The Five Year Plan (1998)

'Not even out yet and you're talkin' like a wiseguy,' observed Tamargo. 'Your mission, should you decide to accept it, Slicker, is to stay the fuck out of trouble and this place. Got that?'

'Is that your rehabilitation speech?'

'Yeah.'

'Your lawyer's here,' said the guard who had asked him if he was a communist. "Magine that. Wants to give you a ride back into the city. Must be your witty conversation, Slicker.'

'You've noticed it too, huh?'

The guard waved him toward a door.

'See ya, Commie.'

Dave shrugged. Now that he had thought about it some more, communism just seemed like a different kind of theft, that was all. And what was happening to the whole corrections system, to people like Benford Halls, made him realize that the government didn't really give a shit about releasing human beings from prisons. All it cared about was the next election. He remembered a scene in his favorite movie, The Third Man. Orson Welles's famous cuckoo clock speech. The one where Harry Lime meets his old friend Holly Martins on the Ferris wheel. Dave had seen the movie so many times he could remember the speech word for word.

'These days, old man, nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don't, so why should we? They talk of the people and the proletariat and I talk of the mugs. It's the same thing. They have their five year plans and so have I.'

He took a last look around and nodded.

'Come on,' urged Tamargo. 'I want to get out of here too, y'know? I'm going off duty now. I got some plans.'

'So have I,' said Dave. 'So have I.'

Chapter THREE

'So what's the plan?'

'The plan?'

'Your schedule for the first day of the rest of your life?'

Dave was sitting in Jimmy Figaro's seven-series BMW appreciating all the leather and woodwork and thinking that it looked and felt like a small Rolls-Royce. Not that he had ever been in a Rolls. But this was what he imagined when he thought of one. Adjusting his seat electronically, he glanced through the tinted window as they drove away from Homestead onto Highway 1. There wasn't much to look at. Just broad fertile fields where, for a few dollars, you could 'pick your own' crop of whatever was growing out there -- peas, tomatoes, corn, strawberries, they had all kinds of shit. Only Dave had a different kind of crop in mind.

'I dunno, Jimmy. I mean, you're driving the car. And what a car it is.'

'Like it?'

'You got room service on this?' said Dave, inspecting the phone in the armrest. 'And I've never seen a car with a TV in front.'

'Trip computer. Only picks up TV when the engine is off.'

'What about the Feds? Does it pick them up too?'

Figaro grinned.

'You've been reading the New Yorker.'

'I read all kinds of shit these days.'

'So I hear. As a matter of fact I sweep the car every morning. And I don't mean the fucking rugs. I got this little handheld bug detector in the glovebox there.' Then he jerked his head back on his shoulders and allowed a big smirk to climb up onto his face. 'But just in case they decide to get on my tail with one of those directional mikes, we have double glazing on the side and rear windows of the automobile.'

'Double glazing, on a car? You're joking.'

'A joke is not an option on a BMW. Can you hear any traffic noise?'

'Now you come to mention it, no I can't.'

'No more can anyone hear what you're saying. Not that you're saying much. As usual.'

'It's what's kept me alive until now.' Dave shrugged, and then flipped open the glovebox. The bug detector was a black box about the size of a cigarette packet, with a short aerial. 'Neat. You're pretty serious about this surveillance shit, aren't you?'

'With my client list, I have to be.'

'House counsel to Naked Tony Nudelli. Yeah, you've sure come a long way since you defended the likes of me, Jimmy. What puzzles me is why you came all the way out here to fetch me back into the city. I could have got the bus.'

'Tony asked me to make sure you were all right. And house counsel's putting it a little strongly, Dave. That fucking article made me sound like Bobby Duvall. However, unlike the name of that character he played in The Godfather--'

'Tom Hagen.'

'Yeah, Hagen. Unlike him I have more than one client. You, for instance. Should you ever need my advice on anything--'

'Well, thanks Jimmy, I appreciate that.'

'OK, if you have no particular plans for the day, then here's what we'll do. Like I say, Tony wanted me to make sure you were OK. We'll drop by the office where I'll show you a balance sheet I've prepared. What I've done with your money, that kind of thing. Then, if you'll allow me to, I'll make a few suggestions as to what you can do with it. After that we can maybe take an early lunch. Only I have to be in court at 2.30.'

'Sounds fine, Jimmy. I've got nothing but appetite.'

'You're hungry? For what? Just tell me. I know this little Haitian place on Second Avenue. We could stop there for some breakfast if you wanted.'

'I've had breakfast, thanks. And it isn't food I'm hungry for, Jimmy. Sounds a little cheesy, but it's life I'm hungry for. Y'know? It's life.'

They drove along North Bay Shore Drive, round the side of the modern building where Figaro & August had its suite of offices, and into the underground parking lot. Figaro led the way toward the elevator.

'So,' he said, 'yesterday morning, our office receptionist takes a delivery addressed to me while I'm stuck in a client meeting.' Figaro started to chuckle as they rode the car upstairs. 'This is apropos of what we were just talking about? She and my secretary unwrap the item and nearly pass out with fright when they see what it is. Because people in jail aren't the only ones who read the New Yorker. Anyway, to them, the delivery item looks like a concrete topcoat. And the delivery docket says it's from someone called Salvatore Galeria. So they think this is a Mafia message along the lines of Luca Brazzi sleeps with the fishes, etceteras etceteras. Only it's not a Mafia message at all. It's this piece of sculpture I bought in a gallery on South Beach last week. Salvatore Galeria, on Lincoln Avenue. Cost me $10,000. I bought it as a kind of conversation piece. Something I thought the types on my client list might appreciate. To keep wise guys like you amused while I was taking a leak.'

'That's some black sense of humor you have there, Jimmy.'

'Smithy -- she's our receptionist -- we had to send her home in a cab, she was so upset by the sight of what she perceived to be a threat upon my life. Kind of touching when you think about it. I mean, it's like she really gives a shit what happens to me.'

'When you put it like that, it is kind of hard to believe.'

The two men stepped out of the elevator and went along the quiet corridor into the suite. Figaro's office occupied a corner of the building with a wrap-around window affording a panoramic view of Brickell Bridge and the bookshelf shapes of the Downtown skyline. As an apartment it would have seemed generous; but as an office for one man it was awesome. Dave's eyes took in the lime-oak panelling, the cream leather sofas, the Humvee-sized desk, the crummy art and the concrete overcoat, and he found himself admiring everything except maybe the man's sense of humor and taste in paintings. After the confines of his cell in Homestead, Figaro's office made him feel almost agoraphobic. He glanced down at his feet. He was standing on a parquet floor at the corner of an enormous sand-colored rug. In the parquet was a brass plate inscribed with some sentiment that Dave did not bother to bend down and read.

'What's this? First base? Jesus, Jimmy, you could play ball in here.'

'Of course,' remarked the lawyer. 'You haven't been in these offices, have you?'

'Business must be good.'

'When you're a lawyer, Dave, business is always good.'