Key West Luck

by Laurence Shames

  Ozzie Kimmel was saying, “I told you so. I told you the guy was an asshole.”

  “Yeah,” said Nicky, “but you didn’t tell me he was an asshole with a killer dog.”

  “I forgot about the dog. Or maybe it’s a new dog. Who remembers?”

  Phoebe said, “It was very gallant of you to stand up for my honor.” She said gallant in the French way, soft, breathy vowels and light accent on the second syllable.

  “Is that what I was doing?” Nicky said. “I don’t even know what I was doing. I just snapped. Blind mad. Been a lot of years since I felt that way. Don’t know what would’ve happened if the fucking dog hadn’t come flying through the air.”

  “I know what would’ve happened,” Ozzie said. “I know exactly what would’ve happened. You would’ve landed one good punch, then the fat slob would’ve rolled out of the hammock and called the police and the lawyers and you would’ve been in all kinds of trouble, and after about two seconds of feeling good, it would’ve turned out he had the last laugh. Fuckers like him usually do.”

  “Usually, maybe,” Phoebe said. “Not always. I just can’t accept that.”

  “Me neither,” said Nicky. “Especially not about the truck.”

  “Oh, very gallant,” said Ozzie. “What’re you gonna do about the truck?”

  “I don’t know. Something.”

  “Nicky, let it go. The truck is history. I’ll give it back. I’ll find a job. Or I’ll find a different town.”

  Nicky hadn’t realized just how tipsy he was until he heard himself say, “I don’t want you to find a different town. I want you to be here.”

  Phoebe’s face changed then. It didn’t change much, it never did, but her eyelids narrowed slightly even as her pupils were expanding, making her eyes appear to pulse a dark electric blue. For an instant she looked away, then, in a tone that managed to be both gentle and discouraging, she said, “Nicky—“

  “Yeah, I know, I know,” he interrupted. “We’re just pals. You’ve been burned, you’re happy on your own, etc., etc. I know all that. I get it. I’m just saying…”

  The words stalled in part because Nicky felt suddenly muddled and in part because he was afraid of what might come out if he kept on going. Ozzie, of course, couldn’t let the moment pass. “You’re just saying what?” he pressed.

  Nicky answered Ozzie but his eyes never moved from Phoebe’s face. “I’m just saying that I want things to work out for you here because I like having you around, okay? I like seeing you. I like your voice. I like not knowing when you might show up on your bicycle.”

  Phoebe stared back at Nicky the whole time he was saying this and for a few seconds after he had finished.

  Ozzie said, “I think I just became invisible.” No one disagreed with him and after a moment he continued. “Okay, come on, let’s have one more drink at least.”

  Phoebe and Nicky finally disengaged from their stare, but not all at once; their gaze melted slowly, like cake frosting in a sunny window. Then Phoebe said, “No, no more for me. Better not.”

  Nicky said, “Me neither then.”

  Ozzie, looking disappointed, drained his glass. They settled their tab and climbed a bit shakily down from their stools.

  Now there are many times in life when having one more drink is a very bad idea and deciding not to is a mature and wise decision. But when a person’s luck is running bad, even good decisions have a way of backfiring. If Phoebe and Nicky and Ozzie had lingered where they were for one more round, they might have suffered hangovers next morning; but on the other hand, they would have outstayed Bert and Charlie Ponte who were savoring their second cocktail on the other side of the bar.

  And Nicky and Ponte never would have met.

  19.

  Bert the Shirt’s eyesight was not as sharp as it once had been, but decades of self-preserving vigilance had made him exceptionally alert to things going on at the periphery of his vision, so, even though he’d been listening intently as Charlie Ponte kept tormenting himself about the question of retirement, he easily spotted his three young acquaintances as they weaved around the race-track curve of the Clove Hitch bar. Being sociable, he waved hello. Being tipsy and curious, they sidled over. There followed a moment of extreme awkwardness. Ponte was wearing a silk suit and six-hundred dollar Italian loafers. Ozzie had a ripped t-shirt on, Phoebe was tattooed and had a stud through her eyebrow. How did you introduce these people to each other? Bert graciously tried. He described Phoebe as the proprietress of a frozen confection operation and Ozzie as an entrepreneur in the tourism business. He said that Nicky was an entertainer.

