Stick Page 18

  “So if Barry goes in the others will too . . .”

  “It’s quite likely.”

  Stick turned to the first inside page. “It says a hundred and seventy-five Limited Partnership units at fourteen thousand two-eighty-five each . . . minimum purchase five units. That’s . . . seventy grand to get in. Is that right? To raise two and a half million.”

  “You’re close,” Kyle said. “See, the offering’s limited to thirty-five qualified investors. So the minimum you have to invest to get in is exactly seventy-one thousand four-hundred twenty-eight dollars and fifty-seven cents.”

  “And what does that get you?”

  “Wait. That’s the original prospectus you have,” Kyle said. “Firestone, Barry says, is going to simplify the first couple of pages for the meeting tomorrow, sweeten the deal. Now the offering will call for ten investors to put in a hundred thousand each. A million bucks. Then Firestone will take that to the bank to leverage another million and a half on a note payable in five years. The limited partners put in a hundred thousand each for twenty percent of the picture, but they each get a tax write-off of two-hundred fifty thousand.”

  Stick said, “I’m not sure I understand that.”

  “How the tax law applies?”

  “I don’t think I’m ready for it,” Stick said. “But the way it works here, Firestone makes his pitch and they walk up and they each hand him a hundred grand?”

  “Right.”

  “How do they know he’s gonna make the movie? Or if he does if it’s gonna be any good?”

  “In there under risk it states you should seek the counsel of an independent tax advisor,” Kyle said. “Which these guys may or may not do. As I mentioned, if Barry goes in, the rest of them will probably follow.”

  “All that dough,” Stick said, looking at the cover again, “for this.”

  “At least the title works,” Kyle said. “I think the whole deal’s shuck and jive.”

  Avilanosa made a U-turn, came around toward the van and pulled in behind it. Once he had backed into position the trunk of the Cadillac was only a few feet from the van’s rear doors. Moke was out waiting, fooling with his Bullrider hat, setting it loose on his head. He looked at the Cadillac trunk as he heard it pop open but didn’t touch it. Avilanosa, his belly sticking out of his summer-plaid sportcoat, came back and raised the lid, not looking at Moke. The trunk held a half-dozen pots of begonias.

  “What’d you get so many for?”

  “This is from Nestor and Chucky. I have the card,” Avilanosa said. “Did the man leave?”

  “Wasn’t more’n a few minutes ago. Had his nigger driving him in the Rolls-Royce.” Moke turned aside to spit into the sand. “Looks like an old woman’s car.”

  “All right,” Avilanosa said, his dark features closing in a squint as he looked off across the road, down the beach side of Collins Avenue. “What is that, what it says?”

  Moke turned to look. “That’s the Singapore Motel.”

  “Sing-apore,” Avilanosa said, studying the sign.

  “It’s a place in China,” Moke said.

  “I know where it is,” Avilanosa said. “All right, I’m going to leave this car over there.” He looked up and down Collins, then reached into the trunk behind the red-flowering plants and brought out, wrapped loosely in a chamois, a 9-mm Beretta Parabellum that held fifteen rounds, blue steel with a wood grip. He raised the skirt of his coat and worked the automatic into the waist of his trousers.

  Moke said, “Where’s mine?” Avilanosa nodded to the trunk. Moke stuck his head in, felt around behind the flowers and came out with a High Standard 44 Mag Crusader with the long 8?-inch barrel, a dull blue finish. Moke said with a whine, “Shit, I wanted my pearl-handle Smith for this one, my favorite.”

  Avilanosa pushed him, getting his attention, and said, “Put it under your clothes. And take off your hat. You don’t look like somebody that brings flowers wearing that hat.”

  Stick said, “But there were some funny things that happened, too. There was an Armenian guy that owned a party store . . . That story Barry told about wanting to chew his arm off reminded me. You hear him tell that or were you asleep?”

  “I’ve heard it before,” Kyle said. “Barry calls it his coyote story.”

