Facing Tina, Schmidt wanted to understand. He thought of his younger daughter at thirteen. How would she have reacted to his death? But psychology was not his thing. He believed if you paid attention to people, you could more or less understand them. Analysis, examining feelings—he had never been good at it. His wife had been very good at it.
“In the car,” he said, “you told me Brenda doesn’t feel guilty about what we did at Kettle Falls.”
“I don’t think she does.”
“She said the same thing to me when it happened. She said she didn’t care what kind of lousy childhood Jerry Lomak had, and she didn’t give a damn that Marion Ross destroyed him in court.”
“Charlie—”
“That’s exactly what you told me. After you dropped the bomb how you know what happened.”
“She needed to tell someone.”
“Dammit, Tina, she said it to me. Right after. To make me go along with her.”
“But never since,” Tina said. “Not once. Why is that, Charlie? You two have never gone near what happened. Not in nine months. If you had, I think this whole thing about her father would have come out. She lost him and can’t risk losing you.”
Schmidt felt discovered. Exposed. Without their talking about it, he had hoped time would wear away the meaning and risk of Kettle Falls. Wouldn’t time eventually bury it? If he were honest, Schmidt had known all along it wouldn’t.
“She talks to you, not to me,” he said finally. “What’s that mean, Dr. Freud?”
“I think it means what she has with you is too important to risk. I think you matter more to her than anyone since her father died. And you’re the same, in relation to your wife.”
Schmidt emptied his glass and got the wine. He poured into Tina’s glass, then his own. He put down the bottle. “Too important,” he said. “Then she tells me we’re through. What am I missing here?”
“Charlie, I hope you can see it. She didn’t want to be alone with you for two weeks. That’s too long to avoid facing all this. Whatever it is.”
The salads came, and they ate in silence. Brenda had known a lot of men and had told him some of it. He had known only four women before his marriage. That mattered. After two athletic connections in high school, and two more later, he had married at twenty-two. Schmidt had been faithful for the next thirty years, until Lillie died of lymphoma.
The speed of his wife’s cancer had been the only good thing: the diagnosis had come too late for chemo or radiation. That meant Lillie had not lost her pride before losing her life. For two years after, Schmidt was so lonely for her that saying anything to another woman was out of the question.
Then, on Route 2 in northern Minnesota, Brenda Contay. A flat tire, four women going fishing. Sudden attraction. Thirty-three to his fifty-four.
Schmidt again got the bottle. Tina shook her head, and he poured into his own glass. He drank and watched her eat. Because of the MS, it was not easy for her to manage her knife and fork. When she looked up from her plate, Schmidt remembered that the disease was now going after her arresting hazel eyes.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“That I want you to be all right,” he said.
“Some things can’t be fixed, and some can. I think what we’re talking about can be made right. But you have to take it on.”
They ate in silence. Tina was right: he avoided thinking of how Brenda had cut loose his boat and killed a man. When Schmidt insisted on taking the blame—he cut loose the boat, not her—Brenda had taunted him. You’ll go to jail, and Marion Ross will be there every visitor’s day— If he went to prison, she believed Marion would always see herself as responsible.
Brenda had hissed it at him, pushing his chest with both hands. Schmidt could feel it right now, the force of her hands shoving him, eyes like drills. Every Christmas, every Groundhog’s Day. My friend Marion will never be able to let it go because you had to be a Boy Scout. Schmidt had finally agreed. If they got away with it, at least there would be no trial. No lawyers. No ambitious junior prosecutor out in the sticks of northern Minnesota, looking to make a name. No sensational book.
And the truth had not come out. In the nine months since, Schmidt had become so grateful and changed, so full of reasons to live because of Brenda Contay that the whole sordid business of Kettle Falls made him feel more and more threatened.
“Charlie?” He looked up from his plate. “I think I have room for dessert,” Tina said. “Maybe a slice of that chocolate-raspberry cake, on the trolley behind you.”
Immokalee
8:15 p.m.
“In English, Ray. I keep asking you.”
