Tropical Freeze (3 page)

“Ever see what a three-fifty-seven magnum does to elephant hide?”

“It’s been awhile,” Thorn said. “I forget.”

“Not a whole hell of a lot,” Gaeton said.

Gaeton went on with the story, while Thorn glanced into the back seat at this man. Those green eyes clicked onto Thorn’s and held him for a minute. The guy had something burning in there.

They strolled around the lot of a Porsche and Ferrari dealership, the two of them following behind the man in the hula girl shirt as he stalked down the aisles of cars. After a while they attracted a young salesman. He sized up the three of them and spoke to Gaeton.

“Looking for some speed and luxury today?” the young man said.

“Our friend Claude is.” Gaeton nodded ahead to the other man.

“He speak English?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” Gaeton said. “I never had the occasion to speak to him.”

“Well, we’ll let him look a bit,” the salesman said. He seemed to be used to this, three guys shopping together but not knowing each other.

Claude had stopped in front of a black Porsche. He tried the door, but it was locked.

Gaeton called out, “Find one you like?”

Claude looked back at Gaeton. No car buyer’s flush in his face. Just that heavy-lidded look, like a snake about to doze off or strike. It was hard to tell.

Gaeton said, “Get us the keys to that one, will you? Our friend wants to sniff the leather.”

In a few minutes the salesman sauntered back with the keys. He was wearing a black polo shirt with a red alligator on it, a white coat over that, white pants. Dark wraparound sunglasses, loafers without socks.

“The Carrera has very silky steering,” the boy said as he unlocked the driver’s door. “And a top end of one hundred seventy-four.” He turned his sunglasses on Claude and said, “
Me entiendies?
”

Claude let a few seconds pass, then said to the salesman, “You may speak to me in your language. I understand it well.”

“Well, then,” the boy said. A fidget appeared in his right hand, drumming on his pants leg. He nodded his head at Claude.

Claude said, “I want to experience this top end you speak about. This one hundred and seventy-four. I want to feel this.”

The boy glanced at Gaeton and Thorn to see if they were smiling. They weren’t. The salesman created a smile anyway. “We’ll go around the block, a mile or two, then swing back and talk.” Getting a patronizing authority in there.

Gaeton yawned, looked off at the traffic. Thorn watched a jet rise from Miami International a mile or two to the north, its rumble vibrating through the asphalt lot.

He’d been running into this same type of kid a good bit lately. The boy had a nasal haughtiness, as if he’d been to some college where he’d been educated beyond his character, given a glib view, a sketchy understanding of the great ideas. And now there was no job on earth that wasn’t beneath him.

Claude got into the driver’s seat and started the Porsche. Raced the engine. It sounded like he was holding it at redline. The kid ducked into the passenger side, and Thorn and Gaeton headed back to the Mercedes.

At Frog City they reached the last traffic light on the western edge of Miami, the current border of the Everglades. The salesman turned in his bucket seat and made a frantic wave to Gaeton and Thorn, who followed in the brown Mercedes. It was his third since they’d left the car lot. Gaeton waved back.

A hundred yards ahead of them the four-lane highway narrowed to two as it entered the Everglades. The last of the housing developments behind them now, just the shadowy tunnel of pines ahead.

“They must’ve run out of conversational topics,” Gaeton said.

“They don’t seem to have a whole lot in common,” said Thorn.

“First dates are tough.”

The light turned green and the Porsche’s rear tires squealed and Gaeton crushed the accelerator pedal of the Mercedes, lugging after them.

Thorn said, “You see that? He had hold of the kid. Had him by the scruff, like you hold a dog back.”

In a minute Thorn leaned over to check the speedometer. Eighty-five and the Porsche was pulling steadily away.

“By the way, Gaeton, who is this guy? A pharmaceutical king?”

Gaeton Richards leaned back, one hand on the wheel, the other brushing a strand of hair off his forehead. He looked over at Thorn, the trees flashing by behind him.

‘I’ll tell you, buddy,” he said. “I don’t know who the hell that guy is. And I sure wish I did.”

“Come on.” Thorn laughed. “Who is he?”

“All I know is I’m supposed to take him on a shopping spree, see he gets whatever he wants, not let him out of my sight.”

Thorn eased his hand up for a good grip on the door handle, braced his feet flat against the fire wall.

“Why do I have the feeling I’m not going to get that blade today?”

