At the Eclipse Bar, Detective Sergeant Joe Mulvane sipped ale from a frosted mug and with his free hand pulled his damp blue collar away from his moist pink neck, the better to expose the mottled skin to the chill breath of the air conditioner. He swallowed, let forth an exaggerated ahh of satisfaction, then went on with his story.
"So this pretty little Cuban boy comes in," he said. "A strange bird, lemme tell ya. Walks like Daryl Hannah, talks like Jose Jimenez with some night school and a lisp. He's all excited, he's twitching. He's got this cake, apricot, he's holding it like a fucking hand grenade. It's poisoned, he's sure of it. This on top of the paranoid broad who comes in the other day. I mean Arty, you been here longer than I have. Who are these people?"
Arty Magnus sipped his wine, then dug his elbows deeper into the thickly upholstered bar rail, an armrest that conduced to drinking and reflection, mostly drinking. One of the very few things he liked about being a newspaperman was the chance it gave him to shoot the shit with cops. Information. Everybody needed it, and in more discreet places there was never enough to go around; in Key West, which was about as discreet as a public bathhouse, there was generally too much. Information was cheap as local mangoes and about as firm.
"The Silvers?" said the editor. "Some of our leading citizens. He's one of the very few people down here who isn't jerking off when he calls himself an artist. She's one of the very few people still trying to run a quality business on Duval Street instead of doing T-shirts and schlock. Maybe they're strange like artsy-strange. But lunatics? No. The Cuban lad, him I don't know."
"I do," said the fellow who'd come in with Arty Magnus and was sitting on the other side of him. His name was Joey Goldman, he was slightly built with dark blue eyes and wavy black hair, and he had the earpiece of his sunglasses hanging over the pocket of his shirt. The other two men looked at him like they hadn't expected him to contribute, hadn't expected him to know much.
"Yeah," Joey went on. "He used to work for us. Before he went full-time for the Silvers. Worked in our Cleaning Division."
He said this rather grandly, in the manner of the newly successful. Joey Goldman was an oddity in Key West, a place where many people of more privileged background came to fail, to give up, to go pleasantly down the tubes. He'd come from dubious roots, some thought criminal roots, and with a little luck and more savvy than anyone thought he had, he'd become a businessman of substance, a wheeler-dealer in real estate. In this his questionable past had served him well: It was axiomatic that it was easier to rob a place if you had a guy inside. Why shouldn't this logic extend to legitimate business? Who knew before the housekeeper when an owner was thinking of making a move, selling out or trading up? Thus the Cleaning Division was what might be thought of as the clandestine intelligence arm of Paradise Properties, Joey Delgatto Goldman, boss.
"So what's his story?" asked Joe Mulvane. "The Cuban kid."
Joey sipped his Campari, dabbed his lips. "We got like sixteen, eighteen people cleaning for us," he said. "Most of 'em I couldn't tell ya nothin'. But Reuben I can, I'll tell ya why I remember: The first day he came to us he was black and blue. Beat up. Big bruise on his neck, one eye not open all the way. So shy he could hardly talk. Leanin' away like a terrorized cat. Sandra's askin' 'im the usual questions. Where d'ya live? He lives with his parents. How old are ya? He's twenty-three, twenty-four, somethin' like that.
'Then I cut in, I couldn't help it. 'Hey Reuben,' I say, 'who beatcha up?" With this, he shoots me a look that really gets my attention, a look I recognize. It's a look-how can I describe it? — it's not hostile, it's not even strong, but it's defiant, it tells you he doesn't care who you are, what he needs from you, you're out of bounds. And right away I know that whoever beat him up is in his family. I just know it. Look, he's obviously gay. Lotta old-style Cubans, a maricon, they get ugly, it's like a blot onna family honor. I understand something about families, trust me on that. The closer they are, the harder it is to be different. So I feel for the kid. I look at Sandra. Sandra looks at me. The kid is hired and he works out great. Reliable. Honest. Loyal."
"Loyal till he quits," put in Mulvane.
"I got no problem with that," said Joey. "I mean, all we did, we gave 'im a job. The Silvers, they practically became his family, ya know, took over from the asshole family and became the good family. We all know how that works. He did the right thing."
There was a pause for drinking and reflecting, mostly drinking. The sounds of shaken ice and barroom blather came forward as the old industrial air conditioner shuddered, coughed, then shut down for a rest. Mulvane finished his ale with an appreciation that bordered on reverence and pushed his mug forward for another.
"But wait a second," Arty Magnus said. "Can we cut to the chase scene here? The cake-you said the Cuban lad was all excited about a cake. Was it poisoned?"
