Welcome to Paradise (22 page)

Katy stroked his chest. She liked the way the
whorls of hair wrapped themselves around her fingers. "You sure you
wanna be with me that long?"

He ran a hand over the smooth rise of her
hip. "Come on," he said. "Don't start that stuff. Coupla days in
South Beach. Finish with a real vacation. Whaddya say?"

A breeze moved the thin curtains of the room.
It was cooler than the breeze had been before and it lacked the
brickish smell of high afternoon. The day was ending and the crazy,
mistaken dangers of night were coming on.

"I say whatever we're gonna do, we better get
started doing it."

She kissed him once then moved to get up from
the bed. Al held her close a moment more, reveled in her length.
Her toes tickled his insteps, their loins nested without
contortion, her tanned cheek fit like a violin in the hollow of his
neck.

He marveled once again at how smoothly she
unfolded, as she rose to walk off toward the shower.

Across the street, in the lengthening shadow
of the buttonwood hedge, Squid was sulking in the backseat of the
Jag. Chop sat observant and serene behind the steering wheel. Next
to him, Nicky Scotto, jumpy and perspiring, kept plucking at his
trousers, and gave off the funky acetone smell of a nervous man
whose clothes were wrong for the tropics. He was very aware of the
weight of the pistol Chop had given him; it pulled down on an
inside pocket of his jacket and made him lean that way. He stared
at the wooden gate of Paradise and said to no one in particular, "
Ya sure he's coming out?"

"Fuck knows?" said Squid, enjoying the other
man's discomfort. "Guy gets hungry, thirsty, he's comin' out."

Nicky prayed in secret that it would be soon.
He could feel in his bowels that his nerve was wearing thin. He'd
killed before, but never a made man. An equal. Someone with friends
who solemnly believed in getting even.

Chop picked up where Squid left off. "Or if
he has ta walk his little dog."

Nicky was plucking at his sticky pants and
watching the shadows slowly stretch across the street. "Little
dog?" he said. "He's got a big dog."

Chop Parilla felt just the faintest of
misgivings but held his face together and said nothing, only looked
across the street and drummed lightly on the steering wheel.

In the backseat, Squid Berman was taking a
bleak pleasure from seeing more and more that the guy who wouldn't
let him complete his masterpiece was a total idiot. Not bothering
to mask his contempt, he said, "Have it your way, Nicky. Guy's got
a big, gigantic dog."

*

"We're leaving" said Al Tuschman to the desk
clerk with the ruby studs above his eye and the purple bags beneath
them.

The drowsy fellow seemed indifferent yet
confused. He glanced at the departing guest's suitcase, and at the
woman who had not been with him when he'd arrived, and at the
register before him on the counter. "You're booked for two more
nights."

Al said, "I know that. We're going."

The clerk tried his best to look concerned.
"Was everything all right?"

"No," said Al. "There's a gash in the
mattress."

"A gash?"

"You might wanna think about security. Where
can we rent a car right now?"

"Right now?" Time being featureless for him,
he had to glance down at his watch. "Only place, the airport."

Putting his room key on the counter, Al said,
"Would you call us a taxi, please."

He and Katy headed for the office door. Al
held his suitcase and Katy held Fifi. The clerk watched them go,
and could not help seeing some vague personal failure in their
retreating backs. Through his exhaustion he rallied for one last
burst of rote and insincere professionalism. "Please come back and
see us!" he chirped.

Al looked across his shoulder. "Yeah,
right."

But when he crossed the office threshold and
stood for the last time in the courtyard with its pool and hot tub,
its lounges where people rubbed and cooed and chattered, a strange
thing happened: he suddenly felt a fondness for the place. In spite
of everything, in spite of what, minute by minute, had felt like
loneliness and awkwardness and misery, it now seemed to Al that
he'd had a pretty good time there. He was tan and freshly showered.
He'd caught up on his rest and had a tall new lover at his side. In
some cockeyed, screwball way, vacation had turned out pretty
well.

He took a last deep breath of chlorine and
spent flowers, a last look at the closely tended palms with a
yellow sunset glow behind them. He leaned close to Katy and kissed
her on the neck, and then they headed for the wooden gate.

*

Across the street and thirty yards away,
Chop Parilla watched as Al Tuschman dropped his suitcase and Katy
bent down smoothly to put the leashed dog on the ground. He
squeezed the wheel of the idling Jag and pointed with his big
square chin. "There he is!" he hissed.

