by Paul Monette
Tony was very tired, and the only thing that kept him awake now was the coke. He tried to focus on business matters, glancing over reports from his accountants and various memos about his case from George Sheffield. It didn’t seem to occur to him that he’d probably blown the deal with the Feds and would have to serve time after all. He didn’t seem very connected to the future, or at least not beyond the next twelve hours. What he had to do was find Manolo and sit him down and figure out where it had all gone wrong.
Though it calmed him some to read the numbers and see how much he had, he was having a terrible time with time itself. Was it four months ago he got married? Six months ago that he made his first deal on a kilo? He couldn’t seem to put together the twenty million dollars he’d made with the time frame in which he had made it. He got no satisfaction out of being an overnight success, perhaps because the speed of the process had left him no ground to stand on. Besides, time was speeding faster than Tony Montana. He felt old and sick inside. In his mind he kept seeing the man he was when they let him out of prison and sent him into exile. Tough and strong and unstoppable. He couldn’t say where that man had gone.
And somehow he kept coming back to Manolo, and he grew increasingly angry and betrayed. Manolo was full of deceit. He’d probably made some private deal and was only waiting now for Tony to come crashing down. Perhaps he was even ready to lend a hand in arranging Tony’s fall. Well, just let him try. Manolo was an amateur at death. He would see what a true murderous rage could do if he dared to turn on Tony.
All the way to Miami his mind twisted back and forth, wanting to clasp Manolo like a brother and then wanting to brand him as a traitor. After a while he began to think about Elvira, and half of him wanted to gather her into his arms and love her all night long, and half of him wanted to throw her out. He blew hot and cold. He went from sentimental to paranoid and back again, as if those were the only faces of love he could focus on anymore.
Was it the coke? There was no way of knowing, he was never going to stop it now. He’d been taking a powerful antihistamine for days to clear his sinuses. He spilled more now than he snorted. The rush was still very real, it cleared his head like a vision. The streets were littered with gold again, and all he had to do was scoop it up. It only lasted a minute, of course, but a minute of vision was better than none. At least it was somewhere to go if you had to be all alone.
Martin picked them up at the airport in the gray stretch limo. Nick, sensing that Tony didn’t want company, rode up front with Martin. Tony dialed Manolo’s number on the car phone, and he let it ring for twenty minutes, all the way home. No answer. As he held the receiver to his ear, he flicked on the television set to Kojak. Then he turned off the sound and turned on the stereo. He opened the bar refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of beer, though he wasn’t thirsty at all. It was as if he was checking out all his toys to see if everything worked, to see if they still responded to his touch.
The peacocks scattered as they roared up the drive to the mansion. Chi-Chi was waiting at the door as Tony barreled out of the car. “D’you hear from him?” demanded Tony.
“No,” said Chi-Chi, “but Sosa called three times. He sounds real pissed. What happened, Tony?”
“I think he thinks I’m the wrong kinda hero,” retorted Tony dryly. He turned to Nick. “Go up t’ the office and put in a call to Sosa. It takes a fuckin’ half hour to get through. And find me some flake that ain’t been cut.” He flung the vial he’d been snorting from at the floor, smashing it on the tile. “This shit’s so weak, I might as well be sniffin’ bakin’ soda.”
“Boss, that’s the purest stuff we got.” Nick sounded wounded, as if he’d refined the batch himself.
“Don’t argue, will ya?” snapped Tony. “I got a headache the size o’ your ass.” Nick nodded and then beat a hasty retreat upstairs. Tony turned to Chi-Chi. “She up there?”
“Yeah, she’s up there all right. I tried to bring her in a cuppa coffee, and she pulled a gun on me.” Tony started to laugh. It was as if he hadn’t heard a joke in weeks. “It ain’t funny, boss,” said Chi-Chi. “She hit the fuckin’ door, but she coulda hit me.”
Tony’s laugh faded to a sickly grin as he grabbed Chi-Chi by the collar and yanked him close. “You got exactly one hour to find Manolo. You got that?”
“Yeah, sure boss.”
