Her mouth dropped open. She studied me. “Jake? Is that you?”
“I’ll bet he’s no better with a rifle than he is with a shotgun.”
“Jake! What’s happened? Why are you so…so stinky?”
“Is Nicky here?”
“No. I was making that up. I didn’t know what to say.” She took her hands away from her breasts and now arched her back toward me. Old habits die hard.
Then she laughed. “Jake, if only you could see yourself. Wait here.” She ran into the cabana with little bouncy steps and came out carrying a Polaroid camera. She made me pose while she clicked off a shot of a profoundly odd- looking ex-football player, ex-public defender, ex-a-lot-of-things, including, possibly, ex-lawyer.
“The creature from the black lagoon,” she announced, examining the photograph. “Come inside and get cleaned up. Then tell me what’s going on.”
The house was shaped like a croissant, the architecture nuevo-Mediterranean. Cast-stone columns, terra cotta barrel-tile roof, and patinaed window frames gave the place a look of graceful aging, which was a good trick because it was three years old. Inside, the fabrics and wall coverings were eggplant, aqua, and green. The floors were rough-hewn stone. A staircase to the second floor was made of travertine marble with a sweeping iron-and- mahogany rail. Weathered woods throughout let us know we were close to the sea.
Gina led me to a downstairs bathroom that was all rock: slate, limestone, and granite. The shower opened onto a lanai blooming with purple orchids and white jasmine. A couple of whiffs could make you dizzy. She brought me some industrial-strength soap the gardener uses and some fluffy black towels. Then she left me alone.
For about two minutes.
She came into the shower carrying a loofah sponge and wearing a smile and nothing else. The brush stung my skin, but the only other choice was a chisel. She scrubbed me hard and rinsed me soft. The hot water rose in billows of steam. I was clean and wet and warm when she kissed me with open lips. She pressed herself to me, our bodies squishing under the tumbling spray. She was sleek from the suntan oil, her body warm and catlike. I felt sleepy and soothed, but strangely, not aroused. The fear gone, fatigue was setting in.
She kissed me again, and we traded tongues for a long minute. Still no reaction.
She rested her head on my chest and looked down. “Where’s the Jake I know so well?”
“Somewhere in the Big Cypress,” I said, my words drowned out by the blast of water on tile. “Somewhere on the back of a manatee or on a hardwood hammock. I don’t know, Gina. Too much has happened, and it’s not over yet.”
“Hush. You think too much, and you talk too much.” Keeping her breasts pressed against me, she slithered lower, her tongue cleaning a path down my neck, my chest, my abdomen, and lower still. She stayed crouched there, like a catcher behind the plate, the water bouncing off the top of her downturned head.
After a moment, she looked up, smiling. “Ah, there we are, darling. There’s the Jake I know.”
The master suite had a fine view of the canal and the bay beyond. I was on my back on soft pink sheets in a canopied bed. Gina was curled next to me, her head resting on my chest.
“What did you mean about the shotgun?” Gina whispered.
I told her.
I told her everything I had left out before and added what had happened since. She listened, wincing when I got to the part about a machete and Rick Gondolier, but she didn’t act surprised, and if she grieved, she kept it to herself. I told her how Nicky framed me, and how I misjudged Henry Osceola, and how, when it came down to Jim Tiger or me, I’m the one who got lucky. I told her about diving into the water with shotgun pellets spraying an arc above my head, and I told her about a hardwood hammock with a shiny truck. Then I asked her a question.
“What’s the missing piece of the puzzle? What’s ‘the rest of it’?”
I had the sensation that she was shaking her head, the long butterscotched hair tickling my chest. “I can’t, Jake. Nicky’s still my husband.”
“And you’re loyal to him? After everything I’ve told you? After all you know? After this?” My gesture encompassed the bed. It was a little clumsy, but she knew what I meant.
“It’s too dangerous,” she whispered. “None of this would have happened if you had backed off after the trial. You should have let it die.”
“Nice choice of words.”
“You know what I mean. Why are you stirring everything up?”
“It’s my fault? Is that the way you see it?”
“It’s too big for you, Jake. You think in little bits and pieces, always asking if something is right or wrong. Nicky’s on a different scale entirely. With him, it’s a question of power. Is everything lined up? Can it get done?” She sat up on an elbow and looked at me. “You don’t understand him.”
“You’re wrong. I understand he’s completely immoral.”
“That’s what I mean. You’re judgmental, and as long as you see things in moral terms, you’ll never beat him. You’ll never play by his rules.”
The gods make their own rules. There it was again.
“If it’s being judgmental to determine that murder is wrong, that’s what I am. Your husband killed Tupton and had Gondolier butchered and tried to blast a hole in me that you could toss a bowling ball through.”
“He didn’t kill Tupton,” she said.
“Okay, so two out of three. Time off for good behavior.”
Outside the bedroom window, a cuckoo was singing-brisk cuck-cuck-cucks without the ooo — sounding like rapid-fire laughter.
“Tupton wasn’t murdered, Jake. Really.”
“So tell me.”
She sat up and looked at the clock on the bed stand. “Uh-oh. I’ve got to get moving. I’m meeting Nicky at the club for an early dinner with Mr. Sugar.”
My look told her I didn’t understand.
“Carlos de La Torre. There’s some hearing tomorrow, and Nicky needs to know everything’s set.”
“The Water Management Board,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“I thought it was a done deal. Big Sugar won’t oppose the casino plan.”
“Right, but with Nicky, even after the nail’s driven into the board, he gives it one more whack.”
“Does De La Torre know about the rest of it, Gina?”
“He knows a lot, but not that.” She smiled. “Carlos would not be happy about that, not at all.”
“Carlos,” I said.
She cocked her head at me. “A very handsome man in a very Latino way.” Then she laughed. “Jealous?”
“No, curious.”
“Really, Jake, I’ve got to get going, and I’ve said too much already.” She bounded out of the bed and headed into the master-bath suite, disappearing into a maze of showers, tubs, and makeup mirrors suitable for a Hollywood star. When I heard the water gushing, I got up and went through some dresser drawers. I found a pair of silk pajamas, turquoise and white, with Nicky’s initials embroidered on the breast pocket. In his closet, I pulled out a jaunty sailor’s hat. A nice ensemble, I thought, as I got dressed.
I ran quickly downstairs to the kitchen, grabbed the newspaper from the breakfast nook table, and dashed back up to the bedroom. I snatched the Polaroid camera Gina had brought in from the cabana, found a spot on the dresser that had a clear view of the bed, and pushed the ten-second delay shutter.
I hopped into the bed, showed my best shit-eating grin, held up the newspaper like a hostage in the Middle East, gave the thumbs-up sign, and blinked when the flash lit up the room. I waited the prescribed time and looked at the photo. The pajamas and hat were unmistakable, the canopied bed distinctive in its own right. The newspaper had a headline, HOMICIDE RATE UP. They didn’t know the half of it.
I took off the cap and pajamas and put them back where they belonged. I found a pair of Nicky’s shorts that were too big and a polo shirt that was too small, and got dressed. I borrowed fifty dollars from Gina’s purse, scooped up the photo of the sewer rat taken on the pool deck and the one of the satisfied lover from the bedroom-a bizarre before and after-called a cab, and tiptoed down the stairs.
I left the house without giving Gina the chance to set the odds on seeing me again.
The apartment building once had been seafoam green with sunny-yellow racing stripes darting through the
