Steve the naked landlord was on his second beer and had just lit a fresh cigarette from a butt still smoldering in the ashtray. He watched Joey and Sandra approach along the white gravel walkway, Tony and Bruno trudging along behind them. Then he turned his paperback facedown on the damp tiles. "Joey," he said, motioning him over, "can I talk to you a sec?"
Joey crouched down on the pool's cool apron.
"Joey," Steve said. "All these houseguests, these parties. Is this gonna be like a regular thing?"
Joey waited the usual beat, but Steve's smile did not appear. Naked, working on his morning buzz, he was still the landlord. "I wouldn't call 'em parties," Joey said softly.
"No?" said Steve. He lifted an eyebrow toward their bungalow, and in that instant the house appeared not just small but miniature, a scale model of a place where people could maybe make a life. "Joey, every time I turn around, you got more people crammed in there."
"We do?"
Steve just dragged on his cigarette and blew smoke out his nose. "Come on, Joey, let's be fair."
"Fair," said Joey. "O.K." He straightened up, then sucked in a deep breath scented with jasmine and chlorine. He reached for Sandra, touched her arm to stop the electricity from oozing out his fingertips, and walked with her between the pool and the hot tub, Tony and Bruno following behind. Palm fronds scratched lightly overhead, the high sun slashed through in punishing slices. Joey's stomach didn't feel right, it felt like stale but icy air was swirling around inside it.
The sliding door to their bungalow was open wide, and through it came a sort of cool dim humming threat, a threat like that of a too quiet jungle. Joey swept off his sunglasses as he crossed the threshold. There were more people than he expected, more faces than he could process at once.
Charlie Ponte's Miami thugs and divers were glutting up the living room. Thick thighs were thrown over the arms of chairs, big white shirts with dark stains in the armpits were arrayed next to wet suits against the walls. There was a stink of clashing after-shaves and dry-cleaning fluid being sweated out of fabric too long in contact with damp skin. The thugs regarded Joey with an indifference more wilting than active menace.
In the Florida room, the louvered windows were still cranked shut, and a furtive, illicit twilight was being enforced against the day. Charlie Ponte, his silver jacket splotched with moisture, his hair restored to its usual neatness, was perched in the wicker seat where Sandra had been tied. Bert the Shirt d'Ambrosia, dressed for the occasion in nubbly black linen, a burgundy monogram on his breast pocket, rested on the settee, his chihuahua serene yet vigilant in his lap.
Next to him sat Gino Delgatto, nervously crossing and uncrossing his legs. Joey's half brother did not look healthy. His skin was yellowish and he hadn't dropped the weight he'd put on while holed up at the Flagler House. His eyes were gradually disappearing under pads of excess skin, his fatty chin had lost the squareness that brought him to the brink of being handsome.
You had to look beneath the fat to see how he resembled his and Joey's father.
Vincente Delgatto was sitting with a perfect stillness that was the emblem of his dignity and his authority. He was lean, dry, with a long crescent face and a crinkled stringy neck that no longer filled his stiff collar. He wasn't dressed for Florida. He wore a gray pinstripe suit and a red silk tie with a massive double Windsor knot. He had a broad straight nose that came down directly from his forehead, and his teeth were long and veined with brown, stained by half a century of cigars, espresso, and red wine.
Joey stared at him through the strange striped dimness cast by the louvered windows. His legs felt disconnected from him, he wondered if his brain had come unmoored from getting hit too many times then being cast out in the throbbing sun. He didn't quite recognize his own voice. "Pop?"
Bert the Shirt, a man who had been dead, seemed to recognize the moment after which a person could not be pulled back from oblivion, helplessness, or paralyzing confusion. "I called him, Joey," he blurted. "Last night."
"The fucking old lady," Charlie Ponte grumbled. "He's always in my face down heah, always stickin' his nose in."
"What could I tell ya?" Bert stroked his dog and addressed this to the room at large. "I tried to do the right thing."
"Pop," said Joey.
The old man gave the smallest nod, the smallest lift to his thick brows, whose tangled black and silver strands gave a look of stark realism to his deep but filmy eyes.
"Awright, awright. I ain't got all day," said Charlie Ponte. "I'm givin' the kid a chance t'explain things. So go 'head, let 'im explain."
Joey was still standing numbly in the archway. He looked down and saw that Sandra, silent, alert, practical Sandra, had slid a kitchen chair in next to him. He sat.
