“About what?”
“To learn English.”
Mrs. Hailey beamed. “I remember now,” she said. “Fascinating.”
“I knew if I was really going to learn the language, I had to get out of the kitchen. So, I got a job doing brightwork. Polishing brass in the staircases and elevators. Anything brass, that was my job. Now I was able to talk to passengers.”
“Isn’t that great?” Mrs. Hailey always said this when he came to the part about polishing brass. “And then your cousin got you a job in landscaping,” she said. “I remember. On the east coast.”
“Right.”
“But you say people treated you differently.”
“Because of the uniform,” he said. “Brown shirt and pants. You were just part of the landscape.”
That’s how Kleinman had put it. He’d seen Rivera at his nursing home in Fort Lauderdale, talking to two residents in wheelchairs as he planted annuals. Kleinman had stopped his car and buzzed down the window. You like this? Planting flowers, being part of the landscape? When I see potential, I don’t care about a green card. You’re going to stop this and come work with me in Boca—
“I have no idea who takes care of the grounds here,” Mrs. Hailey said. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen them.”
“That’s because they aren’t people to you.”
“Oh my,” she said. “That doesn’t seem right, does it?”
“It’s just the way it is,” Rivera said. “It’s the same with the person who fixes your car. Or opens the door for you at a hotel. That’s why they make soldiers wear uniforms.”
Rivera found another dancer and fitted it into the box. “You didn’t tell about your name yet.” When he looked down, Mrs. Hailey was still looking up expectantly.
“You want the whole story tonight, don’t you?”
“The whole story,” she said.
She was the only white person he had told it to, including Kleinman. He had decided she was harmless, and for some reason, telling a white old lady about his past made Rivera feel better. Made him proud of how far he’d come.
“Your real name is…”
“Quinto.”
“Fifth.”
“Right. My mother said I was named for May 5. That’s an important holiday in Mexico. But my cousin Ray told me she named me Quinto from watching movies.”
“I love this part,” Mrs. Hailey said. She was smiling broadly, her eyeglass chain shaking.
“The priests showed movies,” he said. “And sometimes with old movies, you see numbers before the picture starts. Like a countdown. The night I was born, my mother was watching when the film stopped at the number 5. Ray said it got stuck there. The 5 stayed on the screen until it burned up. They had to stop the projector.”
“And that’s when your mother went into labor.”
“Yes, right after. Ray says she thought the number 5 was a sign. She was afraid if she didn’t name me Quinto, something bad would happen.”
Still smiling, Mrs. Hailey raised her cane and shook it.
“While I finish the ornaments, would you please fill out my time sheet?”
Rivera looked down. “It’s right next to you, on the clipboard with the pen.” She put the cane aside, got the clipboard and brought it close. “First date it—February 6. Then write eight-thirty where it says ‘time of arrival,’ and ten-thirty for ‘time of departure.’ Then sign it.”
He watched her fill out the form. The coroner would establish Burlson’s time of death in that time period. It took her over a minute, but at last she signed. Mrs. Hailey looked up, smiled at her accomplishment, and shook the pen to show her work was done.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You don’t need this, do you?” she asked. “Aren’t you the boss?”
“It’s just good business,” Rivera told her. “For our records.”
The whole thing was funny to her, and she was laughing again. Not at Sweeney, although he was now wearing his village-idiot hat. It was a pork pie, stuck all over with golf tees and score cards, little pencils. He turned to her and she shook her head, unable to stop, waving a hand.
“You have a point,” he said.
There was none, and she doubled over. He came back to the blanket, reached down and scooped ice from the bucket into his glass. Brenda wiped her eyes. “Only really confident players can wear a hat like this,” Sweeney said.
He poured out more chardonnay and waited for Brenda to get her glass. She recovered enough for him to pour. They clinked and drank. Sometime after nine, he had ordered Chinese and called the front gate about the delivery. Styrofoam cartons and dishes were spread around them. He had brought a blanket from the house.
