But suspicion had grabbed on to Tommy Lucca, and on a man like him suspicion was a ratchet, it only went tighter once it grabbed. "Salazar's boat guy, that fuck with the freckles, he's in Havana like every other week—ya don't think he knows other people who want guns?"
"There's no reason to imagine—"
"Fuckin' Paul was acting weird. Take me ta the beach. Lemme see the water. Weird."
"The man's a northerner," said Mendez. "He comes to Florida, he wants to see the beach."
"And all of a sudden, just like that, check into a hotel?"
For that, Carlos Mendez had no answer.
"The fucking guy is jealous of me," Tommy Lucca said. "Always has been. My house. My tan. Now he's looking for a way to screw me."
"Tommy, you're getting way ahead—"
"Either that or he's losing his marbles."
"It could be a million other things," said Mendez.
But Lucca couldn't see a million things, he could only figure two. "He's fucking me or he's crazy. And either way, I don't like what I smell."
* * *
"Ziggy's here?" said Michael. "Stuck here?"
"Looks that way," said Angelina. It was early evening, and she was sitting on the end of her friend's bed, kicking her bare feet against the sisal rug. "In a room with Uncle Louie."
Michael said, "God, it's so romantic."
"For Ziggy or my uncle?"
"For you" said Michael. He was standing near the mirror, lifting his lip to check for specks between his teeth. "It's this perfect little dance. First you chase him, then he chases you—"
"And my family chases both of us."
"Sometimes family's involved," said Michael. "Sometimes it's like that. Like, look at West Side Story."
"I seem to remember that ended badly."
"Now don't get pessimistic. We'll order in Chinese." He went to the bedside table, found a phone book, looked up Chinese restaurants.
Angelina sighed. "Spare ribs," she said. "Uncle Louie likes spare ribs."
"And Ziggy?" Michael asked, the phone tucked between his shoulder and his ear. "What does Ziggy like?"
It was a question to which Angelina could only shrug and shake her head.
32
The instructions that Rose received from Paul Amaro by way of her sister-in-law Maria were simple and specific. She was to take the Key West video to Federal Express and have it shipped to the Flagler House hotel for hand-delivery to a Mr. Paul Martin, the name under which her brother-in-law was registered.
That's all she was supposed to do. It was easy; it was clear, but Louie's wife had chosen not to do it. She'd sat in her steam-heated Bronx apartment, looked out the sooty windows, and she got to thinking. Why would Paul be staying in Key West, why would he want to see her husband's film, unless he had reason to believe that her Louie was down there? And what had always been the problem in her marriage, why had her husband finally abandoned her after all these years, except that she had taken him for granted, she had never gone out of her way to show him that she cared? She resolved that she would show him now.
She'd brewed a pot of coffee, got as close to being sober as she had been in several weeks, and booked an early morning flight to Florida. Something like hope, like tenderness, awakened in her as she packed badly folded clothes into a suitcase.
She arrived in Key West just before midday, the video in its black box in her purse, and took a taxi to the Flagler House. At the front desk she inquired as to the number of Paul Martin's room, had the savvy to slip the clerk a twenty when he said he couldn't give it out.
Tired, nervous, and with a cumulative hangover like a lingering flu, she walked around the pool, among the palms and past the thatched roof outdoor bar. She reached the tiki wing and knocked on her relative's door.
Paul Amaro coughed out a gruff, "Yeah?"
Rose groped for poise against the wet and draining heat. She made her voice husky and official, choked off the New York accent. "Delivery for Mr. Martin."
A moment passed, a bolt slid free. The door opened. Paul Amaro stood there in a hotel bathrobe, blinked into the daylight. Then he said, "Rose, you look like hell."
It was true. Her eyes were yellowish and soupy, her skin had the stretched and bluish sheen of rising dough. Her lipstick missed the outline of her lips, got grainy at the edges like something badly printed. She said, "You always knew how to make a girl feel good."
""What the hell are you doing here?"
"You don't look so hot yourself."
He didn't. His eyes were caving in like sinkholes, the flesh around them was pebbled and gray. Blood pressure was tormenting capillaries, his face and neck were tending toward the color of beef. Wearily, he said, "Why didn't you do like I told you, Rose?"