Stick Page 21

  “I might have. Yeah, I probably said five to hook him. But you and I know it wasn’t that kind of deal. Rainy’s not coming back I’m not gonna pay him, am I?”

  “Well, you made a deal and somebody come back.”

  “I didn’t make it with him.”

  Nestor smiled, a slight easing at the corners of his mouth. “He say to you, it was deliver, wasn’t it?”

  “See, that’s what I mean,” Chucky said. “Guy acts like he’s got it coming. I didn’t hire him, I hired Rainy.”

  “Yes, you keep telling me that. But it was deliver . . .”

  “You think that’s funny?”

  “I think you can believe him.”

  “I’m not gonna give him five grand . . . Why would I give him anything?”

  “I don’t know,” Nestor said.

  “You think I should?”

  “It’s your business, not mine.”

  Chucky said, “But if I don’t . . . I’m thinking out loud. A guy like that, you don’t know what he might do. I mean something crazy. You know?”

  “Then pay him.”

  “I don’t owe him a fucking thing.”

  “Then get rid of him.”

  “What would you do?”

  Nestor looked up at Chucky through his tinted glasses. “I don’t know what I would do. I have no feeling about it, it isn’t my business.”

  “I could argue that one with you. You’re the one got the delivery. You were the other end of the deal.”

  “But I only promise to kill the delivery man, whoever it is,” Nestor said. “And I keep my promise.” He walked over to his car, Avilanosa holding the door open, and got in.

  Big help . . .

  Somebody had tossed his room. Emptied the drawers on the floor, pulled the bed covers apart, turned the mattress cocked half off the box spring. His magazines were still on the dresser. And the original prospectus Kyle had given him to read. The one in which thirty-five investors put in seventy-two thousand and something each and didn’t involve the tricky bank loan part that Kyle said was a fraud. Stick took the prospectus over to his one bedroom chair—green plastic that was supposed to look like leather—sat down and began reading the film offering again, understanding most of it now and wondering why Firestone hadn’t brought it out when Kyle shot down the other scheme. Except the story wasn’t going to sell anyway. Christ, Shuck and Jive. Were they really that dumb out there?

  Cornell said, “Oh, man,” sadly, from the doorway. “I was afraid something like this might happen. Wasn’t nothing I could do.”

  Stick looked over. “Who was it?”

  “Nestor’s man, his father-in-law. The big motherfucker looks like the bouncer at a live-sex show. He found out what he was looking for? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

  “Wasn’t anything to find,” Stick said. “Less he’s trying to tell me something.”

  “Well, you cool about it. Didn’t mess up your stuff too much?”

  “No, it’s okay.” Stick wasn’t interested in Nestor’s father-in-law. He said, “The guy wasn’t too quick, was he? Mr. Firestone.”

  “Man should be parking cars. He went to pack, gonna leave. Him and his little girl having an argument about something.”

  “She seemed pretty sharp.”

  “Has good instincts, but a few things to learn. I told you, she still a baby.”

  Stick straightened, smiled, and Cornell glanced over his shoulder at Kyle standing behind him and got out of her way so she could look in.

  She said, “I don’t know why, I thought you’d be neater than this.”

  “Somebody looking for the microfilm,” Cornell said. “Did you know this man was a secret agent?”

  She seemed concerned for a moment, but said, “I know he has secrets.” Giving it a light touch.

  They went into the sitting room, Stick telling her she was a star while Cornell popped open cans of beer. They put their feet up and did quick Leo Firestone sketches, recalling memorable moments—Firestone dumping on Hispanics right in front of Nestor—Stick saying he wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it. Cornell saying, man, we should make the movie, put some real life in it.

  “Chucky had the best idea,” Kyle said, “but I don’t think anyone heard him. He said lighten up and turn it around. I remember a story in the Herald about customs agents finding two hundred and thirty-six pounds of cocaine in a cargo jet—I think it said with a street value of a hundred and forty-seven million; but there wasn’t anyone they could prove had knowledge of it. So all that coke’s sitting in some storeroom.”