  “An unemployed entertainer,” Nicky put in.

  “Yeah, I heard,” said Bert. “Bad break.”

  Nicky shrugged.

  Ozzie, with his bone-deep lack of tact, said, “And what do you do, Charlie?”

  The little mobster tried not to let it show that the question galled him. Up in Miami, or at least up in Miami till recently, people heard his name and knew better than to ask. Gruffly he said, “Businessman.”

  “Ah,” Ozzie pushed. “Products? Services?”

  “This and that.”

  Bert said, “Well, it’s nice to see you guys. Now if you’ll excuse us…”

  But to his surprise, Ponte did not seem eager to end the conversation. Like all other animals, human beings notice what they need to notice to survive and prosper in their own particular environments, and Ponte had noticed something about Nicky; he’d noticed his gnarled and knobby fingers. He said to him, “You always been an entertainer?”

  “Nah, it’s kind of a new thing.”

  “Ah,” said Ponte. He’d seen fingers like that on other people’s hands. He supposed there were many ways a person could end up with such thick and lumpy knuckles, but the ones he’d seen had belonged to enforcers who led with the left. “Wha’d you do before?”

  “This and that,” said Nicky, and even Ponte had to smile at the echo of his own evasion.

  “You from down here? Originally, I mean.”

  “Philadelphia.”

  “Philadelphia. I got some people I do business with up there. Louie Verducci. Tommy Zito. Ever come across those guys?”

  Nicky tried to look like he was trying to remember the name of a person he might have vaguely known a very long time ago, but he did a poor job of faking it and Ponte knew at once that he was hiding something. Bert knew it, too, and Bert knew something else as well. He knew that Ponte had picked up a scent, and the scent had made him avid, focused, had washed away his spasm of doubt and introspection as though it had been nothing more than a gas bubble briefly troubling his gut.

  Ponte was no longer giving the slightest thought to retiring or backing off. He was thinking about his next score and how good it felt in his groin when he was making things happen, taking care of business. He said to Nicky, “Well, good luck with your entertaining.”

  There was a round of mumbled goodbyes, and as soon as the three younger people were out of earshot, Bert said, “Don’t do it, Cholly.”

  “Don’t do what?”

  “Whatever your deal is, don’t get that guy involved in it. I know him a little bit. I like him. I like his friends. Don’t get him involved and don’t fuck him over.”

  Ponte just shrugged. He didn’t see the point of arguing with Bert and he certainly wasn’t about to promise anything. He was on a caper now, back in the hunt; he’d do things exactly as he felt like doing them and he didn’t much care what Bert or anybody else might think about it. He raised his glass to his lips and hid behind it as he watched Nicky and the others saunter down the dock then across a catwalk to the next pier over. He smiled to himself as he saw them step across a gangway onto a very funky houseboat. He’d found what he’d come for. He was pretty confident he had his fall guy. He knew where Nicky lived.

  PART THREE

  20.

  By the time Teddy Meara got around to bragging to his drinking buddies at the Brigantine about his little jaunt to Cub
a, the story bore absolutely no relation to the truth. In this new improved version of his visit, he’d toured the old city in a 1957 Chevy taxi, sipped mojitos in a café with an amazing salsa band, eaten rice and beans with slices of pig roasted right there on the sidewalk. “And the women!” he was saying now to the three or four guys who were listening with moderate interest and less than moderate credence. “The women, wow. With those skinny ankles in crazy high heels giving that nice tilt to those Latin butts—“

  A guy with a silver pony tail and a parrot on his shoulder interrupted to say, “Yeah, but what were you doing down there in the first place?”

  “Business,” he said softly and with mock-discretion.

