Double down, p.32
Double Down, page 32
But that was for tomorrow night or the next one, if it even going to come at all. For right now they were parked on the deck outside their room, sweltering in the midafternoon heat, squinting, blue blocks notwithstanding, into a fireball sun bleaching the western sky, popping sweat out of every pore (least he was; D’Marco looked cool; pissed, but cool), and scopin’ the marks’ place, as directed. Course not a fuckin’ thing goin’ on. Might as well be standin’ watch on a boneyard (which, when you thought about it, is what they was doin’, there bein’ two kinds of dead: horizontal, in the ground there, and the still-walkin’-around kind, like them poor dumb fucks across the street was).
D’Marco, craning his neck, broke in on these wandering reveries, demanding, “How’s it look?”
And Sigurd, mistaking him, hunched forward in his chair, gaped at the Tropicaire bungalow, and said, “What? Don’t see nothin’.”
“Talking about my neck, dickdip.”
Though the wine-colored bruise was fading some, it was still looking plenty splotched and raw, like he’d taken a serious lick off a bullwhip. Could be he was going to end up with a permanent hickey, but Sigurd knew better than to say that, so he said just the opposite of what he was thinking: “Comin’ along real good. You ain’t gonna have to worry ’bout no scar there, hey.”
D’Marco ran a finger along the purple welt, tracing its outline gingerly. “You think so?”
“Oh yeah. Can’t hardly even see it no more.”
“Tell you one thing,” D’Marco muttered darkly, “this goddam sun’s not helping it any.”
It was the opening Sigurd was looking for. Way he saw it, made no sense at all, both of ’em fryin’ out here, doin’ the Crispy Critter number when you got a air-condition room the other side a that slider. And besides, he had this nagging bit of business yet to attend to. Put off almost a week now, it had to get done, before things started shaking out here. But by now he knew his partner well enough to come at it roundabout fashion, back door. “Sure can’t be doin’ it no good,” he agreed, gave it a beat, and then advanced the notion, “Y’know, maybe what we oughta do is, like, spell each other. Take a little break.”
“We got work here,” D’Marco said, gruffly but not very firmly, a touch of doubt in it.
“Fuck, man. One pair eyes good as two, this kind a work.”
D’Marco didn’t immediately reply. His fretful loving finger continued to stroke the abraded neck. Sigurd waited. Matter a time now. Finally D’Marco said, “This break idea. Lemme guess, you want to go first, right?”
“Nope. Other way around. Get that neck yours outta the sun. Before we gotta run you over to the burn ward.” Sigurd let him think about that, but not long. “Except I do got to make one call,” he said quickly, almost under his breath. “Take me three, four minutes, outside.”
D’Marco narrowed his blue-blocks gaze on him. “Call?” he rumbled, scowling. “Call who? No more cunts in here.”
“Nah, this ain’t cunts. This is up to home.”
The menacing, practiced scowl softened into a sneer. “Got to check in with Mama, do you?”
“Well, yeah,” Sigurd said defensively. “She worries.” And with an edge of defiance in his voice, he added, “That okay by you?”
“Make your fucking call. Make it quick.”
Put in two hours out on the cooker there and the sudden rush of chill air in the room stabbed you right between the eyes, about knocked you over. Sigurd, momentarily dizzied, plunked his rump on a bed till he was sure he wasn’t going to faint, or ralph, and then he pecked out Mom’s number on the Touch Tone and after ten beeps or so (probably one of her goddam shows blasting on the TV) got a greeting sounded like a parrot croaking the word yellow.
“Mom, it’s me, hey. Sigurd.”
“Sigurd? Sig, it’s you? Where you been? Why’nt you call? You shoulda called. I been worried.”
Parrot screech resonated with a blend of joy and the grievances of filial neglect. See, what’d he just tell him out there, D’Marco: You got somebody, a mom, say, you got responsibilities. To her, Sigurd said (and in his own inflections and cadences there was a new swagger, authentic shooter’s swagger now, fringe benefit of the rite of passage icing the other night), “Yeah, well, ain’t nothin’ for you to worry about. I been busy, is all, keepin’ on top a this job.”
