Double down, p.11
Double Down, page 11
TEN
Thirty thousand feet up, winging east and south at what had to be an easy thousand miles an hour, sitting stuffed and shell-backed in a window seat of this airborne cattle car, barred from lighting up a steadying smoke for the next four hours, Sigurd Stumpley occupied himself with thoughtful reflections on mortality. Mortality generally, his own in particular. This fragile scrap of aluminum could drop like a rock falling from the sky; down there a truck or a bus or even just another car could skid into your lane and flatten you; go strutting down a street whistling, dreaming about your next ham-slamming, you could slip on a banana peel, open your skull; accidentally stick a knife in a toaster and electricity’d fry you; take a swim in the lake or a snooze in the tub and water’d drown you; poisoned air could choke you, tainted food poison you; get a headache and pop an asprin and some weirdo’s laced it with cyanide; business he was in, turn your back and—whap!—somebody blindside you. Dangerous fucking world to try and make your way through.
Still, for all these morbid musings, he felt a whole lot better than when he first boarded and the plane taxied onto the field, hesitated, engines revving and fuselage shuddering, and then went blazing down the runway and almost imperceptibly lifted into the air, banking at a steep angle, tilting the earth crazily beneath him. First time in an airplane, it shook the very shit loose in him: heart two-fisting, eyes goggling, ears popping. But now, getting the hang of it, he was starting to feel good again. His old self again. Cocked, locked, and ready to rock. Florida-bound.
Maybe just a little tight yet over the prospect of the two weeks ahead, teaming up with this prime-time contractor, running with him, watching him work, maybe even getting a piece of the final zotzing. Helluvan opportunity. Also, of course, soaking up some rays and for sure getting balled by some of that bowl-a-honey Florida quiff. Florida everybody got laid. Thinking about it made him feel almost warm toward Uncle Eugene, even if the old unc had chewed on him this morning: Stay out of the way, keep your eyes and ears open, see how it’s done, take notes, learn, it ain’t no vacation you’re on, you’re there to learn. Same shit as last night. Sound like he had the fucking rag on, like he was talking to some mutt just come up out of the street-gang ranks. Well, he’d show him Sigurd Stumpley had a pretty sly head on his shoulders, wasn’t nobody you’d want to try and fuck over. Show ’em all.
Speaking of heads, if he craned his neck a little he could see the back of the bald one on the kike, aisle seat three rows up. Chrometop with a couple greased strands, looked like paint streaks, laid across it. Probably going through it right now was the figure to make a dash once they touched down. Forget that, Jewbaby; this boy stuck to your ass like a month-old dingleberry, you ain’t going noplace at all. Couple times since they’d been in the air Jew’d gotten up and lurched toward the can in the back. Both times it looked like he’d cut a glance Sigurd’s way, or least it seemed like it looked like he had. Hard to tell for sure. Imagination, most likely. Nothing to get twisted about. Just stay cool, do your number.
Also speaking of head, slightly different slant, it was hard not to notice the spook stewardess prancing up and down the aisle flashing them gleaming teeth out of that black face with the bones in it high and sharp and clean as a white girl’s, regular nose, no baboon look to it, normal-size lips glossed in silver, pile of crimped black hair, sweet round firm rump on her, way that suntan cooze gets put together sometimes, legs about nine foot long, kind can wrap around you twice. Hard not to notice all that. She was coming toward his row now, dragging a drinks cart. Sigurd’s eyes were tacked on her, and when she bent over to serve some dip-shit across the aisle what he was thinking was how he’d eat the crotch right out of her panties just to get at her black ass. Black or not, he’d be first in line. Come to laying tube, he wasn’t prejudice.
When she asked him if he’d care for anything to drink he said, “Why sure, honey. Whiskey and water go down real nice.” Getting a go down in there for her to hear, give her something to think about. Seemed like she winced a little, though he might have imagined that, too, but just in case he hadn’t he handed her a tenner and before she could make change said, “That’s okay, sweetcakes, you keep it for yourself, hey.” Nothing like the old green to crack open a smile, especially with your coloreds. She gushed a gratitude and, noticing the logo on the T-shirt under his jacket, declared she was a super Bears fan, too. See, right off they had something in common, but before he could establish that bond she gave the cart a tug and was gone. Maybe with a little luck he’d get another shot at it, get up and take a leak, say, and run into her, or catch her on the way out after they landed, talk a little street smack at her, make a connection, get a number. Little luck, he might even be doing the dirty dark hula this very night.
