Florida Straits (22 page)

Gino opened his mouth, then abruptly stopped
himself, like a card player who realizes he is on the brink of
throwing in what could yet be a winning hand. "Joey, I ain't sure I
oughta tell ya."

Joey sucked his teeth, crossed his arms, and
leaned back against the dresser. "Gino, asshole, you're a walking
dead man because of those fucking emeralds. You don't see
that?"

"What kinda split you looking for,
Joey?"

"Split? Split? You think this is about a
split? Jesus Christ, Gino, you really are a putz." Joey looked at
his watch on its arrogantly inexpensive plastic band. "Look, it's
late. I don't need this shit. Either you tell me what I need to
know in the next thirty seconds, or I'm outta here and you're on
your own."

Gino stared at the carpet but found no
answers there. Vicki's foot moved under the sheet and kicked him in
the kidney. "Awright, awright. Supposedly the stones are stashed at
this place called Sand Key Marina. It's about ten, twelve miles up,
and that's all I know about it. Drove me bullshit tryin' to find
it. There's no signs, no streetlights, you like go down these tiny
roads that turn into gravel and then dead-end at these swamps. Over
and over again, fucking swamps. Mosquitoes. Fire-flies. Things
croaking. Anyway, there's an old wreck of a fishing boat at this
marina. Just, like, tied up there, ya know, it can't be used no
more. It's called the
Osprey
. So Vinnie and Frank, they
scoped it out, and they put the stones in this wreck, under a plank
inside with like a little X marked on it. And that's as much as I
know, I swear to God."

Joey nibbled a thumbnail and glanced at the
dirty dinner dishes. "You got cash?"

Gino nodded.

"Gimme a thousand."

"Wha' for?"

"I don't know yet," Joey said. "I gotta
think."

Gino leaned over, put die Jack Daniel's on a
night table, took a wad of bills out of a drawer, and gave his kid
brother some money.

"Tomorrow at midnight," Joey said, "go down
to the basement, up the service ramp, around the pool, and out to
the dock. No luggage, no nothing."

"What about my stuff?" said Vicki.

"Shut up," said Gino.

And Joey left. He saw no one in the elevator
or in the basement kitchen, and when he encountered a security
guard on the private beach, he just walked past him like he owned
the joint and went out to his boat.

—
31 —

There is a kind of preoccupation that makes
people muddled, absentminded, out of rhythm, but there is also a
kind that hones them, makes them as taut yet supple as a child
gymnast. The next day Joey was riding the crest of this second kind
of preoccupation. He had a golden day at work. No one could say no
to him. He patrolled his corner of Duval Street with the
loose-limbed confidence of a great outfielder, and with similarly
uncanny anticipation. He just knew what people needed to hear. One
couple he won over with a winged spiel about award-winning resort
design. Another couple—how could he tell they were starving?—signed
on at the promise of a meal voucher for an oyster brunch. Then
there was the older gent with the gold chains, the silver belt
buckle, and the pebbled ring. This was a man who liked shiny
things, an easy mark for the free passes to the Treasure Museum. By
noon Joey had made half as much money as he had the entire week
before.

Yet never for a moment was the Gino
situation off his mind. It kept nagging at him like a bad but
catchy tune replayed in a dozen different versions, and every time
Joey ushered customers into the Parrot Beach office, he took the
opportunity to pick Zack Davidson's brain.

"Hey, Zack," he asked at around nine-thirty,
"they got this thing, right, like a mappa the water?"

Zack looked up from some papers on his desk.
"Yeah, Joey, it's called a chart."

"Like, whadda they put on it?"

Zack shrugged. "Depths, buoys, lighthouses,
landmarks—"

"Marinas?"

"Not usually. Not unless there's a big tower
or water tank or something. Why?" Zack laughed at himself for
asking this. He seemed to know by now that Joey wasn't going to
tell him why.

"Just curious," said Joey. He put his
sunglasses back on, let the earpieces slide through his hair with a
feeling smooth as sex, and returned to his post on the
sidewalk.

At around ten-fifteen he shepherded in
another couple, deposited them in the waiting room, and was ready
to resume the conversation exactly where he'd left off. Time was
running on two tracks for Joey. There was the thick, slow time of
his salesman's skill, then there was the urgent yet strangely
serene count-down toward his midnight date with Gino. At moments
the two times ran parallel, but then one would stop, freeze, wait
for the other to have its say. "So, like, if you're looking for a
marina and it ain't onna map—"

"Chart," corrected Zack.

