Tropical Depression Page 6

  The Indian didn't answer that. He put his hands flat on the table, lifted himself from the slatted bench, and said, "I'm tired, Murray, I'm going home."

  "Just like that'" the Bra King said. Instantly he felt desolate, it took very little to remind him he was lonely and out-of-place and discombobulated. "We haven't finished our conversation."

  Over his shoulder Tommy said, "No one ever finishes a conversation. That's why I think it's really better not to start one."

  "But your tribe," said Murray, "the Hookasookie."

  "Matalatchee," Tommy said. He walked to where he'd parked his clunker of a bike, and climbed aboard. With no farewell he rode away over the lumpy sand, his cart of seashells rattling with every bump.

  10

  Late the next morning, wrapped in the shade of the banyan tree, Tommy Tarpon leaned back against the Navy fence as a man in a turban and a woman in a sari approached his cart of shells. The man's face was the color of tree bark, as gray as it was brown; the woman took such tiny steps she seemed to be moving on mechanical feet. She picked up a lightning whelk and held it to her ear to hear the ocean.

  The man smiled pleasantly, gestured toward the merchandise. "Verry beauteeful," he said. "These shells, some are same from Indian Ocean. Some I do not recognize. You are Indian?"

  Tommy tugged the fringes on his vest, nodded wearily.

  "We are Indian too," said the woman in the sari. "You give us good price."

  Tommy had yet to make a sale that day. "Dollar off for Indians. Find one you like. Seven bucks."

  The wife listened to more shells, the husband slipped his fingers in a few. They were still deciding when a fat man in a sweat-splotched shirt approached the cart.

  "Tommy," said the fat man, "I need to see your license."

  The fat man's name was Fred, and Tommy had known him, distantly, for many years. He was a native, a Conch, whose patronage job consisted mainly of drinking coffee and eating greasy fritters as he made languorous and random rounds of Key West's souklike streets.

  Tommy cajoled. "What the hell, Fred, you think I'm new in town?"

  "Gotta check it," the inspector said, without a hint of humor. "See it's up-to-date."

  The Indian shook his head, produced a tattered document from a pocket of his chamois vest.

  Fred screwed up his face to squint at Tommy's license, gave it back, then unclipped a tape measure from the moist and crinkled waistband of his pants. He placed the end of the tape against the cart of shells, ran it out toward Whitehead Street. "Y'only got a four-foot setback from the curb. That's a violation, Tommy."

  The Indians, sensing the unease that goes with other people's problems and that spoils a vacation, sidled away, their money still securely in their pockets. "Perhaps we come back later," said the husband.

  Tommy watched the sale depart, then said, "What is this bullshit? You see me here every goddam day for I don't know how long—"

  The fat man wasn't listening. He'd pulled a stub of pencil from his shirt, licked the blunt and smudgy tip of it, and was writing out a citation. "Twenty- five dollars," he said. "Pay it at the courthouse. Another violation within a year, they take away your license."

  Tommy was on his feet now. His hands were on his hips and veins were throbbing in his neck. "Who's they?" he said.

  "Ya know," said Fred. "The board." He scrawled demerits on paper that went soggy in his pudgy palm.

  "Come on," said the Indian. "Gimme a name. Who's leaning on you to do this?"

  The fat man didn't answer, didn't meet Tommy's eye. He put the citation on the cart, coaxed a wad of his trousers out from between his sweating buttocks, and walked away.

  Tommy stewed. He stewed, he paced, he used his hip to bump his cart back one more foot, bring it grudgingly to code. He sat down on his milk crate, calculated how many hours he'd be sitting there to make the money to pay the goddam fine. He stewed some more, was still stewing when his attention was grabbed by the appearance of something unlikely and in fact ridiculous: Murray on a bicycle.

  He was barreling down Whitehead in yellow running shorts and a lime green tank top, and he was ringing his bell like a berserk Good Humor man.

  Never-worn white tennis shoes gleamed against the pedals; wraparound sunglasses made blue mirrors of his eyes. Wobbling, briefly unable to remember where the brakes were, he dropped his feet like landing gear and scraped to a halt in front of the cart of shells. "Tommy, yo," he said. "Do I look local or what?"

  Tommy regarded him, blinked at the suggestion of titty where some men had muscles, at the hairy, pale and skinny ankles protruding from the sneakers. The Indian was in a vile mood and he could find no words.

