Tropical Depression (17 page)

Franny's indignation ripened much more quickly. Without even seeming to take the time to aim, she flung her sno-cone at the giant. It caught him square under the chin and exploded like a small frozen firework across his face and suit.

Time stopped for a moment, red ice hung motionless in a starburst pattern. The breeze went dead and the air refused to carry sound. Bruno looked down at Franny in her linen shorts, her little sneakers and her half-socks with pom-poms holding them above her shoes. For awhile it seemed he might stampede her, stomp on her, break her ribs with the sharp toes of his shoes. Instead, he hovered indecisively, his upper lip pulled back from his teeth, then he wheeled back toward the sno-cone cart.

He picked up what was left of the ice block, maybe sixty, seventy pounds; he hoisted it above his head like it weighed no more than a basketball. Then he advanced on Murray and Franny like a cannon being trundled into place.

The Bra King didn't remember getting to his feet, but he was standing now, some unsought and evanescent gallantry had propelled him between his ex-wife and the goon. His feet were parted shoulder-wide, his soft hands curled into useless unaccustomed fists. But Bruno kept advancing, and Murray's courage quickly eroded, he was backing away with his eyes kept squarely on the dripping projectile that was aimed at him. Bruno trudged forward, Murray skulked back, moving from shade to remorseless sunshine. Finally, with a shot-putter's bestial grunt, Bruno lurched and flung the ice.

It hit the Bra King in the gut, he caught it like an old-time boxer training with the medicine ball. The impact quickened his backward steps; with the missile still seeming to chase him he retreated on the brink of falling until his spine collided with the trunk of a coconut palm. The tree stopped his body an instant before it stopped the ice; the block squeezed the air out of Murray, it exited quickly from everywhere at once with a symphony of unpleasant noises.

He crumpled, dazed and empty, to the ground. He looked up and saw clustered yellow coconuts, shards of sunlight squeezed between their pendant forms.

Bruno, in no great hurry, got into the Lincoln and drove away.

Franny ran to her fallen ex, knelt on the ground and gently, even lovingly, mopped syrup from his brow. She asked if he was all right and he labored mightily to answer with a reassuring wheeze.

She stroked his sticky hair and shook her head. "God," she said, "all I did was ask him to turn his motor off."

"Some guys," the Bra King gasped, "they like their motors on."

"I mean, was it so terrible what I said?"

Murray writhed in search of oxygen, squinted through palm fronds at the bright blue sky. "Betcha a sno-cone," he managed, "that's not what it's about."

Murray's ribs ached, his deflated lungs hung slack in his chest, shapeless as used condoms, but at some point it dawned on him that the ice attack provided a perfect pretext for getting Franny into the master-bath Jacuzzi with him. After some hemming and hawing she agreed to join him for a soak, though the woman he'd slept naked with for twenty-one years now insisted they wear bathing suits.

They were still soaking when Tommy came home from selling shells.

Murray called out to him, summoned him to the boudoir.

The Indian hesitated. He'd heard tales about the kinky rich, their threesomes, foursomes, their bondage rings in marble walls, their alabaster sex toys and household pets dressed up like maids and butlers. With some misgivings he walked into Murray's bedroom with its unmade bed, its wavy linens suggesting carnality. With considerable unease he stepped through the open doorway into the steamy baronial bath. Mostly with relief, he saw the chaste straps of Franny's one-piece, the decidedly ungoatish look on Murray's jowly face.

Striving for a sophisticated nonchalance, the sovereign lowered the lid on the toilet seat and sat down on the pot. "So how was your day?" he asked.

"Not terrific," said the Bra King. "I was assaulted with a frozen confection."

"Excuse me?" said the Indian.

"I think I met your gorilla. About six-six, wedding-cake black hair, cheap suit from the Fat Boys' store?"

"Sounds like him."

"He hit me with a piece of ice the size of Brooklyn."

"Knocked the wind right out of him," said Franny. "Could've ruptured his spleen."

"
Oy
," said the Indian.

"
Oy
?" said Murray. "Now I'm hearing
oy
from you?"

