Sunburn (22 page)

He went through an electric door and out into the cold. His breath steamed, his nostrils stung. Little puffs of vapor came through the grating of the dog carrier.

The taxi line was a hundred yards away, and a lot of people were hurrying toward it. Bert knew he should stop to put his coat on, but he was caught up in the hurry now, he didn't want to let everybody get ahead of him. He pressed on through the freezing air that stank of jet fuel and bus exhaust. He looked vaguely off toward the skyline under its dome of soot. By the time he got a taxi his damp chest was clammy and chilled.

The cabbie was a Haitian with red-rimmed eyes and a green wool porkpie hat. He drove badly, chattering a noisy patois with other Haitians on the radio, but he made no objection when Bert opened the carrier, took out the chihuahua, and held it on his lap. The little dog was shivering with cold or with bewilderment; it looked up at its master with lost and glazed eyes, then licked his hands imploringly with a hot and pasty tongue. Stark white hairs shook onto the old man's dark gray suit.

Bert had asked to be taken to the comer of Astoria Boulevard and Crescent Street, in Queens. There was an old Pugliese hangout there called Perretti's luncheonette. It wasn't a headquarters, exactly— you didn't go to a headquarters unannounced— but it was a good place to find people, or to find out how to find them.

The cab picked its way down the Van Wyck to the Grand Central Parkway. Bert looked out the window at the naked trees, the lingering patches of filthy snow, and tried to tell himself he was at least partway happy to be in New York again. An espresso with anisette would taste good, would warm his gripped and chilly insides. It might be nice to see some guys—Sal Giordano, Tony Matera. And besides, it wasn't a pleasure trip, it was a trip of duty, a kindness to an old friend who would do the same for him.

The Haitian cabbie jerked across three lanes of traffic to exit at Astoria Boulevard. He crawled from traffic light to traffic light, and something almost like excitement began to build in Bert. New York— OK, he was over it, but the city had been good to him. He'd had respect, friends, made money. Now he had the warming thought that he would be remembered, embraced, that a couple of guys, at least, would make a fuss, would treat his visit as a real occasion. He petted his dog, dropped it back into the carrier.

The taxi neared Crescent Street, and Bert tested his memory of Perretti's. A long counter, green, with faded pink and yellow boomerangs. Torn stools with horsehair coming out. Old-fashioned phone booth, with pebbled metal walls, a curved seat, and a fan. . . .

The cab pulled off into a bus stop, the driver threw it into park. Bert looked out the window, and now he was confused. "This ain't the place," he said.

The driver didn't answer, just pointed at the street sign.

Bert looked again. Astoria and Crescent. But the place that used to be Penetti's was not Perretti's anymore. It was a place for fruits and vegetables. Pyramids of oranges and grapefruits and half a dozen kinds of apples were neatly piled on staggered crates that cascaded toward the sidewalk. A Korean in a down vest and earmuffs sat on a box and stoically, tirelessly, shelled peas.

"Oh Christ," Bert said aloud.

The cabbie said nothing, just turned his back and drummed lightly on the steering wheel. The meter clocked off waiting time, Don Giovanni whimpered in his cage, and Bert the Shirt tried to figure where'd he go and what he'd do in this freezing town that suddenly seemed foreign as Calcutta.

At lunchtime, halfway through the chore of putting his office back together, Arty Magnus ordered in a sandwich and found he couldn't eat it. His stomach was telling him what his brain still denied; along the continuum of fear that runs from vague misgivings to utter panic, he was moving to ever queasier regions. Finally, around three o'clock, he could no longer keep his worries to himself. He called Joey Goldman at work.

"Joey," he said, "remember yesterday, you told me something was going on, there was a problem in your family?"

"I remember," Joey said, a little guardedly. Friend or no friend, it wasn't any of Arty's business.

"Well, whatever it is, it seems to be contagious."

"Say wha'?"

"All of a sudden, I got a problem, Joey. Coupla problems. And I'm wondering—"

"Arty, you sound lousy. You OK?"

"I'm not OK. This is what I'm getting to. Outa the blue I got these problems, and I'm wondering if my problem has to do with your problem."

