Florida Straits

by SKLA

  They spent that night south of Miami so they could drive the Keys in daylight. Their motel room had a smell that would always be with them from then on, but which they would hardly ever notice again, it was so much a part of south Florida. The smell was a sort of far-off mildew mixed with salt, mixed with iodine, mixed with oysters choking on mud, mixed with a very fine dust of limestone that was always dissolving in the breeze. Rounding off the aroma was a hint of toasted sawdust, as if the termites cooked the wood as they ate it.

  Joey and Sandra made love amid that Florida smell, then they listened for a few minutes to the locusts and the distant traffic, then Sandra started to cry.

  "Hey?" said Joey. He touched her shoulder under the damp sheet.

  "It's O.K.," she said. "It's O.K." She nuzzled her face into her pillow. "But Joey, aren't you even a little afraid we just won't like it here?"

  He raised himself up on an elbow and breathed deeply of the dust, mold, and strange flowers closed up for the night. He'd never really thought about it quite that way. He'd decided he would like it, he didn't have to think about it. He was going someplace warm, to do some business, establish himself, launch an enterprise. The place had to be suitable, but beyond that? Did Al Capone like Chicago? Did Meyer Lansky like Las Vegas?

  "It's gonna be fine," he said. "Terrific." He turned over and groped around in the dark to make sure his sunglasses were on the nightstand next to him. Then he fell asleep with just the haziest misgivings barely beginning to scratch at his brain.

  —

  "Islamorada," Joey said, pointing out the open window of the Cadillac at many millions of dollars' worth of gleaming boats. "That's where the President goes fishing. Also my Uncle Tony. He went fishing there once. Brought back this big stuffed thing, this fish with like a spike kinda nose. But the guy didn't stuff it right. Still smelled like fish. Then it rotted. Right up onna wall. Got all soft and started to drip. Uncle Tony was pissed."

  Sandra rubbed sunblock on her pale arms and looked out at the bait shops and the seashell stores. Then she started smearing up her legs, and by the time she looked out the window again, the shops were gone, the palm trees were gone, everything was gone. "Joey," she said, "there's no land there." She grabbed her armrest.

  "Ain't that something?" Joey said. "Yup. The Keys. Unbelievable. You ever hear of this guy—what was his name? Flagler. Right. This guy could organize. You see that other bridge over there?"

  He pointed to an arc up on trestles that ran parallel to U.S. 1. Pelicans were perching on it, scratching their bellies with their beaks. Black kids were fishing, dropping hand lines into the shallow green water where the Gulf of Mexico met the Florida Straits.

  "That was Flagler's railroad. Now get this, Sandra. Guy buys up all this land, dirt cheap 'cause you can't get to it. So he builds a railroad, which makes the land very valuable. He builds hotels, and he charges whatever he likes 'cause he's the only guy who's got 'em. It's like total control, and it's legal. Flagler needs cash, he sells a swamp somewhere for a few million. Oh, it's underwater? The land's onna bottom. Trust me. He puts up dog tracks, amusement parks. This guy had all the leverage. A genius."

  Sandra looked over at the railroad trestle. "But Joey, there's big holes in it. I mean, places where it just stops."

  And it was true that large stretches of shining water and empty sky could be seen through Henry Flagler's railroad

  'Yup. That was the only problem. Hurricanes. Some trains blew inna water and it wasn't fun anymore, I guess. Well, you can't buy off a hurricane. At least this way boats can get through." He adjusted his sunglasses, wiggled the plastic earpieces through his hair.

  Sandra watched him out of the corner of her eye. Joey was not usually so chatty, almost never before noon. Most days he woke up grumpy, his mood as rough as his morning stubble. Sandra wasn't crazy about that, but at least she was used to it.

  "You say you've never been here before?"

  Joey was too wrapped up in the scenery to notice that the question had a suspicious edge to it. True, there were things he didn't tell Sandra, though they were not the sort of things a girlfriend needed to get jealous about, just things it was better she didn't know. But he'd never been to the Keys before, and he said so.

  "You seem to know a lot about the place."

  He let go of the steering wheel and shrugged. "I know people who've been here."

