“Numbah Four,” called the master of ceremonies. “Pays off at five to one for de lucky winnahs, yessah yessah!”
The hotel boys had their nets out, scooping up the heavy turtles for the next race. Denise looked across the way. The leggy young widow from Connecticut was jubilantly waving a handful of gaudy Jamaican ten-dollar bills in the face of the tall man with the tiny bald spot. She was flushed and radiant; but he looked down at her solemnly from his great height without much sign of excitement, as though the dramatic victory of Number Four had afforded him neither profit nor joy nor any surprise at all.
The short, stocky, balding Chevrolet dealer from Long Island, whose features and coloration looked to be pure Naples but whose name was like something out of Brideshead Revisited—Lionel Gregson? Anthony Jenkins?—something like that—materialized at Denise’s side and said, “It doesn’t matter which turtle you bet, really. The trick is to bet the boys who throw them.”
His voice, too, had a hoarse Mediterranean fullness. Denise loved the idea that he had given himself such a fancy name.
“Do you really think so?”
“I know so. I been watching them three days, now. You see the boy in the middle? Hegbert, he’s called. Smart as a whip, and damn strong. He reacts faster when the gun goes off. And he don’t just throw his turtle quicker, he throws it harder. Look, can I get you a daiquiri? I don’t like being the only one drinking.“ He grinned. Two gold teeth showed. ”Jeffrey Thompkins, Oyster Bay. I had the privilege of talking with you a couple minutes two days ago on the beach.”
“Of course. I remember. Denise Carpenter. I’m from Clifton, New Jersey, and yes, I’d love a daiquiri.”
He snagged one from a passing tray. Denise thought his Hegbert theory was nonsense—the turtles usually swam in aimless circles for a while after they were thrown in, so why would the thrower’s reaction time or strength of toss make any difference?—but Jeffrey Thompkins himself was so agreeably real, so cheerfully blatant, that she found herself liking him tremendously after her brush with the Byronic desperation of the tall man with the little bald spot. The phonied-up name was a nice capping touch, the one grotesque bit of fraudulence that made everything else about him seem more valid. Maybe he needed a name like that where he lived, or where he worked.
Now that she had accepted a drink from him, he moved a half step closer to her, taking on an almost proprietary air. He was about two inches shorter than she was.
“I see that Hegbert’s got Number Three in the second race. You want I should buy you a ticket?”
The tall man was covertly watching her, frowning a little. Maybe he was bothered that she had let herself be captured by the burly little car dealer. She hoped so.
But she couldn’t let Thompkins get a ticket for her after she had told the tall man she wasn’t betting tonight. Not if the other one was watching. She’d have to stick with her original fib.
“Somehow I don’t feel like playing the turtles tonight,” she said. “But you go ahead, if you want.”
“Place your bets, ladies gemmun, place your bets!”
Hegbert did indeed throw Number Three quickly and well, but it was Five that won the race, after some minutes of the customary random noodling around in the pool. Five paid off at three to one. A quick sidewise glance told Denise that the tall man and the leggy Connecticut widow had been winners again.
“Watch what that tall guy does in the next race,” she heard someone say nearby. “That’s what I’m going to do. He’s a pro. He’s got a sixth sense about these turtles. He just wins and wins and wins.”
But watching what the tall man did in the next race was an option that turned out not to be available. He had disappeared from the pool area somewhere between the second and third races. And so, Denise noted with unexpectedly sharp displeasure, had the woman from Connecticut.
Thompkins, still following his Hegbert system, bet fifty on Number Six in the third race, cashed in at two to one, then dropped his new winnings and fifty besides backing Number Four in the fourth. Then he invited Denise to have dinner with him on the terrace. What the hell, she thought. Last night she had had dinner alone; very snooty, she must have seemed. It hadn’t been fun.
In the uneasy first moments at the table they talked about the tall man. Thompkins had noticed his success with the turtles also. “Strange guy,” he said. “Gives me the creeps—something about the look in his eye. But you see how he makes out at the races?”
“He does very well.”
“Well? He cleans up! Can’t lose for winning.”
“Some people have unusual luck, I suppose.”
“This ain’t luck. My guess is maybe he’s got a fix in with the boys—like they tell him what turtle’s got the mojo in the upcoming race. Some kind of high sign they give him when they’re lining up for the throw-in.”
“How can that be? Turtles are turtles. They just swim around in circles until one of them happens to hit the far wall with his nose.”
“No,” said Thompkins. “I think he knows something. Or maybe not. But the guy’s hot for sure. Tomorrow I’m going to bet the way he does, right down the line, race by race. There are other people here doing it already. That’s why the odds go down on the turtle he bets, once they see which one he’s backing. If the guy’s hot, why not get in on his streak?”
He ordered a white Italian wine with the first course, which was grilled flying fish with brittle orange caviar globules on the side. “I got to confess,” he said, grinning again, “Jeffrey Thompkins is not really my name. It’s Taormina, Joey Taormina. But that’s hard to pronounce out where I live, so I changed it.”
“I did wonder. You look… it is Neapolitan?”
“Worse. Sicilian. Anybody you meet named Taormina, his family’s originally from Sicily. Taormina’s a city on the east coast of Sicily. Gorgeous place. I’d love to show you around it some day.”
He was moving a little too fast, she thought. A lot too fast.
“I have a confession too,” she said. “I’m not from Clifton any more. I moved back into the city a month ago after my marriage broke up.”
“That’s a damn shame.” He might almost have meant it. “I’m divorced too. It practically killed my mother when I broke the news. Well, you get married too young, you get surprised later on.” A quick grin; he wasn’t all that saddened by what he had learned about her. “How about some red wine with the main course? They got a good Brunello here.”
A little later he invited her, with surprising subtlety, to spend the night with him. As gently as she could, she declined. “Well, tomorrow’s another day,” he said cheerfully. Denise found herself wishing he had looked a little wounded, just a little.
The daytime routine was simple. Sleep late, breakfast on the cottage porch looking out at the sea, then a long ambling walk down the beach, poking in tide pools and watching ghostly gray crabs scutter over the pink sand. Midmorning, swim out to the reef with snorkel and fins, drift around for half an hour or so staring at the strangely contorted coral heads and the incredibly beautiful reef creatures. It was like another planet, out there on the reef. Gnarled coral rose from the sparkling white sandy ocean floor to form fantastic facades and spires through which a billion brilliant fishes, scarlet and green and turquoise and gold in every imaginable color combination, chased each other around. Every surface was plastered with pastel-hued sponges and algae. Platoons of tiny squids swam in solemn formation. Toothy, malevolent-looking eels peered out of dark caverns. An occasional chasm led through the coral wall to the deep sea beyond, where the water was turbulent instead of calm, a dark blue instead of translucent green, and the ocean floor fell away to invisible depths. But Denise never went to the far side. There was something ominous and threatening about the somber outer face of the reef, whereas here, within, everything was safe, quiet, lovely.