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  Florida straits

  ( Key West Mystery - 1 )

  Laurence Shames

  Laurence Shames

  Florida straits

  Part I

  1

  People go to Key West for lots of different reasons. Joey Goldman went there to be a gangster.

  His best friend Sal Giordano tried to talk him out of it. "Fuck is down there for you?"

  They were sitting in a green vinyl booth in Perretti's luncheonette on Astoria Boulevard in Queens. It was January. Outside, torn newspapers were stuck in dirty ice at the bottom of dented wire garbage cans. People walked past holding their hats, their coat collars pulled up to their ears. Skinny dogs squatted on the pavement and steam came out from under them. Joey turned the question around. "Fuck is there for me up here?"

  "Up here?" Sal seemed dumbfounded by the remark and gestured toward the grimy window as if pointing out what was obviously paradise. "Up here? Up here is everything, Joey. Up here you got friends, you know the ropes. You need money, you know where to get it. You want sausage, calamari, braciole, you know where to find it, eh? Down there? Down there it's like a little pissant desert island."

  "Sounds good to me," Joey said, but Sal kept right on going.

  He rubbed a thick hand over his blue-black jowls, then counted on his fingers the things that would be lacking. "There's no unions. There's no casinos. There's nothin' to fence, 'cause the spicks already stole it all. Drugs? You don't wanna fuck with drugs, Joey. The Colombians'll whack your ass. So fuck is in Key West? Fucking palm trees. Fucking coconuts. Joey, listen, you feeling down, you want a vacation, take a vacation. I'll front ya the cash if ya need it. But don't move there. I'm telling you, it is not for you."

  "I'm not feeling down," Joey said. "I feel terrific. And I like palm trees." He took a sip of his espresso and his dark blue eyes went out of focus, like he was already picturing the beach, the green water, the curled shrimps with their heads buried in cocktail sauce. "I like to be warm, Sal. I hate the fucking cold. All winter, that coughing, blowing your nose, your feet all frozen. Fingers like you can't even hold the god-damn steering wheel-"

  "Joey," Sal cut in, "I don't like freezing my ass off any more than the next guy. But I'm not asking for the weather report. I'm asking what you're gonna do down there."

  "I'm gonna, like, take over."

  Joey was twenty-seven, something below average height, and had almost finished the eleventh grade. He'd had two jobs in his life, neither for very long, none since his mother died and he cut out any pretense of being a citizen. Once he sold shoes, but quit because he didn't care for the sour smell of feet and the crusty feel of second-day Ban-Lon socks. The other time he was a greeter-seater at a seafood joint in Sheepshead Bay, but quit when he realized it made as much sense to do absolutely nothing as to show fat families to their tables on Sunday afternoons.

  "Take over what, Joey? This is what I'm asking you."

  "I guess I won't know that till I get there, will I, Sal?"

  Sal picked up his little espresso spoon and frowned at it. He was four years older than Joey and had long ago started being a kind of, older brother to him, "mainly because Joey's own brother-half brother, really-didn't seem to want the job.

  It was a complicated situation. Joey's mother had been Jewish, but they lived in an Italian neighborhood. Everybody knew who Joey's father was, but only certain people were allowed to say so, because Vincente Delgatto was a powerful man with a proper Sicilian wife and a legitimate black-eyed heir. Joey's mother, a slender redhead, had been a beautician at the neighborhood funeral home and had met Joey's father during a period of local unrest, when he'd been something of a regular there. Theirs was said to have been an affair of unusual intensity-though people may have said that simply because of the unusual intensity of Thelma Goldman's gaze. She had turquoise eyes that were always stretched open under thin arched brows, and when she looked at someone, she seemed to be not just seeing that person but fixing him in some idealized, final form.

  This could be disconcerting, and some people thought Thelma Goldman was a little crazy. Sometimes, it was true, she did unkind things without meaning to. When Joey was ten, eleven, she made him wear a suit on Jewish holidays, which was confusing to Joey because he didn't feel the least bit Jewish, he felt Sicilian like his friends. Also, the suit always got him beat up. As far as Sal could remember, Jewish holidays were the only times Joey got into fights, and he always lost. That's when Sal started looking out for him. He felt sorry for the runty kid with the knees scraped out of his suit pants and snotty blood coming out of his nose.

