Tropical Depression (14 page)

A fidgety Murray moved closer to Franny, just barely brushed her hip with his own. "I'm dying to have some time alone with you," he said.

Murray frowned, chewed an ice cube, felt the idiot frustration of a teenager trying to be suave, thwarted in a make-out quest by a little brother he couldn't shake. "Maybe he'll get tired."

Franny had been packing, traveling all afternoon, the word brought on a yawn. Murray watched her closely in that extravagantly intimate instant before she brought her hand up to her mouth; by sunset light he saw her crowns, her gold and silver fillings, remembered with love the way she sometimes dribbled from one side or the other before the novocaine wore off.

"He won't get tired earlier than me," she said.

Murray hid his disappointment in his glass. Behind them the party buzzed, made clacking, whirring, scratching sounds that swung between the festive and the infernal.

Then Barney LaRue strolled out to the balcony, still uncreased in his perfect summer suit. His presence somehow muffled the party noise, he carried with him a pampered smell of body oil and rich shampoo. He barely glanced at Murray, he made no acknowledgment of Franny. He handed Tommy another drink, pushed it on him really, then stood almost rudely close, assaultingly close. "I'd like to speak with you a moment," he said.

Tommy looked at Murray. Murray raised an eyebrow, took a half-step forward.

"Not you," the politician said. He said it softly but with the inexorable certainty that he would be obeyed. The Bra King stalled, his weight spread indecisively between his feet.

The Indian gave a rueful look, shrugged at his friend, and carried his bourbon toward the living room with its whorls and wreaths of smoke.

Franny turned back toward the sinking sun. "I hate this party," she said. "Do we have to stay much longer?"

Tommy followed LaRue through the ranks of half-crocked functionaries and local busybodies and hangers-on. He followed him down a hallway, past a bathroom with a couple of people lining up to use it, around a bend in the corridor to where the dimmered lighting didn't reach.

LaRue paused momentarily before a closed door. His heart was racing. To be doing this here, now, with a judge in the living room, the press nosing through his home—the sheer nasty baldness of it was as bracing as an ice cube on the scrotum. He gave a furtive glance around, quickly opened the door to his study, hustled Tommy through in front of him.

Inside, sitting at the politician's desk, occupying his regal chair and smoking one of his cigars, was Charlie Ponte, the Mob boss of south Florida.

"Hello, Chief," the mafioso said to Tommy.

"I'm not a chief."

"Sure y'are," said Ponte.

"A chief is elected," Tommy said. "It's an honor to be a chief."

The little man kept on. "You're a chief, I'm a chief. Bahney here, he's a chief. The losers out there"—he jerked a thumb toward the living room—"they're a buncha fuckin' Indians."

Tommy sipped his drink, looked around, noticed Bruno. Bruno was standing hugely in the shadows; he twirled a giant globe, which seemed to fascinate him the way a brightly colored beach ball entrances a gorilla.

"Mr. Ponte's going to be your partner," said LaRue.

Tommy said nothing. Ponte blew a smoke ring, fingered it as it hovered near his face.

"That island of yours," the mobster said. "Handled right, it's an extremely valuable piece of real estate."

"I know that," Tommy said.

"Of course you do," said LaRue. "I'm sure you're very smart about these things. So you'll see the advantage of having a professional like Mr. Ponte on your side."

"I already have a partner, thank you."

LaRue ignored the comment.

"You'll be building a casino," he announced. "Once it's open, you'll get twenty thousand a month, no strings. You'll sign papers, you'll be around for ceremonies. That's all you have to do."

The mobster took a moment to collect himself. He pulled down on the waistband of his silver-zippered jacket, he put on a ghastly smile that stretched the liver-colored sacs beneath his eyes. "All right then," he said pleasantly. "Not Chief. Fuckstick. Listen, Fuckstick, the deal we're offering, the partnership—"

"I have a partner. I told you that."

Ponte stubbed out the cigar on the senator's desk blotter. Bruno sidled closer to Tommy, it was as if a tree had lifted its roots and walked. Tommy smelled B.O. and aftershave.

The mobster pulled his eyes away from the stubborn Indian and asked LaRue: "This partner—'zit the crazy Yid ya tol' me about?"

The senator nodded that it was. Then he looked vengefully at Tommy. "The one who witnessed the treaty. Meddlesome type. Always underfoot. A nuisance."

Ponte rocked in his seat in some ghoulish parody of mirth. "Ya know," he said, "I almost gotta laugh."

Bruno took this as a cue, he came forth with a constipated high-pitched titter that set Tommy's hair on end and started perspiration trickling down his spine.

"A fuckin' nobody," the Boss continued. "A kike amateur. But okay, okay. Ya got a lot on your mind just now. I unnerstand. So take a little time, think things over—"

"There's nothing to think over," said Tommy.

Ponte glanced at Bruno. Bruno leaned down toward the stocky Indian and threw an arm around him, the gesture was almost lovey except that Tommy's collarbones were bending in like the ends of an overdrawn bow.

"I think there is," the mobster said.

Bruno gave a final squeeze then slacked his grip. The Indian felt his skeleton rearranging.

LaRue smiled, never raised his voice. "Tommy," he said, "we realize this is all very new for you, a period of adjustment. But a lot of things will be much easier once you understand we own your red ass now."

Tommy pursed his lips, thought that over. He'd had a lot to drink. He was scared but not as scared as he should have been. He'd come around to being in that bar-brawl frame of mind where there was something sickly fine about being threatened, hit, because it gave you a cherished opportunity to hit back. "You own my ass," he mulled, "you can kiss it anytime you like."

