The bird shat a yellowish paste between Natchez's black sneakers. It went rigid for a moment, a final rippling wave ran through its frenzied muscles. Then, belatedly, it seemed to realize it was dead. The tension left the carcass, Natchez felt the bones shift against the will-less meat.
He stood up, the slaughtered chicken dangling from his hand. His shirt was soaked with sweat, he felt a violent exultation mixed with fleeting nausea. He lifted the corpse to the level of his eyes, peered at it, and was gratified to discover that he felt not a whisper of remorse. He flung the bird a few feet into the tangled weeds, retrieved his wire cage, and went home to his garret to drink and write.
30
At the Eclipse Bar, Detective Sergeant Joe Mulvane sipped ale from a frosted mug and with his free hand pulled his damp blue collar away from his moist pink neck, the better to expose the mottled skin to the chill breath of the air conditioner. He swallowed, let forth an exaggerated ahh of satisfaction, then went on with his story.
"So this pretty little Cuban boy comes in," he said. "A strange bird, lemme tell ya. Walks like Daryl Hannah, talks like Jose Jimenez with some night school and a lisp. He's all excited, he's twitching. He's got this cake, apricot, he's holding it like a fucking hand grenade. It's poisoned, he's sure of it. This on top of the paranoid broad who comes in the other day. I mean Arty, you been here longer than I have. Who are these people?"
Arty Magnus sipped his wine, then dug his elbows deeper into the thickly upholstered bar rail, an armrest that conduced to drinking and reflection, mostly drinking. One of the very few things he liked about being a newspaperman was the chance it gave him to shoot the shit with cops. Information. Everybody needed it, and in more discreet places there was never enough to go around; in Key West, which was about as discreet as a public bathhouse, there was generally too much. Information was cheap as local mangoes and about as firm.
"The Silvers?" said the editor. "Some of our leading citizens. He's one of the very few people down here who isn't jerking off when he calls himself an artist. She's one of the very few people still trying to run a quality business on Duval Street instead of doing T-shirts and schlock. Maybe they're strange like artsy-strange. But lunatics? No. The Cuban lad, him I don't know."
"I do," said the fellow who'd come in with Arty Magnus and was sitting on the other side of him. His name was Joey Goldman, he was slightly built with dark blue eyes and wavy black hair, and he had the earpiece of his sunglasses hanging over the pocket of his shirt. The other two men looked at him like they hadn't expected him to contribute, hadn't expected him to know much.
"Yeah," Joey went on. "He used to work for us. Before he went full-time for the Silvers. Worked in our Cleaning Division."
He said this rather grandly, in the manner of the newly successful. Joey Goldman was an oddity in Key West, a place where many people of more privileged background came to fail, to give up, to go pleasantly down the tubes. He'd come from dubious roots, some thought criminal roots, and with a little luck and more savvy than anyone thought he had, he'd become a businessman of substance, a wheeler-dealer in real estate. In this his questionable past had served him well: It was axiomatic that it was easier to rob a place if you had a guy inside. Why shouldn't this logic extend to legitimate business? Who knew before the housekeeper when an owner was thinking of making a move, selling out or trading up? Thus the Cleaning Division was what might be thought of as the clandestine intelligence arm of Paradise Properties, Joey Delgatto Goldman, boss.
"So what's his story?" asked Joe Mulvane. "The Cuban kid."
Joey sipped his Campari, dabbed his lips. "We got like sixteen, eighteen people cleaning for us," he said. "Most of 'em I couldn't tell ya nothin'. But Reuben I can, I'll tell ya why I remember: The first day he came to us he was black and blue. Beat up. Big bruise on his neck, one eye not open all the way. So shy he could hardly talk. Leanin' away like a terrorized cat. Sandra's askin' 'im the usual questions. Where d'ya live? He lives with his parents. How old are ya? He's twenty-three, twenty-four, somethin' like that.
