Tropical Depression Read online

  Ponte went back around his desk, stared a moment at the cashless briefcase. He turned his attention to the senator once again. The senator looked confused. Ponte smiled horribly, leaned over on balled fists. "Well, fuck it, I don't care about that fifty."

  "What fifty?" said LaRue.

  Ponte mugged up at his thugs. When he looked back at his visitor his eyes were very narrow.

  "The Indian didn't ask me for a hundred grand," he said. "The Indian wanted fifty."

  "Bullshit!" said LaRue. He tried to say it forcefully but his voice cracked and it came out as a whimper. "Bert specifically said to me—"

  "I known Bert a long time," Ponte cut him off. "Bert's a friend a mine. You calling Bert a liar?"

  "Then the Indian put him up to it," said the politician. "The fucking Indian set me up!"

  Ponte frowned, considered, scratched his chest through the shiny fabric of his silver jacket. "Nah," he said, "it doesn't wash. How many times you told me, Bahney, that who we're dealin' with, we're dealin' with a stupid drunken Indian. A smart guy like you—you tellin' me a stupid drunken Indian is smart enough to set you up?"

  LaRue opened his mouth; no words came out. His Adam's apple shuttled up and down, his eyes bulged like he was choking on a bone.

  For a moment Charlie Ponte savored his discomfiture, then made a soothing gesture. "Bahney, Bahney, don't get your bowels in an uproar. That fifty grand, fuhget about it, I fuhgive it."

  The politician, sweating now along his perfect hairline, stared at him in silence.

  "I fuhgive that fifty grand," the little boss continued. "Ya know why? To teach you a lesson. A lesson in graciousness. A lesson in class. A gentleman, Bahney, he doesn't scrape after every nickel and dime. A good businessman, he doesn't have to. Ya make the right deals, y'earn the honor and the privilege to be a sport. Like this casino: the money it's gonna spin off, Bahney—aren't you embarrassed to grab a measly fifty grand?"

  There was nothing for LaRue to say, he sat there sweating in his bruised and dirty suit, the salty sweat tormented all his bug bites. Bruno and Squeak were flanking his chair, squeezing in on either side of him, their nearness made him faintly nauseous.

  Casually, almost as an afterthought, Charlie Ponte picked up the manila envelope, slid out the signed and witnessed contract. From a pocket of his silver jacket, he produced a pair of half-round reading glasses; they gave him a weirdly studious aspect.

  He began to read. He looked puzzled; then concerned; then enraged. With fingers transformed suddenly into awkward claws, he rattled his way to the last page of the document. He read, re-read, paused a heartbeat to bite his lower lip and remove his glasses. Then he sprang up from his chair, threw himself across his desk, and grabbed on to Barney LaRue's silk tie.

  He grabbed the tie and shoved the knot up as tightly as he could, his small hard fist wedged beneath the politician's chin. Trapped blood swelled veins in LaRue's neck, his face went scarlet and taut as an abscess. A thin gurgling sound escaped his imploding throat, until Ponte let up on the noose and started slapping him around the nose and eyes.

  LaRue tried feebly to fend off the blows, but his arms were pinioned by the goons. They dragged him to his feet. Ponte came around his desk and punched him in the groin, kneed him in the lips when he doubled over.

  "Fucking asshole," the boss hissed into his distorted face, and the victim didn't understand what had gone wrong.

  Reeling, tasting blood and snot, too sorry for himself to grasp that the calamity he'd courted for so long was coming due, he opened his bloody mouth to ask a question.

  Bruno's fist crushed the words back down his gullet. "I got smacked because a you," the big thug said. He hit the reeling figure a second time, knocked him backwards until he slammed into a wall then crumpled to the floor.

  Charlie Ponte paced a moment, caught his breath, plucked at the collar of his silver jacket. He went back to his desk, barely touched a corner of the document LaRue had brought, as though the pages held some dread contamination.

  He looked with loathing at the beaten figure in the twisted tie, then said to Bruno, "Lose 'im. Lose 'im forever. Then we see about the fuckin' Indian and his jerkoff friend."

