Scarface (20 page)

“Yeah, yeah,” said Manolo, who’d known exactly how Tony would react. “You can’t hide something that gorgeous, you know. You think I’m the first guy’s noticed her?”

“I’ll worry about that,” retorted Tony. “When she’s old enough, we’ll find her a nice doctor. Or maybe a stockbroker.”

“She ain’t a nun, Tony. She’s lookin’ for a party, just like everybody else.”

They dropped it. Tony decided he had to keep in closer touch with Gina. He called her the next afternoon and started grilling her about her boyfriends. She laughed it off, berating him for treating her like a child. He started in to lecture her when she suddenly interrupted. She’d seen her friend Beatriz the night before. Elvira was home.

It was one o’clock. He had a dozen deliveries to make that day, but he managed to palm a few off on Manolo, a few more on Nick the Pig, and he had the rest done by three. He drove to Brickell Avenue and waited outside in the Monte Carlo. He had no idea what her schedule was. She might only go out in the evening, for all he knew, and even then only accompanied by Frank. He couldn’t call. He couldn’t leave a note. With so much time gone by, he hadn’t a clue where things stood between them any more. He had no other choice but to count on his luck.

About ten after four the Rolls was brought around to the portico just outside the main entrance. She appeared out of the elevator in a white silk dress, dazzling next to her Caribbean tan. She was alone. Tony let her get into the Rolls and drive out of the driveway and turn right toward Coral Gables. Then he gunned the Monte Carlo and tailed her for about two blocks. At the next intersection the light had just gone red. Elvira slowed the Rolls to a stop. Tony tapped his brake and rammed her rear bumper, not very hard. She leaped out of the Rolls cursing, her eyes blazing. Tony got out grinning. She didn’t appear surprised.

“You idiot,” she said, but not without amusement. “What are you trying to do now?”

“I thought you might like to go for a ride.”

“In that?” she retorted disdainfully, pointing at the Monte Carlo. “I think I’ll pass. Besides, I have to go get my hair done.”

“Why? It looks great the way it is.”

She shrugged. She didn’t seem to mind at all talking in the middle of the street. There wasn’t much traffic, and the cars funneled by them easily enough, but they must have wondered how these two could stand there chatting after one of them had just rear-ended the other. “Nothing better to do,” Elvira said.

“So why don’t we go for a ride?”

“As a matter of fact I was thinking about you,” she said. “When I was in the Bahamas.” She gestured down the street, more or less in the direction of the ocean. “I realized there was something I forgot to ask you.”

“So ask, why don’t you?”

“How’d you get this?” She reached up a manicured finger and drew it down along the scar, barely touching it. “It’s very sexy.”

Tony smiled. “Somebody’s husband.”

“Oh.” She shook her head and clucked her tongue. “See why I don’t believe in marriage? Too damn bloody. Where should I leave the Rolls?”

He pointed to a parking lot across the way, in front of a Pizza Hut. She got back in the car and pulled it in. People in Miami had gotten used to seeing Rollses at Pizza Huts. It was a whole new breed. The Rollses of Palm Beach, purring down Worth Avenue with the chauffeurs in gray livery, wouldn’t have been caught dead at a Pizza Hut, of course, but they couldn’t hold back the future either. Elvira seemed to delight in the incongruity as she left the car and trotted across the street to the Monte Carlo. Tony thought his heart would stop, she was so beautiful running towards him.

“Have you got a towel or something?” she asked when she opened the door. The seat was in fact very grungy. The Monte Carlo looked like it was owned by farmworkers. There wasn’t anything handy to lay down for her, so he unbuttoned his rayon short-sleeved shirt with the tiger on the back and slipped it off. He spread it on the worn and oily seat beside him, and she got inside.

She immediately turned the rearview mirror toward her and checked her face. Tony had already peeled out into traffic, hunkering down to look out of the side mirror. She tilted the rearview back in his direction and slumped against her door and gave him an antic look.

“So,” he said as they slipped onto the expressway, “how was the Caribbean?”

“Real pretty.”

“I come from the Caribbean, you know.”

“I know,” she said. “Did you used to hang out on the beach half-naked, toking on a little joint?”

“Uh huh. No joint, though.”

“Oh, right. You’re the dealer who doesn’t get stoned. I think you do it just to be ornery.”

“What’s ornery?”

“Trying to rape girls in the ladies’ room, that sort of thing.” The car was stuffy. She opened her window and held her head so the wind blew in her hair. “Where are we going?”

