Sunburn (13 page)

"Ya shoulda seen it," the retired mobster was saying. "Ya shoulda seen it!" His white hair with its pink-bronze glints was less than perfectly in place, the big sleeves of his salmon-colored linen shirt were quivering. "Jesus, ya hadda see it. It was beautiful."

"Wha', Bert?" Joey said. "What was beautiful?"

"Don Giovanni," said the Shirt. He lifted the chihuahua in his upturned palms, and it did seem that the tiny creature was proud of itself. Its whiskers turned upward at a jaunty, almost rakish angle, and its black nose sniffed the air with a quickened curiosity about the wonders of the outside world.

"Wha'd he do?" asked the Godfather.

Bert paused, looked momentarily confused. "
Marrone
, Vincente, I gotta paint ya a picture?"

No one reacted. The awkward silence only seemed to drive the doting dog owner onward.

"We were onna beach," he said. "I gave 'im the flaxseeds, just like Debbi said. She's a peach, that kid, I'm gonna send 'er flowers—Sandra, don't lemme forget. S'anyway, we're onna beach, walkin' along, almost sunset, and the Don goes inta his squat. I'm thinkin', Oh Christ, here we go again, another failed attempt. He hunkers down inna coral, gets comfortable, looks up at me with those pathetic white eyes. I see the muscles start strainin' in 'is sides, I'm like heartbroken. Then whaddya know? The breakthrough! I don't know who was more surprised, me or the dog. ... He shifts around a little, finishes his business, I swear ta God he smiles. Yeah, smiles! Then he starts kickin' like crazy. Sand, rocks—I mean, he's
excavatin
. He prances off like a fuckin' whaddycallit, a Clydesdale, like he could lick the world, the little stud."

Arty rose, smiled, extended his right hand. From his left dangled the spiral notebook, and Bert the Shirt, confused, abashed, but never altogether out of it, didn't fail to notice.

"Glass a wine?" Vincente said. "Piece a cheese?"

"Nah, Vincente, nah," said Bert. "I'm interruptin'. I shouldn'ta come bargin' in like this, but I was all worked up. I hadda tell someone."

"We're honored it was us," said Sandra. "Come inside, have a cup of coffee."

Bert shook his head. "Thanks, nah. The truth? I'm like emotionally drained, I gotta go lay down." He started turning, then hefted the chihuahua the way a butcher hefts a steak before slapping it on the scale. "But ya know, I don't think it's my imagination. The dog is definitely lighter. Ahty, nice ta meet ya."

He went into the house. Sandra and Joey followed him.

Arty settled back into his chair, put his notebook on the low metal table. The atmosphere had gotten churned up, like water when a big boat passes; he waited for the air to flatten out. He refilled Vincente's wineglass and his own; the two men batted a shy droll smile back and forth.

After a time, the ghostwriter said, "So Vincente, we were talking about authority."

A cloud crossed the moon. It seemed to carry with it a parcel of wind that rattled the aralia hedge and put choppy little ripples in the pool. "Ah," said the Godfather. "Were we?"

Gino was feeling so pleased with himself that he spent the night at the Eden Roc in Miami Beach and availed himself of the services of a five-hundred-dollar popsy. In the morning his eyes itched, his mouth felt woolly, and the hot glary ride to Key West was four hours of irritation. When, around one, he opened the door to his top-floor oceanfront room at Flagler House, all he wanted was to crawl into bed and complete his short night's sleep.

Debbi wasn't there, and the first thing he noticed was the vase stuffed full of extravagant roses, so red they were purple. He narrowed his eyes, lumbered suspiciously to the dresser, and read the little folded card that lay next to a fallen petal. A jolt of blind jealousy flashed through him, lighting up his gut and his muscles; the adrenaline left a glow like the tail of a comet. Had Debbi been there, he would have berated her on the spot, maybe grabbed her hair while demanding an explanation. But she wasn't there, and he was sleepy. With no one watching, no one to defend his honor to, his spasm of rage soon petered out. He drew the curtains, stripped, and went to sleep.