  On Meara’s other side, someone said, “Business?” The single upturning word was freighted with a heavy load of dubiety. It was spoken by a fat man with a thick black beard who was eating a giant mound of chicken wings, the plate positioned close to him where he could protect it with his elbows from anyone who might try to grab one. “I thought you were just a grunt down at the Customs base.”

  “That’s what you think, Gus, you just keep right on thinking it,” said Meara.

  “So what’s your business down in Cuba?” asked the parrot man.

  “Can’t really talk about it. Got a few irons in the fire. You know, this and that.”

  “Probably mostly this,” said a guy whose shirt-buttons were buttoned wrong, as he made the well-known gesture for jerking off.

  The other men laughed.

  Meara tried but failed to hide it as his pink face flushed a darker red. “That’s okay guys, laugh. Sit on your dumb asses and laugh while Cuba’s opening up and there’s all sorts of money to be made down there. See if you’re laughing when I score some real dough and get the hell out of here.”

  The laughter thinned out and turned a little sour then. Gus Delios went back to his pile of chicken wings and as he munched one he wondered if this character could possibly be for real. Things were happening in Cuba; no one doubted that. Maybe this guy, even though he seemed like one more small-time loser, had some kind of inside track down there. Never hurt to keep the options open. He wiped his mouth on his forearm and said, “Okay, Teddy, maybe we’re selling you short. I wish you all the best.”

  Having expected more sarcasm, Meara didn’t quite know what to make of this statement that could pretty much pass for sincere. He made no answer.

  “So happens I’m always looking for business opportunities,” Delios went on. “You come up with something interesting, you need some backing, some help, keep me in mind. Might be worth your while.”

  Ozzie was not at all concerned that Nicky didn’t sleep at home that night.

  In fact he woke up next morning with a wry and knowing little smile on his face when he realized Nicky’s bed in the makeshift loft was empty. He figured that his roommate had spent the night in Phoebe’s truck, making cramped but ecstatic love in the narrow cot across from the shelf of syrups. This outcome seemed only logical to him. Anyone could see that things had been trending that way for a while now, what with the stares, the chance touches of their elbows, the half-finished exchanges that seemed to tremble on the brink of becoming declarations. True, Phoebe’s allergy to romance had seemed quite genuine and virulent; true, Nicky in a funny way was actually pretty shy. But people had a way of not listening to their fears and hesitations when a powerful attraction was tickling their ears, and if Ozzie was surprised by anything, it was that the two of them hadn’t sacked it sooner.

  After coffee he decided to ride over to the Sno-Cone truck. He wanted to find out for sure what was going on and of course he was looking forward to giving the new couple some static about all that we’re-just-pals shit.

  It was a beautiful morning, not yet hot but plenty warm, and as he rode along the promenade that bordered Smathers he took his usual inventory of women on the beach. In recent days, their numbers had been steadily if undramatically increasing, the volume of tourists perversely swelling toward the time when Phoebe would no longer have her business. As Ozzie scudded past, newly arrived sunbathers were spreading their towels over the imported sand, then stripping off cover-ups to reveal bathing suits they’d never worn before except maybe in a dressing room, and about whose fit and skimpiness they had some reservations. Breasts were discreetly redistributed in cup-less tops; errant slivers of buttock were tucked back, always temporarily, into bikini bottoms cut too brief to contain them. On many of the new arrivals’ backs and legs, the skin was so white as to look blue; by noon it would be tending toward a shade midway between Barbie pink and the inside of a tangerine; the ones who stayed on the beach all day would go back to their hotels looking like tandoori chicken.

  Three or four people were lined up in front of the service window of the Sno-Cone truck. Ozzie took his place behind them and when his turn came up he said, “Hey, Feeb, how ya doin’?” He said it with a mischievous semi-smirk on his face and in an I-know-what-you-did-last-night sort of tone.

  Neither the tone nor the expression seemed to register at all with Phoebe. She said, “Fine, Oz, how are you?”

  “Not as good as you are.” He meant this as an oblique reference to the supposition that Phoebe had very recently had sex whereas he himself had not for quite a while.

