A Five Year Plan

Chapter Three

‘So what’s the plan?’

‘The plan?’

‘Your schedule for the first day of the rest of your life?’

Dave was sitting in Jimmy Figaro’s seven-series BMW appreciating all the leather and woodwork and thinking that it looked and felt like a small Rolls-Royce. Not that he had ever been in a Rolls. But this was what he imagined when he thought of one. Adjusting his seat electronically, he glanced through the tinted window as they drove away from Homestead onto Highway 1. There wasn’t much to look at. Just broad fertile fields where, for a few dollars, you could ‘pick your own’ crop of whatever was growing out there — peas, tomatoes, corn, strawberries, they had all kinds of shit. Only Dave had a different kind of crop in mind.

‘I dunno, Jimmy. I mean, you’re driving the car. And what a car it is.’

‘Like it?’

‘You got room service on this?’ said Dave, inspecting the phone in the armrest. ‘And I’ve never seen a car with a TV in front.’

‘Trip computer. Only picks up TV when the engine is off.’

‘What about the Feds? Does it pick them up too?’

Figaro grinned.

‘You’ve been reading the New Yorker.’

‘I read all kinds of shit these days.’

‘So I hear. As a matter of fact I sweep the car every morning. And I don’t mean the fucking rugs. I got this little handheld bug detector in the glovebox there.’ Then he jerked his head back on his shoulders and allowed a big smirk to climb up onto his face. ‘But just in case they decide to get on my tail with one of those directional mikes, we have double glazing on the side and rear windows of the automobile.’

‘Double glazing, on a car? You’re joking.’

‘A joke is not an option on a BMW. Can you hear any traffic noise?’

‘Now you come to mention it, no I can’t.’

‘No more can anyone hear what you’re saying. Not that you’re saying much. As usual.’

‘It’s what’s kept me alive until now.’ Dave shrugged, and then flipped open the glovebox. The bug detector was a black box about the size of a cigarette packet, with a short aerial. ‘Neat. You’re pretty serious about this surveillance shit, aren’t you?’

‘With my client list, I have to be.’

‘House counsel to Naked Tony Nudelli. Yeah, you’ve sure come a long way since you defended the likes of me, Jimmy. What puzzles me is why you came all the way out here to fetch me back into the city. I could have got the bus.’

‘Tony asked me to make sure you were all right. And house counsel’s putting it a little strongly, Dave. That fucking article made me sound like Bobby Duvall. However, unlike the name of that character he played in The Godfather—’

‘Tom Hagen.’

‘Yeah, Hagen. Unlike him I have more than one client. You, for instance. Should you ever need my advice on anything—’

‘Well, thanks Jimmy, I appreciate that.’

‘OK, if you have no particular plans for the day, then here’s what we’ll do. Like I say, Tony wanted me to make sure you were OK. We’ll drop by the office where I’ll show you a balance sheet I’ve prepared. What I’ve done with your money, that kind of thing. Then, if you’ll allow me to, I’ll make a few suggestions as to what you can do with it. After that we can maybe take an early lunch. Only I have to be in court at 2.30.’

‘Sounds fine, Jimmy. I’ve got nothing but appetite.’

‘You’re hungry? For what? Just tell me. I know this little Haitian place on Second Avenue. We could stop there for some breakfast if you wanted.’

‘I’ve had breakfast, thanks. And it isn’t food I’m hungry for, Jimmy. Sounds a little cheesy, but it’s life I’m hungry for. Y’know? It’s life.’

They drove along North Bay Shore Drive, round the side of the modern building where Figaro & August had its suite of offices, and into the underground parking lot. Figaro led the way toward the elevator.

‘So,’ he said, ‘yesterday morning, our office receptionist takes a delivery addressed to me while I’m stuck in a client meeting.’ Figaro started to chuckle as they rode the car upstairs. ‘This is apropos of what we were just talking about? She and my secretary unwrap the item and nearly pass out with fright when they see what it is. Because people in jail aren’t the only ones who read the New Yorker. Anyway, to them, the delivery item looks like a concrete topcoat. And the delivery docket says it’s from someone called Salvatore Galeria. So they think this is a Mafia message along the lines of Luca Brazzi sleeps with the fishes, etceteras etceteras. Only it’s not a Mafia message at all. It’s this piece of sculpture I bought in a gallery on South Beach last week. Salvatore Galeria, on Lincoln Avenue. Cost me $10,000. I bought it as a kind of conversation piece. Something I thought the types on my client list might appreciate. To keep wise guys like you amused while I was taking a leak.’

‘That’s some black sense of humor you have there, Jimmy.’

