Sunburn Read online

  Arty Magnus had not smoked a cigar since college. The last one had inflamed his sinuses and given him a two-day case of heartburn. But now he bravely rose with the other men and passed through the wide unadorned doorway to the patio. The moon was bright, you couldn't quite see colors but you could tell the red impatiens from the pink; the air was still, a second moon was floating in the pool.

  Gino held a lighter in his fat cupped hands. There was something ancient in the act of sharing the offered flame.

  Through the kitchen window, Sandra saw four red points shining through the silver moonlight, the cigar tips of the Godfather, his two unmatching sons, and the nice new fellow who was being drawn into their circle.

  10

  "Dog's constipated," said Bert the Shirt.

  "Who isn't?" said the Godfather.

  They were standing on Smathers Beach in the half hour before the sun went down. Vincente's black shoes and Bert's white sneakers scratched against the nubbly limestone that passed for sand. In the green water, three or four miles from shore, a couple of sailboats were scudding by; farther out, beyond the reef, a shadowy freighter was riding up the Gulf Stream.

  But Bert wasn't looking at the water, he was watching his straining chihuahua squatting in the knobby coral. The dog was hunkered down on its hind legs, its back was arched, it was trying so hard to pass a stool that it was quivering all over. Its little white rat's tail was pumping hopefully, the tiny pink button of its asshole was pressing outward like a flower about to open. But nothing happened, and the clogged dog stared up through its milky eyes at its master, seemed to implore an assistance that no mortal being could provide.

  "Fuckin' age," said Bert the Shirt. He gave his head a slow shake; his white hair with its glints of bronze and pink caught the sunlight different ways. "Poor dog don't even jerk off no more. Used to be he'd lick 'is balls. Once, twice a week he'd hump a table leg, try ta fuck a squeak toy. Ya know, he showed some zip. Now? Two fuckin' bites a dog food, a heart pill, drops in 'is eyes. His big thrill? He can pee onna rug, I don't yell at him no more. Some fuckin' life, huh?"

  Vincente didn't answer. He was looking out at the ghostly freighter, at the tired sun suspended in its slow plunge to the sea. "Omerta, Bert," he said. "The honorable silence. Ya think it counts for anything? Ya think it means shit anymore?"

  Bert didn't miss a beat. Since his brief death he had trouble staying on track, but making transitions had never been easier for him. "Since that mizzable fuck Valachi spilled his guts? On TV no less? Remember those little black and white sets, big box, little picture, by the time they warmed up the show was over? Ya think about it, what's left to be silent about? Like there's someone out there, he's been in a coma forty years, he don't know there's a Mafia? The movies, the books. Now I read where they're sayin' Edgar Hoover was some kinda nutcase Nazi faggot. Liked ta put a helmet on, have people tie 'im up and call 'im Edna. So who ya gonna believe?"

  "Ain't a question a who ya believe," the Godfather said. "It's a question a doin' the right thing."

  "Who's arguin'? But Vincente, can we talk heah? You and me, we're old, I mean, speakin' whaddyacallit, figurative, the dog can't shit and we can't lick our balls no more. Least I can't. But hey, one good thing about gettin' old, ya don't have to pretend no more; there's no reason ya can't just lay things out, say, Here it is, take it or leave it, kiss my ass. So like even with this code of honor bullshit—hey, I believed in it, you believe in it, but how many guys really believed in it? It just gave them an excuse—"

  "It don't matter," said Vincente, "what the other guys believe."

  Bert fell silent. Don Giovanni gave up on a bowel movement. The dog lifted slowly out of its arthritic crouch, kicked weakly at the coral knobs, and was again defeated, failing now to cover a mess it had failed to make. Its pale whiskers hung dejected, its expression was chagrined. "Nah," the Shirt said finally, "I guess it don't."

  The sun hit the horizon; its reflection joined with it and gave it the shape of a stubby candle, a squat pillar of flame. The air was the same temperature as skin, if it wasn't for light salty puffs coming off the water, you could forget that it was there. " 'S'pleasant here, ain't it?" said the Godfather. He said it as though he'd just that moment noticed.

  "Very."

