“That’s Miami,” Vincent said.
“Well, then over there somewhere. Where I used to live it was a hop to Mecca, though I never went there. Right here, this could be Egypt, except there’re toilets.”
Vincent sat sideways on a plastic lounge chair facing DeLeon stretched out on one, dark brown and white in white bathing trunks, looking toward the spade-shaped dome of the gambling casino. There were few people still at the pool. The sun, nearly through for the day, laid a flat light on the cement and on the ocean beyond the beach. They would talk about Teddy, leave him and come back, always with something to say.
“It’s a bitch, ain’t it?”
“He’s getting smirky,” Vincent said.
“Acting up?”
Teddy had told the cops if they were going to make him stay here against his will they’d have to pay his hotel expenses. So the cops offered him an apartment that was in a tenement behind police headquarters, all the people living there on food stamps. Teddy looked at it-Vincent was told-held his nose and had them drive him to the DuPont Plaza; he’d use a card.
“He’s gonna sue us,” DeLeon said.
“He might.”
“Should bring him out here,” DeLeon said.
“I was thinking of that. How to work it.”
“See if we can figure some accident might happen to him. Trip and fall down an elevator shaft.”
They had arrived two days ago in the late afternoon and handed Teddy over to Lorendo Paz at the airport. DeLeon had introduced Vincent at Spade’s Isla Verde as a special guest-“Check the computer, man”-and here they were, until the computer told the manager to throw them out.
“Kidnappers Incorporated,” DeLeon said, “resting up between gigs, hoping to shit they don’t get arrested just yet. What’s the man’s name, Herbie?”
“Herbey.”
“I think he’s got the idea. One of those boys, they prob’ly do it for you. Take the motherfucker deep in the woods, man, lose his ass.”
“That’s not bad,” Vincent said. “If I knew where I was going-that’s an idea.”
“Be too easy just shoot him.” DeLeon raised up on his elbow to look at Vincent closely. “You know what you saying to me? You want to kill him, but you want to do it a way you can tell yourself you didn’t. What kind a shit is that?”
“I don’t want to kill him.”
“Mean you don’t want to come out and say it.”
“No. I’ve done it.” Vincent shaking his head back and forth. “I didn’t want to and I don’t want to do it again. I mean it.”
“I respect you, man, but what you doing you running a game on yourself.”
“Uh-unh, I did not want to shoot the guy.”
“I’m not referring to that one, I mean here, right now. I think, as you see it, you want Teddy to do it, expose himself, make a move on you. Then you can shoot his ass off not wanting to, swear to it, but still shoot his ass off.”
“I’ve thought of that.”
“But you make it hard on yourself, don’t you? Got to do it by some book. I never been this close to a good policeman, see how he thinks. You people strap guns, I always believe you like to use them. You don’t, what other way you see is there?”
“Scare him enough,” Vincent said.
There it was, the Mora theory of saving lives, and Buck Torres asks how you were supposed to know when it was working or not, in that moment before you shoot and save your own life or don’t shoot and maybe lose it.
“Get him scared enough to quit. Maybe even confess.”
DeLeon said, “You serious?” He said, “Shit. How you gonna scare him? Police up there, police down here, they try all kinds of ways to nail his ass and they can’t do it. Man must believe by now he’s got fairy dust on him. Isn’t nothing can touch him.”
“Mr. Magic,” Vincent said.
“He don’t look like but a reject, but he must have something going for him. Little homicidal motherfucker. The sneaky ones, man, are the worst.”
Vincent asked him what he was doing this evening. DeLeon said going to Old San Juan and do loop-the-loops. Vincent asked him if he’d make a stop on the way. “I’d like you to meet Modesta, the cab driver’s wife. See what you think.”
“Love to,” DeLeon said. “She a cute woman?”
Well, for a little round two-hundred-pounder smelling of laundry, her dress barely reaching her knees because of her size. Skinny legs with strange knots on her shins. A black-black African black woman, a silhouette in the doorway looking out to the street. She said, “Come. Please.”
It was a relief to turn around and go back outside, get out of the hot-grease smell of the place and the noise: the washing machine working, the electric fan blowing hot air, the television turned way up. Her kids were watching “Love Connection,” wanting to see if the young lady contestant had picked the computer programmer dude, the bartender dude or the car salesman…
Or none of them, DeLeon thinking, following Vincent and the woman outside into light once more, across the hardpack junky yard to the street, the woman saying, “I understan’ it now.”
“What’s that?” Vincent asked her.
“I dream of riding in a carriage without no horses, a black one,” she said, approaching DeLeon’s limousine. “I sit in it as you speak to me. If you would turn on the radio music, please, and the air condition…”
DeLeon looked at Vincent who gave him a look in return as she waved to neighbors and got in the back seat, Vincent following her in. She rolled the window down and waved some more as Vincent asked her how she knew Teddy was going to be released. She stopped waving and seemed surprised at the question.
“Because he’s Mr. Magic. I told you that.”
“That’s why he’s free. But how did you know it? How did it come to you? In a dream?”
“I come in my head. Also the police tell me.”
Vincent said, “Oh.”
DeLeon, half-turned behind the wheel, taking all this in, saw Vincent look at him-no expression but disappointed. What did the man expect? Vincent must have been hopeful though. He said to the woman then, “Do you know what’s going to happen to him now? I mean now that he’s free?”
“I don’ know that unless I see him.” The woman raised a hand to her neighbors. “If I see him, maybe I can tell you. I don’t know.” She turned from the window to look closely at Vincent. “But be careful of him.”
When Vincent looked at him again and nodded, DeLeon picked up the blue canvas bag from the front seat and handed it back to him. He watched Vincent take out the stainless steel urn.
“Do you know what this is?”
The woman reached out to touch the urn with the tips of her fingers. She began to stroke it, gently. DeLeon saw her eyes close.
She said, “I see a girl… falling from the sky.”
DeLeon felt chills and thrills and saw Vincent’s eyes, alive, come at him again.
The house was in the same neighborhood where Iris had lived, an upstairs flat like hers with paint peeling from the shutters and dirty walls. A weak light was on in the ceiling of the living room where two women and a skinny PR guy in an undershirt were watching “Love Connection.” One of Teddy’s favorite programs.
Teddy was in the kitchen doing business with another skinny PR guy who wore a snappy little straw down on his eyes and a dirty T-shirt. The kitchen was separated from the living room by a counter, so Teddy could hear “Love Connection” even when he wasn’t looking at it. At the same time he was telling the PR guy in the kitchen no, he couldn’t use a whole baggie, all he needed were a few joints. When the PR guy heard this he acted impatient, like Teddy was wasting his time.
He had given a busboy at the DuPont Plaza ten bucks to recommend this house. Get anything you want there. Anything? Anything.
Teddy believed the girl was nuts to have picked the car salesman, a show-off type with long sideburns in this day and age. They’d had their date and were now telling Chuck Woolery, the “Love Connection” host, all about it. How the car salesman’d had car trouble, Jesus, and was two hours late to start with. Then had taken the girl to a Japanese place where the girl said she was totally turned off by all that yukky stuff. The audience liked it when she said raw fish and hot wine were not her cup of tea. Then Chuck Woolery gave the audience his innocent look and asked the asshole car salesman if the evening got any better, if there was any romance. The asshole car salesman, backstage, but on a screen there on the show, said, well, he had given her a pretty good kiss goodnight…