Angelina bit her lip. She sighed, and said at last, "Uncle Louie, you remember Sal Martucci?"
"Ya mean the skunk sonofabitch that—"
He broke off suddenly. He fell back half a step, squeezed his chin between a thumb and index finger, and for the first time he looked hard at Ziggy Maxx, tilting his head and narrowing his eyes. He said, "Angelina, no."
She nodded yes.
"Marrone, Angelina," said her uncle. "Of all the people."
"What can I say? You see now why I couldn't tell you?"
He nodded vaguely.
Her tone went thin and young. "You still on my side, Uncle Louie?"
Ziggy's hand was on the knife deep in his pocket. He liked the feel of it though he knew it wouldn't do him any good.
Louie stood there in the sun. He thought about his family, its cockeyed way of giving everyone a favorite. He thought about his brothers, about their strength that had made him weak, their wadded bankrolls that had made him poor, their crooked confidence that had made him a quailing little man. He looked at the ground, said, "I'm still on your side. Of course I'm still on your side." Then he added, "But who's gonna break it to your father?"
"No one's gonna break it to her father," Ziggy said.
"But if he's here—" said Uncle Louie, and then he fell silent.
All three of them were silent amid the splashing and the laughing and the scratching of the fronds, and in the silence it was gradually dawning on each of them that they were captives there at Coral Shores. It didn't take a gun and it didn't take a knife to hold them hostage. The town was too small, the streets too narrow; the airport was a fishbowl. For as long as Paul Amaro was around, they didn't dare go out. They were marooned together in the naked city, their best hope the camouflage of undressed men and drag queens all done up in heels and rouge.
Uncle Louie pursed his nervous lips, shot his niece a resigned and sheepish smile. "Guess I'll see about a room."
31
"I see," said Carmen Salazar, when Paul Amaro, sitting in the stretched and loopy shadows of the garden in late afternoon, had told him as much of the story as he felt like telling. "I'm glad, of course, to help in whatever way I can. But perhaps it would be easier if I better understood a couple things."
Paul Amaro gave the smallest of nods. The nod told Salazar he was free to ask questions; the smallness of it told him he'd better be careful how he phrased them.
"Your daughter, Mr. Amaro—"
"Paul. People I do business with, they call me Paul."
Salazar smiled inwardly. He hadn't been invited earlier to use first names. "Paul," he said. It felt good in his mouth, seemed to promise income growth, prestige. "Do you believe that she was kidnapped or do you think she ran away?"
Amaro took a deep breath, slowly blew the air into his fist. "At the start, I thought that someone grabbed her. But I don't know who, I don't know why." He faltered, shrugged, stared off into knotted shrubbery that swallowed up the light. "Now I don't know what to think."
"Forgive me, but was she involved with drugs? I ask because there are certain neighborhoods—"
"My daughter isn't into drugs."
"A love affair?"
"She didn't run around."
Salazar saw that a change of tack was called for. "And your brother, you think your brother's down here too."
"He's the one who called New York," Amaro said. "Vanished a couple days after she did."
Salazar drummed fingers on the arm of his lawn chair; it made a dull cheap sound. "Your daughter and your brother. Excuse me, Paul, but the connection, I'm not sure I see—"
"I don't fucking see it either," admitted the capo. "That's why my first thought was vendetta . . . Look, my brother comes here on vacation. Gets back all excited. Comes to my house, shows his asshole video. Next thing I know, my family's torn apart."
When Carmen Salazar was thinking hard, he didn't scowl; instead, his top lip rode up on his teeth and quivered, rabbit-like. After a moment, he said, "That video—who has it?"
Paul Amaro shrugged, said, "His wife, I guess."
"Maybe there's some hint, some landmark. Might be interesting to watch it together."
Paul Amaro sucked at wet thick air, smelled musky fruits and overripe flowers. He looked down at his hands, grudgingly admitted that this Salazar was bright, already he was bringing some reason, some promising dispassion, to all this infuriating muddle. "Yeah," he said, "it might."
* * *
"Lucky me," said Uncle Louie, though he didn't really sound like he meant it. "Got the last room."
"The last room?" said Angelina. "What about Ziggy?"