burlap pouch full of Colombian emeralds. The treasure hunter's ego swelled to fill the moment the way bread rises to fill a pan. Joey felt himself squeezed to the edge of the occasion, the fringe of events, he felt himself disappearing, and he was glad for that. He was suddenly very tired. Emeralds, brothers, ropes, speedboats; gangsters, helicopters, blows to the head, threats against his life. It was extremely draining, disorienting almost to the point of madness. He suddenly felt like a loose wire, limp, frayed, power oozing away like blood. He put his hand in the small of Sandra's back. He badly needed to touch her, to ground himself, to remind himself how compact she was, how neat and taut the little humps of muscle on either side of her spine.

  They followed in Clem Sanders's wake, down the gangway and across the concrete pier. Through the tumult, they only half heard the salvor's quick sly comments to reporters, only half noticed the clicking cameras, the helmeted police. Then a familiar voice broke free of the crowd's buzz from behind the sawhorse barricades.

  "Joey, hey, Joey."

  It was Zack Davidson. He was wearing his pink shirt, his khaki shorts. His collar was turned up perfectly but not too perfectly, his sandy hair fell as if by chance into an inevitable arc over his forehead. "We got it, huh, we got it!"

  "Hm?" was the best Joey could manage.

  "Joey," said Zack, reaching over the barricade to punch him lightly on the shoulder. "We just got a little bit rich. For a guy that just got rich, you don't look that happy."

  Joey smiled, but his cheeks felt weary, bruised, and sunburned as they bunched up around the corners of his mouth. He toyed with his sunglasses, slid the earpieces through his hair. "I guess I'm getting ready to be happy, Zack," he said. "I'm not quite there yet, but I'm getting ready."

  Numbly, his hand on Sandra's slender back, he followed the course of Clem Sanders's small parade. It was just after they'd passed the armored car and were standing in line for handshakes from the mayor that Joey saw the dark blue Lincoln waiting for him across the street. Sandra saw it too.

  "Whyn't you go inna motorcade with Clem," Joey said to her.

  Sandra said nothing and didn't budge from Joey's side. Together, they inched down the receiving line. Twenty yards away was a rank of cops, and beyond that was a wide world where there was no one to protect them from Charlie Ponte and from the long reach of the old neighborhood.

  "Really, Sandra," Joey whispered. TV cameras were on them, local big shots were slapping backs. "These guys are killers. They're really pissed, their patience is used up. There's no reason for you-"

  "There is a reason, Joey," Sandra interrupted. "You asked me to marry you, remember? You said I should hold you to it. So I am. I'm going with you. It's part of the deal."

  "Sandra-" he began, and then he realized it was useless to protest. He took a deep breath, cast a foreigner's glance at the cameras and the gawking tourists, then steered his fiancee out of the receiving line. "Awright," he said, "we can't dodge no more. Let's go and get it over with."

  They walked with neither haste nor hesitation through the line of cops and toward the waiting Lincoln. Tony shot them a malicious scar-lipped smile from behind the wheel, and Bruno held a back door open for them with the grim solicitousness of an usher at a funeral.

  — 49 -

  Steve the naked landlord was on his second beer and had just lit a fresh cigarette from a butt still smoldering in the ashtray. He watched Joey and Sandra approach along the white gravel walkway, Tony and Bruno trudging along behind them. Then he turned his paperback facedown on the damp tiles. "Joey," he said, motioning him over, "can I ta
lk to you a sec?"

  Joey crouched down on the pool's cool apron.

  "Joey," Steve said. "All these houseguests, these parties. Is this gonna be like a regular thing?"

  Joey waited the usual beat, but Steve's smile did not appear. Naked, working on his morning buzz, he was still the landlord. "I wouldn't call 'em parties," Joey said softly.

  "No?" said Steve. He lifted an eyebrow toward their bungalow, and in that instant the house appeared not just small but miniature, a scale model of a place where people could maybe make a life. "Joey, every time I turn around, you got more people crammed in there."

  "We do?"

  Steve just dragged on his cigarette and blew smoke out his nose. "Come on, Joey, let's be fair."

  "Fair," said Joey. "O.K." He straightened up, then sucked in a deep breath scented with jasmine and chlorine. He reached for Sandra, touched her arm to stop the electricity from oozing out his fingertips, and walked with her between the pool and the hot tub, Tony and Bruno following behind. Palm fronds scratched lightly overhead, the high sun slashed through in punishing slices. Joey's stomach didn't feel right, it felt like stale but icy air was swirling around inside it.

