the pavement, three punches before he figured out he was being hit. He went down thinking, Man’s pretty fast for a fat guy.
The ringing in his ears had just about quit when Negrito stomped on his neck. Leo heard a voice from somewhere far away say he wasn’t fucking around, but Leo didn’t think he was.
By the end of the month, Sailor Randy’s slowed down. Bryce Peyton cut back security, and Harry only worked the money nights. He still had the money he’d gotten from Sven and Javier, though, and with only half his pay going to the Wind N’ Sand, he was, in fact, accumulating cash.
The big news was, he had a genuine thing going with Aggie. She lived in an apartment complex in Sunrise, and they shopped for groceries and rented videos of blackand- white gangster movies. Harry slept at her place a couple of nights a week.
Aggie liked to cook, and Harry couldn’t get over how cheap you ate when you made your own food. For eight or nine bucks, the two of them were stuffed and had things left over besides, to eat another night.
Aggie’s dream was to be a writer. Harry could identify with wanting to be something other than what you were, but a writer? There was no money in the writing racket unless you hit big with something they turned into a movie. Otherwise, you were wasting your time. And writing took up a lot of time.
She was the theater critic for a weekly arts rag. The gig paid next to nothing, but she did get to see a lot of mediocre theater for free. Harry went with her once, but he was snoring before intermission, and Aggie didn’t invite him again.
The paper had a predictable “anti-establishment” point of view, a way of looking at the world that Aggie didn’t share, but since she was only critiquing bad plays, nobody cared about her politics. As a matter of fact, Aggie was quite the little capitalist, investment newsletters in the mailbox, on the phone with her broker in the morning.
Besides her newspaper duties, Aggie was hard at some secret project stashed in her computer files. Harry bugged her to show it to him. She said it wouldn’t make sense to anybody but her, and when he pressed it, she changed the subject. He guessed this made them about even. She was in the dark about a big chunk of his life, too.
Harry was lounging around one morning, leafing through Aggie’s hundreds of CDs, and she was trying to get rid of him so she could get some writing done, but since Harry didn’t have anywhere to go or anything to do, he was stalling. The TV was tuned to some cable business show and something came up about one of Aggie’s many stock picks. She clicked off the music and un-muted the TV.
“These fucking guys,” Harry said. “Cheerleaders.”
The screen flashed to a dark-haired good-looking guy extolling the virtues of some company Aggie was long in. Buy, the guy said. That made Aggie feel good.
“Harry,” she said, “this guy looks just like you. It’s uncanny.”
His name flashed under his image. Arthur Healy.
“You think you two could be related?”
Harry said, “Uh, yes, I think we could be. He’s my brother.”
“Your brother.”
“I think you heard me right.”
“You never said a word about him.”
“It never came up before. What’s the big deal? He’s on TV all the time. They gotta put somebody on these shows, right?”
“How come you two have different last names?”
Harry was about to say, What are you talking about? But he pulled himself up and said, “That’s a longer story.”
She said, “I’ve got time.”
“I don’t want to talk about him,” Harry said, and when she didn’t say anything, he said, “I just don’t, okay?”
Aggie looked at him like she wanted to say no, but what she said was, “Okay.”
It was a Wednesday night. Aggie had roasted a chicken with garlic and carrots and potatoes, and they were sitting around the remains of the meal, discussing that night’s rental,
Aggie was a huge Al Pacino fan, but it was the plain-looking guy who played the sidekick, John Cazale, who made the movie worth sitting through another time. Aggie couldn’t picture him, but Harry told her she’d know him for sure once she saw him, he was the one who didn’t go to Vietnam in
Aggie was clanking dishes around in the sink and Harry said, “I’ll get that,” because that’s what he always said, but she went on washing and he didn’t argue. Back in the living room, he found the remote control between two couch cushions and pinched the TV to life.
The news was on. A DEA spokesman was announcing the largest cocaine seizure anywhere, ever. If it wasn’t the biggest and the best with these guys, it was nothing. The anchorwoman blah-blah-blahed over footage of the haul, half a ton was the claim, DEA agents proudly wearing DEA caps and DEA vests. The picture cut to a head- and-shoulders of the anchoress in a hideous yellow blazer and door-knocker earrings, puffed-up hair frozen in place.
It reminded Harry of the gangster movies where the bad guys always hear the law is after them on the radio. They just happen to be tuned to that station.
And Harry just happened to be tuned to this one.
The anchoress said, “Miami Beach Police today released a composite drawing of a suspect in the March Ocean Drive slaying of a Dutch businessman.”
Cut to Composite Harry sporting the crew cut he’d let grow out, and the four or five days worth of beard he’d had at the time.
“Persons who may have seen this man are strongly urged to contact Miami Beach Detectives at 970-TIPS. Any information will be kept strictly confidential.”
Cut to a promo of the weather. A graphic under the lady’s madly grinning grill teased, Naughty or Nice?
Composite Harry’s features were close enough to real Harry’s, but the eyes, the eyes were scary close, and if you were a cop and you set your lights on Harry, you’d want to talk to him about what happened that night on Ocean Drive. Or if you were a ditzy chick who recognized Harry from Sailor Randy’s, and you were clicking your way around the parallel TV universe, you might be tempted to call that number. Likewise if you were the clerk who wore holey t-shirts to your job, where Harry rented movies.
Chain-smoking through
He was over the shock of running into his composite self on the cable waves. Right now, he was in desperate need of a plan. Before he executed it, whatever it turned out to be, he was going to tell Aggie everything. Most of it. Maybe. At the high cost of lying to himself, he’d enjoyed this four-week breather, but it was worse than dishonest not to think these cozy domestic moments had definite expiration dates. They were about to come due.
She misread his state of mind. When the movie ended she said, “I’ll drive you back to the hotel if you want,” but he didn’t want that. He wasn’t sure it’d be safe.
Aggie went to bed and Harry told her he’d be right in, he wanted to smoke some more and think some more, and after about an hour, when he walked into the bedroom, she was asleep. He slid in next to her and stared into the dark.
He tried to remember the first job he’d pulled. How old was he when they used to duck into supermarkets and drop steaks into the pockets they’d sewn inside the winter coats they wore till May, Harry and Ken Lupo and Gary Paris? Snatching purses from nightclubs they snuck into through side doors? The years ticked by and it all
