Welcome to Paradise (24 page)

The big dog howled and yelped and spun in
tight and anguished circles. The little dog hung on, fur flying
backward, legs and tail streaming out behind as though distended by
the motion of some insane amusement-park ride. Ripper's scrotum
stretched like pizza dough; Fifi flapped like laundry in a gale.
Finally she loosed her grip, went scuttling across the floor.
Ripper, whimpering and bloodied, ran limping for the exit.

Big Al Marracotta, hands still in the air,
said, "Jesus Christ! My dog!"

"You don't need 'im anymore," said Nicky
Scotto. "We're goin' for a ride."

Al tried to keep the terror out of his voice.
"Nicky, come on. You got the market-"

"You're giving it ta me?" said the man with
the gun. "That's very nice."

"Come on, don't kid around. I talked ta Tony.
I know what's what."

Now it was Nicky who was a little bit
confused. He labored not to let it show.

"It's yours," Big Al went on. "Fair enough. I
ain't happy, but congratulations."

There was a pause. The lights buzzed. Drunken
street noise filtered in. Katy sidled farther away from her former
boyfriend.

Nicky said, "Tony tol' ya this?"

"Yesterday. Said the market goes back ta
Nicky. Said my time was like a tryout. I'm pissed but that's
life."

Scotto pursed his lips, scratched his
eyebrow, pulled his ear. For an instant he lowered his gun. Then he
said, "Nice try, Al. Had me goin' for a second. But don'tcha think
Tony woulda called me first?"

Weakly, Big Al Marracotta said, "He
didn't?"

"You got balls," said Nicky. "I give ya
that."

Using his pistol to point the way, he
gestured toward the Jag. Big Al didn't budge. Squid moved close and
shoved him along.

Chop pulled the lever that released the
trunk. It yawned open slowly, like the mouth of a whale. Nicky
said, "Hop in."

Big Al said, "Please. You're makin' a
mistake. Call Tony—"

Squid raised his gun butt, gave him one brisk
hack where the spine ended and the skull began, and caught him
neatly by the armpits as he sagged. He muscled him into the trunk
and slammed the lid on top of him.

Nicky turned his gun toward Katy and ordered
her into the car.

She stood where she was. Trying to sound
firm, trying to convince him with her righteous certainty, she
said, "You got your guy. We can go now, right?"

"Sorry, sister. Job ain't finished yet."

"But you said—"

Squid was moving toward her across the oily
floor. He grabbed her almost gently by the elbow.

Nicky interrupted her. "What I said is that I
don't like witnesses. Get inna fucking car."

Ushered by Squid, dizzy on her high shoes,
she slid into the backseat once again, allowed herself a shudder
and a groan as she nestled next to Tusch. Fifi bounded onto his
lap, licked their joined hands.

"That's quite a dog you got," said Squid.

Chop drove off slowly through the scattered
drops of blood that the rottweiler had left behind.

Halfway to Stock Island, Big Al Marracotta
woke up in the trunk.

It was pitch dark in there, with just a small
supply of viscous air that smelled of grease and rubber. The tires
were loud as their treads sucked at the pavement, and he bounced
with every seam in the road. Potholes sent him flying against the
underside of the lid. He curled up and cradled his head and
wondered if it was absolutely certain that he was being taken to
die.

In the passenger compartment, things were not
much cheerier. For a while no one spoke. Al and Katy leaned against
each other, their flanks growing very warm where they touched. The
heroic shih tzu perched proudly on her master's lap as a few
hideous miles of U.S. 1 slipped past in what was now full night.
There was the glare of fast- food joints and desperate strip malls,
crappy motels shilled by giant signs that throbbed like boils.
Nicky Scotto plucked at his pants and wondered if, with Big Al gone
and the fish market solidly his, he might ease back into wearing
decent suits.

Chop approached the little bridge at Cow Key
Channel. Squid pointed to a hollow on the far side of the road.
"That's where we picked up your stupid license plate," he told Al
Tuschman. "Tailed you all the way to your hotel. You didn't notice
nothin'."

No, the furniture salesman admitted to
himself, he hadn't. But why would he have? He wasn't a criminal,
didn't have violent enemies, didn't have to live life looking back
across his shoulder. He'd arrived in Key West, just a few short
days ago, as one more average schmo with average hopes for his
vacation. Get a tan, maybe meet a woman. Step, however briefly,
however meekly, outside the self he was by habit, and go home with
life enriched by a memory or two. Modest expectations; sane
expectations. Why would he have noticed, or believed, that two
maniacs suddenly were out to get him?

