by Paul Monette
About ten minutes later they came to the house in Shenandoah Park. Tony combed his hair in the vanity mirror above the bar and straightened his collar. Then he did a heavy double toot. Telling the men to wait in the car, he hefted up the canvas bag, stepped out onto the curb, and loped up the drive to the back of the house. He waved to the boys who were tinkering with the car, then ducked inside and sprinted up the stairs. It seemed like a point of pride with him that he do this thing with the grace of an athlete.
Just now, as he reached the third floor—not even breathing hard—he looked fit enough to fight for the middleweight title.
Only Dolores and the grandmother and the retarded boy Ricardo were home. Dolores was most upset, for she knew how much Tony liked to go a couple of rounds with Paco. Tony had to reassure her, patting her arm and shushing her. He only had a minute, he said. She had to listen carefully.
“You take this, Dolores,” he said, heaving the canvas bag onto the kitchen table, “you hide it, okay? Year from now, you start usin’ it to live on. Groceries, gas bill, doctors—whatever you gotta pay, you pay outa here. You understand?”
Dolores nodded gravely. So did the grandmother. They looked soberly at the canvas bag, and it was clear they would follow his instructions to the letter. They would not even open the canvas bag till the year was up.
“That way,” Tony said, “you and Waldo can start puttin’ half his salary away for the kids. For their education. Comprende?”
Once again the two women nodded in unison. They both looked grief-stricken now, as if they understood that Tony would not be back. They did not press him or ask him questions. They were too well-bred for that.
Tony reached in his pants pocket and pulled out the paper on which Elvira had written the Washington address. Tony asked Ricardo to go fetch a pencil, and when the young man brought him one he wrote Elvira’s name down twice. Her maiden name and her married name. There was no telling what she would go by later on.
“Some day I want you to contact this lady,” he said, handing the paper across to Dolores. “She used to be my wife. You tell her all about me and Paco and Ricardo here, how we met in the ocean. How I got you to take Ricardo in. I want you to tell her she’s part of the family too. You understand?”
“Sure, Tony. You can’t wait till Waldo comes home?”
“No, I gotta go now.” He leaned forward across the table and kissed Dolores on either cheek. Then he kissed the grandmother’s forehead. “You just take care o’ my boys,” he said. “I want Paco to grow up and be President, okay?”
Ricardo stood up when he did, and they shook hands man to man.
“Go with God, Tony,” said Dolores.
Tony nodded and smiled and took a last long look around the kitchen. Then he slipped outside and shut the door behind him with a quiet click. He trotted downstairs with a grin on his face. By the time he’d reached the car he was already thinking of the next encounter. He frowned with concentration as he gave the next address and tapped out a couple of thick lines. But deep inside he laughed for a long moment, because he’d finally done something that no one could take away.
Then he snorted hard.
All the way to his mother’s house he tried to focus on Gina. When had he set her up in business? When did she leave Mama’s house and get a place of her own? He kept thinking that if only he could recover the timing, he’d be able to put his finger on where they had all disappeared to. It was like they were all playing a game, hiding in a landscape full of trees, and he kept forgetting where he’d already looked.
Nick got another gram from the glove compartment and handed it over the seat. Until now he had always waited till Tony asked, but apparently they had reached a new plateau. Tony’s snorting now was purely automatic. He did not even pay attention to being high. The rush went right by him, clearing his head for a bit in the process but otherwise leaving no mark. It was as if he needed to do it now to prove how numb he was.
He left the two men in the car, who knew better than to bother a man who was saying goodbye to his mother. As Tony walked up to the front door, he tried to think what the deal was between him and this woman. Was he paying the rent? Or was she the one who’d thrown the money in his face? He could hear her sobbing even through the door. He walked in and followed her grief to the kitchen. She sat with her head in her arms on the table, the receiver of the phone lying helpless there beside her. The line was still open between her house and her son’s house, but it might as well have been dead.