  "You talk to your old man about this, Joey?"

  It was a question Sal hated to ask, because he knew it would make Joey mad. Not that Joey had much of a temper. He didn't. This was one of his worst professional shortcomings. Some guys had a great gift for getting mad; they'd get mad over anything and could instantly puff up into a terrifying display. Joey only got mad when he was mad, and there were only a few topics that got him going. His father was one of them. "Fuck for?" he answered.

  "Maybe he's got something for you. Something worth staying for."

  "All of a sudden?" Joey said. He splayed his hands out on the Formica table and examined them. "All of a sudden he's gonna gimme something good? Come on, Sal, you know the kinda bullshit work I get. Errand boy. Gofer. Maybe now and then I get to hold a bagga money and pass it to the next jerk down the line. Let's not kid ourselves. I know where I stand. My old man's gonna be consigliere any day, my half brother Gino struts around like he's God's fucking gift, and I'm a mutt who's never even gonna get a button."

  "Cut it out with that mutt stuff," Sal scolded. "No one gives a shit about that but you."

  "Why should they?" Joey said. "But Sal, it's facts. I'm not full Italian, I can't get made. Simple as that."

  "O.K. But Joey, you know and I know that plenty of guys make damn good livings without a button."

  This was the wrong thing to say. Joey leaned forward over his wrists and blanched between the eyebrows. "Right, Sal, and that's exactly my fucking point. Am I one of those guys? Not hardly. Doesn't that tell you something? I got a father who's a big shot, a brother who thinks he's a big shot, and I gotta scrape for nickels and dimes? Who's lookin' out for little Joey, huh?"

  Sal sipped espresso and tried a different tack. "It ever dawn on you that maybe the old man's tryin' to protect you?"

  The question made Joey swallow. He didn't try to answer it. "Sal, listen," he said. "My mind's made up. It's not like I'm storming off in a huff. I've thought it over. A lot. I stay around here, I can't be anything but like a third-string guy. I go someplace new, O.K., maybe I fall on my face, but at least I take my shot."

  A bus went by outside, belching black steam and rattling the front window of Perretti's. Sal narrowed his eyes and tried to picture the far end of the New Jersey Turnpike and the long road that came after it. All he could conjure up was a vague idea of Trenton, followed by an endlessness of dashed lines snaking away to nowhere. Suddenly it felt to him like he was the one going far away from everything he knew. The thought scared him like a shriek in the night. He reached across the table, grabbed Joey by the back of the neck, and pulled his face close.

  "Joey, man, you're gonna be like all alone down there."

  Joey Goldman had black hair that was curlier than most and wouldn't hold a part very well. The skin of his lean face was stretched taut between high cheekbones and a square chin with just a hint of a cleft. "Sal," he said, "I love ya, so no offense. But did it ever dawn on you that maybe I like that idea?"

  2

  Joey's girlfriend Sandra Dugan didn't want to go.

  "Jeez, Joey," she said, "you spring this on me now, just wh
en things are going right for me?"

  She was getting ready for work, and she held a hairpin in her mouth while gathering up the wisps of short blond hair that had fallen onto the nape of her neck. The mirror was at the foot of the bed, and she looked past her own reflection at Joey. He was under the blue blanket, propped up on pillows, drinking coffee.

  "What springing?" he said. "Springing is like when it's a surprise. This is no surprise, Sandra. How long we known each other now? Three years, closer to four? Haven't I been telling you all along that I plan on getting outta here?"

  "Yeah, Joey, you've said that. Fair enough." She leaned close to the glass and brushed green shadow above her pale green eyes. "But Joey, everybody says that. Leaving New York-it's like a constant topic. At the bank, everyone's always saying how they're gonna move out on the Island. The girls from school, they all think they're going to L.A. It's like a safety valve, all this talk about leaving. But no one does it."

  "And why don't they?" Joey said. He sat up higher in bed and gestured with his coffee mug. "One reason. They don't have the balls."