‘Smithy — she’s our receptionist — we had to send her home in a cab, she was so upset by the sight of what she perceived to be a threat upon my life. Kind of touching when you think about it. I mean, it’s like she really gives a shit what happens to me.’

‘When you put it like that, it is kind of hard to believe.’

The two men stepped out of the elevator and went along the quiet corridor into the suite. Figaro’s office occupied a corner of the building with a wrap-around window affording a panoramic view of Brickell Bridge and the bookshelf shapes of the Downtown skyline. As an apartment it would have seemed generous; but as an office for one man it was awesome. Dave’s eyes took in the lime-oak panelling, the cream leather sofas, the Humvee-sized desk, the crummy art and the concrete overcoat, and he found himself admiring everything except maybe the man’s sense of humor and taste in paintings. After the confines of his cell in Homestead, Figaro’s office made him feel almost agoraphobic. He glanced down at his feet. He was standing on a parquet floor at the corner of an enormous sand-colored rug. In the parquet was a brass plate inscribed with some sentiment that Dave did not bother to bend down and read.

‘What’s this? First base? Jesus, Jimmy, you could play ball in here.’

‘Of course,’ remarked the lawyer. ‘You haven’t been in these offices, have you?’

‘Business must be good.’

‘When you’re a lawyer, Dave, business is always good.’

Figaro motioned Dave towards a sofa, checked through the notes that were stuck to the edge of his walnut partner’s desk, and waited for Carol to hike across the floor with the file she was carrying.

‘Is that Mister Delano’s file?’ asked Figaro.

‘Yes, it is,’ she said and, laying it neatly on the desk in front of him, glanced at the man sitting down on the sofa. Carol was used to seeing all kinds of characters — that was the politest word for who and what they were — appearing in her boss’s office. Mostly they were walking mugshots, blunt faces in sharp suits, knuckle-draggers with silk shirts and ties as loud as Mardi Gras. This particular character appeared to be a little different from the rest. With his matching gold earrings, Laughing Cavalier beard and mustache, and Elvis-sized quiff he looked like a pirate who had borrowed some clothes after swimming to shore. But he had a nice even smile and even nicer eyes.

‘Would you like coffee?’ she asked Figaro.

‘Dave?’

‘No thanks.’

Smiling back at him as she went out of the office, Carol decided that with a haircut and a shave and a change of clothes he might look younger and a little less like someone who was on his way to the gas chamber. Cute was what he would look. The door closed behind her and she knew that the feeling she had got on her tightly skirted butt had been from those big brown eyes.

Figaro sat down opposite Dave and flipped a sheet of paper across the glass coffee table towards him. His eyes still on the room, Dave made no move to look at the paper.

‘Cigar?’

Dave shook his head.

‘They give me a throat. Could use a cigarette, though.’

Figaro helped himself from the box of Cohibas on the table — a present from Tony — and then fetched Dave a cigarette from a silver cigarette box on his desk.

‘It was the smart move, Dave,’ he said through a speech bubble of blue smoke. ‘Keeping your mouth shut.’

Dave smoked his cigarette silently. He figured it had been Figaro’s advice and Figaro’s mistake, so let him do the talking now.

‘It was too bad the Grand Jury decided to construe your silence as complicity in what happened. I guess maybe the judge was taking your previous conviction into account. But even so, five years, for something you had nothing to do with. It seemed excessive.’

‘And if they pinch you for something, Jimmy? Even if it’s something you had nothing to do with. And they want you to finger one of your clients. Maybe your biggest client. What will you do?’

‘Keep my mouth shut, I guess.’

‘Right. It’s not like you really have a choice, you know? You’re dead for a lot longer than five years, let me tell you. It’s a big consolation when you’re in the joint. There’s not a day passes when you don’t say to yourself: this is hell, but it could be worse. I could be doing time at the bottom of the ocean wearing Jimmy’s $10,000 overcoat.’ Dave jerked his head at the work of art occupying a corner of Figaro’s office and grinned coolly. ‘It is a conversation piece, just like you said it would be. Yes sir, I can see how that is going to come in very handy. But more object lesson than objet d’art, I’d say. Keep your mouth shut, or else.’

‘You’re a talented guy, Dave.’

‘Sure. Look where it got me. A lifetime achievement award at Homestead. Talent’s for people who play the piano, not the angles, Jimmy. It’s not something I can afford to indulge.’

‘You can afford,’ said Figaro, and tapped the sheet of paper meaningfully. ‘Just look at this balance sheet. In consideration for your time and inconvenience—’

‘That’s a nice way of icing a five-year slice of cake.’

