by Paul Monette
In the bathroom, as soon as he heard the first shot, Tony had spun around on the goon who was tying him up. He kneed him in the gut and slipped the rope around his neck. Now he stood back against the wall, lifting the guy off his feet with a stranglehold. Hector flicked on the chainsaw and tried to slash at Tony, but Tony held the goon in front of him like a shield. Hector didn’t care. He began to slash at the goon instead, as if he could cut him away from Tony. Manolo appeared at the bathroom door, holding the Ingram. He raised it to blow Hector’s head off when Tony shouted: “No! He’s mine!”
Hector turned and slashed at Manolo, who jumped back out of the doorway. Then Hector backed away past the sink and slid open the bathroom window. The goon was screaming in Tony’s arms, though he made no noise on account of the rope. He bucked and twitched with his slash wounds, so that Tony couldn’t free himself to go after Hector. Hector held the chainsaw against the window screen and ripped it across. Then he dropped the saw and dove through into the alley.
Just then the goon passed out from loss of blood. Tony let him fall to the floor, picked up the Ingram beside the tub, and snarled at Manolo: “Finish off this motherfucker!” Manolo was standing in the doorway again, gaping open-mouthed at the body in the bathtub. Tony didn’t stick around to hold his hand.
He dove out the window after Hector, landing in a rolling somersault and springing to his feet like a tumbler, running full-tilt already. Hector, squat and slow, had just reached the end of the alley and turned into the parking lot. As Tony came to the corner, Hector was scrambling between parked cars, trying to get to his two-toned Cadillac.
Tony didn’t hurry now. The Ingram swung lightly at his side. The neon bathed him as he stalked through the lot. Several tourists had seen him now, and they ran screaming into the lobby, where several others were streaming in from their rooms, having heard the explosion in Room 18. Tony had no thought of the cops. Revenge was all that mattered. Hector had reached his car now, but there was no way the Cadillac would get past Tony. He’d blow all the tires out. He’d blow the windshield. Hector was his, that was all there was to it.
Hector might have thought he had a chance, as he tore the car door open and fell into the seat. He was probably gambling that Tony wouldn’t open fire on a public street. He was full of delusions, Hector. And worst of all, he’d forgotten the car keys.
Tony strode forward between two rows of cars. He could hear a lot of shouting from the lobby. He was twenty feet from the Cadillac when Hector opened the door and got out. He was holding up his hands and waving, like somebody trying to stop a speeding car. He bawled at the top of his lungs: “We can make a deal, Tony!”
Tony loved the feel of the Ingram as he raised it and squeezed the trigger. And kept squeezing. It was astonishing how many bullets the gun could spit. Hector’s whole body began to dance. Tony raked the barrel back and forth across the Colombian’s belly, unloading the whole clip, methodically blowing the man apart. Hector’s eyes were still staring in horror as the last breath of life burst from his blood-specked lips.
Even the traffic in the street stopped, forty, fifty feet away. The tall cool figure of Tony Montana, the one they would call Scarface, stood bathed in neon yellow, holding a smoking gun. It said something about the gaudy night along the boulevard that he looked just then like a man who’d broken clear. The Monte Carlo came careening around the corner, Manolo yelling from the driver’s window, but for the moment Tony heard nothing. He looked down at the Ingram pistol, weighed the heft of it in his hand, then reached to his ankle to see if it fit his holster. It did. He checked the cuff of his jeans for a bulge. He seemed satisfied.
The Monte Carlo lurched to a stop. Manolo jumped out, threw open the back door, and growled at Tony in a voice that was hardly human. Tony turned and ducked into the car, easy as a millionaire. The traffic stood still to let them peel out, and they tore off like an ambulance. The air was already shrieking with sirens as the reaper, Miami-Dade division, came racing in with the body bags.
Manolo was panting and shaking so hard, it sounded as if he was having a coronary. He drove through two red lights in a row. Chi-Chi, who had seen nothing, was so jumpy beside him he seemed to be having withdrawals. Manolo took a wide curve to get off the boulevard, gunned across the pavement and knocked a mailbox over, then lurched back into the street. About two blocks later they shrieked to a stop beside an exhausted playground. Manolo slumped to the wheel, still shaking so hard it was almost a fit.
