Florida Straits

by SKLA

  Bert folded his hands.

  "Or maybe they flew to New York. I mean, they'd figure that's where Gino was."

  Bert shrugged.

  "You know what, Bert?" Joey said, "I just can't fucking worry about it." His nerves rather than his muscles propelled him to his feet, and he stood with his shins against the marble table. "I mean, I'm so goddamn close to having this bullshit solved. I gotta do like I'm doin', and after that, what happens, happens. Am I right?"

  Bert the Shirt reached down and petted his exhausted dog. "You're right, Joey, you're right. What happens, happens. Who can argue?"

  — 42 —

  "Hi, Steve," Joey said. "Whatcha reading?"

  After leaving Bert, he'd driven back to the Parrot Beach office. He'd picked up Zack, who was duly titillated when he saw the illicit-looking stack of hundreds. Together, they'd returned to the Treasure Museum to sign papers. Smiling like a senator, Clem Sanders accepted the cash and the nautical chart. He was on the phone to the media before his two young partners had made it through the door.

  It had been blisteringly hot downtown, asphalt softening and harsh light glinting painfully off tin roofs. Doing business in this weather was a sweaty affair and stank of nerves; driving around in the mufflerless Eldorado entailed a lot of grit, noise, and the reek of half-combusted gasoline. After the errands, the compound had never seemed more of a haven. It was quiet. It smelled good. The greenery ate up the worst of the heat. Steve the naked landlord stood waist-deep in the cool water, a monument to ease. He was on his fourth beer, his ashtray was full, his second pack of cigarettes lay crumpled on the wet blue tiles. He glanced up at Joey, then turned his paperback over to remind himself what he'd been reading. The cover showed a big black car and some guys with guns giving off red flashes for bullets. "Mafia," said Steve. "Rubouts." Then he smiled.

  Joey smiled back.

  Then Steve added, "Oh, your friends from Miami are here. I let 'em in." He waited a beat and smiled again.

  "Friends from Miami?" said Joey.

  The words seemed to rise up like a puff of steam. Then they solidified and took on a sickening weight, and Joey ran out from under them as one would from a falling rock. He skirted the pool, skidded on the tiles, and reached for the sliding door of his cottage, knowing in that moment that everything was over, everything was fucked, he'd come up short as usual, he'd blown it, the old neighborhood was not about to let him get away, and he'd been a loser and a fool ever to imagine for an instant that it might be otherwise.

  He yanked open the door. He saw no one, heard nothing, only vaguely noticed that the bungalow was darker than usual. It was darker because Charlie Ponte's thugs had closed the louvered windows in the Florida room, and they had closed the louvered windows because that's where they were keeping Sandra.

  They had her tied up in a chair.

  Her ankles were bound with a dirty gray rope. Big loops of a different line ran around her midriff and her arms and kept her pinned back in her seat. She was wearing her work clothes, a neat cream-colored skirt and a plain beige blouse, and across her mouth was a wide piece of shiny silver duct tape, frayed where it had been torn from the roll. Her short blond hair, usually faultless, was frazzled now, clumps of it hanging onto her forehead. She looked up at Joey, and in her pale green eyes there was terror but no blame, rather a kind of silent, desperate wisecrack— You spring this on me now? Just when things are going right for me?—and it raced through Joey's mind that what he and Sandra really shared were their crazy gropings toward optimism and their ability to meet disaster, if not with courage exactly, then at least with a lack of complaint and a lack of surprise. Ponte's thugs did not prevent Joey from going to Sandra and putting his arm around her. The only thing she could move was her face. She turned it into his stomach, and only then did she start to cry. The tears went right through Joey's shirt.

  "Hello, shitbird," said one of the thugs. It was Tony, the short one with the scarred lip and the bad toupee, the one who'd been squeamish about splattering a dog. But now he was holding a gun on Sandra and seemed to feel no discomfort at all. "We had a really shitty few weeks 'causa you, scumbag. We ain't in a good mood."

  Joey squeezed the knob of Sandra's shoulder and reminded himself how slight she was inside her oversized shirt.

  "Stop hangin' on to your girlfriend, faggot," said the other thug. It was Bruno, the huge one who liked to rip things apart. He was standing in the dimness between a bad painting of birds and a bad painting of seashells. He'd taken off his blue suit jacket and he looked even bigger without it. "Come ova heah," he said, pointing down at the sisal rug.