Nicky Scotto felt the urgency deep down in
his guts. He narrowed his eyes and craned his neck. He squinted
down, he stretched and strained, but finally he had to say, "There
who
is?"

In the backseat, Squid Berman chewed his
tongue and thought, Is this guy a moron or what?

"Big Al!" said Chop.

Nicky tightened down his abdomen and rubbed
his eyes and felt the gun against his ribs. He grabbed the
dashboard and leaned far forward. "Where?"

Christ, thought Squid, the motherfucker's
blind!

"Right there!" Chop said. "Wit' the tall
broad and the dog!"

Nicky stared, and stared, and saw a stranger.
A long and sweaty moment passed. Then he said, "Come on, don't fuck
around."

For a heartbeat no one moved. Then Chop
shifted very slightly in the driver's seat and slid his gaze to the
rearview mirror, silently but desperately conferring with his
partner.

Nicky tracked his eyes, saw the look on his
face— hangdog, crestfallen. In a nauseating instant, he understood.
He said, "You fuckin' assholes! You think that's Big Al?"

"That
is
Big Al!" insisted Squid.

"You're telling me who Big Al is? I don't
know that fuckin' guy from Adam!"

"The license plate—" said Chop.

"Fuck the license plate! Geniuses! Ya got the
wrong guy all this time!"

Neither Chop nor Squid had anything to say to
that. Chop just looked down at his knuckles. Squid thought ruefully
about his brilliant work. Some masterpiece— wrong from the
start.

"I tol' you," Nicky hammered on. "Little guy,
big dog." He gestured toward the threesome quietly waiting for
their taxi on the dusky sidewalk. "Zat look like a big dog ta you?
Zat look like—"

He stopped himself mid-rant. Something had
clamped on to his attention. A spiky head of raven hair above a
pert, small-featured face above a healthy chest above a long thin
pair of legs. He said, "Wait a second. Who's the broad?"

"You know everything," Sid Berman said. "You
tell us."

"Come on, come on. Who is she?"

Chop shrugged. "Some broad that he picked up.
Wasn't with 'im at the start."

Nicky looked harder. Long neck, slightly
pointed chin. He'd seen her in New York. He was sure of it. At
various bars and seafood joints. Sassy. Pouty. With a way of
looking bored. He said, "Shit, I think that's Big Al's
girlfriend."

Everybody was confused. Squid could not help
saying, "Big Al's girlfriend. But not Big Al."

"Shut up," said Nicky. He plucked at his
pants and tried to stitch his torn-up thoughts together. After a
moment he said, "We're grabbing them."

Chop began, "But you just said—"

"Shut up. Go."

He put the idling Jag in gear.

Al and Katy had been talking about the great
time they would have in South Beach. Long walks by the ocean.
Cocktails in the crazy lobbies of old lime-green hotels. Finger
food in suave cafes as beautiful people glided past on
Rollerblades.

When the Jaguar stopped in front of them, Al
tried to make a little joke. "Pretty fancy cab."

Katy smiled but did not have time to laugh.
She looked up to see a suit moving toward her, caught a sickening
glimpse of a big hand wrapped around a gun that gleamed a dull blue
in the deepening dusk.

Squid spilled from the backseat right after
Nicky. He bounded over to Al Tuschman and poked the muzzle of a
pistol between his ribs.

Fifi barked. Nicky kicked her in the snout.
He grabbed one of Katy's wrists and wrenched it behind her back and
let her feel the gun against her spine. "Inna car," he whispered.
"Not a fuckin' sound."

He used her long arm as a lever and pushed
her to the Jag. She dragged the dog behind her; no one seemed to
care.

Squid prodded Al Tuschman, who moved like he
had just woken up. His suitcase, ghostly, stayed there on the
sidewalk.

It happened too fast for real fear to grab on
until they were seated in the car. That's when the milky feeling
swelled up from the stomach, the cold burn moved down the legs. Al
and Katy and the shih tzu were huddled in the back with Squid.
Nicky swiveled toward them, his pistol poking lewdly through the
slot between the bucket seats.

Chop drove away. Drove calmly, slowly. A
sightseer's pace through peaceful, unsuspecting streets, past
clapboard houses whose emerald and coral and turquoise shutters
hoarded up the fading light.

