Florida Straits (34 page)

Clem Sanders savored the moment. His boat
was taller than the others, and he loomed on the deck like a
preacher casting his blessing across the waters. He didn't need to
look down to know that the desperadoes in the cigarette were going
through a purgatory of helplessness: the ocean revealed guilt even
as it offered absolution, and Sanders let the guilty squirm. He
cleared his throat, scanned the sky. To the north, the low land of
the Keys was just barely visible, a smudge on the horizon. To the
south was the indigo ribbon of the Gulf Stream, winding its way to
the ends of the earth.

"No need to trouble about these people," he
said at last. "But if you'd be so kind as to cruise on in with
us—"

Sandra suddenly got up from the stern
settee. Her hair was mussed, her pale skin was splotched pink with
sun and fear, but she managed to sound calm and self-contained,
poised within her own crisp outline. "Mr. Sanders, would it be O.K.
if Joey and I rode in with you?"

The little flotilla bobbed in the water, the
guardsmen finally brought their rifles to their sides, and Clem
Sanders smiled like a politician pinching babies. "Well, of course,
little lady. If you like."

Sandra smiled as one of the marine cops
reached a hand to help her over the gunwale. Joey followed. But if
he felt relief, Charlie Ponte squelched it in a second.

"See ya later," the little mobster said. He
tried to make it sound casual and friendly. It didn't. "We got a
date."

Joey just nodded, then trailed Sandra as she
climbed a rusty ladder that brought them to Clem Sanders's side.
Lines were uncleated, fenders brought in. Above the noise of
starting engines, the treasure hunter said to Joey, "Kid, what the
hayle you doin' here? You said you wanted to stay outta the public
part."

"Those guys," said Joey, by way of answer,
"they like persuaded me to change my mind."

—

Very Key West. The scene at Mallory Dock was
very Key West.

As the crew was tying up, Joey looked out
from the deck of the salvage craft. Pier bums, their beards stiff
with salt and old food, were milling around, sucking their gums.
Aging hippies with gray feet swarmed toward the spectacle like
pigeons to a tower. But mostly Joey saw cameras. Local cable crews,
network gangs from Miami, tourists with video zooms—they were all
there to document this old Key West tradition, this miracle of
money coming out of the water.

A line of city cops had cordoned off the
gangway. County sheriffs made a gauntlet to the armored car.
Highway cops on Harleys sat in a chevron formation in front of the
mayor's ancient but gleaming Imperial convertible. Meek visitors
edged cautiously closer, not sure where they were allowed to stand,
not sure if what they were gawking at was interesting. Key West—a
town of people passing through, looking around, waiting, hoping for
something special to happen, then not having a clue what was going
on when it did.

Clem Sanders, his sun-crevassed lips spread
into his best television smile, his gold doubloon flashing on its
leather necklace, led the triumphant procession down the ramp. He
waved, shook hands, tantalizingly dangled the burlap pouch full of
Colombian emeralds. The treasure hunter's ego swelled to fill the
moment the way bread rises to fill a pan. Joey felt himself
squeezed to the edge of the occasion, the fringe of events, he felt
himself disappearing, and he was glad for that. He was suddenly
very tired. Emeralds, brothers, ropes, speedboats; gangsters,
helicopters, blows to the head, threats against his life. It was
extremely draining, disorienting almost to the point of madness. He
suddenly felt like a loose wire, limp, frayed, power oozing away
like blood. He put his hand in the small of Sandra's back. He badly
needed to touch her, to ground himself, to remind himself how
compact she was, how neat and taut the little humps of muscle on
either side of her spine.

They followed in Clem Sanders's wake, down
the gangway and across the concrete pier. Through the tumult, they
only half heard the salvor's quick sly comments to reporters, only
half noticed the clicking cameras, the helmeted police. Then a
familiar voice broke free of the crowd's buzz from behind the
sawhorse barricades.

"Joey, hey, Joey."

It was Zack Davidson. He was wearing his
pink shirt, his khaki shorts. His collar was turned up perfectly
but not too perfectly, his sandy hair fell as if by chance into an
inevitable arc over his forehead. "We got it, huh, we got it!"

"Hm?" was the best Joey could manage.

"Joey," said Zack, reaching over the
barricade to punch him lightly on the shoulder. "We just got a
little bit rich. For a guy that just got rich, you don't look that
happy."