She stopped laughing and wiped her eyes. Sweeney’s clubs lay strewn on the grass, along with the little socks that went on his woods. He had lined up two empty wine bottles to mark their tee-off space. After the second bottle, Brenda’s learning curve had flatlined. In front of the blanket, a trail of golf balls ran up the gully, out onto the fairway. Even Sweeney had muffed a few shots, but she thought that was just to make her feel better.
He flopped down next to her. Hands clasped at his knees, he looked out. His face was shiny, and Sweeney was now in full golfer’s mufti—the hat, fancy saddle shoe golf cleats. It was cool now, but his black silk shirt was plastered to him. Her own Kelly green blouse had dark patches under the arms and down her center. Hands braced behind her, she looked up at the sky and didn’t care. She felt liberated. Lighter. Happy to be outside. Even the grass felt different to her now, prickly and coarse under her palms. Star-filled, she thought, still looking up. Star-crossed. She felt pleasantly drunk.
“It wouldn’t be wise for me to live here,” she said.
“Too easy?”
That was exactly it. She looked at him. He was wiping his face with a used paper napkin, getting barbeque sauce on his forehead. “I’d call in sick half the time,” Brenda said. “Editors would just stop calling me.”
“You’re right. A freelancer would need discipline. Better to grow up with it.”
“Or come to it from poverty.”
He tossed the napkin on a paper plate. “You mean Rivera,” he said. “Whatever else is true about the guy, he’s come a long way.”
Until now, she had forgotten the whole reason for coming here.
“I learned some things,” she said. “That’s why I wanted to see you.” Sweeney was looking up now, thinking of something else. She touched his arm, and he turned to her. “On our way here,” she said, “on Friday, I thought James Rivera was the poster boy for pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. You seemed to have doubts.”
She told him about Chester Ivy and Noelle Harmon. Then her chance encounter with Ray Colon. “I drove him to Immokalee,” she said. “He told me his cousin came here as a crew member on a ship. There’s no sign of James Rivera on the All Hands on Deck website. This afternoon, I went to Marco. I talked to a security guard. One of Rivera’s customers died there on Thursday. The guard loves Rivera, like everyone else. He shows up with groceries for his customer, the one who died. He tells the guard he forgot the woman’s diabetic and lactose intolerant. He gives the guard some ice cream, he even has a spoon ready.”
Sweeney was still looking up, hands braced behind his back. “Perfect English and nice manners,” Brenda said. “Preppy clothes, Topsider boat shoes. A van with a lift to take his old customers to restaurants and doctors. Getting their pictures framed, renting porn for the old guys. Staying for iced tea with nice old ladies who show him photos of all the people who never come to visit—”
She remembered the photos on Sweeney’s kitchen table.
“It reminds me of something,” he said, still looking at the sky. “No, never mind. It’s rumor-mongering.”
“I’m a journalist,” Brenda told him. “There are no rumors, only leads.”
“Not even rumors,” Sweeney said. “Just happy hour loose talk.”
He thought a moment, reached o
ut and grabbed the only ball they hadn’t used. He threw it into the night. “I heard a story,” he said. “From another lobbyist. He was up in Michigan last summer. We were having drinks, and he mentioned some elderly people who died down here. One suffered from bad rheumatoid arthritis and fell. Someone else died the same day, when he accidentally pulled out his oxygen tube. You could say both these people died between nursing shifts.”
“Patrick—” Sweeney turned to her. “Fifty-three thousand people in Collier County are sixty-five or older. Forty-five percent are seventy-five or older. One thousand three hundred doctors’ offices and clinics, forty-four thousand Medicare recipients—”
Sweeney held up a hand. “Okay, you did your homework. Let me finish. These people died fast, not even between nursing shifts. And not because of neglect. Both times, the attendant was doing something else. Making up a bed, loading the dishwasher. No one blamed the caregiver. Things happen to frail old people, that’s all. This friend of mine wasn’t talking about All Hands on Deck, he was just talking. Saying how easy it would be to go into business that way. You know how it’s going to be. Remember the memorial service for Teddy Larson’s mother? The son can’t be bothered to fly down, but someone from All Hands on Deck shows up.”
