Scarface (15 page)

“If this is a double-cross, Montana, I’ll cut your fuckin’ nuts off.”

He hung up. As Tony replaced the receiver he glanced across at the car. Even from this far away he could see that Chi-Chi was shooting up. Manolo sat slumped in the driver’s seat, too staggered himself to stop Chi-Chi. Watching his helpless friends, Tony could feel his own eyes go suddenly hot with tears. He thought how Angel trusted him. Of all of them Angel was the one who would have been content to be nothing more than a dishwasher. He only came along because of Tony. He would have done anything for Tony.

With furious concentration Tony shook the tears away. He hawked and spat in the gravel outside the booth, forcing the thought of Angel from his mind. Love nobody, that was the rule. Everybody got killed in the end. He squinted across the street, following a big-bellied man in a baggy suit as he strode out of the lobby, carrying a suitcase. The man ducked into an unmarked cop car and drove across the motel lot, veering among the several cruisers and the paramedic equipment, nosing through the crowd and out to the street.

As Highsmith pulled into traffic, he glanced across at Tony in the phone booth. Their eyes met, as cold and deadly on one side as the other. Tony thought he was going to lose him, for the cop car kept traveling past the gas station. Tony watched it drive away up the boulevard, and he was suddenly weary from all the botched negotiations. Trust nobody, he thought as he stepped from the phone booth.

Then he noticed the cop car turn into a driveway a couple of hundred yards down the road. It waited with the motor running. Tony sprinted across to the Monte Carlo, jumped in the back, and ordered Manolo to drive. Ten seconds later they pulled into the driveway beside Highsmith’s car. They were right next to a drive-in bank window. A big yellow sign proclaimed: “Instant Cash!”

Tony got out of the car and went around to the driver’s side of the cop car. Highsmith leaned his elbow on the car door, pointing a gun straight at Tony’s belly. Tony smiled as if the gun wasn’t even there, but he stopped about five feet from the car. He held out the canvas bag. “Hi, Lieutenant. You recognize this?”

Highsmith growled: “What about all that mess back there, Montana? You think I need to come out eleven o’clock at night so I can get the dry heaves? What the fuck are you guys doin’?”

Tony shook his head gravely. “Colombians, Lieutenant,” he said. “Should never have happened. None o’ this. Like I said, I work out of Miami, and I’d be glad to give you a call whenever I got business in the area. Frankly, I could use the protection. You know what I mean?”

Highsmith studied him up and down. Then, almost reluctantly, he pulled in the gun and placed it on the dashboard in front of him. He grabbed the suitcase, opened the car door, and got out. Still grumbling a bit he said: “Yeah, well I’m sure we can work out something.”

“Why don’t you gimme your card, huh?” said Tony smoothly, holding out the canvas bag.

There was one last moment’s pause, as if Highsmith needed to take a breath before he entered the big time. Then he reached for the canvas bag, and once he got a good grip on it, he dropped the suitcase on the ground between them. He tossed the canvas bag into the car. Tony made no move yet to pick up the suitcase. Highsmith reached into the inner pocket of his seedy suit, which looked like it cost ten bucks with the tie thrown in, and drew out his wallet. He slipped out a card, smoothed it a little, and handed it across to Tony.

Tony beamed like a salesman. “Hey, this is great.” He jerked a thumb down the boulevard toward the motel. “Listen, Lieutenant,
my
people don’t live like that. I think we can run this business like professionals. You know what I mean?”

Highsmith nodded. “Sure make my job a whole lot easier, Montana.”

“Tony. Call me Tony.”

“Tony,” said Highsmith gravely, and the two men shook hands. Almost shyly now, Highsmith got back in his car. He kept his eyes on the rearview mirror while he backed out, as if he was ashamed to look at the man he had just made friends with. Only when the car had pulled away up the boulevard did Tony reach for the suitcase and bear it across to the Monte Carlo.

When they jimmied it open, they found six kilos.

They drove right back to the Havanito Restaurante. Omar wasn’t even there, just his lunk bodyguard, who spoke no English. He had the three thousand cash in an envelope, but Tony wasn’t interested. He demanded to speak to Omar. Reluctantly, the bodyguard moved to the phone booth and dialed a number. Tony grabbed the receiver.

“You get the stuff?” asked Omar, clearly annoyed to be called away from his dinner.

“Yeah, I got the stuff, asshole,” Tony said coldly. “But somebody screwed up real bad. One o’ my men got carved.”

