Black Sal Lombardi sat under the thatched sun shelter on a wooden beach chair, sipping coco-loco from a carved-out coconut. He was watching pretty American girls play soccer with their slightly older American boy friends; they all (Sal, too) wore bathing suits and were soaking up the afternoon sun. He was between Mexican whores right now, having gotten bored with the last girl the hotel man had provided. Sal had been enjoying his privacy these last several days; but watching these golden-tanned American girls bounce and jiggle got him thinking about requesting a new puta for this evening.
Playa Caleta was the "morning" beach and most of the tourists headed for Playa Hornos, the "afternoon" beach, after one o'clock. Nobody Sal asked seemed to know why this was-though a few had mentioned tide and shade patterns-but the tradition was long-standing. Sal liked to watch the girls, but he didn't like a crowded beach; so he waited till the afternoon had thinned of tourists before making use of palm-fringed Caleta beach, which his hotel fronted. When he wanted to swim or sun some morning, he used the private pool of his casita.
Sal had taken to the sun, though he seldom swam. His olive complexion had gradually baked to a near black, making him truly worthy of the nickname "Black Sal" at last. He had been here, after all, over two years. Two years of vacation or retirement or however you cared to view it.
He knew only that he was happy. His pre-ulcerous condition had gone away; he hadn't had a glass of milk in eighteen months. He weighed ten pounds less and was as physically fit as a teenage boy. At least three times a week, he played the golf course at Playa Encantada-usually with vacationing American businessmen, some of them with ties to his own business-and went fishing several times a month, hiring out a boat and tackle and captain through the hotel. He had sent home several photos of himself with prized catches: sailfish and marlin longer than an elephant's dick. He'd been fresh-water fishing in the coastal lagoons, by torch light; he'd gone duck-hunting and once even took a guided expedition into the mountainous interior, where he bagged a mountain lion.
The spectator sports weren't bad, either: Jai alai every night in the fronton building near Playa Caleta; bullfights every Sunday afternoon; boxing and wrestling. The nighttime entertainment was wild; from one nightclub you could view a spic kid climb down La Quebrada cliff to a platform and, torch in hand, dive forty feet into a breaker, then climb the opposite cliff to a flat rock one hundred thirty feet up and dive the fuck again, between a narrow sea ravine with jagged rocks on either side. Down below newspapers were set on fire so the kid could see what he was doing. This took balls or no brains or both, but whatever, it was a hell of thing to see.
Sal was glad he had a piece of this action. Acapulco had been just another scenic bay city in the boondocks until the highway was built between here and central Mexico back in '27. Horvitz and some of the other big boys from back home, when Repeal was around the corner, got in on the ground floor when resort hotels started going up along these beaches.
The resort town would only continue to grow. Sal knew, but there would come a time when it would be too crowded with tourists for his taste. By that time, though, he'd be back in the States, back in Cleveland, back in business. That fucking Ness was already out from under the protective wing of his patron. Mayor Burton; now that Burton was in the U.S. Senate, an acting mayor-Edward Blythin-was filling the slot till the next election. If the democrats won, and they probably would, that meant the end of Ness as safety director-and the beginning of Sal Lombardi finding his way home and back to the top.
Not that he was anxious. If his late cousin Angelo, God rest his soul, had thought that the life down here would make you any less a man, Sal had only to look at his wall of mounted fish and his scrapbook of hunting and fishing photos and for that matter slap his flat firm belly to know how very much a man he was. And people here, whether tourists or locals, knew Sal Lombardi was somebody important from the States. So he had respect, too. Which was important to him.
He would go back home, eventually. He even looked forward to it-but he didn't dwell on it. He was having too good a time drinking tropical drinks out of hollowed-out pineapples and watching sailboats against blue skies and divers cutting into clear water and pretty girls in skimpy bathing suits frolicking and beautiful sunsets painting the horizon.
He had learned something important here: Saludy pesetas, y tiempo para gastarlas — health and money, and the time to enjoy them. No accident that "tiempo" came third. Back in the U.S.A., Sal was like everybody else: a slave to watches, to clocks, marking his life in minutes and hours. These Mexicans knew enough to measure their lives in days or even years.
