Christopher Buckley - Wet Work

Diatri leaned back in his chair and stared at the priest for a moment's effect. "Why don't you just tell me what it is you and Mrs. Ramirez are holding back."

They stared at each other for a good half minute. Finally the priest said, "On one condition."

"This is a federal investigation, Padre. No conditions."

"In that case, I can't really say."

"All right. I'll consider it."

"Consider it?"

"Favorably."

"In that case. Two days after I got the phone call, Rosa received an envelope through her mail slot containing ten thousand dollars. Five hundred used twenty-dollar bills."

"Funny how she neglected to mention that little detail to me. Does she still have the envelope?"

"No. I asked. She burned it. But there were no markings."

"That's really too bad. What about the money?"

"Spent. She bought a new television-"

"Great. Little Emiliano missing and she's the Queen of K Mart."

"-for her sister, who's dying of pancreatic cancer. That's one of the worst kind. The rest she's using on getting her into a private hospice out in Flushing."

Diatri stood up. "Thank you, Padre."

"Frank, may I ask you something?"

Frank. "Yes."

"Do all priests make you nervous, or is it just me?"

"You don't make me nervous."

"Then why have you been doing that with your ring the whole time? By the way, is that Sinatra?"

"It's, I gave up smoking. It's something to do with my hands."

"No it isn't." The priest smiled.

At the door, Diatri said, "If they got word there was going to be a major battle, they would fly in two things. Frozen steaks and priests. We could always tell when the shit was going to hit when we saw the frozen steaks and the priests. I haven't had a steak since January 1968. And I used to love steaks." Diatri shook his hand. "Thank you for your time, Padre."

"You want to cut?" said Felix.

Charley grunted no and said he wasn't going to play another hand if it was going to be another goddamn game with eighteen goddamn wild cards. He was half crazy from the waiting. Two weeks in the Everglades Suite-to hell with the vaulted ceilings and the great view-had him pacing like a stuck lion. A cage is a cage, even if it is Spanish Revival. Two weeks of waiting on a scared-stiff doper to come out and play. Two weeks of waiting, of playing poker, an eternity to a man like Charley. He was so bored he said he was thinking of buying Eastern Airlines just to have something to do.

"Why can't you just deal straight poker?"

"Because it's dealer's choice and I'm winning. I'm up $16,400. Nines, threes and sixes wild. Four, you get an extra card, cost you half the pot. Arrange 'em and roll 'em."

"That's whorehouse poker," said Charley. "And I'm not going to play it."

"All right," said Felix. "Then pay up."

"Just deal."

They rolled over their cards one by one and bet. Felix said, "Six kings." Charley shook his head the way he might at a tax increase. Felix pulled his chips over and methodically stacked them into the neat piles that annoyed Charley, who let out a cloud of disapproving cigar smoke and went and stood on the balcony. The lights of Key Biscayne glittered across the water.

"What about a tunnel?" Charley said. "We rent the house across the street and go in under the wall, under that minefield he's got. Minefields, in downtown Miami. What's this country come to, Felix? We go up into his bedroom and catch him with his pants down. Use some of that stun gas."

Felix finished stacking his chips. "Let's give it another week, boss."

"No, I'm sick of waiting. You tell Rostow and the boys we're going to meet right here tomorrow morning, ten A.M. We're going to meet right here and we're going to discuss a tunnel."

He knew better than to argue. It might pass of its own accord, like a low-pressure zone. He checked his watch and said, "I better go." He strapped on his pistol and gathered up his now-worn medical journals, resisting the weariness that attached itself to the task so as to not encourage Charley's tunnel scheme. He opened the refrigerator and removed the small saltshaker with the hinged lid. He shook the grains to make sure they were loose, checked the holes in the shaker to see they were clear and slid it into the pocket of his jacket. "Maybe tonight'll be the night," he said. Charley was still staring off toward Key Biscayne with his back to him.

"Ten A.M.," said Charley.

They'd chosen the hotel for its proximity to Neon Leon's restaurant on Southwest Seventy-third Street between Southwest Fifty-eighth Avenue and Fifty-eighth Place. Felix reached the Winn-Dixie-"The Beef People"-parking lot across the street ten minutes after leaving the Biltmore. He shut off the engine and checked his watch; it was two minutes to eight. At eight he saw Rostow emerge from Neon Leon's and walk toward him. He got in, shut the door, and let out a disconsolate belch. "Got any Pepto?" Felix nodded at the glove compartment. Rostow opened it. There were three new bottles of Pepto-Bismol. Rostow opened a bottle and took a long slug. He licked his lips pink.

"How's the squid tonight?"

"Sucks," said Rostow. He sat with the bottle of Pepto open between his legs. "I've been thinking-"

"So's the boss."

"-about Mac's idea. The incendiary. The problem is getting our own fire truck. We're getting hung up on the truck. It doesn't have to be a truck. Why does it have to be a truck? Why can't it just be an ambulance?"

"He's called a meeting tomorrow at ten. He wants to dig a tunnel."

"A tunnel." Rostow took another swig of pink. "I don't know if Bundy is going to go for any more digging. He says burying Chin put his back out. Says he's having lumbar problems. But I can't eat much more of this shit."

Felix crossed Southwest Seventy-third Street and walked into Neon Leon's. There was a Lucite copy of the Venus de Milo in the lobby, lit from beneath so that her stumps and severed neck glowed brightly. Felix wondered if this was intentional.

The maitre d' gave him a bright smile. "Dr. Allende! Like a clock!" He led Felix to his regular table, reserved for him every night the last two weeks, a well-lit corner booth where he could read his medical journals. Felix sat and, again resisting the temptation to sigh, spread his magazines out before him: New England Journal of Medicine , Journal of the American Medical Association , Gastroenterological Review , The Lancet . Tonight he'd wrapped JAMA's cover around the new Sports Illustrated so that he wouldn't have to spend another night pretending to read about renal dysfunction.

His regular waiter, Ignacio, appeared. They spoke in Spanish.

"You're late tonight," Ignacio reproved him with mock severity. "Four minutes."

Felix made a clack-clack gesture with his hand. "Medical conferences give doctors an excuse to talk too much."

Ignacio nodded knowingly. "How long is the conference?"

Felix gave a world-weary shrug. "Until we find a cure for cancer. What's good tonight?"

"Nothing," said Ignacio.

"Okay, I'll take the nothing and some fresh fish, grilled, no butter, no sauce. And coffee."

" A sus ordenes ," said Ignacio with his customary flourish.

As always, Felix asked if the squid was fresh-just to make sure it was on the menu-and, as always, ordered something else. Calamares en su tinta , squid in its own ink. A bowl of calamares en su tinta was a dinner out of Jules Verne: rubbery white tentacles rising out of a creamy, purple lagoon. What a strange obsession. Chin said that Barazo had developed a taste for it, even before seeing it for the first time, after someone told him it was the favorite dish of Juan Carlos de Borbon, King of Spain. (It isn't.) Barazo scattered hundred-dollar tips at Neon Leon's like autumn leaves; they were only too happy to have it, fresh, on the menu every night, over the objections of the chef.