Florida Straits

by SKLA

  Bert reached out and placed a cool hand on top of the younger man's. "Joey," he said. "Joey. Listen to yourself. You're saying, Think Florida, but listen how nervous you sound, how wound up. That's not Florida. That's not tropical. To be that worried, that's still New York."

  "O.K., Bert, I know it is. But what can I say. I am that worried. I ain't slept. Coupla days ago I hadda pay the February rent. I reach into the drawer to get the cash, I count up what I got, and I say, Where the fuck is my money going? It's not like I'm being a big shot. It just goes." He yanked off his sunglasses and showed Bert his eyes. They were owlish to begin with, because he left his shades on when he sat in the sun. But now the pale circles had turned a nubbly yellow, and the bloodshot whites made his deep blue irises look almost grapy.

  "Awright, Joey, you're under some strain. I can see that. So let's go back to basics. Look over that way, past the gates. Whaddya see?"

  Joey put his sunglasses on again, twisted himself in his chair, and peered past the pool, the tennis courts, the hibiscus hedge. "A road."

  "Then what?"

  "The beach."

  "Then what?"

  "Water," he said. "I see water."

  "Good, Joey. Now doesn't that make you feel calm, all that nice cool green water? Doesn't it calm you down?"

  "The truth, Bert? Fuck no. Not at all. I'm like itchy all over. What would make me feel calm is if I knew what the hell I was doing down here, if I thought I was heading for a payday."

  "Kid," said Bert, with the sad patience of a junior high school teacher. "You're not paying attention. This is what I'm telling you. A payday would make you calm, maybe you oughta look to the water for a payday. That's where the money comes from down here. Always has. Always will."

  Joey stared off at the shallow green ocean, but the ocean didn't talk to him. He pulled at his chin, he squirmed in his seat. Bert kept playing solitaire.

  "Look what passes for old money down here," the retired gangster continued. "The Bergens. The Clevelands. You've hearda those families, right? How you think they got rich? They were pirates. Yeah. Legal pirates. There's a reef around five miles out from here. The water in between, it's called the Florida Straits. Now, ships useta all the time run up onna reef and sink. These families that are so rich now? They lived in shacks by the water. Shacks! They peed innee ocean. They didn't even have glass inna windows.

  "But they were smart. They built lookout towers. A ship goes down, boom, they jump in their boats and row out the Straits. They rowed out there in squalls, in hurricanes. And the law of the sea says the first guy who gets there, it's his boat. He owns whatever's on there—silver, jewelry, cash, whatever. Course, sometimes it helped to have a shotgun, to prove you were there first. So these snooty families that get hospital wings named after them, they started, like, as hijackers."

  Joey was still staring at the water; his hairline was crawling. "So, Bert, you're telling me I should get a fucking rowboat and wait for a shipwreck?"

  "Nah, forget about it," said the older man. "This was a hundred years ago. These days, there's treasure salvors, it's big business. There's this one guy, Clem Sanders—"

  "Bert," Joey blurted, "so what are you telling me? I'm like dyin' heah."

  "What am I telling you?" Bert repeated. "Joey, I'm sevenny-tree years old, I been dead, I hafta all the time know what I'm saying? I'm just thinkin' out loud, like trying to clue you in on the local traditions. 'Cause they matter, Joey. Remember that. Local traditions. They matter in New York, they matter here. Where's the goddamn dog?"

  Bert reached down underneath his chair, stretched his fingers toward the quivering chihuahua, and looked skyward to check the position of the sun. Then he stood up halfway with the chair lifted against his shrunken backside and moved a foot or so around the table. "You're a pain innee ass," he said to the dog. Then, to Joey: "I gotta keep him in the shade or he like dries out. He went inta convulsions once. Almost popped his eyes right out of his head. Fuck you laughing at?"

  "Bert," Joey said, "you weigh like a hundred seventy pounds and the dog like weighs four ounces. Wouldn't it be easier to move the dog?"

  "Dog don't wanna move. Dog don't wanna do nothing but shit onna floor and now and then jerk off on a table leg. Mind your fucking business."

  "I ain't got no business. That's why I'm here."

