The Paradise Gig Read online

  This, I’ve noticed, is one of Master’s most basic ploys for sort of easing his way into other people’s lives. He just tells them his name, whether or not there’s the slightest indication that they want to know it. With humans, I guess if someone tells you their name, there’s an expectation that you tell them yours in return. As far as I know, there’s no law saying that anybody has to do this, but if they don’t, I guess it would be tantamount to saying Who gives a shit what your name is? Which would be considered pretty rude.

  So the woman standing on her head says, “I’m Callie.”

  “Sally?”

  “Callie. With a C.”

  “Ah, nice name. Little bit unusual. Local, right?” says Master. This is another of his tactics that hardly ever misses, because Key West locals tend to be extremely proud of being locals, so if you identify them as such, they’re already on your side.

  “Guess I’m getting to qualify. Been here five years or so.”

  “Thought you kinda looked familiar.” It’s obvious he’s fishing now, but hey, he’s an old man and it’s not like he’s trying to pick her up in a singles joint, so what’s the harm? “Tryin’ ta picture where I know ya from. A restaurant? A bar?”

  “Take your pick. I’ve worked at lots. These days I’m running cocktails down at Luigi’s.”

  “Ah, nice place, Luigi’s. Dinner crowd’s a little tony for my taste, but the bar, the little tiki kinda thing, big deck right onnee ocean there, sunset view, bellissimo.”

  “Good tips,” says the woman. “And not too bad on the AQ.”

  “AQ?”

  “Asshole Quotient. Tends to rise as you get closer to Duval.”

  “And prob’ly as you get closer to last call,” Master observes.

  “That too.”

  Well, once Master gets chatting, he’ll happily stand there all day, but at some point even he notices that the woman would like to come down off her head and move on with her workout, so he says a polite goodbye and makes a bit of a show of tugging on the leash to drag me away. This, frankly, is unnecessary and hurts my feelings just a little bit. I mean, I know when it’s time to leave. Usually I know before he does.

  Anyway, we shuffle back to the yellow chair with all the usual beach business going on around us—footballs flying, radios blasting, guys on skim boards doing face-plants—and Master takes the customary twenty minutes to sit down. I scratch away the top layer of hot sand and make myself a nice cool, damp place to lie down in, then I watch the woman named Callie.

  Eventually she very smoothly lowers out of the headstand and starts a bunch of twists and bends and stretches. I notice her bathing suit, which is unusual for Smathers Beach because it isn’t a bikini but a one-piece in a medium shade of blue. Now, I’m no expert, but just as a side note I happen to think that in most cases a one-piece is actually more flattering than a bikini. I mean, bare skin is nice and all of that, but a one-piece follows the flow of the body much more elegantly. A bikini chops things up into…I don’t know, call it episodes. You got your bosom episode; you got your backside episode; in between you got your sunburn episode. But the body isn’t episodes, it’s all one thing. Anyway, Callie’s one-piece traced out all her movements and I thought it was really very pretty.

  Her hair was short and sort of the same color as the beach, which is to say mainly amber blonde but with glints or a tinge of silver here and there. With the little silver parts, I couldn’t tell if they were occasional strands of gray or just lighter blonde that had been stripped of color by sun and salt. Which also meant that I really couldn’t tell how old she was. Definitely not a kid, whatever that means these days. Definitely way younger than Master, but then again who isn’t? I’d put her somewhere in that large vague area between four and six in dog years. Beyond that, it was really hard to tell because she was so lean and fit and her skin was mostly smooth beneath the tan, but with some faint crinkles of humor or maybe wisdom at the corners of her eyes and mouth.

  Anyway, she went through a sequence of exercises that led back to the headstand part, and it was on the third or fourth go-round that the weird thing happened.

  So okay, she’s standing on her head. The sun has gotten pretty low by now and her body casts a long thin shadow like a sundial. Out of the corner of my eye, I suddenly notice these two guys walking down the beach. They’re dressed pretty much exactly the same, but except for that, they’re a mismatched pair. One of them is tall and lanky with an odd way of leaning as he walks, like he’s standing in a breeze that no one else can feel. The other is short and thick with no neck but a shiny mat of stiff black hair. Side by side, they sort of give the impression of a palm tree swaying above an untrimmed hedge. Like I said, they’re dressed alike but not exactly in beach attire. More like what you’d wear to a nightclub or maybe a hot climate funeral. Black pants. Black shirts, very tight. Black shoes, which I can tell from my low angle are taking a beating from the rough sand; dusty scuffs are already etched into the toes.

