Sunburn (27 page)

———

"Someone to see you," said Marge Fogarty, standing in the doorway of Arty's office at around three that afternoon. "Who?"

"One of the men who was here the other day. The white one."

"Ah shit," said Arty. He had a new lover with whom he was smitten, he was having a marvelous day. Why spoil it sparring with Mark Sutton? "Tell him I'm not here."

"He says it's important."

"Of course he does. I'm out."

Marge shrugged, but as she turned to go she nearly walked into the stocky agent's rippled chest. "I distinctly asked you to wait outside," she scolded.

Sutton ignored her. "It is important," he said to Arty. "And you're in."

"You ever been sued for harassment?" Arty asked him.

At this the young cop could not suppress an impish smile. He took the question as a compliment. Three years with the Bureau, he knew how things worked: You wanted a lifetime as a street agent, you followed procedures, went by the book. You wanted to make a hot career, you took some chances, tested the limits. Instead of answering Arty's question, he said, "I have something I think you'd like to see."

Arty frowned. Marge Fogarty discreetly withdrew. Sutton approached the editor's desk, reached into the small briefcase he was carrying, and produced a glossy eight-by-ten of Debbi Martini and Bert d'Ambrosia.

"So?"

"Nice-looking young woman," said Sutton.

"A little tall for you," said Arty.

Sutton gave a quick wince, erased it by flexing muscles. "Apparently just right for you."

"Meaning?"

"We've been watching you. We've been watching her. It seems, to put it delicately, that the two of you have become an item."

"Listen," the agent resumed. "I'm not your enemy. I'm trying to help you out. Your lady-friend here—you know she's on probation on a drug charge?"

Arty tried not to look surprised. But he couldn't help glancing at the picture of Debbi, the wide and avid eyes, the smile so big it was almost goofy. Steeling himself, he said, "This is Key West, Sutton. Am I supposed to be scandalized?"

"Scandalized? No. But I thought you might be a little bit concerned."

Arty said nothing, struggled to hold his face together. A nasty glozing doubt had suddenly sprung up to mock him. Reluctant Arty. Cautious Arty. What did he really know about this woman he'd fallen into bed with? Only that she had a trusting, life-embracing gaze and an exhilarating way of shrugging. Only that she seemed the greatest thing that had happened to him in as long as he could remember.

"She was caught red-handed with cocaine," Sutton hammered on. "Not a little stash for personal use. A lot of cocaine."

"You're telling me she's a dealer?"

"I'm telling you she got off with a suspended sentence and probation. Part of the probation—no contact with felons. Like Gino. Like Vincente. Arty, listen to me. We tell what we know, we show the pictures, she goes away for two, three years. She won't be the same person when she gets out, believe me."

Arty sat. Something seemed to be pushing down on his shoulders, sapping the starch from his posture. He thought about thrall. The thrall of his pledges to Vincente, now the more visceral thrall of desire, of the joyful and reckless beginnings of love. He looked at the picture of Debbi, then said miserably to Sutton, "Just what the hell do you want from me?"

By way of reply, the agent reached into his briefcase again. He pulled out an infrared image of Arty and Vincente at the metal table on Joey's patio, placed it next to the other photo. Vincente had his finger raised in a Socratic gesture. Arty had his notebook on his lap.

"I think the pictures tell the story," said Mark Sutton. "You lied about why you go to that house, Mr. Magnus. You looked us in the eye and you lied. But OK, no hard feelings. Let's keep it practical. Over here, you've got the girl. Over here, the Godfather. You can protect one of them, Mr. Magnus. You can't protect both."

Arty splayed his hands out on his desk, let out a long slow breath. Behind him the droning air conditioner dribbled condensation onto the rotting floor.

"I'd like to know what you're hiding," said the agent. "Maybe you'd like to tell me what you and Delgatto talk about. Maybe you'd like to show me what's in that little notebook."

"And if I tell you it's got nothing to do with you?"

Sutton frowned down at the picture of Debbi Martini. "I think we both know that's not good enough," he said.

"Certain things in life," the Godfather was saying, "they just ain't supposed ta happen."