  "Don't curse, Joey. It's common."

  "Balls is a curse? Balls is a part of the body."

  Sandra had put on her big square glasses. She let them slide forward on her narrow upturning nose and stared him down in the mirror.

  "Awright," he resumed. "Nerve. They don't have the nerve. They'll bitch and moan all right, because that's easy. But will they change things?"

  "Not everyone can change things." Sandra had had good evidence of this. Her father was a longshoreman and a drunk who would now and then stop drinking and start crying. Her mother was a loud and flamboyant complainer who would quite regularly pack up the kids, run away to the Poconos or Montauk, and come back forty-eight hours and half a carton of Newports later with nothing settled. Sandra could still remember the red wool coat her mother always bundled her into on these strange excursions. It had big square black buttons that Sandra toyed with in the car. "Besides," she continued, "change means change, Joey. It doesn't just mean going somewhere else."

  But Joey was not to be deflected. "Yeah, people'll look around and say, "Look at this crummy apartment I live in. It's got one stupid window that looks out at an airshaft. It's got one radiator that hisses like a mother and drips rusty water onna floor. It's so small my girlfriend can hardly fit her behind between the bed and the mirror.' Am I right, Sandra, am I right?"

  "Look," she said, "the apartment's a dump. Who's arguing? You wanna move to Park Avenue, I'm ready. But Joey, people don't turn their whole lives upside down because they have a small bedroom."

  "Maybe they should. It isn't like their lives are so terrific right side up."

  Sandra was putting on lipstick. She tried to talk and got some on her teeth. "Joey," she finally said, "maybe life isn't supposed to be terrific."

  "No? Then what's it supposed to be?"

  "You know. Like O.K., organized, decent. Regular."

  Joey put his coffee mug on the nightstand, sat up in bed, and hugged his knees. "Nah," he said at last. "Just decent? Just regular? Nah, I can't buy that. Besides, Sandra, can we be a little honest here? I don't believe that's really what you want either. Because if it was, you'd be a jackass to be with me, and I don't think you're a jackass. I'm never gonna be a working stiff, you know that. A regular guy hoping for a ten-dollar raise? I'd slit my goddamn wrists. I gotta do things the way I gotta do 'em."

  "That's fine for you, Joey. But what about me?" Sandra turned to face him. She had thin bluish skin that flushed salmon pink in the cold, the heat, or the wind, and now a rise in blood pressure was making her cheeks gleam through her makeup. "I realize this is hard for you to grasp, but I feel pretty good about things the way they are. I don't mind it here. And I like my job."

  "So you'll get another job," he said. "They have banks in Florida."

  There was a certain expression, not severe, exactly, but immovable, that came onto Sandra's face at moments when she realized that a double helping of practicality was required of her. "You sure it's that easy?" she said.

  Joey wasn't sure, it showed in his face. Sandra pressed her advantage. She squared her shoulders and straightened the placket of her blouse. "Besides, I like being able to say, 'I'm your Anchor banker.' I like the sound of it. I like the prestige."

  "What prestige? Sandra, you're a teller at a drive- up window in Rego Park."

  "And what the hell is wrong with that?"

  Joey held up his hands as if fending off a punch. "Nothing's wrong with it. It's terrific. It's great. But don't make it sound, ya know, like I'm asking you to throw away a career in high finance."

  "No," Sandra said, "all you're asking me to do is throw away the only job I've got, leave my friends, drop out of accounting class for like the third time already. And I'm supposed to do all this just because you've got something to prove to your father and brother?"

  Joey let his hands fall so that they slapped against his thighs. He pushed a noisy breath past his gums and shook his head. "First of all, Sandra, he's my half brother. Second of all, this has nothing to do with them."

  Sandra crossed her arms and leaned back against the dresser. Her mouth curled into what would have been a smirk except that her light eyes softened at the same time. "Joey, I thought we were being honest here. Let's face it-everything you do has to do with them."

  Joey pursed his lips and looked down at the creases in the blanket, the way they fanned out, then flattened. He reached for his coffee mug and took a few seconds to hide his face in it and think. But Sandra went on before he'd come up with anything to say.

