by Paul Monette
“As far as Panama, then,” said Sosa. “Thirteen grand a key.”
“Ten,” said Tony.
“Twelve.”
“Eleven.”
Sosa smiled and drained his coffee. He set the cup and saucer down on the table. He reached out with both hands, as if to show he had nothing up his sleeves. Tony reached out his own hands, crossing them so he could grip Sosa in a double handshake. They sat hunched forward in their wicker chairs, holding the grip for a long moment.
“Eleven, then,” said Sosa. “I think we’re going to be doing business together for a long time, Tony.”
“That’s the way I want it, Noldo.”
They let each other go and leaned back in their chairs. Their eyes stayed locked together. When Sosa spoke again, it was with the oddest tenderness. “Just remember, Tony,” he said, “don’t fuck me. Whatever you do, don’t ever fuck me.”
At the end of the lawn, the guards tossed Omar’s body over the edge and down the canyon. Already the scavenger birds were gathering, wheeling in the sky.
The Lopez Bakery was a model operation. Housed in a white-tiled deco building on Tallahassee Boulevard, it employed thirty-five Cuban refugees—the old school of refugees, who’d fled the mother country in the first days of the revolution, fine upstanding American citizens all. You could eat off the floor of the Lopez Bakery. Men in white aprons and bakers’ hats bustled back and forth with long wooden shovels, setting the dough in the wall ovens and bearing away the fragrant loaves. The Lopez Bakery specialized in delicious, crunchy soda crackers, of a kind that the Cuban community remembered fondly from the old days. But they made wonderful tarts as well, and wedding cakes and poppyseed rolls. It was a picture-book operation, with gleaming white trucks in the driveway and vigorous, grinning drivers to do the deliveries.
No wonder Frank Lopez had received so many citations. In his tidy office on the upper level, with a big picture window looking down on the bakery proper, the walls were chockablock with plaques and mementoes. The Chamber of Commerce, the Small Business Administration, the Better Business Bureau, the Elks, the Rotary, you name it—nothing they liked better than to take a tour of the bright and fragrant premises of the Lopez Bakery. It was the classic American success story, immigration division. Along one wall, between a Cuban patriot flag and the stars and stripes, was a row of photographs: Frank shaking hands with JFK; Frank shaking hands with LBJ; Frank shaking hands with Nixon; Frank shaking hands with Jimmy Carter.
No one was shaking Frank’s hand just now. He stormed around the office, hollering and shaking his fist in the air. His bodyguard Ernie stood impassively in the corner. Tony and Manolo sat in two chairs drawn up to the desk. Manolo was kind of hunkered down, wincing a bit in the face of Frank’s explosion. Tony sat with his arms folded, a patient look on his face.
“What are you, nuts, Montana!” roared Frank, banging his fist against the wall. “You go and make an eighteen-million-dollar deal without even checking with me! I’ve had people tortured for less than that!”
“Hey, Frank, it’s a money machine,” said Tony. “Eleven grand a key, we can’t lose. We make seventy-five million in a year. That’s serious money, Frank.”
“Oh yeah? And what’s Sosa gonna do when I don’t come up with the first five million, huh? Send me a bill? I’ll tell you what he’s gonna do. He’s gonna send hit squads up here, that’s what.”
He groaned like a man in pain and banged the wall again. All the photographs jumped, and the one of Nixon went cockeyed. Ernie flexed his fingers, as if waiting for an order to strangle someone. He didn’t care who.
Tony shook his head and sighed, like he was terribly disappointed. “Frank, you don’t realize. I’m in real tight with Sosa.”
“You know what this trial is costing me in legal fees, Montana? A fuckin’ fortune, that’s what. Now they got this new racketeering law says they can take it all, every penny I ever made, back to the year one!” Frank swept a bunch of papers off his desk and onto the floor. The unfairness of things was insupportable.
“So you’re short a couple mill,” said Tony. “So I’ll make some moves on the street for you. We can get a mill here, mill there. Everyone’s gonna want a piece o’ this. Kinda like a syndication, ya know.”
Frank shot him a cold-blooded look. “You been makin’ some moves on your own, have you?”
