Sweeney gave her a weary smile and sipped his drink. She had told him the purpose of her trip to Florida was to research an article on real estate for Esquire. Well-off baby boomers were preparing for retirement by snapping up houses and condos in Naples. She had arranged to spend two weeks at a friend’s place, on a golf course called Donegal. What do you know? Sweeney had said. I’m going there, too. I own a house at Donegal.
As he sipped his drink, she again noticed the tan line on his ring finger. “Your house in Naples,” she said. “Is your wife there, or back in Michigan?”
“No, neither.”
Was he divorced? She wanted details on how Sweeney had met his wife, whether they played golf together—anything to move things along. But he lowered his glass and said nothing more. This, too, was like Charlie Schmidt. Short and sweet.
“‘Hunky dory.’” Sweeney smiled. “I bet that’s another one from your guy.”
True, it was. Brenda turned away. She felt a strong impulse to spill the beans, to spill her guts and tell him how, last spring, she and three other women had gone fishing in Minnesota. We were followed by a man, she wanted to tell him. He murdered four people, and I killed him.
An arm settled gently on her shoulders. Brenda focused on the seat in front of her, on the in-flight magazine, and the instructions for escape in an emergency. She nodded thanks, and Sweeney took his arm away.
Spill the beans. How long was it going to take? Almost every time she had an idea or opened her mouth, Charlie Schmidt would be there.
LE BONHEUR
PELICAN BAY
“Hell, it’s not prejudice at all,” Mister B said again. “You get that, Jimmy, that’s why we see eye to eye. You’re a sharp guy, I saw that right off.”
Seeing eye to eye meant being in agreement. In sync. “Well, Mr. B, I don’t exactly—”
“I say you’re smart, and I say you’ll go far,” Mr. B said. “You’re Mexican. Hispanic, Latino, Chicano—” He waved his arm—“whatever the hell you people call it now. The point is, you see how dumb all this bullshit over race is. Christ, all the Jesse Whoozits and Reverend Whatzitts, all in a lather talking bullshit—”
Dale Burlson shook his head and drank from his morning Heineken. If you were in a lather, you were angry about something. But now Burlson’s mother-in-law again entered the room. For the third time in twenty minutes she came to a stop between the Greek columns supporting the condo’s vaulted foyer. Birdlike in a quilted satin robe, she looked like a chess piece on the floor’s black-and-white marble squares.
“Hi,” she said.
“What’s up this time, Mom?”
“Who’s that?”
“This is still Jimmy,” Burlson told her. “You remember Jim, don’t you?”
“Where’s Pinky?”
“At the vet’s, Mom. For a trim. Jim’s going for him real soon.” Smiling at this, Burlson’s mother-in-law turned and wobbled off. She was very attached to her toy poodle. When she was gone, Burlson again shook his head. “Pinky, Pinky, Pinky,” he said.
“She seems good today,” Rivera said. “Good color.”
“Oh, yeah, the color’s great. The mind?” Burlson made the motion he used to illustrate his mother-in-law’s dementia—scrambling eggs in a bowl. He took another long swallow.
The condominium—nine thousand square feet under air—occupied all of Le Bonheur’s top floor. Outside the great room’s floor-to-ceiling plate windows, a broad, unfinished terrace lay shadowed in morning sun. Stacks of tile rested between a diamond-bladed saw and three eyeless cherubs lying on their sides. Yellow nylon ropes had been rigged until the baluster railing was finally in place. Delays were making Burlson more bad-tempered than usual. But tomorrow he would be fishing, in a better mood. He was always full of opinions and used bad language. Shit this, fuck that, chink, greaseball, nigger, kike. But if you worked for such people, you let it go.
“It looks like they’re making good progress,” Rivera said of the terrace.
“Couple more weeks. They’re still waiting on some kind of grout.”
Rising above the yellow ropes and cement dust, the world lifted off and rose with the perfect blue of the Gulf of Mexico. Up here on the thirty-first floor, point blank on the beach at Pelican Bay, the weather could be hypnotic. That was why Dale Burlson had bought six more units. At three to five million a pop, he considered them a steal, the kind of property you could flip before you had to close. Then, as the building was nearing completion, the bottom had dropped out of the high-end of the market.
“Yeah,” Burlson said, looking out, “Betty would’ve loved it. All this—” he gestured to the terrace “—I don’t give a shit, but it was her dream, so there you go.” He took another swallow.
“It’ll be great, sir.”
“Yeah, okay, it’ll keep. But make sure you pick up Pinky. She won’t shut up about the little fucker until you get back. We’ll talk on the boat tomorrow.”
At last free, Rivera turned and moved toward the foyer. There was so much to do before noon, but it pleased him that the idea had come to him in English. That’s how his mind worked now, in American English.
He opened the double doors, turned and waved before easing them closed. Quickly he crossed to the elevator and pushed the button. A familiar hum passed through the reception room’s green marble walls. Green marble was what Betty Burlson had insisted on before her sudden death last June. As the doors parted, Rivera’s phone jingled.
“Ray, what have you got?” He stepped in, and as the doors closed, his cousin explained in Spanish that Mrs. Hudson’s garage opener was stuck. He had no lubricant and was already running behind. He would be able to install the Winslows’ barrier-free ramp, but that meant putting off the Port Royal plumbing job until Monday.
“I don’t like it, Ray. We guaranteed Port Royal for Friday. He’s a good client.”
“Que se joda.”
“Come on, you promised. Speak English.”
“He can go
