Florida Straits(61)

Joey looked through his blue lenses at the blue shimmer of the pool. "Yeah, Bert," he said. "Well, speakin'a pains innee ass, I took a boat, slipped inta the Flagler House, and wenta see Gino last night."

The Shirt took the news in stride. "And how's he doin'?"

"He's fallin' apart," said Joey. The statement came out oddly neutral because in it sympathy was balanced with rage, letdown canceled out vindication.

"Figures," said Bert. "Soft inna middle, Gino is. If things don't fall his way, if he can't play the big shot—"

"Well, I'm gettin' him outta town tonight. I got it mostly figured and I think it's gonna work."

The old man reached up and stroked the strands of flesh that were like the rigging for a double chin that wasn't there. "You think it's gonna work?"

"It'll work," Joey said softly. He looked out through the open side of the Paradiso quadrangle, across the bustle of A1A to the imported sand of Smathers Beach and the green Atlantic beyond. "But I'm gonna need some help."

"Like?"

"Like I need you to drive about twelve miles up the Keys and meet me at dawn at this little bridge between Big Coppitt and Saddlebunch."

"That I can do," Bert said. "It's not like I sleep good anyway."

"Then I need you to take Gino and Vicki to Marathon airport and get 'em onna first flight out. But not to Miami. I think it'd be better to avoid Miami. Where else they fly to outta there?"

"Prob'ly West Palm, Tampa."

"Yeah," said Joey, "someplace like that. Soon as possible. Then fuck it, we're done."

Bert scratched his chest through his cheesecloth shirt, and with his other hand he scratched the dog's. "Joey, ain'tcha forgettin' something?"

"Whassat?"

"What about the emeralds, Joey? Gino have the emeralds?"

Joey drummed his fingertips on the white enamel table and slowly shook his head. "The two guys that got whacked? They stashed 'em. And my genius brother, the night he almost got us killed, he went to cop 'em and couldn't find 'em."

"So that's that?" said Bert the Shirt. He was retired, more than comfortable, he had no use or even desire for extra money, but still, the idea of three million dollars going unexploited seemed to offend him profoundly. "So the stones'll just sit somewhere and rot?"

"Emeralds don't rot," said Joey. "That's the beauty part."

Bert paused. Back when he was active in the business, he'd been one of the better pausers in New York. He'd squint, toy with his collar, reach ever so slowly into his monogrammed pocket for a smoke. So supple were his pauses that they were equally suited to exuding menace or concealing knowledge or simply shaving parts of beats off the rough jazz of his speech. "Giovanni," he said at last to the dog, "you think this kid's holdin' out on us?"

Joey patted the chihuahua's head as a way of placating its master. "Bert, I ain't said one thing that isn't true. But hey, listen, coupla other things. Ya know where I can get a sleeping bag?"

"Sleeping bag? Joey, what're you runnin' here, a fucking Boy Scout camp? There's an army surplus on Stock Island."

"Great. And I need a rowboat. You got any idea where I can get a rowboat?"

"Prob'ly right in Garrison Bight," said Bert the Shirt. "Along the embankment there. There's always some winos, they sit in these old boats, sleep in 'em, I guess. Offer 'em twenty bucks. They'll take it, get drunk, and steal the boat back tomorrow."

Joey nodded, rapped the metal table with his knuckles, and started to get up. "Sounds easy enough. But ain't that what you tol' me, Bert, that in Florida everything should be easy?"

The Shirt nodded, a little bit uncertainly. He hated getting tripped up on what he did or did not remember saying.

"And money comes outta the water here," said Joey, pressing the old man's bony shoulder. "You tol' me that, too, didn't ya, Bert?"

Here Bert felt himself more firmly in the grip of recollection, and he smiled his loose-lipped long-toothed smile. "Always has," he said. "It's, like, tradition."

—

Sandra was in the pool.

Now that the evenings were staying hot, this was her favorite time at the compound. Steve the naked landlord had disappeared, taking his beers, his ash-tray, and his nakedness with him. Peter and Claude had left for work; Wendy and Marsha had gone inside to eat either brown rice or pepperoni pizza; Luke was off playing music somewhere, and Lucy the mailman was in front of television with her feet up. Sandra had the place to herself, under a dimming sky that was still greenish yellow at the western fringe, with the palms and poincianas losing the last of their daylight color and turning black and flat as etchings overhead. She stood midriff-deep in her chaste two-piece and breathed in the jasmine and the chlorine.