Split Images Page 16

  "I gave you a tripod."

  "How'm I gonna use a tripod? I get set I got to move. I look like those assholes on eyewitness news except I'm in a fucking jungle, fucking bugs eating me up, the VCR, the battery pack, the fucking cables--try lugging all that shit around and hold the fucking camera still."

  "That the patio?"

  "Okay, that's the patio. That's--see, there's Piper over there chasing something. Look, driving him crazy. Probably the fucking bugs . . . Okay, here she comes. Bugs don't bother this broad."

  "Dorie," Robbie said. "Very nice tan. Well, hey . . ."

  "Hang onto your pecker," Walter said, "the show's just starting . . . Takes the top off . . . You ever see anything like that in your life? Defy the laws of fucking gravity. Look at that . . ."

  "No tan lines," Robbie said.

  "You aren't kidding no tan lines," Walter said.

  "Now, hooks her thumbs in there . . . You got any music? We should have some music go with this.

  Boom. Da-da da-boom. Off comes the little panties. Look at that, the red hair and the black bush.

  She could have quails in there, hiding."

  "Hasn't started to sag yet," Robbie said."That's how you tell if a broad dyes her hair, look at her bush."

  Robbie said, "Is that right?"

  "What I can't figure out," Walter said, "the fuck she put the bathing suit on for she's gonna come outside and take it off?"

  "Why didn't you zoom in?"

  "I zoomed. You think I didn't zoom, for Christ sake? Wait up. I almost zoomed out of the woods and jumped her . . . There's your zoom."

  "Very tight."

  "How would you know?"

  "Your zoom . . . You're pretty steady now, Walter. You're getting better."

  "You bet your ass I'm steady. I got it homed in now. Locked. You'd have to break my arms. That broad can't move, I'm on her. Look at that, scratching her puss . . . Now she gets on the lounge. I kept thinking, like trying to give her mental telepathy, roll over, roll over, you don't want to burn your buns."

  "What's this?"

  "We're in the woods again. I heard a car so I moved a little toward the back of the house . . .

  Okay, there's his Rolls Royce. You notice it's light tan? The Datsun Z's the broad's. Okay, the guy's already inside."

  "Chichi?""Yeah, it's about five o'clock now. But the day before it was closer to six."

  "What's he do when he comes?"

  "The fuck you think he does? . . . Now we're in the woods again . . . Coming out . . . I'm almost on the beach now. Notice the level, I'm practically lying down."

  "There he is."

  "Yeah, he comes out on the patio. See Piper? . . .

  Look at that, runs over to him . . . The broad rolls over . . . there she is, her puss winking at the guy he's playing with the fucking dog. I like dogs, don't get me wrong, but Jesus Christ . . . Now they're chatting. You have a hard day at the office, dear?

  About right there I had something hard I could've showed her . . . Playing with the dog again. Hi, Mr.

  Piper. You're a good little doggie, aren't you? You miss Coconut Grove and your little friend? Tough shit. Now they're looking out at the ocean. I thought maybe something was gonna happen here . . . There, shot of the ocean. Nothing. Back to the show . . . Broad gets up, stretches, he goes right on talking. Stands there like a pimp. I mean he doesn't even touch her."

  "That's about what he is," Robbie said, "a pimp.

  He uses women."

  "Well," Walter said, "if you use 'em for the right thing and they like it, that's different. She bends over now to pick up the suit. Look at that. Takingmy picture with her brownie . . . They bullshit for a minute or so and go in the house. That's it. Beginning of the next tape'll show him coming out with the broad about twenty minutes later, then some more boats going by. No boats stopping, no yellow van."

  Robbie didn't move, staring at the empty television screen.

  "You want to see it again?"

  "I think so," Robbie said with a thoughtful tone.

  "I want to study the layout a little closer."

  "I know what you want to study," Walter said.

  "But hey, it's okay with me. You're the boss, Mr.

  Daniels."

  Angela believed the shiny brown thing that had run out of the bathroom was a palmetto bug. Bryan told her she didn't want to think of it as a roach because of the connotation, but that's what it was, a cockroach.