Nicky said to Katy, "I know you." The simple
statement was a horrid accusation. "Kitty. Kathy. You fuck Big Al.
Am I right?"

Katy said nothing. By now she vaguely
recognized her captor. One more thug from the thuggish places she
used to let herself be taken to. She could not recall his name.
Frankie, Funzie, Petey, Sal—what did it matter? They were all
preening, back-slapping show-offs; she could seldom even tell who
were friends and who were enemies.

After a moment Nicky wagged the gun toward
Al. "So who's this other asshole?"

Katy stayed silent. So did Al. Squid reached
across and slammed the butt of his gun into the tall man's solar
plexus. Fifi tried to nip his hand. "Answer the fucking
question."

Al had a hard time getting his breath to hook
up with his vocal cords. Weakly, he managed, "Name's Al
Tuschman."

Squid's eyes pinwheeled. "
Big Al
Tuschman, any chance?"

"Wit' a license plate that says so?" put in
Chop.

"Yeah," admitted the furniture salesman.

"I tol' ya!" Chop insisted.

"Shut up," said Nicky Scotto. "Let it go,
already." To Katy he said, "But ya didn't come here wit' this
asshole, did ya? Ya came here wit' the real Big Al."

Katy said nothing. Chop wound slowly through
the streets. Cats skulked along the curbs. Brightening streetlamps
put orange starbursts on the windshield.

"So where the fuck is he?" Nicky said.

Katy kept quiet. She was not a traitor. For
the last few days she'd worked hard at killing her old life,
shedding the hurt parts that had inhabited that life; she didn't
need to kill old boyfriends, too.

Nicky Scotto sucked his teeth, said with
confidence, "You're gonna tell us."

She didn't.

Nicky plucked his clothing and tried a
different tack. "This new asshole—you like 'im? I mean, I get the
feeling you and him are hangin' out together now."

Katy said nothing. Al soothed his quivering
dog.

"Listen, Kitty—"

"Katy."

"Katy," Nicky said. "Lemme put this very
simple. Someone named Big Al is gonna die tonight. It can be the
other one, who frankly is a useless scumbag, or it can be this guy
you seem to like. I'm givin' you the chance to decide. Take a
minute. Think it over."

He produced a toothpick from a jacket pocket,
chomped it. Chop drove. He loved to drive; he could drive all
night.

Katy looked at Al. It was too dark to really
see his eyes. She saw his pitted cheek, one corner of his mouth.
She liked his face but she couldn't bring herself to speak.

Nicky got impatient. He said to Squid, "Show
the lady we're sincere."

Squid licked his lips and reached his hot,
damp arm around her back; the hollow of his armpit cupped her
flank. The gun was in his hand and he pressed the muzzle into the
soft place behind Al Tuschman's ear. Contextless, obscene, it
dented the flesh, traced out the seam between the skull and jaw.
She felt Al tighten, felt his breathing stall. Squid cocked the
hammer. The click seemed very loud.

Her shoulders sagged. She said, "Okay,
okay."

The gun stayed where it was.

"Last I know, he's at the Conch House."

Squid withdrew his arm. Nicky almost smiled.
The toothpick danced between his teeth. He looked at Chop.

Chop said, "That sucks."

"Whatsa matter?"

"Can't grab 'im there," the driver said. "Big
fancy busy place. Tons a people. Guards."

Nicky plucked at his itching trousers. Chop
serenely made left turns, right turns. Al touched Katy's knee with
a hand that wasn't steady.

After a silence, Squid's voice had the harsh,
damp rasp of a kazoo. "So she brings 'im to us."

Nicky looked at him.

"Come on," he said. "Two days ago they were
an item. Big tall sexy babe like this, she lures 'im down."

Katy closed her eyes, forced herself to
inhale.

Nicky considered. "We do 'im there?"

"Too closed in," said Squid. "Grab 'im's all
we do."

Chop turned in the direction of Duval
Street.

Squid swallowed, then kept talking like Al
and Katy weren't there. "We give 'er an hour. She doesn't bring 'im
down, the new Romeo is dead. We're no worse off than now."

Al Tuschman held his dog against his stomach.
The quiet residential streets turned garish as they neared Duval.
Neon flashed; the humid air took on blue and orange grains. Chop
wove among mopeds and bicycles and pedicabs until he found the
Conch House's garage.