A Five Year Plan

Chapter Five

Dave had missed the ocean, even one as busy with people and boats as the one off Miami Beach. Sandwiched between the pale blue sky, and the pink rock dust that passed for sand, the gray snakeskin-colored sea rolled toward him in white scribbles of water. In Homestead he had often imagined having this view again. But it was not his regained sight of the ocean that served to underscore his freedom, but its accompanying salty smell and visceral, breathy sound. He had forgotten that part. Back inside the four walls of his hotel suite, luxurious though it was, it had been all too easy to conjure the nightmare of being in his cell again, in the same way that an amputee could still feel the severed limb. He had only to close his eyes and listen to the air-conditioned silence. But here on the beach, with its sounds and the smells thrusting in upon his consciousness, the feel of the wind in his neatly cut hair, and the late afternoon sun warming his smoothly shaven face like the hot plate of a giant stove, it was impossible to mistake his surroundings for anything but the outside world. Dave lay on his beach towel and breathed deep from the sky above him. He didn’t even read. His other neglected senses wouldn’t allow him to concentrate on anything but where he was and what that meant. A few days’ relaxation in Bal Harbor would help him to begin dismantling the walls inside his head. After that he could go to work.

Willy ‘Four Breakfasts’ Barizon got his nickname from the time when he ate four whole cooked breakfasts — two eggs sunny side up, two strips of bacon, a sausage and hash browns each — in a Denny’s on Lincoln Avenue. A little over six foot three, he weighed around 230 pounds in his shorts and 250 when he was dressed, the extra twenty being mostly referable to the two handguns he wore underneath his loose, Hawaiian style shirt. His tongue was a couple of sizes too large for his face, which meant he spoke out of the side of his wet-looking mouth as if he still had one of the breakfasts pouched in the other cheek, like a chaw. His black hair was naturally curly although the cut made it look as if he’d just had a permanent, with small dreadlocks that hung loosely over the tops of his elephantine ears, like a Hasidic Jew’s. With a passing resemblance to a budget-sized giant, Willy Barizon was a hard man to miss. Besides, it was a while since he had done this kind of work, and he had forgotten how to be subtle. The ice-trucking business had been all front. Looking tough when you turned up to collect was nearly all you needed to know. It was rare that you actually had to smack someone.

Dave made Willy the minute he saw him. Or rather, he made the look the big man received from the bell-boy when Dave came out of the hotel restaurant and asked the front desk to send the fax he had written out in neat Cyrillic capitals while having his dinner. Five years of watching his ass in Homestead had given Dave eyes in the back of his head. The bell-boy might as well have shot a neon arrow into the big man’s chest. ‘There’s your mark. Go get him.’

Dave stepped into an elevator car alongside a woman with hair as tall as a chefs hat. What was it with Miami women and big hair? With one eye on this confection of hair and the wizened doll beneath it, he pressed his floor button and stood back in the car as the woman selected her own floor. Then she moved to one side as Willy joined them. It was a second or two before he thought to press a button himself, which more or less confirmed Dave’s suspicion that the big guy had been waiting to follow Dave up to his room. But the question of motive still eluded him. Not a cop, that much was certain. A cop would have pinched him in the lobby. And for what? Suspicion Grand Theft Auto? As the doors slid shut, Dave turned toward Willy Barizon and held out his left wrist to display the watch he had bought in the Bal Harbor Mall that same afternoon.

‘You see this watch, man?’

‘What?’

‘Not what. Watch. This watch is a Breitling Chronometer. Best watch in the world.’

Baby Doll was pretending that he didn’t exist.

‘Forget Rolex. I mean, that’s just for the movies. And National Geographic. This. This is a goddamn quality timepiece. Cost me $5,000.’

‘So fuckin’ what?’ snarled Willy.

‘Wait, I haven’t finished. You wanna see my wallet?’ Dave took out his wallet and flipped it open. ‘See that? Coach leather. Isn’t that beautiful? And there’s $1,000 in cash too.’

‘You’re nuts.’

The elevator chimed as it reached Baby Doll’s floor.

‘Really,’ she said, stepping smartly out on her high heels. ‘Some people just don’t know how to handle it, do they?’

‘You’re so right, lady,’ agreed Willy.

Dave returned the wallet to the coat pocket of his linen suit and took out his new fountain pen as the doors closed again.