Tony shoved him away. Chi-Chi stumbled out the door and stood dazed in the driveway, like he didn’t know where to begin. Tony had them all on edge now. They tried to steer out of his way, or they shied and shuffled and looked at the floor, which only made him more furious. He stormed through the house complaining, tossing out orders. It was like turning all the dials in the limo. He didn’t need the sandwiches he ordered, or his list of dealers or his bank statements or anything else he was yelling for. He just wanted to feel the system responding to his touch. If it hadn’t been so late and he didn’t have so much to do, he would have gone out and spent money like water, just to show he was still Midas.
By the time he entered the office he was almost his old self again. He made rapid calls to his stockbroker, to the manager of the diamond company, the realty people, the zookeeper. As he listened to brief reports, he attacked the plate of roast beef sandwiches and guzzled a split of Mumm’s. In the middle of listening to a list of loans outstanding, he gave a surly nod at Nick.
“Hey, you think we could have some caviar or somethin’? I just got home, for Christ’s sake. I wanna celebrate.” Nick hustled his ass and disappeared. Tony picked up the phone and wandered with it out to the balcony. Streaks of sunset were on the sky, and a marvelous odor of lemons filled the air. From where he stood he could see the Bengal pacing his island. He never stopped. “Yeah, okay Stan,” said Tony into the phone, “I’m sure it can wait till tomorrow. Jesus, ain’t this a pretty time o’ day?”
Nick came back with caviar, a big Iranian tin of it, and a bottle of Cristal. Tony looked it all over and nodded. He sat down at his desk and took out a sheet of the cream-colored stationery he’d never once used, with the Coral Gables address engraved at the top. He wrote across it in a big clumsy hand: “Would the Queen like to have a drink with the King?” He sealed this in an envelope and handed it to Nick.
“Gimme five minutes,” he said.
And just then the phone rang with the call from Bolivia. Nick slipped out of the room. Only now did Tony pick up the vial of coke Nick had set on the desk. He answered the phone and identified himself to Sosa’s black aide in Cochabamba. As he waited for Sosa to be summoned, he tapped out lines on the polished mahogany surface of the desk.
“Is that you, Tony?”
“Whaddaya say, Noldo?”
“So what happened, babe?”
“We had some problems.”
“Yeah, I heard.”
“Somebody sent you a telegram, huh?”
“Not exactly, Tony. Our friend gave a speech today to the U.N. General Assembly. A speech we never expected to hear. Kinda spoiled our day.”
Carefully Tony rolled up a hundred. He bent down and snorted two lines, not loudly, but not trying to hide it either. It was getting to be dusk outside, and the light was pearly. Tony made no move to turn on a lamp. In the blue shadows that fell across the room, the cocaine gleamed in a lunar way like gold dust in the sun.
“Yeah, well that guy Alberto was a piece o’ shit, Noldo. The situation wasn’t quite the way we figured on, ya know. We hadda make some adjustments. Alberto got stuck. I hadda cancel his contract.”
Sosa spoke with extreme precision. “He was a very valuable man, Tony. You made a very big mistake.”
Tony laughed. “Hey Noldo, no big deal. I can find ya a hundred guys on the street’ll kill anybody. They’ll kill their fuckin’ grandmother. I’ll go up next week and waste him myself—but not his wife and kids, Noldo. You gotta find scum to do that.”
“There’s no next week, Tony. They found what was under the car. Gutierrez has got security up the ass now.” The grisly even
ness of Sosa’s voice finally began to crack. Tony felt a spurt of pride when he heard it. He was younger and stronger than any of them. He wanted this man to hate him. Sosa started to shout: “Now all of a sudden the heat’s comin’ down—on me, Tony. Somebody’s gonna pay for that! You blew it, you peasant!”
“Hey wait a minute. Who the fuck you think you’re talkin’ to?”
Sosa’s rage exploded now. He was almost incoherent. “I told you the day I met you, you stupid spic! Don’t fuck with me! People fuck with me they get burned!”
Tony could hear him panting at the other end of the phone. He flashed on an image of an old man rutting, straining to keep it up. His own voice took on an icy calm. “I guess you’re the one made the big mistake, Noldo. You thought I was your bellboy, huh? No way. Nobody tells me what to do. ’Specially scum like you.” To punctuate this, he bent and snorted another line.