‘Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, like we agreed. Paid into an offshore account and then invested at 5 percent per annum. I know. Five percent. That’s not much. But I figured that under the circumstances, you’d want zero risk on an investment like this. So that comes to $319,060, tax free. Less 10 percent for my own management services, which comes to $31,906. Leaves you with $287,154.’

‘Which works out at $57,430 a year,’ said Dave.

Figaro thought for a moment and then said, ‘Is the right answer. There’s no end to your talents. Math too.’

‘In case you ever wondered, that’s how I got started in the rackets. I used to do numbers for a living. When I was a kid. Harvard Business School was not an option. I was the only heebie in our neighborhood and the Italian kids thought it would be cool if they had a Jewish banker.’

‘It figures.’

‘Well figure me this, Figaro. I never charged more than 5 percent for my financial services. Ten percent seems more like vig than commission.’

‘Most clients who pay five percent will also pay tax. And they’ll usually take a cheque.’

‘Point taken.’

Figaro stood up and went behind the desk. When he returned to the sofa he was carrying a sports bag. He dropped it beside Dave and sat down again.

‘You do prefer cash, don’t you?’

‘Doesn’t everyone?’

‘Not these days. Cash can be hard to explain. Anyway, have you thought what you’re going to do with it?’

‘This isn’t exactly fuck-off money, Jimmy. Three hundred grand minus the change doesn’t buy you a lifestyle.’

‘I could recommend some things. Some investments maybe.’

‘Thanks Jimmy, but I don’t think I can afford the green fee.’

‘Consider it waived. You know, now is a perfect opportunity to get onto the property-owning ladder. There’s plenty of good value real estate throughout the county. It so happens I have an interest in the development of some country club homes on Deerfield Island.’

‘Isn’t that the island Capone tried to buy?’

Figaro grimaced through the cigar smoke.

‘This is fifty years ago you’re talking.’

‘Maybe, but I thought that was all zoned as a nature reserve. Raccoons and armadillos and such like.’

‘Not any more. Besides raccoons aren’t nature. They’re pests. You should really think it over. Go and take a look. Nine-foot ceilings, gourmet eat-in kitchens, a fitness center, intercoastal views. From as low as two-ten.’

‘Thanks a lot Jimmy, but no.’ Leaning over the arm of the sofa Dave unzipped the bag and glanced inside. ‘I need this money to set me up in something. Something that feels a little more real than landfill real estate.’

‘Yeah? Like what for instance?’

‘I’ve got some ideas floating around.’

Figaro shrugged.

‘Would you like to count it?’

‘And leave myself with nothing to do this evening? No thanks.’

Dave decided to skip lunch with Jimmy Figaro. The sight of Jimmy’s car, his two-thousand dollar suit, and the wide-eyed look on his secretary’s face had been enough to remind Dave of how out of place he now appeared. The Lucifer beard and the curtain rings in his ears might have helped keep his ass out of trouble in Homestead, but things were different on the outside. In the kind of respectable, well-heeled places Dave expected to be going, maintaining the don’t-fuck-with-me image would not be good for what he had planned. It was like Shakespeare said: the apparel proclaimed the man. He was going to need a complete makeover. But first he had to find a car, and well aware that he stood zero chance of driving away in something leased or rented, it made sense to keep the mean-as-shit look going for a while, at least until he had his wheels sorted. That way he figured he wouldn’t get sold the kind of fucked-up automobile that might have to bring his bad ass back to the showroom.

Now that he was out of Homestead he wanted to spend as much time in the open air as possible. That meant a convertible; and in the sports section of the Herald he found what he was looking for. A Mazda dealer offering a selection of keenly priced sports cars. A cab took him west of Downtown, along Fortieth, to Bird Road Mazda, and thirty minutes later he was driving back east toward the beach, in a ’96 Miata with CD, alloys, and only 14,000 on the clock. He had just started to enjoy the fresh air, the sunshine, the sporty stick shift, and the music on the radio — he didn’t own any CDs — when, pulling up at a traffic light to turn north onto Second Avenue, he looked across at the car alongside and found himself staring into the mean eyes of Tamargo, the guard who had escorted him from his cell in Homestead not three hours before.

Tamargo was driving just $1,900 worth of old Olds and seeing Dave in a car that had cost almost ten times as much, the prison guard’s sofa-sized jaw dropped like he’d had a brain hemorrhage.

‘The fuck d’you get that car, Slicker?’

