Stick Page 22
She sat back again to look straight ahead. They were on the Julia Tuttle Causeway now.
“I thought you were serious.”
Stick said, “I’ve found that real life is weirder than the movies. But I like movies better, they’re safer. You ever meet Warren Oates?”
“Yeah, once, at Dan Tana’s. I was with a friend of his and he joined us for dinner. Why?”
“I just wondered. Was he a nice guy?”
“Yeah, I liked him. He was all right.”
“How long you going to be at the Roc?”
“I guess a few days. I’m supposed to wait till Leo gets back from New York, but I’m going to make a few calls to L.A. and if I can find anything at all, anything, I’m gone. If I have to hitchhike. Leo, the son of a bitch, hasn’t paid me in over a month.”
“Why you supposed to wait here?”
“Leo took a suite to use as a production office—he was so confident we’d be in business. It’s cheaper to leave me here than take me to New York. While he makes another pitch and gets all the names wrong.” She bit at her thumbnail, not so much anxious as impatient. “My problem, I’ve got plenty of self-esteem but no credits. I meet somebody like Kyle—very pro, a super lady—and it makes me want to move, get going . . . I loved the way she handled Leo, led him along with the questions—the asshole, with that condescending ‘I think she’s got it’—and then zapped him. It was a beautiful set piece, just beautiful.”
“She knows what she’s doing,” Stick said.
Jane stared at him. “You’ve got something going with her, haven’t you?”
Stick took his eyes from the causeway, the pavement rising gradually ahead of them. “I tell you I’m just the chauffeur . . .”
“Yeah, well, I caught a few looks passing back and forth between you,” Jane said. “That’s why I was sure you weren’t just the chauffeur. Then I thought, Jesus, maybe she’s a narc, too. Listen, the relationships around here are so weird I’d be willing to believe anything . . .starting with the butler, what’s his name, Cornell, and the lady of the house. Is she in a nod all the time or what?”
“Yeah? You saw something there?”
“I could be wrong, but I’d bet even money they’re fucking.”
“Real life,” Stick said.
“Yeah, you’re right.”
She looked around again as they came off the causeway and turned left onto Collins Avenue.
“Jesus, I think you’re right. He is following us.”
Stick cranked the wheel, pointing the Cadillac up and around the circular drive that rose to the Eden Roc’s main entrance. He popped the trunk release as the girl opened her door. Then dug into his pants pocket before getting out and walking to the rear end of the Cadillac. A bellman came out, lifted the bag and tote from the trunk. Stick closed it, turned to see Jane looking down the ramp toward the street.
“He’s parked back there. What’re you going to do?”
“Maybe I can win his respect,” Stick said. “Don’t worry about it.”
Her hand was extended now. “Well, it was fun. And I wish you luck.”
Stick took her hand in both of his and saw her expression change, the lines through her jaw harden.
“What’s this?”
“One-way fare to L.A. Or close to it.”
She looked at the folded one-hundred-dollar bills in her hand, three of them. “For what?” With that hard edge, suspicious.
“You remember Chucky . . .”
“What about him?”
“The one told you to do breast exercises?”
“I know who you mean. Fatty.”
“Suppose he calls you—”
“Bullshit—what’re you doing? I thought you were a nice guy.”
“Listen to me a minute, will you?” Standing here in his black suit arguing with a girl in a tank top, the liveried help watching. “What’s the number of your suite?”
She hesitated. “Why?”
“Come on, just tell me.”
“Fifteen-oh-three.”
“When somebody calls, they want the production office, how do you answer the phone?”
“I say hello. What do you think?”
“What if you—just for the next couple of days when you answer, what if you said . . .Norman Enterprises? And sounded, well, happy and optimistic about it.”
She said, “Norman Enterprises? . . .”
“Yeah. You like it? Good morning, Norman Enterprises. No, I’m sorry, Mr. Norman isn’t in right now. You want to leave a message?”
