I took a long hit on the scotch. My eyes watered, and beads of sweat appeared on my forehead. “Why should she want to hurt you?”
“Good question. Why has she fooled around on every man she’s married? I didn’t know, so I asked her to see a shrink. She goes, and after twenty grand or so, the shrink says she has low self-esteem. Doesn’t feel she deserves the big house and the boat and the servants, and a man who adores her. So she tries to sabotage it every time, and she does a damn good job. As for Jake Lassiter, you’re her safe harbor. You don’t try to buy her-you’re just a regular guy from the old days who shared some good times with her. So she starts to develop intimacy with you, which frightens her, and she bolts again.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I don’t want to lose her. If you’re dead, she’ll mourn for you. She’ll blame me, but even worse, she’ll blame herself, lowering her esteem even more, fulfilling the prophecy-that’s what the shrink called it-that she doesn’t deserve happiness. So she’ll fall into bed with the next guy, or maybe even leave me.”
“And if I’m alive, what then?”
“You tell me, Counselor.”
“Gina will come back to me. She always does.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Right. If you’re happy and healthy and doing your own thing, sooner or later she’ll run back to her safe harbor. On the other hand, after tonight’s little show, you might be inclined to turn the lady down.”
My head was spinning off course. I imagined Nicky Florio asking a psychiatrist whether killing me would be therapeutic for his wife. I imagined a bearded, pipe-smoking shrink in a cardigan telling him to bond with me first, discuss our common ground, then consider whether his desire to kill me stemmed from his unorganized, primitive id or a desire to help his wife.
“So, bottom line, Jake, we’re competitors, enemies where Gina is concerned. She’s my wife, but you knew her first. You’ve got history, but you’re playing on my territory, so I make the rules. Are you with me?”
The gods make their own rules, I thought, the phrase still rattling around in my head. “I’m not sure.”
“Think about it, Jake. What have you learned tonight?”
“A straight beats three of a kind.”
Florio was shaking his head. “You always made her laugh. She told me that. But I don’t think you’re that funny. I think you use the wise-guy stuff to avoid reality, and, Jake, my friend, reality is staring you in the face.”
I sensed Diaz shifting his feet. Maybe he was tired of standing there, or maybe he was getting ready to put bullet holes in the white cotton sofa, a goodly portion of which was covered by me.
“I spent all this time with you,” Florio said, “trying to teach you a lesson. I wanted you to see Gondolier get it. It was important for you to understand your situation, your lack of options. I wanted you to know what happens with just one fuckup.”
I polished off the rest of the scotch. It was suddenly very warm in the house on stilts built without permits. “Message received, loud and clear.”
“Good. Because I want to give you a chance. I’m offering you the benefit of my wisdom and experience, and you sit here and crack wise. Don’t you see what I’m trying to teach-”
“Rule number two,” I said. “Co-opt the enemy. Infiltrate, buy ’em off.”
His smile seemed genuine. “You got it right. I want to keep you where I can see you.”
“Which is where?”
He stood up, swinging a leg over the back of the chair and spinning it away. He walked over to the sofa and looked down at me. “Stand up, Jake.”
Now what?
Diaz moved a little to his left, getting Florio out of his line of sight. Or was it his line of fire?
I stood. I had become so obedient so quickly.
Florio extended a hand. I reached out, tentatively, and he shook it firmly. “Welcome aboard, Jake.” He turned toward Diaz. “Hey, Guillermo, let go of your gun and shake hands with my new partner.”
Chapter 16
Dawn was an orange glow to the east, a chattering of birds, a succession of splashes and ripples in the water below. In the distance, I heard what sounded like thunderclaps, but after a moment they seemed to be a series of dull, thudding explosions. The morning light cut across a table in what could have been a bedroom in the southeast corner of the house. But there was no room for a bed. A table took up most of the entire room. It held a larger version of the scale model of Cypress Estates that Charlie and I had seen at the bingo hall. The same shops and apartments, burger palaces and gas stations, the lagoons and wood storks. But other things, too.
The golf course.
Parking garages.
Miniature buses. Dozens of them.
And a huge building on stilts, a cream-colored flying saucer of a building that looked like a domed stadium. Next to it, connected by a shaded catwalk over the water, was a miniature version of the same building.
“Know what you’re looking at, Jake?”
“Looks like a modern sports complex, a football stadium next to a basketball arena. Kind of like the Vet and the Forum, except your stadium is domed.”
“This ain’t Philadelphia, Jake. The small building will be the Living Everglades Museum. The roof is retractable, lets the sun shine in. Rain, too. It’ll have a zoo, a herbarium, a living garden, an aviary, an electronically controlled habitat of every species of life found in the Everglades. We’re going to grow the plants and raise the animals and make it all accessible. I’m the guy who’s going to preserve the Everglades. I was going to make Tupton the executive director of the museum and living habitat. I’d fund everything. Now look at this.” He pointed to a remote section of the model, a hardwood hammock with several airboats pulled up to a dock. Models of dark- skinned men and women sat around campfires near miniature chickee huts. “Our authentic Indian village. No alligator wrestling, no T-shirt stands. The real thing. Indians living and fishing and cooking for everyone to see the old ways.”
He saw the look I was giving him. “You didn’t think this stuff was important to me, did you, Jake? You thought it was all about money. Well, you’re wrong. You and Tupton and all the do-gooders think in cliches and stereotypes. A man’s a developer, he must be a robber baron who doesn’t give a shit about the birds. Damn, it’s not that simple. I grew up hunting in the forest near Ocala. I used to fish for bass in Lake Okeechobee. Don’t you understand I agreed with Tupton on the goals? It’s his methods that sucked. Lawsuits against developers, a freeze on building permits in Monroe County. Double the impact fees in Collier County. Lying down in front of the bulldozers for the TV cameras. That’s all crap.”
“I don’t get it. If you were going to do all this, why was Tupton fighting you?”
“He wasn’t, not at first. I needed his support for the project, and in the beginning he was receptive. At least, he said he’d listen.”
“Until he saw the golf course…”
“Fuck the golf course! The golf course is diddly-squat. Until he saw the casino. ”
Florio pointed to what I thought was the domed stadium. “Look at it, Jake. Forget bingo. Say hello to blackjack, roulette, craps, slots, keno, poker, the whole works. And look what else. Unlike Vegas, it’s got windows, a walkway three hundred sixty degrees around the building and into the museum. Bring the kids for a nature walk. You can look out over the slough, commune with nature, watch snowy egrets soar…”
“Draw to an inside straight,” I said.
“It’s not funny, Jake. I had everything lined up, but Tupton blows it.”
Nicky Florio sat there thinking about it, and I waited for him to tell me the story. It didn’t take long.
“At the party, Tupton wanders into my den and sees the plans for the casino. When he came across the
