Tropical Depression (18 page)

Murray was drinking coffee. Since Franny had arrived, he'd started seeing things through her eyes, he realized suddenly that his coffee mug was perfect for a rental unit, the kind of cheap generic mug that bounced off tile floors. "That's it," he said, "the paper."

Franny had finished her kiwi, she now was nibbling blackberries. "That reporter," she said. "The skinny one who talked to you at the cocktail party. Maybe he'd care."

Tommy made a moist and skeptical sound, had to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. "Like he's gonna go after Barney LaRue for the sake of some nobody Indian."

"Now there's that bitter thing again," the Bra King said.

"Murray—have I been wrong so far?"

This was a tough one to answer, so Murray looked off at the ocean, past the green water to the inky blue where a smudge of a freighter rode the Gulf Stream.

She pictured the politician's smarmy smile, shook her head. "My hair dries, I'm going downtown, see if there's anything not too schlocky in the galleries. You like, Tommy, I'll pick you up some clothes." She ate another berry, glanced with what might have been affection at the Bra King's full and furry flesh as it spilled out the edges of his tank top. "Too bad I wasn't here to shop for Murray too."

*****

In a tone somewhere between firm and dragonlike, Barney LaRue's receptionist told the two unimportant-looking visitors that the senator was extremely busy and she doubted he would be able to speak with them if they didn't have an appointment.

Murray glanced around the waiting area. It didn't look busy. The unpeopled straight-backed chairs and the scattered magazines gave it the aspect of in abandoned dentist's office. "Would you ask him, please? I think he'll want to see us."

To her chagrin, the senator instructed her to send them in. She hissed softly at their backs as they went through the door of his office.

LaRue, by contrast, was all welcoming charm this morning. He shook hands warmly with his guests. Eschewing the formality of his desk, he led them to a little grouping of chairs and sofa, where they could sit at ease in the honeyed light that streamed in from the garden.

"So," he said to Tommy, "you're here to talk about your plans for your island."

Tommy looked at Murray. Murray looked at Tommy. It dawned on both of them that they should have rehearsed.

The Bra King made a false start at speech, what came out was something like the forsaken sound a bubble makes when it rises to the surface of a bathtub.

Tommy said, "We're here to tell you your friend Ponte uses pretty shitty tactics."

The senator's face grew no less cordial, but now a blank befuddled look spread across his well-spaced features. "Ponte? I don't believe I know anyone named Ponte."

"Someone named Ponte," Tommy said, "was sitting in your study the other evening. In your chair. Smoking your cigars."

But the congeniality of the poker table was history now, and the politician interrupted. "I'd appreciate it if you'd call me senator."

"Senator," said Murray, and in the next heartbeat wished he hadn't given in and said it. The concession made him mad, and now he was ready to talk tough. But talking tough takes practice and Murray found that he was no damn good at it at all. "These threats, this pressure," he fumbled. "Tommy and me, we're not looking to make trouble, but what's been happening to us, if it gets out, the publicity—"

"Ah," said Senator LaRue. "The publicity. Yes, that is a matter of concern."

Murray stalled, nonplussed. He hadn't expected it to be so easy. "Awright, then. So what we want—" "What concerns me," the senator said, in a voice that triumphed not by volume but by suavity, "is Tommy's image."

There was a pause. In the garden, palm fronds scratched, hibiscus leaves shook and blurred the shadows that dappled the office's pale wood floor.

"Ethnic stereotypes," the senator went on. "Nasty things. Hateful. And I would hate to have it said that Tommy here, an emblem of Native Americans everywhere, got so stinking drunk on such an important occasion that he started imagining—"

"You son of a bitch," said Tommy.

"You were drinking heavily," said LaRue. "Forty people saw you drinking heavily. Forty people, some of the most respected people in this community, saw you stagger out without so much as a thank you or a goodbye. It wasn't very gracious, Tommy. I wouldn't think you'd want it in the papers."

The Indian flushed dark as brick, the whites of his popping eyes had turned an acid yellow.

LaRue folded his hands, composed his thin and bloodless mouth, summoned back his wallpaper smile. "And while we're on the subject of your island," he calmly said, "there's something you should be aware of, just in case you're not. You own the land, but the state owns right up to the shoreline. Place isn't worth much if people can't get there. People can't get there unless you dredge a channel. You can't dredge a channel without a special exception from the state. Think about that, Tommy, when you're calling people names ... Now, is there anything else I can help you with?"

Out on the sidewalk, Murray, who never tired of telling people that before moving to Key West he'd been the most moderate of drinkers, said, "I need a drink."

It was around eleven-thirty in the morning. Tommy said nothing, just climbed on his bike and led the way crosstown. They rode through tunnels of bare-limbed poincianas waiting out the spring for a yet-higher sun to bring them into season; they rode past the first frangipanis springing weirdly into bloom, fragrant waxy flowers being dreamed by scaly, leafless stalks.

At length they came to the Eclipse saloon. It was a low and charmless building with a big wood door on which was tacked a 1950's sign that showed a penguin on an ice floe and claimed that it was
cool inside.
The interior was dim and smelled of washrags. The place never closed; between four and eight
a.m
. no liquor could be served, hard-core patrons dozed or ate soft-boiled eggs. Now, in the lull before the lunch rush, a few of these pickled regulars leaned over the bar in postures that knew no time of day. Waitresses were filling saltshakers and ketchup bottles, a janitor was mopping the scuffed threshold to the kitchen.

