Florida Straits (7 page)

" 'Frankie,' I say, 'that's great. God bless
you.' So here it is eight years later, Joey, and here I am." Bert
lifted his hands and his eyes toward the ceiling, but whether he
was thanking heaven for his resurrection or simply locating himself
in space it was impossible to tell. "Six years ago I had a triple
bypass, and today I feel as good as an old fart can expect to
feel."

Joey took a sip of his tequila.
"Unbefuckinglievable, Bert. Afuckingmazing. So have they called on
you?"

The old mafioso leaned closer and Joey
caught a whiff of his bay rum after-shave above the booze-and-
washrag smell of the bar. "Joey," he whispered, "this is why I
wanted to talk to you. This is what I'm trying to tell you. There's
been nothing for them to call on me
about
. In the early
years, yeah, every three, four months they'd ask me to check up on
something, but it was usually something in Miami. These New York
guys, ya know, they got no sense of geography. I'd say to them,
'How the fuck should I know what goes on in Miami? Miami is as far
from here as Brooklyn is from Baltimore.'

" 'Oh yeah?' they'd say. "Where's
Baltimore?'

"But Joey, since Scalera got whacked, I
hardly get called at all. Once in a great while maybe. But our
friends are just not active down here, Joey. This is what I'm
telling you. And why aren't they? 'Cause there's a whole different
mix of people down here— Cubans, military, treasure hunters,
smugglers—and a whole different set of scams. Your father knows
that, Joey. Your brother Gino should know it."

"I'm not working for my father," Joey said.
"And I'm not working for Gino. I'm here on my own."

Bert sucked down the last of his whiskey
sour and considered. "On your own? This I didn't realize." He
cocked his head, pursed his loose lips, then blew some air between
them. "On your own. O.K., Joey, you got balls, you got ambition, I
respect that. But Joey, what you're trying to do—you don't just
show up someplace and act like you're a goddamn franchise, like
you're opening a branch office of the Mob. Whaddya think, it's like
fucking McDonald's? Maybe you can sell the same hamburger on every
street corner in America. With scams it's different. You wanna
operate here, you gotta come up with something local. Ya know, a
scam that fits the climate."

Now, three or four times in a person's life,
probably not more, something is said that really makes a
difference. The moment, the source, and the need to hear that thing
all line up perfectly, and the comment ends up seeming not only
like the listener's own thought but his destiny. Joey drained his
glass and ran a hand through his hair. "You're right, Bert," he
said. "I know you're right. But what should the angle be?"

The old man looked down at his watch. "Holy
shit," he said. "I gotta go. I got some guys coming over to play
gin rummy."

He reached down under his barstool as if
retrieving a hat, and came up with a dog. It was a chihuahua with a
wet black nose, bulging glassy eyes, and quivering whiskers, and it
fit in the palm of Bert's fleshy hand.

"That dog was there the whole time?" Joey
asked.

"Yeah," said Bert, and he stared at the
animal's glassy eyes. "I hate this fucking dog." Then he addressed
the dog directly. "I hate ya." He turned his glance back to Joey.
"I gotta take him with me everywhere, or he shits onna floor. For
spite. It's not even my dog. It's my wife's dog."

"So why doesn't your wife take care of
him?"

"She's dead."

"Ah jeez, Bert, I'm sorry."

"Old news. She's been dead five years. And
it was like her deathbed wish.
Bert, promise me you'll take care
of Don Giovanni."

"Don Giovanni?" Joey said, looking dubiously
at the quaking little creature.

"Yeah. Ya know, like the opera. My wife
loved the opera. A very cultured woman, my wife." Then he said to
the chihuahua, "Our Carla, our dear sweet pain inna neck, Carla,
wasn't she cultured?" And to Joey: "But the fucking dog, I hate the
fucking dog. Cliff, put this on my tab." And he got up slowly.

"But Bert, hey," said Joey, "you're leavin'
me, like, hangin' heah."

"You wanna talk," said Bert the Shirt, "come
by the condo. Anytime. The Paradiso. We'll talk by the pool."

—
8 —

Joey pushed open the door to the compound
and breathed deeply of the jasmine and the lime. He was feeling
optimistic and benign. One of the ladies was poaching in the hot
tub, only her dark coarse hair visible above the roiling water.
"How's it feel in there, Marsha?" Joey asked.