  "Peaceful like. Simple. Makes ya feel like, hey, what's the big deal if an old man says some things, eases his mind?"

  Bert the Shirt said nothing, just watched the sun slip into the Straits, savored the small victory of being alive and in that place to see it.

  The Godfather said, "So why can't I do it? Why do I feel like there's some nasty fuck out there"— he paused and tapped his scrawny chest—"or maybe inside here, that isn't gonna let me?"

  ———

  The next morning Arty Magnus was sitting at his desk, his back to the dribbling, droning air conditioner, his feet propped comfortably between his telephone and his computer terminal. He was reading that day's Sentinel, counting typos, mismatched pronouns, yawning in his soul at the flat gray dullness of the merely factual, the smothering monotony of what was called the news. How was it possible that, in a world so full of nuance, nuance in the paper was as rare as cats that swam, that in a town so full of humor, the paper's occasional attempts at levity fell flat as pounded veal?

  Thinking about it made Arty groggy. He got up to fetch another cup of coffee.

  On the way back from the dispenser, he decided to hang out awhile by the AP teletype. It was an old machine, archaic, a clunky-looking workhorse on a graceless pedestal, but Arty liked the way it chattered, how it filled up endless rolls of yellow paper with its untiring monologue. For an outfit like the Sentinel, the wire was the only pipeline from the drear world north of mile marker twenty; it carried epochal dispatches from places like the UN, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C., portentous accounts of coups, disasters, the fall of the West, which would then be reduced to fourline items that ran next to the police blotter in the column other news.

  Arty sipped his coffee and watched the yellow paper fill up with ink.

  .

  dateline paris: economic summit flounders.

  dateline moscow: russians talk of ethnic cleansing.

  dateline new york: mafia big slain in brooklyn.

  .

  This one Arty read.

  The gist of it was that Emilio Carbone, fifty-nine, boss of the Fabretti family, was midway through a plate of calamari rings at a seafood joint in Sheepshead Bay when three gunmen walked calmly through the swinging kitchen doors and shot him eleven times in the liver and the lungs. Also killed was fifty-six-year-old under-boss Rudy Catini. The restaurant was full but no one seemed to get a good look at the shooters. An FBI expert said that the very public nature of the killings meant one of two things: Either the hit was sanctioned by the other families or it was carried out by a renegade faction whose clear aim was to intimidate. The rubout, stated the source, was "a sign of weakness, not strength, further evidence of the Mafia's desperate condition."

  Arty sipped his coffee and wondered if Vincente yet knew. Or if Vincente, for that matter, between planting flowers and pruning shrubbery, between strolling on the beach and eating with his family, had pronounced sentence on Carbone. Who knew what strings the old man pulled, how ruthless he might be, how he really operated? What would it be like, Arty wondered, to pick up the phone like you were ordering a pizza, but instead you ordered someone killed?

  He was back in his office when, three quarters of an hour later, Marge Fogarty, the silver-haired copy editor and keeper of the three-button switchboard, called to tell him a man was on the line for him but wouldn't give a name.

  Arty put his pencil down. He knew it was the Godfather, knew it with the placid certainty that sometimes tells a batter when a curve is coming, a gambler when an ace is going to fall. He picked up the receiver, saying nothing till he heard the inquisitive Marge drop out of the circuit.

  "Hello?"

  "Ahty, I wanna talk ta ya. Can ya meet me for a little
while?"

  The editor, a reluctant sort of person, didn't answer for a moment. He was playing a game with himself. He knew he would say yes, but it dawned on him that he should take the time to wonder if he would say yes of his own free will or if he was already slipping into some sort of nameless perilous thrall. It was important, he felt, to be clear about that now, because the thrall could only deepen with involvement, become an atmosphere, a fact of nature, a gravity you forgot about but that was always tugging. He persuaded himself that he could say no, then said, "Sure."

  "The nursery," said the Godfather. "Plants, we both like plants. Whaddya say, we meet at the nursery, have a little talk?"

  11

  Arty Magnus locked his old fat-tire bicycle, wiped some sweat off his neck, ran a hand through his damp and frizzy hair.