Ramon Colon glanced away before drinking his Dos Equis. He lowered the bottle and shook his head. “I don’t get it,” he said. “We don’t need him. We got a lot of people right here we can train. Our people. We don’t need some spaced-out hippie making problems.”
The two cousins were ending a long day back in Immokalee, at El Lucero. They were sitting in the cantina’s backyard at a picnic table, under loops of Christmas lights. Immokalee served as the inland home for the labor force that kept Naples looking good. It was the same below-minimum-wage labor that harvested tomatoes and other crops grown on land that wasn’t yet too valuable for agriculture, the same labor that built golf courses and high rises, and prepped new boats for men like Dale Burlson. James Rivera could now afford better, but life in Immokalee was low profile. Keeping out of trouble here was easy.
The woman who had passed earlier appeared again on the sidewalk. As she moved along Boston Avenue, she looked at him and smiled. Rivera returned the smile but looked away and drank from his Diet Coke. Keep away from alcohol, Kleinman often said. And keep it in your pants. Sex and booze are bad for the bottom line.
“Think about it,” his cousin said. “Stuckey is lazy and stupid. Look at what happen to Ivy, leaving him like that. He don’t listen. If he hear something, he don’t remember.”
“You don’t like him because he’s Anglo,” Rivera said.
“So what? You no Anglo, look at you. You got these people eating like a bird out of your hand. They love your ass, you own them.”
“Let me give you a hypothetical.” Rivera saw his cousin didn’t understand. “A typical situation. A new client calls, I make the appointment. I go to the door, the woman opens it. You’re not the person I talked to, she says. She’s old, prejudiced. She grew up somewhere all white. You can tell she’s confused, because I sound like the voice on the phone. But I can’t be the same person. I have the right clothes, a nice haircut, but it doesn’t matter. What do you think happens?”
“You real nice to her,” Ray said. “You tell her how nice is her landscaping, the paint job on her house. I seen you do it.”
“Not this time. This time she says ‘I made a mistake’ and slams the door.”
“Stupid old lady.” Ray drank his beer and looked out on the street. “All this money, these old people—” Bottle poised in front of his mouth, he thought a moment. “There should be like a timer on their forehead,” he said. “Your timer go off, goodbye.”
“For people like that woman, I send Stuckey, in a long-sleeved shirt.”
“You got Derek,” Ray said. “You got Aaron.”
“That’s right. Derek’s southern, Aaron’s Jewish. Do you have any idea how amazing it is to find a Jewish guy willing to do this kind of work? When Aaron shows up, the Jewish clients think they died and went to heaven.”
“Yeah, well.”
“But you’re right.” Rivera set down his soda. “Dennis is not the perfect employee for All Hands. I told him to cover the tattoos when he’s on duty. And no piercings.”
“Look like someone use a rivet gun on him,” Ray said. “Un payaso. Tonto.”
“Also, I’m trying new things that Stuckey is useful for,” Rivera said. “Operations off the books.” Ray Colon frowned at this. “Don’t worry, we’re fine.”
“Why you don’t tell me?”
; “I’m telling you now.”
“What that mean, ‘off the books’? This is something you got from Kleinman, right?”
“Yes. And trust me, Ray. It’s going to be good for us. In a few years, the laws will change. We’re ahead of the curve, and someone like Stuckey is useful. I need him.”
“Need Stuckey.” Ray finished his beer. “Just please don’t mess up a beautiful thing.”
◆◆◆◆◆
Ray’s wife always held dinner for him. When he left, Rivera got out his cell phone. A mix of salsa and mariachi music pulsed from inside the cantina as he tapped the speed dial for Rachel Ivy’s private number. He cupped his free ear.
“God, I thought you’d never call. You told me seven, I made sure… Hello? Who’s this?”
“Hello, Mrs. Ivy, it’s James Rivera.”
“Jesus.” Rachel Ivy coughed. “I thought you were someone else. Say something first, why don’t you? What do you want?”
That was how Rachel Ivy always talked. No greeting or manners. No class. “Mr. Ivy died this afternoon,” he said.
