Florida Straits (36 page)

"Did you love my mother?"

For some moments Vincente Delgatto did not
answer. He stared down at the damp tiles around the pool, at his
polished shoes. He was still a married man. It was not proper to
discuss such things. But Joey had received so little and was asking
for so little now.

"Yes," the father said. "I loved her very
much."

Joey nodded. "I'm glad. She loved you too.
You ever think of being with her? I mean, really being with
her?"

The old man retreated behind his filmy eyes
and scudded backward through the decades, back to the times when,
just as now, his errors had both mattered more and mattered less.
"Often," he said, in that voice that was like a rumble underground.
"Every time we could get away, ya know, to someplace peaceful.
Every time I held her in my arms. But Joey, I couldn't do it. I
couldn't."

"I know you couldn't, Pop," said Joey
Goldman. He reached out and put a hand on his father's. From inside
the bungalow, he faintly heard the whoosh and plunk of Sandra
getting out of the bathtub. She was so neat, Sandra was, so
precise. By now she'd have a towel tucked under her arms, she'd be
wiping the steam off the mirror to brush her hair. "I'm glad you
thought of it at least, Pop, I really am. I'm glad you were, like,
romantic."

— Epilogue
—

Charlie Ponte's emeralds were appraised at
three million two hundred and ten thousand dollars. But Joey was
mistaken in imagining that his one-third share, discreetly
registered under the name Zack Davidson, would break out at seven
figures. In his newfound enthusiasm for all things legitimate, he'd
overlooked the one great disincentive to doing things the lawful
way: taxes. The disbursed funds were just under eight hundred
thousand per partner.

Charlie Ponte took this graciously. He could
afford to. The Colombians seemed mainly amused that he'd gotten his
stones heisted; they seemed, as well, reassured at the disorganized
state of the Italian-American mafia. They added three million
dollars' worth of free cocaine to Ponte's next shipment and told
him not to lose it.

Zack himself, ever the gentleman, insisted
on giving up a proportionate fraction of the quarter-million Joey
had promised him.

Joey brought home something shy of six
hundred thousand, and tried without success to give part of it
away. Bert the Shirt d'Ambrosia would not accept a penny beyond
Gino's repayment of his ten-thousand dollar loan. "But Bert," Joey
had argued, "nunna this coulda happened without you. It was you
that started me thinkin' about a scam that fits the climate. You
helped with—"

The old man had stopped him with a wave of
his elegant, long-fingered hand. "Joey, I got what I need." Then he
paused. "You wanna do something for me?"

"Yeah, Bert. This is what I'm saying."

"Here's what you can do." He held Don
Giovanni in his palm and lifted the tiny animal toward Joey's face.
"The fucking dog, if I die again, I mean for good this time,
promise me you'll take care a the dog. It's like a curse from my
wife, I'm passing it along."

Vincente Delgatto gave an admiring chortle
when Joey confessed to him how he'd finagled a third of the
treasure, but he also declined to share in his younger son's
windfall. "No, Joey," he'd said, his profound voice thinned out by
the wires of the pay phone a discreet distance from his social
club. "From Gino I'd take because to Gino I've given. But from you,
no, I'd be ashamed."

The Don, however, did accept a first-class
round trip ticket to Key West to attend Joey and Sandra's wedding.
He was accompanied by best man Sal Giordano, to whom Joey had also
sent the finest pair of sunglasses he could find. Gino Delgatto was
invited but did not attend. Perhaps he did not want to chance being
spotted at the reception at the Flagler House, where he—or rather,
Dr. Greenbaum—still owed a tab of nearly eleven thousand
dollars.

Joey and Sandra were married in a civil
ceremony on a blisteringly hot day in the middle of June. Outside
the courthouse, the palm trees rustled dryly, sounding like a broom
on a sidewalk; smells of jasmine and iodine wafted through the
dusty air. The bride wore a cream-colored skirt and a matching
blouse with shoulders built in. She'd tried to get tan for her
wedding day, but had managed mostly to turn her short hair nearly
white. She flushed a becoming pink during the ceremony; her green
eyes moistened and shimmered like the calm and prosperous
ocean.

Bride and groom held hands as the vows were
pronounced, and Joey Goldman made no attempt to choke down the lump
in his throat. He took in the grand words pronounced in a somewhat
hurried monotone by the judge, and in his own mind he distilled
them down to an essence from which he took enormous comfort: "To
make, ya know, a life together. Do stuff, look out for each other.
It's, like, serious."

Suddenly awash both in romance and funds,
Joey had suggested a lavish honeymoon, perhaps in Rio, but Sandra,
practical and steady, had argued for postponement. There was, for
now, too much to be decided. Joey and Zack had agreed in principle
to become partners in business; they had not, however, figured out
what kind of business it should be. In the meantime they were
keeping their jobs at Parrot Beach, conferring as often as time
allowed while leaning on the Plexiglas that covered the pristine
and silent model of the perfect life in Florida, the Saran Wrap
swimming pool and the tiny people on lounges. Sandra was still
working at the bank, but had cut back on her hours so she could
begin to shop for a house. She wanted something small,
unpretentious, easy to keep clean; Joey lobbied for something
grander, hidden behind hedges and banks of bougainvillea, and of
course with a pool.

They looked at many places, and after
looking they would sit in the old Caddy with the smashed windshield
and come up with all sorts of reasons not to buy. The truth was
they were looking for excuses not to move just yet. They had come
to feel an odd affection for the mismatched furnishings and thrown
together people of the compound. It had been, after all, their
first nest in their new life, and the more they thought about it,
and the more they understood they would in fact be moving on, the
more it seemed to them that they'd been very happy there.