Tony sat silent in the back seat, breathing evenly as he stared out at the empty playground. His face wore no expression at all, and it almost seemed that his heart must be as dead as his eyes, that he’d grown so hardened he couldn’t feel any more. But then he leaned slightly forward and laid a hand on Manolo’s quaking shoulder. Right away Manolo stopped gasping. The fit seemed to pass.
“What happened? What happened?” Chi-Chi kept whispering it over and over, first at Manolo and then at Tony. Frantically he dug his hands in the pockets of his jacket, as if he’d lost his stash.
Suddenly Manolo shook free Tony’s hand, reached over and smashed a fist in Chi-Chi’s face. “Shut the fuck up,” he snarled. Chi-Chi whimpered into silence.
Nobody spoke for a moment. Tony was boss; the next move was his. There was an implicit assumption here that their survival depended on following orders. The whole reason for having a boss was to get through a crisis like this. After half a minute Tony spoke: “Turn around. Go back to the motel.”
Manolo questioned nothing. If it seemed like madness to return to the scene of the bloodbath, he kept it to himself. As soon as they turned onto the boulevard, they could see the flashing lights blocks away. As they approached closer, traffic was being diverted away from the Sun Ray. Its parking lot was jammed with patrol cars, blinking red and blue. They had enough firetrucks backed up into the street to put out a forest fire. Tony directed Manolo to turn into a gas station just across from the Sun Ray. They drew to a halt beside a bank of phone booths.
Tony grabbed up the canvas bag of cash and stepped out of the car. He moved to the phone booth, dropped in a dime, and dialed information. “Sun Ray Motel,” he said. As he dialed the number the operator gave him, he looked across the street toward the motel. There must have been a hundred people milling about in the lot, hookers and drunks and runaways and tourist couples in polyester finery, all of them clustered around and gaping at the sheet-covered remains of Hector. In the lobby a team of paramedics attended to several people who’d fainted from shock.
A rattled voice answered. “Sun Ray, may I help you?”
“Yeah, Room 18 please,” Tony said.
Miraculously, the desk clerk put the call through. Perhaps any semblance of normality was welcome. Equally extraordinary, somebody actually answered the phone. “Carlson here,” said a grim and ashen man who’d clearly had enough of Room 18.
“Yeah, is the lieutenant there?” asked Tony.
“Just a second.”
As Carlson went off to get him, Tony could hear a lot of commotion through the line. People shouting, people crying. Someone who sounded like the motel manager was shrilling his own innocence. Then a new voice came on the line. “This is Highsmith,” it said.
“Right,” said Tony. “You think I could have a word with you, Lieutenant?”
“Who is this?”
“I think you got something of mine.”
A half second’s pause. Then Highsmith continued, very very cautiously. “And what might that be, Mister . . . ?”
“Montana. Tony Montana. I’m up from Miami.”
“I see. What is it you’re looking for, Mr. Montana?”
“Suitcase. Brown suitcase. It was on the bed. Course, somebody mighta moved it—”
Highsmith interruped coldly. “I think you’ve made a mistake, Mr. Montana. That object you’re talking about is mine now. If you’re smart you’ll get lost before I start tracing this call.”
“Now ain’t that a funny thing, Lieutenant. I cou
lda sworn this bag I got right here belongs to you.” There was silence now on the other end of the line. Tony smiled as he continued. “I’m tellin’ you, it’s got your name all over it, Lieutenant. We musta picked up each other’s bag by mistake.”
A pause. Then Highsmith’s voice dropped to a murmur. “Where are you calling from?”
“I’m right across the street, Lieutenant. You can’t miss me. There’s a whole row o’ telephone booths.”
“If this is a double-cross, Montana, I’ll cut your fuckin’ nuts off.”
He hung up. As Tony replaced the receiver he glanced across at the car. Even from this far away he could see that Chi-Chi was shooting up. Manolo sat slumped in the driver’s seat, too staggered himself to stop Chi-Chi. Watching his helpless friends, Tony could feel his own eyes go suddenly hot with tears. He thought how Angel trusted him. Of all of them Angel was the one who would have been content to be nothing more than a dishwasher. He only came along because of Tony. He would have done anything for Tony.
With furious concentration Tony shook the tears away. He hawked and spat in the gravel outside the booth, forcing the thought of Angel from his mind. Love nobody, that was the rule. Everybody got killed in the end. He squinted across the street, following a big-bellied man in a baggy suit as he strode out of the lobby, carrying a suitcase. The man ducked into an unmarked cop car and drove across the motel lot, veering among the several cruisers and the paramedic equipment, nosing through the crowd and out to the street.
