Tropical Depression (23 page)

Franny detested donuts. Fat-soaked flour spiked with the slow poison called sugar. But she liked the idea of getting up, moving her rigid limbs. She almost didn't mind when Squeak, stale-smelling and hawkish, leaned across her to undo the rings.

She sat up gingerly, rubbed her wrist and ankle. "Any juice, fruit'" she ventured. "Anything like that?"

Bruno shook his head. "Jewish broads," he said. "Wit' them everything is room service. Where's she think she is, the fuckin' Biltmore?"

"She don't know where she is," chirped Squeak.

This struck the two thugs funny; they tittered like baboons.

"Can I have some coffee?" Franny asked.

Bruno handed her a container, she clutched it with both hands. The coffee was milky and sweet, she sipped it slowly, blinking toward the bundled wires that dangled from the ceiling.

"We're here till four tomorra morning," Bruno said to Squeak.

The skinny thug said, "Shit. Then?"

Bruno looked at Franny, bit into a jelly donut before he answered. An ooze of thick red jam appeared at the corner of his mouth, he licked it with a bovine tongue. "Then we take her for a ride."

Franny twitched at that, spilled a little coffee.

Bruno seemed very pleased with himself. "Look," he said. "I think she's scared today, I think we scared the smart-ass comments right outa her. Didn't we, Mouth?"

Franny said nothing, she sat very still at the edge of her cot and tried to keep her coffee cup from shaking.

"Yup," said Bruno, like he'd just proven something deep and satisfying. "The idea a goin' for a ride, she don't like that at all. I think from here on in she's gonna keep that smart mouth zippuhed."

Gratified, he wiped his greasy hands on his trouser legs and reached into the oil-spotted bag for another donut.

*****

Murray showered, lay down on his bed, closed his pulsing eyes and impatiently waited for the rest of the world to catch up with him, to join him in this brave decisive day.

Around nine he ate two Prozac, washed them down with orange juice. He paced the living room, threw open the curtain that gave onto the balcony. Slender triangles of sundered glass hung precariously in the frame of the sliding door, gave evidence of his enemies' boldness and their violence.

But Murray was no longer rattled, no longer awed, in fact he held their crude and blustering tactics in contempt. He had become nearly certain that everything would soon be under control, that his own gambit, elegant and deft, would surely triumph. This new unflinching confidence—his shrink might have called it a symptom, a side effect, even a delusion—Murray knew was a passage and a transformation.

Walking on tiptoe, he poked his head into Tommy's room; Tommy was asleep with his mouth open, softly snoring.

He moved to the doorframe of Franny's empty chamber, made a silent vow to her suitcase and her clothes: He would bring her back, he would have her back.

He went to his own room, softly closed the door behind him, plumped his rumpled pillows, and began to work the phone.

*****

For Franny time was thick and empty.

Bruno left. Squeak sat. He didn't talk. He didn't pace. He didn't read the paper. He only sat, and Franny knew from his vacant concave face that he wasn't even thinking. There was something terrifyingly doltish, inhumanly blank, in the way he could sit there for uncounted hours doing nothing whatsoever.

The day grew hot, the metal room got airless as a locked car in the sun.

At some point Franny became aware of things happening outside—whatever outside meant. She didn't hear things, exactly, not at first. She felt a thrum, a change in density, a gathering busyness in the air. Gradually, the thrum became a buzz, resolved itself into something that seemed almost familiar, the pulverized and blended voices of a distant crowd. The buzz rose and fell, sometimes grated and sometimes hit chance harmonies, as when an orchestra tunes up.

Squeak looked at his watch. It was the most enterprising thing he'd done in quite a while. "Won't be long now," he cheeped.

At first she saw nothing but a blinding slash of sun; then she saw a flamingo. It was standing on one leg in a shallow pool and it was drinking water upside down. Around the pool, the grass was very green. It went on for awhile then ended at a low white fence. Beyond it was a swath of rich brown dirt, then there was a grandstand full of loud shirts and polyester jackets, a vast unbroken mat of them that might have been a quilt made in a madhouse.

Franny rubbed her head. She hadn't gotten to wash her hair and she didn't like the feel of it. "Hialeah?"

"Very good," said Squeak. Suddenly expansive, he jerked a thumb toward the bundled wires. "All electric now," he brayed. "Used to be guys would work in here, run the numbers up by hand."

Franny nodded numbly. A bland unmoored acceptance came into her voice, and she said, "I'm a hostage in a tote board."

Her eyes adjusted, she looked across the track, at the prancing thoroughbreds warming up, the tiny jockeys in their screaming silks. She looked out at the thousands of people who could not help her.

"Good view a the finish line from here," Squeak chirped.

When the horses ran, they shook the earth.

It was just after two the next morning when Murray and Tommy got into the scratched-up Lexus and headed up the Keys.

At their backs, a red and gibbous moon was setting, the glare of Key West was first muffled, then swallowed up by the humidity. Ahead, the thin ribbon of U.S. 1 lifted over bridges and trestles as it wound from rock to rock; a sparse stream of tourists and refugees was flowing up and down the road even at that bleary hour, people still looking for a place to sleep or drink or find some desperate amusement. Pelicans flew above the power lines, their dipping flight the shape of pendant cable.

"I told you. Just stall." Murray's elbow was propped on his window frame, his skin smarted pleasantly from the salt in the air. "Stall," he repeated. "And if it doesn't go well, help me get between the goons and Franny."

The sovereign of the Matalatchee nodded solemnly. That much he could certainly do, would do without being asked. He saw himself running, diving, berserk across the beach, his teeth bared and his arms outstretched, absorbing in a kind of ecstasy the blows and blades and bullets intended for his friends. So much for his triumphant foray into the white man's world.