“Looks like I’m going to need a new car,” he said, “if we’re going to be taking a lot of rides.”

“We’re taking
this
ride,” she replied precisely. “I wouldn’t make any plans if I were you. I never make plans.”

“What kinda car you like?”

She shrugged, as if to say she could no longer be sure of anything she liked. “My father used to have an old Jaguar,” she said. “When I was a little girl.”

He took a downtown exit, making his way to Sarasota Boulevard, where the auto dealerships were lined up for several blocks. When he pulled into the Jaguar place and parked the Monte Carlo outside the main entrance, the salesmen on the floor looked pained. As Tony and Elvira walked in, Tony shrugging into his tiger shirt, the sales manager approached with barely concealed contempt. They paid no attention, they were having too good a time. He showed them four or five sedans, none of which piqued their fancy till they came to a bright red XJ-6.

“I think this is you,” said Elvira.

Tony stalked around it, then got inside and ran a hand over the leather dash. He leaned out the window and beckoned her over. “You like it?” he asked. “I mean, is it you?”

She shrugged. “Bit loud, I suppose. But yeah, it’s real cheerful. You look like a million bucks in it.”

Tony grinned and got out. The sales manager was sort of wringing his hands, looking out the window as if he could will a nice white businessman to come in and buy a car. Tony had to tap him on the shoulder to get his attention. “Uh—excuse me. How much is this car?”

“Twenty-eight thousand,” said the manager, thin-lipped and arrogant. As if to say: “Out of your range, pal.”

Tony reached into his front pants pocket and pulled out a wad of cash, as casually as if he carried it around all the time, though he’d retrieved it a couple of hours ago from the coffee tin where he had it stashed. It was all in thousand-dollar bills. Tony started peeling them off, and the manager, pale and stunned, held out the palm of his hand so Tony could count them out. Elvira looked on with vast amusement. When Tony had handed over the twenty-eight bills, he asked the manager to double-check. With shaking hands the manager did a recount, all the while fawning on Tony, promising him they could have the car ready to drive away by noon the following day.

“No way,” said Tony. “There’s some custom work needs to be done. Can you do it?”

“What sort of custom work?” asked the manager with a gelid smile.

Tony walked along the side of the car, pointing here and there at the body. “Get this whole section bullet-proofed,” he said. “Here and here. And I want blackout shutters. Bulletproof window in back. Tint all the windows except the front, I don’t like bein’ looked at. Then I want one o’ them radio scanners, you know? The best they got, so I can pick up flyin’ saucers if I have to. You got all that?”

“I think so,” said the manager wanly.

“We’re gonna need fog lights. Case we take a little vacation in a swamp.” Tony turned to Elvira, who stood with her arms folded, enjoying it all as much as he. “Am I forgettin’ anything?”

“How about machine-gun turrets?”

“Nah,” he replied with a shake of his head. “With the Ingram, see, you don’t need a turret.” He turned to the manager. “Do ya?”

“Uh, no—I suppose not.” The manager stood there stupidly, holding the twenty-eight thousand. He looked like he’d never seen cash before. He was a whiz at explaining financing, but he seemed to have no patter that fit the current situation. “These extra . . . features,” he said. “They’ll cost you quite a bit.”

“How much?” retorted Tony, starting to peel another G-note off his wad.

“I simply couldn’t tell you,” said the manager, anxious and rattled. “I’ll have to get hold of a specialist. This just isn’t usual.”

But he had a sinking feeling that it was going to be. He ushered Tony into his office and made him sign the ownership papers. When he asked for identification, Tony produced a Florida driver’s license and his green card. The manager may have seen a green card before, but he’d certainly never sold an XJ-6 to someone who carried one. He promised to have an estimate on the extras by tomorrow afternoon. No, Tony did not have to give him any more money right now.

He walked Tony back to the Monte Carlo. Elvira was standing beside it, smoking a cigarette. With a growing sense of disbelief, the manager watched Tony remove his shirt and place it on the greasy seat so Elvira could sit. As Tony got in and they drove away, the manager gave a weak wave, as if he’d just lost a sale.

“You move real fast, don’t you?” she said. “Maybe too fast.”

“I been waitin’ a long time. Where to?”

“Back to the car. I still have to get my hair done.”

“When will I see you again?”

She laughed. “You don’t need to see me. You just bought a new car. You’re going to have girls coming out of your ears.”

