Native Tongue (23 page)

“And who wouldn’t be,” said Bud Schwartz, tight as a knot. “Can we get to it, please? We got plenty to talk about.”

Francis X. Kingsbury said, “I’m trying to remember. You got the Ramex Global file. Jersey Premium. What else?”

“You know what else.”

Kingsbury nodded. “Start with the American Express. Give me a number.”

Bud Schwartz sat down in a high-backed colonial chair. From memory he gave Kingsbury an inventory: “We got a diamond tennis necklace in New York, earrings in Chicago. Yeah, and an emerald stickpin in Nassau of all places, for like three grand.” He motioned to Danny Pogue, who hobbled over to Mrs. Kingsbury’s dresser and began to look through the boxes.

Dispiritedly, Kingsbury said, “Forget it, you won’t find it there.”

“So who got it all?”

“Friends. It’s not important.”

“Not to us, maybe.” Bud Schwartz nodded toward the bathroom. “I got a feeling your old lady might be interested.”

Kingsbury lowered his voice. “The reason I use the credit card, hell, who carries that much cash?”

“Plus the insurance,” said Danny Pogue, pawing through Mrs. Kingsbury’s jewelry. “Stuff gets broke or stolen, they replace it, no questions. It’s a new thing.”

Great, Bud Schwartz thought; now he’s doing commercials.

“There’s some excellent shit here. Very nice.” Danny Pogue held up a diamond solitaire and played it off the light. “I’m guessin’ two carats.”

“Try one-point-five,” said Kingsbury.

“There were some dinners on your card,” Bud Schwartz said. “And plane tickets, too. It’s handy how they put it all together at the end of the year where you can check it.”

Kingsbury asked him how much.

“Five grand,” Bud Schwartz said, “and we won’t say a word to the wife.”

“The file, Jesus, I need it back.”

“No problem. Now let’s talk about serious money.”

Kingsbury frowned. He pulled on the tip of his nose with a thumb and forefinger, as if he were straightening it.

Bud Schwartz said, “The Gotti file, Mr. King.”

“Mother of Christ.”

“‘Frankie, The Ferret, King.’ That’s what the indictment said.”

“You got me by surprise,” Kingsbury said.

Danny Pogue looked up from an opal bracelet he was admiring. “So who’s this Gotti dude again? Some kinda gangster is what Bud said.”

“How much?” said Kingsbury. He leaned forward and put his hands on his bare knees. “Don’t make it, like … a game.”

Bud Schwartz detected visceral fear in the man’s voice; it gave him an unfamiliar feeling of power. On the other side of the bathroom door, Francis Kingsbury’s wife shouted something about wanting to get out. Kingsbury ignored her.

“The banks that made the loans on Falcon Trace, do they know who you are?” Bud Schwartz affected a curious tone. “Do they know you’re a government witness? A mob guy?”

Kingsbury didn’t bother to reply.

“I imagine they gave you shitloads a money,” Bud Schwartz went on, “and I imagine they could call it back.”

Francis Kingsbury went to the bathroom door and told Penny to shut up and sit her sweet ass on the can. He turned back to the burglars and said: “So what’s the number, the grand total? For Gotti, I mean.”

Danny Pogue resisted the urge to enter the negotiation; expectantly he looked at his partner. Bud Schwartz smoothed his hair,
pursed his mouth. He wanted to hear what kind of bullshit offer Kingsbury would make on his own.

“I’m trying to think what’s fair.”

“Give me a fucking number,” said Kingsbury, “and I’ll goddamn tell you if it’s fair.”

What the hell, thought Bud Schwartz. “Fifty grand,” he said calmly. “And we toss in Ramex and the rest for free.”

Excitedly Danny Pogue began excavating a new pimple.

Kingsbury eyed the men suspiciously. “Fifty, you said? As in five-oh?”

“Right.” Bud Schwartz gave half a grin. “That’s fifty to give back the Gotti file …”

“And?”

“Two hundred more to forget what was in it.”

Kingsbury chuckled bitterly. “So I was wrong,” he said. “You’re not such a putz.”

Danny Pogue was so overjoyed that he could barely control himself on the ride back to Molly’s condominium. “We’re gonna be rich,” he said, pounding both hands on the upholstery. “You’re a genius, man, that’s what you are.”

“It went good,” Bud Schwartz agreed. Better than he had ever imagined. As he drove, he did the arithmetic in his head. Five thousand for the American Express file, fifty for the Gotti stuff, another two hundred in hush money … rich was the word for it. “Early retirement,” he said to Danny Pogue. “No more damn b-and-e’s.”