  They were in the Buick Century driving north into Palm Beach; seven-thirty and still bright, though the sun was gone, off somewhere behind condominiums.

  "It was probably a German cockroach," Bryan said, "but it could've been a Madeira. They're both that shiny light brown. They'll eat anything, soap, paper . . . glue. I saw two of them when I went inthere to take my shower. I thought it was one long one at first, but they were like butt to butt. I think they were getting it on."

  "Palmetto bugs fly," Anglea said, bringing it up from some early recollection.

  But no match for Bryan. "A lot of different species have wings, they're still cockroaches."

  "I like your owl facts better."

  "Roaches're ugly but you got to admit they're quick," Bryan said. "You know how quick an American cockroach is?"

  "You're gonna tell me anyway," Angela said.

  "An American cockroach--you roll up a newspaper and try and hit him with it, the American cockroach can take off in fifty-four thousandths of a second."

  "Almost as quick as Chichi Fuentes," Angela said.

  "So you didn't just buy a new dress today.

  Where's the place we met Gary?"

  "Go up Royal Palm to County and turn right.

  It's on Poinciana."

  "I'm glad you know your way around."

  "That's not all I know," Angela said.

  They sat back of the hedgerow, outside but in shade, among the tourists in their resort outfits, everyone drinking, finished with one part of the day and beginning the fun time. Bryan said, "You see cowboy hats all over now, don't you?" Angela toldhim the polo crowd was gradually going western; you saw cowboy hats at Wellington, even more at Royal Palm and Gulfstream. He told her he missed her today. She looked at him with her warm glow and said, "Did you, really?" He said, "I miss you when you leave the room to go to the bathroom."

  She said, "When you were reading about roaches, was there anything in there about the Santo Domingo variety La Cucaracha Fuentes? I'm finding out what a beauty he is."

  They sipped bourbon collinses from tall frosted glasses, Bryan in a blue-orange-yellow Hawaiian shirt, playing the role of tourist, enjoying it; Angela crisp in a white linen sundress, brand new, more conscious of an image.

  "He procures girls for stag parties on yachts."

  "I was in Vice," Bryan said, "but I never raided a yacht. I hung out mostly in public toilets."

  "You're in Palm Beach now, boy," Angela said.

  "The toilets are Italian marble and Chichi will get you anything you want for a price. I talked to my friend at the Post and he sat me down with a society writer who's got a chart of who's sleeping with whom plus a list of the young single girls. The ones that come up from the minors and hang out at the polo clubs and the in bars. Chichi is hot right now for a girl named Dorie Vaughn. He's supposed to have her set up in a house somewhere."

  "You mean a whorehouse?""No, for privacy, to get away. She's not in the phone book. I checked the County Clerk's Office and there's nothing registered in her name, so I tried Broward County. Drove all the way down to Lauderdale and what do you know? Dorie Vaughn has a home in Hillsboro."

  "Where did that get you?"

  "To Hillsboro, where do you think. I drove past and took a peek, just from the driveway. Little Dorie's got a place that's worth at least a million, maybe more."

  Bryan said, "I mean where does it get you in the end? You know the guy's in dope. What else you want to know?"

  Angela said, "I want to know about the scene here. I want to know if rich
people get high like everyone else."

  "Talk to the feds, they'll give you all the information you want."

  "I don't want facts, Bryan, I want color. I want to get next to Chichi and get him to tell me some stories."

  "I think you should stick to your rich people's book."

  "Should," Angela said. "Do you say should a lot? I hadn't noticed."

  "I don't know, but I think we should eat," Bryan said, "before I take a bite out of you."

  They drove to Chuck's Bar-B-Que Pit on FederalHighway, a place Gary Hammond had recommended, where the light fixtures were wagon wheels and Charlie Russell prints hung on the walls. Angela said, "Oh, my God--never ask a cop where to eat." But it wasn't bad. They had ribs and a pitcher of beer in the rustic lounge and would remember Linda Ronstadt singing "It's So Easy to Fall in Love."

  Bryan saw familiar cowboy hats come in. Two of them. The same two that had walked past the sidewalk cafe and eyed them.

  Angela said, "Why don't you want me to do one on drugs?"

