by Paul Monette
“Tony, what am I supposed to do? The IRS is coming down real heavy on all of us. The Time cover didn’t help one little bit. I gotta do it, Tony, I got stockholders.” Tony stopped a foot from the door and waited. The deal was about to be proposed. “I gotta go twelve percent on the first ten million. That’s if it’s all in twenties. I’ll go nine percent on tens, six on fives, same as before.”
Tony turned, his lip curled in an arrogant sneer. “Kiss my ass,” he said.
Stearns shrugged and showed his open palms, thick with tennis calluses. “You’re not gonna do any better than us, babe, I’m tellin’ you that right now.”
“Oh yeah? I’ll fly it to the Bahamas if I have to.”
Stearns frowned at such obvious naivete. “You gonna fly it yourself, Tony, on a regular basis? Once maybe. And then what? You gonna trust some monkey in the Bahamian cabinet with twenty million of your hard-earned greenbacks?” He shook his head gently, and his voice grew more and more soothing. “C’mon Tony, don’t be a schmuck. Who else can you trust? Ask Sheffield. That’s why you pay us what you do—because you trust us.”
The phone buzzed from the outer office. Stearns flicked a button and took the call. Tony stared at the banker with huge contempt, his mind racing with revenge. Methodically he added Stearns’s name to the list in his head of those who would be sorry. Then just as suddenly a wave of weariness washed over Tony. Taking care of all the money was getting to be more than he could handle. The duffel bags piled up in the stash houses with ludicrous regularity. Millions of dollars in tens and twenties amounted to an enormous volume, and then there was the need of guarding it, getting trustworthy people to count it. The whole thing made Tony crazy—he felt like a two-bit gangster emptying slot machines, the trunk of his car a foot deep in quarters. He had no time any more. He couldn’t keep track of every phase of the operation and do the laundering too. Being rich was beginning to eat him up.
“I should be done here in a second,” said Stearns into the phone. He glanced at his Rolex as he hung up. He smiled at Tony. “So what do you say, Tony? Stay with us, huh? You’re an old and valued customer.” Three months was apparently long enough to make you old at the Banco Sud di Miami.
“Yeah, okay,” said Tony sullenly, his face a mask of indifference.
Stearns grinned. “I knew you’d see it our way,” he said. “Hell, there’s enough for everyone, right?”
Tony lay back in his marble gold-leaf bathtub, a Cuban cigar clenched between his teeth. A color TV was hooked to one side of the tub, a long phone line to the other. Within reach across the terrazzo floor were a stereo console and a portable bar. The bathroom was enormous, with a great baroque chandelier in the middle of the ceiling, mirrored walls, a sauna, a steam room, and a balcony overlooking the zoo. Tony lay there watching television, while Manolo sprawled on the sofa across the room, leafing through the racing sheet. Elvira sat at the vanity next to the balcony doors, slowly painting her eyes.
Tony was watching the Dolphins game, but just now they were into a string of advertisements. John Houseman stood in a college lecture hall, books under his arm, touting the praises of Smith Barney. “They make money the old-fashioned way,” Houseman intoned. “They earn it.”
Tony hit the remote control and snapped it off. “Twelve fuckin’ percent,” he grumbled. “What kinda jerk do they think I am? I remember when we used to knock those places over ’stead of takin’ shit from ’em.”
“They’re too smart,” said Manolo. “They got all the angles figured. You steal it, and then you gotta pay to put it back in.”
“You know what capitalism is, don’t you?” Tony tossed the cigar butt into the toilet. He sounded a bit like John Houseman himself. “Capitalism is Getting Fucked. Everybody gets fucked, ya know? You get fucked in the ass, you get fucked in the face, you get fucked in the ear—”
“God, you’re so articulate,” said Elvira, reaching over from the vanity and grabbing up the remote control. She snapped on the television and flicked the channel to the cable news. She reached for a vial of coke from among her creams and powders. She began to tap out lines on the mirrored surface of the vanity.
“You do too mucha that shit, you know that?” said Tony. He opened the door of the portable bar and pulled out a slip of champagne.
“Nothing exceeds like excess,” said Elvira, bending her swan neck and snorting through a rolled-up fifty. “You should know, Tony. You’re the king of excess.”
