Florida Straits (35 page)

"O.K.," he began. "O.K."

But immediately he stopped. He swiveled on
the plastic seat of his kitchen chair and looked back over is
shoulder. "Sandra. Where's Sandra? I want you here, baby."

In the Florida room there was a shuffling of
feet, a disapproving rearrangement of limbs. You didn't invite
broads to a sit-down. But it was Joey's meeting now, it made his
hair itch to realize he could do what he wanted. Bruno carried a
chair for Sandra. She made no sound as she sat. Her hands were
motionless in her lap and her posture was breathtaking.

"Right," said Joey. "O.K. Yeah.... Now, Mr.
Ponte, your emeralds are gone, you saw that for yourself. They're
inna vault by now, there's nothing to be done." It was a dicey
opening, it already cast the Miami Boss in the role of the guy
who'd lost. Ponte looked down between his knees and tugged at a
thumbnail. "So let's like go over how it got to that.

"The two guys that ain't around no more,"
Joey went on, "Vinnie Fish and Frankie Bread—they grabbed the
stones from Coconut Grove, and my brother Gino was in with them.
Weren't ya, Gino?"

Gino looked down and nodded, his fat chin
coming up like a high collar as he did so.

"So the deal was this," Joey said. "Vinnie
and Frankie, they stashed the stones on a junky old fishing boat,
then they took the boat out and sank it. The idea, ya know, was to
let some time pass, let things cool off some, then the three of
them would salvage the wreck and walk away with the money. Ain't
that right, Gino?"

The older brother looked at Joey from under
the fat pads of his eyebrows. Gino didn't mind lying to Ponte, not
at all, but he wanted to be in control of the story. His bastard
kid brother was now asking him to drive blind, let go, bend over
and leave it all to him. The idea rankled almost as much as it
terrified. But Gino had no plan of his own and it seemed he had
finally realized he had nothing more to lose. He nodded.

Vincente Delgatto moved forward an inch in
his chair and folded his lean and papery hands.

"So O.K.," Joey resumed. "Frankie and Vinnie
disappear. For Gino, this is good news, bad news. He's got nobody
to split the money with. That's good. He's got no one to help him
salvage the boat. That's bad. So the night your boys grabbed me and
Bert and took us to the gahbidge—Gino set that up so he could run
up the Keys to scope things out. Bert knows that too. Don'tcha,
Bert?"

The Shirt petted his chihuahua, scratched it
behind the ears. "He used us. As decoys. No hard feelings, Gino,
but that wasn't right. Someone coulda gotten hurt. Sandra here, she
coulda been with us."

Joey's fiancée gave a small nod of gratitude
for Bert's concern. The nod stretched but did not violate her crisp
outline.

Then a low rumble seemed to ripple the
striped dimness of the Florida room. It was Joey and Gino's father
starting to speak. The voice was very sad. "To your own brother you
do this, Gino?"

"Pop, hey, it's history," said Joey.
"Besides, Gino and me, we forgive each other, don't we, Gino? Life,
ya can't get through it without ya forgive people, ya drown in
bullshit otherwise. I mean, forgiveness, that's really what this
meeting is about."

"Bullshit," put in Charlie Ponte. "This
fucking meeting is about what happened to my fucking emeralds."

"Right, Mr. Ponte. You're right. But
forgiveness, the stones, it all comes together. 'Cause here's what
happens. Gino realizes there's no way he can salvage the wreck
alone. So he goes to a pro—that's Clem Sanders, the salvage guy. He
reaches him through me, 'cause, hey, this is my town now, I know
who to go to. This much, Mr. Ponte, I'm involved"—he lifted his
hands in a gesture of surrender—"and this is why, me too, I'm
asking your forgiveness.

"But this Sanders, he's a businessman, he's
legit, he's got a certain way he does things. An expedition, he
sells shares. He keeps a third, he keeps the right to sell a third,
the third third he sells to the guy who proposes the search. So now
Gino is back to being a one-third partner. You follow?"

Charlie Ponte propped his elbows on his
knees and rested his chin on his crisscrossed fingers. "So you're
telling me that Gino owns a one-third share a my fucking
emeralds?"

"This is exactly what I'm telling you, Mr.
Ponte. It's in the public papers, you can check for—"

"Now wait a—" Gino interrupted.

His father cut him off in turn. "You done
enough, Gino. Your brother's talkin' now."

