Florida Straits (8 page)

"Awright, Joey, you're under some strain. I
can see that. So let's go back to basics. Look over that way, past
the gates. Whaddya see?"

Joey put his sunglasses on again, twisted
himself in his chair, and peered past the pool, the tennis courts,
the hibiscus hedge. "A road."

"Then what?"

"The beach."

"Then what?"

"Water," he said. "I see water."

"Good, Joey. Now doesn't that make you feel
calm, all that nice cool green water? Doesn't it calm you
down?"

"The truth, Bert? Fuck no. Not at all. I'm
like itchy all over. What would make me feel calm is if I knew what
the hell I was doing down here, if I thought I was heading for a
payday."

"Kid," said Bert, with the sad patience of a
junior high school teacher. "You're not paying attention. This is
what I'm telling you. A payday would make you calm, maybe you
oughta look to the water for a payday. That's where the money comes
from down here. Always has. Always will."

Joey stared off at the shallow green ocean,
but the ocean didn't talk to him. He pulled at his chin, he
squirmed in his seat. Bert kept playing solitaire.

"Look what passes for old money down here,"
the retired gangster continued. "The Bergens. The Clevelands.
You've hearda those families, right? How you think they got rich?
They were pirates. Yeah. Legal pirates. There's a reef around five
miles out from here. The water in between, it's called the Florida
Straits. Now, ships useta all the time run up onna reef and sink.
These families that are so rich now? They lived in shacks by the
water. Shacks! They peed innee ocean. They didn't even have glass
inna windows.

"But they were smart. They built lookout
towers. A ship goes down, boom, they jump in their boats and row
out the Straits. They rowed out there in squalls, in hurricanes.
And the law of the sea says the first guy who gets there, it's his
boat. He owns whatever's on there—silver, jewelry, cash, whatever.
Course, sometimes it helped to have a shotgun, to prove you were
there first. So these snooty families that get hospital wings named
after them, they started, like, as hijackers."

Joey was still staring at the water; his
hairline was crawling. "So, Bert, you're telling me I should get a
fucking rowboat and wait for a shipwreck?"

"Nah, forget about it," said the older man.
"This was a hundred years ago. These days, there's treasure
salvors, it's big business. There's this one guy, Clem
Sanders—"

"Bert," Joey blurted, "so what are you
telling me? I'm like dyin' heah."

"What am I telling you?" Bert repeated.
"Joey, I'm sevenny-tree years old, I been dead, I hafta all the
time know what I'm saying? I'm just thinkin' out loud, like trying
to clue you in on the local traditions. 'Cause they matter, Joey.
Remember that. Local traditions. They matter in New York, they
matter here. Where's the goddamn dog?"

Bert reached down underneath his chair,
stretched his fingers toward the quivering chihuahua, and looked
skyward to check the position of the sun. Then he stood up halfway
with the chair lifted against his shrunken backside and moved a
foot or so around the table. "You're a pain innee ass," he said to
the dog. Then, to Joey: "I gotta keep him in the shade or he like
dries out. He went inta convulsions once. Almost popped his eyes
right out of his head. Fuck you laughing at?"

"Bert," Joey said, "you weigh like a hundred
seventy pounds and the dog like weighs four ounces. Wouldn't it be
easier to move the dog?"

"Dog don't wanna move. Dog don't wanna do
nothing but shit onna floor and now and then jerk off on a table
leg. Mind your fucking business."

"I ain't got no business. That's why I'm
here."

"Right," said Bert. "So think about water.
This is what I'm telling you. This Clem Sanders guy, this treasure
guy, he goes around telling people that a whole third of all the
gold and silver and jewels that's ever been mined has ended up at
the bottom of the sea."

"A third of everything?" said Joey. " 'Zat
true?"

Bert turned his palms up and shrugged. "How
the fuck should I know if it's true? I only know this guy says it."
He put a red three on a black four.

Joey went back to staring at the green water
and listened to the dry rustle of the palms. "So Bert," he began,
trying to keep his tone businesslike and to choke back the rising
wave of panic, the unspeakable fear that he might go broke, come up
with no ideas, and return, ashamed, to Queens. "I don't know what
I'm gonna do. But let's say I come up with a way to pull some bucks
outta the ocean. We gonna be partners, or what?"