  "Listen, Joey, I'm late. I'll think about it."

  She slipped into a fuzzy white cardigan and sidled around the bed to give Joey a kiss. She was in the doorway when she turned and spoke again. "Joey, lemme ask you something. I know better than to look for any promises from you. O.K. But you're asking me to drop everything and move to Florida. Will you at least admit that that's like a serious thing to ask somebody to do?"

  Joey absently smoothed the creases in the blanket. For a moment it seemed harder to answer the question than it would be to sit there sipping coffee until Sandra left, then quietly pack a bag and go away without her. Then he pictured the empty front seat of his car. "Yeah," he said softly.

  "Yeah what?" Sandra pressed.

  Joey looked down at his feet under the blue blanket. The radiator started to hiss and a drop of rusty water plopped into the pie plate that Sandra had put underneath the valve. "Yeah, it's like serious."

  — 3 -

  On the long ride south on Interstate 95, Joey Gold-man's 1973 Eldorado convertible burned five quarts of oil, drank up two hundred and thirty gallons of gas, and blew a right rear tire next to a water tank that said Lumberton, N.C. While putting on the spare, Joey tore a fingernail and spent the rest of the day trying to nibble it back into shape. It was the sort of thing you could do on cruise control.

  When Sandra saw her first palm tree, she started to laugh. It was all by itself in front of some rest rooms in a turnoff just north of the Florida border, like Georgia was telling the world that it had palm trees too.

  "What's so funny?" Joey asked her.

  "Tropicana," Sandra said. "It looks like the girl on the orange juice."

  South of Jacksonville, they stopped at a Waffle House for sausage and eggs, and Sandra changed into a pair of turquoise shorts and white sandals with flowers on the insteps. Joey rolled up his sleeves, undid the second button of his shirt, and told himself he would never again remove the sunglasses that Sal Giordano had given him as a going-away gift. He loved them. They had dark blue lenses that gave everything the velvety look of the half hour after sunset; the black plastic earpieces slid through his hair with a feeling smooth as sex. At Vero Beach he pulled off onto the shoulder and took the Caddy's top down. This required some wrestling because the frame was rusty and the electric system hadn't worked in years. "January eleventh," Joey said. "Seventy-six degrees. Sandra, did I tell
ya this was gonna be great?"

  They spent that night south of Miami so they could drive the Keys in daylight. Their motel room had a smell that would always be with them from then on, but which they would hardly ever notice again, it was so much a part of south Florida. The smell was a sort of far-off mildew mixed with salt, mixed with iodine, mixed with oysters choking on mud, mixed with a very fine dust of limestone that was always dissolving in the breeze. Rounding off the aroma was a hint of toasted sawdust, as if the termites cooked the wood as they ate it.

  Joey and Sandra made love amid that Florida smell, then they listened for a few minutes to the locusts and the distant traffic, then Sandra started to cry.

  "Hey?" said Joey. He touched her shoulder under the damp sheet.

  "It's O.K.," she said. "It's O.K." She nuzzled her face into her pillow. "But Joey, aren't you even a little afraid we just won't like it here?"

  He raised himself up on an elbow and breathed deeply of the dust, mold, and strange flowers closed up for the night. He'd never really thought about it quite that way. He'd decided he would like it, he didn't have to think about it. He was going someplace warm, to do some business, establish himself, launch an enterprise. The place had to be suitable, but beyond that? Did Al Capone like Chicago? Did Meyer Lansky like Las Vegas?

  "It's gonna be fine," he said. "Terrific." He turned over and groped around in the dark to make sure his sunglasses were on the nightstand next to him. Then he fell asleep with just the haziest misgivings barely beginning to scratch at his brain.

  "Islamorada," Joey said, pointing out the open window of the Cadillac at many millions of dollars' worth of gleaming boats. "That's where the President goes fishing. Also my Uncle Tony. He went fishing there once. Brought back this big stuffed thing, this fish with like a spike kinda nose. But the guy didn't stuff it right. Still smelled like fish. Then it rotted. Right up onna wall. Got all soft and started to drip. Uncle Tony was pissed."