‘Then there’s this fountain pen.’

‘Fuck you pal, and fuck your fountain pen,’ said Willy, and instinctively patted one of the two pieces he was carrying under his waistband.

Dave’s prison-sharp eyes took in the tell-tale bulge at a glance. ‘I’m telling you all this for a reason,’ he explained coolly. ‘I’m telling you this so you’ll know how high I rate your fucking chances of robbing me.’

‘You’ve got the wrong guy, Delano. Who said anything about robbing your dipshit ass?’

Dave took a step back in the car. The tongue almost fell out of the guy’s mouth when he talked. Dave had felt the spittle on his face like early rain. His eyes lingered on the tongue, momentarily fascinated by its grotesque aspect. At best it looked like the record label for the Rolling Stones that Andy Warhol had designed. Sticky Fingers. He still had the album in his record collection. If his sister hadn’t sold it. At worst the tongue looked like some kind of hideous pink jellyfish that lived inside a ring of yellow coral. The elevator chimed again as it reached Willy’s chosen floor, only he paid it no attention.

The guy had used his name. He was carrying a piece and he had followed him into the elevator. What else did Dave need to know? He unscrewed the cap of his fountain pen.

‘Are you finished giving me a guided tour of your personals?’

‘There’s one more thing,’ insisted Dave. ‘There’s this pen. This pen is a Mont Blanc Meisterstuck. It’s called Mont Blanc because the fourteen-carat nib tells you the height of Mont Blanc, should you want to know. That’s the highest mountain in France. Go ahead and take a look.’ Dave held the pen up for Willy’s inspection. ‘Four thousand eight hundred and ten meters high. Go ahead and look because I’m gonna give you this pen as a gift.’

Willy looked.

Dave hardly hesitated, stabbing the big man in the white of his eye with the mitre-shaped point of the Cohiba-sized pen, simultaneously spattering Willy’s face, neck and shirt collar with a galaxy of ink-spots.

Willy howled with pain, pressing both hands to his injured eye, leaving Dave free to hit him hard with a punch to each kidney as if was working the heavy bag in the prison gym. He finished a trio of blows with a low arcing hook to Willy’s balls that had his whole shoulder behind it and felt as cruel as if he’d tugged pieces of Willy’s flesh from his body with red-hot pincers. The elevator doors opened with a gasp of air that echoed the sound from Willy’s misshapen mouth. Crouched down on his haunches, one hand on his balls, the other on his eye, Willy looked more dwarfish now and easily manageable. Dave could see that there was no need to hit him again. But he had questions that needed to be answered. And placing the all-leather sole of a smart new loafer in the small of Willy’s back, Dave launched him into the hallway. Willy belly-flopped onto the thick-pile carpet, hit his head against a fire extinguisher attached to the wall, and then passed out.

Dave collected his pen off the floor of the elevator and stepped quickly out of the car before the doors closed. A glance both ways. No one about. He took hold of Willy’s legs and dragged him down the hallway and into his suite.

Safely through the door, Dave frisked Willy carefully, relieving him of a Ruger Security-Six, worn on a belt inside his pants, that he figured was mostly for show; and, underneath a belly band, a smaller, quieter-looking .22 automatic that was probably what usually got the job done. Dave unloaded the big revolver and kept the .22 handy for when the guy came round. The name on the driver’s license he found in the sweat-dampened wallet was Willy Barizon. Dave had never heard of him. There was a Mastercard, eighty dollars, a ticket from the Sheraton’s valet-parking service, a slip for a dog at Hollywood, and a hooker’s business card with a 305 area number: ‘Foxy Blonde. Young voluptuous beauty. I visit you.’ On the back was written a name. ‘Tia.’ Dave flicked the card into the trash.