  “The guy, the Armenian, had thirty-eight bucks in the cash register and absolutely refused to tell us where he hid his money. This place had to be worth eight to twelve hundred, a Saturday night. So Frank sticks his gun in the guy’s ear and tells him I’m gonna rape his wife if he doesn’t get the dough out, quick. The wife’s this dark, bent-over little old lady with a mustache I’d put in the bathroom. I want to say to Frank, not me, man, you do it. The guy, the Armenian, didn’t say a word, nothing. Frank threatens to shoot him, counts to three and now the guy says, ‘Kill me! I don’t care—kill me!’ So we left. And you know what? We forgot the thirty-eight bucks.”

  “You’re right,” Kyle said, pouring them another Dewar’s, “you were in the wrong business. What you could do, though, maybe, is give Leo Firestone a pretty good story.”

  “Another time we’re sitting in a bar, we’re just about to make the move—a guy comes out of the men’s room with a shotgun and holds the place up. Does it all wrong. Still, he got the dough. We waited till he was about to walk out and took it away from him. So we locked him in the storeroom where they kept the booze supply, cases stacked up—the guy and all the patrons that were in the place. The next day we read in the paper they were in there six hours. The cops open the door, everybody’s smashed, having a great time and the holdup man, it said, appeared to have suffered a severe beating. I think he was in the wrong business, too.” Stick shook his head. “I remember the guy was wearing a gold satin athletic jacket with Port Huron Bullets on the back.”

  She said, “Daring holdup pair get away with—how much on that one?”

  “I don’t remember. Our career only lasted a hundred days and it was over for good.”

  “But exciting, huh?”

  “I’m not sure that’s the word.”

  “I knew a couple of guys who sold commodities options, which is illegal, but not exactly dangerous,” Kyle said. “And, I had a client who lost a hundred thousand in a real-estate swindle. I advised against getting into it and he said, ‘But look who’s investing, and named a very prominent local businessman. It turned out the name that lent so much assurance to this very shaky development was part of the scheme and the investors lost nine million dollars.”

  Stick said, “Without having to point a gun at anybody.”

  “You go to the same prison though,” Kyle said.

  Stick nodded. “That’s the truth.”

  What it came down to every time if you lost: dirty drafty place with broken windows, awful food and dumb people, few you could talk to . . . far from Biscayne Bay sipping Dewar’s on ice, watching the gulls and sailboats, the first red streaks of sunset. He felt at home here. He had felt at home down on South Beach, too, in that cheap retirement hotel. Strange? He hadn’t liked that place any less. Maybe he didn’t know where he belonged.

  He said, “You know who else is from Norman? My old hometown?”

  Kyle said, “Wait, let me guess.”

  He watched her thinking about it, that beautiful nose raised in the air, the delicate line of her nostril . . . looking at him again with clear blue eyes, interested.

  “Is he a famous outlaw?”

  “Uh-unh, James Garner. I wonder if they could get him for Shuck and Jive. My first choice would be Warren Oates, but he’s gone.”

  She seemed surprised. “What happened to him?”

  Stick didn’t answer; he looked off, listening. “You hear a car door?”

  “It’s probably Diane,” Kyle said. “Barry would be gone by now.” She watched him get up, walk away from the patio.

  Now Kyle got up. She followed him across the front of the guest house to the corner. It was nearly a hundred yards from here to the garage turnaround—beyond the tenn
is court, the palm trees, the terraced front yard—but they were able to make out the shape of the van, blue metal in the cavernous shade of old trees. A figure appeared from behind the van, carrying something that obscured him. Then another figure appeared. They were unloading plants.

  Stick felt Kyle’s hand touch him, stroke down his back. She said, “More customers for you?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “If it’s the same van,” Kyle said, “it was parked out on the beach road when I came back. But there was only one person in it. This looks like a delivery.”

  “Did you get a look at him?”

  “Not really. He was wearing a cowboy hat and reminded me of somebody. A very creepy guy who’s a friend of Chucky’s. If Chucky isn’t creepy enough for you—” And stopped as Stick came around, taking her arm and she was moving with him back to the patio.

  He said, “Put some shoes on.”

