Gold Coast (8 page)

“I
was
mad,” Lesley said, “but I’m not anymore.”

“How come?”

“You didn’t have to talk to me like that.”

“Did you go out?”

“No”—pouting—“I sat there with Aunt Leona watching TV all night.”

Poor little thing—he was supposed to comfort her, tell her he was sorry. He wasn’t annoyed or upset. In fact, he didn’t feel much of anything toward Lesley, one way or the other. He was catching glimpses of Karen DiCilia in the glow of the torch, part of her face in shadow, the light reflecting on her dark hair. Dark but not Italian-dark, the woman not anything like he’d imagined the wife of Frank DiCilia.

Lesley said, “Are you going to bed or you gonna read?”

It was strange, in that moment he did feel a little sorry for her, standing there in her see-through
nighty and her curlers. He said, “It’s late. Might as well go to bed.”

“You want me to get in with you?”

“You bet,” Maguire said, getting undressed as she turned off the light and pulled back the green and yellow spread.

“There,” Lesley said. “God, isn’t it good?”

“It sure is.”

“Shit, I forgot my curlers.”

She sat up, took out the ones in back and got down there again.

“Ouuuu, that hurts. But it’s okay. Now it’s okay. Ouuuuu, is it ever.” After awhile she said, “Cal?”

“What?”

“If my aunt knew we did this? She’d shit. You know it?”

“I guess,” Maguire said.

“We’re watching TV? She goes on and on about in Cincinnati she’s at a picnic with this guy named Herman or Henry or something and how he grabbed her and kissed her. God, it was like it freaked her out, and she was
my
age. In the guy’s car. I want to say to her, ‘Aunt Leona, you ever go down on him?’ She’d actually shit, you know it?”

“I bet,” Maguire said.

“No, she was twenty-
three
. It was just before she got married. But not to Herman. My uncle’s name was Thomas. That’s what they called him all the
time, Thomas. I can’t imagine them doing it. Can you imagine Aunt Leona doing it?”

“No,” Maguire said.

“She’s in there snoring away, all this beauty cream on. You should see her.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Well, I better get my ass beddy-by. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Night,” Maguire said.

“Don’t play with it too much,” Lesley said.

“I won’t.”

The door closed.

He could see Karen DiCilia in shadow and firelight, the clean-shining dark hair, features composed. Karen DiCilia, Karen something else, Karen Hill originally. He’d found out a few things. If she could ask questions he could, too. And then she had asked a few more. Calvin, is it? Yeah. Calvin doesn’t go with Maguire. It should be Al instead of Cal, Aloysius Maguire, a good mick name. Well, Karen doesn’t go too well with DiCilia, does it? And the good-looking woman saying, No, it should never have gone with DiCilia.

Sometimes we’re bored, willing to try something new and different. Change for the sake of change.

Maguire saying, Right.

Sometimes, then, we’re too impulsive, we make up our minds too quickly.

True.

Sometimes we talk too much, say things we don’t mean.

Very true. (Talking, but what was she
say
ing?)

And we get into a bind, a situation that offers few if any options and then we’re stuck and we don’t know what to do.

Maguire saying, Uh-huh.

Maguire almost saying, If you want to tell me what you’re stuck in, what the problem is, why don’t you, instead of beating around?

Almost, but not saying it. Because what if she told him? And expected him to help her out in some way; man, with the kind of people who’d been associated with her husband and were probably still hanging around—Then what, chickenfat, sit there and grin at her or get involved in something that’s none of your business?

This was a very good-looking woman. The kind, ordinarily, it would be a pleasure to help out and have her feel grateful. This one, he was pretty sure, could be warm and giving.

But right now she was in some kind of no-option bind and had a keen interest in firearms . . . while Maguire had a vivid memory of the six by eight cells in the Wayne County Jail and what it was like to go to trial facing 20 to life.

So he had said, when it was his turn again, “Well
listen, Karen, it’s been very nice talking to you,” and thanked her again and got out of there.

Lying in bed he began to think, But maybe she just needs somebody to talk to. Somebody she feels would understand her situation. Or keep the local con artists away. It didn’t necessarily have to be anything heavy. What was the risk in talking to her, finding out a little more?

She was a good-looking woman.

He wondered how old she was.

He wondered how many more new one hundred dollar bills there were in her house.

ARNOLD CAME FROM THE BEDROOOM
carrying a yellow canvas bag that had a zippered flap on the side for a tennis racket. Roland was on the balcony looking over the rail, holding onto his cowboy hat due to the wind off the ocean. Arnold stared at Roland’s back, at the bright-blue material pulled tight across the shoulders.

Roland turned. As he saw Arnold watching him, he said, “How’s Barry?”