  They’re walking directly toward Callie. This in itself is strange. Who walks in such a straight line on a beach? Usually people weave and wander, looking around, in vacation mode, numb and purposeless. Not these guys. Don’t get me wrong; the two of them don’t seem to be in any great hurry, but who says that bad news has to travel fast? Maybe the worst news is the kind that comes on slowly, like a hurricane, and you know it’s coming, and you’ve got plenty of time to dread it, and you just can’t do a goddamn thing about it.

  Anyway, they get closer. Callie doesn’t seem to notice, but who can say for sure? Maybe she’s deep in concentration, maybe she’s just trying to ignore them and keep her balance and focus on her breathing or empty out her mind or do whatever it is that yoga people are trying to accomplish while standing on their head. But she can’t ignore them any longer when they stop right at the edge of her towel and plant themselves between her and the sun. Their shadows blot out her shadow. They totally erase her outline. They make her disappear. Maybe it’s just a brief eclipse but it somehow feels like a violation and a crime.

  A moment passes. The short guy says something. I see his lips move but I can’t hear what he says. I think Callie answers but I can’t be sure. Then the tall guy with the swaying walk reaches out and touches her left foot and she falls down from the headstand. But here’s the thing, the crucial thing. I can’t tell how hard he touches her. Does he push her down? Does he knock her over? How much pushing does it take to make someone lose their balance when they’re standing on their head? Maybe the touch is just playful. Maybe he just tickles her foot. Maybe they’re friends and everything is hunky-dory. What I’m saying is that there were a lot of maybes in that moment. But here’s the thing I didn’t like. I didn’t like the way she came out of the headstand. I’d seen her do it several times by now. Every other time it was slow and graceful. This time she just sort of crumpled. The middle caved in. Her elegance gave up. That gave me a bad feeling.

  So she ends up on her hands and knees. There’s a little bit more talking. Then she stands up and the three of them leave the beach together, the tall guy and the short guy on either side, Callie in the middle. And again there’s a lot of maybes. Are they forcing her to go with them? Are they pushing her? Not that I can tell. She’s boxed in, that’s for sure, but friends walk close together too. Maybe they’re just going for a drink. Still, I can’t shake the bad feeling I got from watching her crumple and now seeing her squeezed in like that. Call it canine instinct if you want. It just doesn’t look right to me.

  I tug at the leash and let out a whimper as the three of them walk past close to Master’s chair. Callie doesn’t look at us. Her eyes are facing straight ahead.

  2

  E

  ven if he hadn’t watched the approach over green water, mangrove islets, the cruise ship-glutted harbor and the dense but miniature downtown, Pete Amsterdam would have known at once that he was back in Key West from the way his glasses fogged up the instant he stepped off the plane.

&n
bsp; There was nothing gradual about how this happened. One second his glasses were perfectly clear. Next second they were totally steamed and the world became a soft moist blur, a place where you shouldn’t necessarily believe your eyes. Florida’s heat—tempting, delicious, exhausting—put a kind of gooey glaze on things, a viscous shimmer. Usually the glaze was very pretty, quite seductive. It magnified small moments, small events, the destinies of small people. The shimmer boosted contrast, added drama, though sometimes at the cost of truth. Behind the slinking funhouse haze, things were seldom as they first appeared. In Key West, therefore, it was always a good policy, before making even the most everyday decision or reaching the tiniest conclusion, to pause, consider, rub your eyes, mop your lenses, and take a second look. Though of course there was no guarantee that the second glance would be any less deceptive than the first.

  This was a lesson Pete had learned, or at least should have learned, in the course of his very sketchy career, or really non-career, as a private detective. To be clear, he was not a real detective. He didn’t even look like one. No broad shoulders, no jutting chin. He was of average height, on the wiry side, with soft and rather sleepy brown eyes and curly brown hair that sometimes just barely looped over the tops of his ears. His default expression was a half-smile that didn’t go as far as showing teeth, as if he was secretly amused by some remembered joke that other people might not find funny. He looked mild, approachable, the type of whom tourists ask directions. Not tough or intimidating, as detectives tend to be. No matter, though, since he was only a detective on his tax returns.

