Florida Straits

by SKLA

  "Mind if we start eating?" Claude whispered.

  Joey made a maternal sort of gesture, like motioning food into their mouths. He shot them a pleading look and he knew it went unnoticed.

  "And another thing," Bruno said into the phone, "he says it's like worth more than we figured. . . . Nah, I don't know why. . . . Nah, it can't be in Miami, 'cause the present is down heah, ya know, like inna water. . .. Tomorrow, yeah, he promises. . . . Sure he invited us to spend the night. . . . Don't worry, Mr. Ponte, nobody ain't goin' anywhere. . . . Yeah, O.K., see ya tomorrow, bright and early."

  — 44 —

  "Ya think ya could maybe, like, untie her now?"

  It was full dark outside and Tony had switched on the lamps in the Florida room. In their pools of thick yellow light, the scene appeared not merely squalid but lewd. By daylight, Sandra had seemed just one more bargaining chip, the handiest object of value to grab. With the onset of night, it moved to the forefront that she was also a woman. The fact of sex came out like a red star and colored the room in the nastiest way. Brute impulses hung in the air and everybody squirmed as if under a swarm of gnats. Sandra struggled to keep her posture. She wanted to believe that as long as she kept her shoulders back, her tummy in, as long as she stayed within her own crisp outline, she would be inviolable. Joey was less sure. The surrounding darkness made a sort of firefly glow come out of Sandra, and it seemed to Joey that with every nighttime moment she was bound, the greater the chance that Tony and Bruno might get really crazy.

  "Come on," he coaxed, "you got no reason to keep her like that."

  "Fuck you, jerk-off," Tony said. "We don't need a reason."

  He said it mildly, offhandedly, balancing his gun on his thigh. But now, suddenly, it was Bruno who seemed short-fused, exasperated. Maybe it was the strain of having to speak in front of strangers that had gotten him wound up. He stood over Joey and grabbed his hair. Then he yanked as if pulling up a weed.

  "Kid," he said through clenched teeth, "I am really sicka hearin' your mouth. Ya talk too fucking much. In theah"—he pointed vaguely across the compound—"in heah, all ya do, ya talk, talk, talk. Like ya got somethin' to say, somethin' to bargain. But ya know what, kid? You ain't got shit to say, and you ain't got shit to bargain. No leverage. Zero. You're fucked. Understand that. Tony, where's that goddamn tape? I'm gonna shut this motherfucker's mouth so's I can have some peace and quiet heah."

  Tony gave a little shrug; it was all the same to him. He reached into his jacket pocket and threw Bruno the roll of duct tape. The big thug tore a length of it off the roll; it came away with a sound like a ripping parachute. He slapped it on hard enough to make Joey's teeth hurt, and Joey, though his hands were free, didn't dare to reach up toward his face. The adhesive had a vile taste, it was like eating a fistful of stamps.

  Bruno stepped back like a painter admiring his work. The silver slash where Joey's mouth used to be gave him satisfaction. But he wasn't quite ready to calm down yet. "Talk, talk, talk," he muttered. "With this fucking jerk, everything is talk, talk, talk."

  Tony smiled at his colleague's little tantrum, and the smile tortured his dented lip. The gun was across his thigh, and he leaned a shade closer to Sandra, who glowed like a firefly in the nasty light.

  —

  "Now who could that be?" said Bert the Shirt d'Ambrosia to his dog.

  It was twenty minutes before ten, not a time when visitors often called. The old man zapped the volume on the television, slowly got up out of his recliner. His chihuahua struggled out of its velvet bed and rattled along behind. "Who is it?"

  "It's Peter and Claude. From Joey's compound."

  Bert felt a quick clutch of dread, a feeling he remembered too well from his working years. It grabbed at his windpipe and made his rib cage squeeze down on his heart. He opened the door.

  The bartenders stood close together in the bright light of the hallway. It was Leather Night at Cheeks, and they were wearing matched calfskin vests fastened in front with links of chain. "Hi, fellas," said Bert the Shirt. "Come on in."

  "Just for a sec," said Claude. "What beautiful pajamas." They were plum-colored satin, piped with sky blue, and the buttons were made of shell.

  "My wife bought 'em. Used to pick out all my clothes. Except shirts. Shirts, I had made. So what is this, guys, a social call?"