“Hey, I’ll check it out right away,” said Omar, jittery now. “I’m sorry, Tony. Why don’t we double that fee for the night’s work, huh? Lemme talk to Honorato.” Honorato was the moron bodyguard.

“No thanks,” Tony said.

Omar’s voice was suddenly hard: “Tony, you can’t keep the yeyo. It ain’t yours. I don’t care who got killed.”

“You don’t understand, do you, Omar? You just lost your place in line. I’m givin’ the stuff to the boss—direct. Now where do I find him?”

Omar paused. The toughness was gone when he spoke again. “Yeah okay, Tony. We’ll go see Frank, huh? You do good work. I been tellin’ Frank.”

“Don’t kiss my ass, Omar. You might get an infection. Where is he?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll set it up. I’ll get right back to ya.”

“You do that, Omar,” said Tony, and hung up in the Monkey’s face.

He waited in the booth and lit a cigarette. Though he only had about a hundred dollars to his name, he wasn’t going to take the three thousand. He was in for bigger stakes now, and they knew it. Omar called back within three minutes. A meeting had been set up for nine the following evening. Tony wrote down an address on Brickell Avenue in South Miami. Omar was desperately friendly.

They didn’t dare go back to the apartment. They took a room in a hookers’ motel and watched television all night long. Chi-Chi nodded out early. For a long time Tony and Manolo didn’t speak at all. They shared a couple of six-packs of beer and kept their thoughts to themselves. They both knew Angel’s body would lie unclaimed in the Dade County morgue, because he had no immediate family. After all those thousands of phone calls from Fort Chaffee, he’d never succeeded in finding the right Fernandez. He would be buried in the same paupers’ graveyard where all the rest of the coke murders ended up.

About four
A.M.
Tony told Manolo to get some sleep. There was no way anybody could track them down here. Manolo stood up and walked heavily to the bed, where he lay down beside Chi-Chi. Tony thought he’d fallen asleep, but after a couple of minutes he said: “Hey Tony.”

“Yeah, chico?”

“I don’t wanna die that way.”

“Yeah, I know. Me neither. Go to sleep now.”

But Manolo couldn’t let it go. “Why’d it have to be him? He was such a little guy, Angel. Wouldn’t hurt nobody.”

Tony turned in his chair and fixed Manolo with a steely look. His voice hardened. This was the boss talking now. “Look, it’s over, okay? We’ll be more careful now. I won’t let it happen to us. You got my word. Okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” said Manolo quietly, as he curled up under the covers and shut his eyes.

Tony turned back to the television, where a rerun of
Bewitched
spilled its canned laughter into the room. All of a sudden the tears were in his eyes again, and this time he didn’t will them away. His face was impassive as the tears streamed down his cheeks. Though he wasn’t good with words, a voice inside him began to speak his sorrow. Silently he talked to Angel till the first pink of dawn streaked through the Venetian blinds. He was sorry he was such a lousy hero. Sorry he couldn’t protect his men. Sorry most of all that he still had such a hunger to be a king—a hunger that seemed obscene now, with Angel lying dead in Room 18.

About six o’clock he finally passed out in his chair. The suitcase lay open on the floor beside him, all its packets of snow gleaming in the dusky light. The test pattern buzzed on the TV screen, blank and empty as the godless day that broke outside like a fever.

That evening, Tony and Manolo drove to the high-rise district surrounding Brickell Avenue, adjacent to Coconut Grove and Coral Gables. This was the real money. They met Omar in the fountained lobby of a twenty-six-story condo complex. Four or five heavily armed security guards monitored every move and called ahead to make sure Mr. Lopez was expecting them. With the coke money in South Miami rising as far as the penthouses, these condo complexes had started doubling their security. A guard went up in the elevator with them. Another guard was posted on the top floor, walking the hallway with a German shepherd.

Omar and Tony and Manolo were let in at the double doors of Apartment 2620. A hefty, Indian-looking bodyguard named Ernie led them across a mirrored foyer to a two-story living room with a drop-dead view of the city below. Ernie had rabid eyes, and he looked about as friendly as a Doberman. Manolo gaped at the swank surroundings, the white carpet and the coral upholstered chairs, the antique painted furniture and wall cases full of pre-Columbian art. Tony tried hard not to look cowed by it all. He stepped to the terrace doors and looked out at the glittering city, with the black expanse of the ocean beyond. He still held the suitcase in his hand.

“On a clear day you can see Havana,” said a gravelly voice behind him.

