* * *
"You have to go back," said Michael.
"I will not go back," said Angelina. "I have my pride."
"Pride is stupid. Go back You're wearing him down."
"Wearing him down? What is this, a boxing match, a war?"
"Sometimes it's like that."
"Michael," she said, "I've tried. I'm done. He doesn't want me."
It was afternoon. They were sitting by the pool. Neither had been awake for very long; their schedules had gotten so bizarre that they were once again in sync.
"That's what you say," Michael challenged.
"That's what I say? That's what I know."
"Maybe there's another explanation."
Angelina feigned disinterest, looked off at the cool blue water staked with forms of naked men, gluteal folds jagged with refraction.
Her friend continued, "Maybe he wants you so bad that he can't let himself have you."
She tried not to let it show that she liked the sound of that. "Very flattering," she said. "Very perverse."
"Sometimes it's like that."
"Sometimes it's like a lot of things," said Angelina.
"That's true," said Michael. "You think it's always the same?"
"How the hell should I know?" She sighed. Her bathing suit squeaked as she squirmed against her lounge chair. "Let's talk about something else, okay? When do I get to meet David?"
22
Funzie Gallo, unsure if he was doing right or wrong, but certain that he'd go crazy if he had to keep on watching his old friend lumber blindly around the social club, had gone ahead and laid the groundwork for the deal down in Florida. He arranged for Paul Amaro to meet with Tommy Lucca.
The evening before the sitdown, sitting with a bourbon in his silent living room, Paul told his wife he was going to Miami on business. She didn't answer him. She hadn't answered him in days. For a long time, many years in fact, her silences had been accusations; but what had changed in the week and a half since Angelina disappeared, was that Paul now knew they were. He heard the seething questions inside the silence, they found his guilty places like dye finds tumors, and he felt compelled to respond, he seemed not to notice it was a one-way conversation.
"What else can I do up here?" he said. "You're looking at me like I shouldn't go, like there's more I should be doing. What else can I do?"
She didn't answer. A lamp was on behind her, it reduced her to a silhouette of an old lady's hairdo and a face that was wrinkled at the edges. She turned away her eyes.
"I've talked to everyone I know. I've begged. I've threatened. I've sent messages to the Irish, to the Asians. Tell me, Maria, what more should I do?"
She said nothing. Her hands were folded in her lap, they didn't move.
"Al's here," her husband said. "Joe's here. There's any news, they can find me in a minute."
Maria was quiet.
"Life can't just stop," he said. "Life stops, ya go crazy and what the hell does it accomplish?"
There was no reply.
Paul Amaro's voice grew higher, thinner, craven. "You think I feel this less than you do, woman? You think I love her any less than you?"
Angelina's mother didn't answer. Her husband stood up heavily and left her sitting on the sofa, featureless and gray with the yellow lamplight reaching toward the corners of the room behind her.
* * *
Next day, Paul Amaro went to Florida. He was carrying no weapons, packing no contraband; there was no reason not to fly.
At Miami airport, he walked through the same corridors that his daughter had walked through, smelled the same faint salty mildew, saw the same pyramids of plastic oranges.
A driver met him, swept him past the clutter of downtown to discreet and shady Coral Gables, where rambling houses with red-tiled roofs crouched behind high walls of jagged limestone rock. At Tommy Lucca's place, a gate slid open silently, tires crunched over immaculate white gravel, and the car stopped beneath a columned porte cochere.
An Asian butler met him at the door, handed him a hot washcloth. Another servant brought a mimosa on a silver tray. Then the butler led him down a long hallway lined with vases, paintings; and around a sunny courtyard with a fountain; and toward a separate wing whose walls were paneled in mahogany. The elegance was seamless until the servant tapped lightly on the study door, opened it, and there was Tommy Lucca's face. The nose went even more sideways than Paul remembered; twisted cartilage showed a shiny dent, the nostrils didn't match. The mouth was broad and loose and twitchy, he seemed always to be about to suck his teeth. He said a single word but clearly he was showing off. "Welcome."
Paul Amaro said, "Nice to see you doing so well, Tommy."