Joey hesitated. He glanced at Bert, pulled
in a chestful of air, and continued. "Now here's where the
forgiveness comes in. The shares that Gino bought, they cost ten
thousand dollars. Bert fronted the cash for 'em, didn't ya,
Bert?"

The old mobster nodded, his chihuahua
twitched.

"So Gino is gonna pay that money, outta
pocket, that's gonna be, like, his cost for forgiveness, his
penalty for fucking with you."

For an instant Gino froze like a skunk in
headlights. Then he pitched thickly forward on the settee. "Joey,
hey—"

His father raised a single gnarled finger.
"Zippuh your fucking mouth shut, Gino. You'll pay the money."

"And of course," Joey resumed, "his third of
the emeralds, that goes right to you."

He fell silent, as though his pitch was
over. Outside, the pool pump switched on and hummed, the palm
fronds rustled dryly. Don Giovanni stood up and did an impatient
pirouette in his master's lap. Sandra smoothed her cream-colored
skirt across her thighs. Joey glanced at her pink neck and wondered
how many years in Florida it would take for her to get a tan.

Charlie Ponte's mouth was moving as he
worked out some arithmetic, but the numbers didn't solve his
problem. When he finally spoke, it was not to Joey but to Vincente
Delgatto, and his tone was oddly calm. It was the tone of a general
who'd endured the charade of diplomacy and could now move joyously
into war.

"Vincent," he said, "outta respect for you
I'm sittin' heah quiet, I'm listening, I'm giving these boysa yours
every chance. Joey heah, what he says, a lot of it makes sense. I
give 'im credit. But Vincent, his bottom line, it fucking stinks. I
lost tree million dollars in emeralds. He's telling me he can get
me back one million, and he's makin' it sound like a big fucking
favor. Come on, Vincent, you know it as well as I do—the numbers
don't add up. Whaddya want from me? I got no choice."

Vincente Delgatto sat still as a parked
truck. But there was an admission in his posture.

Even Bert the Shirt could not deny the
numbers. "Don't come out right," he muttered, like he was checking
over a grocery receipt.

Sandra, who never fidgeted, started fretting
with her fingertips.

"Wait a second, Mr. Ponte," Joey said. "Who
said anything about one million dollars? I'm talking four million.
This is what I was tryin' to tell ya all morning. Since last night
I been tryin' to tell ya this."

Everybody sat. Everybody waited. There was a
lull in the breeze and the air smelled like scorched sand.

"Mr. Ponte, lemme ask you something. The
Colombians—you ever tell 'em about the missing stones?"

The Miami Boss could not help snorting.
"Right," he said. "And look like a horse's ass? Like I can't
control my own people?"

Joey raised a pacifying palm. "Who's gotta
know it was your own people that heisted 'em? You never got 'em.
End of story."

Ponte pursed his lips and considered.

"Now tell me if I'm wrong," Joey continued,
"but these emeralds, they were, like, a goodwill gesture, like to
make it up to you for some other business they screwed up,
right?"

Ponte gave a grudging nod.

"Well, they screwed up again. I mean, hey,
what kinda goodwill gesture is it if you never got the stones? The
way I see it, they still owe you."

The Miami Boss threw a sideways look at
Vincente Delgatto. The patriarch sat still, his expression blank as
the ground.

"They're gonna believe me," Ponte said, "I
tell 'em the stones never got to me?"

Joey leaned forward over his knees and put a
conspiratorial rasp into his voice. "Mr. Ponte, this is the beauty
part—they don't hafta believe you." He gestured past the louvered
windows at the world. "They're probably watching it on television
right now. It's gonna be in all the papers. Headlines. Pictures.
Three million in mystery gems
—this is a big deal down heah,
you know that. Your stones ended up innee ocean, you have no idea
how. This is what you tell the Colombians. Shit, what's three
million to them? They wanna keep you happy, they'll give ya three
million more. Three, plus the one ya got from Gino. That makes
four, am I right?"

Ponte tugged an ear, looked down at the
sisal rug striped with filtered sunlight. Then he shrugged. Then he
almost smiled. Then he said to Joey's father, "Vincent, where you
been hiding this boy?"

The patriarch moved his lips a fraction of
an inch and his filmy eyes darkly gleamed with something like
pride.

"So Mr. Ponte," Joey said, "we have an
understanding here?"