The red man shrugged. "People you live with, you pick up their mannerisms."

"We've lived together half a day," said Murray.

Tommy didn't answer, though something in his look said, yes, but it would be much longer.

Just then the phone rang.

"Want me to get it?" Tommy asked.

"Sure. See if the cord'll reach."

The Indian grabbed the instrument from the bedside table, said, "Zemelman residence."

"Christ," said Les Kantor, "he has a houseboy now?"

The comment offended Tommy. "I'm not a houseboy, I'm a sovereign nation. Hold on, Murray's in the bathtub."

He dragged the phone in, Murray put the receiver against his dripping ear.

"Murray? Les. What kind of nuthouse you running there?"

"Nuthouse? An abode of bliss. Guess who's in the bathtub with me, Les?"

"I'm not sure I wanna know."

"Franny."

"You have to tell everyone?" she said.

"She'll talk to you?" said Kantor.

"You bathe with people you're not on speaking terms with? What's up?"

"Just got back from Milan," said the acting CEO of BeautyBreast, Incorporated.

"Ah," said Murray. "And how was the show?"

"Uninspiring. Whole fuckin' world's in a doldrum. But there's one thing I think we have to talk about. If you don't have time right now—"

"For you,
bubbala
, I have time."

Tommy Tarpon, sitting on the toilet, flanked by fogged mirrors, tried not to look miffed. He thought he was
bubbala
.

Les Kantor said, "The news from Milan, I'll give it to you in one word: Nipple."

"Nipple?"

"Nipple. Designers are showing a lot of it. The whole silhouette: nipple."

"Don't tell me the braless thing—"

"No, thank God, it's not the braless thing. Just the opposite."

"What's the opposite of the braless thing?" Murray asked.

Franny sank down lower in the tub, submerged until she was nothing but a curly head protruding from the vaporing water.

"Look," explained Les Kantor, "designers are showing nipple, but the women, it's not the seventies, they're not making statements with their tits, it's just a style, a look, the nipples are really built into the bra. You see what I'm saying?"

"Ah," said Murray. "Falsies for the nineties."

"Right, but it's gotta sound more elegant than that. Faux aureoles, something like that. Anyway, we gotta work up a whole new line, new slogans, new commercials. You on board on this?"

"Sure."

"Come on, Murray, say it like you mean it."

"Sure, sure. Only, Les, I got an awful lot going on—"

"Murray, please, we gotta move on this. I'll call you in a day or two, okay?"

"Okay."

"Tell Franny I said hi."

Murray hung up, feeling strangely elated. His ex-wife in the tub; his old partner on the phone; his new partner on the toilet. Bras; casinos; romance: It was almost enough distraction to occupy every splayed-out tendril of his juiced-up brain. "Now where were we?" he said.

"Where we were," said Franny somberly, "is trying to figure out what to do about these large strong people who seem to want to hurt you."

"Right," said Murray. "This what's his name, this Ponte, I think we gotta find out more about him. Maybe we should talk to Bert."

"Bert?" said Tommy. "Why Bert?"

" 'Cause I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure that Bert is Mafia."

Tommy crossed his legs, crinkled up his brows, reflected on the arcane and infinite oddness of the white man's world. "You shitting me?" he said.

*****

Habits stick to lonely men like barnacles to boats, and Murray knew that Bert the Shirt, with sunset approaching, would be sitting in his folding chair, ten yards from the lapping shoreline of Smathers Beach, his sneakered feet half-buried in the coarse imported sand, his eyes fixed placidly on the western horizon, his dog half-conscious in his lap.

The Bra King wasted no time on pleasantries, but said to the old man's back, "Bert, we really gotta talk to ya."

Bert was hard to startle; his reflexes weren't slow so much as yogic, things registered but with the urgency skimmed off like the fat on soup. He swiveled calmly, the teal blue silk of his shirt shimmering as it crinkled around his skinny neck. "Ya put it that way," he said mildly, "ya make me feel important. Hi Tommy. So what's on your mind?"