But Charlie Ponte, having ordered Joey to speak, now decided he wasn't quite ready to give up the floor. He ignored Joey, ignored Gino, ignored Bert, and spoke only to the patriarch. "But Vincent, remember, you and me, we got an agreement. We can sit here and make nice, but if I don't get satisfaction from this meeting-"
Ponte stopped talking because it was one of those statements that could not be finished. But then the Miami Boss made the mistake of thinking back over the whole story of the heisted emeralds, the irritating trips down the Keys, the waiting, the disappointments, the manpower wasted, the putrid and futile evening with the garbage, and he launched into a slow burn.
"Because I'm tellin' you, Vincent, the aggravation I been getting, the bullshit I been putting up with, and for what? From who? From this nobody, this jerk, this little faggot with a pink shirt on, this fucking clown-"
"Cholly, he's my son."
The short and simple words, the way the old man said them, stopped Charlie Ponte cold. Acknowledging the bastard, proclaiming the tie. This changed things. Kinship. It was in the blood, sure, but that was only half of it. It also hinged on what people said to each other, or didn't say, what they were proud of and what they kept buried. All of a sudden Ponte was less sure he knew who he was dealing with.
"The agreement," Delgatto senior went on, in a voice that was low but carried, that seemed to be everywhere at once, like a rumble underground, "it stands. Ya don't get satisfaction, ya do what ya gotta do. No retaliation. I shouldn't've agreed, but I did. I didn't know. My son Gino, he fucked up bad. Didn't ya, Gino?"
Gino nodded miserably. His fat chin was down on his chest, and his shirt was stretching open between the buttons.
"Only thing I ask," the patriarch concluded, "is ya give Joey a fair shot at workin' things out."
Ponte pursed his lips and nodded Joey swallowed, looked at his father. The old man met his gaze and Joey took away from the exchange a hit of that undaunted readiness, the anyplace, anytime preparedness he'd felt that first time alone in a boat, alone on the ocean, alone in the night. His head cleared, the situation was clean as a razor. Either he would save himself or he would not.
"O.K.," he began. "O.K."
But immediately he stopped. He swiveled on the plastic seat of his kitchen chair and looked back over is shoulder. "Sandra. Where's Sandra? I want you here, baby."
In the Florida room there was a shuffling of feet, a disapproving rearrangement of limbs. You didn't invite broads to a sit-down. But it was Joey's meeting now, it made his hair itch to realize he could do what he wanted. Bruno carried a chair for Sandra. She made no sound as she sat. Her hands were motionless in her lap and her posture was breathtaking.
"Right," said Joey. "O.K. Yeah… Now, Mr. Ponte, your emeralds are gone, you saw that for yourself. They're inna vault by now, there's nothing to be done." It was a dicey opening, it already cast the Miami Boss in the role of the guy who'd lost. Ponte looked down between his knees and tugged at a thumbnail. "So let's like go over how it got to that.
"The two guys that ain't around no more," Joey went on, "Vinnie Fish and Frankie Bread-they grabbed the stones from Coconut Grove, and my brother Gino was in with them. Weren't ya, Gino?"
Gino looked down and nodded, his fat chin coming up like a high collar as he did so.
"So the deal was this," Joey said. "Vinnie and Frankie, they stashed the stones on a junky old fishing boat, then they took the boat out and sank it. The idea, ya know, was to let some time pass, let things cool off some, then the three of them would salvage the wreck and walk away with the money. Ain't that right, Gino?"
The older brother looked at Joey from under the fat pads of his eyebrows. Gino didn't mind lying to Ponte, not at all, but he wanted to be in control of the story. His bastard kid brother was now asking him to drive blind, let go, bend over and leave it all to him. The idea rankled almost as much as it terrified. But Gino had no plan of his own and it seemed he had finally realized he had nothing more to lose. He nodded.
Vincente Delgatto moved forward an inch in his chair and folded his lean and papery hands.
"So O.K.," Joey resumed. "Frankie and Vinnie disappear. For Gino, this is good news, bad news. He's got nobody to split the money with. That's good. He's got no one to help him salvage the boat. That's bad. So the night your boys grabbed me and Bert and took us to the gahbidge-Gino set that up so he could run up the Keys to scope things out. Bert knows that too. Don'tcha, Bert?"
The Shirt petted his chihuahua, scratched it behind the ears. "He used us. As decoys. No hard feelings, Gino, but that wasn't right. Someone coulda gotten hurt. Sandra here, she coulda been with us."
Joey's fiancee gave a small nod of gratitude for Bert's concern. The nod stretched but did not violate her crisp outline.
Then a low rumble seemed to ripple the striped dimness of the Florida room. It was Joey and Gino's father starting to speak. The voice was very sad. "To your own brother you do this, Gino?"