As Highsmith pulled into traffic, he glanced across at Tony in the phone booth. Their eyes met, as cold and deadly on one side as the other. Tony thought he was going to lose him, for the cop car kept traveling past the gas station. Tony watched it drive away up the boulevard, and he was suddenly weary from all the botched negotiations. Trust nobody, he thought as he stepped from the phone booth.
Then he noticed the cop car turn into a driveway a couple of hundred yards down the road. It waited with the motor running. Tony sprinted across to the Monte Carlo, jumped in the back, and ordered Manolo to drive. Ten seconds later they pulled into the driveway beside Highsmith’s car. They were right next to a drive-in bank window. A big yellow sign proclaimed: “Instant Cash!”
Tony got out of the car and went around to the driver’s side of the cop car. Highsmith leaned his elbow on the car door, pointing a gun straight at Tony’s belly. Tony smiled as if the gun wasn’t even there, but he stopped about five feet from the car. He held out the canvas bag. “Hi, Lieutenant. You recognize this?”
Highsmith growled: “What about all that mess back there, Montana? You think I need to come out eleven o’clock at night so I can get the dry heaves? What the fuck are you guys doin’?”
Tony shook his head gravely. “Colombians, Lieutenant,” he said. “Should never have happened. None o’ this. Like I said, I work out of Miami, and I’d be glad to give you a call whenever I got business in the area. Frankly, I could use the protection. You know what I mean?”
Highsmith studied him up and down. Then, almost reluctantly, he pulled in the gun and placed it on the dashboard in front of him. He grabbed the suitcase, opened the car door, and got out. Still grumbling a bit he said: “Yeah, well I’m sure we can work out something.”
“Why don’t you gimme your card, huh?” said Tony smoothly, holding out the canvas bag.
There was one last moment’s pause, as if Highsmith needed to take a breath before he entered the big time. Then he reached for the canvas bag, and once he got a good grip on it, he dropped the suitcase on the ground between them. He tossed the canvas bag into the car. Tony made no move yet to pick up the suitcase. Highsmith reached into the inner pocket of his seedy suit, which looked like it cost ten bucks with the tie thrown in, and drew out his wallet. He slipped out a card, smoothed it a little, and handed it across to Tony.
Tony beamed like a salesman. “Hey, this is great.” He jerked a thumb down the boulevard toward the motel. “Listen, Lieutenant, my people don’t live like that. I think we can run this business like professionals. You know what I mean?”
Highsmith nodded. “Sure make my job a whole lot easier, Montana.”
“Tony. Call me Tony.”
“Tony,” said Highsmith gravely, and the two men shook hands. Almost shyly now, Highsmith got back in his car. He kept his eyes on the rearview mirror while he backed out, as if he was ashamed to look at the man he had just made friends with. Only when the car had pulled away up the boulevard did Tony reach for the suitcase and bear it across to the Monte Carlo.
When they jimmied it open, they found six kilos.
They drove right back to the Havanito Restaurante. Omar wasn’t even there, just his lunk bodyguard, who spoke no English. He had the three thousand cash in an envelope, but Tony wasn’t interested. He demanded to speak to Omar. Reluctantly, the bodyguard moved to the phone booth and dialed a number. Tony grabbed the receiver.
“You get the stuff?” asked Omar, clearly annoyed to be called away from his dinner.
“Yeah, I got the stuff, asshole,” Tony said coldly. “But somebody screwed up real bad. One o’ my men got carved.”
“Hey, I’ll check it out right away,” said Omar, jittery now. “I’m sorry, Tony. Why don’t we double that fee for the night’s work, huh? Lemme talk to Honorato.” Honorato was the moron bodyguard.
“No thanks,” Tony said.
Omar’s voice was suddenly hard: “Tony, you can’t keep the yeyo. It ain’t yours. I don’t care who got killed.”
“You don’t understand, do you, Omar? You just lost your place in line. I’m givin’ the stuff to the boss—direct. Now where do I find him?”
Omar paused. The toughness was gone when he spoke again. “Yeah okay, Tony. We’ll go see Frank, huh? You do good work. I been tellin’ Frank.”