“Where you at now, Sig?”
Where? Dumb fucking question. But he said tolerantly, “Florida, Mom. Still in Florida.”
“When you comin’ home?”
“No way to tell for sure,” said the weary, toil-worn warrior. “Won’t be long, though. Couple days, maybe.”
Mom started in on him: You eatin’ right? Gettin’ enough rest? Takin’ care of yourself? You got to take care of yourself, Sigurd…He listened without hearing, voicing reflex assurances (“Yeah…sure…I’m doin’ that…Right.”) at the occasional split-second break, Mom catching her wind, in the torrent of maternal wheeze. What he really wanted to do was tell her how Dietz was actually down here, Dietz himself, and how he’d just been talking to him, filling him in on the action, you could maybe say, more or less. But then he figured maybe that wasn’t such a keen idea either, seeing as how she might spill something to Uncle Eugene, put him on the horn before presto, doing his patent-pending ass-dicing number. Sigurd was wrestling with these warring impulses when, just then, D’Marco came charging through the slider, barking, “Player’s on the move,” and, pitching him the keys to the LX on his dash to the door, “Cover the Jew, track him, he trys to bolt”; and Sigurd said into the phone, “Gotta run now, Mom.”
“But we was just gettin’ talkin’,” Mom whined.
Sigurd, clutching the keys, another emblem of his accelerating coming of age, another milestone, said, “Somethin’ come up. Work.”
“Sigurd, you watch out for yourself, son. You hear me?”
“Don’t you worry none, Mom,” he said toughly.
It was a vast and sprawling complex, the Collonades Beach Hotel was—three hotels in one, actually, the Collonades North and South linked to the central unit by a bewildering maze of passageways and breezeways and clusters of satellite bungalows strung like connective tissue between the three multistoried structures. And on close inspection it seemed on the perilous edge of toppling, disintegrating, a glass-and-concrete House of Usher at any moment about to implode, crumble into powdery dust, settle into the sand. Vanish utterly, and by the wind only grieved.
Standing at the entrance to the main building, Waverly had ample time for such melancholy flights of fancy, and other thoughts as well. Twenty minutes (she’d said, somewhat breathlessly), meet you across the street from your apartment, over by that abandoned hotel, I forget the name, twenty minutes. That was easily an hour ago, maybe longer.
And so he waited, shielding himself under the canopy from the implacable sun, a wall of white gold in the cloudless sky. And eventually the Jaguar came tooling down Ocean Avenue and pulled up in the drive. She approached him, smiling meagerly, swaying ever so slightly, elegantly dressed in pink chiffon body blouse, deep cut, and black silk skirt looped by a wide bow belt. Her heels clacked on the grainy asphalt. Sunlight defined the firm planes of her face. Her eyes were hidden behind bronze-tinted Serengeti Drivers. A lady of style and fashion, unmistakably Palm Beach, come to call, bringing with her the fragrances of a delicate perfume and the hint of a scent of gin.
“Late again,” she said, rolling over helpless palms.
“It’s all right,” Waverly said, not much conviction in it.
“Would it do any good to say I’m sorry?”
“It’s all right, Caroline,” he said again.
“There’s this party, reception. For the prince. At the Venetian Room in the Breakers, no less. All the investors and wives were there. Are there.”
“Sounds very festive.”
“Don’t be angry, Tim. Please.”
“I’m not angry. Maybe a little baffled by what’s going on. Or not going on.”
She gave him a tight, strained look, a look contracted with seriousness, doubt. Then, taking his arm, she said, “Let’s stroll.”
Waverly wagged a thumb at the car. “Cops’ll ticket you if they come by. This place is posted, you know.”
“Jock’s treat,” she said with a shrug.