  "Like your Uncle Tony."

  "Yeah, Uncle Tony. And my mother."

  Sandra paused. She seemed surprised—not that Joey's mother had been to the Keys but that Joey mentioned it. His mother had been dead six years. Sandra had never met the woman, and Joey never talked about her if he could help it. Three, four times a year, she came up in conversation, usually around some holiday, when everyone was feeling lousy anyway. Not that Joey hadn't loved his mother. That was just it. He had, Sandra knew that. But Joey was not one of those people who managed to pull some sweet juice out of being sad. For him, to linger on a sad thing that couldn't be fixed was as pointless as sticking your finger in your eye.

  "When was your mother down here?" Sandra ventured.

  Joey looked away from her, out the window at the pelicans, and waited to see if he'd get the usual knot in his belly and if it would clamp his mouth. It didn't happen. Maybe it was the sunshine, maybe just being away from Queens. "I think she was here a few times," he said.

  Sandra stayed still and quiet.

  "I never really got the story straight," Joey continued. "And of course I'm never gonna hear it from my old man. But as well as I can make out, what happened was like, if my father had business in Miami or Tampa or even Havana in the old days, he'd arrange for my mother to come down, and they'd have a few days together. You know. Some lobsters, some champagne, some dancing, some jazz, some walks onna beach. Pretty romantic, I guess. Then he'd go back to the wife and baby Gino, and my mother would ride home on a separate train."

  He squeezed the steering wheel, pursed his lips, and tugged on an earlobe. "Fucking sordid, isn't it?"

  "If they cared for each other. . ." Sandra began. But then, as though the notion didn't convince her, she let it trail off through the open roof. Joey flashed her a bent look that seemed to say, Thanks for trying, but the notion didn't persuade him either. He blew out a long breath, turned on the radio, and listened to static for a while.

  "Reception sucks down here," he said.

  —

  It took Seven-Mile Bridge to pull him out of his sulk.

  "Now this is really something, Sandra. Seven miles, nothing but water. How'd they do it? Like hammer some stakes innee ocean? I mean, this whole road is just like. . . like if they had a pier at Coney Island that ran practically to Sandy Hook. I mean, look at this!"

  Sandra held on to her armrest and squirmed, as if trying to find a shady place in the roofless car. Pelicans scudded by, big and slow as clouds, and terns dove underneath the trestles. Joey clicked on the cruise control and half stood in the driver's seat to get a better view of the green water dotted with clumps of dusty mangrove and splotched with reddish patches of submerged coral. The salt wind steamed his sunglasses even though the air felt dry.

  "You love it, huh?" Sandra shouted skyward.

  "Love it," Joey said. "Feels like home."

  He let the Caddy steer itself and spread his arms out wide, laying claim to the green water, the diving birds, the tinted sky. Sandra glanced up at him and tried to shield her sunburned forehead. All the sunblock in the world wasn't going to keep her from turning pink.

  "I mean, Sandra baby, I got no waya being sure, but like, the way it feels, I think maybe I was conceived down here."

  — 4 —

  "Joey, you believe in omens?"

  He cracked an eye and glanced in the direction of the voice. Sandra was standing in the open doorway of their dank room at the Farthest South Motel, and Key West's morning light was searing white behind her. He put a slightly mildewed pillow on his head. "Wha?"

  "Omens, Joey. You believe
in 'em?"

  "Nah," he said. The sound came out from under the pillow like a bubble from underwater.

  "Good," Sandra said. " 'Cause a coconut fell on the car and smashed the windshield."

  "Ah fuck."

  "Don't curse, Joey. Try at least."

  He rolled over onto his back, the pillow still covering his pulsing eyeballs. "Sandra, I'm not even awake yet, and you tell me my goddamn car is trashed. Lemme curse."

  "It's only the passenger side. The glass didn't even fall out. It's just, ya know, smashed. Looks kinda like a spider-web. Sit up. I brought coffee."

  Joey groped for his sunglasses on the night table. He slid them on, then opened his eyes. The tinted lenses didn't blot out the fuzzy dots of mold where the ceiling met the walls.

  Sandra had brought with her a copy of the Key West Citizen, already folded to the real estate ads.

