Laurence Shames - Florida straits

"I'll tell Mr. Ponte all about it," Joey said.

The remark offended Bruno, who reached down and pressed his thumbs hard on the soft place under Joey's collarbones. A sharp pain arced down clear to the bottom of his lungs. "You ain't in no position to tell Mr. Ponte nothin'. Got that?"

Joey stayed silent and the silence caromed off the walls. Outside, there were water sounds, breeze sounds. Out there the air was the temperature of skin, and life, sweet life, felt good.

Tony and Bruno consulted with their eyes again. Bruno scratched an armpit. "We could bring 'em to Miami," he said. "We gotta ice 'em, we could; ice 'em just as good up there."

Tony frowned, his scarred lip puckered. "But if the stones are down heah…"

Another pause. Joey tried to decide if saying something more would get him slugged again. He tried to decide if it mattered if he got slugged again.

"Guys," he ventured, "I'm telling you, I got a way to work this out. Whyn't ya call Mr. Ponte? Tell 'im if he'll come down heah, he'll see his stones tomorrow."

Tony and Bruno locked eyes. Then, oddly, Bruno broke into a crooked and horrific smile. "No phone," he said. "I yanked it outta the wall."

"Little, like, precaution," said Tony.

Joey pointed out toward the compound. "So use a different phone. We'll borrow one."

Bruno and Tony considered.

"Look," Joey said, "the naked guy, the landlord, you told 'im you were friends a mine from Miami, right? So that's the story. I'll play along."

"We got the broad," Tony reasoned. "He don't want we should hurt the broad."

As a reminder, he stroked Sandra's neck with the silencer and a sound came out of her like the squeaking of kittens in a cardboard box.

"No," said Joey. "I don't."

"And," said Tony, "we gotta ice 'em, what the fuck if it's tomorrow or today?"

"Yeah," said Bruno. "Tomorrow, what the fuck. Just as dead as like today."

It was dusk when Joey and Bruno emerged through the sliding door of the cottage.

The western sky was green and mauve, the trees had already gone black. A light breeze barely rattled the palm fronds, and there was a sense, as always at the close of a hot south Florida day, of the world exhaling a clenched and overfull breath and deflating slowly into a grateful languor. Luke the reggae musician was sitting at the far edge of the pool, his Walkman on and his feet in the water. Lucy the beautiful Fed was swimming silent laps in a flowing pair of boxer shorts. Steve had finished his beers and vanished. Wendy and Marsha passed by arm in arm, walking their cat on a leash.

Joey's head throbbed and his knees were stiff with fear. Bruno loomed over him like a building, and he tried to hold his face together as he nodded his hellos. He felt a rush of weird affection for these neighbors he barely knew, a flash of ferocious nostalgia for this life that seemed to be receding from him as fast and unstoppable as a comet. He could not help wondering if Tony was sitting close to Sandra, breathing on her, and the thought made him nauseous. He led Bruno across the damp tiles toward Peter and Claude's bungalow. Lights shone through the bougainvillea on the trellis. The front door was open, opera was playing. Joey poked his head in. "Anybody home?"

Claude came around from the kitchen. He walked toward them like he was modeling a mink, though in fact all he was wearing was a tiny pair of pink bikini briefs that stopped around three inches below his navel. "Oh, hi, Joey," he sang out above the music.

"Hi, Claude, how ya doin'?" Joey's voice sounded metallic and false behind his ringing ears. The whole world felt suddenly foreign to him and he wondered if he could possibly be fooling anyone. "I want ya to meet a buddy a mine from Miami. Claude, Bruno. Bruno, Claude."

The two men regarded each other like ambassadors from countries fourteen time zones apart. They nodded. It was impossible to figure which one decided they would not shake hands.

"Claude," said Joey, "my phone's onna fritz and Bruno needs to make a call. Any chance-"

"Come on in," Claude said. "We're just making some eggs before work."

He led the way back to the kitchen. Unlike Joey and Sandra's, the bartenders' kitchen didn't look rented, transient. It had white tile, plants, copper pots, and Joey felt a pang at such settled domesticity. Peter was hunkered over the counter, neatly dicing scallions. He was wearing briefs exactly like Claude's, except his were lime green. Joey introduced Bruno. Claude pointed to the wall phone. Then he broke eggs and hummed along with the music.

" 'Scuse me," Bruno said, in a voice surprising by its bashfulness, "is there a phone that's, like, more private?"

"Sorry," Claude said. "That's the only one."

Peter stopped his dicing and looked up from under his eyebrows to flirt. "No secrets in this house," he said.

Bruno tried a smile that didn't quite work. Teeth came out, but more like he was going to bite. He dialed Charlie Ponte's Miami club and tried to figure out a coded way of telling his boss the situation. This messed with Bruno's confidence. Talking was not what he was best at.

A flunky answered the phone in Miami. Ponte was in but of course he wouldn't take the call. No self-respecting mobster ever took a call the first time. Bruno was given another number and told to call it in ten minutes.

"Hope that's not a problem," Bruno bashfully announced.

"Don't be silly," said Claude. "Want some eggs?"

Bruno in fact looked hungry.

"No, Claude, no thanks," said Joey.

There was a silence, a long one. Joey stood in the foreign fluorescent light of the kitchen and watched Claude whipping eggs, Peter slicing mushrooms. He couldn't shake off the image of Sandra tied up in the chair, her pretty midriff ringed with rope, her mouth taped like a tear in the upholstery. And it was gnawing at him that there was nothing more he could do. He couldn't accept that.

"That opera you got on?" he said at last. " 'Zat Don Giovanni? "

Peter and Claude glanced at each other and seemed to be deciding whether they should laugh. Like a lot of people Joey had met in Florida, they sometimes couldn't tell when he was kidding.

"It's Porgy and Bess," Peter said.

"Ah," said Joey, "I thought it was Don Giovanni. That's my favorite, Don Giovanni is."

Peter and Claude shared a wry look along the countertop. A funny kid, this Joey. Claimed to love opera, but couldn't tell Gershwin from Mozart. Or Italian from English.

"Bruno," said Claude, "how's the opera up in Miami?"

Bruno's mouth moved but nothing came out. He fumbled for a place he could put his giant hands without smashing something.

"Miami," Joey cut in dismissively. "Miami's nothin'. For opera, theater, New York is the place. Paradise. Paradiso." He reached for the bartenders' eyes the way a drowning man reaches for a log. But their attention was riveted on the omelette. Claude handed Peter the bowl of eggs. Peter poured them into the frying pan on top of the scallions and mushrooms. They gave a homey sizzle and started immediately to blister at the edges.

Joey went on, casual as cotton. "Yup, for all that culture stuff, paradise. Course, this is paradise too, but down here paradise is different, right? It's onna beach, by the water. Hey, when you guys go to work, you drive up along Smathers?"

It was a screwball segue, but not screwball enough to tear Peter and Claude away from their bubbling eggs. Bruno brought his eyebrows a quarter inch closer together, and Joey wondered if that quarter inch of displeasure meant that he'd get beat up some more.

"Usually we cut through town," Peter said blandly. He gave the frying pan a gentle shake. "It's shorter."

"Yeah," said Joey, "but if you're talkin' paradise, that ride up A1A, along the water…"