Joey smiled, but his cheeks felt weary,
bruised, and sunburned as they bunched up around the corners of his
mouth. He toyed with his sunglasses, slid the earpieces through his
hair. "I guess I'm getting ready to be happy, Zack," he said. "I'm
not quite there yet, but I'm getting ready."

Numbly, his hand on Sandra's slender back,
he followed the course of Clem Sanders's small parade. It was just
after they'd passed the armored car and were standing in line for
handshakes from the mayor that Joey saw the dark blue Lincoln
waiting for him across the street. Sandra saw it too.

"Whyn't you go inna motorcade with Clem,"
Joey said to her.

Sandra said nothing and didn't budge from
Joey's side. Together, they inched down the receiving line. Twenty
yards away was a rank of cops, and beyond that was a wide world
where there was no one to protect them from Charlie Ponte and from
the long reach of the old neighborhood.

"Really, Sandra," Joey whispered. TV cameras
were on them, local big shots were slapping backs. "These guys are
killers. They're really pissed, their patience is used up. There's
no reason for you—"

"There is a reason, Joey," Sandra
interrupted. "You asked me to marry you, remember? You said I
should hold you to it. So I am. I'm going with you. It's part of
the deal."

"Sandra—" he began, and then he realized it
was useless to protest. He took a deep breath, cast a foreigner's
glance at the cameras and the gawking tourists, then steered his
fiancée out of the receiving line. "Awright," he said, "we can't
dodge no more. Let's go and get it over with."

They walked with neither haste nor
hesitation through the line of cops and toward the waiting Lincoln.
Tony shot them a malicious scar-lipped smile from behind the wheel,
and Bruno held a back door open for them with the grim
solicitousness of an usher at a funeral.

—
49 —

Steve the naked landlord was on his second
beer and had just lit a fresh cigarette from a butt still
smoldering in the ashtray. He watched Joey and Sandra approach
along the white gravel walkway, Tony and Bruno trudging along
behind them. Then he turned his paperback facedown on the damp
tiles. "Joey," he said, motioning him over, "can I talk to you a
sec?"

Joey crouched down on the pool's cool
apron.

"Joey," Steve said. "All these houseguests,
these parties. Is this gonna be like a regular thing?"

Joey waited the usual beat, but Steve's
smile did not appear. Naked, working on his morning buzz, he was
still the landlord. "I wouldn't call 'em parties," Joey said
softly.

"No?" said Steve. He lifted an eyebrow
toward their bungalow, and in that instant the house appeared not
just small but miniature, a scale model of a place where people
could maybe make a life. "Joey, every time I turn around, you got
more people crammed in there."

"We do?"

Steve just dragged on his cigarette and blew
smoke out his nose. "Come on, Joey, let's be fair."

"Fair," said Joey. "O.K." He straightened
up, then sucked in a deep breath scented with jasmine and chlorine.
He reached for Sandra, touched her arm to stop the electricity from
oozing out his fingertips, and walked with her between the pool and
the hot tub, Tony and Bruno following behind. Palm fronds scratched
lightly overhead, the high sun slashed through in punishing slices.
Joey's stomach didn't feel right, it felt like stale but icy air
was swirling around inside it.

The sliding door to their bungalow was open
wide, and through it came a sort of cool dim humming threat, a
threat like that of a too quiet jungle. Joey swept off his
sunglasses as he crossed the threshold. There were more people than
he expected, more faces than he could process at once.

Charlie Ponte's Miami thugs and divers were
glutting up the living room. Thick thighs were thrown over the arms
of chairs, big white shirts with dark stains in the armpits were
arrayed next to wet suits against the walls. There was a stink of
clashing after-shaves and dry-cleaning fluid being sweated out of
fabric too long in contact with damp skin. The thugs regarded Joey
with an indifference more wilting than active menace.

In the Florida room, the louvered windows
were still cranked shut, and a furtive, illicit twilight was being
enforced against the day. Charlie Ponte, his silver jacket
splotched with moisture, his hair restored to its usual neatness,
was perched in the wicker seat where Sandra had been tied. Bert the
Shirt d'Ambrosia, dressed for the occasion in nubbly black linen, a
burgundy monogram on his breast pocket, rested on the settee, his
chihuahua serene yet vigilant in his lap.