She began to smile and looked like a little girl. She said, “Oh, wow,” and sounded like a little girl.
“I’d really appreciate it,” Stick said.
A cabdriver came along the street toward the van, stocky old guy about sixty, pointing to the sign that said TAXIS ONLY, shaking his head. “You can’t park here. Move it out.” He didn’t look Cuban to Moke, probably Italian. Wise-ass guy come down here from the Big City.
Moke had tied a lavender bandana around his head like a sweatband. He had on his old comfortable leather jacket that fit the bends and creases of his body, nothing under it but sweat and his big Smith & Wesson 44 Mag. It hurt, the better-than eight-inch barrel digging into his groin and thigh but felt good, too. Moke rolled his window down, felt the rush of warm, humid air, rested his elbow on the sill.
He said, “Papa, you want to bleed out your ears? Keep talking to me.”
The old guy stood his ground in the street but kept his mouth shut now, Moke getting a kick out of the geezer trying to give him an evil look. The next thing, Moke was sitting up straight, slipping the Hurst shifter into gear, ready to pop the clutch—and that old man better get out of the way.
Then got a surprise. The Cadillac had eased down the ramp and stopped, waiting for traffic to pass on Collins. Moke was sure it would turn right and head up to Bal Harbour. But the Cadillac turned left, came past him going south and Moke had to U-turn away from the cab stand to get on its tail.
Stickley had not looked at him going by. At least he hadn’t seemed to, though it was hard to tell with those no-glare windows. Moke tailed the Cadillac back toward the causeway, then got another surprise when it turned left on Alton Road, staying on the island, crossed the narrow bridge over the inlet and now drove along Bay Shore Golf Course, darker in here with all the foliage, though the sky was still showing some daylight. When the Cadillac turned in at the club entrance Moke braked and held back. What was Stickley going in there for? It was a public course, they’d allow him, but it was sure too late to play any golf.
Moke drove past the entrance, scouting, saw rows of cars in the parking lot still. Two hundred feet down the road he turned around, came back and nosed the van into the lot past high shrubs and trees. The parked cars were scattered around. There was the Cadillac in the second row from the front, facing toward the clubhouse. There wasn’t a soul around. Moke kept to the back of the lot before coming up slow behind the Cadillac, letting the van coast in neutral. He braked gently to stop a row behind.
Still nobody around. He rolled his window down. All he heard were crickets. He could sit and watch that Cadillac with its goddamn dark-tinted windows and Stickley might be in the car and he might not. He would have had time to get out and go into the clubhouse. Maybe have some drinks. Maybe he knew a waitress in there. Or he could be in that car waiting for somebody to come out, maybe picking up a waitress after work. If he was in that car, sitting there . . .
There was another car close on the driver’s side of the Cadillac, empty space on the other.
Moke raised his door handle, pushed with his shoulder and slipped down off the seat. He pulled his 44 Mag, gleaming in the dusk, and his jeans felt loose on him. He did not have to check the loads; he was ready. Tiptoe up on the passenger side of the Cadillac . . .
Which he did, concentrating on his game. Got all the way to the right-side door, eased in close, pressed his headband against the glass . . .
Empty.
It was when he straightened up again that the cord or whatever it was came over his head and around his neck—Christ!—yanked him back tight against the seat, making him gag, the cord or whatever it was digging into his throat, slick plastic-coated, and when he tried to pull it free his head was yanked back by the hair—Christ!—pulling his scalp, pulling his eyes open wide as they would go looking at the van ceiling.
Stick’s voice, close, directly behind him, said, “You got a problem, son. How you’re gonna hand me your gun without strangling to death.”
22
BARRY WAS GOING TO KILL HIM. The car telephone was still attached to one end of the cord. But he’d rather have Barry threaten and try than Moke, any day.
One fist clenched in a stringy handful of hair, the other twisting, pulling on the cord, keeping it taut, Stick did not want to let go. But he would have to give Moke some slack.
