He went to the sink and started washing up with dish soap. He was fastidious about his hands, Joey was, aside from being finicky about his food.
Sandra sighed and ran her fingers through her short blond hair. "What's gonna be with you, Joey? Well, come on, let's go out. I get paid tomorrow.
— 9 -
Bert the Shirt d'Ambrosia did not look terrific in his Bermuda shorts. Loose skin gathered around his knobby knees as at the neck of a Chinese dog, and on his right thigh, clearly visible through the sparse white hair, was the scooped-out pink scar of an old gunshot wound. His dark nylon socks ended three inches above his ankles, and the brown mesh shoes made his feet look bigger than they really were. But the old mobster was saved from dowdiness by the splendor of his blue silk shirt. It had horn buttons and the shimmer of the tall sky just after sunset. There was navy piping around the collar and a monogram on the chest pocket.
"Boo," said Joey Goldman.
Bert looked up in no great hurry. He was sitting at a poolside table at the Paradiso condominium, playing solitaire under a steel umbrella. "Was a time," he said, "you couldn'ta got the jump on me like that. Now? What the fuck. I'm just an old guy playing cards."
"You got a watchdog," Joey said. Don Giovanni, his wet nose twitching, cowered beneath the old man's chair.
"Fucking dog isn't worth shit. But siddown, Joey. I'm glad you came by."
The younger man pulled up a white wrought-iron chair and eased himself into it. "Nice place." The Paradiso had three pink towers that bristled with balconies and framed a big pool and a pair of tennis courts; the Atlantic Ocean was across the street. Through Joey's tinted lenses, the water was a milky green not much darker than the color of celery.
"It's not too bad," Bert said. "They don't have bocce, that's the only thing."
"Well," said Joey, and he left it at that. The old man turned up an ace, waved it in the air, and kissed it. "Bert, I was thinking about what you said the other day."
Bert cocked his head but said nothing. He was at the age when things he'd said forty years before left a more reliable track than things he said five minutes ago. Fortunately, he'd developed the knack of looking sage while waiting to be reminded what he'd been so wise about.
"Ya know," Joey went on, "about how ya gotta come up with, like, a Florida caper, something that makes sense for where we're at."
"Not where we're at. Where you're at." The Shirt put a black seven on a red eight.
"Whatever," Joey said. "Anyway, it makes a lotta sense. Except.. except. Except, Bert, I can't for the life a me figure out what the angle oughta be. The last two nights, I couldn't sleep. I got outta bed and went outside. It's like three inna morning, and I'm sitting under a palm tree like a fucking lunatic, telling myself, Think Florida, think Florida. But I just come up with stupid fucking things. Suntan lotion. Baby alligators. This kid I knew in like second grade-he had a pencil sharpener that looked like an orange. Said Florida on it. So how the fuck am I supposed to make a living off of baby alligators and stupid-ass souvenirs? Bert, I'll be honest with ya. I'm balancing neatly onna ballsa my ass down here. I ain't made a nickel. My girlfriend's getting fed up and I can't say I blame 'er. I gotta get something started or I'm in deep shit."
Bert reached out and placed a cool hand on top of the younger man's. "Joey," he said. "Joey. Listen to yourself. You're saying, Think Florida, but listen how nervous you sound, how wound up. That's not Florida. That's not tropical. To be that worried, that's still New York."
"O.K., Bert, I know it is. But what can I say. I am that worried. I ain't slept. Coupla days ago I hadda pay the February rent. I reach into the drawer to get the cash, I count up what I got, and I say, Where the fuck is my money going? It's not like I'm being a big shot. It just goes." He yanked off his sunglasses and showed Bert his eyes. They were owlish to begin with, because he left his shades on when he sat in the sun. But now the pale circles had turned a nubbly yellow, and the bloodshot whites made his deep blue irises look almost grapy.
"Awright, Joey, you're under some strain. I can see that. So let's go back to basics. Look over that way, past the gates. Whaddya see?"
Joey put his sunglasses on again, twisted himself in his chair, and peered past the pool, the tennis courts, the hibiscus hedge. "A road."
"Then what?"
"The beach."
"Then what?"
"Water," he said. "I see water."
"Good, Joey. Now doesn't that make you feel calm, all that nice cool green water? Doesn't it calm you down?"
"The truth, Bert? Fuck no. Not at all. I'm like itchy all over. What would make me feel calm is if I knew what the hell I was doing down here, if I thought I was heading for a payday."
"Kid," said Bert, with the sad patience of a junior high school teacher. "You're not paying attention. This is what I'm telling you. A payday would make you calm, maybe you oughta look to the water for a payday. That's where the money comes from down here. Always has. Always will."
Joey stared off at the shallow green ocean, but the ocean didn't talk to him. He pulled at his chin, he squirmed in his seat. Bert kept playing solitaire.
"Look what passes for old money down here," the retired gangster continued. "The Bergens. The Clevelands. You've hearda those families, right? How you think they got rich? They were pirates. Yeah. Legal pirates. There's a reef around five miles out from here. The water in between, it's called the Florida Straits. Now, ships useta all the time run up onna reef and sink. These families that are so rich now? They lived in shacks by the water. Shacks! They peed innee ocean. They didn't even have glass inna windows.
"But they were smart. They built lookout towers. A ship goes down, boom, they jump in their boats and row out the Straits. They rowed out there in squalls, in hurricanes. And the law of the sea says the first guy who gets there, it's his boat. He owns whatever's on there-silver, jewelry, cash, whatever. Course, sometimes it helped to have a shotgun, to prove you were there first. So these snooty families that get hospital wings named after them, they started, like, as hijackers."
Joey was still staring at the water; his hairline was crawling. "So, Bert, you're telling me I should get a fucking rowboat and wait for a shipwreck?"
"Nah, forget about it," said the older man. "This was a hundred years ago. These days, there's treasure salvors, it's big business. There's this one guy, Clem Sanders-"
"Bert," Joey blurted, "so what are you telling me? I'm like dyin' heah."
"What am I telling you?" Bert repeated. "Joey, I'm sevenny-tree years old, I been dead, I hafta all the time know what I'm saying? I'm just thinkin' out loud, like trying to clue you in on the local traditions. 'Cause they matter, Joey. Remember that. Local traditions. They matter in New York, they matter here. Where's the goddamn dog?"
Bert reached down underneath his chair, stretched his fingers toward the quivering chihuahua, and looked skyward to check the position of the sun. Then he stood up halfway with the chair lifted against his shrunken backside and moved a foot or so around the table. "You're a pain innee ass," he said to the dog. Then, to Joey: "I gotta keep him in the shade or he like dries out. He went inta convulsions once. Almost popped his eyes right out of his head. Fuck you laughing at?"
"Bert," Joey said, "you weigh like a hundred seventy pounds and the dog like weighs four ounces. Wouldn't it be easier to move the dog?"
"Dog don't wanna move. Dog don't wanna do nothing but shit onna floor and now and then jerk off on a table leg. Mind your fucking business."
"I ain't got no business. That's why I'm here."