He and Arty were sitting around the low metal table on Joey Goldman's patio. It was dusk. The still swimming pool gave off a sapphire glow; in the west, behind the aralia hedge, slabs of flat red cloud were squeezed between layers of green and yellow sky.

"A child dies," Vincente said. "Shouldn't happen. A beautiful woman gets a cancer in her breast. A rotten son of a bitch gets to de end of his life wit'out it ever catches up wit' 'im. A son turns against his father. These things make any sense to you, Ahty?"

The ghostwriter sat with his spiral notebook spread open on his lap. His cheap pen was in his hand. Now and then he broke through his own preoccupations long enough to scrawl a phrase, but his mind wandered. For the first time he thought he truly understood what Vincente meant when he spoke of being overstuffed with secrets.

"On'y way it makes any sense at all," the Godfather went on, "is if ya figure maybe there's some crazy balance, it's got nothin' ta do wit' good and bad, right and wrong, who deserves a break and who deserves a hot poker up de ass, it's just some crazy way that things, like, average out."

Slowly, stiffly, the old man reached forward toward his glass of wine. Arty watched him. He didn't look tired, exactly; he looked drained and jittery together, at that point of fatigue and strain where one has forgotten what it is to rest. His hand trembled slightly as he raised his glass; his lower lip pushed out to meet the rim as in an awkward unsure kiss. Then he said, "An' this is where God comes into it. Ya see what I'm sayin', Ahty?"

"No, Vincente, I don't think I do."

"If it's all just averaging out, random like ... I mean, lemme ask ya this. Which d'ya think is worse: Ya don't b'lieve in God at all; or ya wanna b'lieve, ya try, but ya look around and y'end up sayin', Wait a second, what kinda cruel sick bastard could He be? I mean really, which is worse?"

For this Arty had no answer. The Godfather didn't seem to notice. He took a wheezing breath and reached under the lapel of his satin smoking jacket.

"OK," he went on. "So say it all comes down t'averaging out. So whaddya do? Ya do what ya can ta help the percentages, improve your odds. An' 'at's where this comes in."

He pulled his hand out of his jacket. It was holding the snub-nosed .38.

Arty's mouth fell open. He'd never seen a gun in someone's hand so close to him. It looked obscene, disgusting. The barrel had a dull industrial sheen, the muzzle was dark as the bottom of a mine.

"Yeah, ya get yourself a gun," the Godfather resumed, absendy gesturing with the weapon, "an' ya tell yourself you're helping your chances, improving your odds, it's less likely you're gonna be the one that gets fucked. But ya know what, Ahty? Y'ain't doin' nothin' about your odds. Nothin' ya do does nothin'. That's the joke. Innee end, things either work out or they don't."

He broke off, slowly waved the gun, put it softly on the metal table. Arty's eyes followed it down, and he was visited by an ugly thought. Perhaps Vincente really was just a criminal and nothing more, as mean and vulgar and unredeemed as Mark Sutton made him out to be. Could there be any virtue in standing up for such a man, any goodness or even any sense in sacrificing others on the crooked altar of promises made to him?

Vincente was looking off toward the west, at the fading clouds. His tunnel eyes were out of focus. After a time he said, "But where was I goin' wit' this?"

Arty put his notebook down, leaned far forward, his forearms on his knees. "Vincente, you OK?"

The old man didn't react right away. Then he put on a masked wry smile, scratched behind an ear. Was he OK? This was not a question he was often asked. Of course he was OK. He was the Boss, the elder, the one who knew. He had to be OK; why bother asking?

Why bother answering? Instead, he said, "Ah, I remember now. The gun. I'm showin' ya the gun because I was thinkin', this book we were doin', it woulda been nice ta leave the gun out of it, like, ya know, it didn't exist, wasn't part a the story. Like we could say Vincente Delgatto wasn't a punk, he was a man wit' some dignity, maybe he knew a couple things. But ya couldn't leave the gun out, Ahty, ya couldn't pretty it up like that—"

"The book we
were
doing, Vincente?"

The old man pulled up short. His mouth worked a couple of seconds before sound came out. "Before things got all fucked up. Before it got too dangerous."

A yellow light came on just inside the house. Joey, carrying the enormous pasta bowl, appeared in the doorway and told them it was time for dinner. He saw his father's revolver glinting dully on the table and pretended he did not.