They started down the breezeway that ran the length of the building. At the south end they came on a cobblestone walk, a promenade of shops, dark and shuttered now, leading through the hotel to a grassy, weed-choked courtyard in back. A wrought-iron gate barred the entrance. A sign on the arch above it identified the promenade as the Rue de Paris. Caroline stood gazing at the sign a moment. She began to giggle softly.
“Remember the word games we used to play sometimes? When we were young?”
Waverly looked puzzled.
“Rue de Paris, Rue de toot? Like that?”
Remembering his way back across the chasm of years, he said, “Rue de Vallee.”
“Rue de wakening.”
“Rue de day,” he said, and her face lost its animation and the giggling stopped.
“Let’s go on,” she said and, still clutching his arm, guided him away.
They walked very slowly, as if to conserve themselves against the wasting heat. The breezeway led them past a paint-blistered bungalow unit and then along the front of the Collonades South. Occasionally, at her wordless direction, they paused to peer through the grimy windows. Here and there a tiny light gleamed from a wall fixture or an ornate chandelier. Some of the corridors were littered with chairs, lamps, dismantled beds, mattresses, assorted trash; others were perfectly clear.
At one of those pauses she said dreamily, “Such an eerie place. Up close this way.”
“It wasn’t always like this. In its day it was a showcase. Singer Island’s finest.”
She didn’t seem to hear him. “So many ghosts in there,” she sighed, as though mourning them.
Waverly looked at her curiously. So many ghosts, yes, and so many human messages to give and receive and decode and interpret. He wasn’t sure yet what the message was here, but he had an idea. Figured he would wait, a while longer anyway.
They continued on. This breezeway opened onto a large parking lot, empty and barren as a level patch of moonscape; another sheltered passage flanked the south face of the hotel, leading to the back, and from there to an amoeba-shaped pool, and beyond that to the beach. They turned the corner and walked that way. At the end of the passage was a stairwell covered by a wire mesh evidently intended to discourage trespassers, though from the trampled look of it without much success.
“Do you suppose there’s people in there?” Caroline said, indicating the snarled wire.
“It’s possible.”
“But who? Who’d dare go inside?”
“Vags, dopers, street people. Who knows?”
“But it’s so…creepy.”
“It’s a place to crash.”
At just that moment a hot puff of wind lifted off the ocean, filled her skirt. She smoothed it down modestly, and around a small golden laugh she said, “There be spirits here. Phantoms.”
Waverly was at last run out of patience. “Is that what you came to talk about, Caroline? This ruin of a hotel?”
“No, it wasn’t that.”
“What then?”
A rush of quick feeling came up in her face, and she turned away from his direct gaze. “Robbie says the deal—his project—is practically closed. Finalized, in his words.”
“Really. Good for him.”
“He’s very excited over it. Almost manic.”
Manic, was he. Small wonder, manic. Waverly said, “I expect by now you know he found the photo.”
“Oh yes. I was the first to know.”
“And that he’s talked to me about it?”
“That, too.”
“Well? Do you have any thoughts on the matter?”
“Thoughts,” she repeated, staring out into the deserted parking lot, seemingly gathering them. And after a hesitation she said, “It’s all so tangled. He’s begging me to stay, keep the family together. Promising to change.”
“And you believe that?”
“No, no, no, I don’t believe it.” Her hands made fluttery circles in the thick oppressive air. “I know better. But it’s not easy for me, Tim. Don’t you see? He’s such a weak man, under all that brass and bluster. Desperately insecure.”
“Also mean-spirited,” Waverly said quietly. “By your own testimony.”
“Mean-spirited, yes, and egocentric and cruel and vengeful—all those things. But about one thing he’s right: we have a history, even if it’s a wretched one.”
“So what is it you’re telling me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe, finally, there’s no escaping your own past after all.”