  It was a weekday morning and the nursery wasn't crowded, it had the brisk backstage atmosphere that pertained when only the professionals were around. Here and there workers went by with shears, with trowels, with atomizer bottles. People carried trees, it looked bizarre when all you saw was feet beneath a walking poinciana. Under the bird netting, the light was soft and cool. One quadrant of the yard was being misted; a lavender fog hung over it.

  Midway down an aisle of buttonwood and bougainvillea, the Godfather was sitting on a slatted bench. He was wearing a gray suit that was much too warm for the weather; you could see the texture of the wool. Cinched tightly around his shrunken neck was a wide tie of burgundy silk. He sat with great stillness, his veiny spotted hands resting on an ebony walking stick with a scalloped silver knob on top. He saw Arty and lightly patted the bench next to him, a grandfatherly gesture, beckoning a child to sit down, to pass some time with him.

  Arty sat. The Godfather slowly waved a hand across the greenery, breathed deeply of the flowers and the peat. "I love this," he said. "Florida changes ya, don't it? I first saw this place, it was too plain for me. Now it's perfect."

  Then there was a silence, a long one. A workman walked past with a shovel, it made Arty think of Emilio Carbone.

  Finally Vincente said, "Ya know who I am."

  It was not a question, and Arty just nodded.

  "Ya know why I wanna talk to ya?"

  Arty shook his head.

  The Godfather stared at him and seemed to be deciding whether he had just been fibbed to. "I think ya do," he rasped, "but OK, it all makes sense. Ya wanna write books, you're scared ta write books, the chance ta write a book jumps up and bites ya innee ass, y'act like ya don't notice. This is why ya still work for a newspaper."

  Arty said nothing. If he felt insulted, he'd missed the one clean moment to hit back; after that it would just be whining. He looked off toward the baby palms, felt a sudden ludicrous compassion for their struggle up toward daylight, their wispy nakedness before the wind, their helpless patience with the whims of rain.

  "I'm askin' ya to work with me," the Godfather resumed. "Tell my story. Be my whaddyacallit, my ghostwriter."

  Arty's feet shuffled in the mulch. A mushroom smell came up from the scratched at earth. His mouth fell open, but all that came out was a strangled aah, a doctor's office sound.

  "Ya scared?"

  Arty nodded.

  "Of me? Or the book?"

  "Both."

  "Fair enough," said the Godfather, and he reached up toward his tie. It could not have been any straighter or any snugger, but he toyed with it anyway, smoothed it down inside his buttoned jacket. He turned a few inches toward the younger man, laid his ebony walking stick across his lap. "Ahty, lemme tell ya a coupla things about how I do business. I don't pressure nobody, I don't get nobody involved that doesn't want to be involved. Ya wanna say no ta me, ya can. No hard feelings. That's the God's honest truth."

  Arty looked past the web of brows and wrinkles into the sockets of Vincente's eyes. "I believe it," he said.

  Vincente raised a finger. "Believe this too: If we do make a deal, the deal is sacred; it lives as long as we do. Know that. It isn't something you walk away from, some lawyer gets you out of. Any doubts at all, be safe, say no."

  Arty's hands were damp, he rubbed them on his pants legs. A man came down the aisle with a hand truck full of poison. The mist went off in one section of the nursery and came on in another; a fresh green smell wafted over from where the watering had started.

  "So here's what I'm thinkin'," the Godfather went on. "Five thousan' a month, for as long as it takes. Ya keep your job, it's better that way. The thing is, nobody can know we're doin' this—nobody. 'Cept my sons, I think they got a right ta know. And my friend Bert, he'll figure it out. But no one else. Our secret, Ahty. Y'unnerstand?"

  "But a book isn't—"

  Vincente fiddled with his tie again. "Nothin' comes out till I'm dead. Which, let's face it, doesn't figure ta be that long. After that, Ahty, y'own it, ya do what ya want." He paused, gave a hissing grunt. " 'Course, if it's like everything else I done in my fuckin' life, it'll turn out no good innee end. But you, maybe you'll make it good, maybe you'll make a fuckin' fortune on it."

  A cloud crossed the sun. Under the black mesh net the dappled light went gray and flat, a cool breeze made the baby palm fronds scrape and rattle in their pots.