  Peter and Claude stood there in the dim foyer and looked down at their feet. They'd argued a little about whether they should stop by at all. They had a certain tendency, they knew, to blow things out of proportion, to take a scrap of gossip and raise it to the level of tragedy. That happened in Key West, where life could be so placid, so restful, that people imagined upheavals, disasters, just to exercise their nerves.

  "Bert," said Claude, "did you know Joey has friends down from Miami?"

  Bert bent down and picked up Don Giovanni. "Why would I know that?" he said, and the bartenders had to start over.

  "He came to use our phone before," said Peter. "Said his was on the blink. He had this guy with him—"

  "Wha'd he look like?" asked the Shirt.

  "Big, with 1950s hair," said Claude.

  That described most of the people Bert knew. "He have a name, this guy?"

  "Bruno," Peter said.

  "Marrone," said Bert the Shirt.

  "So Bruno used the phone," said Claude, "and Joey, well, from some things Joey was saying, we sort of got the feeling, we could be wrong, it might just be our imagination—"

  "Spit it out," said Bert.

  "We thought maybe he's in trouble and he wanted us to let you know," said Peter.

  Bert absently stroked Don Giovanni and the dog put its cool nose between the buttons of his pajamas. "Well, ya did right comin' to tell me. I appreciate it."

  The bartenders had expected more of a response. "Is there something we should do?" Claude asked. "Should we call the police?"

  "No."

  Bert volunteered nothing further, and now Peter and Claude couldn't help feeling gypped. It seemed only fair to them that they should be given some information in exchange for theirs.

  "Maybe we shouldn't ask this," Claude said at last, "but Bert, is this, like, Mafia?"

  The Shirt launched into a mellifluous pause. He glanced from Claude to Peter, up at the crystal chandelier, down at the rug. He petted his dog, started to smile, erased the smile and put on a look that used to carry menace but had now become an expression of gentle warning. "You're right," he said softly. "Ya shouldn't ask."

  —

  It was midnight. Tony and Bruno had taken out huge black cigars and the Florida room was wreathed in smoke. Joey and Sandra faced each other across the width of the sisal rug and struggled not to gag on the stink of tobacco and the taste of tape. Outside, the air was heavy, moist, the palm fronds barely scratched against each other. Good conditions, if they held, for Clem Sanders to make his dawn departure. If they didn't hold? Joey chased the thought from his head. He was out of chances. Either the emeralds appeared tomorrow or everything was over.

  Tony yawned. It was a profound yawn that twisted his scarred lip until it was almost folded double.

  A moment passed, then Bruno caught the contagion. He stretched like a grizzly bear and gave off a sound like some large thing mating in the jungle. "Fuck I'm tired."

  "Take a nap," said Tony. He was showing off, like he had better stamina. But then he yawned again.

  "What about duh lovebirds heah?" Bruno gestured vaguely toward Joey and Sandra, and in the gesture it was terrifyingly clear that the captives had stopped being human in his eyes. They were freight, furniture, mute parcels that needed guarding and were keeping him awake.

  "Duh lovebirds," Tony echoed. He was getting slaphappy with fatigue, and the word tickled him. "Duh lovebirds, fuck 'em, whyn't we just tie 'em up together inna sack. Good and tight. Pack 'em away, forget about it, you and me can take turns sleeping."

  Bruno took a puff of his cigar, then nodded agreement. He went to untie Sandra just long enough to
move her into the bedroom and truss her up again. He got down on one knee like a grotesque troubadour and fiddled with the knots at her ankles. Then he muttered a curse, pulled a knife out of his sock, and cut the ropes. He did the same with the loops around her midriff, and the sight of his meaty hand against her body made Joey feel faint with rage.

  For a moment Sandra sat as rigid as she'd been before she was unbound. Tony leaned over her and looked at her hard, the way a referee looks at a beaten fighter to see if there are any brain connections left, any sanity. "Listen, lady," he said, "you want I should untape your mouth?"

  Sandra was afraid to nod. She felt that anything she did would be the wrong thing, would lead to some horrendous and perverse response. She just sat.

  Tony wagged a warning finger in her face. "Any noise, any trouble, you're in deep shit, lady. You got that?"

