Stick (9 page)

No—Stick decided—Cornell wasn't listening for magic words. He was home.

After supper, coming back along the breezeway to the garage, he began thinking of that big blown-up
who, me?
photo again—wondering if he could stick his head in the den, take another look—and a strange thing happened. He saw a yacht tied up at the dock now. Big sleek-looking cruiser that had to be fifty feet long. He went down to the dock, began pacing it off from the bow, counted twenty strides and looked at the stern.

Seaweed.
And beneath it,
Bal Harbour, Fla.

He walked back to the apartment in the garage, now relating Barry's
who, me?
expression to the cruiser in the photo in Chucky's den, but still not sure of something.

Cornell was wearing a pearl gray tie now with his gray trousers, slipping on a lightweight black blazer.

“You going out?”

“Man, you think I wear this to go
out?
Look like the undertaker.”

“There's a boat tied up at the dock.”

“
Boat
? That's a halfa million dollars worth of cabin cruiser, the
Seaweed.
The man makes some of his great escapes on it.”

“I thought maybe somebody stopped by.”

“We got company coming, but not by sea.” Cornell buttoned his blazer, turned sideways to the dresser mirror to look at himself. “You a lean, handsome motherfucker, ain't you?”

“He has parties on the boat, uh?”

Cornell turned from the dresser. “What you trying to find out I might help you with?”

“Our boss, I wondered if he's got a friend by the name of Chucky.”

Cornell's face broke into a smile. “Chucky? You know Chucky? You do, there some things you haven't told me.”

“They pretty good friends?”

“They play together sometime. How you know Chucky?”

“There was a fella name Rainy Moya at Jackson, used to work for him.”

Cornell shook his head. “Don't know any Rainy Moyas. But Chucky, shit, Chucky's the head clown, our man's star attraction, his
in
with the bad guys, the wise guys, all those guys . . .  What you looking at?”

Stick waited.

Cornell said, “Yeah,” taking his time, “there some things you have not told me.”

“I got to talk to somebody,” Stick said.

“Don't get me into nothing, man, I'm clean, I'm staying clean.”

“I need to find out something . . .”

“I got to go to work.”

“Wait a minute, okay? I want to ask you a question, that's all. I think,” Stick said, and hesitated. “I practically
know,
Chucky set up a guy, the one I mentioned. Rainy. Sent him to drop a bag knowing he was going to get whacked. Guy steps out of the car with a gun big enough to kill Jesus. But you tell me Chucky's the head clown, lot of laughs.” Stick waited.

Cornell said, “Yeah? What's the question?”

“Is he or isn't he?”

“I got to go to work,” Cornell said.

Stick fell asleep. He wasn't sure for how long. He was watching a James Bond movie on television, sitting up in a comfortable chair, but when something touched him he jumped and the news was on.

Cornell said, “Didn't mean to scare you . . .  Mr. Stam would like you to come out to the patio.”

Stick had to look up at him. “That all you going to tell me? How should I dress?”

“You fine like you are.”

“What's the problem?”

“Cecil,” Cornell said. “Cecil come home mean and ugly. Don't like the idea he's fired.”

“I been waiting for him to come and get this stuff out of there,” Stick said, “so I can go to bed.”

“Well, he's here now. Mr. Stam want you to have a talk with him.”

“I didn't fire him,
he
did.”

“Then come tell Mr. Stam that.”

“What's the guy think, I took his job?”

“Ain't any way to know what Cecil thinks.”

“Yeah? What's he like?”

“Cecil? He's an ugly redneck mother
fucker
is what he is. And he don't
like
nothing.”

“Wait a minute,” Stick said. “I get into this—then he's got to come here and pick up his
clothes
? After?”

Cornell said, “Man, what can I tell you?”

It was an informal get-together. Friends over for a few drinks, some cold shrimp and crablegs: Barry's lawyer, his internist and his yacht broker and their wives in casual dress, light sweaters over shoulders, their faces immobile, softly illuminated by patio lights buried among rows of plants, candles on the buffet table and a circle of torches burning on black metal poles.

Barry and Diane wore white caftans, Diane among the guests while Barry stood in his robe, in the ritual glow cast by the torches, to face Cecil, who hung against the portable bar.

