— 42 -
"Hi, Steve," Joey said. "Whatcha reading?"
After leaving Bert, he'd driven back to the Parrot Beach office. He'd picked up Zack, who was duly titillated when he saw the illicit-looking stack of hundreds. Together, they'd returned to the Treasure Museum to sign papers. Smiling like a senator, Clem Sanders accepted the cash and the nautical chart. He was on the phone to the media before his two young partners had made it through the door.
It had been blisteringly hot downtown, asphalt softening and harsh light glinting painfully off tin roofs. Doing business in this weather was a sweaty affair and stank of nerves; driving around in the mufflerless Eldorado entailed a lot of grit, noise, and the reek of half-combusted gasoline. After the errands, the compound had never seemed more of a haven. It was quiet. It smelled good. The greenery ate up the worst of the heat. Steve the naked landlord stood waist-deep in the cool water, a monument to ease. He was on his fourth beer, his ashtray was full, his second pack of cigarettes lay crumpled on the wet blue tiles. He glanced up at Joey, then turned his paperback over to remind himself what he'd been reading. The cover showed a big black car and some guys with guns giving off red flashes for bullets. "Mafia," said Steve. "Rubouts." Then he smiled.
Joey smiled back.
Then Steve added, "Oh, your friends from Miami are here. I let 'em in." He waited a beat and smiled again.
"Friends from Miami?" said Joey.
The words seemed to rise up like a puff of steam. Then they solidified and took on a sickening weight, and Joey ran out from under them as one would from a falling rock. He skirted the pool, skidded on the tiles, and reached for the sliding door of his cottage, knowing in that moment that everything was over, everything was fucked, he'd come up short as usual, he'd blown it, the old neighborhood was not about to let him get away, and he'd been a loser and a fool ever to imagine for an instant that it might be otherwise.
He yanked open the door. He saw no one, heard nothing, only vaguely noticed that the bungalow was darker than usual. It was darker because Charlie Ponte's thugs had closed the louvered windows in the Florida room, and they had closed the louvered windows because that's where they were keeping Sandra.
They had her tied up in a chair.
Her ankles were bound with a dirty gray rope. Big loops of a different line ran around her midriff and her arms and kept her pinned back in her seat. She was wearing her work clothes, a neat cream-colored skirt and a plain beige blouse, and across her mouth was a wide piece of shiny silver duct tape, frayed where it had been torn from the roll. Her short blond hair, usually faultless, was frazzled now, clumps of it hanging onto her forehead. She looked up at Joey, and in her pale green eyes there was terror but no blame, rather a kind of silent, desperate wisecrack- You spring this on me now? Just when things are going right for me? — and it raced through Joey's mind that what he and Sandra really shared were their crazy gropings toward optimism and their ability to meet disaster, if not with courage exactly, then at least with a lack of complaint and a lack of surprise. Ponte's thugs did not prevent Joey from going to Sandra and putting his arm around her. The only thing she could move was her face. She turned it into his stomach, and only then did she start to cry. The tears went right through Joey's shirt.
"Hello, shitbird," said one of the thugs. It was Tony, the short one with the scarred lip and the bad toupee, the one who'd been squeamish about splattering a dog. But now he was holding a gun on Sandra and seemed to feel no discomfort at all. "We had a really shitty few weeks 'causa you, scumbag. We ain't in a good mood."
Joey squeezed the knob of Sandra's shoulder and reminded himself how slight she was inside her oversized shirt.
"Stop hangin' on to your girlfriend, faggot," said the other thug. It was Bruno, the huge one who liked to rip things apart. He was standing in the dimness between a bad painting of birds and a bad painting of seashells. He'd taken off his blue suit jacket and he looked even bigger without it. "Come ova heah," he said, pointing down at the sisal rug.
Joey went. He knew the rituals. He knew he was to get hit, he just wondered whether it would be face or gut. His blood turned thin and sour and he stood at loose attention like a tired soldier. Bruno took a moment to size him up, then slugged him in the belly. Joey doubled over, his empty chest folded down across his trembling thighs. His eyes were open but everything was black, with streaks of phosphorescent green. He thought he heard a little shriek but couldn't tell if it was Sandra giving a sympathetic wince through her duct tape, or his own wheezing as he struggled for air. Before he could straighten up, Bruno grabbed him by the head and pushed him backward onto the settee. "Where's your fucking brother?" he asked.
Joey couldn't answer because he couldn't breathe. He tried to use the time to think, but he found he couldn't do that either. "Fuck should I know?" he finally managed.
"You helped him get away, ya little cocksucker," Tony said.
"I don't know nothin' about it," Joey said.
There was a pause. The two thugs looked at each other. Sandra squirmed. Outside, there was a splash from the pool. The motor of the hot tub clicked on and hummed. The easy life of Florida was proceeding. Tony reached slowly into his jacket pocket and pulled out a silencer. Very deliberately, he fitted it onto the muzzle of his gun.
"You and your girlfriend, kid," said Tony. "You're nine-tenths dead."
He leaned over Sandra and tucked the gun under her chin, pushing it into the soft place between her jawbone and her throat. Her head was rigid against the back of her chair and she tried not to go cross-eyed staring down at the threatening hand.
"Don't fucking touch her," Joey said. He found himself getting to his feet.
"Ain't he brave?" said Bruno. As he said it, he bashed Joey across the ribs with his forearm. Joey's chest rattled, his heart seemed to shake off some juice, like a thrown sponge. He sat back down.
"Mr. Ponte wants his emeralds," Tony said. He hadn't moved the gun away from Sandra's chin. His finger was on the trigger and he didn't seem to be paying very close attention to whether or not he was squeezing. "He's tired of waiting and he's tired of being dicked around by little shitasses like you."
Joey looked at Sandra and suddenly he wanted to cry. It was less out of fear than out of frustration and remorse. He wanted to crawl across the floor and tell Sandra he was sorry. Sorry he'd taken her away from Queens, sorry he couldn't really take her away from Queens, sorry that Queens seemed to inhabit his life like a virus.
"So where's the fucking stones, kid?" Tony went on.
Joey said nothing. Bruno leaned down and smacked him hard with the back of his hand. The pain went from Joey's cheek to his gums, then lodged behind his eardrum.
"Kid," the shorter goon resumed, "I gotta tell ya somethin', no offense. Your brother Gino, he's a cunt. He's a dumb twat who don't know what he's doin'."
"You hear me disagreeing?" Joey said.
"Then why the fuck are you protecting him?"
"I'm not."
Tony seemed to consider this. The effort made him cranky, and he tapped the silencer against the underside of Sandra's chin. It made a morbid sound, not quite a slap and not quite a click. A vein was pulsing in Sandra's neck. "Awright, kid, you're not protecting your brother. So maybe you'd like to protect your pretty little girlfriend heah." He pulled back the hammer. "I'm gonna ask ya one more time: Where's the fucking emeralds?" He was dimpling Sandra's neck with the gun.
"They're innee ocean," Joey heard himself say.
Tony and Bruno consulted with their eyes. They didn't seem to like the answer. It struck them as an insult and a lie.