Eddie went into the stinking bathroom. A dirty glass sat on a shelf above the sink. Eddie turned on the tap. Rusty water trickled out. After a minute or so it cleared slightly. Eddie washed the glass, rubbing it clean inside and out with his fingers, then filled it.
He returned to the bedroom. JFK’s eyes were still closed.
“Water,” Eddie said.
Not opening his eyes, JFK said, “You know we all ninety-nine percent water? All humanity? So it be the water have this disease, not me. All I be needing to do is piss out that sick water and fill up with clean. Abracadabra- problem solve.” His eyes opened. “You believe there truth in that?” he said.
“I’m not a doctor,” Eddie replied, coming to the side of the mattress and extending the glass.
JFK tried to sit up, could not. He raised his hand. It shook. “So weak, man,” he said. “I was never in this life a big strong white hunter like you, but …” His hand flopped down at his side.
Eddie sat on the mattress. He put his hand behind JFK’s head, feeling the dampness in his tightly curled hair and the fever in the scalp beneath. He raised the glass to JFK’s mouth. JFK’s lips parted. Eddie poured in the water, slowly. JFK’s Adam’s apple, prominent in his fleshless neck, bobbed up and down. He drank half the glass, then grunted and shook his head. Eddie lowered him back down.
JFK breathed rapid, shallow breaths. “Down to ninety-eight percent now, man. Maybe ninety-seven.” His breathing slowed. “Water, water everywhere,” he said. “How true it be, those things they say in church.”
“Water, water everywhere’s not from church,” Eddie said.
“Sure it is,” said JFK, “sure it is. The gospel truth I strayed away from all my born days. Like my brothers, Franco and Dime.” His eyes shifted to Eddie. “You be different from your own brother.”
“In what way?”
“Not the same.” He licked his lips.
“More water?”
JFK shook his head. “Too hard,” he said. His eyes closed.
“You were in New York,” Eddie said.
JFK nodded, barely.
“You saw Jack.”
He nodded again.
Why?”
“Old times,” said JFK. “And him so rich, I be wondering if he could spare a little material advance for old JFK.”
“Did he?”
“Fifty dollars. U.S.” A faint smile appeared on JFK’s face.
Fifty dollars: exactly what Uncle Vic had got. It must have been Jack’s standard handout. “When was this?” Eddie asked.
The smile vanished. “Two years ago. Maybe three. The sickness already have me in its coils then, but not so strong.” He opened his eyes, looked at the Marley poster, then at Eddie. “You be in Switzerland at the time.”
“Switzerland?”
“Doing finance.”
“Who told you that?” said Eddie, rising.
JFK shrank back on the mattress. “Your brother. I aks about you. Feeling bad about how you lose your trial in the distant past. And that what he say. Switzerland.”
Eddie reached down and took JFK’s head in his hands; not hard-at least, he didn’t think it was hard. “Are you listening to me?” he said. “I want you to listen carefully.”
JFK licked his lips. “I be listening,” he said, almost too softly to hear.
“Then get this straight. I just got out. I did fifteen years for a crime I knew nothing about. Your crime.”
“Fifteen years?”
Eddie took his hands off JFK, rose, walked to the tarpapered window, peered through one of the coin-sized holes. He saw a goat straining its tether to get to the leaves of a dusty bush just out of reach.
There was a noise behind him. Eddie turned, saw JFK crawling desperately off the mattress. He got hold of the chair, pulled himself up, his movements weak and agitated at the same time; trying to reach eye level with Eddie. He gasped for breath: “But I tries to warn you, man. On the boat radio.”
“Warn me about what?”
“Mr. Packer he call ahead to the harbor police in Lauderdale, man. For reporting a stolen boat. No problem, except I know what be on this stolen boat, man. I get on the radio in the bar, to be warning you don’ go to no Lauderdale. But Mr. Packer he come in the bar, see me, shut off the radio.”
“Did he know what was on board?”
“No, man. It be just the three of us know.”
“The three of you?”
JFK held up three fingers, long and delicate, counted them off one at a time.
“Me.”
Eddie nodded.
“Mandy.”
Eddie nodded again.
JFK touched his third finger. “And Jack.”
“Jack?”
“Jack your brother.”
“Jack was in on it?” An image came to him, lit by a beach fire: Jack’s hands and forearms, scratched as if by heavy gardening.
“Equal partners,” said JFK. “I the owner of the ganja, Mandy she have the buyer in Miami, Jack have the boat. I be aksing you first, but you was saying no to me.” JFK’s body, supported by his grip on the card-table chair, began to tremble. The feet of the chair rattled on the floor.
Jack had been in on it. That explained why the search for JFK had been a sham-a real investigation would have implicated him too-but it didn’t explain everything. “Did Jack know Packer called the harbor cops?”
“Sure he know. We all right there in the bar-me, Packer, Jack.”
“And Jack didn’t try to stop him?”
“He try. He say why be making it police matters? Packer he say to teach you respect for property. Not just the boat-the girl too, that be his system of thinking. They argue back and forth.”
“But Jack didn’t tell him about the dope?”
“How he do that without he incriminating hisself? Instead he tell Mr. Packer come out on the beach, for talking private. That give me the chance to call you. But Mr. Packer he smart. He come running back in, rip the plug out of the wall.”
“That was all?” Eddie said.
“All?”
“All it took to stop my brother?”
JFK thought for a moment. “Like he could hit Mr. Packer on the head or thing like that?”
“If he had to.”
JFK shook his head. “No way,” he said. “Mr. Packer he use his hold on your brother.”
“What hold?”
“He say one more trick and you don’ be gettin’ the seven and a half percent.”
“That stopped him?”
“Seven and a half percent of everyt’ing, man. The hotel, the time share, the golf, the marina. Could have been millions, maybe. Millions. You understand the forces of the situation?”
Eddie understood. Understanding had a physical component; at first it was all physical: a light-headedness, as though he were much too tall, and fragile, like some strange bird. Then came the mental part, the fact of what Jack had done to him and the way it had happened. But not how Jack could have done it to him. He wanted one thing: to ask Jack that question.
Eddie stood motionless in JFK’s hot room, unconscious of passing time. His mind was far away, in a cold northern place of pirate games, of hockey, of falling through the ice. He thought of all that, and more, but failed to
