out of the water.
A line of city cops had cordoned off the gangway. County sheriffs made a gauntlet to the armored car. Highway cops on Harleys sat in a chevron formation in front of the mayor's ancient but gleaming Imperial convertible. Meek visitors edged cautiously closer, not sure where they were allowed to stand, not sure if what they were gawking at was interesting. Key West-a town of people passing through, looking around, waiting, hoping for something special to happen, then not having a clue what was going on when it did.
Clem Sanders, his sun-crevassed lips spread into his best television smile, his gold doubloon flashing on its leather necklace, led the triumphant procession down the ramp. He waved, shook hands, tantalizingly dangled the burlap pouch full of Colombian emeralds. The treasure hunter's ego swelled to fill the moment the way bread rises to fill a pan. Joey felt himself squeezed to the edge of the occasion, the fringe of events, he felt himself disappearing, and he was glad for that. He was suddenly very tired. Emeralds, brothers, ropes, speedboats; gangsters, helicopters, blows to the head, threats against his life. It was extremely draining, disorienting almost to the point of madness. He suddenly felt like a loose wire, limp, frayed, power oozing away like blood. He put his hand in the small of Sandra's back. He badly needed to touch her, to ground himself, to remind himself how compact she was, how neat and taut the little humps of muscle on either side of her spine.
They followed in Clem Sanders's wake, down the gangway and across the concrete pier. Through the tumult, they only half heard the salvor's quick sly comments to reporters, only half noticed the clicking cameras, the helmeted police. Then a familiar voice broke free of the crowd's buzz from behind the sawhorse barricades.
'Joey, hey, Joey.'
It was Zack Davidson. He was wearing his pink shirt, his khaki shorts. His collar was turned up perfectly but not too perfectly, his sandy hair fell as if by chance into an inevitable arc over his forehead. 'We got it, huh, we got it!'
'Hm?' was the best Joey could manage.
'Joey,' said Zack, reaching over the barricade to punch him lightly on the shoulder. 'We just got a little bit rich. For a guy that just got rich, you don't look that happy.'
Joey smiled, but his cheeks felt weary, bruised, and sunburned as they bunched up around the corners of his mouth. He toyed with his sunglasses, slid the earpieces through his hair. 'I guess I'm getting ready to be happy, Zack,' he said. 'I'm not quite there yet, but I'm getting ready.'
Numbly, his hand on Sandra's slender back, he followed the course of Clem Sanders's small parade. It was just after they'd passed the armored car and were standing in line for handshakes from the mayor that Joey saw the dark blue Lincoln waiting for him across the street. Sandra saw it too.
'Whyn't you go inna motorcade with Clem,' Joey said to her.
Sandra said nothing and didn't budge from Joey's side. Together, they inched down the receiving line. Twenty yards away was a rank of cops, and beyond that was a wide world where there was no one to protect them from Charlie Ponte and from the long reach of the old neighborhood.
'Really, Sandra,' Joey whispered. TV cameras were on them, local big shots were slapping backs. 'These guys are killers. They're really pissed, their patience is used up. There's no reason for you-'
'There is a reason, Joey,' Sandra interrupted. 'You asked me to marry you, remember? You said I should hold you to it. So I am. I'm going with you. It's part of the deal.'
'Sandra-' he began, and then he realized it was useless to protest. He took a deep breath, cast a foreigner's glance at the cameras and the gawking tourists, then steered his fiancee out of the receiving line. 'Awright,' he said, 'we can't dodge no more. Let's go and get it over with.'
They walked with neither haste nor hesitation through the line of cops and toward the waiting Lincoln. Tony shot them a malicious scar-lipped smile from behind the wheel, and Bruno held a back door open for them with the grim solicitousness of an usher at a funeral.
— 49 -
Steve the naked landlord was on his second beer and had just lit a fresh cigarette from a butt still smoldering in the ashtray. He watched Joey and Sandra approach along the white gravel walkway, Tony and Bruno trudging along behind them. Then he turned his paperback facedown on the damp tiles. 'Joey,' he said, motioning him over, 'can I talk to you a sec?'
Joey crouched down on the pool's cool apron.
'Joey,' Steve said. 'All these houseguests, these parties. Is this gonna be like a regular thing?'
Joey waited the usual beat, but Steve's smile did not appear. Naked, working on his morning buzz, he was still the landlord. 'I wouldn't call 'em parties,' Joey said softly.
'No?' said Steve. He lifted an eyebrow toward their bungalow, and in that instant the house appeared not just small but miniature, a scale model of a place where people could maybe make a life. 'Joey, every time I turn around, you got more people crammed in there.'
'We do?'
Steve just dragged on his cigarette and blew smoke out his nose. 'Come on, Joey, let's be fair.'
'Fair,' said Joey. 'O.K.' He straightened up, then sucked in a deep breath scented with jasmine and chlorine. He reached for Sandra, touched her arm to stop the electricity from oozing out his fingertips, and walked with her between the pool and the hot tub, Tony and Bruno following behind. Palm fronds scratched lightly overhead, the high sun slashed through in punishing slices. Joey's stomach didn't feel right, it felt like stale but icy air was swirling around inside it.
The sliding door to their bungalow was open wide, and through it came a sort of cool dim humming threat, a threat like that of a too quiet jungle. Joey swept off his sunglasses as he crossed the threshold. There were more people than he expected, more faces than he could process at once.
Charlie Ponte's Miami thugs and divers were glutting up the living room. Thick thighs were thrown over the arms of chairs, big white shirts with dark stains in the armpits were arrayed next to wet suits against the walls. There was a stink of clashing after-shaves and dry-cleaning fluid being sweated out of fabric too long in contact with damp skin. The thugs regarded Joey with an indifference more wilting than active menace.
In the Florida room, the louvered windows were still cranked shut, and a furtive, illicit twilight was being enforced against the day. Charlie Ponte, his silver jacket splotched with moisture, his hair restored to its usual neatness, was perched in the wicker seat where Sandra had been tied. Bert the Shirt d'Ambrosia, dressed for the occasion in nubbly black linen, a burgundy monogram on his breast pocket, rested on the settee, his chihuahua serene yet vigilant in his lap.
Next to him sat Gino Delgatto, nervously crossing and uncrossing his legs. Joey's half brother did not look healthy. His skin was yellowish and he hadn't dropped the weight he'd put on while holed up at the Flagler House. His eyes were gradually disappearing under pads of excess skin, his fatty chin had lost the squareness that brought him to the brink of being handsome.
You had to look beneath the fat to see how he resembled his and Joey's father.
Vincente Delgatto was sitting with a perfect stillness that was the emblem of his dignity and his authority. He was lean, dry, with a long crescent face and a crinkled stringy neck that no longer filled his stiff collar. He wasn't dressed for Florida. He wore a gray pinstripe suit and a red silk tie with a massive double Windsor knot. He had a broad straight nose that came down directly from his forehead, and his teeth were long and veined with brown, stained by half a century of cigars, espresso, and red wine.
Joey stared at him through the strange striped dimness cast by the louvered windows. His legs felt disconnected from him, he wondered if his brain had come unmoored from getting hit too many times then being cast out in the throbbing sun. He didn't quite recognize his own voice. 'Pop?'
Bert the Shirt, a man who had been dead, seemed to recognize the moment after which a person could not be pulled back from oblivion, helplessness, or paralyzing confusion. 'I called him, Joey,' he blurted. 'Last night.'
'The fucking old lady,' Charlie Ponte grumbled. 'He's always in my face down heah, always stickin' his nose in.'
'What could I tell ya?' Bert stroked his dog and addressed this to the room at large. 'I tried to do the right