  It didn't matter. The Bra King didn't need an answer.

  "I woke up this morning," he went on, "I felt terrific. By rights I should've had a hangover. But I didn't. Pill last night. Two pills this morning. Beautiful. I went out and bought a bicycle."

  Tommy didn't see the connection. He just nodded grumpily from atop his milk crate.

  "And the clothes—bought 'em days ago. Didn't have the baytsim to put 'em on."

  "Baytsim?" muttered the Indian.

  "Yiddish. Means eggs. Ya know, balls."

  "Ah," said Tommy. "Oopoppi."

  "Say wha'?"

  "Balls in Matalatchee."

  "Whaddya know. So anyway, with the clothes, today I figured screw it. This town, I've seen plenty a guys wearing tank tops that shouldn't be wearing tank tops, and I say to myself, Dignity. Just what the hell is dignity except ya have less fun than the goofballs who aren't dignified. Am I right?"

  Tommy hadn't noticed that Murray's style was cramped by excessive dignity. He said nothing.

  "And how are you?" the Bra King finally got around to asking.

  "Lousy," said the Indian.

  Murray took a moment to study him, saw slightly bloodshot eyes, tense skin stretched across the forehead. "We hit it pretty hard last night."

  "Nothing to do with that," said Tommy. He told Murray about the summons. "Fuckers are harassing me, threatening to take me off the street."

  Murray frowned, looked past the southernmost marker, scanned the horizon for hints of Cuba. "Convincing you to get a store?"

  "Tha'd be my guess," said Tommy. "Scumbags."

  Inexorably, the Bra King said, "Alla more reason we gotta talk." He climbed off his brand-new bike, yellow shorts hiking up to show a flash of bright blue underpants. "I'd like to sit a minute. Mind if I sit a minute?"

  Tommy didn't say yes, he didn't say no. He seemed resigned, as to the pitch of a vacuum cleaner salesman who's wedged that first ameboid foot between the door frame and the door.

  Murray moved around the cart of shells and sat down on the sidewalk, his back against the fence that cordoned off the Navy property. When he was settled in, he said, "Crumbs."

  He let the word hover there until Tommy gave in and said, "Crumbs what?"

  Tourists milled, scooters clattered past. Murray said, "What you said last night. About how you make your living. And it dawned on me that if you're gonna be so goddam pigheaded about making your living offa crumbs, at least y'oughta pick a crumb that's worth some money."

  Tommy hadn't felt hung over before. Now, listening to Murray, he was getting a headache. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

  Somehow, propelled by medication and a lifetime's worth of ambition, busyness, the Bra King had gotten to his feet, was pointing, pacing. "I have a plan, Tommy. A plan for you to win. Win big. Your own way. No scumbags. You can tell 'em all to kiss your ass."

  The Indian leaned back against the fence. He didn't believe it for an instant.

  The Bra King was undaunted by the lack of a response. "The other night I played poker," he said. "I'll level with ya: LaRue was in the game. I didn't like him. He bluffs and his neck gets pink. Anyway, I got polluted. Which is weird, 'cause before I came here, I had liquor bottles, dusty, they lasted me for years. So we're playing poker, talking this and that. Politics, retirement. The
n all of a sudden guys are talking about casinos, about how only Indians can open 'em—"

  Now Tommy reacted. He raised his hand like a traffic cop, pulled his face away like he was fending off some terrible contagion. "I know all about that, Murray. Forget it."

  "Now there's a crumb that's worth something. No taxes. No competition. A license to print money."

  The Indian crossed protective arms against his innards, resolutely shook his head.

  Murray paced, his reflective glasses glinted in the sun. "Come on, Tommy, ya read about it in the papers. That tribe in Connecticut. Or down here, the whaddyacallit, the bingo Indians."

  "Miccosukkee," Tommy said. "Look, they've been recognized for years, the states are stuck with them. But any new tribes, they bury you, they fight you to the end."

  "So fight 'em back."

  Tommy gave a bitter snort. "It's the whole fucking government. You don't have a chance."

  "You don't have a chance," Murray mimicked. "Tommy, I don't understand this attitude you have, this getting even by giving up."

  "Who said I think I'm getting even? Murray, listen, it's impossible, they put you through a million hoops."