Tony shrugged. “Hey, I keep my eyes open.”
“Oh yeah? What do your eyes say about the Diaz Brothers, what about them, huh? What about Gaspar Gomez? What’s he gonna do when you start moving two thousand keys on the street next year?”
“Fuck Gaspar Gomez. Fuck the Diaz Brothers.” Tony was surly now and impatient. He stood up and faced Frank across the desk, and perhaps for the first time both of them realized Tony was a couple of inches taller. “What’d they ever do for us? We’ll bury them cockroaches.”
Frank just stared at him for a minute. He was breathing heavily from all that rage, and there was confusion in his eyes. He’d been in this business for fifteen years, and he knew the young man in front of him was the wave of the future. He didn’t want to be scared. He wanted to go with the crazy risks and maybe end up with the world in his pocket. The anger began to fade in him, and he sat heavily in the desk chair.
Tony sat casually on the corner of the desk. “Look, Frank,” he said, “it’s time. We gotta expand. The whole operation.” His voice was gentle and coaxing. “New York—L.A.—Chicago. We have to set a mark of our own, Frank, and enforce it, whatever it takes. We gotta think big.”
“Like your friend Sosa, huh?” Frank sounded weary. “Maybe this is his idea. He’s a greaseball, Tony. He’s a snake, that’s what he is.” But somehow there wasn’t much conviction in his curses. It was as if he didn’t expect to be believed. He was like a father whom nobody listened to any more, whose sons were too busy getting laid. “You don’t trust a guy like that,” said Frank. “Maybe I made a mistake sending you down there. Is that what happened to Omar, Tony? Did he know something he wasn’t supposed to know?”
“Are you saying I’m lying, Frank?”
Ernie moved a step out of the corner. Manny’s hand slipped off the chair arm and hovered at his jacket pocket.
Frank spoke carefully. “Let’s just say I want things to stay the way they are. For now, Tony. Stall the deal.” There was a long pause. As the two men stared in each other’s eyes, Tony knew Frank knew Tony had given his word to Sosa. There was a break about to happen here. Maybe it wasn’t irretrievable, maybe they just had to sleep on it. Maybe they still respected each other enough.
All Tony said was: “Have it your way . . . boss.”
He turned to leave, beckoning Manolo to follow. It seemed there would be no final word. They reached the door, Tony opened it, then stood back to let Manolo go through. Frank called out on the spur of the moment. He almost sounded sad, except the words were so hard.
“You know I told you when you started Tony, the guys who last in this business are the guys who fly straight. Real low key. Real quiet. The guys who want it all—the chicks, the champagne, the flash—they don’t last.”
Tony paused to hear it all, but he didn’t look over at Frank. And he didn’t nod at the end or wait a respectable interval. He just walked out and shut the door. If he seemed angry at anyone at all, it was Manolo, who stood in the outer office looking bewildered and frightened. Tony batted him on the side of the head and headed for the elevator. He banged the button and banged the wall beside it, and Manolo tried to steer clear of his fury, which only made Tony snarl at him. They went down in silence.
The doors opened, and they walked through the bustling bakery, skirting a cartload of rolls as it dollied out to the trucks. It wasn’t till they’d gained the street that Manolo could speak. He didn’t care how angry Tony got. He still couldn’t understand why everything fell apart up there.
“What’s he gonna do, Tony?”
Tony spun around as if he was going to jump his friend. His eyes wer
e slits of rage. “You mean what are we gonna do, chico,” he said with a sneer. “We’re gonna get Frank Lopez, that’s what.”
Chapter Six
EIGHT DAYS LATER Tony and Manolo were sitting in a plush waiting room. Everything was either gray or lavender, and even the walls seemed to be carpeted. Both men were decked out in suits and ties. Manolo carried the attaché case on his lap, perched on his knees as if he was expecting dinner on a plane. Tony read the sports page, grumbling because there wasn’t enough soccer coverage.
They were waiting to see George Sheffield, a tough and grizzled lawyer whose reputation was nearly legend among the coke kings, several of whom he had managed to keep out of jail, in spite of crimes too numerous to list. He was on retainer to five or six Cuban gangsters. His methods were entirely unorthodox and certainly illegal, but he had so many murderous friends, nobody dared to question his arrangements. Besides, so many lawmen were on the take to him, there was scarcely anyone left to ask the questions.
