every chance. Joey heah, what he says, a lot of it makes sense. I give 'im credit. But Vincent, his bottom line, it fucking stinks. I lost tree million dollars in emeralds. He's telling me he can get me back one million, and he's makin' it sound like a big fucking favor. Come on, Vincent, you know it as well as I do-the numbers don't add up. Whaddya want from me? I got no choice.'
Vincente Delgatto sat still as a parked truck. But there was an admission in his posture.
Even Bert the Shirt could not deny the numbers. 'Don't come out right,' he muttered, like he was checking over a grocery receipt.
Sandra, who never fidgeted, started fretting with her fingertips.
'Wait a second, Mr. Ponte,' Joey said. 'Who said anything about one million dollars? I'm talking four million. This is what I was tryin' to tell ya all morning. Since last night I been tryin' to tell ya this.'
Everybody sat. Everybody waited. There was a lull in the breeze and the air smelled like scorched sand.
'Mr. Ponte, lemme ask you something. The Colombians-you ever tell 'em about the missing stones?'
The Miami Boss could not help snorting. 'Right,' he said. 'And look like a horse's ass? Like I can't control my own people?'
Joey raised a pacifying palm. 'Who's gotta know it was your own people that heisted 'em? You never got 'em. End of story.'
Ponte pursed his lips and considered.
'Now tell me if I'm wrong,' Joey continued, 'but these emeralds, they were, like, a goodwill gesture, like to make it up to you for some other business they screwed up, right?'
Ponte gave a grudging nod.
'Well, they screwed up again. I mean, hey, what kinda goodwill gesture is it if you never got the stones? The way I see it, they still owe you.'
The Miami Boss threw a sideways look at Vincente Delgatto. The patriarch sat still, his expression blank as the ground.
'They're gonna believe me,' Ponte said, 'I tell 'em the stones never got to me?'
Joey leaned forward over his knees and put a conspiratorial rasp into his voice. 'Mr. Ponte, this is the beauty part-they don't hafta believe you.' He gestured past the louvered windows at the world. 'They're probably watching it on television right now. It's gonna be in all the papers. Headlines. Pictures. Three million in mystery gems — this is a big deal down heah, you know that. Your stones ended up innee ocean, you have no idea how. This is what you tell the Colombians. Shit, what's three million to them? They wanna keep you happy, they'll give ya three million more. Three, plus the one ya got from Gino. That makes four, am I right?'
Ponte tugged an ear, looked down at the sisal rug striped with filtered sunlight. Then he shrugged. Then he almost smiled. Then he said to Joey's father, 'Vincent, where you been hiding this boy?'
The patriarch moved his lips a fraction of an inch and his filmy eyes darkly gleamed with something like pride.
'So Mr. Ponte,' Joey said, 'we have an understanding here?'
'Enough with the Mr. Ponte shit,' said the little mobster from Miami. 'Call me Charlie, kid.'
Cover
— 50 -
'Come on, Pop,' Joey Goldman said. 'This is Florida, we'll sit out by the pool.'
It was mid-afternoon, the sun was fierce though the breeze was freshening, and Joey slid the outdoor table into a patch of shade. The compound had grown weirdly, blessedly quiet. Gino Delgatto, fat, oily, and ashen, had bolted immediately at the conclusion of the sit-down. Bert the Shirt, using his frail dog as an excuse, had gone home to take a nap. Charlie Ponte had kissed his older colleague from New York, given Joey an avuncular pat on the cheek, gathered up his sweaty minions, and headed for Miami. Sandra had excused herself to take a long hot bath, to try to soak the terror and the memory of captivity out of her sunburned skin. Only Steve the naked landlord was about, and he turned his bare backside on his newly troublesome tenant, this quiet guy who all of a sudden was always entertaining.
'A swim or something, Pop? I'll lend ya some trunks.'
Vincente Delgatto hadn't even taken off his dark gray suit jacket, and he seemed to find something droll in being invited to go for a swim. He gave a small smile, strong, veiny teeth flashing for just an instant between his thin dry lips. Then he waved the suggestion away. 'No, Joey, no thanks.'
They fell silent and for a moment the father and the son enjoyed the air that was the temperature of skin and carried the pleasantly rank sweetness of wet cardboard. 'Joey,' Vincente Delgatto said at last. 'Joey. The way you handled that, it was beautiful. Beautiful.' He sounded transported, as though by an aria perfectly sung. 'I never realized, Joey. What you could do, I never realized.'
Joey Goldman toyed with the ribbing on the sleeve of his pink knit shirt, slid the earpieces of his sunglasses through his hair. 'There was nothin' to realize, Pop. Up in New York, when I lived up there, hey, let's face it, I couldn't get outta my own way, I couldn't do nothin'.'
His father shook his head, which wobbled slightly on his shrunken neck. An old man's errors mattered both more and less than a young man's. More because there was less time to undo them; less because there was less time to endure their consequences. 'You coulda done plenty, Joey. I never gave you a chance.'
Joey just shrugged. The palm fronds scratched like brushes on a snare drum, the little wavelets in the pool traced a bright pattern on the bottom. The silence went on a beat too long, and Joey fiddled with his glasses. 'Sal gave me these shades, ya know. Like a going-away-'
'You hate me, Joey?'
The son hesitated. It was not so much that he was in doubt about his answer as that he was taken aback at being asked the question. His father was not a man to make a habit of offering his upturned throat.
'Nah, Pop,' Joey said at last. 'I don't hate ya. I wish some things were different, but hey.'
'Things could be different, Joey.' Vincente Delgatto reached up to straighten his already perfect tie. This was still, as it had been for as long as Joey could remember, the signal that the Don was about to offer the benefits of his influence. 'I could set you up good. You wanna come back to the city, I could set you up very nice.'
'Nah, Pop, that's not what I mean. I don't want that anymore. I'm over it. What you do, what Gino does, it's not for me. I know that now.' Joey paused, tapped his fingers on the table, and gave a little laugh. 'I ain't a tough guy, Pop. Never was. I useta try to be, and let's face it, it was fucking ridiculous.
'Besides, New York? Nuh-uh. Pop, my life's in Florida now. I like it here. It's easy. Palm trees. Sunsets. And I'm gonna tell ya somethin', it's gonna sound, like, sarcastic, but I don't mean it that way. You did me a big favor, not takin' better care a me before. I mean, if things weren't so, so frustrating up there, I never woulda left. I wouldn'ta thought of it. I mean, how many guys even think of it?'
It was not a question meant to be answered, but Vincente Delgatto raised a finger as though he might try. Then he dropped his hand into his lap and a faraway look came into his deep but filmy eyes. His lips pushed slightly forward toward what might have been a pout but looked, oddly, almost like the preparation for a kiss, and suddenly, for the first time ever, it occurred to Joey to wonder if his father had sometime thought of leaving, of changing, of turning his back on the neighborhood and his place within it to live a life he'd chosen for himself.
'Pop,' said Joey, 'can I ask you something?'
The old man simply cocked his head to listen.
'Did you love my mother?'
For some moments Vincente Delgatto did not answer. He stared down at the damp tiles around the pool, at his polished shoes. He was still a married man. It was not proper to discuss such things. But Joey had received so little and was asking for so little now.
'Yes,' the father said. 'I loved her very much.'
Joey nodded. 'I'm glad. She loved you too. You ever think of being with her? I mean, really being with her?'
The old man retreated behind his filmy eyes and scudded backward through the decades, back to the times when, just as now, his errors had both mattered more and mattered less. 'Often,' he said, in that voice that was