  Joey went. He knew the rituals. He knew he was to get hit, he just wondered whether it would be face or gut. His blood turned thin and sour and he stood at loose attention like a tired soldier. Bruno took a moment to size him up, then slugged him in the belly. Joey doubled over, his empty chest folded down across his trembling thighs. His eyes were open but everything was black, with streaks of phosphorescent green. He thought he heard a little shriek but couldn't tell if it was Sandra giving a sympathetic wince through her duct tape, or his own wheezing as he struggled for air. Before he could straighten up, Bruno grabbed him by the head and pushed him backward onto the settee. "Where's your fucking brother?" he asked.

  Joey couldn't answer because he couldn't breathe. He tried to use the time to think, but he found he couldn't do that either. "Fuck should I know?" he finally managed.

  "You helped him get away, ya little cocksucker," Tony said.

  "I don't know nothin' about it," Joey said.

  There was a pause. The two thugs looked at each other. Sandra squirmed. Outside, there was a splash from the pool. The motor of the hot tub clicked on and hummed. The easy life of Florida was proceeding. Tony reached slowly into his jacket pocket and pulled out a silencer. Very deliberately, he fitted it onto the muzzle of his gun.

  "You and your girlfriend, kid," said Tony. "You're nine-tenths dead."

  He leaned over Sandra and tucked the gun under her chin, pushing it into the soft place between her jawbone and her throat. Her head was rigid against the back of her chair and she tried not to go cross-eyed staring down at the threatening hand.

  "Don't fucking touch her," Joey said. He found himself getting to his feet.

  "Ain't he brave?" said Bruno. As he said it, he bashed Joey across the ribs with his forearm. Joey's chest rattled, his heart seemed to shake off some juice, like a thrown sponge. He sat back down.

  "Mr. Ponte wants his emeralds," Tony said. He hadn't moved the gun away from Sandra's chin. His finger was on the trigger and he didn't seem to be paying very close attention to whether or not he was squeezing. "He's tired of waiting and he's tired of being dicked around by little shitasses like you."

  Joey looked at Sandra and suddenly he wanted to cry. It was less out of fear than out of frustration and remorse. He wanted to crawl across the floor and tell Sandra he was sorry. Sorry he'd taken her away from Queens, sorry he couldn't really take her away from Queens, sorry that Queens seemed to inhabit his life like a virus.

  "So where's the fucking stones, kid?" Tony went on.

  Joey said nothing. Bruno leaned down and smacked him hard with the back of his hand. The pain went from Joey's cheek to his gums, then lodged behind his eardrum.

  "Kid," the shorter goon resumed, "I gotta tell ya somethin', no offense. Your brother Gino, he's a cunt. He's a dumb twat who don't know what he's doin'."

  "You hear me disagreeing?" Joey said.

  "Then why the fuck are you protecting him?"

  "I'm not."

  Tony seemed to consider this. The effort made him cranky, and he tapped the silencer against the underside of Sandra's chin. It made a morbid sound, not quite a slap and not quite a click. A vein was pulsing in Sandra's neck. "Awright, kid, you're not protecting your brother. So maybe you'd like to protect your pretty little girlfriend heah." He pulled back the hammer. "I'm gonna ask ya one more time: Where's the fucking emeralds?" He
was dimpling Sandra's neck with the gun.

  "They're innee ocean," Joey heard himself say.

  Tony and Bruno consulted with their eyes. They didn't seem to like the answer. It struck them as an insult and a lie.

  Bruno bent down and stuck his face in Joey's. His eyes were like puddles of oil and his breath smelled of old seafood. He butted Joey's forehead with his own, and Joey's skull rang like a Chinese gong. The shock wave ran from the bridge of his nose to the top of his spine and back again, it felt like his brain was being sliced with a serrated knife. But the thing about pain is that beyond a certain point it stays the same, it lodges just this side of insanity, and the thing about fear is that after a while a person's terror glands get all wrung out, and panic levels off to a kind of jungle alertness. Through his dizziness, Joey felt the old lunatic readiness returning, felt it filling him the way air pumps up a tire.

  He heard Tony saying, "I cannot believe you are still givin' us bullshit."

  "It isn't bullshit."

  Tony ignored him. "We could blow you away right heah. We could take you to the gahbidge. We can do anything. You know that, right?"