Tony’s appointment was for three P.M., and he didn’t get ushered in till after four, but he kept his temper. He understood there were men that even kings had to go to hat in hand. He had pulled a lot of connections just to get this meeting. He had meanwhile taken his cut of the last Colombia shipment in coke. Frank was more than glad to lay a couple of kilos on him, because his own distribution was thrown into chaos by Omar’s sudden demise. Tony and Manolo had spent the whole last week dealing the coke with Nick the Pig.
They’d had to be very careful not to intrude on Frank’s client list. Moreover, they still had to keep their commitments to Frank, so it meant that some days they were out on the street twenty or thirty hours without a break, peddling grams. They had to get coked up just to keep going. For the first time since they started in the business, they began to look a bit green about the gills. Despite the three-piece suits and the attachés, no one would have mistaken them now for anything else but dealers.
A blonde and shapely secretary who was clearly getting it from the boss led them into Sheffield’s office. The lawyer didn’t even look up from his papers at first, as he spoke into the phone with a hoarse and gravelly croak. His eyes were heavy-lidded and yellow; they seemed cigarette-stained like his fingers. As Tony and Manolo sat down he put out his fortieth Camel of the day, swore into the phone, and hung up abruptly. He ran a hand through his thin red hair and looked warily at the two Cubans.
“So who’s Tony Montana?”
“That’s me,” said Tony. “This is my partner, Manolo Ray.” No response. “They tell me you’re the best lawyer in town.”
Sheffield snorted and reached for a Camel. “Did they also tell you how expensive I am?”
“Yeah, sure. It’s like they say—if you gotta ask, you’re outa your league.”
“J.P. Morgan,” Sheffield said. “A personal hero of mine. So you read American history, do you? What’ve you done lately to get your name in it?”
Tony laughed. “Not much yet. But I’m thinkin’ of expanding my operation, see. Go independent. Get my own distribution system. Make my deals right at the source. From what I understand, the first thing I need is a class act like you on the payroll. You know, to advise me—just like you do those other guys.”
“What’s your time-frame?”
“Now,” said Tony.
Sheffield took a deep puff of his cigarette. Then he coughed till it seemed he would spew his guts out. He hawked noisily into his handkerchief. Then he spoke, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “We start with a hundred grand,” he said. “Cash. On the table.” His rheumy eyes took on an arrogant glaze, as if to say: “Come back when you’re ready to play hardball.”
Tony nodded at Manolo, who flicked open his briefcase and drew out an envelope. He handed this over to Tony. Tony reached in and grabbed four wrapped stacks of thousand-dollar bills. There were twenty-five bills to the stack. Tony butterflied and fanned the money, as if to make a ritual show of its all being there, and he laid it in a pile on Sheffield’s blotter. When Tony looked up, Sheffield was smiling broadly.
“I guess I got the job,” said the lawyer.
Tony waited in the Jaguar. He’d made no attempt to conceal the car. It was visible from all twenty-six floors of the condo complex across the street. A limousine was waiting under the portico. After Tony had been sitting there about ten minutes, he saw three men emerge from the condo building: Frank Lopez, Ernie, his bodyguard, and a third man Tony had never seen before, a burly man with a slight limp. They all climbed into the limo, and it drove away, passing so close to Tony that Frank could have reached out the window and touched him. But Frank was too busy talking to the third man. And Ernie, who was paid to watch for people like Tony, was already deep in the funny papers.
Tony left his car and walked across to the entrance. The day guard by the elevator knew him of course and merely nodded as Tony stepped in and pressed 26. When he reached the floor, the guard with the dog nodded like a buck private in the presence of an officer. He almost saluted. Tony walked up to Frank’s door and rang. He expected a servant, at least the maid, and he was momentarily startled when Elvira herself opened the door.
“You just missed Frank,” she said flatly. The flatness did not conceal her surprise. She wore jeans and was barefoot. Her body was beautiful, her face tired.