‘I don’t think you’ll be visiting Willy for a while,’ he said, recalling the ferocity of his blow to the big man’s balls. Dave ducked into the bathroom and returned with the cords from the two bathrobes with which he bound Willy’s hands behind his back and then his ankles. He fixed himself a drink and gathered some matchbooks from his bar area as Willy groaned his way back to consciousness. Dave squatted down on the backs of Willy’s thighs, facing his feet, and began to remove the big guy’s shoes and socks. He glanced over his shoulder and said:

‘How are you doin’ there, Moose? Ready to have a little Socratic dialogue yet? That means I say one thing, you say another, and I get to reach a conclusion.’ Dave flung away Willy’s socks with distaste and sipped some of his drink. ‘Ever hear of Socrates, Moose? He was a Greek philosopher, who was condemned to death for corrupting the youth of Athens. This was before television of course. Kids today, they’ve got cable, so they’re probably already corrupted, right? This Socrates was obliged to take hemlock. That’s a kind of poison. Related to the parsley family of plants, as a matter of small interest, so be careful how you garnish. Anyhow, when I read about this, in a book by Plato, I got to wondering just how the fuck do you go about obliging someone to take poison of his own volition. I mean it’s not like they strapped him down on a gurney for a lethal injection like they do in the can. No, he just sat around with a few of his good friends and drank it himself. No shit. And I asked myself, why?’

‘Fugg you,’ groaned Willy.

‘Well now, it turns out that those ancient Greeks — nasty bastards — gave you an alternative to letting you poison your own self. You know what that was? A guy would come along and torture you to death. How he did it was like this. He’d tie you down and give you some kind of drug to help your ass relax. Amyl nitrate, or its ancient equivalent most probably. Same as those S&M gays do. Those guys do all kinds of shit to each other that I can’t figure. When the executioner figured you were ready, he would stick his whole fucking arm up your ass, Robert Mapplethorpe style, and just keep on going until he got a hold of your heart. When he did — and this was the most exquisite part of the torture — he would slowly crush your heart in his hand, like it was a fucking sponge or something. Can you imagine that? Talk about pains in your chest. Jesus. The real experts could make it last a while, like experienced lovers. And that — that was the alternative to poison, I kid you not. A fatal fist-fuck. No wonder old Socrates elected to off himself, right?’

‘Gee-zuzz greist...’

‘Precisely. Another writer — you’re gonna hear me refer to a lot of literary figures, you spend any time with me, Moose. The last five years, I’ve done nothing but read. And work out. But that part you already know, I guess. Sorry I had to hit you so hard. But you’re a big guy, Moose. Anyway, this other writer, name of Samuel Johnson, said that the prospect of being hanged helps concentrate a man’s mind wonderfully. And my guess is that so does torture.’

‘Vugg ovv... my eye... zayin’ nuthin’... azzhole...’

Dave drew Willy’s feet toward him.

‘Moose, Moose, you wanna do something about these feet of yours. Worst case of athlete’s foot I ever saw. Do you dry between your toes? You should, you know. You’ve got yourself a chronic case of it here, I suspect. Damn difficult to eradicate. Most of those fungal preparations? They don’t work. But I’ve got a sure-fire way of getting rid of the tiny microbe that causes this misunderstood chiropodic condition. It’s really a secret, but I don’t mind sharing it with someone like you, Moose.’

Dave turned around.

‘But before I do, is there some secret you’d like to share with me? Kind of a quid pro quo? Like maybe who was it sent you to see me, packing thunder, and why? Talk to me, Moose. And don’t tell me you’re looking for your Velma or I’ll think you’re being cute with me.’

‘...the vug’s Velma...?’

‘You’re not a Chandler fan? That’s too bad, Moose. I think you’d enjoy him. He’s what we call hard-boiled. A bit like these feet of yours. So what do you say?’

Willy Barizon coughed painfully. ‘Look Mizter, you got the wrog guy. I don’t know nuthin’. Nobody vuggin zent me. My eye. There’z been zum miztake.’

‘Moose, you’re insulting my intelligence. And my intelligence doesn’t like that. It takes offense at just about anything. But mostly it takes offense at the assumption that it isn’t there. That I’m as dumb as you are.’

Dave started to thread the hotel matchbooks between Willy Barizon’s malodorous and clammy toes as if he had been preparing to paint the big man’s toenails.

‘Ugh. Remind me to wash my hands when I’m done here.’

‘What are ya doin’?’

‘It’s what I was telling you about, Moose. That sure-fire way of getting rid of athlete’s foot? Fact is man, you’ve got to burn it out. Like cauterizing a wound. Extreme heat kills infection. These are matchbooks, Moose. You ever see a whole matchbook burn? It’s like a Roman fucking candle, man.’

‘Help,’ screamed Moose and started to struggle desperately. But Dave was ready with a bar towel, stuffing it into Willy Barizon’s chop-shaped mouth.