Gaeton was quiet for a few moments; then in an almost dreamy tone he said, “You ever remember Saturdays, going to the
Guardian
office?” Nearly closing his eyes as he recalled it. “How we would play with the bars of lead type and make up our own newspaper stories about people around town. Get ink on our clothes.”

“Yeah, I think about it. Those were good days,” said Thorn. “I remember the headlines we made up.
BILL NICKERSON FOUND ASLEEP IN HAMMOCK WITH DEAD SNOOK
, things like that.”

The
Guardian
had been Gaeton’s father’s newspaper, the only paper at that time in the upper Keys. It was a one-man affair that he ran out of the downstairs of a Conch house in Tavernier, on a squeaky hand-set press. Gaeton senior had been the reporter, the publisher, editor, everything. He was a calm, quiet widower, who subscribed to a dozen New York magazines, read cowboy novels, smoked a pipe. His hands were always inky and knuckle-busted.

Thorn thought of him often, of his voice especially. How steady and rich it had been, never straining, no matter how angry he might be, or disappointed. Holding that solid timbre, always clear and direct. It still resonated in Thorn’s inner ear, a kind of middle C, a reference point. The man could stand in the blast of a hurricane or the easy wash of a summer trade wind and speak with the same calm and grace.

“I was just thinking about those days,” Gaeton said. “How we thought things were back then, how we pictured the world.”

“It was a simpler time,” Thorn said.

“Yeah, simpler.”

Thorn watched the asphalt hurtling underneath them. In the distance the Porsche smoked to a stop.

Gaeton said, “He’s testing the brakes now. If you’re going to drive that fast, you need good brakes.” Gaeton brought the Mercedes down to just a little over legal speed. The other car was still a half mile ahead.

The Porsche took off again, its tires burning.

“Here we go,” Gaeton said, accelerating.

“You’re telling me you don’t know this guy? We’re playing tag at a hundred plus and you don’t know who he is?”

“I’m working on it,” Gaeton said. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted you to meet him, see what I’m into.”

“Looks like you’re still in the bad guy business. Not a big change from the FBI.”

“If you’re going to help me, I thought you should know how it is, see one of these jokers.”

“Help you? Who said I was going to help you?”

“You will,” Gaeton said. “I just haven’t asked you yet.”

“Ask me, so I can tell you no right now and get it out of the way.”

Thorn watched the steering wheel shimmy in Gaeton’s hands. He kept himself from leaning over to check the speedometer. The black Porsche was just a speck now at the end of a long straightaway. They had to be doing over a hundred.

Gaeton glanced over at Thorn, caught his eye, and smiled. He said, “I remember when we were kids, you and me, Darcy, Sugarman, always around this time of year, we’d get into that pirate thing. Dueling. Eye patches, that whole number.”

“I’d forgotten,” Thorn said.

“Dad never liked it. Glorifying bad guys, he used to say. He’d say things like that and I thought he was being tightass and fussy. I never knew what he meant. Not back then.”

Thorn was silent. He was trying to put this together. Claude, the
Guardian
, pirates. This whole day.

Gaeton said, “You’re rebuilding your house now. That’s taking all your time, right? Getting yourself back together. I shouldn’t be bothering you with my bullshit.”

“You in some kind of danger, Gaeton?”

Gaeton held his eyes to the road. Empty now for as far as they could see. The pines and melaleucas blurred past. He shook his head as if trying to focus his eyes on the here and now.

He said, “You ever hear of Benny Cousins, the guy I work for?”

Thorn said he hadn’t.

“Well, he was a hotshot with DEA, till he quit few years back, started Florida Secure Systems.”

“Now he’s your boss.”

“Yeah,” Gaeton said, thinking about it. “My boss.”

“So, what’s the problem?”

“I wish I could tell you the whole thing, Thorn. But I can’t.”

“You can’t tell me, but you want me to do something.”

Thorn willed his right foot to relax, stop stamping on the imaginary brake. Gaeton looked over at him.

“Oh, hell, Gaeton, you need me, I’m there,” Thorn said. “You know that.”

“Yeah, I knew that.” Gaeton smiled at him. “But it’s still good to hear you say it.”

The wheel was shaking hard now. Gaeton was working just to keep them in their lane. He squinted down the three-mile straightaway at the disappearing Porsche. Then he cleared his throat and looked over at Thorn, his eyes full of trouble.