The past again. The worm at the core of every dream is always the past. Who should know better than he, who against all reason had entered that shadowland of memory and grief so many times. So many times. The message he’d suspected he was hearing earlier, peering through a glass into this ghostly relic, this wreckage, was clear enough now. And yet, looking at her this way, at her pained, tarnished loveliness, seeing past it to the restless, spirited girl he remembered, the girl she had been, he was seduced once more by the treacherous fiction of hope, and in spite of his best instincts he heard himself saying, “Friday, on the ship, you said you were coming with me. I have to ask you if that’s changed.”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve got to decide, Caroline. By tomorrow night things are going to be breaking fast for me. One way or another, you’ve got to decide. On this one you can’t flirt with time.”
Her rising hands met her falling face, and through splayed fingers and in a voice pleading, choked with tears, she said, “I can’t decide!”
Waverly felt a great hollow space opening inside him. “I think that means you already have,” he said.
A jumble of emotions seemed to hover over the grave and measured silence that fell between them. And then, as if by unspoken accord, they started back, saying not a word, nothing left to say, a peculiar desolate harmony charging the silence. At the door to the car, unticketed for all his cautions, she turned and from behind the bronze-tinted glasses regarded him with a lost gaze. “Timothy Waverly,” she said, and though the tears were gone now, her voice crumbled on a ruined smile.
“Caroline Vanzoren.”
“Such a happy coincidence, meeting you again, here, of all places, after all these years.”
“Destiny’s puns, coincidences. Somebody said that. Something like that.”
“Maybe we’re not quite done with them yet. Those coincidences.”
“Maybe.”
“Goodbye, Tim.”
Waverly followed the Jaguar with his eyes till it vanished at the end of the street. The hollowness inside him deepened, widened. Draw me a map of the brambled landscapes of the heart. Instruct me in the mysteries of its geography. Read me the riddles of its cryptic, arcane semiology. No maps appeared, and no answers occurred to him. But off to his right, no more than thirty yards up the road, was a quicksand reminder of the other side of his life: the shooter, standing at the end of his own shadow in a slanted beam of crystal sunlight, arms folded across the wedge of chest, lips curled in a wicked sneer, and head shaking slowly, side to side.
Bennie was unsystematically and with a theatric show of irritation stuffing clothes in a bag on the floor. He glanced up when Waverly came through the door and muttered, “Better grab some gear. We gotta move.”
“Move? What’s going on?”
“Goddam bug day tomorrow.”
“Bug day?”
“Yeah, their funeral. Remember?”
Waverly expelled a sigh. “The tenting. I forgot.”
“You ain’t solo there. You were gone, Oh Boy pops in, says they startin’ up first thing in the morning so we got to be out tonight. Nice timin’, huh. As if we ain’t got enough grief.”
About that he was surely right. Of all the petty, messy distractions they didn’t need just now, this one had to be a front-runner. Waverly said, “Where’s he putting us?”
“Dog pound in back.”
“We have to move everything?”
“O’Shithead says no, you want to trust an Irishman. Says that bug gas they pump in here won’t hurt your laundry. Just you. Choke you up a little. As in dead.”
Waverly sighed again. “So what are you taking, Bennie? That’s all I’m asking.”
“Takin’ enough for a couple days. You better do the same.”
“The loot? You got it?”
Bennie gave him a withering look. With his shoe he nudged a small satchel by the bag. “Some of us ain’t got our heads totally up our ass.”
Waverly let it go by. He was not in a humor to bicker. And anyway it was probably deserved, the way things seemed to be falling out.
Bennie stooped down, zippered the bags, hoisted them, and huffing and sweating, started across the room. “I’m headin’ on over. Be sure and lock up here, huh?” The door banged shut behind him.
Waverly stood there trying to consider what he’d need, but his thoughts wandered, scattered. Caroline, Robbie, Bennie, the shooter, the game coming up (less than three hours now, his watch reminded him, got to focus, center), tomorrow night’s showdown—too much cluttering his head, too much. He felt spiritless, bleary, almost dazed. He looked around the room. Focus, focus. A change or two of clothes, he’d need, some shaving gear, that should do. He gathered them. The air mattress—don’t forget the air mattress. He collected the mattress. And the door, remember the door. He locked it on his way out, pocketed the key.
