Virgin Heat (26 page)

He was halfway through it, one foot searching for the ground on the far side of the threshold, when he was suddenly grabbed by a man who sprang from the shadows, with garlic on his breath and a tire iron in the hand that wasn't clawing into Michael's shirt. His snaggled teeth yawned open before the emissary's eyes and he said, "Fuck you want, my friend?"

Michael's foot still dangled in midair; it made spasmodic stabs at terra firma. Ziggy hadn't mentioned a welcoming committee. But then, Ziggy didn't know that Carmen's bodyguards had been recently outmuscled and embarrassed, that Michael would be their means of saving face. "I want. . ." he managed, "I want to speak with Carmen."

The goon increased the torque on the front of Michael's shirt, squeezed like he was wringing out a sock. "For why?"

"Ziggy sent me," said the messenger.

There was a pause, Michael's suspended leg still groping for the earth. Then a voice came from the dimness of the garden. "Pat him down, Pablo."

The big man gave a last squeeze, then let Michael come to ground. He felt the visitor's sides, his legs, his crotch. "He's hokay," he said back to his boss.

Michael mustered his nerve. "You don't know the half of it."

"Bring him here," said the voice from the garden.

Pinching his arm, the goon led him under vines and through the foliage to where a pensive and deflated Salazar was sitting in his lawn chair, a sticky residue of duct tape making linty coils around the frame.

Glancing up at his guest from under sullen brows, he said, "Ziggy sent you. I guess that means Ziggy's still alive." He tried to say it with his usual lilting cynicism, but the mordancy fell flat, his blitheness had deserted him.

The seated man crossed his knees, came forth with a bitter and percussive little laugh. "Work things out? He still thinks there's a way to work things out with these crazy big shot lunatics?"

"Not exactly
with
them," Michael said.

Carmen Salazar uncrossed his legs, propped an elbow on his sticky chair arm, put his chin on his palm. "Let's not talk in riddles, friend."

"Okay," Michael said, and he tried to sound insolent yet chummy, just like he'd rehearsed. "Ziggy wanted me to tell you that you can take your chances with the big shots or you can maybe come away on top by helping him to plan a little party. It's up to you."

A breeze moved through the garden at a walking pace, delivering aromas like a mailman drops off letters. Carmen Salazar pulled on his chin and mocked himself. He was a small-time guy, but a small-time guy with brains; he knew, he'd always known, that when a little life collided with big ones, only trouble could result. Why did people go against what they knew? Why did they scorn even the few small scraps of wisdom that they had? Sitting there, he understood quite clearly that the illicit but congenial life he'd built around his garden was over. He'd overreached; he'd placed himself between two strong men and probably made enemies of both; he'd wrecked himself. Ruthlessly lucid in his depression, he saw that no matter what course he chose now, either he would be destroyed or everything would have to change.

He said, "Pablo, bring the man a chair."

*

On the balcony of the room that had been Louie's, then Louie and Ziggy's, and now Louie and Rose's, a single candle was burning. It was not an elegant taper; it was bug-flecked citronella in a galvanized bucket. Still, it cast a flickering flattering light on the man and the woman who sat at their small table eating Chinese food that had been delivered on a moped.

Comfortable together, they ate mostly in silence. Dinner companions for ten thousand dinners, they knew not only each other's favorite dishes, but each other's favorite bites within the dishes. Rose knew that Louie loved the baby corns, the tickle of the tiny kernels against his gums. Louie knew that Rose enjoyed the crunch of water chestnuts, he picked them out for her and lay them, tiny offerings, on the edge of her plastic plate.

He put his fork down, watched her eat an egg roll, the way her full lips locked securely on the crumbly wrapper before she bit. She watched him gnaw a spare rib, his unswerving method of nibbling one side of the bone, then flipping to the other, saving the knuckly knob of meat for last.

She poured him tea and beamed. He took a sip and glowed.

She blotted her lips on a paper napkin, reached across to put a hand on his. "Louie," she said, "isn't it amazing? We were happy all those years and didn't even know it."

"Hungry?" Ziggy said.

It was night and he'd realized he was lonely. His sulk had fallen away at last, and it seemed to leave him skinless, undefended, needy. He'd ordered in a pizza and two bottles of Chianti. Then he'd wandered the grounds of Coral Shores, hoping to find someone to eat and drink with him.

His heart did the leap of the friendless when he spotted Angelina sitting at poolside in a blue sarong, looking up at misted stars. But she said, "I don't feel like eating."

"Sit with me?" he asked.

She didn't say no, and he dragged a little table and a chair up next to her lounge. He opened the pizza box; an insinuating smell of cheese and garlic and oily cardboard wafted up. "Tempted?"

Angelina shrugged so that her flipped hair rested briefly on her shoulder, then looked off at the sky. Ziggy started eating pizza, a long string of topping stretched between his fingers and his face. After a moment Angelina said, "I never should've come down here."

Ziggy chewed, sipped some wine. Then he said, "Jeez, and I've just finally decided I'm glad you did."

Angelina didn't look full at him, kept his face on the edge of her vision. "My reasons," she said, "I thought they were pretty simple. Find you. Make love. See what happened."

Ziggy said, "Sounds good to me."

Angelina kept on going. "But it was much more complicated than that. The whole family thing. I see it now. If I'd seen it then, the complications, I never would have come."

Through pizza, Ziggy said, "People, I don't think they ever see how complicated something's gonna be. If they did, nobody'd do nothing."

Angelina finished off her wine, held out her glass for more. "My father," she said. "My poor, loving crook of a father. You gonna make trouble for him again?"