"Enough with the Mr. Ponte shit," said the
little mobster from Miami. "Call me Charlie, kid."

—
50 —

"Come on, Pop," Joey Goldman said. "This is
Florida, we'll sit out by the pool."

It was mid-afternoon, the sun was fierce
though the breeze was freshening, and Joey slid the outdoor table
into a patch of shade. The compound had grown weirdly, blessedly
quiet. Gino Delgatto, fat, oily, and ashen, had bolted immediately
at the conclusion of the sit-down. Bert the Shirt, using his frail
dog as an excuse, had gone home to take a nap. Charlie Ponte had
kissed his older colleague from New York, given Joey an avuncular
pat on the cheek, gathered up his sweaty minions, and headed for
Miami. Sandra had excused herself to take a long hot bath, to try
to soak the terror and the memory of captivity out of her sunburned
skin. Only Steve the naked landlord was about, and he turned his
bare backside on his newly troublesome tenant, this quiet guy who
all of a sudden was always entertaining.

"A swim or something, Pop? I'll lend ya some
trunks."

Vincente Delgatto hadn't even taken off his
dark gray suit jacket, and he seemed to find something droll in
being invited to go for a swim. He gave a small smile, strong,
veiny teeth flashing for just an instant between his thin dry lips.
Then he waved the suggestion away. "No, Joey, no thanks."

They fell silent and for a moment the father
and the son enjoyed the air that was the temperature of skin and
carried the pleasantly rank sweetness of wet cardboard. "Joey,"
Vincente Delgatto said at last. "Joey. The way you handled that, it
was beautiful. Beautiful." He sounded transported, as though by an
aria perfectly sung. "I never realized, Joey. What you could do, I
never realized."

Joey Goldman toyed with the ribbing on the
sleeve of his pink knit shirt, slid the earpieces of his sunglasses
through his hair. "There was nothin' to realize, Pop. Up in New
York, when I lived up there, hey, let's face it, I couldn't get
outta my own way, I couldn't do nothin'."

His father shook his head, which wobbled
slightly on his shrunken neck. An old man's errors mattered both
more and less than a young man's. More because there was less time
to undo them; less because there was less time to endure their
consequences. "You coulda done plenty, Joey. I never gave you a
chance."

Joey just shrugged. The palm fronds
scratched like brushes on a snare drum, the little wavelets in the
pool traced a bright pattern on the bottom. The silence went on a
beat too long, and Joey fiddled with his glasses. "Sal gave me
these shades, ya know. Like a going-away—"

"You hate me, Joey?"

The son hesitated. It was not so much that
he was in doubt about his answer as that he was taken aback at
being asked the question. His father was not a man to make a habit
of offering his upturned throat.

"Nah, Pop," Joey said at last. "I don't hate
ya. I wish some things were different, but hey."

"Things could be different, Joey." Vincente
Delgatto reached up to straighten his already perfect tie. This was
still, as it had been for as long as Joey could remember, the
signal that the Don was about to offer the benefits of his
influence. "I could set you up good. You wanna come back to the
city, I could set you up very nice."

"Nah, Pop, that's not what I mean. I don't
want that anymore. I'm over it. What you do, what Gino does, it's
not for me. I know that now." Joey paused, tapped his fingers on
the table, and gave a little laugh. "I ain't a tough guy, Pop.
Never was. I useta try to be, and let's face it, it was fucking
ridiculous.

"Besides, New York? Nuh-uh. Pop, my life's
in Florida now. I like it here. It's easy. Palm trees. Sunsets. And
I'm gonna tell ya somethin', it's gonna sound, like, sarcastic, but
I don't mean it that way. You did me a big favor, not takin' better
care a me before. I mean, if things weren't so, so frustrating up
there, I never woulda left. I wouldn'ta thought of it. I mean, how
many guys even think of it?"

It was not a question meant to be answered,
but Vincente Delgatto raised a finger as though he might try. Then
he dropped his hand into his lap and a faraway look came into his
deep but filmy eyes. His lips pushed slightly forward toward what
might have been a pout but looked, oddly, almost like the
preparation for a kiss, and suddenly, for the first time ever, it
occurred to Joey to wonder if his father had sometime thought of
leaving, of changing, of turning his back on the neighborhood and
his place within it to live a life he'd chosen for himself.

"Pop," said Joey, "can I ask you
something?"

The old man simply cocked his head to
listen.