They drove past tattoo parlors, liquor
stores.

In the trunk, Big Al Marracotta bounced and
rolled, and tried to avoid admitting he was terrified by getting
more and more pissed off. Disagreements happened; guys got iced. He
accepted this, except when it was happening to him. Now it all
seemed senseless and unjust. Why was he getting killed? Because
that putz Benny Franco got himself indicted? Because Tony Eggs
didn't make a phone call?

Or was it even crazier and more infuriating
than that? Was he getting killed because he took vacation? This was
the price of a goddamn week away from work? Or was it that he took
vacation with a no-good, ingrate tramp who sold him out?

Baffled and furious, he bounced, he tumbled,
and gradually he realized that he was running out of air. He had to
pull hard from the bottom of his lungs to inhale; he smelled his
own stale breath going into him again. In the blackness of the
trunk, he felt a sudden excruciating loneliness, previewed the
unspeakable remove of being dead, and the helpless and humiliating
sorrow of it only made him madder. He swore to himself a solemn
pledge: if he was going down because of all this unfair craziness,
these betrayals and these blunders, he wasn't going down alone.

Curled up, panting, he reached toward his
ankle. He felt for the slender knife that Squid's hurried frisking
hadn't found. One knife against three guns—there was no chance he
could save himself. Yet there was a certain spiteful comfort in
knowing there was still somebody weaker he could hurt. Pulling the
weapon smoothly from its leather sheath, he tucked it up his sleeve
between the bounces of the car. He pulled hard at the rank and
thinning air, and took a final nasty pleasure from figuring how he
might slash and tear the woman who had turned on him.

*

Chop turned off the highway at MacDonald
Avenue, then wound through streets of deepening dreariness.

Dim and secret bars gave way to crowded plots
of rusting trailers lifted up on cinder blocks; the trailers
yielded to a precinct of windowless garages housing auto-body and
machine shops. Where the asphalt ended and the road became humped
gravel dotted with deep foul puddles that would never dry, there
were random shacks with kinked and crumpled metal roofs, their
grassless yards littered with splotched banana leaves and
decomposing fronds. Streetlamps grew sparse; they wavered in
uncertain, percolating ground that was only inches higher than the
ocean. There was a smell in the air of sea corrupted, a salty stink
like that of anchovies kept too long in the tin.

Chop serenely drove; the Jaguar clattered
over stones.

Dead ahead, inexplicably standing sentinel in
the middle of the street, there was what appeared to be an ancient
tollbooth. It leaned on rotting stakes; boards were missing from
its wooden flanks; there was no glass in its windows.

On closer inspection, it proved to be the box
office for a long-abandoned drive-in theater.

Beyond the tiny building, bathed in wan and
opalescent moonlight, stretched the ghostly parking field. Low
concentric mounds built up of shells and bits of coral lifted
vanished cars to perfect viewpoints. The posts that had held the
scratchy speakers poked up crooked from the contours. The screen
itself—its paint long seared away by sun and salt, its plywood face
splintery and scarred—loomed patiently, waiting for the inevitable
wind that would send it crashing down.

Chop rode the mounds like waves, finally
broke the silence. "Good place, huh?" he said to Nicky.

"Beautiful."

Gasping in the trunk, Big Al Marracotta
bounced and rolled with every hump.

The driver headed for what once had been the
snack bar, a fragrant place of Milk Duds and malteds and soggy
burgers wrapped in foil. Boarded and imploding now, it was only
something to hide behind. Chop pulled up near it and switched the
engine off.

They climbed out of the car.

Nicky plucked at his damp and hated suit.
Squid twisted his torso, stretched his bandy muscles. Chop
halfheartedly produced a gun, but seemed to wish he was still
behind the wheel.

Fifi jogged in little circles, then paused to
sniff the seam where the snack bar met the ground, detected
memories, perhaps, of ancient popcorn, archaic franks. Katy rose up
tall on her high-heeled sandals. The night air was still warm
against her legs; she concentrated on the feeling. Al Tuschman
stood close to her and looked up at the rotting, tilting movie
screen backed by a spray of starlight. Drive-ins had been big in
Jersey. He remembered going in pajamas as a little kid. Life seemed
very safe then.

