A Five Year Plan

Chapter Twelve

Inspired by Jimmy Figaro’s purchase of a sculpture for his office, Tony Nudelli bought a bronze for his pool-house. A life-size Marilyn Monroe as she had appeared in The Seven Year Itch, her white skirts frozen voluminously as she stood over the subway vent.

‘Nice,’ said Al. ‘Real classy.’

‘Glad you like it,’ said Nudelli. ‘Cost me a fuckin’ fortune. And then some. The refinements I had done were almost as much as the original bronze.’

Al frowned and then looked a little more closely at Marilyn. The halterneck dress, the big breasts, the same look of ecstatic delight on her dippy blonde face. She looked exactly the way he remembered her from the movie. Right down to the red polish on her toenails. Finally, admitting defeat, he said, ‘OK, I give up. I can’t see no difference. Exactly what were these refinements you had done?’

Nudelli grinned. ‘Take a look under her dress,’ he suggested.

‘You’re kidding.’ But Al bent down, peeked between Marilyn’s legs, and let out a loud guffaw. The white panties she had been wearing in the movie were gone. And what was there instead looked as realistic as if she’d been a table dancer flashing her pussy in your face in return for a bill underneath her garter. Right down to the gash in the pubic hair.

Still laughing Al said, ‘Now that’s what I call a conversation piece.’

‘I thought so.’

‘She’s beautiful, Tony, just beautiful.’

‘I’m thinkin’ of having her up on some kind of table. It can’t be this one, she’s too heavy for glass. But I want to be able to look at that trim now and then, whenever the fancy takes me.’ He lit a cigar and puffed it, happily watching Al as he squatted down to take another, closer look.

‘Can I touch her pussy?’

‘Be my guest.’

Al reached up and pressed the palm of his hand over Marilyn’s private parts, laughing like a kid. He said, ‘I never thought I’d get to give Marilyn Monroe some index finger.’

‘You and Bobby Kennedy.’

‘Not forgetting Jack.’ He sang, ‘ "Happy birthday, Mister President." ’

‘She looks like she’s enjoying it, Al.’

‘I’ve always known how to please a woman, y’know? It’s all in the wrist action. Man, this feels good.’

‘Who says modern art don’t mean nuthin’?’

‘Not me. You won’t hear me complaining.’

For Tony’s benefit, Al sniffed his forefinger experimentally, each nostril vacuuming along its hairy knuckled length as if it had been the choicest cigar from Tony’s rosewood humidor. He said, ‘Too bad you couldn’t get it made scratch n’sniff.’

‘I’m workin’ on it.’ Nudelli waved his Cohiba at the seat in front of him. ‘Sit down, Al. We’ve got some business to discuss.’

‘I figured.’

‘This longitude and latitude that Delano gave you. I had the guys on my boat look it up on their charts. Seems like it’s a spot north-west of the Azores along the Mid-Atlantic Shelf. Anyway I fixed everything. Just like Delano wanted. A freighter out of Naples is gonna meet you at this nautical position. She’s the Ercolano. Carrying break bulk cargo. Loose items like spools of wire, lumber, steel beams, shit that’s too large to be containerized. But mostly Italian marble for the luxury bathrooms and gourmet kitchens of America. I’ll come back to that in a minute. The Ercolano’s agent in Naples is a company called Agrigento. I’ve done business with them before and they’re 100 percent reliable for our purposes. The captain’s been told to expect to find a vessel in distress at that position and to pick up a passenger and cargo. He’s going to hide the money in a marble sarcophagus that’s on its way to some rich dead guy in Savannah.’

Al nodded. ‘Got it.’

‘Also, you’ll note I said "passenger". Not plural, but singular. Meaning your individual ass, Al.’ Tony puffed the cigar and looked momentarily uncertain of something. ‘It’s up to you how you do it pal, but I don’t want Delano comin’ back here to Miami with the money. The long and the short and the in-between of it is that I want him dead. I figure you’ll need him alive only as long as it takes for you to make the rendezvous with the Ercolano. If I was you I’d let him have it before you get on the Ercolano and then sink the yacht, like he planned. Only with his dead son-of-a-bitch body still on board.’