  The two thugs dragged the politician through the narrow dockside door, raked him over the splintery catwalk, tossed him like a sack of rice into Ponte's speedboat that was tied up to the wharf. The engines whined then roared, and they headed for the Gulf Stream, where the surging water was indigo and a mile deep.

  *****

  Some time later, Max Lowenstein, washed, shampooed, wearing his tweed jacket and carrying a small suitcase, walked into Martinelli's restaurant, took a deep slow breath, and approached the lectern where the maitre d' was leaning on the reservation book. He flicked his eyes to the left and to the right, cleared his throat, and said softly, "Excuse me, do you have stringozzi?"

  The maitre d' looked at him sadly, tiredly, said, "Everybody knows. I'll take ya back."

  He led the way past a pair of enormous lobster tanks, through a dining room still half-full of late eaters wearing lobster bibs, into a raucous kitchen where lobsters flailed like scorpions as they were dropped into boiling vats. At the back of the kitchen he knocked on a door.

  Bruno, very recently returned from murder, opened it, looked at the visitor, said, "Who the fuck are you?"

  "I have a message from the Indian," blurted Lowenstein.

  "It better be good," said Squeak, in a voice like a misblown horn. "The Indian's nuts are hangin' by a thread." He patted the psychiatrist down, paused a moment at a hard thing in his pocket. It turned out to be his pipe. He led Lowenstein through another door to Ponte's inner office.

  Under a single bare light bulb, the little boss was sitting at his desk. His hands were splayed in front of him, his skin was yellow, he looked like a man with a bellyache, waiting in secret anguish for a belch. He glanced up, stretched the liverish sacs beneath his eyes. "What now?" he said.

  On legs that were none too steady, the visitor approached. He put the little suitcase on the desk, opened it. "The Indian's returning this," he said.

  Ponte blinked, looked at the bundled bills, at the nervous bearded man that brought them. "No one ever gives back money," he murmured, wonder in his voice.

  Lowenstein said nothing.

  "How d'you come into this?" Ponte asked suspiciously.

  "The Indian's friend, I'm his psychiatrist."

  Ponte scratched his plastered hair, mugged over at his goons. "Psychiatrist. I'm starting to think I need a fucking psychiatrist."

  "It's a serious commitment, therapy. There's fifty thousand dollars there. Every penny."

  The mobster stared again at the money, dumbfounded at the perversity of its reappearance. Finally he said, "The fuckin' aggravation I been through, the money doesn't pay for that."

  Lowenstein knew that sometimes people had to say things, it didn't mean you had to answer them. He let Ponte's words settle, then resumed. "The Indian says you didn't get what you were paying for, there's no reason you should pay. He returns the money as a token of respect. Chief to chief."

  Ponte drummed fingers on his desk. "Respect is a good thing. A casino is a better thing."

  "I presume you've read the papers LaRue was carrying."

  "I haven't seen LaRue in weeks."

  There was a silence marred by kitchen noises: hissing water, rattling trays.

  Ponte resumed, pointing a finger. "The Redskin fucks me, goes into business with someone else, I'll kill 'im."

  "He knows that. He accepts it."

  "He fuckin' better," said the mobster, but he felt himself off-balance now, like a man who throws a roundhouse punch and encounters only air.

  "He wants no quarrel with you," said the shrink. "Your differences before, he says they're like the smoke from yesterday's fire. What I would call finished business."

  Ponte looked at the money, looked at his fingernails, glanced furtively at his goons and wondered what more he could say to remind the
m he was still master of the situation. "Chief to chief?" he said at last. "He said that?"

  "Exact words."

  "Fuckin' A." Then he thought of something else that cheered him up. "And the stubborn bastard don't even have a place to live."

  "No, he doesn't," said the shrink.

  Ponte shook his head, picked up a sheaf of bills, put them down again, said, "Ah shit. Cigar?"

  "You don't mind, I'll smoke a pipe."

  The mobster unwrapped a corona, bit and spit the plug, held his lighter out for Lowenstein, who bent across the desk and drew in the offered flame.

  Ponte puffed, exhaled a violet haze, squinted philosophically. "Psychiatrist. Sweet Jesus. You noticed it's a crazy fucking world we live in?"

  "I've noticed our ideas about what's sane and normal are very flawed and very fragile. So Mr. Ponte, we smoke in peace?"

