Ov orders another martini and we both watch dimples shake the can. Fresh juice in hand, he picks up where he left off. “Five, maybe six years, me and Rhodo are neighbors and nothing passes but how-ya-dos. This year, though, I come down like I always do, after Thanksgiving, and there’s a hole in my wall. No shit, a door cut in between my place and Rhodo’s. I’m ballistic. I grab Rhodo and say, ‘What the hell’s with the hole?’ What does he do but give me a grin and says, ‘Oh, that, sorry, I should have asked, but my mom was visiting and I wanted a place she could call her own. Privacy, you know?’ My jaw’s at my belt. ‘You what?’ I says and he says it again, same thing. Guy like this, you never figure he’d have a mom. Anyway, then he says, ‘Tell you what, how about I buy your place? Pay you twice the market in trade.’ ”
Ov mouths one of the three olives from the martini. “Well, I like my place and selling’s never entered, but ‘twice’ catches my ear, so I asks, ‘What’s it mean, in trade?’ ‘Y’know,’ he says, ‘I got some property’s worth twice the market of your place. We swap. Trade. I get yours, you get mine.’ Twice the market, right away I’m thinking extra bedroom, extra bath, not that I’ve ever needed them, but y’know, down here space is space, maybe even on the fourteenth floor with a wrap-around balcony, that’s the kind of place you’re talking at twice the market. So I says, ‘This other property, tell me about it.’ You should have seen the smile on his face. Two gold molars showed. ‘You’re going to love it,’ he says. ‘You’re from Michigan, right? I’ve got this hundred-and-thirty-acre piece just above Gaylord, small lake on it and a cement plant.’ ”
Ov does the second olive. “I look at him like he’s crazy, which the dive proves he is, but at the time I don’t know he’s going to play pelican, but I should have figured with the hole in my wall and all. ‘Gaylord,’ I says, ‘Gaylord is in freaking Michigan. What are you talking about Gaylord and a cement plant? I thought you had something here on the beach.’ I’m yelling at the sucker, but he just puts out his hands, motions me to calm down, gives me a smile like it’s me who’s the crazy one for not jumping at this snowball, and he says all over again, ‘This place with the land, the lake, and the cement plant, this deal you don’t want to pass up.’ ”
Down goes the third olive. “By now, I’ve got no doubt the guy’s fifty-one short of a deck. Guy like that, you don’t come right out and say it, ’cause no telling where he goes from here, so I says, ‘Forget the deal and just fix my wall. While you’re at it, paint the whole freaking room and don’t pull shit like this again.’ And that’s the end of it. Can you believe? Next day drywall’s up. Week later paint’s on, everything back the way it was.”
Ten years, off and on, I’ve been doing stuff for Ovitz Marker. Ten years every conversation has a problem lurking in it. So I’m listening to this wondering where it’s going, because right now I can’t see the thorn.
“Hey,” Ov says to Dimples with a wink, “this here martini, you forgot the olives.” Dimples gives a friendly little snort and impales four olives on a toothpick. Scarfing the first one, Ov says, “Aphrodisiac.” I’m thinking Dimples ought to put the whole jar on the bar and let him go at them for all the good it will do.
“So,” Ov says. “What d’y’ think?”
What I think is that if I can get rid of Ov, there’s still a chance with Dimples. What I say is, “A character.”
“Yeah, well,” Ov says. “It’s a good story. But now the chitchat’s over, maybe we can spend a minute on business.”
I give him the queer eye. “Vacation, Ov, vacation. We don’t do work on vacation.”
Like I never said it, Ov says, “You got to help me with this one. Besides, knowing you were in town, I already passed your name to this guy and he wants to talk with you.”
I push away from the bar. “Ov, I’m on vacation. Way I see it, what you got to do is go back to this guy and pass him another name. I’m out. And, so there’s no hard feelings, here’s a ten for the drink.”
I’m walking away and Ov’s yelling after me. “Your money’s no good here, and the guy I told, he don’t take no for an answer.”
The sun’s been up for a half-hour and I’m sitting on the deck, still in skivvies, feet propped on the table, trying to decide whether to bike out to Lover’s Key or just walk to the beach, when a woodpecker raps on my door. Four days I’ve been here now, and this is the first time anyone, I mean anyone, has touched that door. “Don’t need any,” I yell, but the pecker does it again.
Pulling on some plaid shorts, I pad over to the door. On the other side is a guy wearing a suit coat and tie. Mormon is the first thing that flashes because on the beach nobody still drawing breath sports a tie. But somehow the guy doesn’t look like a Mormon. They’re always young, clean-cut, fresh-looking. This guy is anything but. More like used, cut-up, and ready for the trash bin. The suit is black, the tie is grey silk, and the guy standing behind the guy has at least ten inches on him and four on me.
“You Jaxon?” the little guy with the tie asks.
“Yeah,” I say, “and whatever you’re selling, I don’t want any.”
“Inside,” he says, reaching up with splayed fingers to push my chest.
Now I’m easygoing, but one of the things that puts me off is short guys in ties pushing me on the chest and giving me orders in my own rented house. So I stand my ground and gently but firmly swat his hand from my chest saying, “Flake off, Charlie.” This time the tree in the second row reaches an arm over the short guy with the tie’s head and starts for my neck. Before it gets there I have the wrist in my paw pushing it upward so that he grabs nothing but cloud. But I don’t get a chance to show off my kung fu or jujitsu because the short guy has a cannon stuck in my belly-button, trying to push it through to my spine.
“Inside,” the guy with the tie says again, and this time I figure, why not. “Sit down,” the tie says, sliding the Magnum back in his coat. “Treat all your customers like this, you’re not going to stay in business long,” Tie says.
“A,” I say, “most of my customers don’t pack. B, I’m on vacation, no customers wanted. C, my license’s no good here. D, what’s it to you?”
“Check it out,” Tie says and Tree starts a tour of my palace. To me he says, “Who cares what you want? You talk to Marker? He’s supposed to let you know I’m hiring you. He says he talked to you, last night. He talk to you?”
Ov’s talk at the Beach-A-Doo slides back into my head and I roll my eyes. “Hey, I told him same thing I told you. I’m on vacation: rest, relaxation, no jobs. Got it? So thanks for thinking of me, but find yourself another boy. Now, if you don’t mind.”
The tie looks at me with a cocked head. “You’re not getting this, are you? Nobody’s asking you if you want the job. What I’m saying is that you’re taking the job.”
“Or what?”
“Or Ovitz Marker gets whacked. How’s that for an or-what?”
I nod my head and give him a dumb look like I’m impressed. “Pretty good or-what,” I say. “Thing you want to do on the way out is let me know where I should send flowers. Ov was a good client.”
It takes a second, but eventually a smile works its way onto Tie’s face. “You’re okay,” he says. “I like that. Most guys I know, give a little heat, they fold. Not you. That’s pretty good. Hey, you know who I am? Marker tell you that? Who you’re dealing with, here?”
“My guess would be Snow White and you left the other six dwarfs at home.”
Again, he chuckles. “You got a good routine. Keep it up; I’ll get you a gig at the Sands. But just so you know, I’m Al Capon.” He says it so it sounds Italian. “And I run this town.”