LaBrava said, "What do you want to do to Richard?"
Miney said, "What do I want to do? I want to put a thirty-ought-six in him, right here." Miney touched the bridge of his nose with a finger that looked hard as bark. "But what I am going to do is put him in the back of my truck rolled in a dirty tarp and take him on home. We'll decide fair. Maybe lock him in a root cellar for up to thirty-five years--how's that sound? Let him out when Buster gets his release."
That didn't sound too bad.
LaBrava said, "You think you can handle him?"
"He's big as a two-hole shithouse and I'm blocky," Miney said, "but once I lay my ax handle across his head I don't expect trouble."
"He's over at the Paramount Hotel on Collins Avenue," LaBrava said.
Nobles walked into the lobby, his head aching with images of things to come, little details he had to remember. Like--Jesus, the typewriter! Already he'd forgot one. He was suppose to have taken care of that on the way down. He saw himself in darkness dropping it off the MacArthur Causeway...
And saw his Uncle Miney in that same moment--Miney sitting asleep with a snuff stick in his mouth, right there in the Paramount Hotel lobby. Nobles felt himself yanked out of that future time and back into a Jacksonville courtroom past, Miney extending his arm, his finger, pointing the Last Judgment at him... He got out of that lobby. Ran up to Wolfie's on the corner of Twenty-first to phone Cundo.
But the little booger wasn't in his room.
Nobles didn't want to go over there. He didn't like the feel of the place, all the foreigners hanging around. So in the next couple of hours he killed time having snacks, corned beef sandwiches, and checking the lobby, each time seeing Miney sitting in the same goddamn chair like he would let moss grow on him if he had to.
Finally, when it was dark he drove over to the La Playa Hotel, checked to see if Cundo had returned--not yet--and sat outside in the car to wait, listening to the jabber of dagos passing on the street. Little fuckers, ought to be sent back where they came from.
Send Cundo back too when they were through with him.
He heard Cundo's voice before he saw him--like a dago prayer shouted to heaven. The next thing, Cundo was feeling his car, running his hands over it in the streetlight, asking had he hit anything, had he stripped the gears, had he got bugs on it. Try to get a word in about something important. Nobles had to wait and found it was worth it. For once Cundo saw his car was okay the little fucker was so grateful he nodded yes, right away, and kept nodding yes to everything Nobles told him.
Go see Uncle Miney and give him a story. Yes. Tell him Richard's moved and nobody knows where. "Convince him or he'll ruin this deal we got. You understand?" Yes, of course. "Send him on his way or he'll mess us up good." Don't worry. Still looking now and again at his black Pontiac.
"The woman's car's over there at the ho-tel. Eldorado parked on the street." Yes? "Smash the windows with something. Windshield, headlights, 'specially the window on the driver side." Yes, okay. "Later on tonight I'll tell you the rest, what you're gonna do, then we don't see each other for a while. You understand?" Yes. "You gonna miss me?" Of course.
"Something else. Shit, I almost forgot. There's a typewriter in your trunk I want you to throw in the ocean, in Biscayne Bay. You hear me? Not in a garbage can or out in some alley, it's got to be sunk for good."
Yes, of course. Not even asking why--the little booger was so grateful to see his car again.
Sitting in the middle of the sofa LaBrava would lose himself for a time, watching Jean Shaw on the television screen and feeling her next to him. He could turn his head and see her, right there, the same face in profile. In the darkness of the room the two Jean Shaws were nearly identical, pale black and white. But he would not lose himself for long, because Franny Kaufman sat close on his other side and he was aware of her too. He would hear her, soft sounds in response to what she was watching, and feel her leg and sometimes her hand. She was here because Jean Shaw had invited her. Maurice, in his La-Z-Boy, paid no attention to Jean's whispers to be quiet. If he felt like making comments he made them.
"I'm gonna tell you something. Guys that ran dice games never looked like Dick Powell."
"Shhhh."
"I never knew a good-looking guy ran a dice game. I tell you about a guy named Peanuts?"
"Maury--"
"Edmund O'Brien was starting to get fat even then, you notice?"
At one point Franny's voice in the darkness said, "Hey, Jean?" a tone of mild surprise. "I've seen you before... I can't think of the name of the picture."
LaBrava was aware of the silence until Maurice said, "Jeanie, you still know how to deal cards like that?"
Cundo Rey said to the old man he understood from the guy over at the desk, the hotel guy, that he was looking for Richard. Cundo watched this Uncle Miney take the stick out of his mouth, almost gagging as he saw the dirty brown end of it.
"You a friend of Richard?"
Like he was accusing him. From the sound and the look of the man, another strange creature from the swamp, Cundo didn't believe he should tell him yes. He said he knew Richard, he had seen him around here.
The old man said, "Where?" He said, "Take me where I might find the son of a bitch."
They got in the old man's pickup truck and the old man began talking about Richard Nobles, saying he had "fell from grace once he got his ass up against hard work." Saying he had become nothing but a mean rascal who would sell his friends and blood kin to save his own hide, or maybe just for fun--Cundo understanding only some of what the old man said, but getting enough to hold his interest and want to keep the old man talking. Miney saying there was a time he himself was "wilder'n a buck and went looking for women and to do some drinking," but a man had to reach a point where he left that behind him. Richard's appetite was such he must be "holler to his heels." The old man said Richard--maybe what was wrong with him--had never looked up to nobody. He said to Cundo, "Who's you all's hero? People like you."
Cundo had to think. Fidel? No. Well, yes and no. Tony Perez? Of course. Roberto Ramos, if he was still playing in the big leagues. But he didn't know if the old man had ever heard of Tony Perez or Roberto Ramos, so he said, "The President of the United States."
Miney said, "Shit, that scudder--they's people eating nothing better'n swamp cabbage, he don't give a shit."
Cundo asked him what he wanted Richard for and Miney said, "You shake him out of the tree and I'll take care of the rest." Yes, as Nobles had said, it sounded like this old guy could make trouble for them. Cundo gave him directions. Take a left. Take another left. They were on Ocean Drive now coming up on the Della Robbia from the south.