security check on telephones, and so the next and more radical part of Joey's answer did not immediately sink in. 'In a deli next to where I work. Where're you?'
'Me?' Sal said. 'Inna parking lot of the Airline Diner, out near La Guardia. 'Scuse me if I gotta yell. Lotta fuckin' planes going by. Hey, wait a second. Did you say where you work?'
'You picked up on that, huh?' said Joey. 'Unbefuckinglievable, huh? Yeah, I got a job.'
'Doing what?' Sal yelled, above the whine of a landing jet.
'Real estate. Sort of. I stand onna corner and con people into going to look at these condos. Time-snare, they call it. Starting to make a little bit of money.'
'Joey, that's great,' Sal said, and though he meant it, he could not keep out of his voice some of the same doubt and sourness that had crept in when his younger pal had first said he was heading south. It had to do with watching someone you care about go someplace you know that you will never follow. 'So you haven't taken over the rackets yet?'
Joey laughed into the phone. 'Hey, I tried. Fact, I got some stories, Sal, you'll shit. Probably I'll try again sometime. But ya know, what I was tryin' to do, it was too much too soon. The rules down here, the traditions, everything's different. Up north the money comes outta the street, down here it comes outta the water.'
'Fuck does that mean?' shouted Sal Giordano.
'That's what I gotta figure out before I try again,' said Joey. 'And inna meantime I'm hooking tourists for forty bucks a couple. How are things up there?'
Sal hesitated as a plane screamed past. 'Up here it's like eighteen degrees, old ladies are falling down onnee ice, and I'm freezing my nuts off.'
'I'm not asking for the weather report, Sal. How're things?'
Sal hesitated again, though this time there was no airplane. 'Not great, Joey. It's a very tense time up here. Very tense.'
'The cops?'
'Nah, not the cops. Cops are pretty much leaving us alone. It's among our own people. There's a lotta mistrust, lotta bad feeling. Some guys have been disappearing. People are talking like maybe there's gonna be war.'
' 'Zis about Charlie Ponte's emeralds?'
'Fuck you know about that?' Sal asked, and even though he was talking to his adopted kid brother, the former runt who never won a fight and was never entrusted with any but the dullest and most trivial errands, such was the mood of wariness among members of the Queens and Brooklyn Mafia families that he could not quite squelch a note of suspicion. 'You know more than you did when you was up here.'
'I got a friend down here,' Joey said. It sounded like, and was, a boast. 'You remember a guy named Bert the Shirt?'
'Sure I do,' said Sal, above the jet noise. 'Good man. But wait, ain't he the guy that dropped dead onna courthouse steps?'
'Yup. He kicked the bucket. But they brought him back, and the Pope let him retire. People still look to him on Florida business, though.'
'Joey,' said Sal, 'do yourself a favor-don't get curious about this. It's bad, I'm telling you. Your old man, they finally made him consigliere, but it's not like they're doing him a favor, the way things are. Everyone's like getting ready for a siege. Practically every day there's sit-downs, everybody plotting, trying to figure out who's with who. Your brother Gino, he's tryin' so hard to look brave it's ridiculous. It's a fucking mess.'
'So Sal, get away, take a vacation. Come down here and relax awhile. You'll love it. You're like the only person I miss from the whole fucking city.'
' Marrone, Joey. Think. With what's going on, it would only be like the stupidest thing in the world to suddenly show up in Florida. Besides, it wouldn't be doing you any favor to show these guys you're buddy- buddy with the family. That's just asking for trouble.'
Joey frowned at the coin box and tugged at the collar of his pink shirt. 'You're right, Sal, I guess you're right. Maybe not now. It's just that I'd like to see ya sometime.'
'Sometime. I'll get down there sometime.' Sal said it like he didn't believe it would ever happen. A jet seemed to be revving up next to the phone booth. 'So listen,' he screamed, 'you stay outta trouble down there. You got any messages you want me to take to anyone? Your old man? Your brother?'
