“It’s too dark.”
“I can see it you can see it. Look. You read it straight across it says Andrea Delia Robbia. He was a famous Italian sculptor back, I don’t know, the fourteen, fifteen hundreds. They name these places the Esther, the Dorothy — what kind of name is that for a hotel on South Miami Beach? I mean back then. Now it don’t matter. South Bronx south, it’s getting almost as bad.”
“Delia Robbia,” LaBrava said. “It’s a nice name. We going?”
“You say it, Delia Robbia,” Maurice said, rolling the name with a soft, Mediterranean flourish, tasting it on his tongue, the sound giving him pleasure. “Then the son of a bitch I sold it to — how do you like this guy? He paints the Andrea all white, changes the style of the lettering and ruins the composition. See, both hotels before were a nice pale yellow, dark green letters, dark green the decoration parts, the names read together like they were suppose to.”
LaBrava said, “You think anybody ever looks up there?”
“Forget I told you,” Maurice said. They walked back to the car and he stopped again before getting in. “Wait. I want to take a camera with us.”
“It’s in the trunk.”
“Which one?”
“The Leica CL.”
“And a flash?”
“In the case.”
Maurice paused. “You gonna wear that shirt, uh?”
LaBrava’s white shirt bore a pattern of bananas, pineapples and oranges. “It’s brand new, first time I’ve had it on.”
“Got all dressed up. Who you suppose to be, Murf the Surf?”
There was a discussion when LaBrava went around the block from Ocean Drive to Collins and headed south to Fifth Street to get on the MacArthur Causeway. Maurice said, we’re going north, what do you want to go south for? Why didn’t you go up to Forty-first Street, take the Julia Tuttle? LaBrava said, because there’s traffic up there on the beach, it’s still the season. Maurice said, eleven o’clock at night? You talk about traffic, it’s nothing what it used to be like. You could’ve gone up, taken the Seventy-ninth Street Causeway. LaBrava said, “You want to drive or you want me to?”
They didn’t get too far on I-95 before they came to all four lanes backed up, approaching the 112 interchange, brake lights popping on and off as far ahead as they could see. Crawling along in low gear, stopping, starting, the Mercedes stalled twice.
LaBrava said, “All the money you got, why don’t you buy a new car?”
Maurice said, “You know what you’re talking about? This car’s a classic, collector’s model.”
“Then you oughta get a tune.”
Maurice said, “What do you mean, all the money I got?”
“You told me you were a millionaire one time.”
“Used to be,” Maurice said. “I spent most of my dough on booze, broads and boats and the rest I wasted.”
Neither of them spoke again until they were beyond Fort Lauderdale. They could sit without talking and LaBrava would be reasonably comfortable; he never felt the need to invent conversation. He was curious when he asked Maurice:
“What do you want the camera for?”
“Maybe I want to take a picture.”
“The woman?”
“Maybe. I don’t know yet. I have to see how she is.”
“She’s a good friend of yours?”
Maurice said, “I’m going out this time of night to help somebody I don’t know? She’s a very close friend.”
“How come if she lives in Boca they took her to Delray Beach?”
“That’s where the place is they take them. It’s run by the county. Palm Beach.”
“Is it like a hospital?”
“What’re you asking me for? I never been there.”
“Well, what’d the girl say on the phone?”
“Something about she was brought in on the Meyers Act.”
“It means she was drunk.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“They pick you up in this state on a Meyers Act,” LaBrava said, “it means you’re weaving around with one eye closed, smashed. They pick you up on a Baker Act it means you’re acting weird in public and’re probably psycho. I remember that from when I was here before.”
He had spent a year and a half in the Miami field office of the United States Secret Service, one of five different duty assignments in nine years.
He had told Maurice about it one Saturday morning driving down to Islamorada, LaBrava wanting to try bonefishing and Maurice wanting to show him where he was standing when the tidal wave hit in ’35. LaBrava would remember the trip as the only time Maurice ever asked him questions, ever expressed an interest in his past life. In parts of it, anyway.
He didn’t get to tell much of the IRS part, the three years he’d worked as an investigator when he was young and eager. “Young and dumb,” Maurice said. Maurice didn’t want to hear anything about the fucking IRS.
Or much about LaBrava’s marriage, either — during the same three years — to the girl he’d met in accounting class, Wayne State University, who didn’t like to drink, smoke or stay out late, or go to the show. Though she seemed to like all those things before. Strange? Her name was Lorraine. Maurice said, what’s strange about it? They never turn out like you think they’re going to. Skip that part. There wasn’t anything anybody could tell him about married life he didn’t know. Get to the Secret Service part.
Well, there was the training at Beltsville, Maryland. He learned how to shoot a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum, the M-16, the Uzi submachine gun, different other ones. He learned how to disarm and theoretically beat the shit out of would-be assassins with a few chops and kicks. He learned how to keep his head up and his eyes open, how to sweep a crowd looking for funny moves, hands holding packages, umbrellas on clear days, that kind of thing.
He spent fifteen months in Detroit, his hometown, chasing down counterfeiters, going undercover to get next to wholesalers. That part was okay, making buys as a passer. But then he’d have to testify against the poor bastard in federal court, take the stand and watch the guy’s face drop — Christ, seeing his new buddy putting the stuff on him. So once he was hot in Detroit, a familiar face in the trade, they had to send him out to cool off.
He was assigned to the Protective Research Section in Washington where, LaBrava said, he read nasty letters all day. Letters addressed to “Peanut Head Carter, the Mushmouth Motherfucker from Georgia.” Or that ever-popular salutation, “To the Nigger-loving President of the Jewnited States.” Letters told what should be done to the President of the USA, “the Utmost Supreme Assholes” who believed his lies. There was a suggestion, LaBrava said, the President ought to be “pierced with the prophet’s sword of righteousness for being a goddamn hypocrite.” Fiery, but not as practical as the one that suggested, “They ought to tie you to one of those MX missiles you dig so much and lose your war-lovin ass.”
Maurice said, “People enjoy writing letters, don’t they? You answer them?”
LaBrava said usually there wasn’t a return address; but they’d trace the writers down through postmarks, broken typewriter keys, different clues, and have a look at them. They’d be interviewed and their names added to a file of some forty thousand presidential pen pals, a lot of cuckoos; a few, about a hundred or so, they’d have to watch.
LaBrava told how he’d guarded important people, Teddy Kennedy during the Senator’s 1980 presidential campaign, trained to be steely-eyed, learned to lean away from those waving arms, stretched his steely eyes open till they ached listening to those tiresome, oh my, those boring goddamn speeches.
Maurice said, “You should a heard William Jennings Bryan, the Peerless Prince of Platform English, Christ, lecture on the wonders of Florida — sure, brought in by the real estate people.”