Around three, Debbi came up from the beach. She unlocked the door; the click and the squeak brought Gino past the last stages of his nap. His righteous jealousy woke up with him. Debbi slipped into the room, dark save for the wand of sunlight that squeezed between the panels of the drapes, and the first thing she heard was, "Who the fuck is Don?"

She was wearing flip-flops; there was sand between her toes. She stepped out of the rubber thongs and said, "Gino, what're you talking about?"

"One night I'm away," he rasped, "and you're fuckin' around. I oughta slap ya silly."

"I'm turning a light on, Gino. Cover your eyes."

She switched on a night table lamp. The yellow gleam showed Gino propped on pillows, a wrinkled sheet around him like bunting. His skin was blotched with sleep, his face was wrinkled. He looked like a gigantic hairy newborn.

"So who is 'e?" he insisted. Then he put on a fey and sour voice and quoted the little card. "
You set me free. Don Giovanni
. What kinda faggot poetry bullshit is 'at?"

Debbi slipped out of the smock she wore over her bathing suit. Sunburn had freckled her shoulders; wisps of red hair escaped from the clip at the nape of her neck and tickled the peeling skin. "You're pathetic, Gino." She wanted a shower. She went into the bathroom and locked the door behind her.

Gino sat bolt upright in the bed. His glands were telling him he'd been insulted, wronged; now he couldn't even get an answer to his question. Naked, hairy, furious, he bounded off the mattress, lumbered to the bathroom, and hammered on the door. "Who is 'e, goddammit?"

Debbi turned the shower on, got ready to step in.

"Answer me, you tramp!" screamed Gino.

Serenely, Debbi eased herself into the hot rain of hissing spray. Gino punched the door. Then he slammed it with his shoulder; the wood creaked on the hinges. Debbi thought, Oh hell, let's not have the police. She reached around the shower curtain and undid the lock. Gino bulled against the door again. This time it opened easily. The big man's momentum carried him skating naked across the damp tiles of the bathroom floor. He bounced off the far wall, hit his chin on a towel rack, and ended up sitting on the toilet. He'd used it last; the seat was up.

Gino said nothing, just sat there on the pot. Debbi poked her wet head from behind the curtain. "Maybe you should take one too, Gino. Improve your disposition. When we gettin' outa here?"

The big man shifted on the lip of the bowl, groped for a way to get on top of things again. "Gettin' out?" he said. "You're the one who's always sayin' why don't we stay awhile, settle in."

It was Debbi's turn not to answer. She put her head under the full force of the shower, reveled in the streaming oblivion of it. She was over wanting to settle in. She'd crossed the line. Probably she'd crossed it days before, but now she knew she'd crossed it. All she wanted now was to be done with Gino.

———

At around four o'clock that afternoon, Marge Fogarty, the silver-haired copy editor and receptionist at the Key West
Sentinel
, stepped into Arty Magnus's cubicle and told him there were two men who wanted to see him.

The editor looked up from his computer screen. "Who are they?"

"They wouldn't say," said Marge.

"Dirt-bags? Crackpots?" That's who usually clamored for the attention of newspaper editors: people with festering grievances, paranoid obsessions, people who had worn out the ears of everyone they knew.

Marge peeked over the top of her bifocals. "They don't look local and they seem respectable."

Arty gave a resigned shrug, and Marge went to fetch the visitors.

In a moment she was back with a white man and a black man. The black man was tall, with wide-spaced eyes and a grayish dusky skin; his hair was silver on the sides and he was fastidiously dressed in pleated poplin trousers and a mint-green oxford-cloth shirt. The white man was short and knobby; he wore khaki shorts and a polo shirt whose banded sleeves were snug against his bulging triceps.

"What can I do for you?" Arty said to them, polite but not too welcoming.

For a moment they didn't speak. They waited for Marge Fogarty to withdraw, waited to see if she would close the door to Arty Magnus's office. But this was Key West; there was no door. The only modicum of privacy was afforded by the rumbling, groaning air conditioner at the editor's back. The FBI men eased forward to get within the shadow of its noise and presented their credentials.

