Florida Straits (27 page)

He shook his head and laughed softly into
the night. From baby alligators and pencil sharpeners to real
estate and emeralds. O.K., Joey admitted, he wasn't home free yet,
not every last piece was in place. Still, at three
a.m
., everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt, and
Joey indulged in the rare pleasure of paying himself a compliment.
It was an unusual compliment for Joey in that it was not bullshit,
it was not bragging, it was not meant to impress anybody. He took a
sip of his coffee, put his head back against the hard webbing of
the lounge, and basked in the belief that, for a kid from the
neighborhood, he wasn't doing too bad down here in Florida.

—
38 —

At 8:55
a.m
., which
felt to Joey like the middle of the afternoon, he walked into the
Parrot Beach sales office, wearing his pink shirt, his by now
broken-in khaki shorts, and his confident watchband that told the
world he frowned on flash. When Zack Davidson showed up a few
minutes later, Joey handed him nine hundred and seventy-three
dollars in cash. It was what was left from Gino's thousand after
the rowboat and the nautical chart had been paid for.

For Zack, however, nine
a.m
. was not afternoon, it was first thing in the
morning. His sandy hair was still damp from the shower, he hadn't
even had his second cup of coffee, and he glanced down at the wad
of bills as if they were a face that looked familiar, but only
somewhat. "What's this about?"

"The little motor?" Joey said.

Zack tilted his head expectantly. Yes, he
knew the little motor.

"I lost it."

Zack sat down in his desk chair and drummed
his fingers on the blotter. He had a fair amount of experience with
outboard engines. Many things went wrong with them. Their spark
plugs got gummed up. Their water pumps crapped out. Their
propellers fell off, their starter ropes came away in your hand,
their shifters jammed so you could only go backward. Outboards were
a plague, an affliction. But how did you lose one?

"You lost it," he said, plucking a dark
thread from the sleeve of his pink shirt. It was not a question. He
just needed to hear it in his own voice.

Joey nodded.

"I don't imagine you wanna tell me how it
happened."

Joey shook his head. "Sometime maybe. Zack,
I don't know what they cost. If that isn't enough ..."

Zack waved away the offer. Nine hundred and
seventy-three dollars was in fact more than the old motor was
worth, less than a new one would cost— in that gray area where
insurance adjusters quibble and gentlemen do not. "You get done
what you needed to do?"

"Yeah, I did," said Joey, and though he
hadn't meant to smile so soon after telling Zack of the loss of the
motor, he couldn't help it.

Zack slipped into sales manager mode. It was
something he could comfortably do while half asleep. "So the
cockin' around is over? You're gonna get out there now and sell
some goddamn real estate?"

"Bet your ass. Tons. But Zack, listen,
Sandra and me, we'd like you and Claire to come over for dinner on
Saturday night. Can ya do that?"

Zack hesitated just an instant, and Joey
felt suddenly shy. A strange and basic thing, the courting stage of
friendship. The offers of alliance and the gestures of warmth got
passed back and forth like wampum. "Pretty sure we can," Zack said.
He hoped it didn't sound like he was reserving himself an out.
"Sounds real nice."

"Florida," said Joey. "Sounds like Florida.
Grilling steaks. Eating outside with shorts on. How sweet it is,
huh, Zack?"

Zack rubbed his reddish eyebrows, and Joey
headed out, pausing for a second to contemplate the Parrot Beach
scale model with its Saran Wrap pool and miniature residents on
beach chairs. Boating, barbecues, company—his life was getting to
where it could almost fit right in with that ideal of ease under
sunny skies and Plexiglas.

—

At around eleven, with two commissions in
the bag, Joey took a break and called Perretti's luncheonette on
Astoria Boulevard in Queens. He could picture the old maroon phone
booth at the back of the green-painted store, with the pebbled
metal walls that were always cold to the touch and the accordion
door that always fooled you about whether you should push or pull.
Joey asked for Sal Giordano, but his buddy wasn't there. He said he
would call back in a couple of hours, and if Sal came in, he should
leave a number and a time he could be reached. This meant that Sal
would organize his afternoon around getting down Northern Boulevard
or over the Gowanus Bridge in a timely fashion, before rush hour if
possible, and hoping that when he got there, his public telephone
had not had its coin box chiseled out by a crack addict or its
metal- sheathed wires yanked apart by an aggravated patron who had
lost his quarter.