  The sliding door to their bungalow was open wide, and through it came a sort of cool dim humming threat, a threat like that of a too quiet jungle. Joey swept off his sunglasses as he crossed the threshold. There were more people than he expected, more faces than he could process at once.

  Charlie Ponte's Miami thugs and divers were glutting up the living room. Thick thighs were thrown over the arms of chairs, big white shirts with dark stains in the armpits were arrayed next to wet suits against the walls. There was a stink of clashing after-shaves and dry-cleaning fluid being sweated out of fabric too long in contact with damp skin. The thugs regarded Joey with an indifference more wilting than active menace.

  In the Florida room, the louvered windows were still cranked shut, and a furtive, illicit twilight was being enforced against the day. Charlie Ponte, his silver jacket splotched with moisture, his hair restored to its usual neatness, was perched in the wicker seat where Sandra had been tied. Bert the Shirt d'Ambrosia, dressed for the occasion in nubbly black linen, a burgundy monogram on his breast pocket, rested on the settee, his chihuahua serene yet vigilant in his lap.

  Next to him sat Gino Delgatto, nervously crossing and uncrossing his legs. Joey's half brother did not look healthy. His skin was yellowish and he hadn't dropped the weight he'd put on while holed up at the Flagler House. His eyes were gradually disappearing under pads of excess skin, his fatty chin had lost the squareness that brought him to the brink of being handsome.

  You had to look beneath the fat to see how he resembled his and Joey's father.

  Vincente Delgatto was sitting with a perfect stillness that was the emblem of his dignity and his authority. He was lean, dry, with a long crescent face and a crinkled stringy neck that no longer filled his stiff collar. He wasn't dressed for Florida. He wore a gray pinstripe suit and a red silk tie with a massive double Windsor knot. He had a broad straight nose that came down directly from his forehead, and his teeth were long and veined with brown, stained by half a century of cigars, espresso, and red wine.

  Joey stared at him through the strange striped dimness cast by the louvered windows. His legs felt disconnected from him, he wondered if his brain had come unmoored from getting hit too many times then being cast out in the throbbing sun. He didn't quite recognize his own voice. "Pop?"

  Bert the Shirt, a man who had been dead, seemed to recognize the moment after which a person could not be pulled back from oblivion, helplessness, or paralyzing confusion. "I called him, Joey," he blurted. "Last night."

  "The fucking old lady," Charlie Ponte grumbled. "He's always in my face down heah, always stickin' his nose in."

  "What could I tell ya?" Bert stroked his dog and addressed this to the room at large. "I tried to do the right thing."

  "Pop," said Joey.

  The old man gave the smallest nod, the smallest lift to his thick brows, whose tangled black and silver strands gave a look of stark realism to his deep but filmy eyes.

  "Awright, awright. I ain't got all day," said Charlie Ponte. "I'm givin' the kid a chance t'explain things. So go 'head, let 'im explain."

  Joey was still standing numbly in the archway. He looked down and saw that Sandra, silent, alert, practical Sandra, had slid a kitchen chair in next to him. He sat.

  But Charlie Ponte, having ordered Joey to speak, now decided he wasn't quite ready to give up the floor. He ignored Joey, ignored Gino, ignored Bert, and spoke only to the patriarch. "But Vincent, remember, you and me, we got an agreement. We can sit here and make nice, but if I don't get satisfaction from this meeting-"

  Ponte stopped talking because it was one of those statements that could not be finished. But then the Miami Boss made the mistake of thinking back over the whole story of the heisted emeralds, the irritating trips down the Keys, the waiting, the disappointments, the manpower wasted, the putrid and futile evening with the garbage, and he launched into a slow burn.

  "Because I'm tellin' you, Vincent, the aggravation I been getting, the bullshit I been putting up with, and for what? From who? From this nobody, this jerk, this little faggot with a pink shirt on, this fucking clown-"

  "Cholly, he's my son."

  The short and simple words, the way the old man said them, stopped Charlie Ponte cold. Acknowledging the bastard, proclaiming the tie. This changed things. Kinship. It was in the blood, sure, but that was only half of it. It also hinged on what people said to each other, or didn't say, what they were proud of and what they kept buried. All of a sudden Ponte was less sure he knew who he was dealing with.