  18

  FROM THE OFF-SIDE OF the guest house they walked out toward the road, crossed the front of the property through stands of acacia trees and came all the way around to the driveway. Kyle asked questions and he told her to wait, not now. He told her to stay in the trees, he’d see about getting a car, if he could sneak one out of there.

  But when he came to the corner of the garage and saw the van right there, the rear doors open, six pots of flowering plants standing on the cobblestones, he thought of taking the van and liked the idea. He didn’t see Moke or the guy with him until they came out of the morning room and stood on the lawn to decide where they’d look next: go down to the cruiser tied up at the dock or over to the guest house. After a few moments they walked off toward the tennis court: a heavyset Cuban-looking guy, big hands hanging empty; Moke holding a long-barreled revolver at his side, but not wearing his hat.

  The hat was on the driver’s seat in the van. Stick reached in for it and saw the key in the ignition. He took the hat—glancing inside the crown to see the inscription, Bullrider, but no toilet paper in this one—and placed it behind the left front wheel, against the tire tread. He got up in the seat then and watched through the windshield. As soon as the two figures, way off now, walked around the front of the guest house and were no longer in sight, Stick turned the key. He let the engine idle low, backed up slowly, got the van turned around and looked out the window at Moke’s Bullrider straw squashed flat on the cobblestones before heading down the drive, past the house to the trees in front. When Kyle got in she said, “When can I ask you what’s going on?”

  “While we’re having dinner,” Stick said. “Look in the glove box and see if there’s a registration.”

  She said, “You like to know whose car you’re stealing?” They followed Bal Harbour Drive to the gatehouse, followed the exit lane out and Kyle said, holding a plastic-covered registration, “Charles Buck, an address in South Miami.”

  Stick said, “Does that tell you anything? How about Chucky Gorman a.k.a. Charles Chucky Buck?”

  They left the van in Bayfront Park, walked to a restaurant in Coral Gables, a favorite of Kyle’s, where they dined in the seclusion of the garden patio and Stick told quietly how Rainy Mora was murdered.

  Kyle did not interrupt. She seemed awed. When he had finished the story she asked questions, in turn, quietly. There was no hurry and she wanted to understand it and how he felt about it. They sipped wine, they ordered avocado and crabmeat . . . What was most difficult for her to understand was why he hadn’t gone to the police.

  Stick said, “The first thing you have to realize, the police aren’t my friends.” He said, “You’re not only the best-looking girl I’ve ever known you’re the smartest, by far, and I respect your judgment but—two things. Rainy’s dead. He knew what he was doing, he knew what could happen to him, and it did. The other thing, I’ve already been to a correctional institution, I’m not going to put myself in a position like I’m asking to go back. I go to the cops with my record, tell my story, the first thing the state attorney’ll do is try to get me to change it. He’ll take the position, the only reason I’m talking to him I was working with the Cubans, but we had some kind of disagreement, so now I want to cop. The state attorney won’t ever believe I was along for the ride or to keep Rainy company and make a few bucks. Why would I do that? I’d have to be crazy, guy with a record. But if I’m not, then they give you that business—if I’m smart I’ll accept a plea deal, accessory or up as high as second degree, like they’re doing me a favor, if I tell who pulled the trigger. Now I think I’d get off. But only after six months to a year in Dade County with a bond set around a quarter of a million.”

  “I know several good lawyers,” Kyle said.

  “Well, if they’ve had any experience along these lines they’d want ten up front and another fifteen if we go to trial. But even if I had the money I wouldn’t give it to a lawyer.”

  “Don’t worry about that part, the money.”

  “I appreciate it,” Stick said, “but it’s got nothing to do with lawyers. See—if I can explain it—you know Chucky deals, you know what goes on around here, the dope business. But you have to look at it from the inside maybe to understand what I’m talking about. I wasn’t an innocent bystander, I was there. Rainy was there, too, but he didn’t make it.”

  She said, “Don’t you feel anything? How can you remove yourself from it?”

  “You mean do I feel anything emotionally?”

  “Yeah. How can you be objective?”

