“We go back there,” Maguire said, “she never says a word all the time we’re doing it. We get dressed, come back out, she pours me another cup of coffee and sits down in that same chair again in the middle of the floor?”
“Yeah.”
“Hasn’t said a word in about twenty minutes now.”
“I know.”
“She says, ‘We found a little parrot was hit by a car once. We nursed it, we got it well again and kept it in the bathroom so it’d be warm. But it drowned in the commode.’ ”
Roland, shaking his head, said, “Je-sus, I know her and about a hunnert just like her.” He opened his eyes and put on a blank expression, turning his head to look around slowly and drawled in a high voice, ‘Yeah, I was down to Mon-roe Station, les see, ’bout five years ago for a catfish supper.’ Fucking place’s a mile and a half down the road. Man, I had to get out of there ‘fore I got covered over with moss.”
“It ain’t the Gold Coast,” Maguire said, “nor afford you the opportunities, does it?”
“Make thirty-five hundred a year in the swamp you’re big stuff. Over here you turn that up every week or so and sleep in on Saturday.”
“I guess if you know what you’re doing,” Maguire said.
“And got hair on your balls,” Roland said. “Right now I’m lining up a deal-when it comes off I’m gonna be set for life as long as I live.”
“What is it, land?”
“Land, you could say that,” Roland said. “Land, a house, a trust fund.” Roland looked over his shoulder, studying the diners at the tables.
Maguire had a close look at the man’s creased rawhide face, and it made him feel tired to imagine trying to hit that face and hurt it. Like kicking an alligator. The way to do it, have a friend waiting outside in the car. Start bad-mouthing Roland till he says come on, step outside. Go out in the parking lot and square off, get Roland turned the right way and then the friend guns the car and drives it over Roland, hard.
He said, “You meeting somebody?”
“Yeah, some people I’m suppose to see,” Roland said. “There’s this dink giving me a bad time. But if they don’t come real quick, I’m going.”
It was getting too close. “I’m going myself,” Maguire said. “ ‘Less I can buy you a drink.” He was becoming anxious to get out of here.
“Well, one more,” Roland said, and squared around to the bar. Looking at the portholes, the illuminated green water, he started to grin. “You know what’d be good? Pop one of them windows. See all that swimming pool water come pouring in here”-grinning, enjoying the idea-“People jumping up, trying to get out, shit, the water pouring out all over their dinner.”
“Yeah, that’d be good,” Maguire said. “Get everybody’s dinner all wet.”
WHEN THE PHONE RANG, Vivian looked at Ed Grossi. Ed had her private number. Jimmy Cap had her number. Her mother in Homestead had it. Ed’s lawyer-
Grossi heard her say on the phone, after she had answered in a hesitant voice and spoke to whoever it was for a moment, “What?… What’re you talking about? I never gave it to you… I did not.”
Tough lady. Very soft and good to him but a tough lady to keep between him and other people. Twelve years she had worked for him: in the beginning somebody to go to bed with, good-looking young Cuban broad; but too intelligent to remain only a piece of ass. More intelligent, basically, than himself or anyone in the organization; but a little weak in self-confidence because she had been a migrant farmworker and was sometimes intimidated by people with loud voices. Something she had to learn: Loudness did not mean strength or power. Though she could be loud herself sometimes and it seemed to work.
He liked to come here and be alone with Vivian for a few days at a time. Do some thinking. Wear flowered shirts and Bermuda shorts. Try investment ideas on her. Tell her things about his past life he had never told anyone, certainly not his wife, Clara. Go to bed with Vivian. Eat fried bananas. Smoke dope with her, which he never did anywhere else but here. Twelve years only. And yet thinking of his life before Vivian seemed a long time ago, or like looking back at another person named Ed Grossi.
She brought the phone to him, where he sat, in his favorite deep chair, his thin bare legs extending to the matching ottoman.
“It’s Roland.”
Seeing her clouded expression, then hearing Roland’s sunny voice: “Ed, hey, I hope I ain’t taking you away from anything, partner, but I got a little problem come up.”
Presenting a problem, but making it sound like it was nothing. Then becoming more serious, with a sound almost of pain, goddarn, not knowing how to handle it and wanting Ed to help him out if he wasn’t too busy and could get away for awhile.
Vivian waited, not sitting down, trying to read Ed’s expression, which told her nothing, and learn something from his brief words, questions. Something about Karen DiCilia. She took the phone from him when finally he said, “All right, I’ll be there,” and hung up.
“Be where?” Vivian said.
“Boca. DiCilia’s apartment.”
“He told me I gave him this number,” Vivian said. “I didn’t. I know I didn’t give it to him. What’s he doing there?”
“He says Karen was drunk, talking loud to some reporter, starting to make a scene. So he took her to the apartment.”
“Why? Wait a minute.” Vivian put the phone on the floor as she sat down on the edge of the ottoman. “Where was this, in Boca?”
“He says in a restaurant. Roland followed her-it looked like she was meeting someone, this woman he finds out is a newspaper reporter or a writer, something like that.”
“Yes?”
“But he thinks Karen was already drunk before she got there.”
“She drinks much?”
“I don’t know, maybe.”
“Call her at home,” Vivian said.
“What do you mean, call her? She’s at the apartment.”
“How do you know for sure?”
“I heard her voice. Roland said, ‘Just a minute. I heard her say something.’ Then Roland said she was sick and went in the bathroom.”
Vivian said, “What restaurant was it?”
“He didn’t say.”
“You’re getting old.”
Grossi looked at her without saying anything.
“I’m sorry,” Vivian said. “Let’s call him back and find out the restaurant.”
“Why?”
“Call and see if her car’s there. If he says he drove her to the apartment. Why there? Why not home?”
“He says the woman reporter would probably go there. He says Karen is going to tell her everything if I don’t speak to her first, Vivian. Christ, the bullshit things we get into.”
“Let’s call him back,” Vivian said.
“It’s an unlisted number. I don’t know what it is.” Ed Grossi pulled himself out of the chair and went into the bedroom.
“I can go to the office and get it,” Vivian called after him. “Forty minutes.”
After a moment Grossi appeared in the bedroom door without his Bermudas now, in striped undershorts. “You can drive me.”
“Call her home,” Vivian said. “See if she went to Boca.”
Grossi was patient with Vivian because he understood her. “I heard her voice on the phone. She’s at the apartment, we’re going to the apartment. Okay?”
“I didn’t give him this number,” Vivian said. “I know goddamn well I never gave it to him.”
If Ed or Vivian called back, Roland would say, “Just a minute,” and put his hand over the phone. Then he’d say, “Shit, now she’s passed out.”
Or he’d turn his tape recorder on again and give them one of the snatches of Karen’s voice he’d pulled off of yesterday’s cassette and rerecorded, Karen talking to the newspaper lady who’d called.
Roland punched the recorder to hear it again.
“Why do you keep asking me that if you know what I’m going to say? Think of something else.”
Roland would say, first, “Mrs. DiCilia, will you talk to Mr. Grossi, please?”
Then punch the recorder and hold the phone toward it.