  "It's been done."

  "What hasn't? If cockroaches've been done, everything has."

  The two cowboys came to the table that was between the bar and the booth where Angela sat close to Bryan, eating ribs with her fingers, busy talking and not worrying about her new white sundress.

  The two cowboys made a production of standing at the table and surveying the room, their gaze coming around to Bryan and Angela before they eased down and drew chairs up for their boots. Their big scoop-brim cowboy hats remained squared over their eyes. Angela was saying it was the point of view that was important; you could still make it interesting with a fresh slant. The two cowboys were telling the waitress they wanted a pitcher of beer. Bryan felt tired. He asked Angela if she'd bought her new dress on Worth Avenue.

  She said, are you kidding? She said the idea would be to describe the traditional Palm Beach setting, the island of conservatism, the last bastion of Old Guard ideas, beginning to gently sway to a new wave, the groovy Young Guard making its move.

  "Cowboys at the polo clubs," Bryan said.

  "Exactly. That's one indication. A shit-kicker informality seeping in."

  Both scoop-brim hats were funneled this way.

  One of the cowboys said, "What did she say?"

  Bryan said, "Where else did you go today?"

  "Well, I had lunch at Two Sixty Four, very lively place, with my newspaper friend and the society writer. She works for the Shiny Sheet."

  "And you were discussing Chichi . . ."

  "Yeah. I told you that. Then I stopped by his apartment--it's at the corner of Worth and South Ocean Boulevard, the ultraexclusive condominium. But he wasn't home. The doorman said he was playing golf."

  "You talk to the doorman a while?"

  "For a couple of minutes. Doormen like to gossip."

  "You asked him a few leading questions."

  "A few."

  There you are, Bryan thought. She talked to Chichi's doorman and the doorman picked up thephone and called somebody. His fingers were greasy. He glanced up to catch the waitress, get some clean napkins and took a look at the two cowboys staring at them: giving them their toughhombre movie-cowboy stares that wouldn't have been worth shit without the big hats. They were both in their twenties, shirts open, straggly hair coming out of their hats. Not powerfully built young men--thank God--but that dirty mean type Bryan had been sending to Jackson for the past sixteen years. He would bet they had put in some hard time at Raiford or maybe a federal lockup. They wore pass-the-time tattoos on their arms, the coarse designs of prison artists.

  One of them said, "Hey, lady . . ."

  And Bryan thought, Here we go.

  Angela was saying, "You have to be excited about what you're doing. If you don't have enthusiasm then your words are gonna just sit there. That's the problem I was getting into with Robbie. My angle was flat."

  "Hey, lady, what're you doing with that old fart?"

  Bryan looked at them now straight on. He might as well.

  Angela said, "What? Are you talking to me?"

  "You aren't married to him, are you?"

  "Shit, he's too old for'r," the other one said.

  "Come on over here, talk to us."Angela said, "Are you serious?"

  Bryan liked her tone: quiet, matter-of-fact, but with a put-down edge to it.

  The one cowboy raised and recrossed his rundown boots on the chair in front of him. He said, "What you want an old fart like him for? Can't even get it up."

  "I like old farts," Angela said, a little more tense.

  "Leave us alone."

  "My, my, my, my," the first cowboy said. "you got a tongue, haven't you? Stick it out, let's see it."

  The other cowboy said, "I got something she can tongue."

  The first cowboy said, "What's the matter with your old man? He don't say nothing . . . Mister, you mind we take your girl out the van? You stay here, drink your beer."

  Bryan edged out of the booth to stand up. He felt Angela's hand touch his arm.

  "Bryan . . ."

  "It's all right."

  "Bry-an? That your name?" They thought it was pretty funny.

  The second cowboy said, "Oh, Bry-an, Bryan . . . Where you going, Bryan? You nervous, gonna go take a piss?"

  "He's gonna complain to the management," the first cowboy said. "We ain't doing nothing."

  Angela watched the Hawaiian shirt cross to thehallway where a sign read Rest Rooms * Telephone. The two cowboys stared at her now. She looked past them. Bryan was gone. The waitress came over with napkins; she said, "Will there be anything else?" Angela told her no, just the check, please. The two cowboys stared at her.