  “The Feds licking their lips,” Cornell said. “I like the one, the customs plane chases the smuggler from Bimini, the man running out of gas and has to ditch, so he lands at Homestead, man, of all places, right at the customs base, where they keep their airplanes, and while they running around looking for him he goes in the office and steals the names and addresses of all the customs dudes. You dig it? Wait. Then—listen now—the man sends an announcement to all the customs dudes saying he’s made it, he’s quitting and, listen, invites them all to his retirement party in Nassau.”

  Stick liked it. “They go?”

  “Would have to quit their jobs or sneak over to do it. No, the man said he would even send a jet plane over, pick ’em up. But the fools—you know what I mean? They could have gone over there, talk to the man drunk out of his mind celebrating and learn all his tricks. But no, the man in charge of the customs dudes won’t let ’em go.”

  Stick said, “Instead of the guy taking the names and addresses—no, the one guy, Shuck, takes the names and addresses and Jive finds the two-hundred and thirty-six pounds of coke . . . Except how’s he going to lift it?”

  Cornell said, “It ain’t all in one cake, man, it’s in bags. See-through baggies inside of burlap sacks; you know, inside something. They take it out, make two trips each, do it easy.”

  Kyle said, “I think the names would definitely have to go. Shuck and Jive. How about . . . Stick and Cornell?”

  “Frank and Ernest,” Stick said. “But it doesn’t have any punch, does it? Just lays there.”

  “Can’t be too real,” Cornell said. “Yeah, has to have some zip. Zip and Punch . . . Sock and Pizzazz.”

  “Sacco and Vanzetti,” Kyle said. “How about Ron and Rick at the Seashore?”

  “No, you know what the title is?” Stick said. “The two dopers rip off the Feds, walk away with a hundred and forty-seven million dollars worth of coke? Scam.”

  “That says it all,” Kyle said.

  “Yeah, Scam,” Cornell said, grinning, dragging the word. “You want to hear a true story maybe we can work in? The gardener that comes here twice a week? Man’s Colombian.” Cornell still grinning. “You know what’s coming, don’t you? I had him put in a patch over the other side of the guest house among the hibiscus. Ain’t Santa Marta, not the same kind of soil, you know? Won’t make dreadlocks grow out of your head either. But it’s fine domestic weed. What I’m saying, who wants some?”

  Barry appeared. At first he looked surprised. Then sad, left out. Then waved his hand in front of his face and clutched his throat as though he couldn’t breathe, wanting to be one of them. Brow furrowed, helpless, he said, “You know how far away you can smell this party you’re having?”

  Cornell, grinning: “Tell us, Mr. Stam.”

  “The Coast Guard station. I just saw a boat coming up from Government Cut . . . Gimme a hit.”

  Barry put his feet up with them. He said he should’ve held the meeting in here, get everybody zonked and decadent on a strong stone, get them good and banged—using all the words he knew—then present the movie deal. He said, “Leo Norman Firestone Presents told the emery board one, he should’ve started with the one, You know how to stop a Jewish broad from screwing? Marry her.” He said to Cornell, “You like that one, huh? Little ethnic humor? You know how they know Adam was white? . . . You ever try to take a rib from a jig? I would’ve said black gentleman but it doesn’t wor
k as good. Okay?” He said to Kyle, “You ought to change your name”—Kyle and Stick giving each other a look—”to Hernia. Hernia, the ball buster. I say that, you understand, with affection, with deep admiration. Hernia McLaren. Try and con me, pal, I’ll take your nuts home in my purse.” He said to Stick, “Since this is not your day off, Stickley, and you’re supposedly on the job I believe? Could I ask you to do something for me, if it’s not too much trouble?”

  Stick said, “It depends what it is.”

  Barry said, “He’s not kidding. He makes it sound like he’s playing along, but he isn’t. I don’t know—I think the help around here has more fun than the . . . whatever the fuck I am. Sometimes I’m not too sure.”

  Cornell said, “You the master, Mr. Stam. The head dude.”

  “Thank you,” Barry said, and looked at Stick again. “If you have time and it doesn’t interfere with your plans too much . . .”