  "Right," said Bert. "So think about water. This is what I'm telling you. This Clem Sanders guy, this treasure guy, he goes around telling people that a whole third of all the gold and silver and jewels that's ever been mined has ended up at the bottom of the sea."

  "A third of everything?" said Joey. " 'Zat true?"

  Bert turned his palms up and shrugged. "How the fuck should I know if it's true? I only know this guy says it." He put a red three on a black four.

  Joey went back to staring at the green water and listened to the dry rustle of the palms. "So Bert," he began, trying to keep his tone businesslike and to choke back the rising wave of panic, the unspeakable fear that he might go broke, come up with no ideas, and return, ashamed, to Queens. "I don't know what I'm gonna do. But let's say I come up with a way to pull some bucks outta the ocean. We gonna be partners, or what?"

  Bert pursed his full and restless lips, turned over his last card, and, stymied, gathered up his losing hand. "Kid," he said, "it's nice of you to ask. But I'm through. Me, I'm all talk and no action, and I like it that way. It's real easy. And I'll tell ya something, Joey. The longer you stay in Florida, the more you appreciate what's easy."

  — 10 —

  It was unusual for anyone to knock at the gate of the compound, since half of Key West knew the combination to the lock. But several days after Joey's visit to the Paradiso, at about ten-thirty in the morning, there was a rapping at the wooden door. Steve the naked landlord was already in the pool with his beers and his ashtray in front of him, his paperback spread open on the damp tiles. Peter and Claude, the bartending blonds, were having breakfast in their sarongs. So Joey straightened his sunglasses and went to the gate.

  It was Bert the Shirt. He was wearing a salmon- colored pullover of the finest Egyptian cotton, with a mesh of subtly contrasting buff at the collar and sleeves, and he had Don Giovanni cradled in the crook of his arm. "Joey, there's something I gotta talk to you about. Got a minute?"

  "Bert," said Joey, surprised and grateful to be visited, "I got nothing but time. Come on in." For a fleeting moment he was embarrassed about receiving a guest in his bathrobe and slippers, and about the naked body in the pool and the pretty men in their pink and turquoise silks. But the feeling passed. This was the Keys; this was home now. It was the land of take-it-or-leave-it and no apologies. "Did I tell you I lived here?"

  "Carlos did," said Bert, walking slowly along the gravel path between the jasmine and the banana plants. "The bolita guy. He had you followed. You didn't know that?"

  Rather than admit it, Joey changed the subject. "I didn't know you talked to Carlos."

  "Carlos talks to me," the older man corrected. He stopped walking and gave Joey a soft little slap on the cheek, a mix of affection, scolding, and warning. "Joey, I'm telling you to relax down here, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't pay attention, eh?"

  "Yeah, Bert. You're right. Bert, this is Steve. Steve, this is Bert, an old family friend."

  "Morning," Steve said. Then he smiled. Sunlight glinted off his moist freckled forehead and red mustache.

  "Whatcha reading?" Bert asked.

  Steve turned the paperback over and looked at the cover to remind himself. "Japs," he said. "Submarines." Then he smiled.

  Joey led the way into the cottage and motioned Bert onto a settee in the Florida room. Shafts of sunlight sliced in through the louvered windows and threw stripes across the sisal rug. "Coffee, Bert?"

  "No, Joey, no thanks. Siddown. This is kinda serious. Joey, you been in touch with your old man since you left?"

  Joey was halfway into his chair when he became certain that Bert was about to tell him his father was
dead. Icicles scratched at the inside of his chest, and his forehead started instantly to pound. Bert read his face.

  "Joey, no, it's nothing like that. He's O.K., he's fine. But tell me, you been in touch with him?"

  Joey sprang back from his flash of guilt and grief with a moment of bravado. "Shit, Bert, I left New York to get away from him."

  "Come on, Joey. No bullshit now. Just yes or no. You been in touch with him or not?"

  Joey was stung by the older man's sternness, and there was a note almost of whining in his answer. "No, Bert, I haven't. I swear. Fuck is this about?"