“Ex-what?”
“So why don’t we talk to this Jew Seidelbaum?” asked Manolo, folding his paper. “He’s got his own exchange, he goes four percent tops. Besides which he’s real well connected.”
Tony popped the cork and swigged the champagne down like Pepsi. He burped. “Are you kiddin’? He washes for the mob. It’s all Guineas.” He shook his head thoughtfully. “Fuckin’ peasants,” he said. “Hey look, there’s Keyes.”
He pointed to the television. Elvira rolled the volume up. A bespectacled man in a three-piece suit, tall and patrician, was talking to a reporter. He could have been the father of Samuel Taft Eliot Stearns.
“. . . the problem can only be solved the way Prohibition was,” said Keyes. “We must stop outlawing the substances. Once we legalize them, we can start taxing them. That’ll drive out the organized crime.”
“How ’bout the organized crime in the police department?” sneered Manolo, shooting the bird at the TV set.
“As a U.S. attorney, Connie,” said Keyes, his voice getting breathy like a politician, “I can only tell you it’s like having your finger in the dike, down here in South Florida anyway. We can’t put a dent in a hundred-billion-dollar-a-year business, not with our budget . . .”
Tony leaned forward in the tub, so his face was scarcely six inches from the screen. “Yeah, you’re right Keyes,” he said, “but it’ll never happen. Your fuckin’ bankers and politicians’ll never let it happen. They’ll fuck anybody if there’s a buck in it!”
“Can’t you for Christ’s sake stop talking about it?” Elvira shouted, as she snapped the TV off again in his face. “Can’t you stop saying fuck? Can’t you see it’s boring?” She turned around to the mirror again but did not look at herself. She bent to the lines and snorted again.
“What’s boring?” asked Tony.
“You’re boring. Money, money, money, money—that’s all you ever talk about.” She picked up a hairbrush and began to draw it briskly through her hair. “You know what you’re turning into, Tony? An arriviste immigrant spic millionaire, that’s what. Why don’t you just dig a hole in the garden, bury it and forget about it.”
“What are you talkin’ about?” He swept a wet arm around the room. “I worked my ass off for this.”
She stood up, drawing her robe closer about her. She spoke with a certain melancholy as she turned to go. “It’s too bad,” she said. “Somebody should have given it to you. Would’ve made you a nicer person. I mean, you probably wouldn’t have had to kill a soul.”
“You know what your problem is, honey?”
She was halfway out the door. As she looked over her shoulder, a lock of hair fell across one eye. “Please don’t tell me,” she said. “I’d much rather be in suspense.”
“You got nothin’ to do, that’s what.”
“That’s not true, Tony. I do a lot of coke. You said so yourself.” And she drifted away into the bedroom, letting the door click shut behind her.
“Aw fuck,” said Tony, slapping the water and shooting a stream that splashed against the television screen. He seemed most annoyed at himself just then, as if the squabble was all his fault.
Manolo said dryly: “I guess married life ain’t everything it’s cracked up to be, huh chico?”
“Yeah, fuck you too.”
“Listen Tony, I think we should look into this thing with Seidelbaum. It feels good to me.”
“Yeah okay, check it out,” said Tony absently.
It was not the first time they’d argued, he and Elvi
ra. Not even the first time that day.
Next morning, about nine o’clock, Elvira left the house for a manicure and a fitting. Chi-Chi drove her in the Continental, and because she was so strung out from the drugs of the night before, she buried herself in the Herald and kept her silence. She was still annoyed at Tony. They’d avoided each other all the rest of the evening, and she’d taken a couple of Q’s and gone out like a light. She figured he must have slept in his study, since he wasn’t in bed when she woke up, and he usually slept in till ten. No sign of him at breakfast either.
As the car came to a halt, she folded up the paper and reached in her bag for dark glasses. Chi-Chi came around to open her door, and she looked up expecting to see the awning of Valmain, the by-appointment-only shop on Riviera Drive where she picked up the lion’s share of her daytime clothes. Instead she was surprised to see they had come to the marina. The Continental was parked on the dock beside the Elvira, gleaming in the morning sun, its motors rumbling. She gave an irritable look at Chi-Chi, drawing a breath to curse him out.