  "Coupla hours," the Godfather said, "I'm flyin' a New Yawk, a week, a month, I don't know for how long. Think it over while I'm gone, will ya do that for me?"

  Arty nodded. He reminded himself he could still say no.

  Vincente slowly swiveled on the slatted bench to face him, you could see the knobby thinness of his bent leg underneath his woolen pants. "Ahty," he said softly, "I'm like stranglin' inside, I'm like chokin' on shit and bile and secrets and things I think are wrong. What I'm askin' ya, I'm askin' ya ta help me get ridda that shit, y'unnerstand?"

  The ghostwriter nodded, swallowed. The sun came back, picked out twenty different kinds of green: waxy, dusty, bluish, silver.

  The Godfather turned away, sat facing straight ahead, his hands propped on his walking stick. "Go now," he said. "I wanna sit here a few minutes, smell things, look at people work." He lifted a hand just enough to make a small embracing gesture toward the foliage, the burlap bags, the clay pots stained with wet. "I love it here," he said. "I had my way, I'd spend a lotta time, this is where I'd sit."

  Part

  Two

  12

  The Godfather recoiled.

  He waved his hands in a fending gesture, leaned far back, and pulled his face away as if shrinking from a bad smell. "Ahty, no," he said. "No tape recorder."

  "But Vincente," said Arty Magnus, "it'd make things so much—"

  "Ahty, fuhget about it. A tape recorder, believe me, it's like a loaded gun."

  Arty Magnus looked down at his switched-off Panasonic. Tiny, cheap, held together with duct tape and powered by batteries no bigger than suppositories, to him it did not look like a deadly weapon. But, he reminded himself, it didn't matter how it looked to him: He was a ghostwriter now; it was his job to see with different eyes, to learn to speak in another person's voice, to describe the contours and the rules and the terrors of someone else's world. "OK, Vincente, no tape recorder."

  It was early February. The Godfather had returned to Key West the day before. He'd been in New York about two weeks, during which time the FBI had monitored his movements. But the Bureau's top priority had become the rubout of Emilio Carbone, and nothing had been found to link Vincente to that murder, or to anything else that might make the careers of prosecutors or of agents. Unharassed, he'd chartered himself a plane and flown back down to Florida.

  He'd called Arty at his office and just said, Well?

  Arty had decided to answer terseness with terseness; he'd made no mention of the hell of ambivalence he'd been living in, no mention of the insomnia, the death of appetite and flight of concentration, the weak-kneed giddiness as of the stroll to the end of the diving board when you know there are two ways down but one of them has come to seem impossibly wimpy. He'd just said, When do we start?


  So now it was dusk and they were sitting on Joey Goldman's patio, glasses of wine at their elbows, a plate of olives and celery between them. The smell of chlorine came up from the pool, giving a perky tang to the sweet depleted smells of flowers closing for the night. A dragonfly flew past, its wings glinted a dull silver and in the stillness you could faintly hear their papery buzz.

  Arty put his tape recorder back into his canvas bag, spirited it away with a slight embarrassment, as if it were a rejected sex toy. "OK," he said again, producing instead a water-stained notebook with a blue cardboard cover and a ninety-nine-cent pen snugged into the spirals of its binding. "So I'll take notes."

  But the Godfather wasn't crazy about that idea either. He reached up to fidget with a tie that wasn't there, scratched his stringy throat instead. "Notes? Ya gotta take notes?"

  The ghostwriter choked back exasperation. "Vincente, try to understand. This thing we're doing, it might take a year, two years, it might come out eight hundred pages. I can't remember--"

  "My business," Vincente said, "we remembered. Sometimes for decades we remembered."

  "I'm sorry," Arty said. "I'm not that smart."

  The Godfather paused, sipped some wine, glanced at his new associate's wide-spaced hazel eyes, and wondered if the guy was already being a wiseass; decided no, he was just looking for a way to do his job. Fair enough. The older man made the conciliatory gesture of offering the plate of celery and olives. " 'Course," he admitted, "fuckin' problem was, sometimes different guys remembered different. Then there was a misunderstanding like, somebody got hurt. Notes—maybe notes coulda saved a coupla guys."