Tony paused and studied Al’s big open face for a moment, aware that Al had got to know Delano reasonably well on the voyage from Costa Rica. He studied the red-hot gray end of the cigar for a moment, feeling the heat on his cheek, and said, ‘You gotta problem with any of that?’

Al shook his head. ‘No problem at all. Delano’s got a smart mouth. On the way back from CR he was breakin’ my balls about this n’that. There were a couple of times when I felt like popping him right then and there. You know what I told him? I told him I was surprised someone didn’t grease him while he was still in Homestead.’ Al shook his head bitterly. ‘S’gonna get worse too, I’m sure of it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Him fuckin’ with me. Like for instance, this air traffic controllers’ strike?’

Tony said, ‘Don’t remind me. I got to take the train to New York because of those fuckers. Country’s going to shit.’

‘Unfortunately there’s no train to Europe. It seems as if a lot of boat owners who want to get over the Atlantic this spring have decided to beat the strike and travel with their boats.’

‘So?’

‘So Delano made the booking with SYT describing himself as the owner and me as the crew. He’s gonna be giving me orders all the time. Breakin’ my balls, like I’m the hired help.’

Tony tried not to laugh. He said, ‘Just remember something, Al. With the smart mouth comes an even smarter brain. Don’t forget, he’s a Jew, and Jews are clever. Don’t make the same mistake as Willy One Eye. Don’t underestimate that kike.’

Al nodded impatiently. ‘Yeah, yeah.’

‘And don’t let yourself get needled. There may be a reason behind it. So be cool and turn the other cheek. Two things you gotta bear in mind if he starts riding you, Al. One, when this is all over you get to waste his smart ass; and two, you get to keep his share of the money. That should make your cross easier to bear. Huh? What do you say to that?’

Al said, ‘Yeah, you’re right. Thanks, Tony.’

‘One more thing. Watch out that it’s not you who gets double-crossed. The Atlantic is a big place, Al. And recent history teaches us that a lot can go wrong in an ocean.’

‘You’re telling me,’ said Al. ‘That kid I told you—’

‘If it does...’ Nudelli puffed out a cloud of smoke and watched it hang in the air between them, as if considering the size of the threat he wished to convey to the other man. The smoke slowly drifted up Marilyn’s white bronze skirt adding an infernal touch to her famous pose. He’d actually met Marilyn once, not long before she died, when she was hanging around with Sam Giancana. A nice girl. A shame what had happened to her. Only it hadn’t been Sam who’d helped hasten her death.

He said, ‘If it does go wrong, you can depend on this. That I can be as cruel as any of them fuckin’ Kennedys. Joe included.’

They were never a close family. The way Dave looked at it, they were never a family at all.

It was the usual stuff. A father who drank. That was the Russian in him. A mother who lit out. That was the Irish in her. And his sister, with an unwanted pregnancy and a boyfriend who didn’t marry her. Well, that was hardly Nick’s fault. Nick Rosen would probably have married Lisa if someone hadn’t cut his throat first.

By the time Dave was twenty he’d more or less given up on them all. With the occasional exception of Lisa. Not that he’d really been much help there either. Just making it through life on his own had seemed challenge enough without having to shoulder the badly packed luggage of their problems as well. But at least he’d tried to help her. Once. Maybe now, after five years, it was time to try again. Maybe. That was how he found himself driving over to her dismally suburban two-bedroom bungalow off Hallandale Beach Boulevard a couple of weeks after he got back from CR.

Dave got out of the Miata carrying his Nike sports bag and walked up the path. He knocked on the warped wooden door and a big dog started to bark inside the house. He waited. It wasn’t yet midday. A stupid time to go visiting. She might have been out working except that the drapes were pulled and there was an old and battered red Mustang parked on the drive. A car that had once been his. How could she have let it get that badly rusted?

