They drove Modesta home in the limo, music and cool air turned up. Then turned them down to quiet sounds to drive out of the city toward Isla Verde; a nice ride, DeLeon relaxed, Vincent trying not to think.
“I’m going home.”
“Can’t fake your injury no more?”
“Can’t play his game.”
“How ’bout I put him on the ground and you drop something heavy on him?”
“I’m tired.”
“Doesn’t matter or not he still wants you?”
“He does, he’ll have to come to Miami Beach.”
“This living on comps and good looks is gonna arrive at a screechy halt anyway, anytime now. Nothing is free, is it? Shit,” DeLeon said, “I’m gonna have to get a job.”
They came to the mosque on the beach. A gambler’s mecca-was that the connection? Vincent still wasn’t sure. They left the car at the main entrance… Vincent winding down finally to reach bottom after days of dead ends, tired to death of thinking.
Then starting up again gradually, not yet aware of it, as he said, “Let’s have a few in the lounge, while I can still sign.” The idea picking him up a little but not much. The black doorman in cape and turban grinned with teeth like old piano keys, giving it all he had. And it picked Vincent up some more. The put-on. The man making a living, playing his part. And DeLeon playing with him, saying, “Allah is God, my brother.” The doorman grinning his ivory grin back, “And Jackie Garbo is his prophet. Say tell you he’s in the lounge. Anxious to see you two.”
It stopped DeLeon. “Uh-oh.”
But lifted Vincent even higher, the prospect of seeing Jackie again, the idea of buying him a drink. “Come on.” Amazing, though maybe not so amazing. Because Jackie was real and good or bad you could read him and be entertained. Jackie was Jackie… Who was Teddy? You couldn’t say Teddy was Teddy… Teddy in and out of Vincent’s mind, never completely gone, as he walked through the lobby with DeLeon and into the lounge. Dark, but there he was, at the bar.
A half-grown bear in a silk suit, raising his glass, white cuff gleaming, pinky ring winking… Vincent walked toward him. He would shake his hand, slap him on the shoulder, get him off stride and listen to his assumptions and raw asides and enjoy it. He heard a cord struck softly on the piano, another and another…
Jackie was looking this way, Jackie saying, “It works. Somebody sent in the fucking clowns. Where you going?”
To the bandstand-was he kidding? Through the tables to the small stage, one step up and across to the piano where Linda stopped playing as she saw him. Was she sad or smiling? Or both. He wasn’t sure. He said, “You’re here…”
And she said, “I missed you, Vincent. Boy, did I miss you.”
AS LONG AS HE COULD LOOK at Linda Moon, close enough to touch, he could be patient and courteous and listen to Jackie, at least while the champagne lasted. Vincent’s whole outlook had changed. He sensed there was even something different about Jackie. Listen.
“When you know you’re getting it up the kazoo but you allow it, then it’s not what you ordinarily call forcible entry. You know what I’m saying?”
Sort of.
“I was hurt. Lemme tell you something, ladies and gentlemen, I can’t remember in my experience ever being more deeply hurt…”
Actually on stage. He stood at the edge directly above them, a dead mike in his hand as a prop, his audience two light faces and one dark face in the gloom of the nearly empty noontime lounge: Linda, Vincent, DeLeon seated with Jackie’s offering, the bottle of champagne, Jackie the good guy continuing:
“… I couldn’t believe it. Here’s this honest cop, supposedly, using what he calls leverage, holding my old sidekick, my confidant, the Moose, over my head as a threat. When all he had to say was, ‘Mr. Garbo, you mind if we use your company plane? It’s very important.’ I mean that’s all you had to do, ask.” Jackie paused, lowered his head, raised it slowly. “Moose, am I a reasonable guy? Relatively you’d say easy to get along with?”
“Kindest man I know,” DeLeon said, back in his old job under new conditions, a favorable location.
“Thank you.”
“He’s a peach,” Linda Moon, Now Appearing in the Sultan’s Lounge, said. “Has a great ear for music.” And looked at Vincent. His turn.
But he couldn’t think of anything to add until DeLeon said, “Man’s wise, too. Knows when to bail out,” and Jackie hooked the mike onto the stand and stepped down to the table.
“He’s an entertainer at heart,” Vincent said. “Should have a stage in his office.”
Sitting down with them Jackie said, “I wanted to I could work this room right here, get a routine together. It’s a gift, you got it or you don’t. Confidence, presence…” Turning to DeLeon. “But I didn’t bail out up there, the inference being I ran out on the Donovans…”
“Uh-unh,” DeLeon said, “I know you wouldn’t do that.”
“What I did, I excused myself,” Jackie said. “Left Dick and Jane playing cutthroat with each other. She is, he’s thinking up catchy names for the sandwiches in the deli or he’s playing with his Wang. Hey, they want to run the casino and the hotel, good luck, they’re principal stockholders. I’ll run the show here from now on, that’s the understanding. Some morning four A.M. I’ll get a frantic call, hop back up there and straighten things out. Otherwise I’m here and I love it.”
“There’s something different about you,” Vincent said.
“You notice ’cause you got an eye, you don’t miss anything.”
“What is it?”
“I’m gonna pay you the highest form a compliment,” Jackie said. “You came in my office when we met, sat down, didn’t say much…”
“Got carried out.”
“That was your own fault. You should a stated your business, not led me on like that. But I should a paid more attention to you at the time, your style, the way you handle yourself. You know why? ’Cause I thought about it later. I realized something. I said to myself, this guy’s got nice easy moves, never pushes, he listens and he learns things. Which is how you found out all you did, right? I said to myself, that’s the way to do it. Don’t get excited, lay back. But listen, that’s the key to it I learned from you. Listen and don’t talk so fucking much. See, guy like you, you prob’ly think you don’t have any effect on people. Well, don’t sell yourself short, my friend, you got a very nice way about you. Stay with it, you’ll do okay.”
“Thanks,” Vincent said.
In the lobby he said, “I’m not gonna be able to keep my hands off you.” She said, “I hope not.” In the elevator he said, “I can’t wait,” and she said, “I can’t either.” So they took hold of each other and began, their mouths not able to get enough, and didn’t come apart when the door opened. They went all the way to the top and had to come down to Vincent’s floor to hurry through the hall and into his room, no words between them now, nothing in the way of “I can’t wait I can’t either” once she stepped out of her pants and raised her dress as he shoved down his jeans and they joined together across the bed, not a moment too soon, breathing into each other until it was done and with immense relief they could again smile, speak.
Teddy was worried he’d have trouble staying on Vincent’s tail in this automatic Chevette he’d rented. Some piece of equipment-it took about twenty minutes for the son of a bitch to lug out of low gear and get moving. When he saw Vincent also had a Chevette he had to laugh. Here they were playing a deadly game in a couple of kiddie cars. The red one following the white one from Isla Verde through the busy Condado Beach section and across the bridge to Vincent’s old neighborhood. In fact, it looked like he and Linda-wherever the hell she had come from-were going into the same place where he’d stayed before. The Carmen Apartments above the liquor store. The cop sure had a lot of class, didn’t he? Moving in, it looked like, both of them with suitcases. Well, wasn’t that cute?