Arnold walked over to the coffee table and dropped the bag. “Fifty-four thousand,” Arnold said.

Roland came in from the balcony. “I asked you how’s Barry.”

“He’s in traction. He’ll be in traction six months. Also his kidney and his spleen’s fucked up.”

“Tell him if he’s gonna dive, he should do it in the deep end,” Roland said. He moved past Arnold to the canvas bag and picked it up. “Wouldn’t think paper’d be this heavy, would you?”

“You gonna look at it?”

“I know what it looks like,” Roland said. “You’re doing good, Arnie. Keep it up.”

“You know I’m gonna pay you, right?”

“Sure, I do.”

“Well, how about—you know, since this isn’t strictly speaking a shylock deal—we make a different kind of arrangement.”

“Like what, Arnie?”

“See, the way it is, I keep paying the vig, how’m I ever gonna get to the principle?”

“Beats the shit out of me,” Roland said.

“You know what I mean? I didn’t borrow the money. I’m only paying the man back his investment.”

“Yeah? What’s the difference?”

“It’s
diff
erent. You got guys borrow money from you, they know going in what the vig is. But this was a business deal.”

“They’re all business deals,” Roland said, “but vig’s vig and the amount owed’s something else. Didn’t they teach you that at school, Arnie?”

“I tried to explain it to Ed—”

“I know you did. And he told you to talk to me,” Roland said. “It’s the same way, a man, a guy owns one of the biggest hotels on the strip, he borrows money, he pays the vig. Every week. He’s got a problem, he comes to me with it. Man with a
restaurant right here in Hallandale, shit, half a dozen appliance stores over on federal highway, picture show, bunch of motels—they all pay the vig, Arnie. They understand it’s the way you do business.”

“Right, shylock business, I understand that.” Arnold moving around, bit his lip. “But this is
diff
erent.”

“And I ask you how-so?”

“I didn’t
borrow
the money, Ed in
vested
it.”

“But you lost it, so you have to pay it back.”

“I didn’t lose it—”

Roland had his palm up, facing Arnold. “We ought to agree on something here.”

“Okay, I lost it.”

“Now then,” Roland said, “when you come to paying back, what’s the difference? Paying back is paying back, whether it’s money you lost or money you borrowed. See, your losing it—we give you money, we don’t ask you what you’re gonna do with it, like the bank. You can flush it down the toilet if you want. Long as you pay it back.”

“Okay,” Arnold said, “I owe you five hundred and forty grand. I can pay you back in time, you know that. But I can’t if I keep paying the fucking vig. Look, ten weeks from now, fifty-four
thousand
a week, man, where the fuck am I? I will’ve paid out five hundred forty grand, right? And I’m still
not into the fucking principle. I’m never into it. You know what I got to do? I mean to get what I’m paying you.”

“I don’t know,” Roland said, “ask your mommy for it?”

“I got to deal in hard shit, man, and that’s a totally different business. Get into that Mexican brown, nobody even likes it, I got to keep a line coming through here and beg, im
plore,
dealers to take the shit. That’s what I’m into now, myself, that’s all.”

“Your little friends,” Roland said, “where’d they go?”

“Who knows. Fuck ’em. I said to Ed, okay, then back me again on the Colombian thing. Three times, three loads, you take my cut as well as your own, I’m paid off.”

“And he said?”

“Shit, you know what he said.”

Roland buttoned his suitcoat and switched the canvas bag from his right hand to his left, ready to go.

He said, “It’s hard out here in the world of commerce, ain’t it, Arnie?”

But rewarding to those who put their nose to the grindstone and their ear to a box-full of cassette tapes, the way Roland did for twenty-four hours
and fourteen minutes spread over three days, listening to something like one hundred forty-six different cassettes.

And ninety-nine percent nothing. Somebody called the weather every day. The lady called her hairdresser once a week, this queer who scolded her and acted impatient. (What’d she take that kind of shit for?) She talked to some people in Detroit a few times; nothing. She talked to her daughter Julie in Los Angeles; listened to her daughter bitch about work and her husband fooling around, the daughter talking away, never asking how her mother was doing. (“Hang up,” Roland would say to himself. “Whyn’t you hang up?”) There were calls to Marta, short conversations in Spanish. Then a woman calling from the
Miami Herald
a couple of times, wanting to interview her, take some pictures of Mrs. DiCilia at home, Mrs. DiCilia saying not now, some other time.