‘Moose. Moose. Just shut the fuck up, will ya? You and I are going to have a Yossarian-sized problem here if we’re not careful. Catch-22? You remember that? I mean, you can hardly answer my questions if I gotta keep a towel in that Picasso-drawn mouth of yours. But then I can hardly go ahead and let you scream the fuckin’ place down either. You perceive my dilemma? So I tell you what I’m gonna do. Part of your problem here I think is your lack of imagination, your inability to visualize just how fiercely one of these little matchbooks can burn. Hence you are unable to conceptualize just how painful this will be for you. So, I’m gonna give you a little demonstration, in as nice a way as possible. And then I’m gonna take this towel out of your blowhole. At the risk of seeming otiose, that’s the point at which you’d better start talkin’ or I’m going to be cooking some bacon down here. So here goes with the object lesson.’

Dave placed an ashtray in front of Willy Barizon’s face. Then he tugged one of the matchbooks from between Willy’s toes, unfolded it, and lit it with the silver lighter he’d bought from the Porsche shop that afternoon. The cover of the book burned reluctantly for a moment and then extinguished. Dave snapped the lighter on and lit it again. This time the cover caught properly alight and a second later the matches themselves ignited spectacularly in a cloud of acrid blue smoke.

‘Whooa,’ chuckled Dave. ‘Olympic fucking flame. Ouch. That looks painful to me. What do you say, Willy? That look painful to you?’

Willy nodded furiously.

‘Ready for that dialogue now?’

Willy kept nodding.

‘Good boy.’ Dave hauled the towel out of Willy’s mouth. ‘So who sent you and why?’

‘It was Tony Nudelli.’

That surprised him.

‘Tony? Why? What the hell’s his beef with me?’

‘He wanted you to be reminded to keep your mouth shut about whatever it is that you know about.’

Dave frowned as he tried to make sense of this information.

‘I’ve spent the last five years in the joint keeping my mouth shut.’ He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

‘I swear it’s true.’

‘Exactly how were you going to remind me? I mean were you just going to have a quiet word in my ear, or was I supposed to feel the need for silence in some non-essential part of my body?’

‘I was just to smack you around some, that’s all. Maybe break a few fingers. Nothing serious.’

‘I’ve had girlfriends who might dispute that, Willy.’

‘It’s the God’s honest truth, I swear.’

‘Shut up a minute while I think.’

Dave was silent for a moment as he weighed up what Willy had told him. It was just possible that Tony Nudelli was indeed sufficiently scared of what Dave knew about him to have ordered up the goon he was now sitting on. Only Tony usually took care of things on a more permanent basis than just a few broken fingers and a busted lip. Dave knew that from personal memory. But as he thought about it some more, it occurred to him that maybe there was a way he might turn the situation to his advantage. A way of demonstrating his loyalty to Tony. A useful prelude for what was to come.

‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘I just don’t buy your story, Willy.’

‘Look, you’ve got to believe me—’

‘Why would Tony want to grease me?’

‘I didn’t say that. I said hurt not grease.’

‘After five years, the one thing Tony knows about me is that I can be trusted not to spill my guts to anyone.’

‘Look, I’m just the button. You know that. I ain’t the man’s psychoanalyst. I ain’t privy to the workings of his mind. I owe him a favor. That’s the way it works, you know that. He tells me to do somethin’, I do it and I don’t look for no fuckin’ mission statement. I get paid to do what I’m fuckin’ told.’

‘You know what I think? I think the Russian sent you over here to whack me.’

‘What Russian? There’s no Russian involved here.’

‘That’s what I think. I think it was Einstein Gergiev who set this up. Isn’t that right, Willy?’

‘No, man.’

‘Now that makes a lot more sense. The Russian. Be quite natural for you to be more afraid of him than you are of me, even with a bunch of matchbooks stuck between your toes. He’s a terrifying character, that Russian. I should know. I shared a cell with him for four years. No, you’ve got to be lying, Moose.’ Dave snapped on the cigarette lighter for extra emphasis.

Desperate now, Willy struggled underneath Dave, his neck and ears reddening with the exertion.

‘Look man, I don’t know about any fucking Russian. I never met anyone called Einstein whosits face. It was Tony Nudelli, I swear. Sweet mother of Jesus, I swear it’s true.’

‘Oooh, are you a Catholic, Moose?’