“She don’t even live in her place,” gasped Mama, choking back her tears. Tony hadn’t even thought she noticed him come in. She spoke as if they’d been arguing nonstop for hours. He realized he would never be able to fill in the part he’d lost. “One day I follow her in a taxi,” Mama said brokenly. “She goes to this fancy condo in Coconut Grove. She don’t come out all night.”
“Coconut Grove?” Who lived in Coconut Grove?
Why was he being so slow? He knew now. But he wouldn’t let the truth take shape in his head. It was as if some terrible messenger had arrived with a sentence of doom, and the only thing Tony could do was barricade himself within the castle walls. Once he admitted the only possible explanation, time would begin its free fall. He realized he had no coke with him, he’d left it in the car. His hands began to shake again. Sweat broke out on his forehead. He was looking right over the cliff and down.
“Did you go in, Mama?”
“How could I?” the old woman wailed. “If I went in there she’d kill me. She’s just like you.”
“Where is it, Mama? What’s the address?” A voice inside him was screaming: Don‘t tell me, I don’t want to know.
“Four hundred something. Citrus Drive. I got it over here.” She lifted herself from the kitchen chair and padded heavily to the counter by the sink. She lifted the sugar bowl and retrieved a slip of paper. The wave of sobbing had passed now. She seemed to be drawing together all her strength for one last rational argument. “You gotta talk to her Tony, she don’t listen to me. She says ‘I’m in love Mama, be happy for me.’ So how come she won’t tell me his name? How come she has to go there late at night like a . . .” She couldn’t say the word. Another squall of tears overtook her.
Tony crossed to her and gently took the paper from her hand. “Don’t worry Mama, I’ll bring her home.”
The paper read: 409 Citrus Drive, #6.
As he turned to go, she reached and grabbed his arm. “Don’t you see what you done to her? Don’t you see? Why do you have to hurt everything you touch?”
“Leave me alone,” he snarled, so coldly she drew her hand away. “I never felt nothin’ from you—never. I made somethin’ outa my life, and I did it all by myself. But it ain’t good enough for you, is it? I’m the bad boy, ain’t I? Your knees are all raw from prayin’ for me. Well, thanks for nothin’.”
He strode through the house and out the door. She ran after him shrieking. Her grief for her wayward daughter had given way to the fury and contempt she reserved for her son alone. “You got a scar on your soul, Tony! You’re gonna burn in hell forever! Make up for the hell you put your people through! I spit on your grave!”
This last curse was flung from the porch, where she stood beneath her beloved trellis shaking her fist in the air. Tony did not turn around but kept walking to the car. Nick and Ernie heard her final savage imprecations, as did the neighbors having a barbecue in the yard next door. As he tore open the car door, Tony yelled back over his shoulder: “Don’t you dare come near my grave!”
It wasn’t exactly the sort of goodbye that you wore like a locket around your neck.
The Corniche drove off, leaving the old woman weeping on her porch, one hand gripping the trellis for support. First thing Tony did, he took a double hit of coke. Neither man in the front seat said a word, and Nick drove aimlessly around the neighborhood, not sure whether to go home or not, not sure what was there to go home to. At last Tony reached forward and handed the slip of paper to Ernie.
“What’s this?”
“The last stop,” said Tony.
Once again there was silence, broken only by the sound of Tony snorting. His final scene with Elvira had receded so far into the past he could no longer recall the details. Dolores and Ricardo and the others were faint as the figures in a crumpled snapshot. His mother was someone he’d left long ago in the slum alleys of Havana. All he could be sure of about the evening’s encounters was the way they pointed like signposts to the fatal crossroads that lay up ahead in the darkness. Tony picked up the car phone and dialed his number at home. It rang; someone had put the receiver back on the hook. Chi-Chi answered on the fifth ring. Reluctantly.
“Where is he, Chich?”
