Cundo Rey said, "Man, we don't have no air. How about I open it just a little?"
Nobles didn't answer him. In a moment a draft of salt air touched his face and it felt pretty good. He reached behind him and opened the window on his side a few inches. Yeah, that was better.
"I don't want to see her just yet. Till we're ready. You understand?"
Cundo said, "Sure," even though he didn't. Why ask him questions? He was acting strange.
"What I'm getting at, I walk in there I'm liable to see her. Or be seen with her, I mean. You follow me? Best we wait for him to come out."
They had been parked here more than a half hour. Cundo couldn't believe it, Nobles becoming cautious, not wanting to go in there and get the guy's pictures, take the guy in his hands, throw him out a window if it was high enough. He would like to have a look at this guy in the light, see him good. The guy didn't seem to scare Nobles, no, but seeing the pictures of himself had changed him; he didn't seem to know what he was doing.
Cundo said, "If the guy works, then why would he be there?" Nobles didn't answer. He didn't know anything, so why ask him?
Cundo said, "I don't like that place I'm living, La Playa. I'm going to move." The reason they were at different hotels, Nobles had said they shouldn't be seen together too much. He had asked why and Nobles had said, because. That was his answer. Because.
"I'm going to find a good place, move my things down from West Palm. What about you? You want to move your things?"
Nobles wasn't listening, he was pushing up straight against the backrest, stretching his neck, saying, "Jesus Christ, there she is."
Cundo had to press his face against the side window, his neck twisted, to see. He said, "Tha's the movie star? Man, she look pretty nice. Who's that old guy?"
"Must be the one she's staying with, one picked her up." Nobles watched them cross the street like they were going to the beach in their good clothes, but now they stopped. He watched the old man pull open a car door and get in while Jean Shaw went around to the other side. They were going someplace. Just her and the old man.
As soon as Nobles had his idea he said, "They go by, you get out. I'm own take the car, meet you later on."
"You want to take this?"
Nobles' head turned with the Mercedes going past them. "Okay, get out."
"Man, this is my car."
Nobles said, "You little booger--" Got that far.
Cundo saw the look and stepped out of the car saying, "Sure, please take it." Stood in the road saying, "Go with God," and watched until the insane creature from the Big Scrub turned left on Fifteenth Street.
Franny came out of the ocean like a commercial, body glistening in two strips of mauve material, Coppertone clean with an easy stride, letting her hips move on their own as she came up on the beach. It was empty in front of her, all the way to the park.
Where was Joe LaBrava when she needed him?
He was across the street, coming out of the Della Robbia with Paco's wheelchair, sitting in it now on the sidewalk, trying it out, talking to the old ladies leaning out of their chairs, reassuring them. By the time Franny reached the grass, he was wearing a plain, beachcomber Panama with a curvy, shapeless brim, a camera hanging from his neck, waving to the ladies as he wheeled off.
Franny yelled his name. He looked over, made an awkward turn and stroked his wheels across the street.
"How do you get up curbs?"
She helped him, came around in front of him again and he was aiming a Nikon at her. Snick.
"I wasn't ready."
"Yes, you were. You look good. You're the first girl in a bathing suit I've ever shot."
"None of that commercial stuff."
He gave a shrug. "Maybe there's a way to do it."
"The bathing suit in contrast to something. How about sitting on a TV set?"
He smiled and she watched him reach around to the camera bag hanging behind him, watched him bring it to his lap, the hat brim hiding his face as he snapped off the wide-angle lens, put on a long one and aimed the camera down a line of palm trees to a group of elderly people sitting on a bench.
"What're you gonna shoot, the regulars?"
"Get 'em when they aren't looking."
"Why don't you come up after... do me."
She was serious or she was having fun. Either way, it didn't matter.
He said, "I don't have any color."
She said, "Whatever you want to use, Joe, is fine with me."
He remembered sore feet from all that standing around steely-eyed in front of hotels and at rallies and fund-raisers, protecting important people. A numb butt from sitting in cars for days doing surveillance. Tired eyes from reading presidential pen-pal letters. Not even counting protective-detail duty in Mrs. Truman's living room, a life that sounded exciting was 80 percent boredom.
It had certainly taken a turn lately.
He cruised Lummus Park in the Eastern Airlines wheelchair, using the Nikon with a 250-mm lens now to shoot across Ocean Drive to get porch sitters: panning a gallery of weathered faces, stopping on permanent waves, glasses flashing sunlight, false teeth grinning--peeking into their lives as he picked them off one at a time. Later on he would see their faces appear in clear liquid, in amber darkroom light, and would be alone with them again and want to ask them questions about where they'd been and what they'd seen. Raped by Cossacks, Franny said, or mugged by...
The Cuban-looking guy said, "What're you doing, taking pictures?"
His hair was slicked down across his forehead and he wore a gold earring. But even without it LaBrava would have known him. The way he moved, for one thing, the way his hand drifted up to touch the wavy ends of his hair.
LaBrava was happy to see him and gave him a smile and said, "Yep, that's what I'm doing, taking pictures."
"You down here on your vacation?"
"Just enjoying life," LaBrava said.
"Tha's nice, you can do that."
The guy wore a black shirt that might be silk and fit him loose. He was skinny under there, a welterweight with that high compact ass in his cream-colored slacks, the shoes white, perforated.
"Tha's a nice camera you have."
"Thanks. How about if I take a picture of you?"
"No, tha's okay."
"I like to get shots of the natives."
"Man, you think I'm a native?"
"I mean the people that live here, in Florida."
The Cuban-looking guy said, "Tha's an expensive camera, uh?" He hadn't taken his eyes from it.
"With the lens it runs about seven and a quarter."
"Seven hundred dollars?"
"The camera cost me five hundred."
"Oh, man, is a nice one, uh? You let me see it?"
"If you're careful." LaBrava had to take his hat off to lift the strap over his head.
"No, I won't drop it. Is heavy, uh?"
"Hang it around your neck."
"Yeah, tha's better."
LaBrava watched him raise the camera, almost as though he knew what he was doing, and sight toward the ocean, the breeze moving strands of the guy's raven hair.
Lowering the camera, looking at it, the guy said, "Yeah, I like it. I think I'll take it."
LaBrava watched the guy turn and walk off. Watched the easy, insolent movement of his hips.
Watched him take four, five, six strides, almost another one before he stopped--knowing the guy was going to stop, because the guy would be thinking by now, Why isn't he yelling at me? Now the guy would be wondering whether or not he should turn around, wondering if he had missed something he should have noticed. LaBrava saw the guy's shoulders begin to hunch. Turn around and look--the guy would be thinking--or take off.
But he had to look.
So he had to turn around.
LaBrava sat in the wheelchair waiting, his curvy-brimmed Panama shading his eyes, the guy fifteen to twenty feet away, staring at him now.