  "Like what kinda hoops?"

  "Like you gotta prove you're a tribe distinct from all the others."

  "Okay, okay," said Murray. "Didn't you tell me you're the last of the whaddyacallit, the Kalamooties?"

  "Matalatchee," Tommy said. "It doesn't stop there. You gotta prove there's tribal lands."

  "So is there?"

  Tommy looked off at the ocean, hesitated, then nodded, reluctantly, like he was making some terrible admission. "There's a little island, ten acres maybe, about four, five miles offshore. There's some shell heaps, some remains of tools—"

  "So what's the problem?" the Bra King said.

  "Everything's the problem. Murray, fuck I know about casinos?"

  "So ya hire people—"

  "And then they own you."

  "No!" said Murray. "You own them! You're the boss. It's a beautiful thing. Get used to it."

  Pleasure scudded very briefly across Tommy's face, was quickly canceled by his accustomed look of impending calamity. "Forget it, Murray, this kind of battle, it's not for me. It's for the big tribes that have money for lawyers—"

  'Ya need a lawyer?" Murray blurted. "I'll give ya money for a lawyer."

  Tommy looked at him, bewildered, suspicious, moved. His voice got soft and thin. "Why would you do that? Why would you give me money for a lawyer?"

  Murray stalled in his pacing, rubbed his fleshy chin. "I gotta have a reason? Call it tribal loyalty. It'd be a mitzvah."

  "Fuck's a mitzvah?"

  'Ya know, a good deed that ya do just because ya wanna do it. Look, you helped me catch a fish. I don't like to see a guy get screwed."

  "I'm gonna get screwed anyway," said Tommy.

  "Why ya gettin' all negative on me?"

  The Indian didn't answer that. He leaned back on his milk crate, blew some air out past his pouted lips. Then he rose, slowly, deliberately, and started lifting the hinged sides of his cart of seashells.

  'Tommy, hey," said Murray, "I'm bothering you, I'll leave. You don't have to close up the business."

  "You're not bothering me," said the Indian. "In fact I want you to come home with me, have a beer."

  The Bra King, nothing if not sociable, said, "Hey, that's great, I'd love to have a beer."

  Tommy climbed aboard his clunker of a bike. "You see Toxic Triangle," he said, "maybe you'll figure out why I got this lousy attitude."

  11

  They pedaled along Whitehead Street, past Hemingway's house and bailbondsmen's offices, then turned up Fleming and crossed the rude clutter of Duval into the residential precincts of Old Town. Ancient pine and cypress planks bellied out along the sides of pampered dwellings; buttery allamanda crested over the tops of picket fences; gingerbread trim hung from eaves and porches. Matched palms swayed on tiny, perfect plots; pastel shutters shaded windows otherwise naked to the passing world.

  Another zig and zag took them across William Street to Caroline, then past the chandlery and bookstore and the restaurants that catered to the yachting crowd.

  But one block farther on, the avenue grew strangely desolate, not sinister but forsaken or maybe simply overlooked. On the land side of the street, a mostly empty parking lot sprawled behind a bent-up chain link fence. On the water side, a weedy vacant lot coughed limestone dust on every breeze. Ahead loomed the electric company, with its red-and-white striped smokestacks, its clustered pylons and crisscrossed wires carrying juice away.

  Tommy hung a left in front of it, onto an unpaved little road with big gray stones that rattled Murray's teeth. In the scrub along this byway, lizards slunk and a rooster strutted. A cat sat in an abandoned refrigerator without a door; a dog peeked out from under the rusted chassis of a ghostly truck. The road wound around a low abandoned building with long jagged tears in its corrugated roof, and ended at a narrow dock of warped and cracking timbers.

  Tommy climbed off his bike. Murray looked out at the green water blazing in the midday sun, and at the bizarre armada of Toxic Triangle. Homemade houseboats were tied up here and there, they looked like grown-up versions of the rafts kids made with popsicle sticks. Old dismasted sailboats with laundry hanging from their lifelines bobbed next to retired fishing craft whose cockpits were shaded with tarpaulins or thatch.

  "Mine's at the end," said Tommy. "Corner lot. Walk your bike, the dock gets pretty dicey."