“This is war, Montana!”
“Great, Noldo, great. Let’s have a war. We can flush out the sewers, huh? And then you can kiss my ass.”
Sosa let loose with a stream of hysterical bloodlust. Tony dropped the receiver back in the cradle with a cocky sneer, as if he was offended by the Bolivian’s lack of decorum. He leaned back in his swivel chair with his hands behind his head, looking out on the mackerel twilight. The door to the office opened, and Elvira walked in. The light from the hallway fell on her golden hair, but her face was all in shadow as he turned to her.
“We supposed to do this in the dark?” she asked. Her voice was wonderfully warm and intimate just then. It was as if she was looking for a joke to laugh at. He loved her laugh.
Tony reached out to the wall and flicked a switch, suddenly bathing the room in honey-colored indirect light. Elvira was wearing a beautiful black silk dress, with her double strand of wedding pearls around her neck. In a way she looked as demure as she had the day she had left Baltimore. Except of course she was high right now. But very much in control: her long slim legs didn’t wobble a bit as she crossed toward the desk. Her smile was easy and mocking, completely self-aware.
“Gee I woulda got dressed,” said Tony, shrugging almost shyly in his rumpled traveling shirt.
“That’s okay, honey. I didn’t get dressed for you. I have to go out.”
“Oh. Will you have a drink first?”
“Well of course,” she said, her smile growing broader. “It isn’t every day that I get an invitation from a king.”
Tony stood up and went to the bar. As he tore the foil and the wire from the champagne cork, he watched her in the mirror. She knew she was being watched, and she didn’t appear to mind at all. As she crossed to the balcony doors, the sultry rhythm of her walk was like something she was whispering to him. Tony popped the cork, and the wine foamed over his hand. As he filled the tulip glasses he said: “Did you think of a place you wanna go?”
“Uh huh.”
She stepped out onto the balcony. He followed with the glasses in hand and passed her one when he reached the rail. The lights had come on in the jungle garden below, and a gas torch flamed on the Bengal’s island. Elvira lifted her glass and gestured toward the tiger. “To the king,” she said, and let her eyes rest on Tony. They clinked and took a swallow.
“Don’t matter to me where we go,” said Tony, “as long as it’s far away.”
She looked at him calmly, her eyes roaming over his face as if she was memorizing it. “Where have you never been?”
He thought for a moment, his brow furrowed with concentration. “I never been to an island,” he said.
She laughed. “But you come from an island.”
“I mean a real island.” He nodded vaguely west, as if he meant to exclude the whole Club Med Caribbean from Nassau to Grenada. “Tahiti or somethin’.”
“There is no Tahiti,” Elvira said dryly, her lower lip touching the rim of the glass. “I’ve been there.”
“Like I say, it don’t matter to me. You pick a place.”
There was silence now for a moment. Carefully she read his eyes, as if to see how serious he was. Then she looked out at the twilight sky, plotting her course by stars that were only the barest glimmer yet. He reached out to her hand on the railing and covered it with his own. For the space of a breath there was no cocaine at all. Their blood beat with nothing but feeling. The world was as immediate and real as the scent of lemons wafting up from the tree below. And they let it last longer than any moment they’d had together in weeks and weeks. They stood there a good two minutes, leaning slightly against each other and mild as the couple on a wedding cake.
And then she turned to him and said: “I’ll be going alone, Tony.” He nodded and drew his hand away. She reached out and grabbed it again, lifting it to her face and cradling her cheek against it. “I’m sorry it didn’t work.”
“Yeah, well . . .” His voice trailed off to an embarrassed silence. It was so much easier when they were yelling. If they weren’t going to run to a desert island, if she wasn’t going to fall in his arms, then they ought to be raging and throwing things. How else would he ever get over her? He said: “So where you going?”
“Old girlfriend of mine,” she replied, tossing off the rest of her glass. She set it on the desk and rang the crystal with a flick of one finger. “She lives in Washington now. Her husband owns Kuwait or something.”
“What’ll you do?”
Elvira tossed her head and laughed. “Dry out, of course.” She patted the pocket of his shirt for cigarettes, slipped out the pack and took one. He lit it for her. “I’m only kidding,” she said dryly. “I think Sally and Jeff are Mr. and Mrs. Freebase of 1980.”