Sweeney batted at something. She was sorry to have made him talk about death. “Let’s leave it alone,” he said. “Rivera’s probably just a hardworking guy. As you say, probably here illegally. That’s why he’s not on the website. Terri thought working with politicians made me cynical and suspicious. She was right. When I see a go-getter, it reminds me of some state senator on a podium. I see him taking bows for legislation he can’t read without moving his lips.”
Brenda drank off her wine. Maybe Sweeney was right. She didn’t know Rivera. He didn’t fit a stereotype, so she had joined his fan club. Then, after a few details, she was ready to think he was a criminal.
“Let’s tidy up this golf course.”
She stood and held out her hand. Sweeney took it, and she pulled him up. He seemed taller now. His mussed white hair made him look almost boyish. He smelled of cologne she remembered from the plane, mingled with sweat and wine. The streak of barbeque sauce still marked his forehead. She reached up and rubbed it off with her thumb.
“What’ll we use—”
He bent and grabbed up the blanket. As they turned and began walking, Brenda kept Sweeney’s hand. There was no reason not to. Mixed with all the wine, she felt grateful to him. Lighter. Unburdened. It was a good hand she preferred to keep as they walked out into the strange, perfected expanse of garish green slicing through darkness.
That’s all it is, she thought, amazed and embarrassed to be thinking such thoughts, to be doing a routine just for herself. All it is—she remembered Charlie Schmidt coming back to the dock at Kettle Falls, looking down at the place where his black speedboat had been tied up. Charlie Schmidt, who had wanted to take the blame. Who had lied for her.
Perhaps the memory was why she kept Sweeney’s hand. Was there any reason, beyond old habits? Old habits, she thought. What crap it was, believing that giving up love, something almost unknown to her in adult life, could be explained by her bad-girl, anything-goes past. What crap.
Watching her feet as they walked, she looked at Sweeney’s golf shoes. His movements seemed almost somber now, as though he wished this weren’t happening. But here was the place, and he leaned against her slightly, moving them out of the band of light. The pressure from his shoulder was precisely what it had been next to her on the plane, Sweeney flying back to Florida for the first time since Teresa Sweeney had done what she did. Was there any connection? Between Teresa Sweeney taking her life and Kettle Falls? None she could think of.
All at once Brenda felt more drunk. Don’t lie, she thought. You aren’t drunk. There was no connection between the man she’d killed and Terri Sweeney. A vicious life, a good life—she shook her head. Both lives had ended, all for nothing. Just a good man left to make lists, and herself without the guts to make a future with Charlie Schmidt.
“I hope you aren’t feeling sorry for me,” Sweeney said.
“Lobbyists are good at reading people. You know what you see.”
“I see this year’s Most Improved Golfer.”
“Do you see someone feeling sorry?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
The spot lamps were still casting their shadows in front of them but more dimly. Silhouetted on the left were the dark houses of people already asleep or out of town.
“No, it matters,” Sweeney said. “Someone who knew about Terri and didn’t feel anything wouldn’t be here.”
“I’m no social worker,” she said.
“I know that.”
“It’s the golf.”
She had not meant to say anything more, but hearing herself, she now wanted what would follow to be funny. For both of them. So she could stop thinking. With that she pulled his hand to make him stop. “It’s all the swinging and twisting,” she said. “It does something to the spine.”
Sweeney swept the blanket around them and drew her in. “All these balls,” he said. “Too much symbolism.” He kissed her, tasting of wine, feeling damp against her.
“Sand wedges,” he said. “Big Bertha drivers—” She wanted another kiss, and he kissed her again, folding her close, pressing the small of her back.
“A very naughty game,” she said. She shoved her hand down his pants, finding him underway. He did the same in one move, grasping her with his whole hand and in her with his index finger. The ease of it proved this was real enough.
“Bogey,” she asked. “What’s that again?”