"That's prob'ly impossible," Joey said offhandedly. But after the words were out he thought about them harder. Gino had a long inglorious history of sucking others into his calamities. Still, the only way he could possibly have dragged Arty in. . . . No, it was inconceivable. He cleared his throat. "So inna meantime, what's your problem?"

There was a silence. Arty's air conditioner dribbled condensation; his feet were braced against his desk and he leaned far back in his squeaky chair.

"Ya know what ya should do?" Joey continued at last. "Right after work, come by the house. Take the El D, bring Debbi up ta No-Name, show 'er the deer."

The editor let his chair crash forward at the preposterous suggestion. "Joey, are you listening? I'm scared, Joey. I don't wanna go look at—"

The other man broke in, and Arty had a rare glimpse of Joey-his-father's-son, a young fellow who trusted in his own oblique shrewdness, who could take charge, take responsibility. "Arty, listen a me. What's goin' on with you, I don't think it's connected ta what's goin' on with us. But if it is, it's very bad—I tell you as a friend. So lemme take some time, siddown with my father, talk it over. You—stay out of it for now. Take Debbi. Look at deer. OK, Arty?"

At 5
p.m
. Duval Street was bustling. Fat people waddled back to their cruise ships like ducks making the inevitable return to water. Pink tourists, their skins sheeny with emollients, twirled postcard racks along the sidewalk. Early drunks were tuning up for an evening of rude noises.

Arty unlocked his bike and pedaled off toward Joey's. He didn't notice the big dark car that pulled away from curbside a moment after he did and weaved along with him toward the quiet residential streets, keeping a careful block behind.

The ghostwriter cruised under the palms and poincianas, then slowly crunched up Joey's gravel driveway and leaned the bicycle against the house. Joey met him at the door, said a terse hello, handed him the keys to the Cadillac. It seemed clear he didn't want him coming in, upsetting Vincente. The son was handling things his own way for now.

Debbi appeared from the living room. She was wearing skintight leggings, cloth shoes, a big shirt over a leotard of electric blue. Her red hair and her freckled throat were swathed in a long navy scarf for the ride in the convertible. She held her big sunglasses in one hand, and she smiled so athletically that the ridges and valleys of her lips stretched away from their coating of lipstick.

The two of them went to the car. Arty settled in behind the wheel, got comfortable, adjusted mirrors. He could not see the dark sedan that had stopped around the corner, hidden by the house next door.

Slowly he backed down the gravel driveway. Debbi touched his arm a second. Her fingers were cool on his skin, he just barely felt the hardness of her nails. "I'm so glad we're doing this," she said. Her eyes were wide, the long lashes spread out almost vertical. "I really thought you were kidding me."

Arty managed a small smile and pointed the El Dorado toward the beach and up the Keys. It was half, three-quarters of an hour till sunset. The low sun gave the flat water of the Florida Straits a gleam like green aluminum; on the Gulf side, distant mangrove islands seemed to float on top of nests of silver cotton. Here and there ospreys circled, pelicans coasted, their dipping flight paralleling the droop and lift of the power lines strung along the road.

Debbi had as hard a time sitting still as a kid on a school outing. "You say they're like dogs?" she said. "About the size of dogs?"

Arty glanced across at her. He noted, to his great surprise, that her face made him feel better, less worried. "Big dogs," he said.

"Antlers like twigs?" she said.

He looked at her again, at the smile so big it was almost goofy, the avid eyes that seemed to pluck at sights rather than wait passively for things to come into view. His nerves were frayed; sensations good and bad tweaked him as though he had no skin. He heard himself say, "Debbi, I think you're terrific."

She blushed; they rode without talking for a while. Salty air whistled past the chrome edge of the Cadillac's windshield. The dark sedan buried itself in traffic and stayed half a dozen car lengths back.

Around mile marker seventeen, Debbi swept off her sunglasses and said, "Arty, can I ask ya something?"

He just lifted his chin.

"You gay?"

He crinkled up his brows and looked at her. "No. Why?"

"Ya know," she said. "Key West and all."

Arty said nothing. Bait shops and seashell stores slipped past.