  43

  Next morning, in the West Building penthouse of the Paradiso condo, three people, ecstatically clean, were lolling in their separate beds, when there was a knocking at the door.

  Murray Zemelman pulled on a robe, walked across the living room where a breeze was blowing through the shattered glass, and was reaching for the doorknob when it occurred to him that it might be prudent to check the peephole. Flattening himself against the foyer wall to peek, he saw a bulbous chihuahua, distorted by the lens, its glazed and milky eyes enormous, its twitching nostrils cavernous and wet. Holding the dog, a newspaper in his other hand, was Bert the Shirt, who this morning was resplendent in a tunic of teal blue linen, with a newly opened frangipani blossom protruding from the pocket.

  Murray opened the door.

  Bert said, "I'm out early with the stupid dog. Not wakin' youse, I hope? I thought you'd wanna see this."

  The Bra King motioned him in.

  Franny appeared, barefoot and yawning. She was wearing a smock of yellow seersucker. Her eyes still had sleep in them, her hair was curled as the towel had left it the night before, her skin was scrubbed to the pink of a painted cherub.

  Tommy's voice came booming from the other bedroom. "Murray? Loan me something to put on. These clothes, I'm burning them."

  Bert said, "A regular roomin' house you're runnin' here."

  Franny went to put up coffee. Murray found a pair of shorts and a cranberry tank top to lend the Indian.

  They gathered on the balcony, sipped java that did not steam against the already toasty morning. Bert put the newspaper on the table, and the others jockeyed for position to read it. Across the top was a banner headline. It said: indian island to remain undeveloped. Then, in smaller type, state senator linked to rejected casino; ties to organized crime suggested.

  Tommy scanned the words, and didn't smile, just crossed his arms against his chest and peered out past the balcony railing, to the pool, the palms, the beach, the sea.

  Murray turned the paper toward himself. Franny seized a corner of it and changed the angle. Murray twisted it again. Finally Franny grabbed the thing and read aloud. Under Arty Magnus's byline, it said:

  "Kilicumba Island—In a bizarre ceremony involving tribal rituals, switched documents—"

  Murray cut in, "That meshuga dance between the middens—"

  Franny shushed him, read on. "—and a satchel of cash delivered by a well-known politician, it was decided here today that the lands recently ceded to Mr. Tommy Tarpon, last surviving member of the Matalatchee nation, would perpetually remain in the state left by Mr. Tarpon's forebears.

  "The decision came despite intense pressure from representatives of a consortium known as First Keys Casinos, Inc., whose officers include several men with suspected connections to South Florida's alleged Mob boss, Mr. Charles Ponte of Miami. Revealed as one of the group's allies is state senator Barney LaRue, who visited Kilicumba, bringing with bim a $50,000 cash payment in a last-ditch effort to persuade the Matalatchee chief to sign a contract authorizing First Keys to build a gambling casino on his property.

  "However; the document actually signed by Mr. Tarpon—and witnessed by Senator LaRue, who was offered ample opportunity to examine the papers— was a very different piece of business. Continued on page seven."

  She riffled through the soggy newsprint.

  Bert stroked his dog enthusiastically, said, "Now here's the part I like."

  Franny sipped some coffee, then resumed. " Obtained exclusively by the Sentinel, the document consists of three pages of personal ads, and a short statement penned by Mr. Tarpon. That statement is here reprinted in its entirety:

  "' When Kilicumba was part of the white man's world, it was considered worthless, a mangrove dot among ten thousand others—and so it was a small thing to return it to me. But once it was mine, it took on great worth in the eyes of certain people, who decided, as the powerful have always decided, to take it back again. I am indebted to these people for teaching me a useful lesson - that the surest way to safeguard something is to protect it from becoming valuable, to find a worth in it that is a private worth, and that seems worthlessness to others.

  " I therefore decree, that now and for all time, Kilicumba shall not be changed or built upon. Access to it shall remain difficult. Its unbearable insects will not be disturbed, its impossible shoreline will not be improved. If the occasional visitor should venture upon it and be moved, the Tribe welcomes him. If it is never visited again, it does not matter.'"

  Franny stopped reading, let the paper fold shut on the plastic table. "Tommy," she said, "that's fantastic."

