shirt.
'Stop hangin' on to your girlfriend, faggot,' said the other thug. It was Bruno, the huge one who liked to rip things apart. He was standing in the dimness between a bad painting of birds and a bad painting of seashells. He'd taken off his blue suit jacket and he looked even bigger without it. 'Come ova heah,' he said, pointing down at the sisal rug.
Joey went. He knew the rituals. He knew he was to get hit, he just wondered whether it would be face or gut. His blood turned thin and sour and he stood at loose attention like a tired soldier. Bruno took a moment to size him up, then slugged him in the belly. Joey doubled over, his empty chest folded down across his trembling thighs. His eyes were open but everything was black, with streaks of phosphorescent green. He thought he heard a little shriek but couldn't tell if it was Sandra giving a sympathetic wince through her duct tape, or his own wheezing as he struggled for air. Before he could straighten up, Bruno grabbed him by the head and pushed him backward onto the settee. 'Where's your fucking brother?' he asked.
Joey couldn't answer because he couldn't breathe. He tried to use the time to think, but he found he couldn't do that either. 'Fuck should I know?' he finally managed.
'You helped him get away, ya little cocksucker,' Tony said.
'I don't know nothin' about it,' Joey said.
There was a pause. The two thugs looked at each other. Sandra squirmed. Outside, there was a splash from the pool. The motor of the hot tub clicked on and hummed. The easy life of Florida was proceeding. Tony reached slowly into his jacket pocket and pulled out a silencer. Very deliberately, he fitted it onto the muzzle of his gun.
'You and your girlfriend, kid,' said Tony. 'You're nine-tenths dead.'
He leaned over Sandra and tucked the gun under her chin, pushing it into the soft place between her jawbone and her throat. Her head was rigid against the back of her chair and she tried not to go cross-eyed staring down at the threatening hand.
'Don't fucking touch her,' Joey said. He found himself getting to his feet.
'Ain't he brave?' said Bruno. As he said it, he bashed Joey across the ribs with his forearm. Joey's chest rattled, his heart seemed to shake off some juice, like a thrown sponge. He sat back down.
'Mr. Ponte wants his emeralds,' Tony said. He hadn't moved the gun away from Sandra's chin. His finger was on the trigger and he didn't seem to be paying very close attention to whether or not he was squeezing. 'He's tired of waiting and he's tired of being dicked around by little shitasses like you.'
Joey looked at Sandra and suddenly he wanted to cry. It was less out of fear than out of frustration and remorse. He wanted to crawl across the floor and tell Sandra he was sorry. Sorry he'd taken her away from Queens, sorry he couldn't really take her away from Queens, sorry that Queens seemed to inhabit his life like a virus.
'So where's the fucking stones, kid?' Tony went on.
Joey said nothing. Bruno leaned down and smacked him hard with the back of his hand. The pain went from Joey's cheek to his gums, then lodged behind his eardrum.
'Kid,' the shorter goon resumed, 'I gotta tell ya somethin', no offense. Your brother Gino, he's a cunt. He's a dumb twat who don't know what he's doin'.'
'You hear me disagreeing?' Joey said.
'Then why the fuck are you protecting him?'
'I'm not.'
Tony seemed to consider this. The effort made him cranky, and he tapped the silencer against the underside of Sandra's chin. It made a morbid sound, not quite a slap and not quite a click. A vein was pulsing in Sandra's neck. 'Awright, kid, you're not protecting your brother. So maybe you'd like to protect your pretty little girlfriend heah.' He pulled back the hammer. 'I'm gonna ask ya one more time: Where's the fucking emeralds?' He was dimpling Sandra's neck with the gun.
'They're innee ocean,' Joey heard himself say.
Tony and Bruno consulted with their eyes. They didn't seem to like the answer. It struck them as an insult and a lie.
Bruno bent down and stuck his face in Joey's. His eyes were like puddles of oil and his breath smelled of old seafood. He butted Joey's forehead with his own, and Joey's skull rang like a Chinese gong. The shock wave ran from the bridge of his nose to the top of his spine and back again, it felt like his brain was being sliced with a serrated knife. But the thing about pain is that beyond a certain point it stays the same, it lodges just this side of insanity, and the thing about fear is that after a while a person's terror glands get all wrung out, and panic levels off to a kind of jungle alertness. Through his dizziness, Joey felt the old lunatic readiness returning, felt it filling him the way air pumps up a tire.
He heard Tony saying, 'I cannot believe you are still givin' us bullshit.'
'It isn't bullshit.'
Tony ignored him. 'We could blow you away right heah. We could take you to the gahbidge. We can do anything. You know that, right?'
Joey nodded. He grew up with it, he knew it. 'Wha' does it getcha?'
Bruno bent low and hissed in his face. 'Satisfaction.'
'Four million dollars' worth?'
'Fuck you talkin' about?' said Tony.
Joey just sat. If he knew anything about staying alive, it was that your chances were better if you made people curious.
'Fuck you talkin', four million?' Tony pressed. Absently, he moved the gun an inch or two from Sandra's throat. It was enough space for idiot hope to inhabit.
'I'll tell Mr. Ponte all about it,' Joey said.
The remark offended Bruno, who reached down and pressed his thumbs hard on the soft place under Joey's collarbones. A sharp pain arced down clear to the bottom of his lungs. 'You ain't in no position to tell Mr. Ponte nothin'. Got that?'
Joey stayed silent and the silence caromed off the walls. Outside, there were water sounds, breeze sounds. Out there the air was the temperature of skin, and life, sweet life, felt good.
Tony and Bruno consulted with their eyes again. Bruno scratched an armpit. 'We could bring 'em to Miami,' he said. 'We gotta ice 'em, we could; ice 'em just as good up there.'
Tony frowned, his scarred lip puckered. 'But if the stones are down heah…'
Another pause. Joey tried to decide if saying something more would get him slugged again. He tried to decide if it mattered if he got slugged again.
'Guys,' he ventured, 'I'm telling you, I got a way to work this out. Whyn't ya call Mr. Ponte? Tell 'im if he'll come down heah, he'll see his stones tomorrow.'
Tony and Bruno locked eyes. Then, oddly, Bruno broke into a crooked and horrific smile. 'No phone,' he said. 'I yanked it outta the wall.'
'Little, like, precaution,' said Tony.
Joey pointed out toward the compound. 'So use a different phone. We'll borrow one.'
Bruno and Tony considered.
'Look,' Joey said, 'the naked guy, the landlord, you told 'im you were friends a mine from Miami, right? So that's the story. I'll play along.'
'We got the broad,' Tony reasoned. 'He don't want we should hurt the broad.'
As a reminder, he stroked Sandra's neck with the silencer and a sound came out of her like the squeaking of kittens in a cardboard box.
'No,' said Joey. 'I don't.'
'And,' said Tony, 'we gotta ice 'em, what the fuck if it's tomorrow or today?'
'Yeah,' said Bruno. 'Tomorrow, what the fuck. Just as dead as like today.'
— 43 -
It was dusk when Joey and Bruno emerged through the sliding door of the cottage.