“See here’s the way it is, Tony,” said Chi-Chi, very jittery, like he hadn’t had a fix all week. “He moved out of his place in Hollywood, maybe two, three weeks ago, only he didn’t tell nobody. It’s like he’s been off the map, ya know? But I found him, boss. I just talked to a dealer’s been deliverin’ him his junk.” Chi-Chi’s voice was pathetically ingratiating. He longed for an encouraging word from Tony. “Hey boss, I think he’s been doin’ some private deal. You want the address?”
“No thanks,” said Tony, and hung up the phone.
As they came into Coconut Grove, the streets were broad and lushly planted. Children who always got what they wanted pedaled by on bicycles. The Corniche did not look at all out of place, yet the man watching out of the rear window had a terrible hunger in his eyes—as if the whole suburban world, manicured and proud, lay an inch beyond his grasp. Otherwise his face was totally blank. He seemed dazed by the constant movement. If they’d turned the car over to him and told him to drive home, he’d have sat there clutching the wheel, unable to go ten feet.
No, the fate he was going to meet required that somebody else drive. Tony needed the freedom to cut himself loose from the world of laws. He could never have stayed within the lines, not now. He snorted two heaping spoonfuls, his eyes crinkling up in pain as the drug hit the raw of his sinuses. There was no way to back off now. He was a pure instrument of revenge, betrayed beyond all endurance, hating everything he loved. He did not know why it had come to this, but then he had not lived his life to learn the why of things. His reasons were all bound up in who he was, instinctive like the convulsions of the world. A volcano had no reason. Neither did a hurricane. What did Tony Montana need one for?
The Corniche drew up at 409. It was a complex built around a central court, with a pair of royal palms flanking the iron gates. “Leave it running,” said Tony, and right away the other men knew there might be gunfire. As Tony stepped out to the curb Ernie opened his door, making as if to follow. Tony shook his head, and Ernie stayed put in the car. Anyone watching Tony saunter up the walk and through the gate would have assumed the obvious: here was a dealer come to deliver goods. The gramweight was probably tucked in the pocket of his fifteen-hundred-dollar suit, and the cash would nicely fill the empty space once the cocaine was turned over. A figure like this in Coconut Grove was as familiar as a milkman in rural Kansas.
Number six was in the rear, beyond the nightlit pool and a plot of flowering trees. Tony could hear a wistful love song playing on the stereo as he stood outside the door. He rang the bell, and a voice called: “Just a minute. Lemme get my pants on.” Somebody seemed to be expected. Only because his heart began to pound did Tony realize he was holding his breath. He expelled it now in a long sigh. He couldn’t believe he’d forgotten to bring the vial of coke. He had a sudden mad wish to run back and toot up, to get him through the next thirty seconds. Then he told himself he could have it as a reward. Get through this, and then he would get so high no one would ever find him.
The door opened, and there Manolo stood, stripped to the waist and toweling dry his hair. When he saw it was Tony, he burst out laughing. “How the fuck d’you ever find me?” he asked, shaking his head with puzzled delight. “Leave it to you, huh, chico?”
Tony pulled the Baretta out of his pocket. Because there was no turning back now, no matter how much they laughed. He’d never felt as lonely as he did right now, face to face with the only man he’d ever called his brother. Manolo looked down at the gun, bewildered. But he stopped laughing, because guns were never a joke with Tony. And just then there was a rustle of cloth behind the door, and Gina suddenly appeared in a flowing robe, naked underneath.
“Tony!” she cried, clapping her hands with delight.
Tony said nothing. His face was blank. He held the Baretta pointed at Manolo’s abdomen. “Hey Tony, c’mon,” said Manolo gently, one hand pushing Gina back, trying to get her behind the door. Now Gina saw the gun for the first time, and she gasped and clamped her hands over her mouth.
Here was the longest second of all, for Tony could not remember now what rage had brought him here. Because his friend had turned his sister into a whore? Because there was some kind of coup being planned, with Manolo at the helm? Couldn’t they see that he loved them? Couldn’t anybody see that? The real crime—and the whole world was guilty of it—was leaving Tony all alone. Just then he almost saw that he had no right to kill for that. But still it was only a second, and Tony was no good at time any more.