When he'd withdrawn, Arty said, "Vincente, you and me, we have a deal. You don't just break it off like that. The deal lives as long as we do, remember?"

The old man's eyes stung, he rolled his tangled brows down to hide them. Talking through that book, easing his mind—it was as close as he was ever going to come to salvation, but he wasn't going to get anybody killed for it. Bitterly, he said, "The deal lives unless it doesn't."

He put his hands on the arms of his chair, and began the arduous process of getting to his feet. Arty closed his notebook and wondered if he'd just been released from his pledges, wondered how he would know honor from treachery, gallantry from treason, beyond the strict bounds of his promise.

Perversely, his gaze was pulled toward one last look at Vincente's thuggish weapon; somehow the Godfather had already stashed it. He must have been wicked quick when he was young, the writer thought.

———

Gino Delgatto, wearing borrowed clothes that didn't fit exactly right, drove his rented T-Bird south on Seven Mile Bridge, on his way to murder Arty Magnus.

The thought of Arty dead didn't trouble him in the least. In fact his own world would seem considerably less cluttered without this skinny brainy Jew outsider who had somehow wormed his way into his father's confidence, was taking money from the old man while seducing him onto a course that could only end in family humiliation and disaster. A book! A public guts-pilling! And meanwhile this nobody is skimming off his five grand every month and getting tighter with Vincente every day, getting to be real buddies, confidants. He had to go.

Still, Gino wished there was someone else to do the killing. He drove under the starry sky between the Atlantic and the Gulf, barreled past the muck-anchored pylons that carried power to Key West at the end of the line, and wished to hell that Pretty Boy and Bo had done the job. It would have been so neat that way; it would have been over with by now.

Who knew about this FBI connection? Who knew even now how far it went? So Messina had thrown it back on Gino. That was the deal—if you could call it a deal. He killed the writer, he was given absolution; he didn't kill the writer, he'd better not buy green bananas. If the writer was wired, if the Feds were watching him, that was Gino's problem; he would take the fall.

Gino chuckled over that one as he drove. Him take the fall? In a world of ratouts and gut-spillings, him be the only sucker that keeps his mouth shut? Not likely. Worse came to worse, the Feds nailed him murder one, he'd sing; he'd sing so loud they'd think Caruso had come back. The kind of information he could give them . . .

What kind of information
could
he give them? He was the Godfather's son, OK. But what did he know, what could he tell, that would give the prosecutors a bigger hard-on than a sure conviction on murder one?

Right offhand, Gino couldn't think of anything, and for a single awful moment he doubted he was as important as he liked to think he was. He banished the thought, watched a moonlit pelican fly next to the road. He wouldn't need to cut a deal. The killing would go just fine. To reassure himself, he reached a hand into the pocket that held the nine-millimeter pistol graciously lent by Charlie Ponte. It made him confident that the odds were heavily on his side.

In the cramped kitchen of a fourth-floor walkup on Sullivan Street, Bert the Shirt d'Ambrosia, his monogrammed cuffs rolled up past his elbows, was making meatballs, while his sniffly chihuahua lay on the cracked linoleum, content in its master's nearness and in the homey smells of meat and garlic and frying onions.

The old mobster, humming tunelessly, sculpted a hollow into the big raw mound of blended beef and pork and broke an egg in it. He kneaded the mixture through the fingers of both hands; it made squishy sounds as the egg yolk ran and bubbled. Then he split the gooey mass into two batches.

He went to the doorway and peeked through it into the living room. Bo, who believed that people should keep up with things, was sitting rapt in front of the evening news, frowning at earthquakes and warlords. He wasn't getting up anytime real soon.

Bert went back to the counter and reflected on how lucky he was in his jailer. Bo had been nothing but considerate, gentlemanly. He'd taken Bert uptown to the Stafford, let him gather up his things, even carried his bag for him. Downtown again, they'd walked Don Giovanni together, shopped for dinner like roommates, met Pretty Boy for a drink at a bar on Bleecker Street. The handsome thug moved from speedy to opinionated, in what seemed the early stages of a night of getting blotto, but Bo had remained a pleasant companion all the while.