He knocked again. This time when the dog barked he heard someone curse the animal. And after a minute or two the door creaked open and there, gathering a thin, kimono-style robe around her overweight, naked body, stood Lisa. Older than he remembered. Well of course, she was. But harder too. As if life hadn’t been especially kind to her. Maybe if Nick hadn’t died it would have been different. But the hell with that, he told himself. He was the one who’d spent the last five years behind bars. And had she thought to come and visit him? To do more than write a couple of badly spelt letters? She had not.

‘Dave, my God,’ she said, obviously flustered. ‘My, my. You’re out.’

‘Hello, Lisa.’

An impossibly large dog came to the door, nudging her behind with a muzzle the size of a shoebox and growling quietly. It looked like a Dobermann that snacked on chocolate chip steroids.

She pushed the dog back indoors, and said, ‘It’s just my kid brother.’

Dave wasn’t sure if she was talking to the dog or to someone else in the house. He had a glimpse of a dingy interior behind her and his keen eyes took in an ancient-looking TV, a grimy moth-eaten sofa, a table with a half-empty bottle of bourbon and, next to the bottle, looking like recent and incongruous arrivals, two new $100 bills.

He said, ‘I wasn’t sure if I’d find you in.’

She shrugged back at him, still trying to find a smile. When it came it looked uncomfortable. ‘Well, here I am.’ Glancing back over her shoulder, she added, ‘You should have called.’

‘I was in the general area,’ he lied. ‘Passing through. So I thought I’d stop, say hello, see how you were.’

‘Only it’s a little inconvenient, right now.’

Dave thought he guessed what he had disturbed.

‘New boyfriend?’

Lisa smiled thinly and nodded with little more conviction.

‘Yeah.’

‘That’s good.’

‘We were—’ A sheepish look filled in the blanks. ‘I’d be embarrassed to let you in. My underwear is all over the floor.’

Dave grinned and said, ‘Same old Lisa.’

She was looking past him now, around the neighborhood. ‘Hey, less of the old Lisa, will ya? I’m only five years older than you.’

That was right. He remembered now. She had been just his age now when he went inside Homestead. Dave was about to pick up on that but then let it go. He wasn’t here to reproach her, but to help.

He said, ‘I brought you a present.’ He handed over the bag. Inside were two parcels, each containing 50,000 of the 250 grand plus interest Jimmy Figaro had given him. ‘Actually, there’s one for Mom as well.’

‘Why thank you, Dave,’ she said and, hesitantly, brushed his hair with her hand.

As she touched him his nostrils detected a sweet cloying smell that for some reason made him start thinking of babies. It was on her hands. A kind of sheen.

‘Just promise me that you’ll only open it when you’re alone,’ he said.

‘Sure, OK.’ She frowned and laughed at the same time. ‘Whaddya do? Rob a bank or something?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Look, why don’t you come back, in about an hour, and we can talk. I’m not much of a cook, but hey. What the hell? You never complained when you were a kid and big sis fixed your dinner.’

Now he remembered the smell. It was baby oil. Johnson’s Baby Oil. Only Lisa had never had her baby. It had been stillborn. And what with the two C-notes and the anonymous boyfriend back in the bedroom an unpleasant thought began to strut its way along the sidewalk of Dave’s imagination.

‘Whaddya say, little brother? Be like the old days.’

It was Dave’s turn to be evasive now.

‘I’d like to, Lisa, really I would. But I’m on a pretty tight schedule.’

There was no need for him to say anything. He told himself it wasn’t his right to do so. Whatever family obligation he’d had, he’d fulfilled, hadn’t he? Fifty thousand dollars a head was a lot of payback for not much of an upbringing. Now he just wanted to get the hell away from there. Forcing a smile that was the equal of the pinched nerve that was Lisa’s own, Dave backed toward his car.