Time was something you let pass; you enjoyed. Something you disposed of, not let rule you. Sal was a better, happier man, now that he had absorbed this view of life. Look how Little Angelo ended up, because he was impatient; because he couldn't accept things like they were. Sal had no intention ending up that way. He was a new man. A man with a future. A man without an ulcer.
The soccer game between the good-looking young people had broken up. Sal padded out onto the white beach, his feet in sandals, a big towel rolled up under his arm. He threw the towel out and spread himself on it, belly-down; let the warmth of the sun blanket him. Bake him. Turn him blacker.
He thought about Ness, smiling into the towel as he contemplated that smug bastard being out of work soon. That fucker wasn't so much. Big-shot Ness never figured out who the Mayfield Road gang's inside man with the cops was…
Vice cop Moeller-who had tipped Lombardi and Scalise and certain key others, who had lied about getting a tip from that nigger Hollis about that Democratic Party raid which was such an embarrassing fuck-up-was even now the primary police "fixer" on the east side. Even now, Moeller was serving the independent colored policy operators and Councilman Raney and the other big nigs. Even now, Moeller remained a trusted Ness associate. What a laugh. What a great big goddamn laugh!
Sal chuckled to himself as he turned over on his back, but suddenly a cool shadow fell across him. Had the sun gone under a cloud? He opened his eyes.
The silhouette of a man hovering over him blotted out the sun. Sal sat up, and the man came into focus: a big loose-limbed colored man in a baggy brown suit and a misshapen charcoal fedora.
"What you laughin' about, chump?"
"Johnson?" Sal got on his feet, acting angry but in reality startled. "Jesus, Toussaint Johnson… what the hell are you doin' here?"
Johnson smiled; it was a tight smile, like a razor had cut a place in the black face for white to shine through. "You're bein' extradited, Sal," he said, pleasantly. "Vacation's over…"
Sal, feeling naked in his swimming trunks, gestured with open palms. "Take it easy, take it easy-there's no rush. Can't we work something out?"
"Nope."
Now Sal's anger was real. "Hey-I like it down here. I'm not ready to go back to Cleveland-not till your boss is out of office, anyway."
"Oh, you're only goin' back to Cleveland for trial. Sal. After that, you'll be headin' to prison-and then overseas."
"Overseas?"
The smile broadened. "Federal judge ordered your citizenship revoked, last week. Something my 'boss' has been workin' on for a long while. You're goin' back to Italy-after you get outa stir in five or ten years."
Suddenly Sal's stomach began to churn. To burn.
"Let's get you some clothes," Johnson said, and took Sal by the arm. "Can't get on a plane dressed like a jaybird."
Sal, almost sputtering, said, "You can be a very rich man, Detective Johnson. Name your price."
"Don't got one."
Sal laughed harshly, but it caught in his throat as he felt himself being dragged toward the hotel by the unrelenting Negro.
"You don't, huh?" Sal said. "How's one hundred grand strike you? That's a lot of money for a colored boy."
Johnson's big head was shaking side to side. "You ain't buyin' yourself outa this one, Sal. You doin' the time."
Salud y pesetas, y tiempo para gastarlas…
"Then," Johnson continued, "you takes a little trip back to spaghetti land."
Sal stood his ground, jerking Johnson to a stop, breaking his grasp. "Who the hell do you think you are, boy? Eliot fuckin' boy scout Ness? Get off your high horse, Toussaint! You're no goddamn saint-you were on Rufus Murphy's payroll for years!"
"Yeah I was," Johnson said, menacingly. "'Fore you had him killed."
Sal swallowed and looked into the black, hateful carved mask of a face, and said nothing. Sal had just learned his final Mexican lesson about time: It had run out for him, and caught up with him.
Toussaint Johnson latched onto the trembling man's arm and hauled Black Sal Lombardi, his skin burned damn near as dark as Johnson's own, off the beach and into custody.