She saw Vincent as an artist, a sculptor who worked with scrap iron. Or painted murals on barrio walls. Or the wrong man, with his sinister look, falsely accused. But in close shots you know he’s innocent. Look at those eyes. She asked what happened and he said, “I got shot.” Not giving it much, a nice sense of timing. He could be an actor. She liked his smile, his sorta-wild dark look with the jacket and tie. “I got shot.” Where? “In Miami Beach.” That was all right, he could get away with it. Fifteen years a policeman, playing cops and robbers. She asked him if he was good at it and he nodded, yes. She asked him if he was afraid now that’d been shot and knew it could happen to him and he nodded again and said yes, it was different now. She asked him if he had ever entrapped anyone and he said, “Not that you’d notice.”
She asked questions easily and got answers. She had gone from her home in Narberth, Pennsylvania, to Emerson College in Boston to become an actress, but couldn’t get out of her head long enough to manufacture emotions. Since she rarely if ever cried, even in movies, it wasn’t something she could do on cue. She joined a casting service in New York and worked with film actors and got them good parts. She liked actors, thought she enjoyed the work-but wait a minute. She was putting all her energy into pushing their careers. What about her own?… She was home for Christmas when she met a tweedy martini drinker named Kip Burkette at the Merion Cricket Club. Sweet guy, prematurely gray, properly good looking, major shareholder of Burkette Investments, Philadephia. She married Kip and moved to Bryn Mawr, became rich and was used to it long before Tommy arrived…
Tommy coming up the steps now to the deck, dripping on the blue tile…
At the wrong time, too soon after, she had compared Donovan the deal-maker, the closer, to Kip, the ivy-covered gentleman, listened to Donovan’s breezy style after ten years of Kip’s monotone, his Main Line lockjaw…
Tommy coming into candlelight with his can of beer, towel stretched low about his hips.
“We gonna eat in or go out?”
“I heard a scream,” Nancy said, “I think Dominga saw you coming out of the pool and ran.”
“ ‘Aiii, that Señor Donovan,’ “ Tommy said, “telling her girlfriends all about it. ‘Ees hong like a caballo.”
“Dominga say that, or was it Iris?”
“Iris? Who in the hell’s Iris?”
“You’re sending her to Atlantic City.”
“Is that right? Iris, huh?”
“Is she for you or customers? Or maybe Jackie.”
“Come on-I don’t know any Iris. Wouldn’t I remember a broad named Iris?”
“Especially this one,” Nancy said. “I hear she’s a knockout. Twenty years old, gorgeous.”
“You mean Eer-es? Yeah, that’s Iris. I didn’t know who you were talking about. Yeah, she isn’t bad looking at all. Blond hair with the dark skin.”
“Where’re you going to use her?”
“I don’t know, the lounge. Cocktail waitress maybe. Who told you about her?”
“Her boyfriend. He came to see you, wanted to know what a hostess does.”
“Jesus, gonna defend her honor. Those guys kill me, get very dramatic about it.”
“He’s a cop,” Nancy said.
“You serious? That’s what I need, a hot-blooded, pissed-off Puerto Rican cop. With a gun.”
He said this was the kind of thing, another example, it wasn’t Gaming Enforcement or the Casino Control Commission causing him problems. It was always little guys with fucked-up personalities. Guys like this cop could turn out to be. They had loose wiring or some fucking thing, like they weren’t plugged into the real world. Guys at the top, Tommy said, you didn’t have any trouble with. You could always deal with guys at the top. But little guys with wild hairs up their ass, there was no book on guys like that.
There were times when Nancy listened to him, fascinated.
She thought of clarifying one point. The cop was from Miami Beach, not Puerto Rico. But Tommy kept talking and later, when she thought of it again, she decided why bother? Two weeks from now she would remember, she had not prepared her husband for Vincent Mora.
TEDDY PLAYED WITH VINCENT the next day. That was his plan, the way it started out.
He parked the Datsun at the beach so Vincent would be sure to see him. Not too close but sitting by itself in the shade of Australian pines. What a day-bright and fair as usual at the postcard beach. If Vincent came over he would take off: he didn’t want to talk to him, he wanted to worry him, get him worked up. But Vincent didn’t come over. He was alone sitting in his chair. Some of the girls would stop by and talk to him, but they didn’t stay long.
Next, later that afternoon, Teddy parked near the old Normandie Hotel and watched Vincent walk past with his cane and his chair on the other side of the street, not limping as much as he had the day before. Vincent looked over, was all he did. Teddy felt like yelling at him, “ ‘Ey, where’s your girlfriend? You go for that PR pussy, ‘ey? So do I, man, so do I.” But he didn’t.
Next, he trailed Vincent to the Carmen Apartments and parked across the street, near the entrance to the Hilton. He could sit out here as long as it might take, easy, after living in a Florida cellblock with the heat and smell of that place, the smell of cons. Different cons smelled different. The ones that put cologne on over their smell were the worst. Jesus, enough to make you gag. There were others smelled pretty good. He saw Vincent appear and go in the liquor store. He would’ve had trouble recognizing him from that time before, over seven years ago, with the beard he wore now. Though once he’d studied the pictures he took he knew he had his man. He’d learned at Raiford, just before he got his release, that Vincent had been shot. There were some happy boys in the yard that day, feeling they should have ice cream and cake. Cons at Raiford knew everything and liked to gossip. They said he got capped by a junkie; shit, but didn’t die. Teddy got out and learned on the streets of Miami Beach where Vincent lived, that he had once been married-a guy who sold dope out of the hospital saw Vincent there when his wife died-and so on. It was no problem to call the Detective Bureau and say he’d checked Vincent’s apartment, he wasn’t home; ask after him, how was he doing?, sounding like a friend of Vincent’s, sincere. Cops were dumb.
When Vincent came out of the liquor store he looked over and Teddy was ready to get out of there. But Vincent didn’t come over, he went back up to his apartment.
Next, Teddy thought he might have a refreshment himself. So he went over to the liquor store, bought a pint of light rum, a few cans of Fresca and some paper cups. When he got back to the car two PRs were standing there. Skinny guys, taller than most, taller than Teddy, with little thin mustaches. They looked like twin PRs, both wearing those PR shirts with pleats and pockets that hung outside the pants. They looked familiar.
One of them opened his wallet to show his I.D. and said, “Policia.” They were cops. They looked familiar because Teddy believed, from his observations, all PR cops looked alike. Skinny guys with little mustaches.
He said, “Officer, I parked in the wrong spot, ‘ey? I’ll move it right out.”
But one of the cops opened the door on the passenger side, pulled the seat up and motioned for him to get in, in back, while the other one went around to the driver’s side. As that one got in Teddy saw the bulge and the tip of the black holster sticking out from under his shirt. He said, “ ‘Ey, wait a minute. Where we going?” The one behind the wheel motioned for the key, asking for it, Teddy believed, in Spanish. “The hell you guys doing? I parked in the wrong spot, gimme a ticket, ‘ey? Christ, you take people in for illegal parking? Listen, why don’t I just pay the fine right now? Save us some time.” He pulled his shirt up to show his money belt, but they weren’t looking, both of them in the car now, in front. He tapped one of them on the shoulder and the guy looked around. “Officer, how about I give you guys some dollares? How much you need?”