Florida Straits
THE CRITICS
LOVE
FLORIDA STRAITS
"Resounding with great Noo Yawk dialogue and packed
with bad guys in shiny blue suits and good guys in pink bikini
briefs, Florida Straits is a wacky caper too wondafaull fa woids."
„ ,
—
People
"Sharp and funny ... a comic suspense novel where the
comic and the suspenseful are beautifully merged. . .. Shames shows
a fine deft touch throughout. .. funky, funny characters that will
have you hooked on the whole ride."
—
The Washington Post Book World
"The plot line flows like a strong ocean current, and
Shames's quirky Key West denizens clash wonderfully with the
insulated and seamy lives of the mobsters."
—Publishers Weekly
"Funny, elegantly written, and hip... a nifty crime
novel!"
—
Los Angeles Limes
"I can't remember when I've had more laughs at the
Mafia's expense. The funniest part is that Florida Straits for all
its zaniness provides a truer picture of mob life than all the
recent spate of as-told-to exposé books put together"
—
Peter Maas
"If you've ever been to Key West, this will make you
wish you were still there. If you haven't.. . now where did I put
those shorts?"
—Booklist
By
Laurence Shames
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Laurence Shames
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of
this author.
For my sister Germaine,
And in memory of my brother Neil Marc
[1955-1956],
whom I never knew but often miss,
And of Phil Landeck, rare man, rare friend.
So Phil, when will we drink the '82s?
Acknowledgments
Deep thanks to my editor, Chuck Adams,
and my agent, Stuart Krichevsky.
More stalwart and congenial allies
a fellow never had.
—
I —
People go to Key West for lots of different
reasons. Joey Goldman went there to be a gangster.
His best friend Sal Giordano tried to talk
him out of it. "Fuck is down there for you?"
They were sitting in a green vinyl booth in
Perretti's luncheonette on Astoria Boulevard in Queens. It was
January. Outside, torn newspapers were stuck in dirty ice at the
bottom of dented wire garbage cans. People walked past holding
their hats, their coat collars pulled up to their ears. Skinny dogs
squatted on the pavement and steam came out from under them. Joey
turned the question around. "Fuck is there for me up here?"
"Up here?" Sal seemed dumbfounded by the
remark and gestured toward the grimy window as if pointing out what
was obviously paradise. "Up here? Up here is everything, Joey. Up
here you got friends, you know the ropes. You need money, you know
where to get it. You want sausage, calamari, braciole, you know
where to find it, eh? Down there? Down there it's like a little
pissant desert island."
"Sounds good to me," Joey said, but Sal kept
right on going.
He rubbed a thick hand over his blue-black
jowls, then counted on his fingers the things that would be
lacking. "There's no unions. There's no casinos. There's nothin' to
fence, 'cause the spicks already stole it all. Drugs? You don't
wanna fuck with drugs, Joey. The Colombians'll whack your ass. So
fuck is in Key West? Fucking palm trees. Fucking coconuts. Joey,
listen, you feeling down, you want a vacation, take a vacation.
I'll front ya the cash if ya need it. But don't move there. I'm
telling you, it is not for you."
"I'm not feeling down," Joey said. "I feel
terrific. And I like palm trees." He took a sip of his espresso and
his dark blue eyes went out of focus, like he was already picturing
the beach, the green water, the curled shrimps with their heads
buried in cocktail sauce. "I like to be warm, Sal. I hate the
fucking cold. All winter, that coughing, blowing your nose, your
feet all frozen. Fingers like you can't even hold the god-damn
steering wheel—"
"Joey," Sal cut in, "I don't like freezing
my ass off any more than the next guy. But I'm not asking for the
weather report. I'm asking what you're gonna do down there."
"I'm gonna, like, take over."
Joey was twenty-seven, something below
average height, and had almost finished the eleventh grade. He'd
had two jobs in his life, neither for very long, none since his
mother died and he cut out any pretense of being a citizen. Once he
sold shoes, but quit because he didn't care for the sour smell of
feet and the crusty feel of second-day Ban-Lon socks. The other
time he was a greeter-seater at a seafood joint in Sheepshead Bay,
but quit when he realized it made as much sense to do absolutely
nothing as to show fat families to their tables on Sunday
afternoons.
"Take over
what
, Joey? This is what
I'm asking you."
"I guess I won't know that till I get there,
will I, Sal?"
Sal picked up his little espresso spoon and
frowned at it. He was four years older than Joey and had long ago
started being a kind of, older brother to him, "mainly because
Joey's own brother—half brother, really—-didn't seem to want the
job.
It was a complicated situation. Joey's
mother had been Jewish, but they lived in an Italian neighborhood.
Everybody knew who Joey's father was, but only certain people were
allowed to say so, because Vincente Delgatto was a powerful man
with a proper Sicilian wife and a legitimate black-eyed heir.
Joey's mother, a slender redhead, had been a beautician at the
neighborhood funeral home and had met Joey's father during a period
of local unrest, when he'd been something of a regular there.
Theirs was said to have been an affair of unusual intensity—though
people may have said that simply because of the unusual intensity
of Thelma Goldman's gaze. She had turquoise eyes that were always
stretched open under thin arched brows, and when she looked at
someone, she seemed to be not just seeing that person but fixing
him in some idealized, final form.
This could be disconcerting, and some people
thought Thelma Goldman was a little crazy. Sometimes, it was true,
she did unkind things without meaning to. When Joey was ten,
eleven, she made him wear a suit on Jewish holidays, which was
confusing to Joey because he didn't feel the least bit Jewish, he
felt Sicilian like his friends. Also, the suit always got him beat
up. As far as Sal could remember, Jewish holidays were the only
times Joey got into fights, and he always lost. That's when Sal
started looking out for him. He felt sorry for the runty kid with
the knees scraped out of his suit pants and snotty blood coming out
of his nose.