Sigurd was discovering there was something about travel—the manic bustle of airports, the squeeze on the balls in the cramped seats, the gentle rocking motion of the plane, the pillars of clouds rising against a blue sky on the other side of the window—made you extra horny. Made you ready to wet your wanger in the nearest knothole. Course you got to be practical. Can’t lose track of what you’re here for, which is the serious business of tagging Mr. Bagel and company and which business, Dietz business, could put the serious snag in your love life. Lot of it going to turn on his soon-to-be partner, kind of dude he’d be, if he’d be the kind liked some yucks, liked to go bouncing after hours. And thinking about him now, trying to picture how he’d look, how they’d get on, Sigurd felt a surge of anticipation tinged with a little doubt, but not much. Just be yourself, he told himself, reinforcing what Mom always told him: People are people. You want to get along, this world, don’t ever try and be nothing but who you are. Old Mom—right again.
D’Marco Fontaine, at that moment, was doing much the same thing as Sigurd; that is, speculating on the personality and character of the young man he was going to be stuck with for the next two weeks. None too happily. From the physical description (“This boy’s kinda short, little on the heavy side—well, got quite a gut on him, actual’—sorta reddish in the hair, freckles…”) he sounded like no one D’Marco would, under ordinary circumstances, be at all interested in knowing. Who’d want to know anybody looked like that? Also the name, which when he first heard it he thought was intended as some kind of joke. Sigurd Stumpley? Jesus. Outside of the comics pages and the Saturday morning kiddie cartoons, who was named Sigurd? And from the particulars of the identifying outfit, D’Marco could make the educated guess this wasn’t somebody heavy into fashion.
Unlike himself, for D’Marco was wearing a tan silk sport jacket, cream cotton polo shirt, tan linen slacks set off by a brandy leather belt, and hand-sewn pebble-grain road mocs with wraparound soles. Whole ensemble looked like something created by one of those exclusive, lighter-than-air wop designers, even though everything he had on was in fact purchased off the rack at Burdine’s. Never mind, his time was coming.
He sat in the cafeteria–coffee shop located on the main concourse of Palm Beach International, no smoking naturally, though that was its own kind of bad joke, what with the cigarette fumes drifting in from the adjacent suicide section and settling over his table and his clothes and his carefully spritzed hair like some noxious cloud of mustard gas. To say nothing of the heavy fried odors elevating off the sizzling grill behind the counter. Not exactly your venue of choice for D’Marco Fontaine, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about it, since the terminal was mobbed with weekend travelers and every chair out on the floor was taken. Somewhere he’d heard or read they were supposed to be building a new airport, and they damn well ought to get to it, get it done, was his thought. This place was a fucking disgrace. Had the greasy feel of a we-never-close diner to it, offensive to the sensibilities of anyone who cared anything about the quality of the air he breathed and a sanitary environment and general tranquillity. Which he did.
But remembering the guiding principle of his professional life—you go where the business says you go—D’Marco sat there anyway, sipping an orange juice (which was certainly not fresh-squeezed and was probably sugared, judging by the taste) and waiting. It was one o’clock, less than an hour remaining. He was beginning to experience some of the gathering rush that comes with the onset of a new assignment, particularly one like this that promised to be lucrative. He was ready. Out in the lot the LX was gassed and serviced. In it were three bags, four if you counted the gym bag. Two contained clothes and other necessaries for an extended stay, the third his working gear, just about all of it, for he had received no specific instructions yet on how this double pop was to be handled and, like any good craftsman, he liked to be prepared for any eventuality. Some people wanted a quick clean clip, a no-muss-no-fuss; others preferred a stinging. It was the hallmark of his work that he always gave the client what he asked for, and often as not with the singular D’Marco Fontaine stamp, like with Andy the other night. The gym bag he brought along in case an opportunity to sneak in a workout presented itself, as it very well might. Two weeks of tracking, there was bound to be some down time. The one advantage to the nurse-maiding side job, only one he could see outside the ten long, was he could maybe put this Chicago mule onto covering the marks and now and then get some of that slack time to himself, not fall too far behind training-wise. That of course would depend totally on the level of smarts evidenced, and with somebody named Sigurd Stumpley you didn’t want to get your hopes too high. Well, nothing to be done about it now. Another hour tell the tale on that one.
