Joey leaned forward over his knees and put a conspiratorial rasp into his voice. "Mr. Ponte, this is the beauty part-they don't hafta believe you." He gestured past the louvered windows at the world. "They're probably watching it on television right now. It's gonna be in all the papers. Headlines. Pictures. Three million in mystery gems — this is a big deal down heah, you know that. Your stones ended up innee ocean, you have no idea how. This is what you tell the Colombians. Shit, what's three million to them? They wanna keep you happy, they'll give ya three million more. Three, plus the one ya got from Gino. That makes four, am I right?"
Ponte tugged an ear, looked down at the sisal rug striped with filtered sunlight. Then he shrugged. Then he almost smiled. Then he said to Joey's father, "Vincent, where you been hiding this boy?"
The patriarch moved his lips a fraction of an inch and his filmy eyes darkly gleamed with something like pride.
"So Mr. Ponte," Joey said, "we have an understanding here?"
"Enough with the Mr. Ponte shit," said the little mobster from Miami. "Call me Charlie, kid."
Cover
— 50 -
"Come on, Pop," Joey Goldman said. "This is Florida, we'll sit out by the pool."
It was mid-afternoon, the sun was fierce though the breeze was freshening, and Joey slid the outdoor table into a patch of shade. The compound had grown weirdly, blessedly quiet. Gino Delgatto, fat, oily, and ashen, had bolted immediately at the conclusion of the sit-down. Bert the Shirt, using his frail dog as an excuse, had gone home to take a nap. Charlie Ponte had kissed his older colleague from New York, given Joey an avuncular pat on the cheek, gathered up his sweaty minions, and headed for Miami. Sandra had excused herself to take a long hot bath, to try to soak the terror and the memory of captivity out of her sunburned skin. Only Steve the naked landlord was about, and he turned his bare backside on his newly troublesome tenant, this quiet guy who all of a sudden was always entertaining.
"A swim or something, Pop? I'll lend ya some trunks."
Vincente Delgatto hadn't even taken off his dark gray suit jacket, and he seemed to find something droll in being invited to go for a swim. He gave a small smile, strong, veiny teeth flashing for just an instant between his thin dry lips. Then he waved the suggestion away. "No, Joey, no thanks."
They fell silent and for a moment the father and the son enjoyed the air that was the temperature of skin and carried the pleasantly rank sweetness of wet cardboard. "Joey," Vincente Delgatto said at last. "Joey. The way you handled that, it was beautiful. Beautiful." He sounded transported, as though by an aria perfectly sung. "I never realized, Joey. What you could do, I never realized."
Joey Goldman toyed with the ribbing on the sleeve of his pink knit shirt, slid the earpieces of his sunglasses through his hair. "There was nothin' to realize, Pop. Up in New York, when I lived up there, hey, let's face it, I couldn't get outta my own way, I couldn't do nothin'."
His father shook his head, which wobbled slightly on his shrunken neck. An old man's errors mattered both more and less than a young man's. More because there was less time to undo them; less because there was less time to endure their consequences. "You coulda done plenty, Joey. I never gave you a chance."
Joey just shrugged. The palm fronds scratched like brushes on a snare drum, the little wavelets in the pool traced a bright pattern on the bottom. The silence went on a beat too long, and Joey fiddled with his glasses. "Sal gave me these shades, ya know. Like a going-away-"
"You hate me, Joey?"
The son hesitated. It was not so much that he was in doubt about his answer as that he was taken aback at being asked the question. His father was not a man to make a habit of offering his upturned throat.
"Nah, Pop," Joey said at last. "I don't hate ya. I wish some things were different, but hey."
"Things could be different, Joey." Vincente Delgatto reached up to straighten his already perfect tie. This was still, as it had been for as long as Joey could remember, the signal that the Don was about to offer the benefits of his influence. "I could set you up good. You wanna come back to the city, I could set you up very nice."
"Nah, Pop, that's not what I mean. I don't want that anymore. I'm over it. What you do, what Gino does, it's not for me. I know that now." Joey paused, tapped his fingers on the table, and gave a little laugh. "I ain't a tough guy, Pop. Never was. I useta try to be, and let's face it, it was fucking ridiculous.
"Besides, New York? Nuh-uh. Pop, my life's in Florida now. I like it here. It's easy. Palm trees. Sunsets. And I'm gonna tell ya somethin', it's gonna sound, like, sarcastic, but I don't mean it that way. You did me a big favor, not takin' better care a me before. I mean, if things weren't so, so frustrating up there, I never woulda left. I wouldn'ta thought of it. I mean, how many guys even think of it?"
It was not a question meant to be answered, but Vincente Delgatto raised a finger as though he might try. Then he dropped his hand into his lap and a faraway look came into his deep but filmy eyes. His lips pushed slightly forward toward what might have been a pout but looked, oddly, almost like the preparation for a kiss, and suddenly, for the first time ever, it occurred to Joey to wonder if his father had sometime thought of leaving, of changing, of turning his back on the neighborhood and his place within it to live a life he'd chosen for himself.
"Pop," said Joey, "can I ask you something?"
The old man simply cocked his head to listen.
"Did you love my mother?"
For some moments Vincente Delgatto did not answer. He stared down at the damp tiles around the pool, at his polished shoes. He was still a married man. It was not proper to discuss such things. But Joey had received so little and was asking for so little now.
"Yes," the father said. "I loved her very much."
Joey nodded. "I'm glad. She loved you too. You ever think of being with her? I mean, really being with her?"
The old man retreated behind his filmy eyes and scudded backward through the decades, back to the times when, just as now, his errors had both mattered more and mattered less. "Often," he said, in that voice that was like a rumble underground. "Every time we could get away, ya know, to someplace peaceful. Every time I held her in my arms. But Joey, I couldn't do it. I couldn't."
"I know you couldn't, Pop," said Joey Goldman. He reached out and put a hand on his father's. From inside the bungalow, he faintly heard the whoosh and plunk of Sandra getting out of the bathtub. She was so neat, Sandra was, so precise. By now she'd have a towel tucked under her arms, she'd be wiping the steam off the mirror to brush her hair. "I'm glad you thought of it at least, Pop, I really am. I'm glad you were, like, romantic."
— Epilogue -
Charlie Ponte's emeralds were appraised at three million two hundred and ten thousand dollars. But Joey was mistaken in imagining that his one-third share, discreetly registered under the name Zack Davidson, would break out at seven figures. In his newfound enthusiasm for all things legitimate, he'd overlooked the one great disincentive to doing things the lawful way: taxes. The disbursed funds were just under eight hundred thousand per partner.
Charlie Ponte took this graciously. He could afford to. The Colombians seemed mainly amused that he'd gotten his stones heisted; they seemed, as well, reassured at the disorganized state of the Italian-American mafia. They added three million dollars' worth of free cocaine to Ponte's next shipment and told him not to lose it.
Zack himself, ever the gentleman, insisted on giving up a proportionate fraction of the quarter-million Joey had promised him.
Joey brought home something shy of six hundred thousand, and tried without success to give part of it away. Bert the Shirt d'Ambrosia would not accept a penny beyond Gino's repayment of his ten-thousand dollar loan. "But Bert," Joey had argued, "nunna this coulda happened without you. It was you that started me thinkin' about a scam that fits the climate. You helped with-"