“Today? Jesus. Just a minute—” He heard music on her end. Seconds later it stopped. “All right, tell me what happened.”
“He was in the pool.”
“God, he drowned? I thought we agreed—”
“One of my assistants was there,” Rivera said. “He left for a minute to go to the kitchen.”
“Oh. Well, that could happen.” Rachel Ivy sounded relieved. “Nobody can be there every second. So you don’t think… The police—”
“They came. They talked to me and the attendant. They’ll contact you about an autopsy, but it’s just routine.”
“God, why? What’s the point—”
Rachel Ivy was a heavy smoker and started coughing. She was holding the phone away, making the hard, deep hacking sound he had heard before. Whenever he called her private line, Rachel always reminded him of “our wishes,” assuring him she spoke for both her husband and father-in-law. We think he’s been through enough, she’d say.
But Rachel Ivy meant something else. After his mother’s death, her husband George had left his father to live in the Naples house. “Under foot” was how Rachel described what this meant for her own life. Of course she was fond of the old boy, but really. All this science, all these techniques for keeping people going. They were against nature, weren’t they? She had then said—not telling him anything, just thinking out loud—that if, say, a time should come, a moment when All Hands on Deck had to make a decision, the family was against what she called “heroic measures.”
“Okay,” she said, clearing her throat. “Jesus, okay, listen. I owe you. You’ve been super down there, I mean it.”
“I’ll arrange with Fuller Funeral Home to handle the details.”
“Perfect. And go top of the line, Jimmy. George will want that. Go with mahogany, whatever their best casket model is.”
“You mean for the viewing.” Rachel didn’t answer. She had forgotten Naples was at sea level. “I assume you want cremation,” he said. “Unless you want Mr. Ivy sent north.”
“God, I forgot. You mostly don’t put anyone in the ground there. No, that’s better,” she said quietly. “I’ll hold off telling George about the cremation. That way, there won’t be a lot of hemming and hawing over what to do. He can have a nice urn in his office. That’s great, Jimmy, you think of everything.”
“I liked Mr. Ivy,” he said.
“Well, hell, I did, too,” Rachel Ivy said defensively. “He was a chipper old guy. He invented I don’t know how many doohickeys for cars. I really did, Jimmy. He just got so…”
“I understand.”
“Now, when we talked—I have to go here real quick—last time or before, I don’t remember, but I know I mentioned there were things there you were welcome to.”
“Things you preferred not to keep.”
“Exactly, not to keep. They’re yours, Jimmy. All of it.”
“I made a list.”
“Everything in his room—well, no, wait. Don’t throw out the pictures, George would go ballistic. His mother painted those. But everything else. All the furniture, stereo, TV. The Oriental rug in his room, I think that’s worth something. There are all those God-awful Hummel figurines Ellen collected, they have to be worth something. His clothes. Well—” She cleared her throat “—you know, we talked.”
“I understand.” Rivera waited for her to bring up their arrangement.
“I’m sure you do, Jimmy.” Now that Rachel Ivy’s father-in-law was no longer under foot, she sounded personal, even cordial. Now you deserve respect, he thought. Now you’re a person. “If you can take care of everything before I come down, that would be great,” she said. “I don’t forget my friends.”
“When we talked last month, I mentioned a picture.”
“What? Oh, God.” Rachel coughed. “You mean that lithograph. The number 5. Did you take it? Jesus, that’s a Jasper Johns.” Rivera waited. “Oh, hell,” she said, “it’s only a print. It can’t be worth more than eight or ten thousand. Go ahead and take it, I hate that thing. If he goes ballistic he goes ballistic. I’ll tell him his father just died and wanted you to have it, he shouldn’t be so petty. Listen, we have guests coming, gotta run. I’ll tell Georgie later, and thanks a bunch.”
He pushed the button and set the phone on the table. Once more the girl was passing along the fence, but Rivera didn’t look. She was moving slowly, wanting him to notice her. He drank his Coke.
