Welcome to Paradise (14 page)

He sat. He was breathing heavily. He looked
down at his ravaged jacket, and he almost wanted to cry. Cry, or
tear it thread from thread, till no two pieces of it hung together,
till it was as utterly destroyed as though it had never been
made.

Softly, relentlessly, Tony Eggs Salento said,
"Enough fun and games. Now we talk. ... I know why you came here,
Nicky. You came here 'cause you want the market back. But here's
the problem: How can you expect to get it back when you still don't
understand why you lost it inna first place?"

Nicky looked down at his hands, very pink
against the green felt of the table. Carlo Ganucci gave a weak and
sudden burp, the burp of a man whose innards weren't working
right.

"Why'd ya lose the market, Nicky?" Tony Eggs
went on. "Not because ya didn't run it good. Because ya got above
yourself.
Capice
?"

Nicky tried to lift his eyes, but couldn't.
His jaw worked and he felt it deep inside his ears.

"Ya got to where ya thought that Nicky Scotto
was more important than the job. The suits, the nightclubs—they
gave you a hard-on, they got you laid. Fine. But, Nicky, listena
me. I'm sevenny years old and I ain't been inna can in forty-five
years. Why? 'Cause I wear cheap suits and I stay home at night, and
I don't rub the feds' faces inna shit I'm gettin' away with. Ya
see?"

The lieutenant raised his face at last.
Around his mouth and eyes, defiance and humiliation were
contending, as on the face of every child who's been scolded.

"So, very simple," Tony Eggs resumed, "here
is why you lost the market. You lost the market because you acted
like a dumb trash show-off punk who was bound to fuck up big time
and get himself nailed. . . . Now, have I made you feel like a
piece a shit?"

There was no answer to that, so Nicky Scotto
just looked around the room. Had the poker players heard all this,
the lackey behind the counter?

" 'Cause here's the funny part," said Tony
Eggs. "I like you, Nicky. You're hungry. Ya work hard. Ya got
potential. So now I'm in, like, a difficult position."

Nicky moved his lips. Getting his voice to
work again was like starting up a long-parked car whose battery had
run down. "What's difficult about it?" he managed.

The boss pulled on his long thin face. "I
think you've learned a lesson. All things bein' equal, you deserve
a second chance. But inna meantime, Big Al's got the market, and up
until a couple days ago I was very happy wit' the job he was
doin'."

Hope scratched at Nicky like loose threads in
his underwear. He looked down at his violated jacket, felt a sudden
spartan contempt for it. Who needed fancy suits? "And now?" he
said.

Tony Eggs scratched his neck. He leaned his
head forward to do so, and his throat went stringy in his
collar.

"Al made a couple judgments that sorta shook
my confidence. Took vacation. Picked the wrong guy ta leave in
charge while he was gone. It's not enough to fire him about.
But—"

"But what?" said Nicky.

Tony Eggs leaned far back in his chair. So
did Carlo Ganucci. The two old men took deep, sighing breaths,
then, in unison, leaned forward once again.

"Nicky," said the boss, "I'm a pretty simple
guy. I've always believed that the best man for the job is the man
who wants the job the most."

Scotto pressed his ribs against the table,
grabbed the edges of it with his meaty hands. "So what can I
do—?"

Tony Eggs cut him off with a shrug. "I'm not
you, Nicky. I don't know what you should do. Think about it. You'll
come up wit' somethin'."

The boss looked away, and Nicky felt suddenly
drained, belatedly realized that the old man's unblinking stare had
been on him for a long, long time. He brought his hands in front of
him, sat through a few seconds of silence before he understood that
the sitdown was over. Without another word he rose to go. The
rubber cups on his chair legs made ugly squeaks against the old
linoleum.

"Your jacket," Tony Eggs reminded him as he
started moving toward the door.

Nicky left it lying where it was.

"Cold outside," said Carlo Ganucci.

Nicky didn't turn around. With only his thin
cashmere sweater for protection, he broke out into the unseasonable
chill of the November morning, his mind already chewing on the
question of what he had to do to get the market back.

Alan Tuschman, fleeing everything and
nothing, ran farther than he should have.