“Don’t kiss my ass, Omar. You might get an infection. Where is he?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll set it up. I’ll get right back to ya.”
“You do that, Omar,” said Tony, and hung up in the Monkey’s face.
He waited in the booth and lit a cigarette. Though he only had about a hundred dollars to his name, he wasn’t going to take the three thousand. He was in for bigger stakes now, and they knew it. Omar called back within three minutes. A meeting had been set up for nine the following evening. Tony wrote down an address on Brickell Avenue in South Miami. Omar was desperately friendly.
They didn’t dare go back to the apartment. They took a room in a hookers’ motel and watched television all night long. Chi-Chi nodded out early. For a long time Tony and Manolo didn’t speak at all. They shared a couple of six-packs of beer and kept their thoughts to themselves. They both knew Angel’s body would lie unclaimed in the Dade County morgue, because he had no immediate family. After all those thousands of phone calls from Fort Chaffee, he’d never succeeded in finding the right Fernandez. He would be buried in the same paupers’ graveyard where all the rest of the coke murders ended up.
About four A.M. Tony told Manolo to get some sleep. There was no way anybody could track them down here. Manolo stood up and walked heavily to the bed, where he lay down beside Chi-Chi. Tony thought he’d fallen asleep, but after a couple of minutes he said: “Hey Tony.”
“Yeah, chico?”
“I don’t wanna die that way.”
“Yeah, I know. Me neither. Go to sleep now.”
But Manolo couldn’t let it go. “Why’d it have to be him? He was such a little guy, Angel. Wouldn’t hurt nobody.”
Tony turned in his chair and fixed Manolo with a steely look. His voice hardened. This was the boss talking now. “Look, it’s over, okay? We’ll be more careful now. I won’t let it happen to us. You got my word. Okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” said Manolo quietly, as he curled up under the covers and shut his eyes.
Tony turned back to the television, where a rerun of Bewitched spilled its canned laughter into the room. All of a sudden the tears were in his eyes again, and this time he didn’t will
them away. His face was impassive as the tears streamed down his cheeks. Though he wasn’t good with words, a voice inside him began to speak his sorrow. Silently he talked to Angel till the first pink of dawn streaked through the Venetian blinds. He was sorry he was such a lousy hero. Sorry he couldn’t protect his men. Sorry most of all that he still had such a hunger to be a king—a hunger that seemed obscene now, with Angel lying dead in Room 18.
About six o’clock he finally passed out in his chair. The suitcase lay open on the floor beside him, all its packets of snow gleaming in the dusky light. The test pattern buzzed on the TV screen, blank and empty as the godless day that broke outside like a fever.
That evening, Tony and Manolo drove to the high-rise district surrounding Brickell Avenue, adjacent to Coconut Grove and Coral Gables. This was the real money. They met Omar in the fountained lobby of a twenty-six-story condo complex. Four or five heavily armed security guards monitored every move and called ahead to make sure Mr. Lopez was expecting them. With the coke money in South Miami rising as far as the penthouses, these condo complexes had started doubling their security. A guard went up in the elevator with them. Another guard was posted on the top floor, walking the hallway with a German shepherd.
Omar and Tony and Manolo were let in at the double doors of Apartment 2620. A hefty, Indian-looking bodyguard named Ernie led them across a mirrored foyer to a two-story living room with a drop-dead view of the city below. Ernie had rabid eyes, and he looked about as friendly as a Doberman. Manolo gaped at the swank surroundings, the white carpet and the coral upholstered chairs, the antique painted furniture and wall cases full of pre-Columbian art. Tony tried hard not to look cowed by it all. He stepped to the terrace doors and looked out at the glittering city, with the black expanse of the ocean beyond. He still held the suitcase in his hand.
“On a clear day you can see Havana,” said a gravelly voice behind him.
He turned to greet Frank Lopez, who had just walked into the room and was already heading for the bar. He was hearty-looking and big-boned, and the Cuban-Jewish mix in him made it hard to pin him down, nationality-wise. He had a wide handsome face and bushy, curly hair. About forty-five. He wore a blue cashmere jacket with a red silk pocket square, and supple Italian shoes made of lizard, so that Tony felt suddenly cheap in his own punk clothes. Lopez did not greet Omar, or even acknowledge the existence of anyone in the room except Tony. To Tony he said, clinking ice in a glass: “So, what are you drinking, Tony Montana?”