Nicky and Squid trained their pistols on the
Jaguar's trunk. Chop flipped a lever and the lid yawned open.

Moonlight wedged in, and Big Al Marracotta
squinted at the sudden brightness, sucked greedily at the rush of
salty air. Nicky said to him, "Get up."

It wasn't that easy. His legs had cramped,
his blood grown grainy and stagnant. He rocked and strained,
flopped like a fish on the beach. Eventually he was sitting on the
trunk's sharp lip, his small feet not reaching to the ground. He
looked straight at Nicky's gun and said, "You really don't have to
do this."

"Hey," said Nicky, "you've seen my cards.
Gotta finish out the hand."

Big Al bit his lip, looked around. Absently,
he said, "Fuckin' drive-in? Ain't seen one a these in years."

No one joined the conversation.

Big Al stared over at Katy, measured the
distance between them. Twelve, fifteen feet. She was standing next
to the big guy with the curly hair. Not touching, but very close.
He said to her, "So you're wit' this asshole now?"

Katy didn't answer that.

Big Al said, "Boom—just like that. After all
I done for you."

Katy said nothing.

Big Al shook his head. And lightly shook his
arm, so that the tip of his knife rested against the heel of his
hand just at the edge of his cuff. "Well," he said, "win some, lose
some. No hard feelings."

He looked down a moment then said to Nicky,
"Bitch cost me a lot. Still, good girlfriend, lotta ways. Mind I
kiss her goo'bye?"

Nicky seemed bleakly amused by the show of
gallows sentiment. It was all the same to him. They were both dead
people anyway. He just shrugged by way of answer.

Big Al eased down from the trunk. His weird
hair gleamed like plastic in the moonlight. Shells and knobs of
coral crunched beneath his shoes. Slowly and deliberately, he
turned his back on the men with guns and shuffled toward his former
girlfriend. For a moment that boy-devil grin was on his face, then
his lips got hard and flat.

Katy leaned backward on her shoes but
couldn't get her feet to move.

He approached without hurry. The ground
crackled beneath him. He turned his wrist just slightly so that it
faced away from Nicky and Chop and Squid. When he was a single
stride from Katy, he twitched his hand and the knife blade slid
down across his palm and he caught the hot handle in his
fingers.

Alan Tuschman saw the blade glint in the
moonlight, saw Big Al Marracotta crouch ever so slightly to turn
his next step into a thrusting lunge.

He had no time to think. He had only that
fraction of a heartbeat in which the brave man acted while the
phony hero postured, and bargained with his nerve, and thereby lost
the moment. Al Tuschman didn't hesitate.

Stomping fear, throttling caution, he threw
himself in front of Katy, across the path of Big Al Marracotta's
jabbing blade. He grabbed at his namesake's flailing arm but didn't
catch it cleanly; Marracotta jerked his hand free and stabbed up
toward Tuschman's neck. The salesman deflected the thrust, but the
knife slashed past his shoulder. He felt it cut his shirt and slice
his skin and bite through to the yielding flesh. With the ooze of
blood came less pain than an ecstatic charge, a hectic
self-forgiveness of past shirkings and doubts and
fallings-short.

Wounded and wildly heedless, Al Tuschman
bulled straight at the man with the knife. Marracotta thrust again.
The tall man seized his pumping arm; the knife flashed and wiggled
like a snake. For a long moment the two Als pressed against each
other in a dreadful stalemate, then the mobster lost his footing on
the loose and chalky gravel, and they both went tumbling to the
mounded ground.

Fifi circled and barked and nipped at
Marracotta's ankles. Amid the tumult, no one noticed that Squid had
slipped away. No one paid attention to the grinding startup of a
different engine.

Al Tuschman scrambled flat on top of Big Al
Marracotta, slugged him awkwardly across the chin. The short man
kneed him in the groin and rolled him over and strained to lift the
arm that held the knife. The salesman kept a hand clamped around
the mobster's wrist and struggled to hang on. Marracotta lifted,
grunted . . . and Tuschman suddenly let go, bucking and shoving as
Marracotta's unsprung arm flew up and wrecked his balance. The
little gangster tipped over and crashed onto his side. The impact
of his landing shook the knife out of his hand; it skated over
shells and coral for half a dozen feet.