  He grabbed a corner of the duct tape and ripped it away. The skin around Sandra's mouth seemed to draw into itself like the foot of a probed clam. She licked her lips and felt a rough white residue of glue. "I have to pee," she said.

  Tony followed her to the bathroom and guarded the door.

  "And you, peckerhead," Bruno said to Joey. "You gonna be quiet, or do I gotta cut your fucking tongue out?"

  Joey stayed still. It had worked for Sandra. Bruno grabbed the tape and yanked like he was starting a lawn mower. Joey's lips felt gone, his teeth felt suddenly as naked as those of a skeleton. Bruno stared at him with his oil-puddle eyes and seemed to be daring him to speak. He didn't.

  "Get inna bedroom, Romeo."

  "Lay down," Tony ordered when they were all assembled.

  Joey and Sandra got into bed, and the thugs stood over them in some hell-born parody of putting the kids to sleep. Bruno had loops and scraps of rope slung over his shoulder like a cowboy. Tony slipped his gun in his pocket to free up his hands. He tied their outside ankles to the legs of the bed and their outside wrists to the comers of the headboard. Their inside wrists he tied together.

  Then he brandished the gun. "Listen, you pains innee ass. One of us is gonna be sittin' right outside heah. Any noise, any aggravation, we break heads. Got it?"

  The thugs turned off the bedroom light, and half closed the door behind them as they left.

  For a few moments Joey and Sandra lay silent, trying to let some of the fear seep out of them. It was a moonless night and dim suggestions of starlight came in blue slices through the louvered windows.

  "I hate sleeping on my back," Sandra whispered.

  "Baby, I'm so, so sorry," Joey said. "I never meant—"

  "I know you didn't."

  She rubbed the back of her hand against his. It was almost the only thing she could move. There was love and forgiveness in the gesture and it put a lump in Joey's throat.

  "If they killed us," Sandra went on, "they'd get away with it, wouldn't they?"

  Joey nodded.

  "Will they? Will they kill us, Joey?"

  "I don't know."

  "Why? It's not gonna get them their money, their jewels, whatever."

  "It's not about that, Sandra. It's about not being made a fool of. It's about winning. They wanna win."

  Sandra considered this, then tried without success to turn onto her side. "And you, Joey, whadda you want?"

  He looked up toward the ceiling. It seemed very far away. He felt the back of his hand tied against Sandra's. It was hard to tell whose veins, whose pulse, was whose. What did he want? He wanted an honorable truce with his old life, and something like a fair start in the new one. He wanted a kitchen like Peter and Claude's, one that didn't look like the last tenants had bolted an hour ago leaving their dishes still in the sink. He wanted, he admitted now, a normal job, some normal friends who did normal things. He lay there trying to figure out how to explain all this to himself, how to sum it up to Sandra, and suddenly the thread, the cord that held the whole package together, seemed utterly clear to him. "I want you to marry me," he said.

  For a while Sandra said nothing. She was not the type who fantasized about marriage proposals, and if she had been, she would not have fantasized being proposed to while her limbs were tied to bedposts and her free hand was bound with a greasy rope to that of her betrothed. Besides, was Joey full of love or just remorse? Maybe, for him, a proposal stood mainly as the biggest apology he could think of.

  "Joey," she finally said, "I've been waiting a long time to hear you say that."

  He gave a little laugh that was full of sad, sudden, and useless knowledge. "I been waiting a long time to get ready to say it."

  "But listen," said Sandra. "Not tonight. Not with the state we're in. I'm not gonna hold you to what you say tonight."

  "Hold me to it, Sandra," he said, and there was a note of pleading in his voice. "I wanna be held to it. This is what I'm telling you. For once I wanna be held to it."

  —

  At two a.m. Bert the Shirt d'Ambrosia was still sitting in his recliner sporadically looking at television with the sound turned off. But mostly he was thinking out loud, talking to his dog. "This is not good, Giovanni. Not good at all."

  The chihuahua did a little pirouette on its velvet bed. The flickering TV picture made kaleidoscopes in its stuck-open pupils.

  "Fucking Gino gets away clean, Joey gets grabbed. Ponte's gotta be very frustrated, very pissed."

  The dog lay down and licked its private parts.

  "Ya know what bothers me, Giovanni, what gets to me? In like the backa my mind, I can't help wondering if maybe it's my fault."