He turned to greet Frank Lopez, who had just walked into the room and was already heading for the bar. He was hearty-looking and big-boned, and the Cuban-Jewish mix in him made it hard to pin him down, nationality-wise. He had a wide handsome face and bushy, curly hair. About forty-five. He wore a blue cashmere jacket with a red silk pocket square, and supple Italian shoes made of lizard, so that Tony felt suddenly cheap in his own punk clothes. Lopez did not greet Omar, or even acknowledge the existence of anyone in the room except Tony. To Tony he said, clinking ice in a glass: “So, what are you drinking, Tony Montana?”

“Whatever you’re makin’,” said Tony.

“Call me Frank, Tony. Everybody calls me Frank. My little league team—the monsignor—even the prosecutors. They all call me Frank.” He turned with two glasses of smoky Irish whiskey on the rocks. He handed one to Tony, then waved his hand at the bar, as if to indicate that the others could get their own. He took a deep drink, clapped Tony’s shoulder, and led him toward the terrace. Tony still held the suitcase.

“Omar tells me good things about you boys,” said Frank.

“Yeah. Omar.”

“Not to mention the job you did for me at Fort Chaffee,” Frank went on. Tony was thrown. The shock must have shown on his face, because Frank laughed. “You didn’t know that was for me, huh? That sonuvabitch Rebenga killed my brother. Fuckin’ commies. They ruin the world, ya know? Anyway, Tony, I’m grateful to you.”

Tony set the suitcase on the floor. He took a swallow of his drink. “Don’t mention it,” he said. “I enjoyed it.”

“And about last night, Tony.” Here Frank sighed and shook his head. It sounded like he’d been thinking about this stuff all day. “Never shoulda happened. We shoulda checked ’em out better.”

Tony said nothing. The two men drank and looked out at the city. When Frank spoke again, his voice had deepened further. The preliminaries appeared to be over. It was amazing how little attention was paid to the six kilos. Half a million dollars worth, and it seemed just then like nothing more than a ticket to bring these two men together.

“I need a guy with steel in his veins,” said Frank. “I need him close to me. Guy like you, Tony. Most o’ these guys, they’re fuck-ups.”

“Yeah, well . . .” Tony shrugged, as if to say he couldn’t decide a thing right now. But he knew inside it was the interview he’d been waiting all his life to happen. He said: “This is the kinda business I been lookin’ for. It’s like I got a feel for it.”

“I know you do, Tony. I could tell that the minute I saw you.” He clapped Tony’s shoulder again. In some way or another, they had stated the parameters of a deal. “Okay, let’s take a look at the stuff.”

He snapped his fingers at Ernie and pointed at the suitcase. They weren’t taking anything away from Tony. It was purely a matter of summoning a servant. Ernie picked up the suitcase and hauled it over to the dining room table. Frank beckoned to Omar and Manolo, introducing himself to the latter with the flash of a grin and a firm handshake, but treating him too like a hired hand. Omar he paid less heed to than the girl who scrubbed his toilet. Only Tony did he treat as an equal. They stood in a half-circle around the table, and Ernie lifted the lid of the suitcase and stepped back. Frank felt one of the plastic bags with a practiced hand, as if to check the texture of the drug. He sighed and looked up at Tony.

“Men get killed for a thousandth of this,” he said. “You know what I’m saying? There’s a thousand dead men in this suitcase.” He shook his head sadly, not expecting a reply. “You’re a real pro, Tony. You didn’t have to bring it all in. I was only buying two keys. You coulda kept the rest. I never woulda known the difference.”

“Stuff’s no good to me,” said Tony dryly. “What do I want to piss it away in the streets for? You’re the one with the system.”

Frank raised his glass. “You stay loyal like that, you move up in this business. You move up fast. Salud!” Tony lifted his own glass and nodded curtly. The two men drank. Nobody else did. Frank laughed: “Then you find your biggest headache’s figuring out what to do with all the cash.”

“I hope to have that problem real soon,” said Tony.

“Sooner than you could ever imagine, Tony. In your wildest Cuban dreams.” He seemed to be somewhere else for a moment, even as he smiled at Tony. Then he shook himself and bellowed at Ernie: “Where the hell’s Elvira? Go get her, will ya.”

As the bodyguard padded off down the interior hallway, Frank stepped away from the table. Tony followed him back to the terrace. Omar and Manolo were left to their silent cocktail. Tony had no idea where Frank came by the paternal attitude toward him, but he didn’t much care. He knew he could use it. Frank gave an exasperated grunt and said: “She spends half her life gettin’ dressed, the other half gettin’ undressed. What does that say, huh?”