“When uh . . . ?”
“Oh, right now. Martin’s going to drive me to the airport. You don’t mind if I use the limo, do you?”
“We could still work it out, Elvira.”
“Shh, don’t be silly. I don’t know what we’re supposed to do about the legal stuff, but . . . whatever you want, okay?”
He reached out a hand and stroked her hip, as if he too was trying to memorize something. His voice was husky. “You’re still a great-lookin’ woman, Elvira.”
She shrugged slightly, out of modesty almost. Then she reached through his open shirt and grazed her fingertips in the gypsy hair of his chest. She said: “We looked the best of anyone, didn’t we?” She seemed to feel genuine pride in this. “The animal part’s no problem, is it? It’s the people part.”
He didn’t know what to say. It was as if there was a cliff right there beside him, and out of the corner of one eye he could see the terrible drop to the darkness below. In one minute, as soon as she left, he knew he was going to have to look down, and then—he didn’t know what came after that. He had to say goodbye now, because he couldn’t just stand there and chat about why they were falling apart. He would rather kill her.
Awkwardly now he drew away from the touch of her hand and turned toward the desk. “Hey come on,” he said brightly, “at least have one for the road.” And without first offering her the rolled-up hundred, he reached for the vial and spilled out the whole of its contents, fanning it out in a quarter moon on the hardwood surface of the desk. Four or five grams at least. The gesture triggered a memory, and even as he bent and snorted he thought of Frank Lopez and the five-hundred-fifty-dollar bottle of champagne. Thought of it because he couldn’t think of anything he wanted to buy anymore.
He stood up and passed her the hundred. There was something almost formal in her posture as she leaned to the desk and did a double toot. Some ancient tribal ritual whispered about her bowed head. The swan-like curve of her back was like a frozen moment in a dance. She stood up and looked in his eyes. For a single beat they were on that desert island, the one that didn’t exist.
“Maybe some day . . .” began Tony, and then he shrugged.
“Who knows?” she said, with a shrug that was the mirror of his own. She bent to the desk again and took up a pen and a sheet of the Coral Gables paper. “Look, here’s the address,” sh
e said, scribbling it down in a shaky hand. “Call me sometime, okay? Sally’ll know where I am.” She dropped the pen and looked deep in his eyes, smiling as if for once in her life there were no hard feelings. “Hey, look at it this way,” she said. “At least we had the circus, huh? Who ever gets the circus?”
And then she pecked his lips and turned and hurried out, still holding the hundred in her hand. Tony moved to take another hit of the coke, but found he had nothing to toot with. He reached in his pocket for his roll of bills, peeled off another hundred, but his hands were shaking so much that he couldn’t roll it up. Then the phone rang. As he reached to answer, he wondered if Nick or somebody had held all calls while he and Elvira were alone together. How long had that been? Ten minutes?
How long did he have now?
“Manolo?” he asked tensely, holding the receiver in both hands.
“Tony, get over here!” It was Mama, and she was hysterical. “She’s gone for good now. I hope you’re satisfied.” Then she fell to sobbing, cursing him in Spanish.
He tried to quiet her down, but she wouldn’t listen. He said he’d be right over, he needed to see her anyway, but still she would not let go of the phone. He lay the receiver on the desk, bent down and sniffed another dose, then hurried over to the closet.
Inside was a metal cabinet where he kept his cash on hand. It wasn’t a safe exactly, more like a double-size locker in a gym. It had a padlock, but they never locked it. They used it as a storage unit, accumulating a bankable amount. When he opened the cabinet he found a couple of half-full canvas bags and a suitcase stacked with twenties in wrappers.
He heaved one of the canvas bags over his shoulder, then grabbed the sheet of paper with the address and stuffed it in his pocket. He rushed from the room. There was no one about as he ran downstairs. It was in his mind to get out of there alone, but as he trotted across the gravel to the garage, he could hear Nick and Ernie running behind him. He didn’t care one way or the other now, and he slumped in the rear seat of the Corniche and let them climb in front. Nick drove. Tony called out an address and then sat back in a daze.