He said, “You think you can do it?”
Moke gagged, managed to say, breathless, “I can’t breathe.”
“I believe you,” Stick said. “I want to see you reach down and pick up that piece by the barrel . . . Go ahead, try it.” He rose on his knees, extending his arms to stay with Moke, saw the revolver, the clean mother-of-pearl grip. Stick let go of the telephone cord, took the solid weight of the Mag in his right hand and felt a world better. He pressed the tip of the barrel into the back of Moke’s neck.
“Now your other one.”
“I don’t have no other one,” Moke said.
Stick tightened his grip in Moke’s greasy hair, yanked back hard and Moke screamed. Stick raised enough to look down into Moke’s upturned face, into wide eyes rolled back, mouth open.
“You’re gonna be bald-headed or dead, one. I want the piece you had Sunday.”
“It’s down underneath the seat.”
“Let’s see you bring it out the same way.”
Moke found it, handed back the High Standard, and Stick released his hair to take it. He hefted the two revolvers; they felt of equal weight.
“Around eight pounds of heavy metal. You put on a show, don’t you?”
“You gonna kill me?”
“I could. Save you doing time.”
“Well, get her done.”
Stick almost hit him with the gun, staring at the headband where he’d lay the barrel across Moke’s skull. He put the High Standard down next to him, grabbed hold of Moke’s hair again and got a howl from him as he yanked back as hard as he could.
He said, “Are you that fucking dumb? Is there something wrong with you?” Staring down into Moke’s face, into those round dull eyes that knew nothing about him. “You think I wouldn’t do it? I don’t have the nerve? . . . I’ve done it.”
He felt himself shaking. He had to let his body relax, sit back on his legs. He had to make a conscious effort to open his fist, release his hold on Moke’s hair. Strands of it came away, twisted between his fingers.
Moke said, “Owww,” a whine, and pulled himself up slowly, hunching, looking over his shoulder at Stick.
“We’re going to get in the Cadillac,” Stick said. “You’re going to drive. You’re going to take me to see Nestor.”
Moke said, “Jeez-us Christ . . .”
“But don’t open your mouth,” Stick said. “I’m afraid I’d shoot you through the head, and I don’t want us to have an accident.”
Nestor dreamed of a jaguar that had walked down the deserted main street of Filadelfia, the town where he was born in the Chaco region of Paraguay. The street was deserted because of the jaguar, the people watching the wild animal from windows and from doors that were open a few inches. This jaguar was very likely the one that had killed several cows, a goat or two and an old horse; but no one threatened the life of the jaguar because of the wonder of seeing it in the street, in civilization. Walking past a truck, sniffing. Turning to look at a dog barking from a porch. Sniffing its way along the dirt street from one end to the other. Nestor was a small boy the day the jaguar came to town. He was there, but he wasn’t certain now if his dreams came from what he had actually seen or what had been told to him many times and was able to see in his mind. It was winter, the dry time, and they said the jaguar was thirsty. They marveled at it and held children up to look at it. Then the men of the village—not the Mennonites who farmed here, but the men of the country who spoke Guaraní more times than Spanish—followed the cat out into the lifeless desert and on the second day the men shot it twenty times with their rifles and held a drawing, a lottery, for its skin.
Nestor dreamed occasionally of other places. He dreamed of Barranquilla in Colombia, of filth in narrow streets and the smell of fish. He dreamed of Cuba, of black smoke rising to the sky, fields on fire, the men going out to do battle with the cane. He could remember the fires clearly as well as dream about them.
But he dreamed most often of the jaguar in the Chaco, a place he could not recall from memory except for a few glimpses and smells. So if the jaguar was in his mind, coming uninvited as it did, it must be a sign.
Yes?