He said, ‘Another time, huh?’

‘Sure honey, but call first, OK?’ she told him. Like he was some John.

‘I’ll do that.’ He jumped into the open car and started the engine.

‘Nice car,’ she said. ‘Are you sure you didn’t rob a bank?’

‘Not yet,’ he repeated and waving stiffly, drove off, trying not to floor the gas pedal and look like he was suddenly desperate to be away from her. And at the same time ashamed. Ashamed for what he felt he was. Just another john in his sister’s life, giving her money and then going away again. His own sister. His own sister.

Kate Furey was giving Kent Bowen a tour of the boat. The Carrera was moored alongside dozens of other yachts on Fort Lauderdale’s intercoastal waterway, and a stone’s throw from R.J.’s Landing, one of the dockside area’s better restaurants. Bowen had already suggested lunching there, but Kate had told him they had too much to do getting him up to speed with the lexicon of yachts and their equipment. She had already figured out a way around his lack of boating knowledge, but she wanted to punish him a little for not being scared off with all her best stories about squalls and seasickness. A water taxi slipped by with a couple dressed up to get married. They waved, and from the sunny skylounge aft deck where he and Kate were standing, Bowen waved back.

‘You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said.’

‘Sure I have,’ said Bowen.

Unconvinced, Kate pointed toward the davits above their heads. She said, ‘OK, what are those?’

‘You mean those things holding up the boat?’

Kate made an inhuman noise that sounded like the wrong answer button on a TV game show.

‘Incorrect. That isn’t a boat. It’s a tender. As in Tender is the Night. But don’t get any ideas. And the tender is attached to? What?’

‘A crane, I guess.’

Kate made the noise again. She said, ‘Davits. Those are davits, dammit. Look sir. Kent. This isn’t going to work unless you become a little more familiar with the right names for things. You won’t, thank God, have to try and sail this boat. But the chances are you’ll have to talk about her with people from other boats. You know? Like you’re proud of her? And by the way, those shoes you’re wearing? They’ll have to go.’

Bowen glanced down at his Air Nikes.

‘What’s wrong with them?’

Kate shook her head firmly and said, ‘They’re not proper boat shoes, that’s what’s wrong with them. A real boatman wouldn’t be seen dead in those things. But we can fix that. We can stop off somewhere along Las Olas on our way down to the port. There’s bound to be a man’s shop, or a chandler’s somewhere on the boulevard. Docksiders are best. Leather uppers, flat rubber soles. At least you can look the part even if you screw up on the glossary.’

Kate walked through a glass doorway and into the salon where a large and extremely comfortable leather couch, arranged aft to port, faced an enormous TV. A smaller sofa and narrow built-in counter with maple wood cabinets lined the starboard side of the salon. The arrangement of furnishings prompted Kate to ask Bowen yet another question. She pointed at a circular, six-place dining table that was located forward of where they were now standing.

‘Am I pointing to port or to starboard?’

Bowen thought for a moment. Impatiently Kate started to click her fingers at him.

He said, ‘Port.’

‘C’mon, it’s got to come faster than that. Like the difference between your right and your left.’

He followed her through the salon casting a look of regret in the direction of the 27-inch TV. He wished he could fetch himself an ice-cold Corona from the refrigerator and go and watch the play-off game on the TV in his stateroom. Dragging his fingers across the satin-finished wood he said, with just a hint of sarcasm, ‘So what’s this part of the boat called in that McHale’s Navy glossary of yours?’

‘The dining room.’

‘Ask a dumb question.’

They climbed a few thickly carpeted steps.

‘Hey, swell kitchen,’ remarked Bowen. ‘Look at this.’

Kate made the wrong-answer noise again.

‘It’s the galley,’ she said.

Bowen sighed, ‘As in slaves, right? Jesus, I’m never going to remember all this shit.’

‘Well it probably won’t matter that much. I already thought of a way to explain your ignorance.’