They were on the expressway. The traffic was heavy and dirty. Rotten motels lined either side of the road, looking out on the stream of cars. The city seemed as grungy here as the car they were driving in. Elvira in her clean white dress was like a creature from another planet.

Tony turned to her. His face was grave, his eyes burning. “I been waitin’ a
long
time,” he said. “The minute I laid eyes on you, I was crazy about you. The
minute.
You understand?”

She was startled at the nakedness of it. She lowered her head, embarrassed, and fished in her purse. She brought out a vial of coke and a tiny silver spoon. “Get your own girl, Tony,” she said quietly. “I’m not available.”

“You just figure out when I can see you again.”

They drove on in silence. She took a toot of the coke in either nostril. She didn’t bother to offer him any. She dropped the vial back in her purse and idly licked the little spoon. She gave a dry laugh: “Did I ever tell you I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth?”

Tony didn’t answer. He just kept driving. His face was completely blank.

Arnoldo Sosa was surely the most glamorous man in Cochabamba, Bolivia. But he would have held his own in Monte Carlo too, or Acapulco or even London. He was a playboy of the old school, about six-foot-two with black wavy hair, Fernando Lamas the year he married Esther Williams. He had a lean athletic body and a Copacabana tan; and he favored polo shirts and pocketless pants, so everyone would see for himself. On his right wrist (on his left was a Rolex) was a big-linked gold ID bracelet, with “NOLDO” written in diamonds.

Accompanying Sosa everywhere was a man whom even Sosa called the Shadow: a thin, intense, venomous-looking Hispanic in his mid-thirties, with the look of death in his smashed and stitched-up face. The Shadow always stood slightly behind the person or persons addressing Sosa, in a sort of garotte position. He stared down anyone who might glance in his direction with a look that could turn a man to stone. Sosa himself was full of a wild and passionate energy. He didn’t need drugs; he was high on money. Because of the Shadow, it was very difficult to muster the same intensity as Sosa. You were too busy wondering if you were going to have your windpipe severed. This was deliberate.

Still, Omar had a much worse time of it than Tony. Since he was so nervous to begin with, he could hardly stand still when the Shadow was in the room. Omar looked like he itched all over. But then, he’d had a bad time of it ever since they left Miami. Sick in the plane to Bogota. Groaned all the way from Bogota to La Paz. Sick all over himself in the helicopter ride up the mountains to Cochabamba. Besides, he was tense and annoyed just being with Tony. He hadn’t wanted to bring him along at all, and he’d tried to convince Frank that Tony was too impulsive, that he couldn’t shut up, that he paid no attention to forms. Frank was insistent. Tony had done such a good job on his first three runs to Bogota, it was time to move him closer to the source. Frank wanted his input.

So that is how Tony Montana happened to be walking through a coke factory with the biggest playboy in Cochabamba, maybe in all of Bolivia. The four of them—Sosa first, then Tony and Omar, with the Shadow so close behind them they could practically feel his breath on their necks—walked through the processing lab, following the drug from step to step. There were four black coal-fired stoves, each with a massive iron kettle on the flame, bubbling with coca paste. Chemists in white lab coats worked side by side with mute, barrel-chested Indians. Along one wall was a row of brick ovens, where the refined cocaine was dried.

Tony missed nothing. He felt as if he was being let in on the secrets of some vast magician.

“So between here and my other factory,” said Sosa, “I can guarantee production of two hundred kilos—that’s refined—two hundred kilos a month. Problem is, I got no steady market. Some months I can’t move fifty keys, other months I gotta do two, three hundred. Crazy, huh? How can you do business that way?”

“Hey, I know what you mean, Mister Sosa,” Omar replied unctuously. “We got the same problem up in Miami. Month to month, you never know what the demand’s gonna be.”

Sosa gave him an icy look, as if to say he didn’t need another parrot. In his limp suit, with a wet cigarette clamped in his nervous fingers, Omar was hopelessly out of his league. He’d been one step behind from the moment he staggered off the helicopter. But Tony still held back, letting the two of them talk. He paused for a moment at a long table just beyond the ovens. The Shadow stopped beside him. Refusing to be intimidated, Tony pinched up a sample of the dried coke and snorted it up his nose. He smiled at the dead-eyed Shadow, to show that he liked the product. He said in a low voice: “Somehow, pal, I don’t think you and I are gonna get along.”