When Joey called back at two he was given a
number where Sal could be reached at four, and when he called at
four Sal picked up almost before the phone had rung. The first
thing Joey heard sounded like the screaming whine of jet engines
close enough to blow your hat off. "So Sal," he screamed, "you're
at the Airline Diner?"

"Nah," Sal shouted. "Outside the Midtown
Tunnel. That's buses. Airline Diner, some dumb fuck in a U- Haul
backed up and crushed the booth. How the hell are you, man?"

"Good," yelled Joey, "real good. How are
things up there?"

"Quiet," hollered Sal. "Makin' a living.
With Gino gone, ya know, it's pretty much business as usual."

"Well," Joey hollered back, "Gino ain't gone
no more. This is why I'm calling, Sal. He should be in New York by
now."

There was a pause, and Joey heard a truck
laboring through its gears as it lumbered out of the tollbooth and
started up the incline on the Queens side of the tunnel, the Empire
State Building in its sideview mirrors. "He's back?" Sal shouted,
and Joey had the feeling that maybe he was a little bit surprised
that Gino was still alive. "What's with Ponte? What's with the
stones?"

Joey was speaking from the far end of the
lunch counter near the Parrot Beach office, the place where
short-order cooks with shaved heads whipped up mango smoothies for
young women in undershirts to suck through straws. This was not New
York, where you couldn't even talk on your own phone for fear of
being listened in on. This was Key West, where you could scream
about gangsters and emeralds in a public place and no one bothered
to turn around. "The stones are innee ocean," he shouted. "And
Ponte, well, I'm like tryin' to work out a way to smooth things
over with him."

"You?"

"Whaddya sound so fucking surprised for,
Sal? Ya sound like my goddamn brother."

Sal waited for an ambulance to go careening
past. "Hey, Joey man, don't get touchy. I didn't know you were
involved, is all."

"Well, I am. Didn't wanna be, but there it
is. But Sal, here's the thing. Right now I'm playing for some time.
Ponte's goons, I don't think they know it yet that Gino slipped
'em. If they find out before I get things organized—"

Some jerk burned rubber coming out of the
toll booth, and Sal Giordano interrupted through the screech.
"Joey, whoa, I don't like the sounda this. I don't like you fucking
with these guys."

"Sal, man, who's fucking? I'm just tryin' to
straighten things out. You worry too much."

Sal considered this. He was a street guy
from New York; of course he worried. "O.K., Joey, maybe you're
right, maybe I do. But maybe you worry too little. Warm weather,
sunshine—maybe it's makin' you calmer than is good for you."

Joey yanked his mind away from that
possibility like a hand from a hot stove. "Sal, listen, right now
there's nothin' I can do but what I'm doin'. So do me a favor. If
Gino's dumb enough to show his face up there, tell him to hide it
again. Can ya do that for me?"

"Sure, kid, sure." Joey didn't like the flat
way he said it.

"And if he starts tellin' ya how brave and
clever he was down here, don't believe a fucking word."

Sal laughed over the roar of an ancient
Pontiac without a muffler. "I haven't for years," he screamed.

"Well, you're smarter than I am, Sal. Me, I
only caught on inna last coupla weeks. How's my old man doing?"

There was a pause, and Joey could picture
Sal shrugging, the way some of the flesh of his thick neck crinkled
up and almost touched his earlobes. "Doin' O.K. He's under some
strain, but hey, he's used to that."

"Tell him I said hello."

"O.K."

"Ya know, Sal, I been thinking. The way I
left without seeing him, that was wrong. It was, like, small. You
can tell him I said that if you want to. Or I'll talk to him myself
one a these days."

Joey's friend said nothing. A cement mixer
came galumphing into Queens. At the Key West lunch counter, a cook
dropped a scoopful of shrimp salad into the hollow of an
avocado.

"And what about you, Sal?" Joey resumed.
"When you gonna get your pale ass down here?"

"One a these days," Sal said. It was that
flat tone again, the tone that neighborhood guys used with people
they couldn't protect, and Joey tried not to notice that it scared
him.

"Those sunglasses ya gave me, Sal, I wear
'em every day."