"Whatever. How d'ya find it?"

Zack ran a hand through his sandy hair.
"Well, there's gotta be a channel to get to the marina. So if you
know roughly where it is—"

"Ah," said Joey, and hit the street
again.

At midday he jogged to the Habaneras Marine
Supply store and bought a nautical chart of the lower Keys. He
brought it back to the office, unfurled it on top of the Plexiglas
case of the Parrot Beach scale model, examined it with frank
befuddlement, and experienced an emotion he couldn't quite place.
It was humility. Bafflement, helplessness, littleness, shame —all
of those he'd felt before. But this was different, rounder.
Humility required a certain amount of confidence, a little bit of
knowledge and pride, to give it a place to nest, and these parts of
the mix were new. "
Marrone
," he said, "what is all this
shit?"

Zack Davidson leaned over the chart and
pointed with a pencil. "Latitude. Longitude. Loran lines. Compass
rose. Shoaling. Harbor ranges . . ."

Joey scanned the paper for an easy place
where his eyes could rest. "And what's this blank part over
here?"

Zack was momentarily thrown by the question
and shook his wrist to rearrange his watch. "That? That's the
land."

For some reason this struck Joey funny: a
map where all the important stuff was in the water and the nothing
part was the land. This he'd never heard of in Queens. The idea
pried open his imagination, turned everything superbly upside down.
He scratched his head, dashed outside, and within an hour had
chalked up two more commissions.

"Reefs?" he said when he came back into the
office. "They put reefs onna chart?"

"Sure," said Zack. "This parta the world,
that's like the most important thing on there."

"Right," said Joey. "And onna land part,
they show where the bridges are, right?"

"Yeah," said Zack. "With the
clearances."

"Right."

He returned to his post and realized for the
first time that it was an extremely hot afternoon. The breeze had
stalled and the palms, so lazily efficient at husbanding their
strength, let their fronds hang as limp and seemingly weightless as
flags. The yogurt eaters bent their necks to lick drippings from
their cones, and young women in undershirts had beads of sweat at
their hairlines. Joey sold one last tour with a heartfelt pitch
about the gorgeous pool at Parrot Beach.

"Hey Zack," he said, " 'zere an airport
between here and Miami?"

'Yeah," he said, "at Marathon. Fifty miles
up."

"Great. And what's a rowboat cost?"

Zack Davidson folded his hands on top of his
blotter, unfolded them, tugged an ear, and yawned. The heat and his
younger colleague were making him tired. "Joey, you're awful hyper
today."

"Yeah, I guess I am. Sorry."

"Hey," said Zack, gesturing toward the stack
of tour chits Joey had amassed, "don't be sorry. It works. But
Joey, man, aren't you getting exhausted?"

He let the question slide. "Zack, listen. I
need your boat again tonight. I gotta keep it overnight, and I need
tomorrow off. I know it's a lot to ask, but after this, I'm through
with this craziness, I swear to God."

Zack shrugged. If Joey didn't wreck his boat
the first time, odds were he wouldn't wreck it the second. Besides,
the kid was on a salesman's roll, in that zone where no one could
say no to him. Far be it from his boss to break the trance. "O.K.,"
he said, "you got it."

"And there's one other thing," Joey said. He
leaned across Zack's desk and wagged a finger under his chin. "You
gotta promise you're gonna lemme make this up to you sometime."

"Joey, hey, it's no big deal."

"It is to me. Come on, Zack, I'm serious.
Don't insult me."

Zack looked at the younger man and blinked
his sandy eyelashes. Skeptical crinkles bunched up at the comers of
his hazel eyes, as if he had a tough time imagining Joey in a
strong enough position to do much of anything for anybody else.
"Whatever, Joey. When you can. If you can. No pressure."

"Soon," said Joey. "It's gonna be soon. And
if things go right, Zack, you're gonna see that I'm a guy who knows
how to return a favor."

