“Same as always, Charlie. Things are seldom what they seem.”
“Correct! Non semper ea sunt quae videntur.”
“You took the words right out of my mouth,” I told him.
A handsome white ibis sat on the hood of a Dodge pickup. We pulled in next to the truck, and the bird flapped its black-tipped wings and took off, but not before leaving behind a memento on the windshield. Next to us, two charter buses from Wachula were disgorging their elderly passengers. I helped Charlie Riggs out of his shoulder harness, and we walked into the bingo hall, a gleaming white building the size of a convention hall.
Inside, the pot-of-gold and pull-tab video games blinked their red and green lights, dispensing coupons redeemable for cash. No jangle of coins here, but these were slot machines just the same. Slide a twenty-dollar bill into the slot, get twenty plays. If three oranges come up, you win. Three gold bars pay top prize of $5,592. Nearby, in a perimeter room, a game of thirty-number bingo was under way.
In the main hall, the crowd was still forming for the early-bird game. According to the signs, the games would continue until 4:00 A.M. Some of the old folks were ambling through the cafeteria line, bringing fried chicken and mashed potatoes with iced tea back to their seats. The Wachula retirees-white shoes and bright plaid outfits-were trooping toward the tables. Their voices, chirpy and expectant coming through the door, dropped into respectful murmurs as they entered the main hall, their cathedral of chance and providence.
In the center of the hall was a small motorboat on a trailer, one of the many prizes of the night. Television monitors blinked out the numbers before they were called. “B, five; O, sixty-four.” The players, women in polyester slacks, men in bowling shirts, turned plastic ink bottles upside down and squooshed the sponge heads on their cards to record a number.
“Jake, come have a look at this.”
Charlie was toddling toward a glass showcase behind the motor-boat. Inside the case was what looked like a miniature town. Scale models of a main street of three-story buildings. Shops on the ground floor, offices and apartments above. Beige stucco walls, orange barrel-tile roofs, a faintly Spanish look. A few blocks away, a semicircle of twelve-story condos surrounded by a moat. An elementary school with tiny figures of children and even an Irish setter frolicking in a grassy yard. Gas stations and a bus depot and a familiar fast-food palace with golden arches. A golf course wended its way around bodies of water.
A tasteful green-on-white sign announced:
CYPRESS ESTATES
ANOTHER FLORIO ENTERPRISES COMMUNITY
Reservation Deposits Now Being Accepted
It could be anywhere, this generic white-bread community. You could stick it west of Boca Raton near the turnpike or down in Homestead by the old air force base. But it was intended to be built somewhere else entirely. Inside the glass play world were adornments not usually seen in models of dream towns.
Plexiglas saw grass.
Miniature wood storks and flamingos and spoonbills, lazing in shallow water.
Cypress trees draped in cotton, spray-painted to resemble Spanish moss.
An airboat seemingly skimming across the saw grass.
A great blue heron-its wings swept high-in the sky above the man-made Glades, suspended in space by a single thread.
Alligators, green and scaly, in a moat surrounded by a concrete wall.
A restored Indian village, or at least a designer’s idea of one, with dugout canoes, campfires, and natives dressed in loincloths pointing bow and arrow at a Lilliputian deer.
Charlie was thumbing through one of the brochures stacked by the display case. He read aloud: “‘Back to nature. Enjoy the beauty of the Everglades as no one ever has.’”
“Or will again,” I said.
Charlie tapped his cold pipe against the glass case. “They don’t show you the infrastructure, do they? You don’t see the bulldozers destroying the egrets’ nests. You don’t see the fill turning the water to slime or the sewers or the dredging or the leaks from the gas station’s tanks. You can’t hear the infernal racket of the pile drivers or smell the fumes of the diesel engines. You don’t see the Styrofoam cups or the plastic six-pack holders that strangle the fish and the birds.”
“Easy, Charlie, you’ll pop a blood vessel.”
“Surely you don’t approve of this, do you, Jake?”
“No. I just can’t believe it will ever be built. Think of the permits required. County, state, Army Corps of Engineers, Department of Resource Management. Even with all Nicky’s lawyers and lobbyists, I don’t see the project getting the green light. It’ll be just another developer’s pipe dream, a model under glass.”
“Let’s hope you’re right,” Charlie said, “and if the government can’t stop it, maybe the environmental groups can tie up Florio with a lawsuit. The way the courts work, it’d take years, and by then, he could lose his financing or be focused on other deals. It happens all the time.”
That sounded familiar. “That’s what Gina said Nicky was worried about, an environmental suit. Nicky must have been infuriated that somebody he considered a pipsqueak could wield such power…”
“Motive,” Charlie mused. “Would that be sufficient motive to kill a man, to keep him from suing?”
I didn’t answer. My attention was diverted.
“Jake?”
Charlie’s gaze followed mine. On a balcony above us, uniformed employees scanned the floor of the bingo hall. A man and a woman stood at the railing. He was in his thirties with thick sun-bleached hair tied back in a pony tail. He wore one of those shapeless black sport coats with the sleeves pushed up. Thick, veined forearms. Even from here, I could make out a diamond-stud earring sparkling in the glare of the overhead lights.
Pretty-boy looks with a bonecrusher jawline to keep from being too pretty. He wasn’t smiling, but I imagined perfect pearly whites, one of those guys with a natural ease with women. I’d been around enough to recognize the type, an oily charm, all his brains in his bikini briefs.
The man said something to the woman, who touched his sleeve and laughed. She said something back to him, and it must have been hilarious, too. If this were the 1940s, you would say they were laughing gaily. I’d been right. The guy had a great grin.
Their eyes locking on each other, they didn’t look our way. Or any other way. There is the cliche about lovers being alone in a crowd. But like a lot of cliches, it is based on truth. The rest of the world be damned. Sirens could be wailing, the building could be ablaze. No matter.
I had seen the look in a woman’s eyes before. I had seen the look in this woman’s eyes before.
Next to me, Charlie was stirring. “Say, Jake, isn’t that Star…?”
“Gina,” I said.
“Whatever. Unless my old eyes deceive me, that ponytailed gentleman is not her husband.”
“Rick Gondolier, and he’s no gentleman,” I said. “He handles Nicky’s gambling business.”
“Perhaps that’s not all of Nicky’s that he handles. Goodness, boy, do you know your neck and ears have turned quite red? Either you have a touch of dengue fever, or…”
Gondolier leaned close, and the two of them gently kissed. Not a passionate kiss. Only their lips touched. But the kiss lingered and seemed to reflect a silent affirmation of something more. I am not an expert on body language, but I know a thing or two about kissing. This one spoke of a comfort level between the two, of a naturalness. It clearly said that they were lovers.
“Jake, you’re not involved with that woman again, are you?”
That woman sounded like a communicable disease. I didn’t answer him.
Charlie sighed. “ Amantes sunt amentes. Lovers are such lunatics.”
They turned around, Gondolier’s hand lightly falling across Gina’s shoulder, guiding her. Then they stepped away from the railing and disappeared.
“Well, now,” Charlie said, “isn’t that the man you wanted to see, the one in charge of the gambling?”
“I’ve seen enough,” I said, and started for the exit. I didn’t stop to fill out a raffle ticket or try my luck at the electronic slots.
Charlie trundled after me, straining to keep up. “A bit huffy, are we?”
I didn’t say a word.