  His gumshoe charade had begun not long after he’d moved to Key West. He’d made some money on the fringes of the tech business up north; it wasn’t mega-money, not even close, but it was enough to live on if he didn’t get stupid and try to act like a bigshot. So he bought a modest little house, which was already pretty close to perfect, but he wanted to enclose and soundproof what had been a breezeway leading to a shed and turn it into a wine-and-music room, a sort of man-cave within a man-cave. So he’d called his accountant to ask him if he could afford the renovation.

  “You can afford it,” the accountant had said, “but don’t be a schmuck. It’s not a wine-and-music room. It’s an allowable expense. An office.”

  “An office for what?”

  “How the hell should I know? A business. You’re starting a new business.”

  “I don’t want to start a business. I just quit a business.”

  “So start another one. Doesn’t have to be for real. Just something plausible. Something you can call yourself.”

  “I don’t know about this, Bernie.”

  “Call yourself…call yourself…call yourself a private eye.”

  “Private eye!” Pete had laughed. He’d snorted. “That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard. You’ve been reading too much trash fiction, Bernie.”

  “Fuck you, I have a stressful job and I happen to enjoy trash fiction. No trash fiction, I’d have an ulcer by now. I’d have colitis. I’d be on statins.”

  “Private eye!” Pete had said again, trying not to admit to himself that the idea, if only for its glaring absurdity, was growing on him. “No. No way. Private eyes are brave. Crusading. Committed. Everything I’m not.”

  He’d waited for the accountant to contradict him or at least soften the assessment. He didn’t. He just said, “What the hell’s it matter? No one’s gonna be dumb enough to hire you.”

  The accountant had mostly been right. In all that time Pete had had two cases. The funny part was that they both got solved and turned out pretty well, though Pete himself didn’t solve squat. He figured out nothing, uncovered no clues, punched no bad guys in the nose. All he did was show up.

  Or at least that’s all he gave himself credit for. But that was Pete. He was always reluctant to get involved, always resisting, always trying to beg off. Then, at some point, against his will and in defiance of what he believed to be his basic personality, caring would sneak up on him and he’d find himself stuck with a commitment to a client or a problem or a cause. He never sought out these commitments and never welcomed them, but once they’d grabbed him he couldn’t shake them off. So he saw them through, while at the same time feeling vaguely guilty because he knew deep down that at least a part of him wanted out at every moment. Had he helped a few people, maybe even saved a life here and there? Yeah, he probably had. In his own mind, though, the outcomes were tainted because the proper crusading spirit had been lacking. What Pete had mainly wanted all along was just to make some problems go away so he could have his own quiet and inconsequential little life back.

  That’s certainly what he wanted as he mopped the fog from his glasses and made his way through the terminal of Key West International, which had recently been renovated but was already starting to look like a dump again, except now it looked like a more modern and generic dump without its former frowsy charm. He was coming home after a brief but awful trip up north to take care of some family business. Another unasked-for obligation. A funeral.

  The guest of honor was a great-uncle whom Pete had barely known. He’d thought that showing up for the interment would be a menschy thing to do, but the plan completely backfired. Instead of feeling like a fine fellow for being there, he’d felt like a louse for not being around more often. With family you just couldn’t win. But, if nothing else, the trip north served as a bracing reminder of why he’d moved to Key West in the first place, why he never married, never wanted kids, never wanted in-laws, nieces, nephews, cousins-twice-removed. What he mainly wanted was to be left alone. Was that so terrible? Did he really need to feel guilty about it? Apparently yes, he did. That’s who he was. That was Pete. He had life mostly his own way, mostly the way he’d envisioned it and crafted it, and he paid for that rare privilege with niggling little chagrins and a hazy but general remorse that didn’t spoil his enjoyment but made it suspect.