"Pop, hey, it's history," said Joey. "Besides, Gino and me, we forgive each other, don't we, Gino? Life, ya can't get through it without ya forgive people, ya drown in bullshit otherwise. I mean, forgiveness, that's really what this meeting is about."
"Bullshit," put in Charlie Ponte. "This fucking meeting is about what happened to my fucking emeralds."
"Right, Mr. Ponte. You're right. But forgiveness, the stones, it all comes together. 'Cause here's what happens. Gino realizes there's no way he can salvage the wreck alone. So he goes to a pro-that's Clem Sanders, the salvage guy. He reaches him through me, 'cause, hey, this is my town now, I know who to go to. This much, Mr. Ponte, I'm involved"-he lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender-"and this is why, me too, I'm asking your forgiveness.
"But this Sanders, he's a businessman, he's legit, he's got a certain way he does things. An expedition, he sells shares. He keeps a third, he keeps the right to sell a third, the third third he sells to the guy who proposes the search. So now Gino is back to being a one-third partner. You follow?"
Charlie Ponte propped his elbows on his knees and rested his chin on his crisscrossed fingers. "So you're telling me that Gino owns a one-third share a my fucking emeralds?"
"This is exactly what I'm telling you, Mr. Ponte. It's in the public papers, you can check for-"
"Now wait a-" Gino interrupted.
His father cut him off in turn. "You done enough, Gino. Your brother's talkin' now."
Joey hesitated. He glanced at Bert, pulled in a chestful of air, and continued. "Now here's where the forgiveness comes in. The shares that Gino bought, they cost ten thousand dollars. Bert fronted the cash for 'em, didn't ya, Bert?"
The old mobster nodded, his chihuahua twitched.
"So Gino is gonna pay that money, outta pocket, that's gonna be, like, his cost for forgiveness, his penalty for fucking with you."
For an instant Gino froze like a skunk in headlights. Then he pitched thickly forward on the settee. "Joey, hey-"
His father raised a single gnarled finger. "Zippuh your fucking mouth shut, Gino. You'll pay the money."
"And of course," Joey resumed, "his third of the emeralds, that goes right to you."
He fell silent, as though his pitch was over. Outside, the pool pump switched on and hummed, the palm fronds rustled dryly. Don Giovanni stood up and did an impatient pirouette in his master's lap. Sandra smoothed her cream-colored skirt across her thighs. Joey glanced at her pink neck and wondered how many years in Florida it would take for her to get a tan.
Charlie Ponte's mouth was moving as he worked out some arithmetic, but the numbers didn't solve his problem. When he finally spoke, it was not to Joey but to Vincente Delgatto, and his tone was oddly calm. It was the tone of a general who'd endured the charade of diplomacy and could now move joyously into war.
"Vincent," he said, "outta respect for you I'm sittin' heah quiet, I'm listening, I'm giving these boysa yours every chance. Joey heah, what he says, a lot of it makes sense. I give 'im credit. But Vincent, his bottom line, it fucking stinks. I lost tree million dollars in emeralds. He's telling me he can get me back one million, and he's makin' it sound like a big fucking favor. Come on, Vincent, you know it as well as I do-the numbers don't add up. Whaddya want from me? I got no choice."
Vincente Delgatto sat still as a parked truck. But there was an admission in his posture.
Even Bert the Shirt could not deny the numbers. "Don't come out right," he muttered, like he was checking over a grocery receipt.
Sandra, who never fidgeted, started fretting with her fingertips.
"Wait a second, Mr. Ponte," Joey said. "Who said anything about one million dollars? I'm talking four million. This is what I was tryin' to tell ya all morning. Since last night I been tryin' to tell ya this."
Everybody sat. Everybody waited. There was a lull in the breeze and the air smelled like scorched sand.
"Mr. Ponte, lemme ask you something. The Colombians-you ever tell 'em about the missing stones?"
The Miami Boss could not help snorting. "Right," he said. "And look like a horse's ass? Like I can't control my own people?"
Joey raised a pacifying palm. "Who's gotta know it was your own people that heisted 'em? You never got 'em. End of story."
Ponte pursed his lips and considered.
"Now tell me if I'm wrong," Joey continued, "but these emeralds, they were, like, a goodwill gesture, like to make it up to you for some other business they screwed up, right?"
Ponte gave a grudging nod.
"Well, they screwed up again. I mean, hey, what kinda goodwill gesture is it if you never got the stones? The way I see it, they still owe you."
The Miami Boss threw a sideways look at Vincente Delgatto. The patriarch sat still, his expression blank as the ground.
"They're gonna believe me," Ponte said, "I tell 'em the stones never got to me?"
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."
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