Then the dinks started calling about the middle of February. Dinks asking her to go out. Dinks calling again and saying what a fun time they had. “Hey, that was a ball, wasn’t it? Delightful.” Laughing like girls. One dink giving her his golf scores for the week. This other dink boring the shit out of her (and Roland) with all these stock market reports. Another one, the only thing he talked about was his Donzi cigarette boat and off-shore racing, Miami-Bimini, Miami-Key West, how big
the waves were, implying what a fucking hero he was out there at the helm. (Roland said to the voice on the tape, “You dink, I’d blow your ass off with a Seminole air boat. Put you smack on the trailer.”) From the sound of them, it couldn’t have been too hard to scare them off. The lady didn’t know how lucky she was, saved from listening to them dinks.

Then the woman from the
Miami Herald
again wanting to interview her; DiCilia saying all right. Then a call from some Palm Beach magazine, the
Gold Coaster,
something like that, and Mrs. DiCilia agreeing to talk to them.

Then more conversations with Ed Grossi in May. (Roland would sit up and pay attention to these.) Then Ed inviting her to his office.

There, that was up to where Roland took over the tape concession and started getting them directly from Marta or Jesus Diaz. Nothing interesting yet, not the kind of information he was listening for.

Then the one, her call to Ed chewing him out. “I never want to see that man here again.” Not loud, but a good bite in her tone. “Keep that animal away from here.” (
An
imal? Hey now.) Then saying, “Why didn’t you tell me yourself? Why did I have to hear it from him? Keep him away from this house. You understand?” (Roland saying, “Hey, take it easy, Karen.”)

He listened to the end. Then played it back and
listened again. No sir, nothing about his proposition. Not a word. Blowing off steam, but not telling the whole story, was she? Keeping a possibility open. Roland grinned.

The next few tapes, nothing of interest. One he thought at first was going to be good.

The woman talking to the operator, asking for the number of Goodman and Stern in Detroit, telling the operator it was a law office. (Uh-oh.) Then talking to a guy named Nate. Nate telling her it had been too long and how sorry he was he couldn’t make Frank’s funeral and was there anything he could do for her. Then Karen asking him if the name Maguire and Deep Run meant anything to him. Long pause. The guy, Nate, saying yes, he believed they handled it. Why? Karen saying it wasn’t important but she’d like some information about Maguire if they had it on file. She had met him, she said, and something about Maguire wanting a job recommendation. This guy Nate saying, after another pause, well, he’d have somebody named Marshall something put a report together and send it to her. But he’d advise her to use discretion and touch base with someone at Dorado, someone close by. And how was everything else down in the land of sunshine?

“Hot in the day, cool in the evening,” Roland murmured to himself. Dink lawyers, you never knew what they were talking about.

Another tape. Another conversation with Ed Grossi. Ed back from his trip. That would have been yesterday. Roland paid attention, listening carefully as Karen asked Ed about a trust fund, wanting to know what bank it was in. Ed told her.

KAREN: You said in bonds, I know, but I’ve forgotten the name.

ED: Miami General Revenue, at six percent.

KAREN: Don’t I get records, something on paper? How do I prove they’re mine?

ED: Well, as I told you, the bonds are in the name of the administrator of the estate, Dorado. The yield, the interest—what’d I say, two and a half?

(“Here we go,” Roland said.)

KAREN: Two hundred and forty thousand.

ED: Yeah, goes into the trust and the bank deposits it, or they credit it to your account, twenty thousand a month. Yeah, that’s it.

(ROLAND: “That’s it all right. Man, that is
it.
”)

KAREN: But I don’t have anything that describes me as the beneficiary, or whatever I am.

ED: You’re getting the money, aren’t you?

KAREN: Yes, but I’d like something on paper.

ED: I’ll have Vivian get you a copy. We’ll get you something, don’t worry about it. How’s everything else? Clara says she wants to get together with you sometime.

KAREN: That’d be fine. (Long pause) Ed . . . look,
we’re going to have to talk about this other thing. When can I come to your office?

(Roland, writing figures on a pad of paper, looked up.)

ED: What other thing?

KAREN: Ed, for God’s sake. Maybe this happens in India or Saudi Arabia, but not Fort Lauderdale, Florida. You can’t simply ignore it.

ED: Karen—

KAREN: You’ve got to
stop
it, that’s all. If you won’t, I’ll take you to court. I’ll do
some
thing—leave here if I have to.

ED: Karen—

KAREN: If you think I’m going to live like this you’re out of your mind.

ED: All right, we’ll have a talk. How about tomorrow, my office? Come on up, we’ll go to lunch.

(ROLAND: “That’s today.”)

KAREN: I’ll meet you at Palm Bay.

(ROLAND: “Shit.”)

He looked at his figures again, scratched them out and started over, multiplying, dividing, trying different ways, finally,
finally
then, coming up with the answer, what twenty thousand a month was six percent of. Jesus Christ, four million dollars the woman had!