‘Yeah, I’m a Catholic’

‘Tell ya what I’m gonna do, Moose.’ Dave stood up and went to the bedside drawer where he found a Gideon Bible. ‘I’m gonna get you to swear an oath, on the Bible.’

‘Sure, anything. Just so long as you believe me.’

Dave sat down on Willy’s back and tucked the Gideon Bible underneath his large jaw.

‘Now repeat after me, Moose. As I have hope for the resurrection of the body...’

‘As I hope for the resurrection of the body.’

‘And life everlasting in Jesus Christ...’

‘And life everlasting in Jesus Christ.’

‘What I have said here is the truth, so help me God.’

‘What I’ve said here is the truth, so help me God.’

‘Now kiss the Bible with that sucker of yours.’

Willy kissed the Bible until it was wet with saliva.

‘You’re not brought up by Jesuits, I hope,’ said Dave. ‘Only those guys were so tricky they could swear one thing, think another, kiss a bible and get away with it thanks to the doctrine of equivocation.’

‘No man, no—’

‘OK, I believe you.’ Dave stood up again and took another sip of his drink. ‘All right. I’m gonna untie you now. Just remember though. I’ve got that little Phoenix Arms twenty-two in my pocket. You try anything ungrateful Moose and I’ll take some of the pressure off that brain of yours. Give you an extra fuckin’ blowhole. You clear on that?’

‘Yeah, clear.’

Dave untied Willy and stood back as slowly, painfully, the big man sat up on the floor. Willy checked his balls and then pressed the heel of his hand gingerly against his injured eye. Through his one good eye Willy looked across the suite at the man now sitting down on a large cream-colored sofa. Laid out on the floor in front of Delano, like the Jerry Seinfeld American Express ad, were the results of what looked to have been a fairly major shopping expedition: several pairs of shoes, piles of shirts, sports shirts, sweaters and pants, and a brand new Apple laptop. There was nothing cheap on view. Even the suite, with a wrap-around balcony and a sea view looked like three or four hundred a night.

‘How’s your eye?’ Dave asked.

‘Hurts.’

‘Sorry ’bout that, Moose. Take a hand towel from the bathroom if you like and some ice from the refrigerator. Make yourself a cold compress. Should keep some of the swelling down.’

‘Thanks, man.’ Moose fetched the ice. He was regretting the passing of his ice business with cousin Tommy. But for that he wouldn’t be sitting there with the risk of losing an eye. And maybe he wasn’t quite cut out for the tough stuff after all. There had to be something easier.

Watching Willy fix his cold compress Dave felt sorry for the big lunk, even though he was sure that Willy would have broken his fingers like he’d said, and without any remorse.

‘You can tell Tony how disappointed I am about this,’ said Dave. Cruelly, he added: ‘When you see him.’

‘If I see him,’ Willy said bitterly. ‘My fuckin’ eye. I think you blinded me.’

‘Disappointed but not resentful. Tell him that despite this little misunderstanding, we’re still friends. Tell him that. Maybe even future business associates. Yeah, tell Tony I’ve got a business proposition for him. Chance to make a big score. That ought to help reassure him... Tell him, I’ll be in touch through Jimmy Figaro.’

Willy picked up the Magnum and slid it into the clip inside his pants. He glanced around for the .22 then remembered that Delano had it in his pocket. Dave guessed what he was looking for, took it out and hefted it in his hand.

‘I’ll just hang onto this a while,’ he said. ‘First rule of self-defense. Have a gun.’

‘Can I leave now?’ Willy sounded contrite. Contrite and concerned. ‘I’d like to get to a hospital.’

‘Sure, but aren’t you forgetting something?’ Dave nodded at Willy’s bare feet and the matchbooks between his toes. ‘Your dogs, guy.’

Willy started to pick them out.

‘I never figured you for no Dennis Hopper, man,’ said Willy, shaking his head. ‘In those clothes, you don’t look so tough. More like a fuckin’ college boy.’

‘The apparel does oft proclaim the man,’ said Dave. ‘But you should have seen me at eight o’clock this morning.’

Willy pocketed one of the matchbooks.

‘Souvenir,’ he said. ‘I collect them.’

‘That should be one to remember,’ suggested Dave.

‘Would you really have done that? Set my toes on fire?’

Dave shrugged.

‘Moose? I’ve been asking myself that same question.’