Murray slid onto a stool and ordered up a bourbon.

Tommy asked for club soda.

"Club soda?" the Bra King said.

"That son of a bitch," said the Indian.

The drinks arrived. The brown stuff in Murray's glass embarrassed him somewhat, but that didn't stop him from sipping it while he waited for his head to clear and his blood pressure to subside. Air-conditioning tickled his back; people started straggling in for lunch.

Finally he shook his head and said, "I don't know how ya fight these bastards."

Tommy was sucking lime. "Ya fight them by making yourself very small, so small that no one bothers to take a swat at ya."

"I fucked that up for you."

"I never said that."

The Bra King put his bourbon to his lips, didn't in that moment like the taste of it. "Ya hungry?"

"Not really."

"Me neither. Let's have a nosh."

"Knosh? I had one of those once, in Miami."

"That's knish. Nosh is, ya know, a snack, a nibble."

They ordered some conch fritters, and while they were waiting for them, Tommy said, "Murray, can I ask you something? You and Franny, what's the story?"

Murray rattled his drink then blurted out, "I'm still in love with her." He paused, wondered if his own forthrightness would rise up to abash him. To his surprise, it didn't, so he carried on.

"Last time I went crazy, I guess it was about the time I started noticing gray hairs clogging up the shower drain, I dumped her for a brainless model with perfect tits. We divorced, she moved to Florida. Within a year, I was absolutely miserable, I felt like I'd gnawed off my own arm, plucked out my internal organs. Franny, meantime, she'd figured out that being rid of me was the greatest thing that ever happened. She realized what a pain innee ass I'd been all those years."

"Lemme understand this," Tommy said. "You dumped her. She thinks you're a pain innee ass. And now you think she's gonna take you back?"

"I think I got a shot."

The Indian looked down at his soda, stirred the shrinking ice cubes with a swizzle stick.

"The way I look at it," the Bra King went on, "when she was with me, she didn't realize she'd be better off without me, and I knew she didn't realize it, and this made me feel I could act like a schmuck and get away with it. But now that she knows she's better off without me, I think she understands that if I don't act like a schmuck no more, we're really better off together. Does that make sense to you?"

The Indian said no.

"We're mates," said Murray. "Better or worse, we're mates. Franny, I'm not sure she sees it that way. But lemme put it like this—"

But before he could get started, the conch fritters arrived. The Bra King, who was not hungry, picked one up immediately. Hot grease burned his hand, he put the fritter down again, licked his smarting fingers.

He still had his fingers in his mouth when the Eclipse's door swung open, a quick rude rectangle of brightness swept across the murky room, and Arty Magnus, the gangly reporter and city editor for the Key West
Sentinel
, came in for lunch.

Magnus squinted through the dimness and uncertainly approached. When his eyes adjusted and he could see who he was walking toward, he gave an affable hello. Then he asked if he could join them.

"I was hoping you would," said Tommy. "I think it's time we had a talk about some of the putrid bullshit that goes on in this town."

The journalist hadn't even got onto his seat yet. "You get right to the point," he said.

"Indians tend to be very direct. That's why there's so few of us left. What can ya tell me about Barney LaRue?"

The bartender came over, gave Arty the kind of hello reserved for steady customers who knew how to behave. Arty ordered a beer and a fish sandwich. The Eclipse's fish sandwich, like that of every other Key West restaurant, claimed to be the best in town and renowned throughout the world.

"LaRue," said Magnus, turning back toward Tommy and Murray. "Old Florida family. Or as old as Florida families get. Great-grandfather made big money, did land deals, swamp drainage, your basic visionary fraud. Granddad was a banker type, dull, talked in capitalist proverbs. Father rebelled, pissed away the fortune, screwed everything that walked, drowned falling shitface off a yacht with his pants around his ankles. Y'ever try swimming with your pants around your ankles?"

The reporter's beer arrived. He took a swig, wiped foam from his upper lip. "As for Barney, nobody really knows why he picked politics. Some people think it was to redeem the family name, erase the memory of his old man's buffoonery. Personally, I think it was to raise the buffoonery to a whole new level."

"What kind of senator's he been?" asked Murray.

"The kind that gets reelected. Hawkish on Cuba. Pro-development while pretending not to be. Doesn't waste tax dollars on poor people."

"Corrupt?"

"Of course corrupt. But not for the money itself, I think. Corruption for sport. Theft as pornography."

Tommy Tarpon finished his soda, wiggled his glass to signal for another. "Did you know he's tied in to the Mafia?"

In his checkered life as journalist and writer, Arty Magnus himself had had some contact, strictly legal, with the Mob. He got a little cagey. "I've heard rumors. I'm not sure I buy them."

"Do you know who Charlie Ponte is?" asked Tommy.

The newspaperman just nodded.

"Did you know he was at LaRue's cocktail party the other night?"

At this, Magnus could not squelch a somewhat unprofessional look of genuine surprise. Tommy told him about the meeting in the study, Ponte's generous offer to build him a casino.

The reporter shook his head. "Barney's got chutzpah, give him that. And you were at this meeting, Murray?"

The Bra King admitted that he wasn't.

"Anyone else see Ponte there?"

"You didn't," Tommy said. "Why would anyone else?"

The journalist remembered his half-eaten lunch, went back to it.

Tommy said, "Then he sank my house."

"He what?"

The Indian explained.

"Any witnesses?"