*****

The races had ended very long ago. The crowd had dispersed, silence returned, Squeak had subsided once again into stunning insensate dormancy.

Hours dragged. Bruno appeared with Chinese food in greasy white containers. Franny ate two bites with a plastic fork and got a headache from the MSG. She lay down on her cot, the whole place stank of soy sauce.

The two goons shot the breeze. They didn't bother binding her. Her body told her it was getting deep into the night.

At some point Bruno said, "Almost four. We oughta go."

They led Franny out of the metal chamber, walked her down the spiral stairs. Outside, they put the blindfold on, and this had come to seem obscenely normal: You went somewhere, someone tied a sash around your eyes, you were blind until you reached the next abomination.

They drove awhile; they stopped.

A door opened, closed, the car filled up with the smell of aftershave.

"Hello, Franny Rudin."

She recognized the voice of Charlie Ponte. She didn't answer.

They drove. A couple minutes later, Ponte said, "So remember—the redskin signs, then we're outa there. Nothing left behind, everybody in one car."

There was a pause. Squeak was doing arithmetic.

" 'Sgonna be awful crowded," he piped.

"Not with two of 'em inna trunk," said Charlie Ponte. "Very still and very quiet."

Bruno laughed at that, he found it funny when other people died. His laugh was hoarse and breathless, Squeak caught the contagion of it and came forth with a nasal toot whose edges were thickened with phlegm. Franny listened to them laughing and wished they'd made her deaf as well as sightless.

*****

At twenty minutes after five, the scratched-up Lexus was on the nearly empty causeway that led to Key Biscayne. Street lamps blotted out the stars; the viscous water of the Intracoastal was flat as cooling soup. A map was open on Tommy Tarpon's knee; a thin unpleasant light from the open glove box bounced around inside the car.

They reached the island, drove past sleeping golf courses and the gatehouses of walled estates, past marinas with tall masts clustered thickly as a bundle of sticks.

On the ocean side they found signs for Rickenbacker Beach.

Tommy put the map away, the Bra King drove more slowly. Timing was crucial, they could not be early.

At 5:38 they reached the parking area. Murray pulled off the road and into the vast and vacant lot. White lines, painted in diagonals like the skeletons of fish, gleamed vaguely lavender in the starlight. Ahead, the beach was black. There was no seam between the land and water, nor between the water and the sky.

Murray cruised. His headlights discovered three tall lifeguard chairs, each with a little rescue boat poised next to it like a dog at the feet of its master. The chairs were perhaps two hundred yards apart; in the darkness they seemed as monumental as Mayan pyramids. He idled toward the north end of the lot; he found a dark Lincoln parked just beyond the pavement, hidden in a little copse of palms. He pulled in near it, switched off the ignition. It was 5:42.

With the engine off, the world seemed as quiet as if it had never been created. Murray tried to take a deep breath, the locked muscles between his ribs wouldn't let the air come in. He tried to speak, could not. He reached out to put a hand on Tommy's shoulder; Tommy pulled him into a quick and awkward warriors' embrace. They got out of the car.

Fearlessly, the Indian approached the Lincoln, confirmed that it was empty. Then the two friends started walking across the beach, toward the northernmost lifeguard chair.

Damp sand slowed their steps, the scratch of it and the faint hiss of dissolving sea foam were the only sounds. They labored closer to the platform; its spindly contours came gradually, dimly into focus, but still they saw no people. Murray peered out to sea. His gaze was thwarted, mocked by the humid darkness, he had no idea how far his vision penetrated before it failed.

They plodded on. And suddenly four mismatched silhouettes popped up from behind the little rescue boat. Murray wanted to run to Franny, convince himself she still existed. But he disciplined his steps, remembered that he had to be deliberate.

Very close now, he saw that Bruno and Squeak had guns out, the barrels glistened dully in the starlight. Franny looked brittle and dry, her eyes were sunken, the sockets sharp and bony.

The thugs stood with their backs to the ocean; Murray stealthily stared past their shoulders. Ponte reached into his silver zippered jacket, pulled out a stapled sheaf of papers and a pen, handed them to Tommy.

"Sign this," he commanded.

Tommy knew his job. "I'd like to read it first," he said, though in the dimness it would have been a struggle.

"There's nothin' to read, Tonto. We run the casino, you get twenty grand a month. Like we agreed. Now sign the fuckin' thing."

"Don't," said Franny.

Bruno turned toward her, his gun at the level of her forehead. "Shut up, Mouth," he said.

Murray, in a trance of panicked bravery, grabbed the big man's arm. "Don't fucking touch her."

"Shut up alla yas," said Ponte. "Sign the fuckin' papers, Chief."

The Indian fumbled with the pages.

"It won't make any difference," Franny said.

"I said shut up. He signs right now or everybody's dead."

Murray peered toward the horizon. There was beginning to be a boundary between the sea and sky, a lifting. He wanted badly to believe he saw vague but moving shapes against the paler black.

Tommy flipped through to the last page of the contract, found the dotted line, shook his wrist free of his shirt cuff. He raised the pen, moved it to the paper, and dropped it on the beach.

Tommy crouched, felt around, buried the pen a little deeper. Ponte cursed under his breath. His thugs rocked on their avid knees, slapped the muzzles of their guns against their palms.

The eastern sky was purple now, against it Murray saw what he'd been waiting for. He bit his lip then squatted next to Tommy and fumbled in the sand, tried to keep the thugs' attention fixed on the ground in front of them. Against the rush of blood in his ears, he thought he could already hear the plunk and whoosh of oars. Dimmer still came the tiny whir of an electric motor, a small propeller turning with such exquisite slowness that the blades would barely blur.

The two friends were still crouching, feeling for the pen, when the first floodlight exploded into life.