Joey motioned him outside, and the two men sat down under one of the steel umbrellas by the pool.
Bert put his dog on the table, and although Joey didn't say a word about it, the old gangster seemed to feel called upon to explain. "The other owners don't like it," he said, "and I don't blame 'em. A dog onna table-it ain't, like, whatchacallit, sanitary. But this dog, ever since the night with the gahbidge, he don't like to be out of my sight. Like, under the chair, that's too far away now. Fucking dog's a royal pain innee ass. Ain't you a pain innee ass, Giovanni? I shoulda let that little scar-faced fucker blow your brains out."
Joey looked through his blue lenses at the blue shimmer of the pool. "Yeah, Bert," he said. "Well, speakin'a pains innee ass, I took a boat, slipped inta the Flagler House, and wenta see Gino last night."
The Shirt took the news in stride. "And how's he doin'?"
"He's fallin' apart," said Joey. The statement came out oddly neutral because in it sympathy was balanced with rage, letdown canceled out vindication.
"Figures," said Bert. "Soft inna middle, Gino is. If things don't fall his way, if he can't play the big shot-"
"Well, I'm gettin' him outta town tonight. I got it mostly figured and I think it's gonna work."
The old man reached up and stroked the strands of flesh that were like the rigging for a double chin that wasn't there. "You think it's gonna work?"
"It'll work," Joey said softly. He looked out through the open side of the Paradiso quadrangle, across the bustle of A1A to the imported sand of Smathers Beach and the green Atlantic beyond. "But I'm gonna need some help."
"Like?"
"Like I need you to drive about twelve miles up the Keys and meet me at dawn at this little bridge between Big Coppitt and Saddlebunch."
"That I can do," Bert said. "It's not like I sleep good anyway."
"Then I need you to take Gino and Vicki to Marathon airport and get 'em onna first flight out. But not to Miami. I think it'd be better to avoid Miami. Where else they fly to outta there?"
"Prob'ly West Palm, Tampa."
"Yeah," said Joey, "someplace like that. Soon as possible. Then fuck it, we're done."
Bert scratched his chest through his cheesecloth shirt, and with his other hand he scratched the dog's. "Joey, ain'tcha forgettin' something?"
"Whassat?"
"What about the emeralds, Joey? Gino have the emeralds?"
Joey drummed his fingertips on the white enamel table and slowly shook his head. "The two guys that got whacked? They stashed 'em. And my genius brother, the night he almost got us killed, he went to cop 'em and couldn't find 'em."
"So that's that?" said Bert the Shirt. He was retired, more than comfortable, he had no use or even desire for extra money, but still, the idea of three million dollars going unexploited seemed to offend him profoundly. "So the stones'll just sit somewhere and rot?"
"Emeralds don't rot," said Joey. "That's the beauty part."
Bert paused. Back when he was active in the business, he'd been one of the better pausers in New York. He'd squint, toy with his collar, reach ever so slowly into his monogrammed pocket for a smoke. So supple were his pauses that they were equally suited to exuding menace or concealing knowledge or simply shaving parts of beats off the rough jazz of his speech. "Giovanni," he said at last to the dog, "you think this kid's holdin' out on us?"
Joey patted the chihuahua's head as a way of placating its master. "Bert, I ain't said one thing that isn't true. But hey, listen, coupla other things. Ya know where I can get a sleeping bag?"
"Sleeping bag? Joey, what're you runnin' here, a fucking Boy Scout camp? There's an army surplus on Stock Island."
"Great. And I need a rowboat. You got any idea where I can get a rowboat?"
"Prob'ly right in Garrison Bight," said Bert the Shirt. "Along the embankment there. There's always some winos, they sit in these old boats, sleep in 'em, I guess. Offer 'em twenty bucks. They'll take it, get drunk, and steal the boat back tomorrow."
Joey nodded, rapped the metal table with his knuckles, and started to get up. "Sounds easy enough. But ain't that what you tol' me, Bert, that in Florida everything should be easy?"
The Shirt nodded, a little bit uncertainly. He hated getting tripped up on what he did or did not remember saying.
"And money comes outta the water here," said Joey, pressing the old man's bony shoulder. "You tol' me that, too, didn't ya, Bert?"
Here Bert felt himself more firmly in the grip of recollection, and he smiled his loose-lipped long-toothed smile. "Always has," he said. "It's, like, tradition."
Sandra was in the pool.
Now that the evenings were staying hot, this was her favorite time at the compound. Steve the naked landlord had disappeared, taking his beers, his ash-tray, and his nakedness with him. Peter and Claude had left for work; Wendy and Marsha had gone inside to eat either brown rice or pepperoni pizza; Luke was off playing music somewhere, and Lucy the mailman was in front of television with her feet up. Sandra had the place to herself, under a dimming sky that was still greenish yellow at the western fringe, with the palms and poincianas losing the last of their daylight color and turning black and flat as etchings overhead. She stood midriff-deep in her chaste two-piece and breathed in the jasmine and the chlorine.
Then she grabbed on to the edge of the pool and started doing her kicking exercises.
That was when Joey came through the gate. Sandra was facing away from him, and he watched her as he approached. She craned her neck to keep her pale short hair out of the water. She pointed her toes, probably the way she'd once seen in a magazine. And while she was kicking furiously, she barely made a splash or a sound. Sandra, Joey thought. This is Sandra. Quiet, private, disciplined, precise. The little kid who would always find something worth doing if stuck in her room, who would always have a project for a weekful of rain. He watched her firm and narrow back, her skinny and determined shoulders, and a strange thing happened: he realized he truly was in love with her. He did not prime himself to feel this, and there was no such thing as readiness for the feeling when it came. It started at his feet and swelled upward as pure, sore, and irresistible as a sudden welling of graveside grief, and it left him with a closed throat and a milky feeling at the backs of his knees.
He walked lightly around the pool's damp apron and crouched low in front of her. "Hello, baby."
"Hi, Joey," she said, still kicking. "Thirty more makes four hundred."
"I love you," he said.
Sandra, the banker, had never before lost count. But now her scissoring legs fell out of their forced march and fluttered softly downward until her feet found the bottom. Joey, kneeling on the wet tiles, kissed her and tasted chlorine.
"I mean, Sandra, I think you're terrific. The best. The way you are. The way you've stuck with me. Hey, Sandra, you want friends? We're gonna have friends, Sandra. I promise. Lotsa friends. And salads. Friends and salads, all you want. And, like, we'll do stuff. I don't know what, whatever you like. Ya know, regular stuff that people do. Movies, picnics, I dunno. But we'll like go out, we'll have, like, a life. You and me. O.K.?"
— 33 -
Viewed from even a little distance out at sea, the life of the land looks small and slow, cozy but at the cost of being locked into lines and lanes, blocks and clusters. Compared to the tireless movement of water, things on land look stunned; it seemed to Joey that they could practically be under glass. Houses seem bolted to the earth. Cars crawl, pushing their meager lights ahead of them. Trees clutch the ground, rooted desperately as teeth.
At eleven fifty-five, Joey Goldman, alone at the wheel of Zack Davidson's little skiff, veered in from the open ocean toward the Flagler House dock. He was towing behind him a paintless plank rowboat with rusty oarlocks and mismatched oars, a broken stem seat, and a cut-off bleach bottle for bailing. He'd offered ten dollars for it and bought it for twelve.