  Even with a buzz Stick was getting tired of smiling.

  “ . . . would you mind driving Leo Norman Firestone and his flat-chested assistant to the airport in about an hour?”

  When Stick hesitated Barry said, “What’re you doing, thinking it over?”

  Stick said, “Mr. Stam, it sounds easy enough,” and stared at him, straight faced. “But there’s a mile of wire in a screen door.”

  He watched Barry nod with a thoughtful expression. It was good dope.

  Eddie Moke picked up the black Cadillac, BS-2, coming out of Bal Harbour, identified Stickley driving—his window down as he went out the gate—but not the people in the backseat. Moke followed the limo all the way crosstown to Miami International . . . goddamnit, where he had to be wide awake in all that airport traffic, not get faked out. It was coming on dusk, which was good, but made keeping the limo in sight harder.

  Moke was operating on his own this trip, needing no orders or plan other than his will to get Mr. Stickley in a fix and shoot holes in him. He hoped then to find 105 dollars in Stickley’s wallet. Forty for the Bullrider straw Stickley had run over and 65 for what he’d had to pay to get the van out of the Miami city pound. Chucky had asked him one time, “They ever let you out of the chute?”

  Fat turd. There’d come a time he’d settle with Chucky. Most likely be told to and he’d take pleasure in it.

  But this one now had become personal.

  Wait till Stickley was alone going back. Run him off the road . . . Or cut past him and open up, yeah, with the nickel-plate Mag and blow the sucker right out of his Cadillac saddle. If the chance didn’t come he could always slip into that garage where he lived. Do it late at night.

  Go on over to Nestor’s after and tell him about it. Say, what else you need done? Nestor would be lost somewhere in his head or not believe it and him and Avilanosa would start laughing and speeling in Cuban and that’s when he’d take the fellas ears out, wrapped in a hanky, and drop them on the table like a couple of dried apricots.

  “You believe me now, señor?” Moke said out loud, looking through the windshield at the Cadillac parked with its trunk open, five cars ahead and two rows over in the traffic, by the Eastern sign. Then squinted and said, “The hell’s going on?”

  The man was walking away with his suitcase, shaking his head at a skycap. But now the skinny girl in the red undershirt was getting back in the car . . .

  21

  JANE SAT IN FRONT WITH Stick on the way back to Miami Beach. He drove in silence, letting her come back down after the yelling match with Firestone all the way to the airport. The guy accusing her of not preparing him for the meeting, the spics. The girl actually telling him if he hadn’t opened his mouth so ridiculously wide he wouldn’t have been able to put his foot in it. Stick had kept his eyes on the mirror most of the way there.

  He would still look at the mirror from time to time. They were on 112 heading east when Stick told her he’d kept waiting for the guy to fire her.

  “He can’t afford to,” the girl said.

  Whatever that meant. Did she have something on him?

  She seemed relaxed now. She said, “You told me you were a chauffeur—remember, this afternoon? I thought you were trying to be funny.”

  “I don’t think it’s funny,” Stick said, “at all.”

  “Well, some people are what they say they are,” Jane said, “but not many. Especially in the industry. What they do, they talk on the phone, they take meetings and go to screenings and put down everything they see. They make wry, supposedly clever comments, but too loud and dumb to be clever. Because—you know why? They don’t like pictures. If they didn’t happen to be in the industry they wouldn’t even go see them, ever. Bunch of fucking lawyers and business types . . . You know any lawyers that see pictures, actually go to a theater and buy a ticket?”

  Stick said, “I’ve only known two and they didn’t do me much good.”

  “The lawyers and the business types answer to the egomaniacs running the conglomerates that own the majors and none of them knows dick about film or has any kind of feeling for it,” Jane said. “You want a development deal now you have to bring them a story that takes place on a giant pinball machine with a lot of flashing lights. Special effects, that’s the name of the game. You don’t have ten million bucks worth of special effects in the script you’re fucked. You see E.T.?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Mary Poppins goes electronic. Flying bicycles and Valley kids talking cute-dirty. I’d rate it right up there with that Velveeta cheese commercial, everybody’s trying to promote a slice of cheese off this little boy and he won’t give them any.”