Cecil would shift his weight and the cart would move, the bottles chiming against each other. He would reach behind him, take a bottle by the neck and swing it backhand to arc over the heads of the guests—no one moved—and splash in the swimming pool. Several bottles floated almost submerged in the clean glow of underwater lights.

Barry held his elbows in, palms of his hands extended flat, facing up. He would gesture as he spoke, then return to this palms-up pose of resignation.

“Cece? . . .  What can I tell you?”

“You already tole me, asshole. If I heard you right.” Cecil was drunk enough to stumble. He would cling to the cart as he raised a bottle of Jack Daniel's to his mouth.

“That's what I mean. What more can I say?”

“You can say it ain't so, pussyface. We'll talk her over.”

Barry was solemn. “Cece, you're not giving me much reason to even listen to you.” He glanced off into the dark. It looked like someone was coming. Finally. “I don't want to call the cops, Cece, but I don't know. I press charges you've got a parole violation. Right?” Barry looked at his guests, picked out his lawyer. “David? Wouldn't you say he's on dangerous ground?”

The lawyer stirred, sat up straighter. He said, “Well, I suppose it's possible . . .”

The figure, coming from the general direction of the garage, was cutting across the slope of lawn now. Carrying something at his side. A bucket? Something round, with a handle. A second figure, Cornell, trailed behind.

Barry said, somewhat louder, “Well, Cece, it's up to you. I'm going to ask you once more to leave quietly.”

“And I'm own ask you to bite this,” Cecil said, palming his crotch. “Little pussymouth Jew-boy, you might be pretty good.”

“That's it, all she wrote,” Barry said. “You're paid up and your replacement's right here, so get the fuck out.
Now.
” He stepped back toward his guests, looking at Stick coming into the torchlit patio . . .  The hell was he doing? Carrying an old two-gallon gasoline can . . .

Stick walked past Cecil without looking at him, not wanting to. He'd seen enough of Cecil already: that hard-bone back-country type, cords in his neck and pale arms, big nostrils—Christ, hearing the guy blowing air through his nose to clear it. You did not talk to the Cecils of the world drunk; you threw a net over them if you had one. Cops and prison guards beat their brains in and they kept coming back. Stick walked over to the buffet table. He placed a glass on the edge, unscrewed the cap on the gooseneck spout of the gasoline can and raised it carefully to pour.

Cecil said, “The fuck you drinking?”

Stick placed the can on the ground. He picked up the glass, filled to the brim, turned carefully and came over to Cecil with it. Cecil stared at him, weaving a little, pressing back against the cart as Stick raised the glass.

“You doing? I don't drink gasoline, for Christ sake. Is it reg'ler or ethyl?”

Stick paused, almost smiled. Then emptied the glass with an up-and-down toss of his hand, wetting down the front of Cecil's shirt and the fly of his trousers.

There was a sound from the guests, an intake of breath, but no one moved. They stared in silence. They watched Cecil push against the bar, his elbow sweeping off bottles, watched him raise the fifth of Jack Daniel's over his head, the sour mash flooding down his arm, over the front of his shirt already soaked. He seemed about to club down with the bottle . . .

Stick raised his left hand, flicked on a lighter and held it inches from Cecil's chest.

“Your bag's packed,” Stick said, looking at him over the flame. “You want to leave or you want to argue?”

He was making his bed, changing the sheets, when Cornell came in, leaned against the door frame to watch him.

Cornell said, “I don't know what you worried about Chucky for . . .  Mr. Stickley.”

Stick looked over at him. “I don't know if I am or not. You never answered the question.”

“Hospital corners,” Cornell said. “Know how to do all kinds of things, don't you? You about scared the shit out of the guests. They all had a double Chivas and went home to bed.” Cornell came into the room, looking around at nothing; the walls, painted a light green, were bare. “You ask me is Chucky a clown or what. Could he have had your friend killed? Ask Mr. Stam, no. Chucky's the funky white Anglo-Saxon cocaine dealer, weird, but wouldn't hurt a soul. Ask on the street, that's another something else. They speak of Chucky, say bad things about him. Set up his own man, set up his mama, wouldn't make no difference. Works with de Coobans and stays zonked on the ‘ludes. Way you want to never never be.”

“He come here to visit?”

“Time to time,” Cornell said. “But as I say, man know how to play with fire shouldn't have to worry none.”