'Then I cut in, I couldn't help it. 'Hey Reuben,' I say, 'who beatcha up?" With this, he shoots me a look that really gets my attention, a look I recognize. It's a look—how can I describe it?—it's not hostile, it's not even strong, but it's defiant, it tells you he doesn't care who you are, what he needs from you, you're out of bounds. And right away I know that whoever beat him up is in his family. I just know it. Look, he's obviously gay. Lotta old-style Cubans, a maricon, they get ugly, it's like a blot onna family honor. I understand something about families, trust me on that. The closer they are, the harder it is to be different. So I feel for the kid. I look at Sandra. Sandra looks at me. The kid is hired and he works out great. Reliable. Honest. Loyal."
"Loyal till he quits," put in Mulvane.
"I got no problem with that," said Joey. "I mean, all we did, we gave 'im a job. The Silvers, they practically became his family, ya know, took over from the asshole family and became the good family. We all know how that works. He did the right thing."
There was a pause for drinking and reflecting, mostly drinking. The sounds of shaken ice and barroom blather came forward as the old industrial air conditioner shuddered, coughed, then shut down for a rest. Mulvane finished his ale with an appreciation that bordered on reverence and pushed his mug forward for another.
"But wait a second," Arty Magnus said. "Can we cut to the chase scene here? The cake—you said the Cuban lad was all excited about a cake. Was it poisoned?"
"Sent a slice down to the lab," the detective said, but his eyes were searching for the bartender and he wasn't going any farther till his warm and empty glass was replaced with an iced and filled one.
When it was, he licked the foam then casually announced, "Yeah, it was fulla poison. Nasty shit too. Sugar. Butter. Cholesterol, enough to make your heart slam shut. A regular time bomb. I took it home, ate it with the wife and lads."
*
"Painting again?" said Claire Steiger. "Augie, I think that's terrific. Only—"
"Only what, Claire?" Augie said.
She shifted in her poolside chair. It was early evening. She and Kip had arrived in Key West barely an hour before. They'd checked into the Flagler House, showered and changed, and now were straining the muscles of their faces to look congenial, to make it seem like this ferocious guarding of their interests was a social call, almost a pilgrimage. A fading light shimmered in the gummy air above the pool. Overhead, the palm fronds hung dark and limp, they sifted the wan gleam of a hazy dusk.
"Only maybe it would be better," the agent said, "if people didn't find that out just yet."
Nina, sitting on the love seat with her husband, pursed her lips. She was over feeling qualms about her gut mistrust of almost anything her former mentor said. "Why, Claire?" she asked. "Why does it matter?"
The dealer's brown eyes were soft, her full lips managed a smile, but she could not quite hold back her hand from reaching for another bit of brie, of which she'd told herself she'd have no more. She slipped the fat cheese into her mouth and shot a quick glance at her husband. He'd arched an eyebrow perhaps a quarter-inch then dived into his gin. Certain things you could count on in life: Round Jewish women reached for food at moments of exasperation, angular WASP men grabbed at cocktails. The couple swallowed their respective medicines and then the wife went on. "Augie, Nina—there's a big auction at Sotheby's ten days from now."
"The Solstice Show," said Nina.
"Yes. And a lot of Augie's works are being offered."
Augie said nothing. He'd had paintings auctioned before, and he didn't see that it had much to do with him. What did it matter if old forgotten canvases from the gallery's holdings and from collections in New York were shuffled around in exchange for cash? He was on to other things, it was the new work that he cared about.
Nina was not quite so placid. "The auction's in ten days, Claire, and we only find out now?"
The agent groped for some high ground. "I
tried calling weeks ago," she said. "You never got back."
Augie didn't have the stomach for a squabble. "Really," he said, "what's the difference?"
Kip Cunningham, who would not accept the notion that mere bankruptcy cast the slightest doubt on his expertise in business, could not help chiming in. "It's just, you know, better not to advertise a fresh supply—"
Augie shushed him with a small wave of his hand. "I totally understand," he said. "And frankly, it's all the same to me if people find out today or next month or never. I'm painting to paint, not to get talked about."
"But what if people ask?" Kip blurted.
Augie sipped his Guinness, let a bit slide frothily past his gullet. His body was working again, his pipes were flowing, his mouth was tasting, and there was a sacred delight in this that overwhelmed all petty and non-visceral concerns. "If they ask," he blithely said, "I'll tell them."