Bert pursed his full and restless lips,
turned over his last card, and, stymied, gathered up his losing
hand. "Kid," he said, "it's nice of you to ask. But I'm through.
Me, I'm all talk and no action, and I like it that way. It's real
easy. And I'll tell ya something, Joey. The longer you stay in
Florida, the more you appreciate what's easy."

—
10 —

It was unusual for anyone to knock at the
gate of the compound, since half of Key West knew the combination
to the lock. But several days after Joey's visit to the Paradiso,
at about ten-thirty in the morning, there was a rapping at the
wooden door. Steve the naked landlord was already in the pool with
his beers and his ashtray in front of him, his paperback spread
open on the damp tiles. Peter and Claude, the bartending blonds,
were having breakfast in their sarongs. So Joey straightened his
sunglasses and went to the gate.

It was Bert the Shirt. He was wearing a
salmon- colored pullover of the finest Egyptian cotton, with a mesh
of subtly contrasting buff at the collar and sleeves, and he had
Don Giovanni cradled in the crook of his arm. "Joey, there's
something I gotta talk to you about. Got a minute?"

"Bert," said Joey, surprised and grateful to
be visited, "I got nothing but time. Come on in." For a fleeting
moment he was embarrassed about receiving a guest in his bathrobe
and slippers, and about the naked body in the pool and the pretty
men in their pink and turquoise silks. But the feeling passed. This
was the Keys; this was home now. It was the land of
take-it-or-leave-it and no apologies. "Did I tell you I lived
here?"

"Carlos did," said Bert, walking slowly
along the gravel path between the jasmine and the banana plants.
"The
bolita
guy. He had you followed. You didn't know
that?"

Rather than admit it, Joey changed the
subject. "I didn't know you talked to Carlos."

"Carlos talks to me," the older man
corrected. He stopped walking and gave Joey a soft little slap on
the cheek, a mix of affection, scolding, and warning. "Joey, I'm
telling you to relax down here, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't
pay attention, eh?"

"Yeah, Bert. You're right. Bert, this is
Steve. Steve, this is Bert, an old family friend."

"Morning," Steve said. Then he smiled.
Sunlight glinted off his moist freckled forehead and red
mustache.

"Whatcha reading?" Bert asked.

Steve turned the paperback over and looked
at the cover to remind himself. "Japs," he said. "Submarines." Then
he smiled.

Joey led the way into the cottage and
motioned Bert onto a settee in the Florida room. Shafts of sunlight
sliced in through the louvered windows and threw stripes across the
sisal rug. "Coffee, Bert?"

"No, Joey, no thanks. Siddown. This is kinda
serious. Joey, you been in touch with your old man since you
left?"

Joey was halfway into his chair when he
became certain that Bert was about to tell him his father was dead.
Icicles scratched at the inside of his chest, and his forehead
started instantly to pound. Bert read his face.

"Joey, no, it's nothing like that. He's
O.K., he's fine. But tell me, you been in touch with him?"

Joey sprang back from his flash of guilt and
grief with a moment of bravado. "Shit, Bert, I left New York to get
away from him."

"Come on, Joey. No bullshit now. Just yes or
no. You been in touch with him or not?"

Joey was stung by the older man's sternness,
and there was a note almost of whining in his answer. "No, Bert, I
haven't. I swear. Fuck is this about?"

Bert leaned forward, put his dog down on the
rug, and dropped his voice to a raspy whisper. "A coupla guys come
to see me last night," he said. "Guys based in Miami. They weren't
in a good mood. In fact, they were ready to whack somebody. Joey,
tree million bucks in Colombian emeralds has been lifted off of
Charlie Ponte's crew, and it was pretty definitely an inside job.
People get dead over that kinda thing."

"Three million bucks," said Joey. His own
stash had dipped below four thousand, and the poorer he got, the
more big numbers impressed him. "Jesus. But wait a second, Bert. If
it was Charlie Ponte's crew, I don't see what it's gotta do with my
old man."

Bert the Shirt sat back slowly and seemed
unwilling or unable to talk until his shoulder blades had made
secure contact with the cushion. "Probably not your father
directly. But maybe some of his boys. Joey, it's this same old
problem with drugs. Biggest fucking mistake our people ever made
was not making a clear policy and sticking to it. Either dominate
the business or don't fuck with it."