“Pocho!”
Now he looked, and she was eyeing him, not smiling or stopping. She wore a white dress that would be her best, for Fridays. With gold hoop earrings. “Sí, pocho!”
It was the word for someone trying to pass for white. She turned away and continued up the block.
Rivera parked on his driveway, pressed the garage-door remote, and got out.
As he approached, the door rumbled up to reveal stacks of furniture under garish fluorescent lights. Dining tables and mattresses crowded the space, stacks of clothes, end tables, coffee tables. To fit them in, couches had been stood on end; TVs and stereos rested on the tables, and there were lounge chairs with motors that vibrated. The boxes of clothes and some of the furniture would go to the annual distribution for migrant workers. It was tax deductible, like what lawyers called pro bono.
Smelling the sour odor of baked Naugahyde, he used the inside button to close the door. He let himself out the back entrance and started across the yard. A six-foot cyclone fence enclosed the lot. His ranch house had no pool, but Rivera had chosen it for its one-bedroom guesthouse. One day, he had hoped, his mother would live there.
Lights were on inside. Letting Dennis Stuckey stay in the guesthouse made it easier to keep track of him. But more than words were needed for Dennis to get the message. Stuckey, Stuckey, Stuckey, he thought. Like Burlson saying Pinky, Pinky, Pinky about his mother-in-law’s dog. As Rivera neared the cottage he heard music and smelled cooking. At the door he looked inside.
Steam was rising from a pot on the stove. Stuckey, naked, was dancing in the middle of the kitchen area. He was holding up something to the ceiling light. On the dining table lay crumpled bills and jewelry.
Rivera knocked. From inside came scuttling sounds, furniture being bumped.
“Yeah?”
“It’s James.”
“Hold on a sec.”
Feet shuffled, followed by the sound of Stuckey hopping on one foot, getting into his clothes. “Coming—” A kitchen cabinet opened and closed. Seconds later, the door swung open.
“Bro,’ ’sup?” Stuckey stepped back as Rivera came in. “You do the family yet?”
“I called. Everything’s fine.”
“Bitchin’.” Stuckey moved his head to the music, shuffled his feet. He had pulled on white shorts and the Osama Sucks tee shirt. Rivera closed the door. Any effort to manage someone like Stuckey would have to rely on the basics of fear and greed. He lived only in the present and never thought a
bout much except food.
Rivera pointed to the boom box on the coffee table. Stuckey mamboed over and turned it off. “You hungry?” He did a judo punch, bouncing and jabbing as though boxing. “Like tofu? I got some killer fried tofu, I got brown rice and kale.”
“Any soft drinks?”
He shuffled across the room, through the kitchen to the refrigerator. Ass still moving, he opened the door and looked in. “You ever drink tequila and ginseng tea?” He looked over his shoulder. “No? Okay.” He looked back. “I got a nice wheat beer, all natural root beer. I got something called Vita Cola. I haven’t tried that yet.”
“Give me the cola.”
Stuckey got out two and stepped to the sink. He shook his head. “You are the man,” he said. “Today? With Ivy? I was fucking freaked, no shit. I come out, he’s nowhere. Gone. Not on the step, not in the chair. Then I see the robe floating. Fuck, he’s underneath, he must be. Where’s he gonna go?”
“What did you do?” Rivera crossed to the table.
Stuckey popped the tops off the sodas. “I didn’t know if he croaked yet, but I remembered what you said. Besides, I had to pee. After, I washed my hands with soap like I’m supposed to. I’m a food handler, right? I put on some deodorant, squeezed a blackhead—” he pointed to his forehead “—then back on the case. I called you, pulled him out. Called the front gate and the cops.” He handed Rivera a bottle, clinked it with his own and drank.
“What about golfers? It’s high season, there had to be people on the course.”
“You saw. Just the ones I talked to.”
“I mean when it happened.”
“Same people,” Stuckey said. “They lost a ball and came back to look. You believe that? All that money, and they still screw around looking for a fucking golf ball? Everyone else played through.”
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