  The dog gave a little whine of disagreement, or maybe it was in pain.

  "Maybe I gave some bad advice," the Shirt went on. "Did I? I really can't remember. Sometimes, I'll tell ya the truth, Giovanni, I don't even notice I'm givin' advice. That's the scary part, huh? Sometimes I'm just yakkin' away, and a kid like Joey, he sees the white hair, he figures, hey, this old guy must know somethin'. Ha. Fuck do I know? Poor kid, he listens to me."

  The old man shook his head. The chihuahua shook its whiskers. Then Bert spent a long moment climbing out of his recliner and the two of them walked stiffly to the bedroom.

  — 45 —

  Joey did not think he'd slept. He was too scared, too uncomfortable, too weirdly proud of himself for proposing marriage, and besides, he'd been keeping a weather vigil. He wanted to believe that by paying close attention, he could usher in a calm dawn, could keep away the winds or squalls that would prevent Clem Sanders from going to the reef. He lay still and silent, sniffing for airborne salt and iodine. The back of Sandra's hand was against his, his left ankle was chafed from the rope that held him down. Over and over again, he'd rehearsed what he would say to Charlie Ponte, how he would explain his plan for turning three million dollars into four. For what seemed like many hours he stared at the grooves in the louvered windows, searching for the first pale slices of saving light.

  But he must have dozed at least, because suddenly the objects in the room had sharp outlines, people were talking on the other side of the half-closed bedroom door, and he was extremely confused. He gave an involuntary yank of the wrist that was bound to his fiancee's. Sandra let out a little grunt of protest. Then they both blinked themselves more or less awake.

  "Lazy sacka shit," came a voice from the other side of the door. It was followed by some slaps. "I pay you to sleep, or what? Stupid fucking dagos I got heah. Where's the fucking kid? I want my stones."

  There was a scuffling of chairs being pushed away, sounds of big bodies springing out of furniture, and within a couple of seconds Joey and Sandra's bedroom was invaded. Charlie Ponte himself led the charge. He was wearing a silver jacket, his eyes were wild above their liverish sacs, and the little man did not look as faultlessly neat as Joey remembered. It was the hair, which was now windblown, almost spiked, peaked a little like a crown around the balding place on top. Ponte was full of a manic, savage cheer that was first cousin to bloodlust. He circled the bed and grabbed Joey by the front of his pink shirt. "Rise and shine, scumb
ag," he said. "Today's the day I get my emeralds."

  He seemed not to notice that Joey was tied, and he started slapping him for not getting up fast enough. The slaps made the bed bounce and Sandra started to cry.

  "Shit," said Ponte. "Shit. I ain't heah to deal with assholes, and I ain't heah to deal with crying broads." Only then did he see the ropes. "O.K., O.K.," he said over his shoulder to the two thugs who'd accompanied him from Miami. "Untie these losers and let's get out onna fuckin' water."

  On the water? The two goons leaned over the bed and started wrestling with Tony's bizarre knots. The mattress rocked, Sandra whimpered. On the water? The new thugs took out knives. The steel got hot against Joey's ankle as they sawed away. He tried to think but things were moving way too fast for him. His eyes were crusty. He had to piss. He hadn't so much as yawned and already he'd been smacked across the face, pummeled around the nose. This wasn't the way it was supposed to happen. He'd rehearsed his pitch to Ponte; he'd thought the whole thing through. It was supposed to be civilized, a sit down where people could work things out. This was just mayhem. One of the new thugs slipped with his knife and poked Joey in the calf. He started to bleed on the sheet. On the water?

  "Mr. Ponte," Joey blurted, "wait a—"

  By now Bruno had blustered into the bedroom. His boss had caught him napping and Bruno wanted to make amends by being extra ugly. "Can it, mouth," he said. He reached for Joey and held him by the throat while the other two finished unbinding him.

  "But—" Joey squeezed out. Bruno backhanded him across the cheek.

  The thugs yanked Sandra and Joey to their feet and pushed them out of the crowded bedroom. There was no air left in their bungalow, it was all dark suits that swallowed the light, black shoes that freighted the earth so it seemed to tip. "Lemme take a piss at least," Joey said as he was being bundled through the kitchen.

  "Piss off duh backa duh boat," one of the goons advised him.