Shoehorned into a seat custom-designed for a dwarf, swollen head, pouchy eyes, dumpster mouth, hippo breath, sour stomach, calcified bowels—for B. Epstein it was not shaping up one of your better days. Make that years. Been a slum of a year, when he thought about it, which he was trying not to do, trying instead to follow the philosophy of his own advice, so freely dispensed to his partner, which advice, reduced to its essence, resembled the Henry Ford, Sr., judgment on history, which in Epstein paraphrase was to declare that one’s personal past is, equally, bunk. What went down, went down; can’t bring it up again (he sermonized himself, though given the bilious condition of his viscera, even he recognized the image was infelicitous). What matters is now or, more pointedly, two weeks from now. Got to look ahead, focus on them fourteen days, turn up a solution. You don’t, you got a engraved invite to the Dietz garden party—main course: worms.
Yet in spite of his best efforts at concentration, no solutions occurred to him, and his thoughts perversely remained rutted in the past. This time twelve months ago everything was running slick as dog spit: dozen broads working regular; three or four steady players, Waverly easily the best of the lot, producing some nice change; book churning loot; little juice pacifying the local heat. Key Line Services, Ink, which was to say himself, doing just fine, thank you. Better’n fine—sensational. Shit, his old man, who he hadn’t thought about in years, decades maybe, and who he was thinking about now, God knows why, be real proud, he could see how far this Jewboy had come.
But that was twelve months ago. Take a good scope on him now and what do you see? Key Line Services gone toes, eleven small left in the till, every well tapped dry and every note and favor called in. Look at the numbers. A big two and a half balloons in the red. And an even bigger fourteen days—thirteen now, you counted yesterday, and for sure Dietz was—looming bigger the more it shrunk. And a Prussian collector waiting on delivery, sooner turn you into a lampshade than give you the steam off his shit. Fuck, who wants to look down the road, that view?
Bitch of it was, none of it was any of his doing. What had he done? Teamed with Waverly, who was about as standup a goy as you’re gonna find. Couldn’t deny that. Two years celling and scamming in Jacktown City and four more minting money in Florida testified to that. And goy or not, he had to admit he’d always sort of liked Waverly, even if he couldn’t pack in the cards without getting himself in the glue. That liking part, that was probably his biggest mistake, probably where he went wrong. Year ago, this time, they were wiping their butts with fifty-dollar bills (another unfortunate image, his burdened bowels reminded him), and then he has to go up to Michigan and tangle with some cornmeal talent turns out to be on the Dietz payroll. Sets off an atom bomb up there and brings the fallout home with him. Trouble is, as he’d discovered in Illinois, that fallout ain’t confined to Timothy Waverly. Nosir, it’s catching.
So you follow it back far enough and that’s all he’d done—been a goddamned good Samaritan, way your Bible says to do. That’s what he’d done, sum total. Look where it got him: ass-deep in the quicksand pit in the Dietz jungle and nobody on the bank throwing him a rope or an oar or a branch or whatever it was they threw in the fucking jungle, and he wasn’t hearing no Tarzan rescue call coming through the bush either. Where’s old Tarzan when you need him? Ripping one off with Jane, his luck, or buggering Cheetah.
Twice during these morose meditations a distant stirring in his lower regions, heralded by a muffled gust of flatus, extended the taunting promise of relief, and he got out of his seat and swayed down the aisle, making for the john. False alarms, both times. Both trips, though, he got a good look at the Chicago tag player hunched against a window and pretending not to notice. Wasn’t gonna win no academy awards, that performance. Which came as no surprise, since it was the same weenie who’d been on him most of the week and who sure as shit (which he was beginning to believe offered no guarantees itself anymore, like everything else in his upended life) couldn’t be no shooter. Not a burned-out bulb like that, carrying all that tonnage. Didn’t make him feel any better, though; Florida wasn’t exactly short on shooters.
