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But Gino Delgatto did not in fact get whacked that night, nor did he head back to New York.
By the time Charlie Ponte and his boys retraced their steps from Mount Trashmore, Gino, for reasons known only to himself, was back at the Flagler House hotel. He'd let the valet park his second rented car, and had locked himself in his room, where he remained effectively barricaded for the next week. He saw no visitors and took no calls. He ordered room service meals three times a day, and kept his hand on his pistol in the pocket of his bathrobe when they were delivered. With dinner came a bottle of Jack Daniel's. He slept with the gun under his pillow, and kept a small revolver near the toilet.
After three days of nonstop television, paranoia, drunkenness, and Gino's increasingly perfunctory embraces, Vicki announced that she'd had enough and was going back to Queens. She did not believe Gino when he told her that she would surely be kidnapped on the way to the airport, and that, at the very feast, she would be strip-searched by a rough-fingered bunch who would diligently probe every orifice where emeralds could possibly be hidden, and would detain her until, with the help of strong laxatives, her lovely young innards had been purged of all precious stones.
"They'll make you shit in a strainer, Vicki. You wanna shit in a strainer with five guys watching?"
"This is some vacation, Gino," she groused. "I shoulda stood in Queens."
He swilled whiskey and didn't answer.
"They wouldn't do that," she resumed after a moment's pondering. "You're just trying to get me to stay."
"No I'm not," said Gino. He was unshaven, jowly, his color was bad, his eyes were bloodshot, and he gave off the yellow smell of bourbon filtered through an overtaxed liver. "I'm fuckin' sick of ya, ya want the truth. Ya wanna go, go."
She got as far as the swath of shade thrown by the hotel awning. Then she saw the dark blue Lincoln. It was parked not more than thirty yards from her taxi. Ponte's crew wasn't even bothering to be stealthy anymore; in Key West, where private life was public and strange behavior was the norm, they didn't need to be. They were just waiting, and they had the whole world to wait in. Gino and Vicki had their hotel room, a cubicle maybe twenty feet square, with a rumpled bed, a television set, a chair that skin stuck to when sweaty, and a tiny balcony that Gino was now afraid to go out on. Vicki went back upstairs, stopping only at the hotel pharmacy to buy some fresh cosmetics and a stack of magazines.
By day five Gino was drinking bourbon with his breakfast grapefruit and talking back to game-show hosts. He could barely bring himself to touch his girlfriend, and she could barely stand to be touched, but there was nothing else to do. Outside, the sun moved across the sky, glared through the windows, turned the walls orange at sunset. Food arrived. Sleep came fitfully.
"Gino, this is really fucking crazy," Vicki said, lying naked and bored after a passionless poke. "I mean, like psychotic. When can we get outta here?"
He lifted himself on an elbow, scratched his hairy belly, and swirled his Jack Daniel's in the smudged glass. He couldn't bring himself to say so, but he didn't think they'd ever get out of there, unless he came up with a plan. And after a week of thinking about it night and day, while drinking, while screwing, while dreaming frenzied and terrifying dreams, he didn't have so much as a shred of an idea.
"So Joey," Sandra asked, "what's really going on with Gino?"
They were in bed at the compound. A light breeze puffed out the curtains and a waning moon threw just enough light so that dim stripes were cast across the quilt by the slatted blinds.
"You really wanna know?"
A week before, she hadn't wanted to, or maybe it had just seemed to her that Joey didn't want to tell her. Couples must conspire to hide things from one another; it's too difficult for either party to do alone. Joey had come home clearly shaken and reeking of garbage. Sandra said she'd been worried, had called the hospital, didn't know Vicki's last name, asked about a young woman who'd been knocked through a window by a moped; the emergency room had handled no such case, and Sandra had felt like a fool. Joey said that Gino had lied, it was one of Gino's crazy schemes. And that was all he said. Sandra, as happened not infrequently, was faced with the choice of pressing or changing the subject. But where was the line between pressing and nagging? So she asked him if he wanted some crab claws. He wasn't hungry. He'd put his clothes in the trash, taken a long shower, and sat up drinking the wine meant for dinner while Sandra had gone to sleep.
"You really wanna know?" Joey asked again now. It seemed to Sandra that this time there was more hope than hesitation in his voice.
"Is it bad?"
"It's really bad."
"Are you involved, Joey?"
"Not by choice-hell no."
"Then tell me."
So he did. He propped himself up on pillows and absently smoothed the creases in the quilt as he talked. The breeze coming through the window was cool and made him grateful for the warmth of Sandra's body next to him. She gave off a nice smell of talcum powder and hand cream.
"So now he's holed up in his room," Joey concluded, "and Ponte is just waiting for a chance to kill 'im. Where the emeralds are, if he's got 'em, I haven't got a clue. What he was up to while me and Bert were kidnapped, why he didn't just blow town, I got no waya knowin'. I've tried calling him like a dozen times already. The switchboard just takes messages. I've gone past the hotel, just to scope it out. The Lincolns are always there. Pontes goons wave at me and laugh, like it's a big goddamn joke. I don't go inna hotel, of course. I mean, that crazy I'm not."
"Joey," Sandra said, "there's nothing you can do."
But he went on as if he hadn't heard. "Ya know what gets me, Sandra? What gets me is that, for all these years, Gino passed for smart. I mean, I believed it. Sure, I bitched, I argued, but basically I bought it. Gino, the guy with big ideas. Gino, the guy who gets things done. Is that pathetic or what? I mean, look at this guy. What the hell was on his mind? And selfish. Jesus Christ Almighty, is he selfish. I mean, he coulda got me killed. He coulda got Bert killed. And what if you came along, Sandra? I mean, you coulda come for the ride." Joey slapped at the quilt and exhaled ferociously, as if trying to dig some family germ out of the very bottom of his lungs. "The fucking guy thinks of no one but himself."
Sandra snuggled closer to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Joey, those are all the reasons why you have to wash your hands of this."
He pulled away, not in anger but only because her touch was too much a threat to his resolve. "No, Sandra, those are all the reasons I can't wash my handsa this. I walk away, and what happens? Gino gets killed. So now he's dead, but he's still the guy who had the big ideas, the guy who was doing things. And me, what am I? I'm still little Joey, the nobody, the guy who don't know nothin', can't do nothin', and sits by like a jerk, like a worm, while his brother gets whacked."
"But Joey, you didn't make the problem."
"Sandra, that's true, and it means nothing. Listen, I been thinkin' about this all week. If Gino gets killed, it's like the clock stops, nothing can change no more. To my old man he's still the golden boy. In his own mind he's still the big shot."
"But Joey, if he's dead-"
"The only way I can ever get rid of the fucking guy, the only way I can really be done with him, is to save his life. You see what I'm saying, Sandra? I wanna be able to say to him, 'Gino, you fucked up, I saved your ass. You were dead, I brought you back to life. So here, schmuck, here's your life. Take it and get outta my face.' Sandra, ya can't say that to a dead man, can ya?"
Part III
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