He fired twice in rapid succession.
The blood flowered out on Manolo’s naked abdomen, and he crumpled. One hand groped in the air toward Tony, and one hand still held Gina back. His eyes were full of shock, but there wasn’t a shred of hatred in them. Before his body even hit the floor Gina was shrieking. Tony looked down at what he’d done, completely numb, like he’d suffered a stroke. He made no attempt to quiet Gina’s screams, but after a moment he began to hear the words.
She fell to Manolo’s body and cradled him in her arms, calling his name in agony as if she could breathe the life back into him. And when she saw he was dead already she gave a strangled cry of grief, all the more wrenching because he’d gone before they could even say goodbye. She wailed at the horror of fate, her hands mired in her man’s blood. She was lost like a widow in a war-torn country. But at last the words began to tumble out.
“We got married, Tony,” she sobbed. “It was all gonna be a surprise. He was gettin’ outa the business. He stopped with the dope.” She looked up into her brother’s blank face. He could almost hear her heart break as she said: “We were so happy, Tony.”
And then she just seemed to go berserk. She launched herself on Tony like a madwoman, beating his chest and dragging her nails across his face. He stood there and took it. The dead look in his eyes hadn’t changed since the moment he fired the gun. If Ernie and Nick had not run up she would have scratched his face to a pulp. Ernie grabbed her around the shoulders and pulled her off Tony. Nick clamped a hand on her mouth to stop her yelling. The neighbors had all double-locked their doors. They were going to sit this one out.
“What do we do, boss?” barked Nick, but right away it was clear that Tony would not be giving any orders. He was staring down at Manolo’s corpse as if he was hypnotized. Though Gina struggled against the two men holding her, unable to cry out, her words went on and on in Tony’s head till he thought he was screaming himself. Ernie managed to lift Gina off her feet, her arms pinned at her side. Nick tore the belt off her robe and gagged her with it. Then he gave a gruff command to Ernie, who bore her away across the courtyard.
Nick leaned down and pushed the body over the threshold, then shut the door. There was still a great splash of blood on the pavement, but at least the light wasn’t flooding it now. Nick took the gun out of Tony’s hand and slipped it back in his pocket. Tony was staring at the door, his head cocked to listen to the stereo playing inside, as if it was terribly important somehow to identify the song. As if the last two minutes had never occurred. Nick took his arm and led him away, saying nothing. Tony gave no resistance. He seemed very drugged—drugged down, not up.
When they reached the car Ernie was already in the back seat, holding Gina tight on his lap. Nick opened the passenger door i
n front and helped Tony in. Then he ran around to the driver’s side, got in, and roared away. It was only then, as the Rolls disappeared down the palm-lined street, that the residents of 409 began to peer around their close-drawn curtains. They had learned, even in these posh quarters of the city, that they must not see what was none of their business, or else they would suffer the consequences. So they let the murders happen and then let the murderers run off, and they knocked on wood and thanked their stars that the nightmare had seized on someone else.
And so the nightmare went on and on.
It was not even ten o’clock when they screeched through the gates past the grim-faced guards and up the drive to the mansion. By now Gina was numb with shock, and she dangled like a rag doll as Ernie carried her into the house. Tony sat in the car staring ahead, the scratches on his face livid in the light of the gas lamps that lined the drive. Nick shook his shoulder, but he didn’t move. Chi-Chi came out of the house and stood on the steps, wringing his hands. They didn’t seem to know what to do if Tony didn’t.
An awkward minute passed, Tony still sitting in the car. Finally Nick beckoned to Chi-Chi, indicating that they should go inside and leave the boss alone. As soon as they walked away Tony stepped out of the car, as if he couldn’t move at all any more except by way of perversity. He called to Nick as the latter reached the door: “I want all the lights on.”
They didn’t ask why. They jumped to do his bidding, glad of any order at all. When Tony walked into the foyer he found Ernie patiently waiting, Gina slumped in his arms.