  They went single file down the narrow pier and Tommy stopped in front of something that used to be a shrimp boat before it was half-sunk. Now its broad stern was partly underwater and its bow thrust upward at a jaunty angle, like an airplane taking off. Plastic lawn furniture was bolted to the splintery planking of its tilted deck, and its small square pilothouse was raised on shims so it was almost, but not quite, plumb. The odd dwelling was linked to land by three frayed ropes and a two- board gangplank.

  "So whadda ya think?" asked Tommy.

  It was a test, and Murray knew it was a test, and without hesitation he said, "I think it's fabulous."

  The Indian scanned his face for some sign of the facetious. "Fabulous?"

  "Fabulous!" the Bra King said again. He gestured at the harbor, the sky, the gulls and frigate birds wheeling. "Look at this view! I pay through the fucking nose for waterfront, and I gotta look at a road, a sidewalk, a hot dog vendor, before I see a drop a water. This is waterfront."

  The Indian raised an eyebrow, undid the leather, cord that held his ponytail. "See below?" The tone was that of a dare.

  Murray just stepped onto the gangplank.

  They went through the pilothouse and down a companionway ladder to the slanted cabin. There was no horizon there, it was like walking in a fun-house. Dusty fractured light streamed in through glassless portholes, a hammock hung at an inexplicable angle between two posts. A propane fridge and cooking ring stood on a yellow table with two short legs and two long ones, a cracked mirror dangled cockeyed from a rotting beam. The rear section of the chamber was a floor-level aquarium. Saltwater lapped softly against a wedged-in plank. See-through minnows swam in and out.

  Murray pointed at the tiny fish swimming around in Tommy's living room. "This is, like, part of the ocean?"

  Tommy nodded. "Sometimes, something big enough swims in, I eat it for dinner."

  "Everything ya need," said Murray. "Beautiful."

  "Yeah," said Tommy. "Great." He produced a six-pack from the little fridge and they took it up on deck.

  They sat in the lawn chairs, whose incline made Murray feel like an astronaut. He looked across the harbor to the manmade islands, Christmas Tree and Tank. He looked a dock away, a mere few hundred yards, to Land's End Marina, where hired hands were cranked up stately masts in bosun's chairs, rigging halyards, changing spreader boots. "Some big boats over there," the Bra King said.

  "And some shitass deathtraps over here," said Tommy.

  Mu
rray said nothing for a minute. He sipped his beer, looked sideways at his host, saw that he was scowling.

  "Tommy," he said at last, "maybe this is like some Indian thing. But where I come from, if you invite somebody to your home, it's because you're being friendly. It's not because you're trying to talk him out of being friends."

  The Indian looked at him, looked away, sipped beer.

  "And it just so happens," the Bra King said, "I like it here."

  Tommy shook his head. "I'll say one thing for you, Murray. You're not a snob."

  "Hey. Litvak trash that made a couple bucks. What I got to be a snob about?"

  Tommy looked at Murray's clothes, his wraparound sunglasses. "Not much, I guess."

  "Right," said Murray. He drank. The sun beat down on his head. He said, "So anyway, about our plans for the casino—"

  "There are no plans," said Tommy. "Give it a rest."

  Murray couldn't. He struggled up out of his chair, tried to pace on the sloping deck, hit a skid and ended up hugging the pilothouse. "Tommy, Tommy, you're killing me, you're breaking my heart. A chance like this—"

  The Indian stared at him. Old hopes, ideals long ruined and rancid, were souring his stomach and hardening his face and making his voice more steely and scornful than he meant for it to be. "Whose chance?" he hissed. "Whose chance is it, Murray?"

  Instantly the Bra King's shoulders slumped, he labored heavily back into his chair. "Hey," he said, "now you hurt my feelings. Whaddya think—you think I'm one more white scumbag looking to horn in?"

  Sunlight flashed off the water. The Indian's eyes were solemn, judging.

  Murray felt fat and flaccid now in his absurd green tank top. "I'm not a scumbag," he said. "I'll tell you what I am. I'm a yenta. Ya know what means a yenta?"

  The Indian shook his head.

  "A meddling busybody pain innee ass. But a scumbag? No. To that I take exception."

  Tommy Tarpon stared off at the harbor, unaccustomed words were clogging up his mouth. At last he said, "I'm sorry. I wasn't calling you a scumbag. It's just that—"

  "Just what?" coaxed Murray.