Florida Straits(56)

At the head of the ramp, there was a pair of ocher- painted limestone posts, and on the right-hand post was a sign that said Staff Only. Joey paused. His pants legs were damp from the ocean spray; his left sneaker was wet. His thick black hair had been blown tautly back by the wind and was coarsened by the airborne salt. His hands still tingled from the vibration of the boat's wheel, and he still didn't know what he'd say to his brother.

He started down the incline.

At the base of it was a set of swinging doors, their brushed-steel surface marred from the push of trolleys and the banging of trays. Joey went through and found himself in a long narrow hallway lit by bare bulbs in yellow wire baskets. On the left, through a broad open doorway, was the kitchen; above the din of pans and dishes clattering, the singsong of Spanish banter rang between the cinder-block walls. Joey slipped past, walking quick and silent to where the corridor turned right and led to a bank of elevators. Unfortunately, a room service waiter was already there. He was thin and blond, had a cart in front of him with a champagne bucket on it, and was dressed, absurdly, in a tuxedo. Joey caught him picking his nose, which seemed to make the waiter feel defensive.

"May I help you?" he asked accusingly.

Joey opened his mouth well before an idea had sparked. But he was cruising on that insane and blessed sense of readiness, and he said the first thing that came into his mind. "Mafia."

"Excuse me?" said the waiter. His pale eyebrows lifted, he swallowed so that his bow tie did a little dance, and he seemed by reflex to be wiping his thumb on the satin stripe of his pants leg.

"The linens, the labor situation," Joey said. "It's like, ya know, a spot check. They treatin' ya right, or what?"

"Oh, fine," said the waiter. "Fine." He looked down at the napkins on his cart. He hoped he hadn't grabbed a frayed one.

The elevator arrived. The employee stood aside for Joey to enter first, though it was unclear whether he did this out of protocol or to avoid showing his back. He rolled his cart out, very quickly, at the second floor, and Joey continued to the fourth, the top. Gino had a list for hotel rooms, as he had for everything. Top floor, water side—that was the best, and so that, of course, was what Gino had bragged he had. Only the best for Joey's older brother. The best of every-thing, so he could remind himself that he was doing good.





— 30 —

"Who is it?" said Gino Delgatto, in the rough yet somehow mousy voice of a man who has his door double-locked, with the night chain on, and his sweaty hand wrapped around the warm butt of a gun he clutches by habit but in whose power to protect him he has stopped believing.

"It's me. It's Joey."

There was a long pause. Gino had now been holed up in his room for almost two full weeks, and his life had become so radically uneventful, his mind and body so muddily torpid, that the channels in his brain had silted over. Any piece of information now struck him as dauntingly new; any decision, such as when and for whom to open his door, required all the concentration he could possibly muster.

"Whaddya want?" he said at last.

"I wanna save your sorry ass. Lemme in."

Again there was a pause.

"You alone?"

"Totally."

There was a sound like surrender in the dry slide of the dead bolt, the cheerless tinkle of the night chain. Gino opened the door just wide enough for a man to slip through, and stood there framed for a moment in the slice of yellow light. He was wearing a hotel bathrobe and he looked like hell. He'd put on ten pounds during his days of doing nothing but eating and drinking, and the increment was enough to push his barely handsome features over the border into brutishness. His fattened cheeks rose into little pads that accentuated the piggishness of his eyes. His nose seemed somehow to have softened and broadened, and was spreading across his face like melting clay. Deep lines at the edges of his mouth gave his jaw the slightly spooky, hinged look of a puppet's, and his skin had the stretched oiliness of someone who is thoroughly constipated. But he was still strong. He grabbed Joey by the arm and yanked him into the room so that the two men were standing chest to chest. Was Gino giving his half brother a hug, or just trying to get the door shut and double-locked as fast as possible?

"Anyone see you?" he asked. Their faces were close and Joey smelled the bourbon.

"No one that matters."

"How'd ya manage?"

"I came by boat."

Gino stepped back and took a moment to process this new fact. He seemed to see in it an opportunity to get on top of the situation by his time-honored tactic of patronizing Joey. But for this he needed an ally, so he shot a facetious glance at Vicki. She was lying in bed, the sheet pulled up so that only the top acre of her chest was exposed. She'd been leafing through a fashion magazine, which she now placed facedown on top of her boobs; the bent spine made a kind of tent for her cleavage. Gino's glance was meant to say, Ain't he clever—for a nobody? and while he was flashing that look at Vicki, he said to Joey, "Fuck you know about driving a boat?"