"Feels great. But I'm Wendy."

Inside their cottage, Sandra was standing in
the kitchen, watching fish fillets defrost. She was just out of the
shower and had a towel, turban style, on her head. She wore a short
pink robe, and rivulets of water still gleamed on her pale
legs.

"Hello, baby," Joey said. "You look
sexy."

"Hi, Joey." Sandra made it a point not to
echo his buoyant tone. "You sound happy. Been drinking?"

"Come on, I had two drinks. But that's not
why I'm happy. I met a guy, a guy from New York. Knows my old man.
Isn't that a pisser? We had a nice talk. It was like
neighborhood."

"Good," said Sandra. "I'm glad you had a
pleasant afternoon." She looked at the fish, laid out on a warped
wooden cutting board. Frozen, the fillets had been silvery and
smooth. As they melted, they turned bluish and flakes bent back
like small barbs.

"Sandra, hey, you like it better when I'm in
a lousy mood and just mope around?"

"No, Joey, of course not. It's just—"

"Just what?"

"Joey, listen. I don't mind that you're not
bringing in any money right now. I really don't."

"I think you do," he said.

"Maybe I do," she admitted. "To tell you the
truth, I'm not sure if I do or if I don't. But Joey, that's not the
point. It's not like you're a freeloader. It's not like you're
lazy. I know you're not. You're out there putting in time, putting
in trouble. I know that. But Joey, here's the thing. You don't
wanna tell me the details of what you're trying to do, fair enough,
I don't need to know. But isn't it getting pretty obvious that it
isn't any easier to do things your way than it is to make an honest
living? So why not use that energy—"

"Oh Christ, Sandra, we're gonna start in on
this again?"

"Yeah, Joey, we are." Sandra crossed her
arms and pressed them against her midriff. Her face, already
flushed from the shower, turned a shade pinker under the unsteady
fluorescent light. "Joey, I'm not sure I really understand why you
came down here, but I'll tell you why I did. I came down here
because I love you. That's the only reason. Not to get a tan. Not
to wear sunglasses. Not because I was unhappy in Queens. To be with
you. I thought you really wanted to change things around and you
had to go far away to do it."

Joey examined his shoes. Sandra went on.

"The things you were doing in New York—look,
I'm not stupid, Joey. But O.K., that was New York. That was your
family, those were our friends. Fine. No one ever seemed to get in
trouble, and if people got hurt, they weren't the people we knew.
I'm not saying I liked it, but I could live with it."

Joey looked at the linoleum floor, at the
ancient oily dust that stuck to the base of the refrigerator and
hung down like a filthy beard. "So live with it and stop
bitching."

Sandra undid her turban and draped the towel
over the back of a chair. "Joey, that's what I'm saying. I'm not
sure I can live with it down here. Down here I can't make excuses
for you. I can't say you were born into it, I can't say it's what
all your buddies do. Down here you got a choice, Joey, don'tcha see
that? And as far as I can tell, you're choosing the exact same
stuff you were doing in Queens."

"Oh yeah?" said Joey. He put his hands on
his hips and tried to muster a tone of righteous indignation. "And
just how sure are you about that?"

Sandra picked up the cutting board and
spilled off some gray water that had come out of the fish. "I'm
not
sure," she admitted. "How should I be sure? You don't
talk to me. And I'd love to be wrong, believe me. But Joey, how
does it look? Does it look like you're joining the Florida work
force? No, it looks like you're hanging around waiting to win the
lottery. And now you tell me you meet a guy from New York. He knows
your father.

We know what that means. It's just like the
old neighborhood—"

"But Sandra," Joey cut in, "you're missing
the whole point, which you woulda got if you let me talk insteada
jumping down my throat before I'm even inside the goddamn door. The
guy's from New York, yeah. And if you must know, he's family,
that's true. But the point is that even he says you can't run a New
York-style business down here, ya gotta go with the local style.
Now, coming from him, I believe it. I mean, the man is a
professional. So that's why I'm happy, Sandra. It's like a new
idea, like a light bulb lighting up. And I have this feeling that
this guy Bert and I are gonna do some things together."

"Legal things, Joey?"

Joey widened his dark blue eyes. "Now it's
gotta be legal? A minute ago it just had to be different from New
York. For Chrissake, Sandra, quit while you're ahead."

