Welcome to Paradise (2 page)

Then he said, "Friends, we are gathered today
to announce the winner of the semi-annual bonus giveaway for top
sales in dinettes."

He gestured for quiet as though there'd been
applause. But the fact was that, for all of Moe Kleiman's attempts
to bring some pomp to the moment, there was no suspense. Everybody
knew who'd won. Who won was who almost always won. It was a regular
routine already.

Nevertheless, Moe Kleiman soldiered on. "The
prize this time around is the best ever. It better be. We got a
fancy new travel agent and we're paying through the nose."

At this, people could not help flicking their
eyes toward Alan Tuschman, the guy who always won. Twenty years
before, he'd been a big-deal high school athlete—split end on the
Cranford football team, power forward on a hoops squad that made it
to the state semis—and, in a circumscribed, suburban way, he'd been
winning ever since, sort of. Got a scholarship to Rutgers. Married
a cheerleader with blond hair and amazing calves, cut and sculpted
from years of leaping. The marriage didn't last; the scholarship
evaporated when the coaches realized that Al Tuschman's talents
wouldn't carry him beyond JV. Still, a few semesters of college and
matrimony felt right while they endured, lived on in memory like
bonus chapters appended to the high school yearbook.

Those temporary victories had helped to keep
alive in Al the mysterious habit of winning, and he still got
pumped and rallied at almost anything that could be called a game.
Sales contests, for starters. Already this year he'd won the giant
television set, for bedding; the trip by train to Montreal, for
living rooms. His colleagues, of course, were sick of him winning,
but they couldn't really find it in their hearts to resent him. He
was a nice guy. Friendly. Fair. He didn't hog the floor, he didn't
show off, and he didn't try too hard. People just liked to buy from
him.

"The prize this time," Moe Kleiman went on,
"is nothing short of Paradise.... Paradise—that's the name of the
hotel. In Key West, Florida. Seven days, six nights. Airfare
included. And the winner is—"

The old ham paused, of course. And in the
pause, Alan Tuschman's fellow salesmen tried to figure out, for the
thousandth time, the key to his success. Some people thought it was
his height, pure and simple. At six-three and change, he was by far
the tallest guy on the floor, and people felt good dealing with a
tall guy. Others thought it was his looks. Not that he was model
material. His cheeks were slightly pitted, his lips thick and
loose; but his eyes were big and dark, the features widely spaced:
it was a face that gave you room to breathe. Then there was the way
he dressed—a strange amalgam of old-time collegiate jock and
working-man suburban slick. Cotton cardigans over open-collared
patterned shirts; pegged and shiny pants leading down to desert
boots; a pinky ring that clattered up against a chunky school
memento, class of '77. In its careless inconsistency, Al's style
gave almost everyone something to hang on to.

"And the winner is," Moe Kleiman said again,
"Alan Tuschman."

Amid thin and brief applause that was
swallowed up by mattresses and chair backs, someone said,
"Surprise!"

"Alan Tuschman," Moe went on, "who in the
past six months,
in dinettes alone
, wrote a hundred
twenty-eight thousand dollars' worth of business. Ladies and
gentleman, that is selling! .. . Al, have a well-earned rest in
Paradise!"

The boss shook Al Tuschman's hand, discreetly
used the clasp as an aid in stepping off the ottoman.

A couple of colleagues slapped Al's back, and
then the group dispersed, spread out through the beds and the
imaginary living rooms to the four corners of the premises. It was
nine fifty-five and the store opened at ten. Every day. No matter
what.

By a quarter of eleven, thinking of vacation,
A1 had sold a French provincial love seat and a wall unit made to
look like rosewood. But then he grew troubled, and stepped around
the low wall of frosted glass that separated the sales floor from
the offices. He poked his head into Moe Kleiman's tidy cubicle.
"Mr. Kleiman," he said, "I have a problem with this prize."

The boss lifted his head and raised an
eyebrow. When he did that he looked a great deal like the old guy
from Monopoly.

"If it's all the same to you," said Al, "I'm
not gonna use the plane ticket."

"All of a sudden you don't fly?" Moe Kleiman
said.

Al Tuschman looked a little bit sheepish.
"Truth is, it's the dog."

"The dog?"

"Remember last year, I won that package to
New Orleans?"

"I remember, I remember."