He told it to Stick on the backyard patio of the walled home in South Miami, the big revolvers lying on the stone table between them, the grass illuminated like a polo field, for security, the santería shrine against the cement wall, off in a corner, an altar to African gods that resembled an outdoor barbecue. Moke was gone. Sent home. Avilanosa brought them beer and left without a word. Nestor offered cocaine. Stick shook his head.
He said, “I wish I had a dream like that. I fall down steep, narrow stairs.”
“What does it mean to you?”
“It means I’m not getting anywhere fast.”
“Or there is danger up those stairs, uh? The sign being you shouldn’t go there.”
Stick thought about it. “Don’t overreach. Don’t bite off more than you can chew.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Or sometimes I see myself in a dream. I’m on a busy street, or I’m in a church . . .”
“Yes?”
“And I don’t have any clothes on. I’m naked.”
“It means you have nothing to hide,” Nestor said. “I think it’s good you tell me that. It’s the same as with the jaguar dream. I see I don’t have to worry about you. You come here . . . I see you, ah, isn’t it something very unusual to see? How many men would do it?”
“But”—Stick wasn’t sure how to say it—”the people of the town went out and shot the jaguar . . .”
“Yes, because it was their enemy again. The sign was over, the sign that you take with you and . . . Como se dice, aplicar?”
“Apply?”
“Yes, you apply it in your life to other things. I apply it to you. I think already I don’t have to worry, you tell me you not going to the police or to the state attorney. All right, this afternoon I sleep, I have the dream. This evening, finally you come. Well, it’s very clear to me then. You see it?”
“But if you never had the dream? . . .”
“I don’t know. Shit. I get tired thinking. The dreams make it much easier to know things.”
“Did a dream tell you to shoot Rene?” He said it quickly to have said it. Then knew it was all right.
Nestor smiled. “I wait for that. No, it was my intelligence told me. It was too bad. I know Rene, but he was the one Chucky sent. So, if I want to stay in the business, huh? . . . Not be ripped off, take to a cleaner . . .”
“I want to take somebody to a cleaner,” Stick said.
Nestor smiled again. “The jaguar came looking for water. Now we find out what you come for.”
“Permission,” Stick said.
“How do you know to do this?”
“I was in prison. Or I just know, I’m not sure.”
“You want that money from Chucky he promise you. Five thousand, uh?”
“Maybe more.”
“Why not? If you can do it.”
“But not if you say no. It wouldn’t be worth it.”
“It’s your business with Chucky,” Nestor said. “Only if you going to turn him in I say no. Because Chucky, they lock him in a room he start talking. He’s very crazy, you know that. You give him to the police then I have to go to Colombia for a year or two and I don’t want to do that. I like this place, this country, it’s very good place to live.”
“Make a lot of money here?”
“Yes, all you want.”
“You pay income tax?”
“Some. But it’s hard, I don’t keep good records.”
“Is Chucky dangerous?”
“Of course he is. The people he has, no. They’re like waiters to him. He’s afraid to have strong people, they throw him out, see they don’t need him and take over his business. But Chucky himself, yes. Don’t let him walk behind you.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“If you know that, well . . . But he’s not sitting there waiting to go to the cleaner. You have to know he would like you dead.”
“He sent Moke to get me?”
“No, no one sent Moke. He like the shoot-them-up business. He wants everyone to think he’s very bad. Sure, so Chucky, he try to buy Moke. And Moke, he’s so stupid, from the country, huh? You can buy him for a cowboy hat. But he has no honor in remaining bought. Do you understand?”
“But you keep him around.”
Nestor smiled. “Of course. Who knows when I have to send a—what is it, a maleta—a bag to someone in payment, huh?” Nestor shook his head, relaxed in his high-backed cane chair, hands hanging limp, diamond reflecting a cold spark of light. “I tell you, in this business, it’s very difficult to find people of honor. Or people who have the custom of being generous. Chucky say you’re . . . what is it? Enterprising. You sell information about the stock markets. You must be intelligent yourself to do that.”