  One of them said, "Who's the guy you're with?"

  "I don't believe this," Angela said.

  "Where you staying?" the same one said now.

  "We'll come visit . . . You like weed? What do you like? How 'bout ludes?" His tone was different: intimate, coaxing. "Get rid of the old man we'll see you later, have some fun."

  Angela picked up a napkin and concentrated on wiping her hands.

  "You tight with that fella? He don't look like he knows where it's at." A confiding tone. "Some guy you picked up? Girl, you can do way better'n that tourist. Where's he from--up north?"

  The other one said, "He come down here in his motor home?"

  Angela saw Bryan coming back now, taking his time. She watched him walk over to the waitress at the service section of the bar and stand there while she totaled their check. She watched him take money out and pay her, the waitress laughing at something he said as he waited for his change.

  "Tell him you're going with us. What do you say?"Bryan was coming from the bar. Angela couldn't believe it: he was carrying a pitcher of beer.

  "You don't want to tell him don't say nothing, we just walk out. The fuck can he do about it?"

  She watched him come past their table to the booth. One of them said, "Well, here's Bry-an back, Hey, Bry-an, you thirsty? He must be thirsty."

  Bryan said to her, "I'll see you outside." When she hesitated he said, "It's okay, I'll be right out."

  He turned and placed the pitcher of beer on the table between the two cowboys. She was out of the booth now. She heard one of them say, "What's this?" And the other one say, "Trying to suck up, so he don't get hurt." She walked away from the booth. She saw the waitress watching. The waitress and a couple at the bar with serious expressions.

  The juke box was playing a Willie Nelson piece, "On the Road Again." She looked back and saw Bryan standing above the two cowboys. He was watching and nodded to her. She continued on to the double-door entrance but that was as far as she was going. She saw Bryan turn to the two cowboys.

  They were looking up at him with keen expressions at this point, curious, the fresh pitcher of beer between them.

  Bryan said, "Can I sit down?" He took hold of the chair where crossed boots rested and pulled the chair out from under the boots, carefully, the cow-boy having no choice but to
lower his feet to the floor. Bryan said, "Thank you," and sat down.

  In a pleasant, normal tone he said, "Fellas, I'm down here on my vacation . . ."

  He looked at their showdown stares waiting, those big, sweaty hard-rider hats pointing straight at him and he started over.

  He said, "Fellas, let me put it another way," still with the nice tone. "I don't want to see either of you cocksuckers in my sight ever again. I'm telling you the truth. If I do, I'm gonna kick the shit out of you, sign a complaint you tried to assault me or sell me a controlled substance. Then I'm gonna see you get sent back to wherever you got those ugly fucking tattoos." He paused before getting up. "Are we of one mind on this?"

  Angela watched him leave the table and cross toward her. She saw the two cowboys looking at each other, starting to move. Bryan didn't look back. He reached her, put a hand on her arm. Willie was still singing. She would remember that and remember going out the door into soft evening light and seeing the gumball on top of the squad car turning without sound, Gary Hammond coming out of the car.

  Bryan said to him, "You got a stick?"

  Gary said, "I got a flashlight."

  Bryan said, "Let me have it."

  Gary reached into the squad car. He tossed theflashlight underhand, arching it flat, the chrome catching light. Bryan swiped it out of the air the way you catch a baton and turned to stand squarely before the entrance to Chuck's Bar-B-Que Pit.

  Angela was next to the car in the first parking place, looking at the back of Bryan's Hawaiian shirt. She saw one of the double doors bang open and saw Bryan step in and sidearm the flashlight at the first one out, slamming it into him to send his big hat flying and the cowboy stumbling back, grabbing hold of his head. She saw Bryan swipe the other one across the face and saw the flashlight come apart, batteries spilling out. She saw the two cowboys as though they were dancing, the one trying to hold up the one with blood on his face. Gary Hammond came past her, looking at Bryan cop-tocop, asking no questions, a hand behind him working the cuffs from the back of his belt.

  Bryan said, "It's okay. It was a misunderstanding." He said to the cowboys, "That's right, isn't it?

  You thought we were somebody else?"