Stick brought up the green plaid bedspread over the pillows, then pulled it back down again and folded it across the foot.

“You want to know what was in the can?” He looked up at Cornell. “Water.”

Cornell said, “Sure, ‘nough?” His grin widening. “Shit . . .  you telling me the truth?”

“Where was I going to get gasoline?” Stick said. “Drive all the way over the Amoco station?”

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME
he had a choice and picked out his own clothes?

He wore state clothes. He wore sporty clothes left by the guy who went to Key West and didn't come back. Now he had a black suit, a gray one and a tan one a tailor in the Eden Roc Hotel had chalked, altered and delivered in three and a half days as a special favor to Mr. Stam. Two seventy-five a copy.

The last time would have been in '76, but he couldn't remember the clothes, outside of a Hawaiian shirt that had sailboats and palm trees on it.

He was to wear a white or light blue shirt, black regular tie. He was to wear the black suit with the black Cadillac, the gray suit with the Rolls, the tan suit with the beige Continental. He could wear anything he wanted when he drove Mrs. Stam; usually she took the green Mercedes.

Stick said, “In the morning when I get up, do I sit around in my underwear, wait till I find out what car we're taking?”

“That's very funny,” Barry said. “No, you don't sit around in your underwear, I tell you the night before.” His eyes serious, questioning. Like he might be having a few doubts. “You keep the cars washed, gassed, ready to go, either for a time I tell you or within ten minutes of my call. You think you can handle that?”

Saying it to a man who had never been in the armed forces but had recently taken seven years of penal shit and was full up. Stick waited a moment, as though he was getting it straight in his mind but concerned about something. He let himself ease back and said, “Yes, sir. But if we have to synchronize our watches we're in trouble. I don't have a watch.”

He would remember Barry's solemn eyes staring at him. Where were the one-liners?

He asked Cornell about it later on: the guy seemed different from one day to the next.

Cornell said, “What's wrong with you? I explained, didn't I? The man's top bill.
We
don't say the line, the man says the line. What we do, we grin and chuckle. Shit, I told you that.”

Stick said, “Yeah, but he gave me a watch to use.”

“Sure he did,” Cornell said. “The same time he wants you to respect him he remembers you coming with that gasoline can . . .  Man wants you to be stupid but happy.”

 

* * *

They took the Cadillac limousine to Leucadendra. Barry sat in back and made phone calls. He talked to his broker, Arthur, told him he'd get back to him. He dialed three numbers asking for someone named Kyle, was unable to find her and was short with Arthur when he spoke to him again; he'd get back. Then spoke to a girl who was “Rorie” at first—Barry laying down a field of soft snow about how much he missed her—then “Aurora” as he explained almost deal by deal how busy he was, why he hadn't been able to see her. Stick, all dressed up in his black suit, would glance at the rearview mirror and see Barry in his tennis whites acting into the phone, telling the girl he was on his way at this very moment to a meeting with his lawyers, but hey, how about meeting on the boat later, around six or so.

He said to Stick, “You know the difference between a wife and a mistress? . . .  Night and day, man.”

Stick looked at the rearview mirror. “That's right, isn't it?” With a note of appreciation, but not giving it too much.

“Sometimes you ask yourself,” Barry said, “is it worth it?” He waited for Stick to look at the mirror again. “Bet your ass it is.”

Stick looked at the mirror again and nodded. Why not?

They drove into the grounds of Leucadendra past fairways to the tennis courts that were off beyond the stucco Spanish clubhouse with its red tile roof. Getting out, Barry pointed to a side entrance that went into the men's grill and told Stick to “park over there somewhere and hang out, I'll be an hour or so.”

Barry walked off carrying three tennis racquets in an athletic bag, a sweater tied around his shoulders. Stick watched him from the air-conditioned car. It was about ninety degrees out there, the sky almost cloudless. He put the Cadillac in “drive” and swung it around.

Park and wait. All right.

But wait a minute . . .