‘You did, huh?’ Bowen contained his momentary irritation.

She went on: ‘For the purposes of SYT’s insurance cover, I was obliged to describe you as the boat owner and me as the captain. A lot of owners have decided to travel with their boats because of the air traffic controllers’ strike. It looks as if it’s going to drag on for a while. So, under the circumstances, it won’t seem that unusual, you coming along on the voyage.’

‘I can’t see how that helps,’ said Bowen. ‘Why should the owner know any less than the crew?’

Kate smiled. ‘For a lot of yacht owners, a luxury yacht is just a floating den. Another expensive toy. Believe me, it’s not uncommon for these guys to know jack shit about their own boats.’ She was enjoying this. ‘So, it’s possible your complete and total ignorance won’t be noticed.’

‘OK.’ Bowen looked around with a proprietorial air. ‘You know, I always did kind of fancy owning one of these things.’

‘I also took the liberty of inviting Sam Brockman to join our crew and make up the numbers.’

‘Sam Brockman?’ Bowen couldn’t help but look disappointed. ‘From the US Coast Guard?’

Kate noted the look on his face and smiled. Coast Guard. That was a laugh. More like bodyguard, just in case Bowen was thinking of trying anything when they were at sea.

‘Well, think about it. It would have looked odd with just me crewing,’ said Kate. ‘And after all, it is his department’s boat, at least until it goes up for auction. We’re going to pick him up at the Lake Mabel station on our way down to SYT’s cargo terminal.’

Bowen tried to feel positive about Sam Brockman’s imminent arrival on board. ‘I’m sure it’s a good idea. Especially with all his, um, nautical knowledge.’

But Kate hadn’t finished. ‘That does of course mean that when we’re in company we ought not to be too familiar with each other. I’ll call you sir, as usual. Everyone’ll assume you’re just another Miami plutocrat with more money than sense. Sir.’

‘I’ve no problem with any of that, Kate.’ Bowen was already thinking of a way to exploit his new status as a rich boat owner. ‘You know what? I’m going to find a bathroom.’

‘Head, sir.’

For a moment Bowen couldn’t believe his luck.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘On board ship, sir, we call the bathroom the head.’

‘Oh. The head. Whatever. Well, that’s where I’m headed, anyway.’ He laughed. Now he had thought of a way. ‘Then I’m going to find me a cold beer and, like any convincing plutocrat with more money than sense, I’m going to put my feet up for a while and I’m going to watch the big game on TV.’

‘We really ought to finish our tour of the boat, sir,’ advised Kate. ‘There’s still a lot you should know about. The engines. The communications system. The ship’s computers.’

Bowen shook his head. ‘Kate? The only thing I want to see right now is the Chiefs taking the Dolphins apart.’ Noting Kate’s expression, he added, ‘I’m from Kansas, remember?’ He walked back down the steps. ‘Let me know when we’re underway, Captain. I’ll be in my quarters.’

Kate watched him go, mouthing a silent ‘asshole’ at Bowen’s back. A second or two later she had the satisfaction of hearing him fall down the circular stair connecting the midship accommodations deck with the formal salon and dining room.

‘Asshole,’ she said and climbed the portside companionway to the wheelhouse skylounge, where she began to get to grips with the Carrera’s computer-based dynamic reporting system. She was almost disappointed to discover how easy it would be to sail the boat. With its exhaustive on-line diagnostic testing and troubleshooting, the Carrera was so well equipped that even Bowen could have piloted it. And she wished that the part of her mission in which she was actually obliged to sail the boat could have lasted longer than the few minutes it would take to cruise down to Port Everglades.

Kate started the engines and then went out on deck to pull up fenders. She might have asked Bowen for help except for the inevitable joke that it would have produced:

Now Kate, you don’t have to worry about fending me off...

Kate’s lip wrinkled with distaste. ‘Not any more,’ she said, and began to pull on a rope she wished had been knotted around Bowen’s stupid neck.