He ran till his saliva was all used up, till
he could feel the separate, grinding pieces that comprised his
knees, till small fillets of muscle began to quiver in his
buttocks. By now he was way up near the airport. Absently he
watched planes take off and land, thought about the passengers
briefly trading one life for another, carrying in their luggage the
people they might be if nobody they knew was watching. The sun grew
higher, shadows seemed to evaporate on hot pavements. The breeze
dropped and the ocean took on the fuzzy sheen of brushed aluminum.
Fifi's tongue hung down almost to the sidewalk, swung like a damp
pink pendulum as she unflaggingly ran.

Just beyond the airport, the island curved,
and there was a wide place in the promenade where people sometimes
parked their cars, to fish, or windsurf, or just to look out at the
Straits. Nearing that curve, sweat in his eyes and fog in his
brain, Al saw something that at first glance made him smile. It was
a new gray Lincoln, spotless but for the inevitable goo of squashed
bugs on the windshield, and it had a New York license plate that
said BIG AL.

Hmm, thought Alan Tuschman. Small world.

In the next heartbeat, though, something
darker and indefinably discomfitting pressed in on him. He felt
somehow crowded in his own skin. As if the basic fact of his
uniqueness were being questioned. As though the borders of the
little space he took up in the world were being suddenly
contested.

He didn't have long to think about it. After
half a dozen more strides, he saw the tall woman he'd spoken with
on the way to the beach. She was sitting on the seawall, wearing
pink shorts and a lime-green top, looking out across the ocean. The
big, drooling rottweiler that he'd first seen on Duval Street was
lolling around her ankles.

Al stopped running. He didn't exactly decide
to stop. He just pulled up short, sucked in a breath, and yelled
out, "Hi there!"

The woman turned toward his voice. It seemed
to Al that she started to smile then caught herself. Her eyes
flicked toward the Lincoln then back again. Blandly, uncomfortably,
she said, "Oh, hi."

Fifi ran over and started yipping at the
rottweiler, crouching on her chicken-wing back legs and sticking
out her flat and tiny face. Ripper quailed, retreated behind Katy's
slender calves.

Al Tuschman, proud of his dog, said, "Don't
worry. She won't hurt him."

Katy almost smiled before erasing it again,
gave Fifi a quick pat on the head. Her face tightened and her hand
pulled back as the Lincoln's driver's-side door clicked open.

Al Marracotta got out. He hadn't previously
seen the point of getting out to look at water that you could see
just as easy through the windshield, but now he did. He was on the
far side of the car, and could barely peek over its roof. He
secretly came up on tiptoe to appraise this sweating palooka who
was talking to his girlfriend. The guy looked strong. Moisture
glistened in his whorls of thick black chest hair, veins stood out
in his neck and arms. But strong was strong, and tough was tough,
and Al Marracotta had long ago learned that the two generally had
squat to do with each other. He snarled at the interloper and
turned to Katy. "You know this guy?"

"We met at the beach." She sounded weary,
maybe frightened, saying it.

"Two minutes you're outa my sight, you're
pickin' up guys at the beach?"

Katy said nothing, looked down at the tangle
of dogs at her feet.

Al Tuschman, trying to be helpful, agreeable,
said, "Hey, we said hello. We hardly talked." Then he gestured
toward the Lincoln's stern. "You know, my nickname's Big Al,
too."

Al Marracotta didn't like that. He was not a
man inclined to share. Not girlfriends, not nicknames, not
anything. He pushed forward his chin and said, "What of it?"

Surprised by the readiness of the other man's
hostility, Al Tuschman gave an awkward and retreating laugh.
"Nothing. Just a funny coincidence, that's all."

Al Marracotta sneered and looked away. "Real
fuckin' funny." To Katy, he said, "Come on, flirt, we're outa
here."

She took a deep breath then rose from the
seawall. She didn't look at Alan Tuschman, but he noticed once
again how gracefully her long body folded and unfolded. Still, once
she'd risen, there was a stiffness and a hesitation in her step,
and anyone could see that she didn't want to get into that car. The
cowardly rottweiler stayed behind her legs the whole way to the
door, its veiny testicles bouncing as it leaped into the
backseat.

Big Al Marracotta burned rubber as he pulled
away. Big Al Tuschman sat down to rest where Katy had been sitting,
used his balled-up shirt to dry his chest, and tried not to think
about the long, stiff-jointed walk back to his hotel.

