Ziggy wondered if there was a right and a wrong answer to this. Being unsure, he told the truth. "No," he said. "Not really."
"I thought this might be a good time for you to start."
"But, Carmen, hey, we're onna same side—"
"This is where you're wrong," said Salazar. "This is why we're having this discussion, to impress upon you that we're not on the same side."
"But we talked all this—"
"I don't wanna be on your side, Ziggy. Your side's always afraid. Always hiding."
"Carmen, look, I said I'd leave you out of it, I gave my word."
"Your word means shit," said Salazar. "And leaving me out of it isn't nearly good enough. This is why my colleague here is poised to blow your head off."
A shaft of moonlight filtered through the foliage, seemed to pour from leaf to leaf. Ziggy said, "But—"
"Listen, Bigtime. Listen hard. You're gonna rat me out with the others. Got that?"
Ziggy tried to lean away from the pressure of the muzzle; the pressure followed him. "I'm not sure I do," he admitted.
"We'll go through it nice and slow," said Salazar. "I'm telling you to rat me out. Turn me in. Sing. Make sure everybody knows it. But only on the gun deal. Nothing else. You understand?"
Ziggy blinked. It was a confusing world. Some guys would kill you if you squealed on them, some guys would kill you if you didn't. "Okay, Carmen, sure, " he said. "Any way you want it."
"I want it that I don't end up like you," said Salazar. "I want it that I keep the face I have. I want it that I can stay in my town and not wet my pants whenever a stranger walks into the room. You see? Now let's go get this over with."
They left the garden together, climbed into Ziggy's car. Uncle Louie, now the shepherd of his sundered family's interests and its tremulous defender against betrayal, told the driver of the pink cab to follow, not too close behind.
* * *
Carlos Mendez didn't like the smell of fish, and even with the windows open wide he was queasy in the seafood truck.
On the long ride down the Keys, he hadn't watched the moonlit pelicans that swooped from bridge to bridge, hadn't noticed channel buoys leaning in the current like palms bent back by heavy wind. He'd only watched the mile markers tick past, and it had seemed a long time between one marker and the next.
He was relieved to see Tommy Lucca's limo parked at the appointed place, the little semicircle before the mock-important gate that closed off Shark Key from the highway.
But as soon as he'd stepped down from the truck and slid into the backseat next to the Miami mobster, he could see that Lucca wasn't right. His pupils were opening and closing, his hand kept plucking at his collar, his tongue was too busy in his mouth, looking for a place to rest. He started saying something emphatic but impossible to follow about swamps and bugs and real estate swindles, and Mendez thought, What a stupid time to get hopped up.
The car and the truck eased back onto the highway to drive the last few miles. There had been vehicles parked all up and down the Keys—people fishing, drinking, groping under steering wheels; no one paid particular attention to the two dark sedans stopped on a bridge a few hundred yards north of mile-marker twelve.
Just past the agents, Lucca's driver slowed, threw his high beams at oncoming traffic, until at length he found the break in the low canopy of mangroves that gave onto the unpaved road. He turned hard, skidded briefly on the gravel shoulder. The truck with its payload of fish and weapons clattered behind, its boxy trailer leaning.
The car bounced and squeaked through puddles and ooze and a sulfurous stink, and Carlos Mendez wasn't feeling well at all. He held the strap above his window and tried to keep his gorge down. Lucca seemed not at all bothered by the battering, the jerks; in fact he seemed to like them. He gave forth little yips, like he was at a carnival or imagining that he was riding on a horse.
Mendez ignored the giddy and demented sounds; with his free hand he calmly rolled and unrolled the Panama hat that was cradled on his lap. But when Lucca actually spoke, Mendez turned to face him, saw that he had pulled a pistol from his jacket and was slapping it lightly against his leg. "That has-been fuck," he said. "He's done nothing on this deal. Nothing but stall and fuck things up and try to screw me. Am I right?"
The car was pitching like a storm-tossed ship. Lucca's finger was toying with the trigger, he was a mass of tics and twitches, his synapses were firing at random. Carlos Mendez thought it politic to offer no opinion.
It made no difference to Lucca, he paused an instant then rolled along. "And I'm supposed to share the payday with this fuck? Balls to that. I'll show 'im."