“One over par.”
“Birdie.” She closed her eyes, working him in the rhythm of his own hand on her, feeling weak-kneed. It was that simple.
“I’ll give you a rule book.” He dropped down and pulled her with him, on him, the blanket still around them.
“This must happen fairly often,” she said. “Fairway often. All this nice grass—”
Both were fumbling under the blanket, undoing clothes. Sweeney’s hands were in the way. He stopped to let her unbutton and unzip him. He let her do her skirt, the clasp. She shucked it down with her panties, both of them keeping their shirts on. That, too, was funny to her—keep your shirt on, I’m coming, I’m coming—
Both of them now looked out and around as they went on touching each other in a mutual need to be done with first steps. The approach, she thought, remembering the lesson. Then the green. With clothes wherever they were, the grass damp under her, the air humid, Sweeney sat with his legs out, braced on his hands. Brenda now sat carefully, leaning and folding her arms around him as he entered her and made a small teepee of the blanket.
He folded her close. It was good. She was riding him slowly, seated in the saddle of his lap. Part of what made it good was each of them facing over the other’s shoulder, keeping watch. She was riding him now, feeling pleasure, but mostly a kind of peace, and a certainty that what they were doing would not be discovered, the double-faced god Janus giving his name to the position, assuring her this was all there would or need to be.
After removing the ornaments, Rivera disassembled the tree. He took it down to the storage room in the Bellissima’s garage, then changed out of his shorts and left.
As he made his cautious way south on 41, he felt more confident. At first, Burlson’s threat had convinced Rivera he must leave Naples. If he did what Burlson wanted, it wouldn’t matter. He would always be the old man’s tool. His slave. Did you really think I’d give a twin-engine Pursuit worth a quarter of a million to a spic handyman? But Rivera had arranged for Stuckey to be at Le Bonheur. The same attendant on duty when Chester Ivy had died. And Rivera now had the time sheet signed by Mrs. Hailey.
At Davis Boulevard he continued east in light Sunday night traffic. This, too, added to Rivera’s confidence. No daytime hang-ups in long lines. No wrecks. It would succeed. This was just a bad patch, a speed bump. Kleinma
n said when things like this happened, you couldn’t take it personally. You had to see it as part of the mix. Baked into the cake, he called it. Hope for the best, James, but always plan for the worst.
He had planned: the moon’s position meant Burlson’s terrace would now be in shadow. The floors under the penthouse were still unfinished and dark. That meant anyone walking the beach at night would be unable to see. Burlson would not be discovered until after sunrise.
Turning in at the Donegal entrance, he slowed and stopped, lowered his window. The guard stepped out. “I have to pick up some equipment at the Ivys’.” The guard leaned in and pushed a button. The gate rose and Rivera entered.
George and Rachel Ivy left Connecticut for Naples for two weeks at Christmas. Rachel came down several times during the winter, and when George wasn’t there, his young second wife was joined by her lover. But Rachel didn’t like her boyfriend having to stay at the Inn on Fifth. At Christmas, when her husband was out on the deck making one of his many calls, she had reminded Rivera of what she wanted: If you have to make a choice, let nature take its course, she said. He understood. And if they were to lose Mr. Ivy, Rivera wanted something in return. Rachel Ivy had shrugged. Name it, she said.
With George Ivy still shouting into his phone outside, Rivera had led Rachel into the great room. He pointed to the wall of pictures. That one, he said, stepping closer. The number 5 is special for me. Looking at it, Rachel Ivy had crossed her arms. That’s a Jasper Johns lithograph, she said. It’s just a print, but it’s worth some money. I never liked the thing, it’s gloomy. When Rivera suggested replacing it with one of the pictures that George Ivy’s mother had painted, Rachel smiled broadly.
The old man’s bedroom walls were covered with his wife’s paintings of tropical birds. Parrots, toucans, snowy egrets. The painter had posed the birds as oversized hood ornaments on cars. The cars themselves had been painted from photos of GM models that her husband Chester had helped to design.
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