Dave shifted uncomfortably in his leather seat and glanced up at the still red traffic light. Serving his full sentence gave him certain advantages now that he was on the outside. Not the least of these was the absence of any nosey-fucking-parker parole officer interfering in his life. But the last thing he wanted was the city police asking awkward questions about where the money for the car had come from. The major question was whether Tamargo could be bothered reporting what he had seen. Right now all the information the cops had on his whereabouts was care of Jimmy Figaro’s office. There was no sense in letting them discover the license plate on his car, and maybe a whole load of other shit as well. So keeping one eye on his rearview mirror, and tightening his grip on the leather steering wheel, Dave smiled back.

‘Hey, I’m talkin’ to you, motherfucker. I said, where’d you get the fuckin’ car?’

‘The car?’

‘Yeah, the car. The one that says stolen on the fuckin’ license plate.’

Still watching the traffic light.

‘This is a clean car, man.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘You know something, Tamargo? You’re part of a detestable solution. A detestable solution, in an infernal recurrence of guilt and transgression. Those are not my words, but those of a great French philosopher. If you had a shred of fuckin’ intelligence you would know that your very accusation implies the failure of the very same institution you represent. It’s your kind of prejudice that’s the single most important factor in recidivism. Maybe you don’t know, but that’s what they call it when a con commits another crime. Recidivism. The best thing you could do on behalf of the whole detestable corrections system? Drive on, and shut your fuckin’ mouth.’

The light turned green. Dave revved the engine hard and slipped the clutch.

Tamargo stamped on his own gas pedal, hoping to keep sight of Dave Delano long enough to read his license plate. Instead the little sports car just disappeared, and the prison guard was more than fifty yards up the road before he realized that Dave had reversed away from the traffic light. Tamargo braked hard and twisting his bulk around in his car seat, searched the rear window for the ex-con in the convertible. But Dave was gone.

After that Dave thought he could not change his appearance a moment too soon. He was heading for Bal Harbor on Miami Beach where Figaro had told him there was an excellent shopping mall opposite a classy Sheraton, with the sea view he had stipulated. Finding a different route onto Biscayne Boulevard, and Route 41, he was soon driving across McArthur Causeway and over the intercoastal waterway with the cruise port and ship docks of Miami on his right. The sight of a couple of big passenger liners pointed toward the ocean gave him a little thrill, for he knew that if things worked out as planned, he would soon be taking a sea voyage himself. Right now he was arriving on South Beach, driving up Collins and through the so-called historic district. That just meant art deco. But that was all the history there was going in Miami, which was one of the reasons why Dave couldn’t wait to leave the place. Even so, it felt good to be driving along through the gaudy pastels and flashy neon of Collins again; with all the people around, it was like rejoining the human race.

Ten minutes up Collins he pulled into the Bal Harbor shopping mall, parked the car, and still carrying the bag full of money, went in search of his new look. Straightaway he knew he was in the right place. Ralph Lauren, Giorgio Armani, Donna Karan, Brooks Brothers. Jimmy Figaro could hardly have recommended a better place for what Dave had in mind. There was even a beauty parlor offering a $200 special: a massage, a haircut, a manicure, a facial. Maybe a facial could include a shave. Dave walked inside.

The place was empty. A girl reading People magazine stood up from behind the counter and smiled politely.

‘Can I help you?’

Dave smiled back, his best feature.

‘I hope so. I just got off a ship. I’ve been at sea for several months and, well, you can see the problem. I must look like Robinson Crusoe.’

The girl chuckled lightly. ‘You do look kind of grungy,’ she said.

‘Tell me, have you seen that movie Trading Places? You know, with Eddie Murphy.’

‘Yeah. He was good in that one. But not since.’

‘That’s what I want. An Eddie Murphy makeover. Shave, haircut, facial, manicure, massage, the whole $200 deal.’

One of the girl’s colleagues, wearing a clinical white dress and a name tag that said JANINE, had come over and was regarding Dave through narrowed eyes, the way he himself had looked at the Mazda before buying it.

‘We’re more Pretty Woman than Trading Places in here, honey,’ said Janine. ‘But we are kind of quiet right now. So I reckon we can fix you up. Make you look like a regular choirboy, if you want. Only it’s been a while since I shaved a man.’

Janine turned to look at her receptionist.

‘Martin. My ex, right? I used to shave him. No, really. I used to enjoy it. Naturally if I had a razor near his throat today it’d be a different story. I’d murder the son of a bitch.’

But then she smiled as if the idea of shaving Dave suddenly appealed to her.

‘Well, what do you say, honey? How are you with female empowerment?’

Dave threw down his bag.

‘Janine? I’m willing to take the risk if you are.’