#####

ABOUT THE AUTHOR— Laurence
Shames has set eight critically acclaimed novels in Key West, his
former hometown. Now based in California, he is also a prolific
screenwriter and essayist. His extensive magazine work includes a
stint as the Ethics columnist for
Esquire.
In his outings as a
collaborator and ghostwriter, he has penned four
New York Times
bestsellers, under four different names. This might be a
record. To learn more, please visit
http://www.LaurenceShames.com
.

ALSO BY LAURENCE SHAMES—

FICTION—

Scavenger Reef

Sunburn

Tropical Depression

Virgin Heat

Mangrove Squeeze

Welcome to Paradise

The Naked Detective

NON-FICTION

The Big Time

The Hunger for More

Not Fade Away (with Peter Barton)

IF YOU LOVED FLORIDA STRAITS BE SURE TO CATCH
LAURENCE SHAMES' NEW NOVEL

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Laurence Shames

For Marilyn with love,

Knock wood-- How did I get so lucky?

Acknowledgements

Hearty thanks to my editor, Chuck Adams, and
my agent, Stuart Krichevsky, for doing much of the thinking and
most of the worrying, while telling me to just keep writing and
have fun. With them on my side, I did.

And a hug to Edie, who knows what it's
really all about.

"Funerals work best in the rain," said
Robert Natchez.

"It isn't a funeral," said Ray Yates. "It's
a memorial service." Yates licked another swath of salt from the
rim of his glass and sucked on his tequila. He was slightly drunk,
and increasingly fascinated by the wet circles his iced glass left
on the varnished table at Raul's. Natchez ignored him.

"The gray sky, the black umbrellas—humble
separate shelters against the damp—"

"You're a pompous pain in the ass," said
Yates.

"Separate shelters," Natchez murmured. "I
like that."

"It stinks," Yates told him. He wiped his
moist hand on the front of his shirt. The shirt had a pattern of
washed-out palm fronds and small flamingoes with the pink faded
from their plumage.

"Then too," Natchez went on, "there's the
way the rain softens the ground, the way the earth yields, squishes
underfoot. Gentle or horrifying? Embracing the dead body, or
pulling it down like—"

"There is no body." Yates slurped the last
of his drink and gestured for another round. "And it isn't

2

laarutoe Skamts

gonna rain. And people don't get buried
here. They get filed, like in drawers. And you're a morbid
sonofabitch."

They waited for their cocktails. It was
mid-April in Key West, the night air was thick and smelled of old
seaweed and dry shells. On the open roof of the old cafe, the
trellised bougainvillea had darkened to a lewd and tired brownish
pink, the petals were thin and brittl- de as crepe paper. Robert
Natchez was tall, lean, and totally dressed in black. It was not a
token of mourning, it was just the way he dressed.

"I'm sad," he suddenly announced. He sounded
confused by an emotion that could be simply told.

"Augie shouldn't have died," said Ray Yates.
"He was better than any of us, less full of shit, and he shouldn't
have died."

The drinks arrived, the waiter wiped away
the last round's rings of dampness. Overhead, a landing plane
clattered past, bringing more of Augie Silver's many friends to say
goodbye.

*

"He should never have stopped painting,"
said Claire Steiger, towel-drying her curly hair. "I pleaded with
him not to stop."

Her husband nestlded deeper into the hotel
bathrobe and sipped champagne. "Because some mysterious intuition
told you something terrible would happen three years after?" He
fingered the fruit plate provided with the suite at the Flagler
House, and briefly wondered why hotel mangoes were never ripe,
hotel strawberries never red. "Or because his work was keeping the
gallery afloat?"

Claire Steiger had soft brown eyes that kept
their tender look no matter what she said. "The gallery's

doing just fine, Kip. You're the one who's
bankrupt, remember?"

It had been a lousy trip down from New York.
A chilly yellow mist kept them on the La Guardia runway for forty
minutes, which made them miss their connection in Miami, and they'd
sat in the cramped and porous commuter terminal for two hours,
eating jet exhaust and nursing grievances. Claire had spent a long
time in the bath, and her skin still felt like an airport.

"Of course," said Kip Cunningham, "the
canvases are worth a great deal more now that—"

"Kip, shut up. Don't be hateful."

"Hateful?" he echoed. It was a word that
seemed to crop up often in the months since his overextended real
estate company had collapsed under the weight of its debts, its
velvety stationery, and its pretensions to empire. Lawyers were
hateful. Judges were hateful. It was hateful that he could no
longer pay his University Club dues out of company funds, hateful
that creditors held liens against his horses. "Since when is it
hateful to be candid?" he said. "You're in a business like any
other, laddo. Supply and demand. Artist dies, no more supply. Ever.
Prices--"

*

"You're gonna lecture me about capitalism,
Kip? Lecture me about Chapter Eleven."

He poured more champagne and went to the
window. Below, the coconut palms were dead still and threw heavy
moon-shadows across the sand. The calm water of the Florida Straits
gleamed with just a hint of goldish green. "Of course," the husband
went on, his back to his wife, "how can you be rational about art
if you're in love with the artist?"

"Everyone was in love with Augie. That was
Augie."

Kip turned. He was a blandly handsome
man,

4

taumiM, Shame*

smooth-skinned and even-featured, and he now
pulled back his thin lips to show a set of perfect teeth. "Strange,
though, that he could have had the gallery owner—all it would have
taken was a wink, the raise of an eyebrow—and he ran off instead
with the assistant. ... Of course, she was younger. Slimmer. Better
bred, some might say."