  Bert leaned forward, put his dog down on the rug, and dropped his voice to a raspy whisper. "A coupla guys come to see me last night," he said. "Guys based in Miami. They weren't in a good mood. In fact, they were ready to whack somebody. Joey, tree million bucks in Colombian emeralds has been lifted off of Charlie Ponte's crew, and it was pretty definitely an inside job. People get dead over that kinda thing."

  "Three million bucks," said Joey. His own stash had dipped below four thousand, and the poorer he got, the more big numbers impressed him. "Jesus. But wait a second, Bert. If it was Charlie Ponte's crew, I don't see what it's gotta do with my old man."

  Bert the Shirt sat back slowly and seemed unwilling or unable to talk until his shoulder blades had made secure contact with the cushion. "Probably not your father directly. But maybe some of his boys. Joey, it's this same old problem with drugs. Biggest fucking mistake our people ever made was not making a clear policy and sticking to it. Either dominate the business or don't fuck with it."

  Bert paused to lick his teeth. Outside, palms rustled and water splashed. The air smelled of iodine and limes.

  "But anyway," the old man continued, "Charlie Ponte's crew, they're inna coke trade. They're not supposed to be, it's unofficial, but they are—it's like an open secret. Your father's people, supposedly they're not. But no offense, Joey, your father's crew has this like superior attitude—"

  "I hear ya," Joey cut in. "I ain't offended, believe me."

  "Yeah, well, to them," Bert went on, "it's like the guys that are in drugs are outlaws, outsiders. They don't respect 'em, they think of 'em as fair game, like as if they weren't friends of ours.

  "So, what happens with Charlie Ponte is this. He's expecting a two-million-dollar shipment from the Colombians, and the shipment is seized by the Feds. Charlie doesn't even get a look at it. So now he's pissed. He's got dealers without product, his business is disrupted. But the Colombians, they're so fucking rich it's unbelievable. Their attitude is like, 'Oh well, that shipment was only a few million. Kiss it goodbye.' The main thing to them is to keep the account active. So they want Charlie to be happy. So they say to him, 'Look, you were expecting two million in product, we'll give ya tree million in emeralds. Keep it as collateral, sell it off, it's up to you.' It's like a token of goodwill."

  "Some token," Joey said.

  "Yeah, right," Bert said. "But these guys, the money they have, it's like you or me giving a guy a buck to park the car. So anyway, Charlie gets his emeralds. Or supposedly he does. They get dropped someplace in Coconut Grove—I don't blow where, and I don't wanna know. But a safe place, a place that's been used before, and only the Colombians and Charlie Ponte's guys know about it. And that's where they disappear from."

  Joey tugged at an earlobe, then raked the back of his hand across his unshaven face. Tiny squiggles of limestone dust floated in the slashed light of the louvered windows. "Bert," he said, "maybe I'm a little slow, but I still don't see where this has to do with my father."

  Bert leaned over to check on the dog, and moved it out of a stripe of sun into a stripe of shade. "Joey, there were a coupla low-level guys who were like floating between the two crews. They'd commute between Miami and New York, they'd do little errands for Ponte, little jobs for your old man. They were lookin' to get made, and they were very ambitious. They found out more than they needed to know about the drop in Coconut Grove. They ain't floatin' no more, Joey. They're lookin' at coral. Up close. And they ain't got no snorkels."

  "Jesus," said Joey, and in spite of himself he almost smiled. Not that he was happy about guys getting clipped; it was just exhilarating to be near some action again, to be getting information. "So you're saying these guys brought in other guys in my father's crew?"

  Bert shrugged. "These guys were angling for a button, Joey. A tree-million-dollar score earns a guy some points. But of course, scoring it from another family was not too bright."

  "Maybe the spicks welshed. Maybe they took the stones back. Maybe they were never delivered."

  "Could be," said Bert. "But that isn't the Colombians' style. Why would they bother?"

  Bert slowly crossed his legs and drummed his fingers lightly on the arm of the settee. For the first time, he seemed to be looking around at Joey's cottage, at the bad paintings of birds and shells, the haphazard furniture made tolerable and even likable by the fact that it was rented and not owned. "Not a bad little place," he said without enthusiasm.