“Boss’s orders,” Chi-Chi said.
Suddenly Gina appeared on deck, waving from the rail. “Do you know what this is all about?” she called.
Elvira smiled and shook her head, deciding what the hell. She got out of the car and trotted up the gangplank, still expecting to see Tony himself when she got on deck. But there was no one except Gina—not including the crew of four in dazzling white, trim as midshipmen, who tossed the lines and immediately got them under way.
“Limo pulled up at the shop this morning,” said Gina, tossing her dark hair as she settled herself on a deck mat. “Official instructions from the boss: cancel your morning appointments. Seems he wants to take me to the circus. Then they brought me here.”
“Where is he?” asked Elvira, moving to the on-deck bar to mix herself a Bloody Mary.
“I don’t know,” laughed Gina. “He must’ve had a change of plans. Why don’t you put on a suit, get some sun?”
“I’m all right, thanks.” Elvira took her drink and sat in the shade of the wheelhouse. She was still near enough to talk to Gina, but she couldn’t sit out in the sun herself. Not that she didn’t look fabulous with a tan. But she knew enough about drugs to know the sun was ruinous to a heavy user’s skin. She had seen enough wrinkled cokeheads in her time. She was still vain enough to protect herself, skin-deep anyway.
They did not know each other very well, Gina and Elvira. They had only been together perhaps half a dozen times. Tony still saw Gina mostly by himself. Either he stopped by her beauty shop for a haircut, or he took her out to lunch or shopping. Neither woman pushed Tony about it, seeming to realize that he needed them for different reasons. But they liked each other and enjoyed each other. The same kinds of things made them bitchy. They tended to roll their eyes at each other if they found themselves standing together in a group of Tony’s “friends,” Chi-Chi and Nick and the rest.
“So how’s married life?” asked Gina, placing a couple of slices of cucumber on her eyes. This sudden mask seemed to free her to ask a sudden question.
“It’s okay,” said Elvira with an easy shrug. “It’s never the same.” She sipped her Bloody Mary. A steward appeared with a tray of sushi and placed it on the bar. Elvira watched the ocean, aching blue in the noon sun, till he withdrew discreetly. Then she said: “Well, lately it’s kind of the same.”
“He drives himself like a maniac, doesn’t he? I tell him Tony, whaddaya want to be, the richest man in the graveyard?”
They were heading down the Inland Waterway, past the first small islands of Biscayne National Park. On the mainland side were the clipped flats and landfill of Homestead Air Force Base. Within forty minutes they had reached the sound that ran between Key Largo and the shores of the Everglades. The herons were white as tufts of snow as they bobbed up and down in the surf. Gina dozed off for ten minutes, and Elvira was very quiet. She began to feel more relaxed than she had in weeks.
Because they were heading south-southwest the sun was on her face now, but she made no move to pull back into the shade. She closed her eyes and took off her glasses and let herself bake a little. She had a full gram in her Celine bag, but she didn’t need it yet. She was cozy from the vodka and starting to feel hungry. For the moment she couldn’t recall why she was so annoyed with Tony. When she thought of his constant profanity and his inexhaustible temper, like he always had to face the world in boxing gloves, it only made her smile and shake her head rhythmically along the back of the deck chair.
When Gina woke up she fetched them both a little plate of sushi. Gina sat cross-legged on the deck to eat, just next to Elvira’s chair. They talked about Tony and Mama, laughing at the elaborate dance the old woman went through in her dealings with her son. Officially she still wasn’t speaking to him. All the same she would talk to him on the phone if he called for Gina, asking him question after question about his wife, and was she eating enough. If Tony asked her a question about herself, she became quite prim and closemouthed. She had not seen him face to face since the wedding. She lectured Gina often on the evils of her brother’s life. She wept and prayed to the Virgin of Guadeloupe.
The steward brought them a pot of coffee, a rich strong Cuban blend that could take a lot of cream. Elvira held her cup close, as if she was warming her hands at a fire. She studied Gina on the floor beside her, stretching her muscles and chatting happily. Though Gina was only four years younger than she, Elvira felt a protective impulse, as one who knew the world a whole lot better. She finally thought there might be a purpose to all the crap she had gone through, if she could only warn someone else.