"You seem like such a nice guy," Debbi went on. "Funny. Nice manners. Ya pay attention. I was wondering why you're not, ya know, involved with someone, married."

"How about: because I was?" he said.

Having got her answer, Debbi now felt qualms at having asked the question. "Listen, I don't wanna pry"

"No problem," Arty said. The reluctant fellow felt suddenly eager to talk. "Nothing terrible to hide. I was married six years. Most of that time was OK. Toward the end I couldn't help thinking my wife thought I was a failure. I didn't like that part."

"She said that?"

"Never in as many words. She didn't have to."

Debbi pursed her lips. "Wha'd she do?"

"Lawyer."

"Smart, I'll bet."

"Oh yeah," Arty said. "But there's city-smart and then there's life-smart. Ya know what I mean?"

Debbi's slender eyebrows zigged up at the middle of her forehead. "I'm not sure I do."

"I'm not sure I do either," Arty admitted. "But I think it has to do with being able to be happy."

The Caddy barreled up U.S. 1. In the rearview mirror, the pulsing orange sun seemed to be picking its way among the mangrove islands, looking for a clear path to the sea.

After a while, Debbi said, "That's shitty, how she made you feel."

Arty looked at her, not sad, not smiling, just with the straight gaze you turn on someone when they've got it right. "Yeah," he said. "It was."

At Big Pine Key he turned off the highway onto Key Deer Boulevard, and beyond the prison and the Little League field he took the right that led to No-Name. The road sliced through low gray scrubby woods; the big dark car still stalked, a hundred yards behind.

Debbi looked out at the stunted and distorted pines, the spiky bleached palmettos, the stony earth scarred with veins of scabby limestone. "Not as pretty as Key West, is it?"

"It's the real Florida," Arty said. "No color. Either bone-dry or a swamp, itchy either way. Spiders the size of your fist, leaves that give a rash, alligators that eat Dobermans."

Debbi crinkled up her nose.

They wound through a clot of suburbs, then over the little rainbow bridge to No-Name Key. From the top of the short span they saw the last full daylight; behind the scrub and mangroves on the other side, it was already dusk. A straight road maybe half a mile long dead-ended at a rank of limestone boulders.

"This is where they are," said Arty. He was driving very slowly now, and his tone was that of whispering conspiracy. "Sometimes they come right onto the pavement. Other times you have to find them in the woods."

Debbi nodded. She leaned far forward, her red nails splayed out along the dashboard. Her sunglasses had been put aside; her ardent eyes reached out for deer.

The Cadillac crept on. No deer appeared. Arty looked in the rearview mirror and finally noticed the dark car following behind them. He made nothing of it. They were on a dead-end road where people came to look for deer at dusk.

From moment to moment the light was getting dimmer. A sudden rustling in the undergrowth made Arty and Debbi suck in breath; a raccoon stared back at them and ran away. They peered beneath shrubs, through tall gray grasses, but they heard or saw no other movement, and as they neared the limestone boulders Arty said a little sheepishly, "Ya can't always find them."

Debbi wanted to be a good sport, didn't want to show her disappointment. Besides, she wasn't giving up. "I think we will," she whispered.

They closed their doors very quietly behind them, skirted the limestone barricade, and stood at the indistinct shoreline of No-Name Key. All around them grew tangled mangroves whose roots arced up like tepees and trapped small rank puddles that smelled of sulfur and rotting seaweed. In what had once been a waterfront clearing, an abandoned cistern stood crumbling; tormented casuarinas grew up in it. Lizards scampered; mosquitoes buzzed; frogs croaked. Amid the animal noises came the faint, unnoticed sound of two more car doors opening and closing. Unseen, two more visitors moved furtively beyond the limestone boulders.

Debbi strolled to the far side of the ruined cistern, and there she saw two deer.

They were does, with enormous eyes and beautifully napped brown coats, and they were browsing on a thorny shrub with dusty mottled berries. They really were the size of dogs. Debbi clapped a hand over her mouth to contain a yelp of wonder. With the other hand she pointed. Arty followed the gesture, came along beside her.