James Burke: Pegasus Descending

“ Dallas has a phone call,” I said.

“Take a message,” the short man said.

“It’s his mother. She really gets mad when Dallas doesn’t come to the phone,” I said.

“He’s a cop,” the driver of the Caddy said, removing his shades, pinching the glare out of his eyes.

The short man and the man in polyester sports clothes took my inventory. “You a cop?” the short man said, smiling for the first time.

“You never can tell,” I replied.

“Nice place to hang out,” he said.

“You bet. If you want a tab, I’ll talk to the bartender,” I said.

The short man laughed and accepted a stick of gum from the driver. Then he stepped close to Dallas and spoke to him in a whisper, one that caused the blood to drain out of Dallas ’s face.

After the three men had gotten back into their Caddy and driven away, I asked Dallas what the short man had said.

“Nothing. He’s a jerk. Forget it,” he said.

“Who’s Whitey?”

“Whitey Bruxal. He runs a book out of a pizza joint in Hallen-dale.”

“You’re into him for sixteen grand?”

“I got a handle on it. It’s not a problem.”

Inside the bar, he pushed aside his food and ordered a Scotch with milk. After three more of the same, the color came back into his cheeks. He blew out his breath and rested his forehead on the heel of his hand.

“Wow,” he said quietly, more to himself than to me.

“What did that dude say to you?” I asked.

“ One-one-five Coconut Palm Drive.”

“I don’t follow,” I said.

“I have a six-year-old daughter. She lives with her grandmother in the Grove. That’s her address,” he replied. He stared at me blankly, as though he could not assimilate his own words.

DALLAS INVITED ME to his apartment the next evening and cooked hamburgers for us on a hibachi out on a small balcony. Down below were blocks and blocks of one-story houses with gravel-and-tar roofs and yards in which the surfaces of plastic-sided swimming pools wrinkled in the wind. The sun looked broken and red on the horizon, without heat, veiled with smoke from a smoldering fire in the Glades. Dallas showed me pictures of his daughter taken in Orlando and in front of a Ferris wheel at Coney Island. One picture showed her in a snowsuit sewn with rabbit ears that flopped down from the hood. The little girl’s hair was gold, her eyes blue, her smile magical.

“What happened to her mom?” I said.

“She took off with a guy who was running coke from the Islands in a cigarette boat. They hit a buoy at fifty knots south of Pine Key. Get this. The guy flew a Cobra in ’ Nam. My wife always said she loved a pilot.” He turned the burgers on the grill, his eyes concentrated on his task.

I knew what was coming next.

“Had a note under my door from Whitey this morning. I might have to take my little girl and blow Dodge,” he said.

I cracked a beer and leaned on the railing. In the distance I could see car lights flowing down a wide bend in an expressway. I sipped from the beer and said nothing in reply to his statement.

“I made a salad. Why don’t you dump it in a couple of bowls?” he said.

The silence hung between us. “I’ve got a couple of grand in a savings account. You want to borrow it?” I said, then raised the bottle to my mouth, waiting for the weary confirmation of the frailty and self-interest that exists in us all.

“No, thanks,” he said.

I lowered the bottle and looked at him.

“It’s just a matter of doing the smart thing,” he said. “I got to think it through. Whitey’s not a bad guy, he’s just got his-”

“What?” I said.

“His own obligations. Miami is supposed to be an open city. No contract hits, no one guy gets a lock on the action. But nothing goes on here that doesn’t get pieced off to the New York families. You see my drift?”

“Not really,” I said, not wanting to know more about Dallas ’s involvement with Miami ’s underworld.

“What a life, huh?” he said.

“Yeah,” I replied. “Make mine rare, will you?”

“Rare it is, Loot,” he said, squeezing the grease out of a patty, wincing in the flare of smoke and flame.

I washed my hands before we ate. Dallas ’s work uniform hung inside a clear plastic dry cleaner’s bag on a hook in the bathroom, the logo of an armored car company sewn above the coat pocket.

BUT DALLAS DID NOT BLOW DODGE. Instead, I saw him talking on a street corner in Opa-Locka with Ernesto, the leviathan driver of the lavender Cadillac. The two of them got in the Caddy and drove away, Dallas ’s face looking much older than he was. Twice I asked Dallas to go to the track with me, but he claimed he was not only broke but entering a twelve-step program for people with a gambling addiction. “I’ll miss it, but everything comes to an end, right?” he said.

Spring came and I disengaged from Dallas and his problems. Besides, I had plenty of my own. I was trying to get through each morning with aspirin, vitamin B, and mouth spray, but my lend-lease colleagues at the Miami P.D. and the cadets in my class at the community college were onto me. My irritability, the tremble in my hands, my need for a vodka collins by noon became my persona. The pity and ennui I saw in the eyes of others followed me into my sleep.

I went three weeks without a drink. I jogged at dawn on Hollywood Beach, snorkeled at the tip of a coral jetty swarming with clown fish, pumped iron at Vic Tanney’s, ate seafood and green salads at a surfside restaurant, and watched my body turn as hard and brown as a worn saddle.

Then on a beautiful Friday night, with no catalyst at work, with a song in my heart, I put on a new sports jacket, my shined loafers, and a pair of pressed slacks, and joined the crew up in Opa-Locka and pretended once again I could drop lighted matches in a gas tank without consequence.

That’s when I got my second look at the short man who worked as a collector for Whitey Bruxal. He stood in the open doorway, scanning the interior, forcing others to walk around him. Then he went to the bar and spoke to the bartender, and I heard him use Dallas ’s name. The bartender shook his head and occupied himself with washing beer mugs in a tin sink. But the collector was not easily discouraged. He ordered a 7Up on ice and began peeling a hard-boiled egg on top of a paper napkin, wiping the tiny pieces of shell off his fingernails onto the paper, his eyes on the door.

Stay out of it, I heard a voice say inside my head.

I went to the men’s room and came back to my table and sat down. The collector was salting his egg, chewing on the top of it reflectively while he stared out the front door into the street, his shoes hooked into the aluminum rails of the barstool. He wore stonewashed jeans and a yellow see-through shirt and a porkpie hat tipped forward on his brow. His back was triangular, like a martial arts fighter’s, his facial skin as bright and hard-looking as ceramic.

I stood next to him at the bar and waited for him to turn toward me. “Live in the neighborhood?” I asked.

“Right,” he said.

“I never did catch your name.”

“It’s Elmer Fudd. What’s yours?”

“I like those platform shoes. A lot of Superfly types are wearing those these days. Ever see that movie Superfly? It’s about black dope pushers and pimps and white street punks who think they’re made guys,” I said.

He brushed off his fingers on his napkin and pulled at an earlobe, then motioned to the bartender. “Fix Smiley here whatever he’s drinking,” he said.

“You see, when you give names to other people, it’s not just disrespectful, it’s a form of presumption.”