He spun like a halfback, got free of Bruno's grip. The big man made a move toward him, but Ponte, with a lifted eyebrow, called him off. Tommy yanked open the study door and skittered through it, falling prey to the comforting but dangerous illusion that he'd won the skirmish, that the first round was his, that maybe his opponents would retreat.

He wanted badly to believe that, but still, outrage and a seeping dread overtook him in the hallway, caught up suddenly like the panic of realizing you are choking on a piece of steak. All at once his temples were pounding, the bones in his legs felt fused. He lumbered through the maze of hallways, across the crowded smoky living room; he recognized no one, bodies looked warped and wavy, faces were masks with black absences for eyes and smeared red gashes for mouths.

He could barely breathe, he struggled toward the balcony for air, trying vainly to calm himself as he went. He saw Murray standing very close to Franny, whispering to her, their faces silhouetted in the dusk, and instantly he knew what he and his partner had to do: They had to meet this enemy together, stare him down, show him their resolve, and do it now, before the will of the adversary had time to gather and to crest.

He followed Tommy in his headlong ramble through the thinning party, down the lighted hallway, past the bathroom, around the bend to where the corridor was dark. Without knocking, with only the briefest hesitation for a gulp of air, the Indian threw open the study door.

The room was dim, and, standing by an open window, drawing deeply on a glowing joint, was Pascal the houseboy. Mingled with the smell of hemp was the memory of a good cigar and the lingering feral stink of Bruno, but no one else was in the room.

The affronted young man in the bowtie put a hand on a hip and fixed the intruders with a petulant glare. "Do you mind'"' he said.

"Tommy, talk ta me," said Murray.

The Indian said nothing for a moment, his face was twisted with rage and confusion and fear and relief. "Never mind," he said, in what he took for triumph. "The chickenshits are gone already."

They gathered up Franny and were out the door without saying their goodbyes.

That evening they had a romantic candlelit dinner for three.

They sat in a quiet garden under an enormous breadfruit tree. Bougainvillea flowers, thin and dry as tracing paper, chattered softly against a latticework fence. Overhead, a tired Orion was laboring up the steep late-winter sky, his brilliance dimmed by an eggshell-white half-moon.

They got their drinks, and after they'd clinked glasses, Murray said, "So Tommy, ya wanna tell me what went on in there?"

The Indian didn't want to. With great difficulty he'd composed himself, he didn't want to get riled again. He'd persuaded himself he'd handled the confrontation very well; but that belief was fragile, he didn't want to mess with it.

"I probably made more of it than it deserves," he said.

"Made more of
what
?" asked Murray.

Tommy sipped bourbon, said nothing. It wasn't the time, the place, he didn't want to go into it in front of Franny.

"What was it you made too much of?" Murray pressed. "This is what I'm asking."

"I just had to talk to one person too many. Let's leave it at that."

"So who was the one person?"

Tommy shook his head and blubbered his lips like he was under a too-cold shower, then turned to Murray's ex. "Franny, can I ask you something? When you were married to this guy, was he always in your face like this?"

"Constantly," she said.

"Always yammering?"

"Except when he was sulking."

"Always pushing, pushing into things the other person doesn't wanna talk about?"

"That's Murray," Franny said.

The Bra King, drinking wine now, was just slightly juiced; he heard, or thought he heard, or longed to hear a note of unquenchable fondness, of acceptance, in Franny's voice. It put a lump in his throat and he hid behind his menu.

Tommy and Franny, on terms now, Murray's relentlessness a bond between them, carried on just fine without him.

"Your necklace," said the Indian. He was suddenly voluble, happy to talk about anything except LaRue and Ponte and Bruno. "Amber. The Matalatchee word for that is
tabtukahti
."

Franny tried to say it.

"No," said Tommy. "More bite in the
ts
." He leaned forward, pressed his tongue between his slightly parted teeth, then squeezed a little burst of air out of his throat. He made a sound that was more than just a consonant but wasn't quite a syllable. "Ttuh."

"Ttuh," said Franny, but hers wasn't quite as hard-edged as the Indian's, it didn't really pop.

Tommy demonstrated again. This time he used his hand to show how the air climbed up his neck and blurted with a small explosion from his face. "Ttuh."

"Ttuh," said Franny.

Now Murray could no longer resist joining in.

"Ttuh," he said. But he had too much moisture in his mouth and his puff of air was too diffuse, he made a soggy sound, a little like a fart.

"Watch," said Tommy. Both hands now pantomimed crisp, dry, and percussive air. "Ttuh."

"Ttuh."

"Ttuh."

"Are you ready to order?" the waiter said. He'd been standing near their table for quite some time.

By the time the mango cobbler arrived for dessert, the tension had mostly drained from Tommy. He and Franny felt that they had known each other for awhile, and Murray had moved even closer to forgetting he had ever been divorced, as if the last six years had been nothing more than some numb extended business trip, an emotionless sleepwalk to strange hotels in vague cities. Now he felt the wordless relief of the end of roaming, the bone-deep ease of the return.

He sipped the port that Murray had ordered all around. "But that tiny slope," he heard himself continuing, "is enough to make the whole bottom half of the peninsula a huge slow river. Grasses, sedges, swamps that seem stagnant but aren't. A gigantic spongy filter. Roots sucking in minerals, caterpillars getting minerals from leaves, the minerals make the colors for the butterflies. Same with flamingoes. Need certain plankton from certain alkaline waters to make them pink. Amazing place."

"Jesus, Tommy," Murray said, "you know a lot about it."

The Indian got shy, couldn't remember how he'd started on the Everglades in the first place. He hid behind his glass a moment, then amazed himself by saying, "I was gonna be a biologist."

"Gonna be?" said Franny.

"Three years at Gainesville. Scholarship."

"You never told me," Murray said.

"Bad for my image," said the Indian. "Don't let it get around."