  Joey nodded. He grew up with it, he knew it. "Wha' does it getcha?"

  Bruno bent low and hissed in his face. "Satisfaction."

  "Four million dollars' worth?"

  "Fuck you talkin' about?" said Tony.

  Joey just sat. If he knew anything about staying alive, it was that your chances were better if you made people curious.

  "Fuck you talkin', four million?" Tony pressed. Absently, he moved the gun an inch or two from Sandra's throat. It was enough space for idiot hope to inhabit.

  "I'll tell Mr. Ponte all about it," Joey said.

  The remark offended Bruno, who reached down and pressed his thumbs hard on the soft place under Joey's collarbones. A sharp pain arced down clear to the bottom of his lungs. "You ain't in no position to tell Mr. Ponte nothin'. Got that?"

  Joey stayed silent and the silence caromed off the walls. Outside, there were water sounds, breeze sounds. Out there the air was the temperature of skin, and life, sweet life, felt good.

  Tony and Bruno consulted with their eyes again. Bruno scratched an armpit. "We could bring 'em to Miami," he said. "We gotta ice 'em, we could; ice 'em just as good up there."

  Tony frowned, his scarred lip puckered. "But if the stones are down heah ..."

  Another pause. Joey tried to decide if saying something more would get him slugged again. He tried to decide if it mattered if he got slugged again.

  "Guys," he ventured, "I'm telling you, I got a way to work this out. Whyn't ya call Mr. Ponte? Tell 'im if he'll come down heah, he'll see his stones tomorrow."

  Tony and Bruno locked eyes. Then, oddly, Bruno broke into a crooked and horrific smile. "No phone," he said. "I yanked it outta the wall."

  "Little, like, precaution," said Tony.

  Joey pointed out toward the compound. "So use a different phone. We'll borrow one."

  Bruno and Tony considered.

  "Look," Joey said, "the naked guy, the landlord, you told 'im you were friends a mine from Miami, right? So that's the story. I'll play along."

  "We got the broad," Tony reasoned. "He don't want we should hurt the broad."

  As a reminder, he stroked Sandra's neck with the silencer and a sound came out of her like the squeaking of kittens in a cardboard box.

  "No," said Joey. "I don't."

  "And," said Tony, "we gotta ice 'em, what the fuck if it's tomorrow or today?"

  "Yeah," said Bruno. "Tomorrow, what the fuck. Just as dead as like today."

  — 43 —

  It was dusk when Joey and Bruno emerged through the sliding door of the cottage.

  The western sky was green and mauve, the trees had already gone black. A light breeze barely rattled the palm fronds, and there was a sense, as always at the close of a hot south Florida day, of the world exhaling a clenched and overfull breath and deflating slowly into a grateful languor. Luke the reggae musician was sitting at the far edge of the pool, his Walkman on and his feet in the water. Lucy the beautiful Fed was swimming silent laps in a flowing pair of boxer shorts. Steve had finished his beers and vanished. Wendy and Marsha passed by arm in arm, walking their cat on a leash.

  Joey's head throbbed and his knees were stiff with fear. Bruno loomed over him like a building, and he tried to hold his face together as he nodded his hellos. He felt a rush of weird affection for these neighbors he barely knew, a flash of ferocious nostalgia for this life that seemed to be receding from him as fast and unstoppable as a comet. He could not help wondering if Tony was sitting close to Sandra, breathing on her, and the thought made him nauseous. He led Bruno across the damp tiles toward Peter and Claude's bungalow. Lights shone through the bougainvillea on the trellis. The front door was open, opera was playing. Joey poked his head in. "Anybody home?"

  Claude came around from the kitchen. He walked toward them like he was modeling a mink, though in fact all he was wearing was a tiny pair of pink bikini briefs that stopped around three inches below his navel. "Oh, hi, Joey," he sang out above the music.

  "Hi, Claude, how ya doin'?" Joey's voice sounded metallic and false behind his ringing ears. The whole world felt suddenly foreign to him and he wondered if he could possibly be fooling anyone. "I want ya to meet a buddy a mine from Miami. Claude, Bruno. Bruno, Claude."

  The two men regarded each other like ambassadors from countries fourteen time zones apart. They nodded. It was impossible to figure which one decided they would not shake hands.