"Sent a slice down to the lab," the detective said, but his eyes were searching for the bartender and he wasn't going any farther till his warm and empty glass was replaced with an iced and filled one.
When it was, he licked the foam then casually announced, "Yeah, it was fulla poison. Nasty shit too. Sugar. Butter. Cholesterol, enough to make your heart slam shut. A regular time bomb. I took it home, ate it with the wife and lads."
"Painting again?" said Claire Steiger. "Augie, I think that's terrific. Only-"
"Only what, Claire?" Augie said.
She shifted in her poolside chair. It was early evening. She and Kip had arrived in Key West barely an hour before. They'd checked into the Flagler House, showered and changed, and now were straining the muscles of their faces to look congenial, to make it seem like this ferocious guarding of their interests was a social call, almost a pilgrimage. A fading light shimmered in the gummy air above the pool. Overhead, the palm fronds hung dark and limp, they sifted the wan gleam of a hazy dusk.
"Only maybe it would be better," the agent said, "if people didn't find that out just yet."
Nina, sitting on the love seat with her husband, pursed her lips. She was over feeling qualms about her gut mistrust of almost anything her former mentor said. "Why, Claire?" she asked. "Why does it matter?"
The dealer's brown eyes were soft, her full lips managed a smile, but she could not quite hold back her hand from reaching for another bit of brie, of which she'd told herself she'd have no more. She slipped the fat cheese into her mouth and shot a quick glance at her husband. He'd arched an eyebrow perhaps a quarter-inch then dived into his gin. Certain things you could count on in life: Round Jewish women reached for food at moments of exasperation, angular WASP men grabbed at cocktails. The couple swallowed their respective medicines and then the wife went on. "Augie, Nina-there's a big auction at Sotheby's ten days from now."
"The Solstice Show," said Nina.
"Yes. And a lot of Augie's works are being offered."
Augie said nothing. He'd had paintings auctioned before, and he didn't see that it had much to do with him. What did it matter if old forgotten canvases from the gallery's holdings and from collections in New York were shuffled around in exchange for cash? He was on to other things, it was the new work that he cared about.
Nina was not quite so placid. "The auction's in ten days, Claire, and we only find out now?"
The agent groped for some high ground. "I tried calling weeks ago," she said. "You never got back."
Augie didn't have the stomach for a squabble. "Really," he said, "what's the difference?"
Kip Cunningham, who would not accept the notion that mere bankruptcy cast the slightest doubt on his expertise in business, could not help chiming in. "It's just, you know, better not to advertise a fresh supply-"
Augie shushed him with a small wave of his hand. "I totally understand," he said. "And frankly, it's all the same to me if people find out today or next month or never. I'm painting to paint, not to get talked about."
"But what if people ask?" Kip blurted.
Augie sipped his Guinness, let a bit slide frothily past his gullet. His body was working again, his pipes were flowing, his mouth was tasting, and there was a sacred delight in this that overwhelmed all petty and non-visceral concerns. "If they ask," he blithely said, "I'll tell them."
Kip and Claire, still allies in debt, if little else, zoomed in quickly on each other's eyes.
"It might be better-" the agent began.
Nina cut her off. It is a weighty thing to know another person's moves so well that a single phrase can bring on rage, can create the bitter certainty that one is being manipulated, bullied, used. For Nina the awareness was especially galling because she could still remember, though the recollection baffled her, when she had wanted to be Claire Steiger: tough, assured, no one's fool, a creature of the city. Amazing, Nina thought, the number of false starts and wrong desires that could be crammed into something as short as a lifetime. "Surely you're not going to suggest he lie?" she said.
"No, of course not," the agent waffled. "But for example-"
"Claire," said Augie Silver, "I'm much too superstitious not to tell the truth. The little talent I have, I'm not going to jinx it by denying it. Look, you don't want people to know I'm working, just keep people away from me. You can do that, can't you?"
"The press? Nobody can do that, Augie," said Claire Steiger. "You know that."
The painter shrugged and sipped his stout. He looked up at the sky, pulled in a chestful of jasmine-scented air, felt his body in the love seat, and savored the nearness of his wife's hip next to his. Claire Steiger, whose skill it was to make people want things, understood that Augie no longer wanted anything she could do for him or sell him, and this was very frustrating. You could not manipulate someone who truly didn't care. You could only go around him, or over him, or find some way to remove him from the loop. The agent stole a quick glance at her husband and saw a flat dead desperation in his eyes that she prayed to God was not reflected in her own.