He asked as casually as if he were offering a second helping of potatoes.
'No, Bruno,' Ray Yates whispered. 'No more.'
'Stan' up like a man then. Ya look ridiculous.'
Yates got to his feet. The left side of his face was already beginning to swell, the eye squeezing shut at the outside corner. His knees were jelly and he leaned against the frail wooden railing of his walkway.
'Sataday it goes ta eighteen hunnerd,' Bruno said. His face was close to Yates's now, and the gambler smelled spearmint gum and garlic through the salty rain. 'Fuck we gonna do about that, Ray?'
Yates's throat clamped shut, and for a while he couldn't speak. 'Bruno,' he rasped at last, 'I don't know. The truth, Bruno? Short of a miracle, I'm not gonna have the money for another three, four weeks.'
The enforcer spit his gum. It hit Yates in the forehead then bounced into the ocean. 'That stinks. My business, that's a long time in my business.'
'Look, tack on a penalty, double the interest, anything you want. Like I told you, Bruno, it's about those paintings. Once they're auctioned there'll be plenty of cash, I'll pay off in full, I swear.'
Bruno put his hands on Yates's shoulders. The gesture was almost friendly, until he started pushing with his ramrod thumbs into the soft places behind the other man's collarbones. 'How long's it been since you won a fucking bet, Ray?'
It was a gauche question and Yates didn't answer.
'What if you lose this next one too? What then?'
'Those pictures aren't a bet, Bruno. They're money in the bank.'
The tough guy dropped his hands, moved his tongue around inside his cheek, and seemed to be considering. Then he looked up at the sky. Rain was still pouring down in big frothy drops, it ran in rivulets between his oily bundles of slick black hair. 'Gonna catch cold on accounta you,' he said, suddenly taking things personally. 'I hate that, a summer cold.'
He grabbed the front of Yates's tropical shirt, pulled him forward, then thrust him backward against the wooden rail. The rail was nothing more than a two-by-four nailed onto posts, and the beefy Yates crashed through it like a bowling ball through pins. The water next to the seawall was too shallow to break his fall; knobs of coral racked his legs and slammed against his back and he lay there stunned amid the beer cans and the condoms, the turds and tampons shot out the bottoms of people's boats.
Bruno looked enormous standing on the gangplank. 'I'll see what Mr. Ponte wants to do with you,' he said.
He walked off slowly through the rain, and Ray Yates lay dead still in the slimy water until he was very sure the big man wasn't coming back.
19
Jimmy Gibbs took up his position on the port side of the Fin Finder near the stern and got ready to loop his heavy line around the bollard. It was June 1. Supposedly the season was over, yet these goddamn know-nothing idiot tourists kept showing up at the charter-boat docks and saying they wanted to go out fishing. Bargain hunters, cheapskates-that's what you got this time of year. Fat guys who drove straight through from Georgia with miniature beer cans in their hatbands; guys whose shirttails wouldn't stay tucked in and whose fumbling fingers would screw things up if they so much as tried to put a shrimp on a hook. They said they liked the heat, these out-of-season visitors, but that was so much bullshit-nobody liked it ninety-two and hazy, with last night's puddles turning to steam that made your legs sweat like hot breath on your crotch. What they liked was the cheap motel rooms, the greasy free tidbits at happy hour, the twofers in the restaurants.
It was funny, Jimmy Gibbs hazily reflected as he tightened down his line with his scored and grizzled hands: You might have thought these people, being less unlike himself, would be nicer to him, less demanding; you might have thought too that Gibbs would feel less touchy taking care of them. But somehow it didn't quite work out that way. There was no bigger pain in the ass on earth than a workingman on vacation. Worried about every dollar; his whole year spoiled if the sun didn't shine or if, God forbid, the fat fuck didn't catch a fish; always suspicious that he wasn't being treated royally enough, that the next guy up the ladder was getting treated better. Rich northerners were wimpy bastards, but Gibbs somehow found them less galling to work for. Maybe it was just that it was less hot when they were here, he didn't end the day quite so wrung out, sweat-soaked, thirsty not in his throat but in some unreachable place halfway down his gullet.
Matty Barnett, looking fine and dignified at the wheel of his boat, cut the engines. In the sudden silence you could hear the whoosh of the pelicans' wings as they gathered to beg for their loops of gut, their fish stomachs full of littler fish.
There were four clients, burned red and swollen with beer, milling around the cockpit, antsy to get off. They filed past Gibbs like he was one more piece of docking hardware, then lolled on the pier, their caps pushed back on their shiny heads. The mate cleated off his dock line and regarded them from under his damp eyebrows: four fat cheapskates waiting to be served.
The skipper stepped down from the steering station. 'Give 'em a beer,' he told Gibbs mildly.
So easygoing, Matty was. So calm, so diplomatic. It's a hot day and they're waiting for their fish; give 'em a beer and keep 'em happy.
It was just the kind of chore, having nothing to do with fishing or the business of running the ship, that Jimmy Gibbs most hated. He delivered the beers and kept his mouth shut. Then he lifted the ice chest, jackassed it over the gunwale and onto the dock, and got ready to clean the fish.
He hosed down the cleaning board so that the splintered wood gleamed darkly in the sun, then reached into the cooler and grabbed a hogfish. Its tail was curling upward and its eye had the surprised look dead fish often have, a look of disappointment, of having been betrayed.
'Whole or fillet?' asked Jimmy Gibbs.
The four fat fishermen looked over at him and sucked their beers. Then one of them said, 'Hey, that's mine. That sumbitch had some fight in 'im, wuddn't it? Took line, lotta line. That drag screamin', oh shit.'
Gibbs stood there in the sun. His short gray ponytail lay like a rotting log against the back of his neck and dammed up the sweat coming down from his head.
'Fillet, I guess,' the fisherman finally said.
Gibbs shoved his knife in and tried to think of other things. Like money. Soon he was going to have some. The painting Augie Silver had given him was on its way to New York, and it was going to fetch a bundle. The Sotheby's people had no doubt of it. They even arranged the crating, shipping, insurance, said they'd take the cost out later. Pretty decent of them, Gibbs thought. He reached into the hogfish and disassembled it. The guts were cold from the ice and felt almost good squishing through his fingers. He spread the creature like an open book and cut the flesh away from the backbone and the skin.
Then he pulled a small yellowtail, barely legal, out of the cooler. Its stripes were still bright, its brick-red gills fanned out in search of something they could breathe.
'Whole or fillet?' asked Jimmy Gibbs.
Three of the four fat fishermen laughed. The fish guts dried on Gibbs's hands. They itched. Flies came to the dead fish and landed on the first mate's wrists.
'Ain't nothin' t'fillet on that baby,' said one of the laughing clients.
'Leave 'im whole, I guess,' said the one who wasn't laughing.
Gibbs worked. His blue shirt was soaked under the arms and along the spine. A drop of sweat fell into his eye and he had no way to rub it.
When he was halfway through the chestful of fish, one of the clients said to him, 'Yo, friend, grab us another beer.'
Gibbs just stared at him, then went back to his gutting.
Now the clients were offended, they weren't being treated well enough. You could see all four of them turn sulky, just like that. Let 'em, thought Gibbs. The trip was over, and if at the end the four fat fucks got pissy and didn't tip him, who the hell cared? He'd be well off soon, he'd be a captain, and when he was, he'd dock his boat and go sit in the shade, like Matty Barnett was doing now. No more gutting, no more scaling, no more playing