"The dog was, like, traumatic. Put her in the
carrier, she looked at me like I was sending her to the gas
chamber. Then the tranquilizers made her sick. Woke up shaking.
Laid down on my shoe so I wouldn't go anywhere. Two days I stayed
in the hotel, looking out the window with this shell-shocked dog on
my foot. I couldn't put her through that again. I'll drive. That
okay with you?"

"Sure, Al. Sure. Only, the reservation starts
tomorrow."

"You don't mind, I could leave today."

Moe Kleiman stood up, took a token glance out
toward the selling floor. A Tuesday in the first half of November.
Very quiet. He said, "No problem, Al. If it makes things easier for
the dog."

"Thanks," said Tuschman. "Thanks for
everything. You'll see, I'll come back tan and sell my ass
off."

He turned to go. He was not yet forty, but
these days, when he pivoted, he felt old tackles in his knees; the
small bones in his ankles remembered rebounds when he didn't land
quite right.

He was just rounding the wall of frosted
glass when he heard Moe Kleiman chuckle. "The dog. Hey, Al, ya know
something?"

The salesman took a step back toward his
boss.

The boss lowered his voice. "The other guys,
it drives them nuts, they constantly wonder why you're always top
banana. But I know. I could give it to you in a word."

Al Tuschman did not ask what the word was. He
didn't want to know. Like everybody else, he had his superstitious
side. Something worked, you didn't jinx it.

Moe Kleiman told him anyway. "Relief."

"Relief?"

"Relief. People see you, Al—big shoulders,
chest hair up to the Adam's apple—they figure, Oy, I'm dealing with
a tough guy. Their guard goes up. But it soon comes down, and then
you've got 'em. Why does it come down? I'll tell you: because
they're relieved to see you really are a softie."

Pleased with his analysis, Moe Kleiman
smiled.

Al Tuschman tried to, but it didn't work. His
mouth slid to one side of his face; he looked down at a swatch
book, shuffled his feet. A softie. Softie as in pushover? As in
coward? Was it really that obvious? Did everybody know? He briefly
met his boss's gaze, made another bent attempt at smiling, and
steered his aching legs toward the partition.

Moe Kleiman watched his best salesman edge
around the frosted glass, and understood too late that he'd barged
in on a secret, that he should have kept his mouth shut. A note of
pleading in his voice, he said, "Al, hey, I meant it as a
compliment."

"But Nicky," said Charlie "Chop" Parilla, "I
don't even know the guy."

"Perfect."

"Perfect? What perfect? Hol' on a minute." He
pressed the phone against his hairy, sweating stomach and screamed
across the garage at the two workmen who were using giant hammers
to bang the doors off a brand-new BMW 740i. "Ya see I'm onna phone.
Try a fuckin' wrench." He dried the receiver on his pants leg, put
it back against his ear. "What's perfect, I don't know the
guy?"

"Motive, Chop," said Nicky Scotto. He was
calling from a pay phone down on Broome Street. It was starting to
snow. Two weeks before Thanksgiving, and thin, defective snow like
a confetti of waxed paper was already blowing sideways through the
street. "Ya don't know the guy, ya got no reason to torment 'im. No
one's gonna suspect."

Chop Parilla scratched his ample belly,
flicked moisture from his fingers. In Hialeah it was eighty-six and
muggy. The doors of the garage were closed. Had to be when you were
doing unrequested autopsies on other people's cars. Lifting engines
out like guts. Scalpeling away spare parts until sometimes nothing
but the drive train sat there on the lift, forlorn as the excised
backbone of a chicken. "I don't know. Sounds like trouble."

"Trouble?" said Nicky. Wet snow was tickling
his Adam's apple and putting evanescent sparkles in his hair.
"Think of it as fun. Twenty grand for a week a trailin' someone you
don't care about one way or the other, and fuckin' wit' his
head."

Chop watched as the wheels were lifted off
the Beemer. Very handsome wheels. Aircraft-grade aluminum. He said,
"If this guy's a big cheese in New York ... I don't know what
you're puttin' me inna middle of."

"There is no middle," Nicky said. "This is
strictly unofficial. A small, personal matter . . . Look, Chop, I
know the fuckin' shithole where you work. Wouldn't you like a paid
excuse to get outa there awhile?"