Next to him sat Gino Delgatto, nervously
crossing and uncrossing his legs. Joey's half brother did not look
healthy. His skin was yellowish and he hadn't dropped the weight
he'd put on while holed up at the Flagler House. His eyes were
gradually disappearing under pads of excess skin, his fatty chin
had lost the squareness that brought him to the brink of being
handsome.

You had to look beneath the fat to see how
he resembled his and Joey's father.

Vincente Delgatto was sitting with a perfect
stillness that was the emblem of his dignity and his authority. He
was lean, dry, with a long crescent face and a crinkled stringy
neck that no longer filled his stiff collar. He wasn't dressed for
Florida. He wore a gray pinstripe suit and a red silk tie with a
massive double Windsor knot. He had a broad straight nose that came
down directly from his forehead, and his teeth were long and veined
with brown, stained by half a century of cigars, espresso, and red
wine.

Joey stared at him through the strange
striped dimness cast by the louvered windows. His legs felt
disconnected from him, he wondered if his brain had come unmoored
from getting hit too many times then being cast out in the
throbbing sun. He didn't quite recognize his own voice. "Pop?"

Bert the Shirt, a man who had been dead,
seemed to recognize the moment after which a person could not be
pulled back from oblivion, helplessness, or paralyzing confusion.
"I called him, Joey," he blurted. "Last night."

"The fucking old lady," Charlie Ponte
grumbled. "He's always in my face down heah, always stickin' his
nose in."

"What could I tell ya?" Bert stroked his dog
and addressed this to the room at large. "I tried to do the right
thing."

"Pop," said Joey.

The old man gave the smallest nod, the
smallest lift to his thick brows, whose tangled black and silver
strands gave a look of stark realism to his deep but filmy
eyes.

"Awright, awright. I ain't got all day,"
said Charlie Ponte. "I'm givin' the kid a chance t'explain things.
So go 'head, let 'im explain."

Joey was still standing numbly in the
archway. He looked down and saw that Sandra, silent, alert,
practical Sandra, had slid a kitchen chair in next to him. He
sat.

But Charlie Ponte, having ordered Joey to
speak, now decided he wasn't quite ready to give up the floor. He
ignored Joey, ignored Gino, ignored Bert, and spoke only to the
patriarch. "But Vincent, remember, you and me, we got an agreement.
We can sit here and make nice, but if I don't get satisfaction from
this meeting—"

Ponte stopped talking because it was one of
those statements that could not be finished. But then the Miami
Boss made the mistake of thinking back over the whole story of the
heisted emeralds, the irritating trips down the Keys, the waiting,
the disappointments, the manpower wasted, the putrid and futile
evening with the garbage, and he launched into a slow burn.

"Because I'm tellin' you, Vincent, the
aggravation I been getting, the bullshit I been putting up with,
and for what? From who? From this nobody, this jerk, this little
faggot with a pink shirt on, this fucking clown—"

"Cholly, he's my son."

The short and simple words, the way the old
man said them, stopped Charlie Ponte cold. Acknowledging the
bastard, proclaiming the tie. This changed things. Kinship. It was
in the blood, sure, but that was only half of it. It also hinged on
what people said to each other, or didn't say, what they were proud
of and what they kept buried. All of a sudden Ponte was less sure
he knew who he was dealing with.

"The agreement," Delgatto senior went on, in
a voice that was low but carried, that seemed to be everywhere at
once, like a rumble underground, "it stands. Ya don't get
satisfaction, ya do what ya gotta do. No retaliation. I
shouldn't've agreed, but I did. I didn't know. My son Gino, he
fucked up bad. Didn't ya, Gino?"

Gino nodded miserably. His fat chin was down
on his chest, and his shirt was stretching open between the
buttons.

"Only thing I ask," the patriarch concluded,
"is ya give Joey a fair shot at workin' things out."

Ponte pursed his lips and nodded Joey
swallowed, looked at his father. The old man met his gaze and Joey
took away from the exchange a hit of that undaunted readiness, the
anyplace, anytime preparedness he'd felt that first time alone in a
boat, alone on the ocean, alone in the night. His head cleared, the
situation was clean as a razor. Either he would save himself or he
would not.