  "The agreement," Delgatto senior went on, in a voice that was low but carried, that seemed to be everywhere at once, like a rumble underground, "it stands. Ya don't get satisfaction, ya do what ya gotta do. No retaliation. I shouldn't've agreed, but I did. I didn't know. My son Gino, he fucked up bad. Didn't ya, Gino?"

  Gino nodded miserably. His fat chin was down on his chest, and his shirt was stretching open between the buttons.

  "Only thing I ask," the patriarch concluded, "is ya give Joey a fair shot at workin' things out."

  Ponte pursed his lips and nodded Joey swallowed, looked at his father. The old man met his gaze and Joey took away from the exchange a hit of that undaunted readiness, the anyplace, anytime preparedness he'd felt that first time alone in a boat, alone on the ocean, alone in the night. His head cleared, the situation was clean as a razor. Either he would save himself or he would not.

  "O.K.," he began. "O.K."

  But immediately he stopped. He swiveled on the plastic seat of his kitchen chair and looked back over is shoulder. "Sandra. Where's Sandra? I want you here, baby."

  In the Florida room there was a shuffling of feet, a disapproving rearrangement of limbs. You didn't invite broads to a sit-down. But it was Joey's meeting now, it made his hair itch to realize he could do what he wanted. Bruno carried a chair for Sandra. She made no sound as she sat. Her hands were motionless in her lap and her posture was breathtaking.

  "Right," said Joey. "O.K. Yeah… Now, Mr. Ponte, your emeralds are gone, you saw that for yourself. They're inna vault by now, there's nothing to be done." It was a dicey opening, it already cast the Miami Boss in the role of the guy who'd lost. Ponte looked down between his knees and tugged at a thumbnail. "So let's like go over how it got to that.

  "The two guys that ain't around no more," Joey went on, "Vinnie Fish and Frankie Bread-they grabbed the stones from Coconut Grove, and my brother Gino was in with them. Weren't ya, Gino?"

  Gino looked down and nodded, his fat chin coming up like a high collar as he did so.

  "So the deal was this," Joey said. "Vinnie and Frankie, they stashed the stones on a junky old fishing boat, then they took the boat out and sank it. The idea, ya know, was to let some time pass, let things cool off some, then the three of them would salvage the wreck and walk away wi
th the money. Ain't that right, Gino?"

  The older brother looked at Joey from under the fat pads of his eyebrows. Gino didn't mind lying to Ponte, not at all, but he wanted to be in control of the story. His bastard kid brother was now asking him to drive blind, let go, bend over and leave it all to him. The idea rankled almost as much as it terrified. But Gino had no plan of his own and it seemed he had finally realized he had nothing more to lose. He nodded.

  Vincente Delgatto moved forward an inch in his chair and folded his lean and papery hands.

  "So O.K.," Joey resumed. "Frankie and Vinnie disappear. For Gino, this is good news, bad news. He's got nobody to split the money with. That's good. He's got no one to help him salvage the boat. That's bad. So the night your boys grabbed me and Bert and took us to the gahbidge-Gino set that up so he could run up the Keys to scope things out. Bert knows that too. Don'tcha, Bert?"

  The Shirt petted his chihuahua, scratched it behind the ears. "He used us. As decoys. No hard feelings, Gino, but that wasn't right. Someone coulda gotten hurt. Sandra here, she coulda been with us."

  Joey's fiancee gave a small nod of gratitude for Bert's concern. The nod stretched but did not violate her crisp outline.

  Then a low rumble seemed to ripple the striped dimness of the Florida room. It was Joey and Gino's father starting to speak. The voice was very sad. "To your own brother you do this, Gino?"

  "Pop, hey, it's history," said Joey. "Besides, Gino and me, we forgive each other, don't we, Gino? Life, ya can't get through it without ya forgive people, ya drown in bullshit otherwise. I mean, forgiveness, that's really what this meeting is about."

  "Bullshit," put in Charlie Ponte. "This fucking meeting is about what happened to my fucking emeralds."

  "Right, Mr. Ponte. You're right. But forgiveness, the stones, it all comes together. 'Cause here's what happens. Gino realizes there's no way he can salvage the wreck alone. So he goes to a pro-that's Clem Sanders, the salvage guy. He reaches him through me, 'cause, hey, this is my town now, I know who to go to. This much, Mr. Ponte, I'm involved"-he lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender-"and this is why, me too, I'm asking your forgiveness.