She looked at the fillets on the cutting
board. They were still oozing gray water and had taken on the
glazed translucence of someone's eyeballs when they have a cold.
"That fish looks lousy."

"Yeah, it does," said Joey. He approached it
as though it might be carrying a grave disease and gave it a
clinical poke with his index finger. "Feels all mushy." He sniffed
at his hand. "Doesn't smell terrific either. Could be like
spoiled."

He went to the sink and started washing up
with dish soap. He was fastidious about his hands, Joey was, aside
from being finicky about his food.

Sandra sighed and ran her fingers through
her short blond hair. "What's gonna be with you, Joey? Well, come
on, let's go out. I get paid tomorrow.

—
9 —

Bert the Shirt d'Ambrosia did not look
terrific in his Bermuda shorts. Loose skin gathered around his
knobby knees as at the neck of a Chinese dog, and on his right
thigh, clearly visible through the sparse white hair, was the
scooped-out pink scar of an old gunshot wound. His dark nylon socks
ended three inches above his ankles, and the brown mesh shoes made
his feet look bigger than they really were. But the old mobster was
saved from dowdiness by the splendor of his blue silk shirt. It had
horn buttons and the shimmer of the tall sky just after sunset.
There was navy piping around the collar and a monogram on the chest
pocket.

"Boo," said Joey Goldman.

Bert looked up in no great hurry. He was
sitting at a poolside table at the Paradiso condominium, playing
solitaire under a steel umbrella. "Was a time," he said, "you
couldn'ta got the jump on me like that. Now? What the fuck. I'm
just an old guy playing cards."

"You got a watchdog," Joey said. Don
Giovanni, his wet nose twitching, cowered beneath the old man's
chair.

"Fucking dog isn't worth shit. But siddown,
Joey. I'm glad you came by."

The younger man pulled up a white
wrought-iron chair and eased himself into it. "Nice place." The
Paradiso had three pink towers that bristled with balconies and
framed a big pool and a pair of tennis courts; the Atlantic Ocean
was across the street. Through Joey's tinted lenses, the water was
a milky green not much darker than the color of celery.

"It's not too bad," Bert said. "They don't
have bocce, that's the only thing."

"Well," said Joey, and he left it at that.
The old man turned up an ace, waved it in the air, and kissed it.
"Bert, I was thinking about what you said the other day."

Bert cocked his head but said nothing. He
was at the age when things he'd said forty years before left a more
reliable track than things he said five minutes ago. Fortunately,
he'd developed the knack of looking sage while waiting to be
reminded what he'd been so wise about.

"Ya know," Joey went on, "about how ya gotta
come up with, like, a Florida caper, something that makes sense for
where we're at."

"Not where we're at. Where you're at." The
Shirt put a black seven on a red eight.

"Whatever," Joey said. "Anyway, it makes a
lotta sense. Except. . . except. Except, Bert, I can't for the life
a me figure out what the angle oughta be. The last two nights, I
couldn't sleep. I got outta bed and went outside. It's like three
inna morning, and I'm sitting under a palm tree like a fucking
lunatic, telling myself, Think Florida,
think Florida
. But I
just come up with stupid fucking things. Suntan lotion. Baby
alligators. This kid I knew in like second grade—he had a pencil
sharpener that looked like an orange. Said Florida on it. So how
the fuck am I supposed to make a living off of baby alligators and
stupid-ass souvenirs? Bert, I'll be honest with ya. I'm balancing
neatly onna ballsa my ass down here. I ain't made a nickel. My
girlfriend's getting fed up and I can't say I blame 'er. I gotta
get something started or I'm in deep shit."

Bert reached out and placed a cool hand on
top of the younger man's. "Joey," he said. "Joey. Listen to
yourself. You're saying,
Think Florida
, but listen how
nervous you sound, how wound up. That's not Florida. That's not
tropical. To be that worried, that's still New York."

"O.K., Bert, I know it is. But what can I
say. I am that worried. I ain't slept. Coupla days ago I hadda pay
the February rent. I reach into the drawer to get the cash, I count
up what I got, and I say, Where the fuck is my money going? It's
not like I'm being a big shot. It just goes." He yanked off his
sunglasses and showed Bert his eyes. They were owlish to begin
with, because he left his shades on when he sat in the sun. But now
the pale circles had turned a nubbly yellow, and the bloodshot
whites made his deep blue irises look almost grapy.