Later the chocolate drop came by and he ordered a Bloody Mary, see if it would settle him down some, get his head right. In normal times he’d of jived her a little, got her to grinning, flashing them eyeballs and teeth. Nice piece dark meat like that, normal times he’d give her his card, maybe line her up for some part-time employment. He’d had stews on the Key Line roster before, and some of ’em worked out real good. Layover work, haw haw.
But times wasn’t normal no more. Best he could do for right now was get himself home, get his system blasted out, get some space to think things through. You want to talk space, how you gonna think on a goddam airplane? Can’t even smoke, f’Chris’sake. He wished he could fire up a cigar, go with the Mary. Since he couldn’t, he nursed it along, and before it was finished a voice came crackling over the intercom, alerting them to their imminent arrival.
Assuming an hour would be more than enough time to get to the airport, and remembering last night’s injunction to keep down, Waverly didn’t leave the Tropicaire apartment until one o’clock that afternoon. His assumption was wrong. The narrow streets behind the Ocean Mall were congested, and it took what seemed like five minutes just to make a left onto Blue Heron Boulevard. It didn’t get any better across the bridge. I-95 of course moved faster, the traffic hurling furiously into the midday heat, but then an accident north of the Okeechobee exchange, a jackknifed semi, slowed everything first to a crawl, then a dead halt. He sat there tapping the wheel impatiently. Time ticked by. The Seville’s windows were not tinted (“I want ’em all to see it’s Captain B. Epstein pilotin’ this sucker,” went the Bennie rationale), and a dazzle of sun glinted off the pink hood. From what he remembered of their middle-of-the-night conversation, its ominous tones, he had to wonder if Bennie wouldn’t regret that decision, among several others, now.
Eventually the line of cars began to creep forward, funneled into a single lane. Soon they were accelerated, barreling again, and he pulled into the PBI lot with twenty minutes to spare. Ten of them, however, were consumed searching for a spot. A bag-lugging citizen finally appeared and surrendered one, and Waverly parked and took off sprinting for the terminal.
So it was a breathless and somewhat sweaty Timothy Waverly who stood at the designated gate on the upper level of the concourse, three minutes before the scheduled arrival time. A crowd was gathering near the entrance, seniors mostly, the men in gaudy sport shirts, their ladies in filmy blouses, both sexes often as not in shorts that exposed mushy thighs and vein-latticed calves better left concealed. Unmistakable Florida sorts, so machine-stamped they were hardly worthy of a second glance.
The sole exception was a rather smartly dressed young man who stood apart from everyone else, his back to the guard rail overlooking the main floor. Waverly took special notice of him. The cut of the clothes suggested that underneath was a body bursting with health, a kind of brute vigor. He had the treacherous good looks of a born-to-the-business thug, the slicked black hair, honed features, the remote, carefully cultivated absence of expression, giving away nothing. The Outlaw Look. Waverly had seen it before, in the Jacktown yard and elsewhere, many a time. Predictably, the eyes were shrouded by opaque lenses, but Waverly would have given odds those eyes were all but vacant of light. Dead eyes. Or eyes that bespoke death.
Waverly moved to a spot along the facing wall, where he could watch him. There had been many coincidences in his life, but he suspected this was not going to be one of them. He could be wrong of course, but he was not ready to bet on it.
The seat belt sign came on and the plane began its long, slow descent. Sigurd’s ears were doing strange things, none of them pleasant. His forehead was pressed against the window. Tufted clouds sailed on by, airy and unsubstantial as dreams. Down below, the earth was laid out in moss-green rectangles. They passed over an enormous blue lake. Small settlements appeared, more moss, then larger ones, shrinking pockets of moss, and then suddenly that was all he could see, settlement, city, mile after mile of it, block after block, sprawling south to the rim of the horizon. Not a trace of the gray, poisoned haze that blurred Chicago. They dipped lower. Everything came into sharper focus. Vehicles moved like tokens on a giant Monopoly board. The round blue eyes of backyard pools gazed up at him, winked as they caught the sunlight. The coastline appeared. A strand of beach teemed with figures, matchsticks scattered randomly across the yellow sand. White triangles flecked a sapphire sea. Florida. Living fucking color. Ears dinging or not, he was here at last.