It startled him, something he had failed to consider: that on a job like this he could spend more than half the time doing nothing, waiting. Twenty minutes from Bal Harbour to Coral Gables, now he'd be “an hour or so.” Did that mean more than one hour but less than two? If Barry played tennis and then had drinks and maybe lunch in the men's grill . . .  Stick realized he could be hanging around here for two hours at least. Or even three hours . . .  Driving, he was doing something, he could shut himself off from the man in the backseat. But waiting, he was waiting for the man to come and set him in motion again. Wind him up. He could wait all day and have no right to complain—”Hey, you said you were going to be
an hour or so”—because waiting was part of the job. Chauffeurs waited. There were some right here, standing by their cars lined up in the circular drive. Three uniformed chauffeurs. Older guys, all of them in their late
fifties or early sixties.

Watching him from the shade. They'd know the Cadillac from the vanity plate, BS-2. The Rolls was BS-1, the Continental BS-3. Mrs. Stam's Mercedes bore a conventional number. Stick got out and walked up the drive. Yeah, they were at least in their sixties. All three wore dark uniforms, white shirts, glasses.

The one wearing a chauffeur's cap, cocked a little to one side, said to him, “Looks like Cecil finally got let go.” Stick nodded, coming up to join them—a younger look-alike in his uniform, the new guy—and the one in the chauffeur's cap glanced at the other two. “I told you. Didn't I tell you?” Then to Stick again, “He got looped once too often, didn't he?”

“I guess so,” Stick said.

They shook their heads talking about Cecil and it surprised Stick that they seemed disappointed. They told their names: Harvey with the cap, Edgar and John, who didn't say much, and told who they worked for as though Stick would recognize the names. They smoked cigarettes with one hand in their pants pocket and referred to other club member names that Stick realized he was supposed to know.
He saw that you acquired a casualness in this job: Yes, you knew all those people and nothing anyone said surprised you. Though Stick let what they said surprise him when they got around to Cecil again, talking about his memory, how ignorant he was but had this knack for remembering things. While Owen, who was Mr. Stam's driver before Cecil, Owen would jot things down he couldn't remember. The three talking among themselves about Cecil and Owen, Stick listening.

Until Harvey turned to him and asked, “How's Mr. Stam doing on that deal he's got in California, that seed company?”

“I don't know anything about it,” Stick told him but paid closer attention now. These old guys were taking their time but gradually moving in on him, the new man.

Harvey said, “You play the market?”

Stick said no and the three of them acted mildly surprised. “Gee, that's a shame,” Harvey said, “sitting where you are, right there in the catbird seat.”

Stick knew he was supposed to ask Harvey what he meant, so he did.

“Working for Barry Stam,” Harvey said, sounding surprised.

“We ask him, what looks good, Mr. Stam?” Edgar said, “and he tells us. Gives us some pretty good tips.”

The one named John smirked, said, “Not bad a'tall.”

Harvey said, “You know, over-the-counter stuff mostly, companies nobody knows anything about.”

Edgar said, “Or some hasn't reached the counter yet. Some of those brand-new stock deals he gets into.”

Stick said, “Well, I hear him talking on the phone. It's about all he does.”

Harvey said, “That's right. Now Cecil, he'd recall the names and numbers for you from mem'ry. Owen, he'd have to jot 'em down. But Cecil, he was like a jukebox. You put a coin in him and he played you a tune. Look off at number two fairway there, get a squint on his face and go right down a list of stocks, tell you the bid and the ask.”

Edgar said, “He did pretty well, too.”

John said, “
Well
? He cleaned up.”

Harvey said, “I betcha he was making a hundred a week, easy.”

Stick said, “Cecil played the stock market?”

“No, from tips,” Edgar said.

“Don't confuse the man,” Harvey said. “Cecil'd give us a stock tip and get the regular kind of tip back. But I'm not talking about a buck or a five. A good one, like a new company Mr. Stam was going into? That could be worth fifty bucks.”

Stick said, “You guys must do all right, you can afford a fifty-buck tip.”

Harvey looked at Edgar and back to Stick. “I work for a lady who don't know shit but what her broker tells her and her broker don't know shit either outside of what's on the Big Board. You follow me? Ten years ago Barry Stam was a little smarty kid'd get mad and hit his tennis racquet down on the pavement, bust about two a week. Today little Barry could buy this whole club they ever wanted to sell it. He started out with a rich daddy like everybody else around here, but he passed his daddy by—I mean he could buy his
daddy,
he wanted to. Started in real estate but makes all his money from stock investments now, mostly the last few years. He's the man with the touch a gold. So if I give old Mrs. Wilson a tip sounds good to her, she gives
me
a tip and then I turn around and split it with Cecil. You see how it works? And not just with me or Edgar or John. You can work it with pretty near any one of the fellas you see here.”