Bert paused to lick his teeth. Outside,
palms rustled and water splashed. The air smelled of iodine and
limes.

"But anyway," the old man continued,
"Charlie Ponte's crew, they're inna coke trade. They're not
supposed to be, it's unofficial, but they are—it's like an open
secret. Your father's people, supposedly they're not. But no
offense, Joey, your father's crew has this like superior
attitude—"

"I hear ya," Joey cut in. "I ain't offended,
believe me."

"Yeah, well, to them," Bert went on, "it's
like the guys that are in drugs are outlaws, outsiders. They don't
respect 'em, they think of 'em as fair game, like as if they
weren't friends of ours.

"So, what happens with Charlie Ponte is
this. He's expecting a two-million-dollar shipment from the
Colombians, and the shipment is seized by the Feds. Charlie doesn't
even get a look at it. So now he's pissed. He's got dealers without
product, his business is disrupted. But the Colombians, they're so
fucking rich it's unbelievable. Their attitude is like, 'Oh well,
that shipment was only a few million. Kiss it goodbye.' The main
thing to them is to keep the account active. So they want Charlie
to be happy. So they say to him, 'Look, you were expecting two
million in product, we'll give ya tree million in emeralds. Keep it
as collateral, sell it off, it's up to you.' It's like a token of
goodwill."

"Some token," Joey said.

"Yeah, right," Bert said. "But these guys,
the money they have, it's like you or me giving a guy a buck to
park the car. So anyway, Charlie gets his emeralds. Or supposedly
he does. They get dropped someplace in Coconut Grove—I don't blow
where, and I don't wanna know. But a safe place, a place that's
been used before, and only the Colombians and Charlie Ponte's guys
know about it. And that's where they disappear from."

Joey tugged at an earlobe, then raked the
back of his hand across his unshaven face. Tiny squiggles of
limestone dust floated in the slashed light of the louvered
windows. "Bert," he said, "maybe I'm a little slow, but I still
don't see where this has to do with my father."

Bert leaned over to check on the dog, and
moved it out of a stripe of sun into a stripe of shade. "Joey,
there were a coupla low-level guys who were like floating between
the two crews. They'd commute between Miami and New York, they'd do
little errands for Ponte, little jobs for your old man. They were
lookin' to get made, and they were very ambitious. They found out
more than they needed to know about the drop in Coconut Grove. They
ain't floatin' no more, Joey. They're lookin' at coral. Up close.
And they ain't got no snorkels."

"Jesus," said Joey, and in spite of himself
he almost smiled. Not that he was happy about guys getting clipped;
it was just exhilarating to be near some action again, to be
getting information. "So you're saying these guys brought in other
guys in my father's crew?"

Bert shrugged. "These guys were angling for
a button, Joey. A tree-million-dollar score earns a guy some
points. But of course, scoring it from another family was not too
bright."

"Maybe the spicks welshed. Maybe they took
the stones back. Maybe they were never delivered."

"Could be," said Bert. "But that isn't the
Colombians' style. Why would they bother?"

Bert slowly crossed his legs and drummed his
fingers lightly on the arm of the settee. For the first time, he
seemed to be looking around at Joey's cottage, at the bad paintings
of birds and shells, the haphazard furniture made tolerable and
even likable by the fact that it was rented and not owned. "Not a
bad little place," he said without enthusiasm.

Joey gave a modest nod. "Well, it ain't the
Paradiso. But it's fine until I really get on my feet." He shot the
older man a wry glance, which was as close as he would come to
admitting that that might be never.

Then there was a pause. If Joey had been
watching closely, he would have noticed that Bert the Shirt was
momentarily exhausted and was marshaling his strength. But Joey
wasn't watching closely, he was slipping back into his obsession
with figuring how to pull a living out of Florida. "And that
reminds me. I was thinkin', Bert, about what you said the other
day, ya know, about money comin' outta the water? If that's the way
people get rich down here—"

Joey suddenly fell silent because the Shirt
had put a hand to his chin and started wagging his head as if in
deep sorrow or disbelief.

"Wha", Bert?"