Kip and Claire, still allies in debt, if little else, zoomed in quickly on each other's eyes.
"It might be better—" the agent began.
Nina cut her off. It is a weighty thing to know another person's moves so well that a single phrase can bring on rage, can create the bitter certainty that one is being manipulated, bullied, used. For Nina the awareness was especially galling because she could still remember, though the recollection baffled her, when she had wanted to be Claire Steiger: tough, assured, no one's fool, a creature of the city. Amazing, Nina thought, the number of false starts and wrong desires that could be crammed into something as short as a lifetime. "Surely you're not going to suggest he lie?" she said.
"No, of course not," the agent waffled. "But for example—"
"Claire," said Augie Silver, "I'm much too superstitious not to tell the truth. The little talent I have, I'm not going to jinx it by denying it. Look, you don't want people to know I'm working, just keep people away from me. You can do that, can't you?"
"The press? Nobody can do that, Augie," said Claire Steiger. "You know that."
The painter shrugged and sipped his stout. He looked up at the sky, pulled in a chestful of jasmine-scented air, felt his body in the love seat, and savored the nearness of his wife's hip next to his. Claire Steiger, whose skill it was to make people want things, understood that Augie no longer wanted anything she could do for him or sell him, and this was very frustrating. You could not manipulate someone who truly didn't care. You could only go around him, or over him, or find some way to remove him from the loop. The agent stole a quick glance at her husband and saw a flat dead desperation in his eyes that she prayed to God was not reflected in her own.
31
There is something about being ushered into a dark Lincoln full of mafiosi that makes a person feel sick to his stomach.
There are a lot of ways they can kill you right there in the car, and none of them are pretty. Piano wire around the neck. Ice pick through the base of the skull. A point-blank shot that singes skin in the instant before it stops the heart. Ray Yates tasted bile. He was no dummy, he knew what the shrinks said about compulsive gambling and the death wish. They were wrong. He gambled for excitement. O.K., maybe humiliation had something to do with it. Maybe he got off on the pang of losing, that confirming disappointment that was bracing as a pinch on the scrotum. But you had to be alive to feel that. This was something the shrinks seem to have overlooked.
"Take 'im tuh duh gahbidge?" Bruno asked.
The man in the front passenger seat considered. He was a small neat man, with short gray hair that was too perfect and crescent sacs the color of liver beneath his eyes. "Nah, take 'im tuh duh shahk."
There was another goon in the back seat with Ray Yates. At this he smiled and sucked wet air between his teeth and gums. "Yeah, Mr. Ponte, great. Been a while since we fed the shahk."
The Lincoln lumbered slowly out of the alley, wound its way through the narrow cobbled downtown streets. Barefoot dirt-bags in droopy-ass jeans wandered here and there among tourists wearing short shorts the colors of lemons and limes. A guy went by on a unicycle with flashing lights among the spokes. This, Yates thought, was the town he'd wanted to fit in with. A town of easy eccentricity, funk without violence, harmless farting around. How had he managed to turn it sinister for himself?
The big car passed a Do Not Enter sign, then turned down a passageway barely wider than itself, and Yates, who'd thought he knew every byway in Key West, lost track of where he was. The car stopped. He was ordered out, there was barely room to squeeze. Bruno turned the lock on a green-painted metal door that was the only break in a wall of crumbly brick.
"We got keys," the other thug explained. He smiled, sucked his teeth. "We got keys for everywhere. Get the fuck inside."
He gave Yates a push into the dark building, and the first thing the debtor noticed was the smell of fish. Not dead fish; live fish, the slime and seaweed smell of live fish swimming in aerated saltwater. Someone hit a light switch. Revealed was a room of buckets and mops, ladders and freezers. At the far end was a metal staircase, the top of which could not be seen.
"Sal," said Charlie Ponte to the thug who sucked his teeth, "grab some fucking fish."
Sal went to a freezer. Bruno pushed Ray Yates toward the stairs. Heavy feet made a dismal ringing sound on the steel steps, a clamor that bounced off the walls of the closed aquarium and came back sounding drowned.