  "Claude," said Joey, "my phone's onna fritz and Bruno needs to make a call. Any chance—"

  "Come on in," Claude said. "We're just making some eggs before work."

  He led the way back to the kitchen. Unlike Joey and Sandra's, the bartenders' kitchen didn't look rented, transient. It had white tile, plants, copper pots, and Joey felt a pang at such settled domesticity. Peter was hunkered over the counter, neatly dicing scallions. He was wearing briefs exactly like Claude's, except his were lime green. Joey introduced Bruno. Claude pointed to the wall phone. Then he broke eggs and hummed along with the music.

  " 'Scuse me," Bruno said, in a voice surprising by its bashfulness, "is there a phone that's, like, more private?"

  "Sorry," Claude said. "That's the only one."

  Peter stopped his dicing and looked up from under his eyebrows to flirt. "No secrets in this house," he said.

  Bruno tried a smile that didn't quite work. Teeth came out, but more like he was going to bite. He dialed Charlie Ponte's Miami club and tried to figure out a coded way of telling his boss the situation. This messed with Bruno's confidence. Talking was not what he was best at.

  A flunky answered the phone in Miami. Ponte was in but of course he wouldn't take the call. No self-respecting mobster ever took a call the first time. Bruno was given another number and told to call it in ten minutes.

  "Hope that's not a problem," Bruno bashfully announced.

  "Don't be silly," said Claude. "Want some eggs?"

  Bruno in fact looked hungry.

  "No, Claude, no thanks," said Joey.

  There was a silence, a long one. Joey stood in the foreign fluorescent light of the kitchen and watched Claude whipping eggs, Peter slicing mushrooms. He couldn't shake off the image of Sandra tied up in the chair, her pretty midriff ringed with rope, her mouth taped like a tear in the upholstery. And it was gnawing at him that there was nothing more he could do. He couldn't accept that.

  "That opera you got on?" he said at last. " 'Zat Don Giovanni?"

  Peter and Claude glanced at each other and seemed to be deciding whether they should laugh. Like a lot of people Joey had met in Florida, they sometimes couldn't tell when he was kidding.

  "It's Porgy and Bess," Peter said.

  "Ah," said Joey, "I thought it was Don Giovanni. That's my favorite, Don Giovanni is."

  Peter and Claude shared a wry look along the countertop. A funny kid, this Joey. Claimed to love op
era, but couldn't tell Gershwin from Mozart. Or Italian from English.

  "Bruno," said Claude, "how's the opera up in Miami?"

  Bruno's mouth moved but nothing came out. He fumbled for a place he could put his giant hands without smashing something.

  "Miami," Joey cut in dismissively. "Miami's nothin'. For opera, theater, New York is the place. Paradise. Paradiso." He reached for the bartenders' eyes the way a drowning man reaches for a log. But their attention was riveted on the omelette. Claude handed Peter the bowl of eggs. Peter poured them into the frying pan on top of the scallions and mushrooms. They gave a homey sizzle and started immediately to blister at the edges.

  Joey went on, casual as cotton. "Yup, for all that culture stuff, paradise. Course, this is paradise too, but down here paradise is different, right? It's onna beach, by the water. Hey, when you guys go to work, you drive up along Smathers?"

  It was a screwball segue, but not screwball enough to tear Peter and Claude away from their bubbling eggs. Bruno brought his eyebrows a quarter inch closer together, and Joey wondered if that quarter inch of displeasure meant that he'd get beat up some more.

  "Usually we cut through town," Peter said blandly. He gave the frying pan a gentle shake. "It's shorter."

  "Yeah," said Joey, "but if you're talkin' paradise, that ride up A1A, along the water . . ."

  Peter reached for a spatula. Claude stretched toward a high cabinet where there was a big stack of plates. Maybe a dozen, all of them matching, enough for lots of friends. The plates broke Joey's heart.

  "Sure you won't have some?" Peter offered one last time.

  "Nah," said Bruno. "But lemme try this call again."

  Joey shuffled his feet. Peter coaxed the omelette out of the pan. Porgy and Bess kept playing.

  "Mr. Ponte," Bruno said. "Yeah, we hooked up O.K. . .. Nah, we're at a neighbor's. His phone, it like stopped workin'... . Well, here's the thing, the present you wanted, he says it's innee ocean.... Yeah, I know that sounds, like, crazy, but that's what he says. He says he can get it, though. Tomorrow—"