  "Expensive," she said, bouncing the eraser end of her pencil off her lower lip.

  "So what else is new?" said Joey. He had around nine thousand dollars cash with him, which was all the money he had in the world. No bank accounts, no social security, nothing written down. But, he told himself, capital was not the key to his business, vision was, and vision he had. He didn't have the details worked out, that much was true, and in fact his plans had gaps as yawning as those in Henry Flagler's railroad. Still, in his mind he could see the grand sweep, the structure. He'd lay the groundwork himself. It would be tough making the connections, mapping out the turf, but it had to be done. That would take a month or two. After that, his boys would handle things. Of course, he didn't know exactly who these boys would be. But they had to be out there, they always were. Street guys, soldiers, guys who maybe had a little gambling action, a string of girls, some pull with the restaurants, but who needed someone a little savvier, who thought a little bigger, to get things organized. That's what Joey would do: organize. And once things were set up, he'd live the genteel and quiet life of a Boss. Guys would come to him, say Hello, Joey—no, make that Hello, Mr. Goldman.

  He'd gesture them into a chair, and they'd be flattered to be asked to sit. Then, discreetly but not without a certain ceremony, they'd hand over money. This part Joey could see quite clearly: Sometimes the money would be in neat white envelopes, other times in rumpled paper bags. The transactions would take place at a spotless glass table, under a palm tree, by a swimming pool.

  "Sandra, these places have pools?"

  "Yeah, Joey." She narrowed her light green eyes and gave a sigh that was midway between exasperated and amused. "For thirty-five hundred a month, you get a pool."

  "Marrone," said Joey. "These are houses?"

  "Yeah. There's also condos, but they seem to rent by the week. About fifteen hundred."

  Joey hid his face in his Styrofoam coffee cup. "Well, it'll be no problem once I get things going."

  "Right," said Sandra, "but it's a little bit of a problem right now. I'll call a broker."

  "Yeah, call a broker," Joey said. He knew how these things worked. He wiggled the earpieces of his shades and spoke in a worldly tone. "The prices they print, Sandra, they never expect to get 'em. We'll make 'em an offer."

  —

  "Your offer's been refused," the broker said, hanging up the phone. "Sorry." He had a gray crew cut, capped teeth, one small diamond earring, and an almost priestly air of truly wanting to help. He'd shown them four houses and three condos. They'd all been too expensive, and not one owner seemed willing to negotiate. Now Joey and Sandra were back at the real estate office, sitting on aluminum chairs while the broker riffled through his box of properties. "You have to understand," he said. "It's season. The town is really full just now."

  Joey pulled on his lip. "We seen seven empty places in an hour," he said. "How full can it be?"

  The broker just smiled. "If a pool is a priority for you, maybe you should consider a compound. There's a nice little two-bedroom cottage available on Packer Street. Eighteen hundred a month."

  "What's a compound?" Sandra asked, and in the question was a note of dread. She was trying to choke down panic, a fear that she'd made a terrible mistake in quitting Anchor Bank, a terrible mistake in coming to Florida, and could easily make the worst one yet in picking a place to live. Compound. The word sounded military, or southern. Would it be Quonset huts and navy brats, or tar paper shacks with door-less refrigerators and hound dogs in the yard?

  "Oh," said the broker, "it's very Key West. A compound is a cluster of small houses, fenced off from the street, usually built around a pool and Jacuzzi and barbecue that everybody shares."

  "Doesn't sound very private," Joey said. He didn't much like the idea of the neighbors standing around roasting wienies when the boys came to deliver cash. But of course this first place was just temporary. Once the enterprise got rolling, they'd move to one of the rambling, hedged-in establishments in the pricey corner of town.

  "You give up some privacy," the broker conceded. "But less than you might think. How long you been in Key West?"

  "One day," Sandra said, a little sheepishly. She seemed to understand already that Key West was one of those places where people, for lack of much else to say, bragged about how long they'd been there. You couldn't get much lower on the social ladder than one day.

  "Well, you know," the broker said gently, "one of the things you'll discover is that no one really cares what anybody else does down here. The island's too small and the weather's too hot to get bothered. Believe me, a more tolerant town you're never going to find."