  In any case, for the moment he was free again, heading home, and all he wanted was a glass of wine and some music on the stereo. So he dragged his carry-on to the curb and hailed a taxi. A real taxi, not an Uber. Not that Pete had anything against Uber; he used the service all the time in other towns. But in Key West, no way. He just couldn’t do it. He knew too many of the drivers in the pink and yellow fleets, especially the pink, whose cars were the lewd and preposterous color of Barbie’s lipstick. He’d seen many of the same faces year after year; a few of the cabbies had become his pals. Both the men and the women drivers seemed to get shorter every season from all those thousands of hours sitting scrunched and bent behind the wheel. Someone always seemed to have a bandage on a forearm or an ear; always the left, never the right. Always the side hanging out the driver’s window in the ferocious Key West sun. Occupational hazards: Basal cell, squamous, occasionally melanoma. At least the pay was lousy.

  By the luck of the draw, a pink cab had the first spot in the queue. And, by the luck of the draw again, it was driven by Anthony Cuccinelli, who had never been called anything but Cooch except by the nuns in the Catholic school he’d attended through eleventh grade up in South Boston. Cooch had coarse and frizzy reddish hair on the sides but was very prematurely bald on top; on his scalp there were freckles whose patterns suggested unnamed constellations. He had an innocent smile, boyish, incongruous with the hairless crown, that always took people by surprise. He and Pete had met years before on a tennis court at Bayview Park, where Cooch had a reputation as the unlikely natural who never practiced, never warmed up, seldom knew the score, and could beat almost anyone, at least when he wasn’t too stoned to track the ball in flight.

  The two swapped a hello as Pete climbed into the car. Cooch said, “Been away?”

  “Nah, just thought I’d pack a bag and come up to the airport.”

  “Okay, bust my balls.” With the Boston accent, it sounded like bawwls. “Lets me know you’re glad to see me. Where ya been?”

  “Jersey.”

  “Ya poor bastud. Business or pleasure?�
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  “Neither.”

  “Guess that leaves family.”

  “You nailed it, Cooch.”

  They reached the airport exit and were about to turn right onto A1A. Across the street, the Atlantic Ocean was twinkling, a light breeze raising pointy little ripples that curled on top like Hershey’s kisses. The smells of salt and seaweed and dried shells gradually drowned out the stink of jet fuel.

  “Wedding?” Cooch picked up.

  “Funeral.”

  “Ah. Fuckin’ death, man. Sorry for your loss. That’s what you’re supposed to say, right? I never know what the fuck to say.”

  “Thanks. I hardly knew the guy. Want to hit some tennis balls later?”

  For some reason this struck Cooch funny, though the impression took a few seconds to build. The freckles on his scalp got darker before he actually started to laugh. Then he rocked forward in the driver’s seat and made light slaps at the steering wheel.

  “Did I just make a joke?” Pete asked.

  Cooch couldn’t answer just then. He shook his head and kept laughing as he wove past the pizza trucks and sno-cone stands that flanked the beach.

  “You high, Cooch?”

  “High?” he managed. “When I’m drivin’? When I might be endangerin’ the lives of my passengers even though I can drive this town with my eyes closed by now and even though I got tipped off by my dispatcher that the next time I piss in the cup isn’t till a week from Tuesday? Yeah, I’m high. What of it? That’s not the point. The point is what you just said, how you said it, when you said it, I just thought it was a little weird and funny.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “You don’t get it? You don’t get it?” He wheeled around and glanced at Pete with huge and liquid eyes as the taxi scudded past the U-shaped complex of the Paradiso condominiums. “Heah we ah, we’re talkin’ serious stuff, deep stuff. Death, funerals, the pearly gates, the big chill, the final fuck. The biggie. And where does the conversation go? Like in two seconds? I mean, what does it come down to? What it comes down to is D’ya wanna hit some tennis balls later? It’s like, me, I’m tryin’ to be all solemn and appropriate and shit. So I say, Sorry for your loss. Though what does that accomplish if we’re bein’ honest heah? Nothin.’ So then you say, not exactly overflowing with emotion but telling it like it is at least, you say basically, Ah fuck it, I hardly knew the guy, plus he’s dead anyway, wanna hit some tennis balls later? Get it? Life goes on, may as well work on your backhand. I find that a very funny segue. You don’t see the humor in that?”