  She took it to mean that she had customers this morning whereas he didn’t seem to have a tour. She said, “Yeah, doing a little better these last few days. Nowhere near enough to buy the truck, but at least I’ll sock away a little tide-me-over money.”

  In what seemed to Phoebe a complete non-sequitur, he said, “And how’s Nicky?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nicky. Remember? The guy we’re just pals with. How is he?”

  “I don’t know. You mean hung-over? You saw him after I did.”

  Ozzie put his hands on his hips and a mock-scolding look on his face. “Man, are you coy or what?”

  “Oz, I have customers and I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Since teasing was getting him nowhere, he then blurted, much to the amusement of the few people who’d lined up behind him, “So you’re telling me you didn’t spend last night with Nicky?”

  “That’s none of your business. But no, I didn’t. Now would you please step aside so I can help these people?”

  He moved away from the window and Phoebe served up some Sno-Cones. While he was standing there in the shadow of the plywood awning he began for the first time to be a little worried about his friend and roommate. As soon as Phoebe was free again he sidled over in front of her and the playfulness was gone from his voice.

  “Nicky didn’t sleep at home last night,” he said. “I thought he was with you.”

  Still confused and somewhat piqued at Ozzie, she said, “Well, he wasn’t. And you’re a jerk for saying that. Maybe he was with somebody else.”

  As soon as she said it she wished she hadn’t. To her surprise, it made her feel a pang of jealousy and an intimation of loss made more hollow and aching by the fact that she had no idea what she was losing or even if perhaps she was losing it by her own free will.

  With a kindness that disarmed her, Ozzie said, “There’s no one else, Feeb. Trust me, I would know.”

  “Yeah, I expect you would.”

  “It’s just I’m kind of worried.”

  In a heartbeat, so was Phoebe. Her pulse sped up and her hands fidgeted over the apron that was streaked here and there with Sno-Cone syrup. “Why?” she said. “What happened?”

  Ozzie sucked his lower lip. “All I know is that later on yesterday, maybe nine o’clock or so, that Charlie guy, the guy who was having drinks with Bert, comes over to the houseboat and says he wants to talk with Nicky. They go out for a drink. And that’s that.”

  “That’s what?”

  “That’s the last saw I saw him. Look, it’s probably no big deal. It’s just that, you know, you room with someone, you sort of get to know their habits. Just going off someplace, unannounced, that just doesn’t seem
like Nicky.”

  Phoebe’s hands were splayed out on the counter. Without seeming to be aware of it, she picked up a sponge and started working it in wide arcs, trying to sweep things clean, make everything tidy and all right. She said, “You’ll call me as soon as you hear from him?”

  “Sure, Feeb, right away.”

  21.

  But they didn’t hear from Nicky, because Nicky, by that time, was in the employ of Charlie Ponte. What happened was this:

  On the evening before, after their chance meeting at the Clove Hitch, Nicky had gone back to the houseboat, picked up his guitar, and played himself some songs, mostly sad ones. He was pretty well sobered up an hour or so later, when he heard his name being shouted from the dock.

  He pretended to be totally surprised by this. But he wasn’t that surprised; not really. Certain signals, undetectable to those outside a certain background and a certain way of life, had passed between Ponte and himself during their brief exchanges at the bar, and some wordless blend of intuition and fatalism made Nicky feel that he hadn’t seen the last of the visitor from Miami. When he heard his name being called out in the night, it struck him not as a greeting but as a kind of desperate summons, a siren call that very possibly was tempting him toward disaster but maybe also offering a change of luck. It didn’t occur to him that when a person’s luck was running bad, a change might turn it even worse. He went out on the deck and said hello to Ponte.

  They’d gone back to the Clove Hitch, sat at a high-top discreetly removed from other patrons. Ponte made a bit of small talk then brought the conversation around to their mutual acquaintances from Philadelphia. Twisting his stub of neck to make sure no one else was listening, he suddenly said, “So who’d you work for, Zito or Verducci?”