*

"Come on, Donnie, what else could he of
meant?"

They were sitting in the fish market office.
It was cold and it smelled of clamshells and the blue tang of
slowly melting ice. Donnie Falcone kept his big funereal topcoat
on; its lapels flapped as he gestured. "Coulda meant a lotta
things," he said. "Up the take. Expand the territory. Increase the
tribute. Ya know, do somethin' t'impress 'im. He didn't tell ya
start a war."

Nicky Scotto drummed his fingers on his metal
desk. Ambition was keeping him warm; he was still wearing the
cashmere turtleneck alone. "What war?" he said. "I'm talkin' 'bout
takin' out one guy."

"Lunatic!" said Donnie, pulling on his long
and pliant face. "Listen ta yourself! You ain't takin' out nobody.
Fuhget about it."

Nicky leaned back in his chair. It was a
crappy chair, the cheap springs creaked as he leaned back, but,
boy, did it feel comfortable. His face went dreamy, piggy black
eyes losing focus.

Donnie leaned far across the scratched-up
desk, grabbing for his friend's attention like he was reaching for
a grip on someone halfway out a window. "Nicky, listena me. This
wanting the market back. It's like a whaddyacallit, an obsession
already. It's makin' you crazy."

"Crazy?" Nicky said placidly. "No. It's
business, Donnie. Tony needs ta see how much I want the job. This
is what he said."

Donnie closed his eyes a second, seemed to be
praying for more patience. It didn't come. He sprang up from his
chair, did a pirouette on the scuffed and damp floor, and pointed
an accusing finger at his friend. "Goddamit! This is what I tol'
you from the start!"

"
What
is what you tol' me from the
start?"

"This crazy bullshit wit' the clams, the
puking. It was never about that. Right from the start you were
lookin' for a way to get the market back."

Nicky Scotto didn't bother to deny it. He
folded his hands and smiled. He looked around the office. Minute by
minute it was feeling more like his again. Pretty soon he could
throw away the pictures of Big Al's wife and kids. Throw them in a
Dumpster with the fish guts and the slime.

"For the love a Christ," his friend implored,
"don't go any further wit' this, Nicky. The man has friends.
Allies. You don't know the shit you're steppin' into."

Nicky Scotto pursed his lips, cocked an ear
toward the shouts and laughs that now and then filtered in from the
market, sounds full of vigor and comradeship and profit.

Then he said, "Hey, Donnie, ya know where I
can get some cheap but decent suits? Right off the rack like?"

When the call came from New York, Squid
Berman was at the aquarium, doing research.

He studied up on barracuda, with their
steam-shovel jaws and beveled pins for teeth; on manta rays, whose
three-foot tails were barbed like those of ancient devils; on giant
octopi, whose suction-cup legs could reduce a man to a polka-dotted
cushion of suppurating hickeys. He spent an entertaining hour and
took away a couple good ideas.

He got back to the motel to find Chop all
excited, rubbing the top of his head and not stopping till his hand
had stroked his stump of neck and was reaching toward his
shoulders.

"Talked ta Nicky," the car specialist
reported.

"Didja tell 'im about the lobsters?" Berman
asked with pride. "Didja tell 'im about—?"

"He wants ta change the job."

"Change the job? But I just been
thinking—"

"He wants we clip the guy."

Squid's face fell and he sat down on the bed.
His bony hands fretted in his narrow lap and his knees would not
stay still. "Clip the guy? Ah fuck. I don't wanna clip the
guy."

Chop was pacing the length of the dresser.
His face was changing, too, getting into character for the new
assignment. Skin tightened at the edges of his eyes, his lips
flattened out and pulled in against his teeth. "Squid," he said,
"don't tell me you're goin' tenderhearted on me."

"It isn't that," said Berman. "Guy dies,
doesn't die, who gives a shit? It's just that..." His tongue probed
around inside his cheeks, he gave a series of spasmodic little
shrugs.

"Just what?"

Squid threw his hands up in the air. "Just
that this has been, like, a really one-of-a-kind job so far, and
now the motherfucker's makin' it bourgeois."

"Boozh-wah?"

"Ya know. Ordinary. Obvious. I hate that
shit."

Chop said, "We get an extra fifty grand. It's
gonna be a piece a cake."