The boss looked up from the heater; red rays played on his sallow face. He nodded vaguely toward the big thugs in the pearl-gray suits. "Your bargaining position," he said. "It's not worth much."
"I ain't askin' much," said Gino.
Messina kept silent, made the other man bid.
"Absolution, that's all," said Gino. "This whole thing, like it never happened."
A gust of snowy wind made the vast steel warehouse sing around its rivets. "And in return I get some gossip about a book," Messina said.
"It ain't just a book," said Gino. "It's a fuckin' time bomb. It's ten times worse than Valachi, it's worse than any ratout—"
"So who's writing it?"
"We got a deal?"
Quietly, Messina said, "For now."
Gino felt his bowels go liquid. Suddenly he was giddy. He'd schemed, he'd lied, he'd wriggled; the grim concentration of the chase had masked his terror. Now he'd played every card but the last one and he had no idea if it had done him any good at all. "Fuck's that mean?" he whined.
"The water was warmer in Florida, Gino."
The captive swallowed; his saliva tasted of fish and bile. The walls of the office seemed to be tipping in; he had the feeling that the Fabretti thugs were looming over him on every side like brownstones about to topple. He couldn't breathe, and when he tried to get his lips ready to make words, his face contorted into a sickly smirk, the horrid glower of an idiot child doing something cruel and senseless. Yet on the brink of foulest treason, he could not quite summon up the guts to be direct. He smirked, and in a glozing whisper he said, "OK, the book. Ya mean, all this stuff about my old man losin' it, ya still ain't figured it out by now?"
The room went silent save for the insane feint ringing of the metal walls. Then there was the dry sound of Aldo Messina rubbing his hands together in front of the heater. A long moment passed amid the stink of fish and the grainy yellow office light. Finally the boss who had admired Vincente Delgatto said very calmly, "Somebody hit 'im for that. Hit 'im hard."
The thugs in the pearl-gray suits passed a look, deciding who would administer the beating. One of them moved toward Gino and sized him up. He took his time, measured out the distance between his own fist and Gino's gut, and then he walloped him in the soft place underneath the ribs. The blow carried through almost to the backbone. Air popped out of Gino as from a bottle of warm champagne. He doubled over; the thug's jerked knee caught him in the left eye socket and spun him backward. His adversary grabbed him as he twirled; Gino's head bobbed like a buoy in the ocean, but the next punch landed flush on his nose and crushed it. The prisoner stumbled back, and Pretty Boy could not resist the urge to trip him. Falling, Gino slammed his head against the doorframe, then crumpled half sitting on the floor.
He was stupefied but not quite out. His eyes had closed but he was conscious enough to taste snot and blood at the back of his throat and to realize he was still alive. It no longer bothered him to be hurt; in some unspeakable way he liked it, it confirmed him. As for being despised, humiliated, loathed, he had sunk to a place where those things lost their sting, he was as indifferent to them as a roach.
He lay there, woozy, playing possum. Amid the maddening ring of the building he picked up scraps of talk, a confusion of gruff voices. Bullshitting us, somebody said. His own father—that fuckin' skunk. . . . Vincente Delgatto, the last guy inna world. . . . But Jesus Christ, with what he knows. . . . Gotta think, gotta think. . . .
Footsteps came toward Gino; Gino didn't budge. The office door was opened, people stepped over his twisted legs. Someone spit on him while going by, and he neither knew nor cared which one of them it was.
29
Early the next morning, in Key West, Bert d'Ambrosia, wearing a teal-blue suit of weightless Chinese silk, was walking his aged chihuahua on the beach.
Over the Florida Straits, the huge sun was going from orange to yellow as it sliced upward through a wisp of purple cloud; the lightly rippled water was moving from indigo to turquoise on its way to milky green. From moment to moment, the air dried out and warmed, came to feel like day, but underfoot the nubbly coral still held the cool and damp of night: the old man felt the tickling refreshment of it through his sneakers.
He meandered a few yards from the water's edge, and now he watched discreetly as his tiny dog hunkered down to do its business. These last few days, since flaxseed had become a regular part of its diet, the chihuahua's approach to the process was almost blase, and Bert, his relief on the dog's behalf not entirely free of envy, had considered blending a bit of the elixir into his own rations. So far he'd refrained; flaxseed seemed as foreign to his dignity as to his time-honored recipe for meatballs. But as he noted the satisfaction with which Don Giovanni kicked sand and pebbles onto his leavings, as he observed the long-absent lightness in the little creature's step, he felt himself increasingly tempted. The seeds were simmered in olive oil. How bad could they be?