The stairs went up two stories and ended at another door. Bruno opened it and grinned. Then he shoved Yates through. The talk-show host found himself standing on a metal grid, maybe six feet square. Around the platform, waist high, was a railing, and beyond the railing, two feet away and one foot down, was the lip of the vast tank that held the aquarium's prize attraction, an eleven-foot hammerhead called Ripper. The tank was dark. A murderous silence hovered over it. It smelled like blood and clams. The others piled in behind Ray Yates. The thug called Sal was carrying two frozen bonito, maybe ten pounds each. There was a small spotlight on the feeding platform; Charlie Ponte turned it on.
"Sal," he said, "trow our friend a fish."
Sal tossed one of the bonito, and before it hit the water, the shark exploded through the surface, its monstrous sideways dildo of a head thrashing, its unspeakable mouth wide open to reveal its double rows of razor teeth. Sharks are not neat eaters. They don't bite cleanly, they tear, they shred, the sharp chaotic hell of their mouths reduces food to strings and tatters. Ray Yates watched the frozen fish disintegrate. The shark thumped the water for more. Salt spray flew above the tank, roiled water viscously lapped.
"Get up onna fucking railing, Ray," Charlie Ponte said.
Yates didn't move. Ponte walked slowly up to him and backhanded him hard across the cheek. Then he nodded to his boys. They lifted the debtor by the armpits and sat him on the rail. He held it, white-knuckled, fighting vertigo. The shark was circling at his back. The rough texture of its silver skin glinted in the light, the obscene gashes of its gill slits sucked and spilled out water.
"Ray," said Ponte, "you're like very close to being dead. You know that, right?"
Yates swallowed, nodded. The railing was cool, it chilled his bowels.
"And why?" Ponte continued. His voice was just slightly louder now, it came through the splashing and sliced roughly through the dark building with its secret nighttime life of fish. "Because you're a weak piece a shit. No control. A fucking bed wetter."
"It's never been like this before," Yates whimpered. "I've always paid. Bruno knows that."
Ponte looked at his goons. "And what's Bruno, the fucking credit bureau? Ray, you're poison. You bet on a horse, the horse falls down. You bet on a fighter, he pisses blood. Now you're inta me for forty-somethin' and I hear you're betting on a fucking painter. This is a new one on me. How the fuck you bet on a painter?"
Bruno and Sal obediently chuckled. Sal held the other bonito by its tail and tried not to let it drip on his shoe as it defrosted.
Yates sat. Drops of spray were wetting his back, and he could not shake the image of the shark risi
ng up on its tail and biting his ass off. "It's not a bet. I own these paintings."
"Yeah. So?"
"Week and a half from now, they'll be sold. Sotheby's. New York. They're worth a lot of money. Hundreds of thousands."
Charlie Ponte looked down through the open grid beneath his feet and sadly shook his head. When he spoke again, it was to Sal and Bruno. "He's holdin' out on me. I hate that. Turn 'im upside down."
Sal put aside the thawing fish and the two goons grabbed Ray Yates. The debtor wriggled but not much: There was nowhere to go but two stories down to a stone floor or into the fishbowl with the shark. They hoisted him then turned him like a roast, laid him out so that his upper thighs were across the rail and his torso was hovering in space. His hands gripped the top of the shark tank, he wondered if the ragged teeth would flash and hack his fingers off. He pulled his face back as far as he could from the roiling water, but still he smelled fish blood and an awful musk. Ponte moved alongside and spoke to him calmly.
"Ray, I hate a guy that sells me short. You think I'm stupid? You think I don't read the paper? Those paintings ain't worth what you say. Who knows if they're gonna sell at all? You lost again, Ray. You're fucked."
Yates's back was cramping, his eyes were starting to tear. "I'll get the money," he rasped. It was all he could think of to say.
"Yeah? How?"
If people were punished for thoughts, the world would be a jail. Yates held himself above the shark tank and looked down at the water. The silhouette of the grotesque and hungry hammerhead snaked through it like the shadow of death. There seemed one way and one way only for Yates to get the money, and in that moment of infinite fear and infinite selfishness there was no doubt that he would cash in Augie Silver's life to save his own, the only question was the nerve and tact it took to do the deal.
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