Ziggy stalled, refilled glasses, didn't answer till he'd tossed down some Chianti. "I'm not mad at anyone, Angelina. I want for you to know that. But I'm gonna do what I gotta do."

The rim of her glass was resting on her teeth, it rattled when she spoke. "It's gonna be my fault."

"Nothing's your fault."

She looked off at the stars. The brightest ones throbbed through wisps of cloud, the dimmer ones struggled not to be smothered by warm vapor. "Something weird?" she said at last. "I really thought I had a happy childhood. The greatest parents, all of that. Now I look back . . . Ziggy, d'you think it's possible for a person to be unhappy a lot of years and never even know it?"

Ziggy cocked his head. But before he could frame an answer, she went on.

"Or get everything exactly wrong? Like love. Like imagine something is love when it isn't really love, it's part of that same thing of pretending things are peachy when they aren't, wanting to believe that something's impossibly romantic when maybe it's just impossible?"

That made Ziggy nervous. He said, "Ya turn these things over and over and round and round, I don't see where it gets ya."

Angelina looked away again, was gone what seemed a long, long time, and when she turned back she was smiling. The smile made Ziggy more nervous than before, it seemed to him there was something in it that was moving on, that was leaving him behind. "Ziggy," she said, "I wonder what would happen if we didn't know each other from before, if we just met now, as strangers?"

He looked at her, the ears he knew were ticklish, the neck that would grow pebbly and as moist as steak, and he was tweaked once more by a lust that swam so deep it had scars for eyes. "What would happen," he said, "is that I'd try to get you into bed with me, and you'd say yes or no."

She looked at him, the thick strong hands, the lips she barely recognized. "I'd probably say yes. 'Cause then it would be simple."

"Yeah," said Ziggy. "Then it would be simple."

*

Muffled by escarole and melons, the guns for Cuba barely rattled as the produce truck proceeded at a legal crawl down 1-95.

Two hours later, just outside of Baltimore, the Italian guy said, "I hate the fucking speed limit. Fucking government. Everything they do, I hate it."

The Hispanic guy agreed, but for spite he didn't say so.

At Richmond, three hours farther down the road, there were tolls. The Italian guy picked up his line of thought. "See what I mean? Middle'a fucking nowhere, the fucking government puts in tolls."

The Hispanic guy stayed silent, but some time later, near the Carolina border, he brightened, saw his chance to be the star. "This Mendez," he said, "I speak to him in Spanish. You'll see, he'll treat us good."

*

After leaving the garden of Carmen Salazar, Michael took a long walk on nubbly Smathers Beach, then went downtown and stopped off at a dance club, then had a couple beers at a leather bar and watched some guys shoot pool.

Around two a.m. he realized he could stall no longer, he should head off on the second of the errands he'd said he'd do for Ziggy. His stomach milky with nervousness, he hailed a pedicab and went to the motel where Keith McCullough stayed.

As he'd done before, he climbed the outside stairs, their cantilevered steps showing dizzy slices of the parking lot below. He walked along the outside corridor, under dim fixtures splotched with flies and moths, past drawn curtains backlit with the sickly glow of televisions. At length he came to his old lover's door. He knocked before his agitation could catch up with him.

Keith McCullough, on stakeout since breakfast, was fast asleep. But he woke up quickly at the knock. "Who's there?"

"It's Michael. We have to talk."

There was a pause, a clear reluctance, and Michael knew precisely what it was about; it was about the dumper not wanting to be bothered with the heartache and recriminations of the dumped. But after a moment a bedside lamp came on, it glowed weakly through the window. Footsteps padded to the door, and Keith McCullough, his hair mussed and his eyelids heavy, undid the locks and stood there in a towel.

Michael could not help saying, "Hello, David."

McCullough, put upon, slumped his shoulders, said, "Michael, listen, I'm sorry for what happened, but this isn't a good—"

"I'm over it," Michael cut him off. "I'm here on business. Invite me in?"

The agent hesitated, then stood aside. Michael entered. He saw the little .25 revolver on the night table, gleaming softly in the light of the lamp. Shaking his head, he said, "A cop. A cop is really what you are."

McCullough closed the door, sat down heavily in a vinyl chair, snugged the towel across his thighs. "What's the business, Michael? Ziggy?"

The ambassador looked around the dimly lighted room, the jerky paintings, the crummy carpet. "This is one tacky place you have. How did I ever get excited here?"

McCullough squirmed, rearranged his towel. He said, "Michael, don't flirt." But having said it, he wasn't quite sure he meant it. Things were breaking fast now, come what may, his posting to Key West was nearly over. He thought with guilty abashedness about his little house on a discreet cul-de-sac in Fort Lauderdale. The PTA meetings. The toys with plastic wheels in the driveway. His wife in bed with face cream on.

Michael said briskly, "You should get some people here tomorrow. Half a dozen, Ziggy says. Ready for outdoor work. Exact time and place, we'll have to let you know."

McCullough shook his head. "I need details, assurance. What if he's jerking me around?"

"Terrible thing," said Michael. "To jerk someone around."

The agent frowned, fiddled with his towel, felt in his loins the shortness of time and the opportuneness of the hour. "Michael," he said. "Michael. I have my job to do. That doesn't mean I'm not genuinely fond of you."

Angelina's friend smiled at that, seemed to relax, leaned back on his elbows so that his shirt stretched taut across his ripply stomach and his jeans pulled snug along his thighs. Turning green eyes on McCullough, he sweetly said, "Do you even know when you're being a conniving scumbag?"