  "Is it?" said the Indian. He was gazing absently down at the Paradiso's placid courtyard, beginning to fill now with early sunbathers and swimmers of laps and people reading magazines.

  "Of course it is," said Murray.

  "Ya did the right thing," said Bert the Shirt.

  "You won," the Bra King said. "And you found your own way to win."

  "I guess," said Tommy, sounding unconvinced. He sipped some coffee, leaned back in his chair. "I just feel all chewed up. I mean, three months ago, I was just a guy who sold shells, drank beer, went fishing. Nothing ever happened to me."

  "Then you met Murray," Franny said. She said it with the compassion of a fellow-sufferer.

  "Then I met Murray," the Indian echoed.

  "Jesus," said the Bra King, "ya don't have to make it sound like catching cancer."

  No one made it sound like anything better, so Murray went on in his own defense.

  "Come on now, Tommy, ya met me, ya drank like a fish and were bitterer than horseradish."

  "At least he had a home," put in Bert the Shirt.

  "He has a home now," Murray shot right back. "He's living here with us."

  "Us?" said Franny.

  "He's always pulling that us shit," Tommy said.

  "Now wait a second," said the Bra King. "One thing at a time. Ya met me, you were like paralyzed with bitterness. True or false?"

  Tommy's tongue explored the inside of his face. Grudgingly, he said, "True."

  "Thank you," Murray said. "And now, what about now? Tell me yes or no."

  "Don't put him on the spot like that," said Franny.

  But Tommy didn't seem to mind. He leaned back, pouted, ran a hand over his chest and stomach like he was feeling for a tumor or a wound. "Less," he said.

  He sounded surprised and for a moment he pondered that surprise.

  "I still think white people are fucked up," he went on. "But now I know it's not my problem. I had my chance to jump into the game, jump in big time. How many people get that chance? The chance to look it right in the eye and say screw it, I don't want it."

  Triumphantly, Murray looked around the table.

  Bert d'Ambrosia stroked his drowsing dog. "But he still don't have a place ta live."

  "Will ya let it go already?" the Bra King said to him. "Since when are you such a nuhdge?"

  "Forty thousand's enough for a houseboat," Tommy said. "A nice one. That's all I wanted out of this—to get back to where I started from."

  "Toxic Triangle?" said
Murray.

  "Primo waterfront," said Tommy.

  "And LaRue?" said Franny. "You think there'll be a scandal?"

  There was a pause. A south breeze carried the smell of iodine from the ocean. Palm fronds scratched and rattled, there was soft splashing from the pool. Across the Paradiso's edenic quadrangle, the senator's penthouse was dark, its curtains drawn.

  Old Bert petted his chihuahua. "Bahney's beyond shame," he said. "I'd be very surprised if at this point Bahney even cares about a scandal."

  44

  They finished their coffee. Bert got up to leave. Tommy, embracing his old life with the chastened gratitude of a man returned from a bold but calamitous furlough, resolved to hitch his cart of shells to his rusty bike and reclaim his spot in the shade of the southernmost banyan.

  Murray walked them to the elevator, and when he came back he found Franny kneeling on the floor of her room, folding clothes into her suitcase. He watched her just a moment before she noticed him, watched her small efficient hands, noted the calm pleasure in her face as she composed a neat mosaic of cotton and linen.

  She looked up and said, "You think he'll be satisfied, doing what he did before?"

  Murray shrugged. "Ya think about it, it wasn't bad. His own boss. Outdoor work. Who knows, maybe we'll find a business, go into it together."

  "You tried that," Franny said.

  "So maybe we'll try again. Ya know, he needs me to look out for him."

  Franny let that slide. "And the drinking?" she said. "You think he'll go back?"

  Her ex-husband shrugged again. A shrug seemed the most honest answer to questions about the heart and mind of another human being, even when that person was a friend, a man whose tribal recollections and forgettings were not so very different from one's own.

  A moment passed. Murray looked at Franny, kneeling in her yellow smock. Her room was narrow, it had a single bed, it was like a child's room, or a nun's, it made him shy, he felt rude and blockish standing in the doorway. He heard himself say, "Franny, I really wish you'd stay with me."