"You talk to your old man about this,
Joey?"
It was a question Sal hated to ask, because
he knew it would make Joey mad. Not that Joey had much of a temper.
He didn't. This was one of his worst professional shortcomings.
Some guys had a great gift for getting mad; they'd get mad over
anything and could instantly puff up into a terrifying display.
Joey only got mad when he was mad, and there were only a few topics
that got him going. His father was one of them. "Fuck for?" he
answered.
"Maybe he's got something for you. Something
worth staying for."
"All of a sudden?" Joey said. He splayed his
hands out on the Formica table and examined them. "All of a sudden
he's gonna gimme something good? Come on, Sal, you know the kinda
bullshit work I get. Errand boy. Gofer. Maybe now and then I get to
hold a bagga money and pass it to the next jerk down the line.
Let's not kid ourselves. I know where I stand. My old man's gonna
be consigliere any day, my half brother Gino struts around like
he's God's fucking gift, and I'm a mutt who's never even gonna get
a button."
"Cut it out with that mutt stuff," Sal
scolded. "No one gives a shit about that but you."
"Why should they?" Joey said. "But Sal, it's
facts. I'm not full Italian, I can't get made. Simple as that."
"O.K. But Joey, you know and I know that
plenty of guys make damn good livings without a button."
This was the wrong thing to say. Joey leaned
forward over his wrists and blanched between the eyebrows. "Right,
Sal, and that's exactly my fucking point. Am I one of those guys?
Not hardly. Doesn't that tell you something? I got a father who's a
big shot, a brother who thinks he's a big shot, and I gotta scrape
for nickels and dimes? Who's lookin' out for little Joey, huh?"
Sal sipped espresso and tried a different
tack. "It ever dawn on you that maybe the old man's tryin' to
protect you?"
The question made Joey swallow. He didn't
try to answer it. "Sal, listen," he said. "My mind's made up. It's
not like I'm storming off in a huff. I've thought it over. A lot. I
stay around here, I can't be anything but like a third-string guy.
I go someplace new, O.K., maybe I fall on my face, but at least I
take my shot."
A bus went by outside, belching black steam
and rattling the front window of Perretti's. Sal narrowed his eyes
and tried to picture the far end of the New Jersey Turnpike and the
long road that came after it. All he could conjure up was a vague
idea of Trenton, followed by an endlessness of dashed lines snaking
away to nowhere. Suddenly it felt to him like he was the one going
far away from everything he knew. The thought scared him like a
shriek in the night. He reached across the table, grabbed Joey by
the back of the neck, and pulled his face close.
"Joey, man, you're gonna be like all alone
down there."
Joey Goldman had black hair that was curlier
than most and wouldn't hold a part very well. The skin of his lean
face was stretched taut between high cheekbones and a square chin
with just a hint of a cleft. "Sal," he said, "I love ya, so no
offense. But did it ever dawn on you that maybe I like that
idea?"
—
2 —
Joey's girlfriend Sandra Dugan didn't want
to go.
"Jeez, Joey," she said, "you spring this on
me now, just when things are going right for me?"
She was getting ready for work, and she held
a hairpin in her mouth while gathering up the wisps of short blond
hair that had fallen onto the nape of her neck. The mirror was at
the foot of the bed, and she looked past her own reflection at
Joey. He was under the blue blanket, propped up on pillows,
drinking coffee.
"What springing?" he said. "Springing is
like when it's a surprise. This is no surprise, Sandra. How long we
known each other now? Three years, closer to four? Haven't I been
telling you all along that I plan on getting outta here?"
"Yeah, Joey, you've said that. Fair enough."
She leaned close to the glass and brushed green shadow above her
pale green eyes. "But Joey, everybody says that. Leaving New
York—it's like a constant topic. At the bank, everyone's always
saying how they're gonna move out on the Island. The girls from
school, they all think they're going to L.A. It's like a safety
valve, all this talk about leaving. But no one does it."
"And why don't they?" Joey said. He sat up
higher in bed and gestured with his coffee mug. "One reason. They
don't have the balls."
"Don't curse, Joey. It's common."
"Balls is a curse? Balls is a part of the
body."
Sandra had put on her big square glasses.
She let them slide forward on her narrow upturning nose and stared
him down in the mirror.
"Awright," he resumed. "Nerve. They don't
have the nerve. They'll bitch and moan all right, because that's
easy. But will they change things?"
"Not everyone
can
change things."
Sandra had had good evidence of this. Her father was a longshoreman
and a drunk who would now and then stop drinking and start crying.
Her mother was a loud and flamboyant complainer who would quite
regularly pack up the kids, run away to the Poconos or Montauk, and
come back forty-eight hours and half a carton of Newports later
with nothing settled. Sandra could still remember the red wool coat
her mother always bundled her into on these strange excursions. It
had big square black buttons that Sandra toyed with in the car.
"Besides," she continued, "change means
change
, Joey. It
doesn't just mean going somewhere else."
But Joey was not to be deflected. "Yeah,
people'll look around and say, "Look at this crummy apartment I
live in. It's got one stupid window that looks out at an airshaft.
It's got one radiator that hisses like a mother and drips rusty
water onna floor. It's so small my girlfriend can hardly fit her
behind between the bed and the mirror.' Am I right, Sandra, am I
right?"