Joey put his sunglasses on again, twisted himself in his chair, and peered past the pool, the tennis courts, the hibiscus hedge. 'A road.'
'Then what?'
'The beach.'
'Then what?'
'Water,' he said. 'I see water.'
'Good, Joey. Now doesn't that make you feel calm, all that nice cool green water? Doesn't it calm you down?'
'The truth, Bert? Fuck no. Not at all. I'm like itchy all over. What would make me feel calm is if I knew what the hell I was doing down here, if I thought I was heading for a payday.'
'Kid,' said Bert, with the sad patience of a junior high school teacher. 'You're not paying attention. This is what I'm telling you. A payday would make you calm, maybe you oughta look to the water for a payday. That's where the money comes from down here. Always has. Always will.'
Joey stared off at the shallow green ocean, but the ocean didn't talk to him. He pulled at his chin, he squirmed in his seat. Bert kept playing solitaire.
'Look what passes for old money down here,' the retired gangster continued. 'The Bergens. The Clevelands. You've hearda those families, right? How you think they got rich? They were pirates. Yeah. Legal pirates. There's a reef around five miles out from here. The water in between, it's called the Florida Straits. Now, ships useta all the time run up onna reef and sink. These families that are so rich now? They lived in shacks by the water. Shacks! They peed innee ocean. They didn't even have glass inna windows.
'But they were smart. They built lookout towers. A ship goes down, boom, they jump in their boats and row out the Straits. They rowed out there in squalls, in hurricanes. And the law of the sea says the first guy who gets there, it's his boat. He owns whatever's on there-silver, jewelry, cash, whatever. Course, sometimes it helped to have a shotgun, to prove you were there first. So these snooty families that get hospital wings named after them, they started, like, as hijackers.'
Joey was still staring at the water; his hairline was crawling. 'So, Bert, you're telling me I should get a fucking rowboat and wait for a shipwreck?'
'Nah, forget about it,' said the older man. 'This was a hundred years ago. These days, there's treasure salvors, it's big business. There's this one guy, Clem Sanders-'
'Bert,' Joey blurted, 'so what are you telling me? I'm like dyin' heah.'
'What am I telling you?' Bert repeated. 'Joey, I'm sevenny-tree years old, I been dead, I hafta all the time know what I'm saying? I'm just thinkin' out loud, like trying to clue you in on the local traditions. 'Cause they matter, Joey. Remember that. Local traditions. They matter in New York, they matter here. Where's the goddamn dog?'
Bert reached down underneath his chair, stretched his fingers toward the quivering chihuahua, and looked skyward to check the position of the sun. Then he stood up halfway with the chair lifted against his shrunken backside and moved a foot or so around the table. 'You're a pain innee ass,' he said to the dog. Then, to Joey: 'I gotta keep him in the shade or he like dries out. He went inta convulsions once. Almost popped his eyes right out of his head. Fuck you laughing at?'
'Bert,' Joey said, 'you weigh like a hundred seventy pounds and the dog like weighs four ounces. Wouldn't it be easier to move the dog?'
'Dog don't wanna move. Dog don't wanna do nothing but shit onna floor and now and then jerk off on a table leg. Mind your fucking business.'
'I ain't got no business. That's why I'm here.'
'Right,' said Bert. 'So think about water. This is what I'm telling you. This Clem Sanders guy, this treasure guy, he goes around telling people that a whole third of all the gold and silver and jewels that's ever been mined has ended up at the bottom of the sea.'
'A third of everything?' said Joey. ' 'Zat true?'
Bert turned his palms up and shrugged. 'How the fuck should I know if it's true? I only know this guy says it.' He put a red three on a black four.
Joey went back to staring at the green water and listened to the dry rustle of the palms. 'So Bert,' he began, trying to keep his tone businesslike and to choke back the rising wave of panic, the unspeakable fear that he might go broke, come up with no ideas, and return, ashamed, to Queens. 'I don't know what I'm gonna do. But let's say I come up with a way to pull some bucks outta the ocean. We gonna be partners, or what?'
Bert pursed his full and restless lips, turned over his last card, and, stymied, gathered up his losing hand. 'Kid,' he said, 'it's nice of you to ask. But I'm through. Me, I'm all talk and no action, and I like it that way. It's real easy. And I'll tell ya something, Joey. The longer you stay in Florida, the more you appreciate what's easy.'
— 10 -
It was unusual for anyone to knock at the gate of the compound, since half of Key West knew the combination to the lock. But several days after Joey's visit to the Paradiso, at about ten-thirty in the morning, there was a rapping at the wooden door. Steve the naked landlord was already in the pool with his beers and his ashtray in front of him, his paperback spread open on the damp tiles. Peter and Claude, the bartending blonds, were having breakfast in their sarongs. So Joey straightened his sunglasses and went to the gate.
It was Bert the Shirt. He was wearing a salmon- colored pullover of the finest Egyptian cotton, with a mesh of subtly contrasting buff at the collar and sleeves, and he had Don Giovanni cradled in the crook of his arm. 'Joey, there's something I gotta talk to you about. Got a minute?'
'Bert,' said Joey, surprised and grateful to be visited, 'I got nothing but time. Come on in.' For a fleeting moment he was embarrassed about receiving a guest in his bathrobe and slippers, and about the naked body in the pool and the pretty men in their pink and turquoise silks. But the feeling passed. This was the Keys; this was home now. It was the land of take-it-or-leave-it and no apologies. 'Did I tell you I lived here?'
'Carlos did,' said Bert, walking slowly along the gravel path between the jasmine and the banana plants. 'The bolita guy. He had you followed. You didn't know that?'
Rather than admit it, Joey changed the subject. 'I didn't know you talked to Carlos.'
'Carlos talks to me,' the older man corrected. He stopped walking and gave Joey a soft little slap on the cheek, a mix of affection, scolding, and warning. 'Joey, I'm telling you to relax down here, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't pay attention, eh?'
'Yeah, Bert. You're right. Bert, this is Steve. Steve, this is Bert, an old family friend.'
'Morning,' Steve said. Then he smiled. Sunlight glinted off his moist freckled forehead and red mustache.
'Whatcha reading?' Bert asked.
Steve turned the paperback over and looked at the cover to remind himself. 'Japs,' he said. 'Submarines.' Then he smiled.
Joey led the way into the cottage and motioned Bert onto a settee in the Florida room. Shafts of sunlight sliced in through the louvered windows and threw stripes across the sisal rug. 'Coffee, Bert?'
'No, Joey, no thanks. Siddown. This is kinda serious. Joey, you been in touch with your old man since you left?'
Joey was halfway into his chair when he became certain that Bert was about to tell him his father was dead. Icicles scratched at the inside of his chest, and his forehead started instantly to pound. Bert read his face.
'Joey, no, it's nothing like that. He's O.K., he's fine. But tell me, you been in touch with him?'
Joey sprang back from his flash of guilt and grief with a moment of bravado. 'Shit, Bert, I left New York to get away from him.'
'Come on, Joey. No bullshit now. Just yes or no. You been in touch with him or not?'
Joey was stung by the older man's sternness, and there was a note almost of whining in his answer. 'No, Bert, I haven't. I swear. Fuck is this about?'
Bert leaned forward, put his dog down on the rug, and dropped his voice to a raspy whisper. 'A coupla guys