  Joey gave a modest nod. "Well, it ain't the Paradiso. But it's fine until I really get on my feet." He shot the older man a wry glance, which was as close as he would come to admitting that that might be never.

  Then there was a pause. If Joey had been watching closely, he would have noticed that Bert the Shirt was momentarily exhausted and was marshaling his strength. But Joey wasn't watching closely, he was slipping back into his obsession with figuring how to pull a living out of Florida. "And that reminds me. I was thinkin', Bert, about what you said the other day, ya know, about money comin' outta the water? If that's the way people get rich down here—"

  Joey suddenly fell silent because the Shirt had put a hand to his chin and started wagging his head as if in deep sorrow or disbelief.

  "Wha", Bert?"

  The old mafioso looked down and spoke to his chihuahua. "This kid, Giovanni. Is he very brave, very stupid, or does he just not listen?"

  The younger man only crinkled his forehead.

  "I mean," Bert said to him, "what have I been telling you heah? Your father's crew is suspected of stealing tree million dollars from our own people. Two guys have already been clipped. A coupla very nasty paisans show up in Key West. Joey, why d'ya think they came heah?"

  Joey just sat.

  The Shirt addressed his dog. "This kid, Giovanni, he's a nice kid, but he's an asshole." Then he glared at Joey. "Asshole, they were looking for you."

  "Me?"

  "Joey, use your fucking head. You just happen to be about twelve hundred miles closer than anyone else to where the emeralds were. And you just happened to move down here right around the time this whole thing had to get planned. How does it look?"

  Joey rubbed his stubbly chin and admitted to himself that it did not look great. "But shit, Bert, I was always the last to know what my father's crew was up to even when I was living right there. Why d'ya think I ain't there no more?"

  "Why should Charlie Ponte believe that? Joey, you know how these people think. Always look for the blood ties first. You're still your father's son. Maybe you don't feel like you are. Maybe you don't have his name. But everybody knows it, just like everybody knows Charlie Ponte sells dope. So, Joey, I'm telling you like a father, watch your ass. These guys will probably come back, and they are very pissed. If I didn't stand up for you, they woulda been here last night. Just to talk. Probably. But it would not have been pleasant."

  "You stood up for me, Bert?" A sublime and un-bounded gratitude made the hair lift on the back of Joey's neck.

  Bert looked at the rug, at his quailing dog.

  "What did you tell em?" Joey asked.

  "Never mind what I tol' 'em."

  "Hey," said Joey, "I wanna know." He squeezed the arms of his chair and puffed up within himself, opening the passageways like a young man does, the better to absorb a compliment from a respected elder.

  "Forget about it," Bert advised.

  "Come on," Joey insisted. "I wanna know."r />
  "Awright," said Bert. "I told 'em you were too much of a loser to be involved in anything that big."

  "Thanks, Bert. Thanks a lot."

  "Sorry, kid. You asked. Besides, it was the best thing to say at the time. On that you hafta trust me."

  — 11 —

  "Joey, will you think about it at least?"

  Sandra held an enormous fish sandwich in both hands and had a glass of beer in front of her. They were sitting at the Eclipse Saloon, in a booth under a big stuffed marlin and a faded photograph of a novelist who used to be world-famous in that bar and regularly got stewed there. A loop of fried onion was dangling from the underside of Sandra's roll and, fish-like, she approached from below to snag it between her teeth. "I mean," she said, "it's not like it's a regular job. All you do is talk to people, schmooze 'em up. You work outside. It's straight commission. You don't really have a boss."

  "That part's bullshit," said Joey. He absently dredged a french fry through a puddle of ketchup. "There's always a boss. I'd still be depending on some suit to hand me a paycheck."

  "Joey, what can I say? Life is bosses. That's how it works. Your pals from New York—don't they have bosses? Your buddy Sal, he has a boss. Your brother Gino has a boss."

  "At least their bosses aren't citizens," Joey said, but the argument sounded thin even to him. His resistance was fading, diminishing in direct proportion to his bankroll, and in proportion, as well, to his growing if still unadmitted awareness that it was no easier to launch a criminal career than any other kind, only more dangerous.