—
32 —

In the screened gazebo at the Paradiso
condominium, the late afternoon gin game was just breaking up, the
players about to go their separate ways for the rituals of cocktail
hour and sunset. When Joey arrived, Bert d'Ambrosia was gesturing
through a final kibitz with the retired judge, his colleague in
age, assets, and the respect accorded to each. Bert wore a pale
yellow shirt whose weave was almost as thin and open as
cheesecloth; the fabric nearly disappeared against his bronze,
stretched skin. Don Giovanni perched on his forearm like an
acrobat, seeming to use his whiskers as a kind of balance pole.

"Hi, Bert. Got a minute?"

The old man flashed him a wry look that said
that was exactly what he had. Minutes. Hours. Days. Maybe even a
few years yet.

Joey motioned him outside, and the two men
sat down under one of the steel umbrellas by the pool.

Bert put his dog on the table, and although
Joey didn't say a word about it, the old gangster seemed to feel
called upon to explain. "The other owners don't like it," he said,
"and I don't blame 'em. A dog onna table—it ain't, like,
whatchacallit, sanitary. But this dog, ever since the night with
the gahbidge, he don't like to be out of my sight. Like, under the
chair, that's too far away now. Fucking dog's a royal pain innee
ass. Ain't you a pain innee ass, Giovanni? I shoulda let that
little scar-faced fucker blow your brains out."

Joey looked through his blue lenses at the
blue shimmer of the pool. "Yeah, Bert," he said. "Well, speakin'a
pains innee ass, I took a boat, slipped inta the Flagler House, and
wenta see Gino last night."

The Shirt took the news in stride. "And
how's he doin'?"

"He's fallin' apart," said Joey. The
statement came out oddly neutral because in it sympathy was
balanced with rage, letdown canceled out vindication.

"Figures," said Bert. "Soft inna middle,
Gino is. If things don't fall his way, if he can't play the big
shot—"

"Well, I'm gettin' him outta town tonight. I
got it mostly figured and I think it's gonna work."

The old man reached up and stroked the
strands of flesh that were like the rigging for a double chin that
wasn't there. "You think it's gonna work?"

"It'll work," Joey said softly. He looked
out through the open side of the Paradiso quadrangle, across the
bustle of A1A to the imported sand of Smathers Beach and the green
Atlantic beyond. "But I'm gonna need some help."

"Like?"

"Like I need you to drive about twelve miles
up the Keys and meet me at dawn at this little bridge between Big
Coppitt and Saddlebunch."

"That I can do," Bert said. "It's not like I
sleep good anyway."

"Then I need you to take Gino and Vicki to
Marathon airport and get 'em onna first flight out. But not to
Miami. I think it'd be better to avoid Miami. Where else they fly
to outta there?"

"Prob'ly West Palm, Tampa."

"Yeah," said Joey, "someplace like that.
Soon as possible. Then fuck it, we're done."

Bert scratched his chest through his
cheesecloth shirt, and with his other hand he scratched the dog's.
"Joey, ain'tcha forgettin' something?"

"Whassat?"

"What about the emeralds, Joey? Gino have
the emeralds?"

Joey drummed his fingertips on the white
enamel table and slowly shook his head. "The two guys that got
whacked? They stashed 'em. And my genius brother, the night he
almost got us killed, he went to cop 'em and couldn't find
'em."

"So that's that?" said Bert the Shirt. He
was retired, more than comfortable, he had no use or even desire
for extra money, but still, the idea of three million dollars going
unexploited seemed to offend him profoundly. "So the stones'll just
sit somewhere and rot?"

"Emeralds don't rot," said Joey. "That's the
beauty part."

Bert paused. Back when he was active in the
business, he'd been one of the better pausers in New York. He'd
squint, toy with his collar, reach ever so slowly into his
monogrammed pocket for a smoke. So supple were his pauses that they
were equally suited to exuding menace or concealing knowledge or
simply shaving parts of beats off the rough jazz of his speech.
"Giovanni," he said at last to the dog, "you think this kid's
holdin' out on us?"

Joey patted the chihuahua's head as a way of
placating its master. "Bert, I ain't said one thing that isn't
true. But hey, listen, coupla other things. Ya know where I can get
a sleeping bag?"

"Sleeping bag? Joey, what're you runnin'
here, a fucking Boy Scout camp? There's an army surplus on Stock
Island."

"Great. And I need a rowboat. You got any
idea where I can get a rowboat?"