Arty glanced at the badges, the ID cards. He felt a flutter of that absurd inchoate guilt that even saints must feel when confronted on any pretext by a cop. He tried to smile but his lips stuck to his teeth. "What brings you to Key West?"

If this was the old we-know-that-you-know game, Mark Sutton had no patience for it. "A friend of yours," he jumped right in. "You visited with him last night. You arrived by bicycle at six-thirty-six
p.m.,
you left at eight-fourteen. We took the liberty of following you home."

Arty folded his hands in front of him. He did not consciously decide to fib; he fibbed, rather, on a protective hunch, an instinct, though he could not have said who he was protecting, or precisely why. "You mean Joey Goldman? Yeah, he's a friend of mine. But what—"

It dawned on Arty quite suddenly that his guests were standing and he was sitting. His tiny office had no extra seats. Fetching a couple might be a good way to gain some time to think. Rising, he said, "Lemme grab some chairs—"

"We don't need to sit," Mark Sutton said. He leaned down, not very far, and put his palms on Arty's desk. "Do you know who Joey Goldman's father is?"

Arty sat again, considered. He'd blurted one fib already; that he could forgive himself. But two fibs made a lie, and soon there was a pattern, a universe of lies, and the thought of that put a sick taste in his mouth, a revolting taste as of biting into something rotten. "Yeah," he said. "I know."

The young agent gave a vindicated nod, then blew his nose into a red bandanna. "He's a lifelong criminal. A dangerous man. Scum."

"He sits in the shade and putters in the garden," Arty could not help answering. "Not very dangerous as far as I can see."

Ben Hawkins crossed his arms; his crisp clothes all but creaked as he changed positions. "No offense, Mr. Magnus, but you can't see very far. A few weeks ago, there was a gangland killing in New York—"

"I've read about it," Arty said.

"All right then," said Ben Hawkins. "Listen, we're here for information. You know these people. You're welcome in their house. ..."

Arty splayed his hands out on his desk. Behind him, the ancient air conditioner dribbled out a drop of condensation that splashed dully on the rotting floor. Tension was crawling up the back of his neck and making his scalp clamp down around his brain, and yet he almost smiled. He was hearing Vincente rasp and rattle on about authority. You can accept it, resist it, become it, or just shut your mouth and try to live an unbowed life as though you were free to decide things for yourself.

"Sorry," said Arty. "I like these people. You guys, I don't know you from Adam. I don't want to get involved."

"It's your duty as a citizen to be involved," said Sutton.

That made Arty scratch an ear. He was at the age when he'd just begun to notice that there were people in the world who were considerably greener, sillier, more confidently stupid than himself.

Ben Hawkins understood that his partner had laid an egg. He took another tack. "You know what the RICO statute is, Mr. Magnus?"

"Sure."

"Not a favorite law of mine. But our boss enjoys noodling around with it. Personally, I think he stretches it a little far, tries to make it reach all the way to friends of friends. Bottom line—you can't always pick where you're involved."

Arty poked his tongue around inside his cheek. To his surprise, he was feeling feisty, getting mad. "Gentlemen," he said, "my dealings with cops have been limited to my work as a reporter. So bear with me if I seem a little slow. Are you threatening me?"

Mark Sutton looked at Ben Hawkins from underneath his mat of too-neat hair. Hawkins's eyes were urging him to go easy, but of course the young agent did not. "Threatening?" he said. "No. Not threatening. Not yet. Just suggesting that it might be in your interests to cooperate with us."

He reached for his wallet, coaxed it from his back pocket, past the knotted muscles of his buttocks.

He produced a business card, let it flutter down onto Arty's blotter. "Maybe you'll reconsider."

The agents left. Arty leaned back in his chair, his wet shirt stuck to his shoulders. He picked up the card with the Bureau seal and made a move toward the wastebasket; then, without quite knowing why he did it, he dropped it into the back of his Rolodex instead.

Vincente was home alone when Gino and his bim came to say goodbye the following afternoon.

In a shady spot out by the pool, the father and the son embraced, but things were wrong between them, the clasp was awkward; chest to chest they came no closer than before.