But now that he had Bert's attention, Murray couldn't find a tactful way to start. "Well," he fumbled, "what it is ... from, like, a coupla things you've said, a coupla hints you've dropped, I sort of got the impression that maybe, in some way, direct or indirect, I know it's not something you'd usually talk about—"

The old man stroked his dozing dog, short white hairs the length of eyelashes rained down on his clothes. "Ya gotta love this Indian," he said to the chihuahua. Then he said to Tommy, "Was. I was Mafia."

'Twelve, fourteen years ago. Courthouse steps. Haht attack. The graph went flat, they lemme out ... Where you're standin', Murray, I can't see the sun."

The Bra King stepped aside, orange light replaced his shadow across the old man's long thin face.

"But inna meantime," Bert continued, "why y'askin?"

"Tommy and me," said Murray, "we're thinking of going into the casino business, and—"

"Don't," the old man said.

"Don't what?" asked Murray.

"Don't fuck with the casino business. The casino business, ya gotta understand, certain people feel it is their God-given right to milk that kinda thing. Other people try to get involved, they get extremely upset, it's like their whole world seems outa whack."

"We're already involved," said Tommy. He told the old man about the meeting in Barney LaRue's study, about Ponte's offer, about the sinking of the houseboat and the battering with the sno-cone.

Bert the Shirt petted his dog, said, "
Oy
."

"You too?" the Bra King said. "
Oy
is like a Jewish thing."

"My ass," said Bert. "It's a New Yawk thing. I lived in New Yawk sevenny years, I'm entitled to say
oy
." He paused, then added, "hypocrite cocksucker."

"Ponte?" Tommy said.

"Nah, Ponte is what he is. LaRue. I hate guys like that. He wants ta be a crook, let 'im be a crook, but be honest about it. Don't go gettin' other people ta do the dirty work."

The sun was poised an inch above the water, Bert refused to take his eyes off it. "All I'll say, I'll say he ain't a guy ya wanna be enemies with."

"How about business partners?" Murray said. "I've been telling Tommy, just take the deal."

The Shirt waited till the sun hit the horizon, till its reflection leaped up and made it no longer a sphere but a fat cylinder of flame.

"The trut'?" he said at last. "I don't think he'd be terrific as a partner. He's one a these guys, ya think ya have a deal, two weeks later he wants a better deal. Pretty soon he thinks he's better off wit'out a partner. And the partner goes away."

"Where's he go?" asked Tommy.

The old man pointed toward the sky. "Look the way that one little cloud, it's already gettin' purple onna bottom. Sittin' here like this, I love it."

"But Bert," said Murray, "we don't want 'im for an enemy, we don't want 'im for a partner—what's that leave?"

The old man serenely stroked his dog as the water took on the dull flat sheen of green aluminum and the sunset ripened to a madman's canvas of billowing reds and acid yellow. "It don't leave nothin'," he said. "This is why I'm tellin' ya, ya shouldn't be involved, ya shoulda talked ta me before."

"We didn't think of it before," said Tommy.

"And right there is the bitch a life," said Bert. " 'Cause now ya got a problem."

Three nervous people slept separately that night in the West Penthouse of the Paradiso.

In the morning, on the balcony, over a breakfast featuring vitamins, trace minerals, and prescription drugs, Murray, looking badly rested and wearing a purple tank top designed for someone with a different kind of body, said, "I think we gotta try LaRue."

The suggestion met with no enthusiasm.

"I think we gotta look 'im in the eye," the Bra King said, "and let 'im know we're not gonna let ourselves be bullied."

"Except we
are
gonna let ourselves be bullied," said the Indian.

Franny's hair was wrapped up in its bright red towel. She was eating a kiwi with a grapefruit spoon. "Not to sound bourgeois," she said, "but has anyone considered the police?"

Tommy gave a derisive snort. "Y'ever read the police blotter in the
Sentinel?
Tourist gets mugged, cops give 'im a victims' rights pamphlet. Guy gets his throat slit in a bar, he gets a pamphlet. Guy gets his arms and legs hacked off, they stick a pamphlet under his chin. Law by brochure. Every day ya see it in the paper."