  “I’ll wait’ll it’s on TV,” Stick said. He looked over at her sitting close to the door, tan bare shoulders slumped. She looked worn out. “Firestone a lawyer?”

  “It’s grossing three million a day. No, he’s not a lawyer. Leo’s problem, he doesn’t have any talent. He makes rotten pictures. Did you see The Cowboy and the Alien?”

  “I missed it . . . How come you work for him?”

  “Because at least he makes pictures and I felt I could learn something, just being around. You ever read John O’Hara?”

  “I might’ve.”

  “There’s a character in one of his stories, an actor by the name of Doris Arlington. She works hard, she makes it, the studio finally gives her a contract that reflects her ability. Doris signs it, puts the pen down and says, ‘There. I’ll never suck another Jewish cock.’ She isn’t showing prejudice. She’s saying she’ll never again submit to people who have no understanding or feeling for her art. Well, I’m still submitting. I’ll work on a picture I know is a piece of shit, because at least I’ll be working.”

  “You like movies.”

  “I love them. I want to produce my own.”

  “Not Shuck and Jive?”

  “Jesus . . .”

  “How about—call it Scam. The two guys’re dopers now. They walk into customs in the middle of the day and con them out of a hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of top-grade cocaine.”

  “Starring Elliott Gould and George Segal,” Jane said. “I saw it. Make it twenty-million dollars’ worth. Even with inflation it’s a lot.” She paused and said, “Considering some of the investors I think even Leo would’ve had a better chance of selling it.”

  “You think so?”

  “He really blew it.”

  “How do you know some of those guys’re into dope?”

  “Nestor Soto? He practically wears a sign. And the pudgy one, Chucky. Barry hinted around he’s a dealer.”

  “You like Barry?”

  “I know a hundred and ninety-nine Barrys. They come with interchangeable one-liners.”

  “You think he deals?”

  She turned enough to face Stick. “Is that what you’re trying to find out? You’re not really a chauffeur, are you?”

  “Not in real life,” Stick said, his gaze on Miami Beach in the distance, pale structures against the darkening sky. “Firestone said the Eden Roc, right? We natives call
it just the Roc.”

  “What were you in real life?”

  “That’s a hard one. I’m still trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up.”

  “How about a cop?” She seemed to have hold of something and wasn’t going to let go.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You ask questions like a cop. Slip them in, no hurry, very patient. What’re you, a narc? . . . Well, it doesn’t matter. You’re not going to tell me if you are.”

  “Nobody’s ever accused me of that before,” Stick said. “Jesus, a narc . . .”

  “I worked for a casting company when I first started. I’d make you any day as an undercover cop.”

  Stick thought for a minute, getting a glimpse of Biscayne Bay now, the little ocean before the big one. He said, “If I look institutionalized it’s ’cause I just finished doing seven years for armed robbery. You want references, call the Detroit Police or the Oakland County Sheriff’s Department. I’m not proud of it, but there it is.”

  She said, “Wow. Really? What was it like?”

  “It wasn’t like the movies, I’ll tell you that.”

  “Did you get raped?”

  “No, I had friends in the yard.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I have a feeling,” Stick said, “if I was a narc you wouldn’t be as interested.”

  “Probably not,” Jane said. “What’s the narc’s motivation? It’s a job. But an ex-con armed robber driving a limo for a millionaire who thinks he’s a stand-up comic is something else. I mean if you do it straight though, not as a comedy.”

  “You think it’d sell?”

  “I like it so far.”

  “Would you like it more if I told you we were being tailed?”

  She turned half-around to look back over the seat.

  “The van, blue Chevy. He’s been on us since we left Bal Harbour.”

  “Who is it? Do you know him?”

  “I have a good idea.”

  “But why is he following you?”

  “I think he wants to kill me.”

  “Come on . . . Why?”

  “I wrecked his cowboy hat. Two of ’em, in fact.”