“Waiting around,” Stick said.

“Yeah, right here.”

Stick said, “Doesn't it bore the shit out of you?”

Chucky was looking at a ton and a half of next to top-grade Colombian marijuana that had a street value of almost two million dollars. Nestor Soto had bought it in Santa Marta for forty dollars a pound, brought it up from Colombia by sea and air and delivered it to
Chucky for two hundred dollars a pound. Now Chucky would turn it over to jobbers and dealers in odd lots—eating extra pills for the next two days—and double his investment.

It was pressure time in the old horse barn—off NW 16th Avenue, out past Hialeah—waiting to move the grass. Dishonest people in the business could hear about it and rip him off. Or somebody could cop to the DEA or the FBI or the BNDD or Dade County Public Safety and they'd confiscate the load, smoke it up in the municipal incinerator and he'd still have to pay Nestor six hundred grand. Within forty-eight hours, that was the deal. Nestor could even steal it from him, sell it again to some other dealer.

Chucky had guys with shotguns in the stables, out in a stand of scrub pine and down NW 16th in a car with a PREP radio. Lionel carried a radio hooked to his belt, his suitcoat hanging open. Chucky wore his hardhat and a long white lab coat, his duster, that he left here on a nail or draped over the handle of a pitchfork.

He said to Lionel, “What I should do, I'm thinking seriously, get out of the wholesale end, work strictly as a broker. I didn't have to stockpile I could be a normal human being.” Looking up at the bales, seeing daylight through the rickety boards. He imagined a wind raising dust across the yard, swooping in
to blow away the barn, rip the lab coat from his back and he'd be standing here with his stacked bales, exposed. “I brokered I could do it all on the phone. Or having my dinner where people stop in. Way I used to do it. What do you need?—see Chucky Buck, the first booth there.”

“Sounds good,” Lionel said, “but you don't make no money. Five, ten bucks a pound.”

“I'm talking about just the weed. What's this load worth if I brokered it? I wouldn't make the deal for less'n thirty grand, on the telephone, never have to look at it. Okay, take the thirty and buy half a kilo of good Peruvian flake. You see what I mean? Look at this pile of horseshit—look at it.”

“I'm looking at it,” Lionel said.

“Cost me what, six hundred grand. Same as ten kilos of Peruvian. Only you don't have to lease a fucking barn to stockpile coke. Listen, this stockpiling—I didn't have to sit on it and wonder who in the hell knows about it outside of enough people we could have a dance we all got together, I wouldn't have this pressure. Right here's where I feel it,” Chucky said, slipping a hand inside his white lab coat to touch his abdomen. “Locks up the intestines, man. Every night I'm watching the late news I have a vodka and citrate of magnesia . . .  You saw they found Rainy. You see it? It was on the news and this morning's
Herald
had it, way in the back.”

Lionel shook his head. “I don't think so.”

“You don't
think
so,” Chucky said. “You mean—here it's about the same guy you handed a suitcase to goes out and gets shot six times and maybe you saw it, maybe you didn't?”

“No, I don't guess I did.”

“They pulled him out at the Bay Front yacht basin. Cause of death gunshot. And they identify him 'cause he's got his wallet in his pocket with the driver's license. You believe it?”

“Yeah, well, it's too bad. I like Rainy okay,” Lionel said. “I work for a guy three years ago; man, I didn't like to work for him at all. He got shot, too. I was very happy about it . . .”

Chucky wondered if Lionel was going to make some kind of point, but never found out. Lionel's walkie-talkie squawked and began speaking to them in Spanish. Lionel unhooked it from his belt and spoke back to it in Spanish, Chucky waiting.

“He say it look like Nestor's car coming. The white Cadillac.”

Chucky straightened. “How many?”

“He say only three. It look like Moke and Avilanosa with him.”

Chucky said, “Shit,” and stepped over to the barn opening to see the car already approaching, its dust trail blowing into the pines that bordered the road in from the highway. Coming past the stables the car
drew two of Chucky's men from the shade to follow along behind, one of them with a pump-action shotgun.