“I didn’t come to see Frank.”
Her eyes flared with annoyance. “This is not the time or the place,” she said, already closing the door. “Next time make an appointment.”
He stuck his foot in the door and blocked it and bulled his way into the foyer. She didn’t put up any fight. She covered her face with her hands and groaned with exasperation, sick of this game. “I got something important to tell you,” Tony said gently. “Why don’t you make some drinks and act normal.”
“Sure,” she said, turning wearily toward the living room. “Why not? We’re all normal here.”
She walked across to the bar, reached down two glasses, and poured two fingers of Chivas Regal in each. She opened the small refrigerator beneath the bar to get ice, then seemed to decide it was too much trouble, and banged the door shut with her bare foot. She turned to hand him his drink.
“So tell me, how’s crime?”
“I heard you was up in New York,” said Tony. “All by yourself.”
“It’s none of your business who I was with.”
“Me, I been down to Bolivia.”
“So I understand,” she said, seeming to get more hostile with every remark. She made no move to sit down but leaned against the bar in a defiant pose.
“What else do you understand?”
“I understand you and Frank have done your last deal together.”
“I guess so,” said Tony. “We ain’t formally concluded anything, but . . .” He shrugged and shot her a sly grin. “Makes things a whole lot easier, don’t it?”
“Does it?”
He raised his glass in a toast. “Here’s to the land of opportunity,” he said. She clinked glasses with him, and each took a belt of the scotch. She did not return his grin. She seemed to be waiting for him to make his point or leave, she didn’t care which. Out of the blue he said: “Do you like kids?”
“I don’t know. I guess so.”
“Good. Cause I like kids.” Suddenly he got very awkward. He moved a step closer to her, but then she seemed to freeze a bit, so he moved a step away. The grin was gone. His voice was husky as he spoke. “Look, here’s what I am,” he said. “I climbed up out of the gutter. I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but I got guts and I know the streets and I’m makin’ the right connections. All I need now’s the right woman. Then there’s no stopping me. I’ll go all the way to the top—really be somebody. Like Frank y’know, with the charities and committees and stuff, but even bigger.” He laughed awkwardly. “Tony Montana, huh? Immigrant refugee makes good. That’s me.”
Elvira looked vaguely stunned, but she said nothing. Perhaps there was pathos in her eyes. Mostly she looked c
onvinced he had just arrived from the moon.
“Anyway,” Tony went on, “what I came up here to tell you is . . . uh . . . I’m in love with you.” They both looked away from each other. There was something almost apologetic in Tony’s voice. He seemed to understand it would be so much simpler if love had not come into it at all. “I know things right away,” he said. “The first time I seen you, I knew you belonged to me. It’s like we’re two tigers, y’know. And there’s no other tigers left.” They looked at each other again. Her face was very, very quiet. It was hard to tell if she was angry or sad or what, but she wasn’t happy. He said: “I want you to marry me. I want you to be the mother of my children.”
For a moment they stood in a stunned silence. Then she shook her head with a mournful little laugh and moved to the end of the bar. “Tony, Tony,” she said, softly reprimanding him as she opened a drawer and pulled out a mirror about six inches square. “I already told you. I don’t believe in marriage.”
“But this is different.”
She set the mirror down on the bar, then fetched a vial of cocaine from the drawer. She unscrewed the cap and began to tap out lines on the mirror’s surface. “It’s never different,” she said wearily. “And what about Frank? What are you going to do about Frank?”
“Frank’s not gonna last,” he said, a trace of pity in his voice. “You know that.”
She had four lines laid down, each about two inches long. She set the vial down and retrieved a short glass straw from the drawer. She leaned down and tooted one nostril, then stood up with her eyes shut, holding the bridge of her nose.
“I’m not lookin’ for an answer now,” he said. “Just think about it, will you? You and me, we could . . .” His hands fluttered in a futile gesture. He couldn’t find the words.
She leaned down to do the other nostril but suddenly had to sneeze. She tried to hold it in, pinching her nose as she let out a little squeak. And now there was blood in her hand, and she threw her head back as she reached for a Kleenex. Tony stepped toward her, reaching out both hands as if she was going to fall.