Joey looked out the window of his phone booth, at the life of a Key West deli. A guy with a shaved head was making conch salad sandwiches. A girl with her boobs hanging out of an undershirt was sucking mango juice through a straw. Outside, it was eighty- two degrees, people were not worrying about tapped telephones or about being murdered by their colleagues, and Joey was suddenly very grateful to be right where he was, doing just what he was doing, nothing more and nothing less. 'No, Sal,' he said. 'No messages. No messages for anybody.'
— 14 -
'Hi, folks, how ya doin'?… Beautiful day, huh?… Y' enjoying Fantasy Island?… Great. Where ya from?… Minnesota, whaddya know. Me, I never been to Minnesota, but hey, there's lotsa places I never been. Minnesota, that's where the Packers play, right? Nah, wait a minute, what's wrong with me, that's Wisconsin, that's the other side of the lake or whatever it is they got up there. Minnesota, that's the Vikings… Whassat, you hate football? Me too, to tell ya the truth. Silly game, ain't it? Buncha big galunks breakin' each other's legs. Hey, who wantsta wear helmets and shoulder pads and get flattened by three-hundred- pound galunks when you can wear practically nothing, lay under a palm tree, and get flattened by a pitcherful of margaritas, eh? Speakin' of margaritas, how'd ya like to take a look at the most beautiful resort in Key West? Sand beach, pool, balconies, the works. Tour takes about ninety minutes… Whassat? You're meeting friends in an hour? Great. Bring 'em along. Come back here with 'em, take the tour, and you'll all go out for dinner on me… That's right. Forty-dollar meal voucher. Per couple. Good at twenty-five of Key West's finest restaurants. Conch chowder, key lime pie. So you'll come back?… Great, I'll be here. You see this little square of sidewalk? You'll recognize it? It's got a crack over here, a curb over there? Awright. This is where I'll be.
…'
Joey slid off his sunglasses, wiped his forehead, and watched the Minnesotans recede into the crush of Duval Street. They'd be back, of that he had no doubt. Not that they'd take the tour. No. They'd be back because tourists who walked Duval Street in one direction always walked it in the other. It was that, or swim to the motel. Sometimes people bantered on the return trip, pretending they were still considering. Sometimes they crossed the street a half block away to avoid a second pitch. Now and then they got hostile. People reacted in different ways to being charmed. Human nature.
Take the Minnesotans. Joey, as per Zack's advice, was studying up, trying to read them. They'd seemed perfect prospects. Fifty or so, wedding rings, family types, normal. The woman wore green pants with an elastic waistband whose puckers quickly stretched to accommodate her fallen bottom; the man had a fishing hat with a trout fly in the band. Joey, who had no wife, no children, belonged to no church, no civic associations, had never been farther inland than downtown Philadelphia, had never caught a fish, and had been part of the legitimate economy for nine days now, tried to imagine their life. The wife, he gathered from a certain softness around her mouth, didn't work, and probably felt a little bad about it, now that all four kids were gone. The husband was an assistant vice president in… in… What the hell did people do in Minnesota? What did they have up there, cows? O.K., a place that made cheese, something like that. So of course he liked to fish, to get away from the cheese smell. The wife, well, she mostly liked to do stuff at home, stuff with thread, that's where she really felt confident. Joey wanted to think that after they'd walked away, she said to her husband, What a nice young man. It must be hard just to talk to strangers like that. But the husband, he'd want to show that he was the worldly one, he knew what was what. Once they get you inside, it's hard sell, Martha. Real hard sell. This fella Bill, he was once in Puerto Rico, and one of these fellas got him to go inside, and four hours later…
'Hey, New York, how ya doin'? Your friends are gonna hate ya when they see that tan, ya know. But that's why you're here, right? So your friends'll hate ya? Looks good. Use that sunblock, though, don't be a wise guy. What parta New York ya from?'