“So tell me,” she said quietly, as they came into Blackwater Sound, heading in to Key Largo town, “what’s with you and Manny?”
“Oh, not too much,” said Gina quickly, burying her face in her coffee cup.
There was a brief silence as Elvira smiled down at her. Then she said: “That much, huh?”
“Don’t tell Tony. Please.”
“But it’s none of his business.” She reached out a hand and feathered the back of Gina’s hair. “None of mine either, I might add.”
She moved to stand up, and Gina grabbed her hand and held her in the chair. “No, I want to talk about it, Elvira.” There was a pang of great relief in Gina’s voice, as if the secret had been a rope around her neck, tightening and tightening. “He’s a wonderful man, and I love him, but he’s so scared of Tony he don’t know what to do.”
“Tony’ll come around. He loves that man like a brother.”
“I don’t think so,” said Gina with a weary sigh. “He’s got this thing about me. Like I’m some kinda virgin princess, and he’s gotta find me a prince. What does he think this is, the old country? Nobody’s a virgin anymore.”
The two women laughed, and the tension broke. Elvira stood and held out a hand and pulled Gina to her feet. They moved to the railing, arm in arm. “He certainly is a throwback, isn’t he?” said Elvira with gentle irony. “I sometimes think he wishes people still fought duels. Maybe that’s a dueling scar, huh?”
At first they thought they were coming into the tiny harbor at Key Largo, which they could see now a couple of hundred yards off to starboard, the rusty pier and the beat-up fishing boats. But the Elvira kept sailing past the entrance to the channel, hugging the shore for another half mile. The underbrush was thick as a jungle, and the beach, such as it was, was mostly a tangle of roots and shell heaps. A great cloud of gulls rose off the water as they passed one cove. Though the women hadn’t a clue where they were headed, Elvira was glad of the journey, if only because it had deepened her feelings about Gina. She suspected Gina felt the same.
“What does Manny say?”
“Oh, you know,” said Gina. “He says he’s got enough trouble just running the business with Tony. They’re always fighting about something. So I say okay, just give it time. Manolo still sees all his other girls, but I don’t care. That’s just sex. We see each other mayb
e twice a week, but he don’t ever spend the whole night. The thing is, I don’t wanna go out with anyone else.” She shook her head and sighed. “Same old story, huh?”
Elvira squeezed her arm. “Don’t worry. It’s like you said, just give it time. Tony’ll stop fighting so hard, and Manny’ll start to stand on his own two feet. You’ll see.”
She didn’t really believe it. Tony’s possessiveness toward Gina was more than stubborn, it was getting to be an obsession. And Elvira knew that relations between Tony and Manolo were increasingly tense. Tony had grown so paranoid about money that he couldn’t seem to delegate authority. Manolo was feeling shut out. But she hoped her own worries didn’t show as she bucked Gina up with confident words. She said she was sure that all four of them would be going out together soon. Maybe take a vacation, just the two couples. Go to New York and blow a fortune.
“Wouldn’t that be fun?” laughed Gina, and Elvira saw what a little girl she was at heart. Still unspoiled. Elvira realized she wanted to keep her that way, just like Tony did, except in her case she wanted to do all she could for the secret lovers. It made her feel like a girl herself.
The boat came around a point of land with a lone palm tree at the end. Beyond was a wide cove with a broad, west-facing beach. But what they immediately noticed were four or five seaplanes dotting the water like an outsize flock of gulls. The Elvira headed in. On the beach itself they could see a bunch of figures dressed in bright and gaudy colors. The two women looked at each other, puzzled.
The crowd on the shore had spotted the boat, and a cheer went up. Then music began to play, blaring out of a pair of ballroom speakers perched on a couple of beached timbers. The Elvira stopped about fifty yards from shore and lowered a boat. Now Gina and Elvira, squinting into the sun, began to pick out the individual figures. There were three or four clowns, all dressed up in motley and tumbling about. There was a girl in a ballerina costume, perched on a white horse. A man in a safari suit held a leopard on a chain. A trio of acrobats tossed each other in the air. A strong-man rippled his muscles.