“You don’t think he’ll call the cops?”

“That’s the last place he’d call. Guy’s a scammer, Danny.”

They stopped at a U-Tote-Em and bought two six-packs of Coors and a box of jelly doughnuts. In the parking lot they rolled down the windows and turned up the radio and stuffed themselves
in jubilation. It was an hour until curfew; if they weren’t back by midnight, Molly had said, she would call the FBI and say her memory had returned.

“I bet she’ll cut us some slack,” said Danny Pogue, “if we’re a little late.”

“Maybe.” Bud Schwartz opened the door and rolled an empty beer can under the car. He said, “I’m sure gettin’ tired of being her pet burglar.”

“Well, then, let’s go to a tittie bar and celebrate.” Danny Pogue said he knew of a place where the girls danced naked on the tables, and let you grab their ankles for five bucks.

Bud Schwartz said not tonight. There would be no celebration until they broke free from the old lady. Tonight he would make a pitch for the rest of the ten grand that she’d promised. Surely they were square by now; Molly had been so thrilled by the contents of the Ramex file that she’d given him a hug. Then she’d gone out and had eight copies made. What more could she want of them?

Back on the road, Bud Schwartz said: “Remember, don’t say a damn thing about what we done tonight.”

“You told me a hundred times.”

“Well, it’ll screw up everything. I mean it, don’t tell her where we been.”

“No reason,” said Danny Pogue. “It’s got nothin’ to do with the butterflies, right?”

“No, it sure does not.”

Danny Pogue said he was hungry again, so they stopped to pick up some chicken nuggets. Again they ate in the parking lot, listening to a country station. Bud Schwartz had never before driven an automobile with a working clock, so he was surprised to glance at the dashboard of the Cutlass and find that it was half past twelve, and counting.

“Better roll,” Danny Pogue said, “just in case.”

“I got a better idea—gimme a quarter.” Bud Schwartz got out
and walked to a pay telephone under a streetlight. He dialed the number of Molly McNamara’s condominium and let it ring five times. He hung up, retrieved the quarter and dialed again. This time he let it ring twice as long.

In the car, speeding down U.S. 1, Danny Pogue said, “I can’t believe she’d do it—maybe she went someplace else. Maybe she left us a note.”

Bud Schwartz gripped the wheel with both hands; the bullet wound was numb because he had forgotten about it. Escape was on his mind—what if the old bitch had run to the feds? Worse, what if she’d found the Gotti file? What if she’d gone snooping through the bedroom and found it hidden between the mattress and the box spring, which in retrospect was probably not the cleverest place of concealment.

“Shit,” he said, thinking of the bleak possibilities.

“Don’t jump the gun,” said Danny Pogue, for once the optimist.

They made it back to the condo in twenty-two minutes, parked the rental car and went upstairs. The door to Molly’s apartment was unlocked. Bud Schwartz knocked twice anyway. “It’s just us,” he announced lightly, “Butch and Sundance.”

When he went in, he saw that the place had been torn apart. “Oh Jesus,” he said.

Danny Pogue pushed him with the crutch. “I can’t fucking believe it,” he said. “Somebody hit the place.”

“No,” said Bud Schwartz, “it’s more than that.”

The sofas had been slit, chairs broken, mirrors shattered. A ceramic Siamese cat had been smashed face-first through the big-screen television. While Danny Pogue hopscotched through the rubble, Bud Schwartz went directly to the bedroom, which also had been ransacked and vandalized. He reached under the mattress and found the Kingsbury files exactly where he had left
them. Whoever did the place hadn’t been looking very hard, if at all.

A hoarse shout came from the kitchen.

Bud Schwartz found Danny Pogue on his knees next to Molly McNamara. She lay on her back, with one leg folded crookedly under the other. Her housecoat, torn and stained with something dark, was bunched around her hips. Her face had been beaten to pulp; beads of blood glistened like holly berries in her snowy hair. Her eyes were closed and her lips were gray, but she was breathing—raspy, irregular gulps.

Danny Pogue took Molly’s wrist. “God Almighty,” he said, voice quavering. “What—who do we call?”

“Nobody.” Bud Schwartz shook his head ruefully. “Don’t you understand, we can’t call nobody.” He bent down and put his bandaged hand on Molly’s forehead. “Who the hell would do this to an old lady?”

“I hope she don’t die.”

“Me too,” said Bud Schwartz. “Honest to God, this ain’t right.”