  —

  "Doesn't look like much from outside," Joey said. He was standing under a scorching sun in a narrow gravel driveway, between a rank of plastic garbage cans and a row of rusty mailboxes with names scrawled on pieces of adhesive tape.

  "That's the whole idea," said the broker. "Laid back. Unpretentious. Very Key West. But watch."

  He punched in a combination and pushed open a wooden door cut into the grape-stake fence. Instantly the temperature dropped five degrees and the baked, dusty smell of the street disappeared. The compound was a small private jungle of palms and ferns, jasmine bushes and banana trees, bougainvillea and hibiscus. Right in the middle, like the old village well, was a big sunken hot tub, and to the left of it was a free- form pool ringed with pale blue tile. A man was standing waist-deep in the water. He had his elbows propped on the edge and was reading a paperback. In front of him were three cans of Bud in foam rubber sleeves and an ashtray full of butts.

  " 'Lo, Steve," the broker said to him. "Whatcha reading?"

  Steve turned the book over, as if he had to look at the cover to remind himself. "Nazis," he said. "Buzz bombs."

  "Ah," said the broker. "Well, this is Joey and Sandra. They'd like to see the place."

  "Help yourselves," said Steve. Then he smiled. "If you're interested, we'll talk. This is where I do most of my business." Then he smiled. He never smiled while he was talking, only after. You could count the beat, waiting for the teeth to come out from under the wiry red mustache.

  The house was small but bright and airy. Sisal rugs. Ceiling fans. A Florida room with louvered windows. Bad paintings of seashells and water birds.

  "And it's got an outdoor shower," said the broker.

  "I usually shower inside," said Joey. "I'm funny that way. Whaddya think, Sandra?"

  Her answer was without excitement but very definite. "It's by far the best for the money. I think we should take it."

  "You think he'll come down on the rent?" Joey asked the broker.

  The broker shrugged. "Compounds cater to, well, it's a special market. Ask him."

  Outside, Steve had lit another cigarette and moved on to the next beer down the line. "How d'ya like it?" he asked. Then he smiled.

  "It's charming," Sandra said.

  "Yeah," said Joey; "lotta charm. Very Key West. But about the rent..." He paused, hoping Steve would take over. Steve just sipped some beer. "I mean, it's a little small."

  "Cozy," Steve said. "But you've go
t the grounds and the pool. And we've got a nice group of folks here. Over there"—he turned and pointed to a trellised cottage half hidden by vines—"that's where Peter and Claude live. They're bartenders. Work nights at a place called Cheeks. Over here"—he gestured toward a bungalow tucked away behind the hot tub— "that's Wendy and Marsha's place. They have an antique store. And back there"—he did a little pirouette—"that's Luke and Lucy. He's a reggae musician and she's a mailman. Nice people. Considerate."

  It was only at this point, when Steve was maneuvering around the swimming pool, that Joey realized he was naked. Dwarfed by his big, stretched belly, his submerged private parts looked like baby birds left home in a nest beneath an overhanging cliff. Of buttocks he had virtually none.

  "And whadda you guys do?" Steve asked. Then he smiled.

  Joey hesitated. This was not a question that was asked among his circle of acquaintances, nor was he accustomed to chatting with naked guys in mixed company. "Well," he said, "Sandra here is in banking. And me, well, I do this and that."

  "This and that," Steve said. "Well, that's what most people do down here. You'll fit right in. Anyway, you wanna think it over, think it over. This is where I'll be."

  Sandra tugged at Joey's sleeve.

  "Excuse us a minute," said Joey, and they retreated to a shady alcove in back of the gas grill. Joey took off his sunglasses and put them on again.

  "I don't know about this, Sandra. I came here to be a businessman, not a goddamn nudist. I mean, you gonna get naked with these people?"

  "Me?" said Sandra. As if by reflex, she reached up toward the high collar of her blouse. "Joey, I'm the original prude, you know that. I blush if someone sees my slip. But if other people wanna take their clothes off, I got no problem with that."

  "I dunno," said Joey. "And I'm not crazy about the idea of living with a Fed right here."