  “Well, the only emotion that enters into it is fear—you see a guy with a submachine gun . . . I don’t think I’m explaining it right. Am I mad at anybody?” He paused as though he had to think about it. “Yeah, I am. I’d like to kick Moke’s teeth in. But then I think I would anyway, just knowing him. The guy with the machine gun, I don’t know who he is but, yeah, I think the cops should take him off the street, for the good of mankind. Chucky, you know he’s a bad guy—you want to see him go to jail?”

  She said, “But he seems so harmless . . .”

  “Does it have to be something personal? Like he kills a friend of yours? He didn’t kill Rainy, he sent him to be killed. And me with him because I walked around his house and told him I didn’t see anything I liked. Or maybe—give him the benefit—he told them to take me instead of Rainy because he didn’t know me. But he sent the two guys in the van to Barry’s house, we’re pretty sure, because it’s Chucky’s van. And if they put me against the wall and you happened to be there, a witness . . . you see what I mean? That’s your weird client you imitate and your dad doesn’t think is very funny. I tend to go along with your dad. So, you want to turn Chucky in? What’s he done you can give the state attorney to make a case?” He smiled at her. “I haven’t had anybody to talk to before this. I keep going ’round and ’round.”

  She said, “I don’t know how you’ve kept it in. You must think about it all the time.”

  “For a while I did.”

  “Why didn’t you run, get as far away as you could?”

  “I thought of that, too.”

  “But you stayed,” Kyle said. She gave him an appraising look, thoughtful, as though to see into him and discover something he didn’t understand himself. “Why?”

  “I don’t like to keep bringing it up,” Stick said, “but I was into some heavy stuff and did time for it. I’ve met a lot of people with poor manners and ugly dispositions. Guys that chew with their mouth open. So it isn’t like I’m new in the life. Something like this happens, the first thing you do is hide. Then you peek out. Then you come out a little way, look around. Come out a little farther. Finally you come all the way out, and in this particular situation a strange thing happened. Nobody recognized me.”

  “I did.”

  “Except you. I got to the point I was going to leave because I couldn’t see myself going up to the top floor of Chucky’s building, fifteen stories with a rail this high on the balcony, and demand anything. Like the five thousand for delivering the suitcase . . . Which he still
owes. Then I go to work for Barry and find out he and Chucky are buddies, they double-date out on the boat. What’s this, a sign? Maybe I should hang around, see what happens.”

  “What you’re really saying,” Kyle said, “you’re not looking for a warm, safe place, are you? You like the action.”

  “I was in Las Vegas once,” Stick said, “I was driving from L.A. to Detroit and I stopped in Las Vegas because I’d never seen it. I walked around all afternoon to the different hotels, lost twenty bucks, went back to the Travel Lodge and slept for a couple of hours. I went back out that evening, made the rounds again, had a warmed-over roast beef dinner at one of the hotels, lost forty bucks . . . Nothing had changed from the afternoon. The same people were playing the slot machines, there was the same litter and dust. There was a longer line now for the show at the Frontier, see Wayne Newton in his outfit. The place is all colored lights and chrome, red carpeting—you know what it looks like—but it’s dirty, like a circus. Everything looks soiled. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I drove straight through the night and most of the next day to Vail, Colorado. From all that phony glitter to Vail, where even the Holiday Inn sign is carved on a log; you have to look to find the name of the place. I go in a restaurant there, now it’s all crepes and patty melts. People at the next table are ordering claret and soda, talking about the Woody Allen film they’re going to see. And you know what? I walked around there half a day, the place bored the shit out of me, I had to get back to Detroit . . . You been to Vegas?”

  “Couple of times.”

  “You like it?”

  “How about cheap perfume covering up b.o.?”

  “There you are. You been to Vail?”

  “Once, in the summer.”

  “You like it?”

  “It’s all right. I wouldn’t want to buy a place there and have to go all the time.”

  “Good, you know what I’m talking about,” Stick said. “Could you live down on South Beach?”

  “Well, it’s an interesting area—yes, I could live there for a while.”