Joe Winder’s trousers were soaked from the thighs down. Nina took a long look and said, “You’ve been fishing.”

“Yes.”

“In the middle of the day.”

“The fish are all gone,” Winder said dismally. “Ever since they bulldozed the place.”

Nina sat cross-legged on the floor. She wore blue-jean shorts and a pink cotton halter; the same outfit she’d been wearing the day he’d met her, calling out numbers at the Seminole bingo hall. Joe Winder had gone there to meet an Indian named Sammy Deer, who purportedly was selling an airboat, but Sammy Deer had hopped over to Freeport for the weekend, leaving Joe Winder stuck with three hundred chain-smoking white women in the bingo hall. Halfway out the door, he’d heard Nina’s voice (“Q 34; Q, as in ‘quicksilver,’ 34!”), spun around and went back to see if she looked as lovely as she sounded, and she had. Nina informed him that she was part-timing as a bingo caller until the telephone gig came through, and he confided to her that he was buying an airboat so he could disappear into the Everglades at will. He changed his plans after their first date.

Now, analyzing her body language, Joe Winder knew that he was in danger of losing Nina’s affections. A yellow legal pad was propped on her lap. She tapped on a bare knee with her felt-tipped pen, which she held as a drummer would.

“What happened to your big meeting?” she said. “Why aren’t you at the Kingdom?”

He pretended not to hear. He said, “They dumped a ton of fill in the cove. The bottom’s mucky and full of cut trees.” He removed his trousers and arranged them crookedly on a wire hanger. “All against the law, of course. Dumping in a marine sanctuary.”

Nina said, “You got canned, is that it?”

“A mutual parting of the ways, and not a particularly amicable one.” Joe Winder sat down beside her. He sensed a lecture coming on.

“Put on some pants,” she said.

“What’s the point?”

Nina asked why his tongue was blue, and he told her the story of the bogus mango voles. She said she didn’t believe a word.

“Charlie practically admitted everything.”

“I don’t really care,” Nina said. She stopped drumming on her kneecap and turned away.

“What is it?”

“Look, I can’t afford to support you.” When she looked back at him, her eyes were moist and angry. “Things were going so well,” she said.

Winder was stunned. Was she seriously worried about the money? “Nina, there’s a man dead. Don’t you understand? I can’t work for a murderer.”

“Stop it!” She shook the legal pad in front of his nose. “You know what I’ve been working on? Extra scripts. The other girls like my stuff so much they offered to buy, like, two or three a week. Twenty-five bucks each, it could really add up.”

“That’s great.” He was proud of her, that was the hell of it. She’d never believe that he could be proud of her.

Pen in mouth, Nina said: “I wrote about an out-of-body experience. Like when you’re about to die and you can actually see yourself lying there—but then you get saved at the very last minute. Only my script was about making love, about floating out of yourself just as you’re about to come.
Suspended in air, I looked down at the bed and saw myself shudder violently, my fingernails raking across your broad tan shoulders
. I gave it to the new girl, Addie, and she tried it Friday night. One guy, she said, he called back eleven times.”

“Is that a new record?”

“It just so happens, yes. But the point is, I’m looking at a major opportunity. If I start selling enough scripts, maybe I can get off the phones. Just stay home and write—wouldn’t that be better?”

“Sure would.” Winder put his arm around her. “You can still do that, honey. It would be great.”

“Not with you sitting here every day. Playing your damn Warren Zevon.”

“I’ll get another job.”

“No, Joe, it’ll be the same old shit.” She pulled away and got up from the floor. “I can’t write when my life is in turmoil. I need a stabilizer. Peacefulness. Quiet.”

Winder felt wounded. “For God’s sake, Nina, I know a little something about writing. This place is plenty quiet.”

“There is tension,” she said grimly, “and don’t deny it.”

“Writers thrive on domestic tension. Look at Poe, Hemingway—and Mailer in his younger days, you talk about tense.” He hoped Nina would appreciate being included on such an eminent roster, but she didn’t. Impatiently he said, “It isn’t exactly epic literature, anyway. It’s phone porn.”

Her expression clouded. “Phone porn? Thanks, Joe.”

“Well, Christ, that’s what it is.”

Coldly she folded her arms and leaned against one of the tall speakers. “It’s still writing, and writing is hard work. If I’m going to make a go of it, I need some space. And some security.”

“If you’re talking about groceries, don’t worry. I intend to pull my own weight.”

Nina raised her hands in exasperation. “Where can you find another job that pays so much?”