Parilla thought that over. It was true that
Hialeah got depressing. All those sunburned beggars with signs
around their necks, sitting at intersections clogged with smoking
cars blasting "murder-Castro" call-in shows. But on the other hand,
in Hialeah, Chop was doing what he was put on earth to do. Stealing
cars. Taking them apart. Sometimes putting them together again in
changed configurations. Gaskets; fuel injectors; the snaking cables
of clutches. He loved them all; they spoke to him. If a couple of
breaks had fallen differently, he might have ended up a smiling,
legit mechanic with a computerized wheel-alignment gizmo and his
name embroidered on his pocket, a regular Mr. Goodwrench.

Nicky Scotto broke into his reverie. "Go down
to the Keys? Sunsets. Margaritas. A little poontang, maybe?"

This made it pretty tempting. But there were
problems. "Nicky, how I even find this guy?"

On the snowy New York corner, Nicky Scotto
smiled. "Easy."

"Easy for you to say easy."

"He's a little guy wit' a big dog—"

"Oh, great," said Chop. "That really narrows
it—"

"—and a vanity plate."

"Vanity plate?" said Chop. "The asshole's got
a vanity plate?"

"Did I tell ya he's a putz or what? Tells all
the world, BIG AL."

Chop Parilla shook his head. It was a small
head on a large body. At the back, neck became skull in one
straight line; in front, the jaw barely lifted clear of the
collarbones—it looked like he'd have to jack his chin up to shave
beneath it. Vanity plate. "Make it thirty grand, I'll do it."

"Thirty," said Nicky. "Now you're gettin'
greedy."

"No," said Chop. "In fact I'm takin' a cut.
Ya want this job done like it oughta be, I need a second guy."

On Broome Street the snow was getting drier.
Nicky brushed flakes of it from the lapel of his camel-hair
topcoat. "Have someone in mind?"

The guys in the garage had started hammering
again. In syncopation with the tapping, Chop said, "Only the
perfect guy for this job. Sid the Squid."

Nicky Scotto smiled, narrowing his piggish
eyes. Snow- flakes tickled his gums. Squid Berman. Nicky knew him
by reputation only. But what a reputation. A warped, perverted,
morbid, and sickly artful madman; perhaps a genius. "But wait," he
said. "I thought I heard that Squid was inna slammer. Heisting a
racehorse or something."

"Not a racehorse. Couple greyhounds. Got
caught red-handed with a can of Alpo. But that was like three
hitches ago. He just got out again."

"Wha'd they get 'im for this time?"

"Stealing letters," Chop Parilla said.

"Letters? Squid? That's stupid. Federal."

"Not letters," said Chop. "
Letters
.
Big, gigantic letters offa hotel signs. Ya know, South Beach, deco.
Wanted to make a huge, gigantic billboard that said YOU TOO."

"You, too?"

"Don't ask me," said Chop. "He got it in his
head. Anyway, he could use some dough and he could use some
entertainment."

"Squid Berman," Nicky said with satisfaction.
Why hadn't he thought of him himself? "Okay, Chop. Bring 'im in, ya
got your thirty grand."

*

Big Al Marracotta spent that night in a
Holiday Inn near Santee, South Carolina. By the time he drove
across the Florida line next day, Ripper's rawhide bone had been
masticated into a gooey mess, the Jerry Vale and Al Martino tapes
had been listened to so many times that even the harp parts had
trickled into memory, and Katy Sansone was nowhere to be seen. Her
face finally came up from underneath the steering wheel somewhere
north of Cocoa Beach.

Around Daytona, polishing her toenails, which
rested on the glove box with the little gun inside, she said, "I
hate long car trips."

"Relaxing," said Big Al. He gestured left and
right. "Look at the palm trees."

"I'd rather watch the license plates," she
said. "Michigan. Ontario."

Alan Tuschman, meanwhile, was lagging a state
or so behind, driving a cruise-control seventy in his leased silver
Lexus, and mostly talking to his dog, Fifi.

"Feef," he said, scratching her behind the
ears, "dogs have it pretty good. You realize that?"

The dog luxuriously lolled her head from side
to side, blithely entrusting her knobby little skull to her
master's enormous hand. She was a shih tzu with an attitude,
immaculately groomed and wholly the coquette. Arching bangs lent
mystery to her black and glassy eyes. Her small pink tongue, not
much wider than an anchovy, was an organ of flirtation. Her walk
was proud and bouncy— a cheerleader's walk; she had a way of
looking back across her shoulder that created a distinct impression
of Bacall. But for all her apparent frippery, she had reserves of
steadfastness and courage that had never yet been tested, but
simmered at the ready nonetheless. Now, at ease and intimate, she
lay on her back and let herself be stroked.