"Every day?" shouted Sal. He sounded
skeptical. "How' bout when it rains?"

"It don't, Sal. This is what I'm tellin' ya.
It's fucking unbelievable down here."

—
39 —

Saturday evening was particularly warm, with
a yellow sky smeared with wisps of unmoving purple cloud. Steve the
naked landlord, his ashtrays and his beers in front of him, his
shriveled genitals nested under the cliff of his belly, lingered
especially late in the pool. He was standing there bare-assed when
Zack and Claire arrived, and Joey had no choice but to introduce
him.

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

Steve turned the damp paperback over and
looked at the cover to remind himself. The cover showed a large
city breaking in half. "Earthquake," he said. "Los Angeles." Then
he smiled.

Joey steered his guests toward a big bowl of
raw vegetables on the outdoor table, and as he did so he studied
Claire. Claire did not look like Joey expected. She was pretty
enough, with tightly curled brown hair and hazel eyes, but she
didn't have Zack's knack of looking just so without seeming to be
trying. She appeared to be the type for whom blouses would not stay
tucked in, for whom tabs on zippers would not lie flat. When she
dressed up, the effort showed, kind of like a painting that had
looked better as a sketch.

She plunged a celery stalk into a bowl of
dip, and Joey watched with interest because he'd voted against the
vegetables. "Sandra," he'd said, "isn't it a little much? I mean,
we're gonna have that gigantic salad and all."

"Joey," she'd said, "women like that stuff.
Just pour the drinks, grill the steaks, and let me plan the rest,
O.K.?"

He'd shrugged. Giving a dinner party, like
having a job, like reading a nautical chart, had its own rules, its
own logic. If women liked raw vegetables on top of raw salad on top
of cooked broccoli on top of melon balls for dessert, so be it.

Sandra had also lobbied for some dishes and
some silverware that matched.

"It's a waste, Sandra. We're moving
soon."

That was the first she'd heard about moving,
and Joey let it slip as casually as if he'd said he was going out
to gas up the car. Sandra didn't believe it, and besides, she
hadn't had time to make it a discussion just then. "So we'll take
them with us," she said. Practical, precise, and forward-looking as
always, she added, "I'll save the boxes."

Again Joey had shrugged, and Sandra bought a
set of plain white plates and some stainless with blue plastic
handles. The matching stuff did make the table look better. Joey
had to admit it.

Now he was asking Zack and Claire what they
wanted to drink. They both said wine, and Joey wondered why he'd
bothered buying all those different-shaped bottles of liquor.

When Bert the Shirt arrived, the two couples
were sitting on the edges of lounge chairs, Claire with her feet
dangling in the pool. The sky had faded, the palm fronds were
drooping limp as flags. From halfway down the gravel path, Bert was
motioning to Joey that he shouldn't bother getting up.

He looked splendid, Bert did. His white hair
was combed back tight, and aside from the nicotine-bronze tinge in
it, there was almost, in the dimming light, a suggestion of pink.
His shirt was the purplish black of ripe olives, with bone buttons
and pale blue piping the same color as the monogram. He held his
chihuahua in the crook of his arm, and gave a stately little nod of
his head when Joey introduced him.

Claire, a lover of all small animals,
reached up to pet the pooch. "What a cute little dog," she
said.

"He's not cute," said Bert the Shirt. "He
looks ridiculous, he's a hypochondriac, and he's got a lousy—"

"Don Giovanni?" came a caressing voice from
the far side of the pool. "He's very cute." The voice was Claude's.
He and Peter had just emerged from their cottage. It was Dress-Up
Night at Cheeks, and the bartenders wore lame. Peter's was silver,
Claude's was gold.

"Oh, hi, fellas," said Bert. "Youse look
terrific." Then he turned his attention back to Claire and back to
the subject of the chihuahua. "This dog," he said, "this dog is the
bane a my life, a stone around my neck. Joey, I tell ya the latest
about this dog? The latest aggravation? Dog needs sunglasses."

"Come on," said Joey.

"Yeah," said Bert. He held the chihuahua
forward like a loaf of bread. "His eyes heah? The whaddyacallit,
the pupils, they don't close right. See all that black? That
shouldn't be. The light shoots straight inta his brain. He needs
shades, I'm tellin' ya."