“Benny’s looking for somebody to show him the fishing spots, show him how it’s done. Simple, basic stuff, where to cast his line, like that. I suggested he talk to you.”

“You did?”

“See, the thing is, Benny plays it very close to the vest with me. So, I thought, well, if you were out with him, fishing, shooting the shit, just you and him, you might be able to fill in some gaps for me. Might get some privileged glimpses.”

“Glimpses into what?” Thorn said.

“His business dealings,” Gaeton said.

“This is very vague, man.”

“I know it is, but it’s the best I can do at the moment.”

“All right,” Thorn said. “Let me get this right. You volunteered me to take this guy out, put him into some fish. I listen to what he says, tell you about it later. That what you mean? Help you investigate your boss.”

“Yeah,” Gaeton said. “Listen, but don’t try to wheedle anything out of him. The guy’s very cagey.”

“Jesus, Gaeton. You could’ve asked me first.”

“Yeah, I should’ve. But Benny brought up the fishing thing all of a sudden, and I just blurted out your name. And he’s fastened on to it, keeps bringing you up.”

Thorn looked out his window at the Everglades, at that sweep of watery prairie, the gnarled cypress, the crisp distances. A great white heron, all wings and neck, floated between the trees out there, making lazy strokes.

“We can talk more about this later,” Gaeton said. He patted the dashboard. “We better catch up to our friend here.”

The Mercedes crept up to one-thirty, the Porsche disappearing around a curve, and by the time Thorn and Gaeton rounded it, the Porsche had gained a half mile on them.

The road ahead made a sweeping turn through the saw grass and palmetto. Flocks of egrets perched on the bare branches of the cypress, and the vast marsh stretched away to every horizon. They drove ahead for five more minutes, rounding a gentle curve and facing down a long, empty stretch. They could see maybe five miles ahead, and there was nothing.

“Shit,” Gaeton said, bringing the Mercedes down below a hundred. “He must have turned off somewhere.”

“That, or he’s in California by now.”

He told Thorn to hold on, and he braked hard, swerving the car into a rest stop. There was a van load of nuns sitting at the cement picnic tables. They held their drumsticks still and watched as the Mercedes slid across the lot. Gaeton made a full one-eighty and fishtailed back onto the asphalt, giving Thorn a wink.

It took them twenty minutes of backtracking, but they found the Porsche parked in the lot of a Miccosukee Indian village. Gaeton parked beside the Porsche. In front of them was a gift shop in a rotting wood building. A hand-lettered sign propped beside the door advertised airboat rides and cases of cigarettes.

Thorn was about to get out of the car when Gaeton put a hand on his arm.

“I been meaning to give you this thing.”

He pulled a small knife from his pocket, held it out for Thorn.

“What? A bribe?”

“Kind of,” Gaeton said.

“That your dad’s?” Thorn said. “His Buck?”

Thorn took it, examined it. It was a one-bladed Buck with a black, deep-grained handle.

Gaeton said, “I don’t have any use for the thing anymore. And I thought, what with you into carving plugs now, maybe you’d like it.”

“I don’t know, Gaeton,” Thorn said. “I appreciate it, but—”

“Take it, Thorn. Don’t embarrass me.”

“Well, thanks, man. Thanks very much,” Thorn said. He opened the knife, tested the blade with his thumb. A razor. “I’d forgotten he did that, whittled.”

Gaeton said, “You know, it was mainly trick stuff. Wood chains, balls in cages, stuff like that.”

Thorn glanced at the old Indian woman watching them from the admission window.

“I know he’d like you to have it,” Gaeton said. “Me, I’ve been carrying it around for years. I never use it but to clean my nails.”

Thorn held the knife and was about to ask Gaeton to quit bullshitting him and tell him what this was really all about, but his friend had turned and was getting out of the car. Thorn slipped the knife into his pocket and followed.

Gaeton explained to the old Indian woman in the admission window that they were looking for the owner of the Porsche. The woman stared at Gaeton, said nothing for a moment, then inspected Thorn. Finally she pointed into the compound. Gaeton pushed through the turnstile, and Thorn followed, past an even older Indian woman weaving a hat from palmetto fronds, through double swinging doors into a dusty yard.

There was their man. Claude was counting out some bills onto a weathered picnic table in front of a band of Miccosukee Indian boys. They were in jeans and dirty flannel shirts. Long, greasy black hair, cowboy hats and boots. Fat Samoan faces. They were slapping each other on the back, grinning.