Gold Coast

11

“THEN THEY GO BACK TO HER HOUSE,” Jesus Diaz said to Roland. “Then, you know, after awhile, he goes home.”

Roland was down on the floor in his undershorts doing pushups, red-faced, tight-jawed, counting, “Ninety-five… ninety-six… Where’s he live?” straining to say it.

Like the time on the toilet, Jesus Diaz thought. The time Roland, sitting on the toilet, grunting, making noises, had made him stand in the doorway of the bathroom while Roland talked to him.

“He lives up by Northeast Twenty-ninth Street, in Fort Lauderdale.”

“One hunnert,” Roland said, getting up, breathing heavily with his hands on his hips. Jesus Diaz tried to read what was printed in red on the front of Roland’s white bikini undershorts, without staring at his crotch.

“You tell me she met him at the place. So then they both drive to her house?”

“No, he went in the car with her, the Mercedes.”

“Then how’d he get home?”

What was printed on Roland’s shorts, was Home of the Whopper. Jesus Diaz said, “He drove her car home.”

“She let him use her car?”

“I guess so. He drove it to where he work, that place, Seascape.”

Roland squinted. “Seascape? The fuck is Seascape?”

“That kind of porpoise place. They have the shows there.”

“Jesus Christ,” Roland said. “Seascape, yeah. I believe Dorado owns it, or did. What’s he do there?”

“The tricks, you know, with the porpoise. Make them jump up, take a piece of fish out of his mouth. All like that.”

“Well, you go on back and see him,” Roland said. “Take somebody with you to hold his arms.”

“Today you mean?”

“I mean right now, partner. Get on it.”

“Man, I’d like to get some sleep first.”

“What you need sleep for? Didn’t you go to bed?”

“I’m just tired,” Jesus Diaz said, and left to go do his job, tired or not.

Do it right or Roland would chew his ass out, tell him to quit chasing that Cuban cocha. Stay in shape like him.

Sure, but if he’d said he was awake all night, except for dozing off-sitting in the mangrove bushes across the street so the security car wouldn’t see him-then Roland would say, All night? You mean to say the dink spent the night? Then Roland might go over there and do something to the woman again.

Man, he was tired though.

Go home, get the Browning to put under his jacket, just in case. Pick up Lionel Oliva at the Tall Pines Trailer Park; pull him out of bed. Hey, Lionel, you want to beat up somebody for a hundred dollars? How big? Not big. Shit yes, he’d jump in the car. It shouldn’t be hard. The porpoise man didn’t look very strong. Also he’d be tired out after his night in the two-hundred-year-old bed.

Marta had said, handing the early-morning cup of coffee to him out the side door, “If it wasn’t broken before, it is now.” Saying it, not as a truth, but because she was happy for the woman.

Jesus Diaz was happy for her also. It was too bad he had to do this to her old friend.

Maguire said to the crowd on the top deck of the Flying Dolphin tank, “There’s the trick it took us eighteen months to teach him. He lays on his side, raises one flipper and… that’s it. You can see why we call him Mopey… Dick. Let’s give Mopey a hand. That must’ve worn him out.”

He had already noticed the Cuban-looking guy in the crowd, lining the cement rail. Yellow shirt, white jacket. The same one Karen had pointed to who’d been sitting at the bar last night. Marta’s brother.

Maguire, on the aluminum pole, gave them the double hand-feeding with Bonnie and Pebbles, wondering if Marta’s brother was here to give him a message.

And the other Cuban-looking guy with him, why was he along, what, to watch?

Maguire asked the crowd, the little kids, if they wanted to see a mouth-to-mouth feeding. They said, “Yeeeeeeeeees!”

No, he had seen too many like the other Cuban-looking guy. They were bouncers in go-go joints. They hung around sports arenas. Marta’s brother looked like he’d been a fighter; the neck, the trace of scar tissue around the eyes. The other Cuban-looking guy was bigger; he could be a lightheavy sparring partner for a good middleweight.

“And that’s our Flying Dolphin Show for this afternoon,” Maguire said, and told everyone next, to kindly proceed to the Shark Lagoon area. Hooker was doing the color over there today. Maguire’s next job, in about twenty minutes, was to announce Brad Allen and then he’d be through. He picked up the bucket of fish sections, looked over at the two guys as he stepped off the platform to the cement deck.

They were waiting. The only ones still up here.

Maguire walked toward the stairway. He heard one of them say, “Just a minute.”

And thought, Your ass.

He put the bucket down without breaking stride, moving with purpose but not running yet or looking around, down the stairway to the dim second level, the underwater windows of the tank showing dull-green.

Now run. And if they ran after him, it was absolutely for certain not to deliver a message he wanted to hear. He began running as he heard them on the stairway, his barefeet patting on the cement, their running steps coming after him now, hitting hard, echoing. He ran past the tank windows seeing gray shapes in the water, Bonnie and Pebbles grazing the glass, pacing him as he ran all the way around the circular second level to the stairway again and up to the top deck.

The bucket of fish sections was where he’d left it. Maguire picked it up and stepped back from the open doorway, hearing their steps coming up toward him now, stiffened his arm holding the bucket, let the first one come through to the outside, Marta’s brother, and swung the bucket into the face of the other Cuban-looking guy, turning him reeling, took the bucket in both hands, fish pieces falling out, jammed it down over the guy’s head and, still holding onto it, ran the bucket, the guy coming with it to the waist-high rail, hitting the cement as Maguire grabbed the guy’s legs and threw him into the tank.

Marta’s brother stood watching.

Maguire moved to the wire gate in the rail that opened to a small platform on the other side, close to the water, where Hooker would go into the tank with his mask and air hose. Maguire waited, looking from the gate to Marta’s brother who was fifteen to twenty feet away.

“What do you want?”

Jesus Diaz said, “This is a warning.” He didn’t know what else to say. “Keep away from the woman.”

Maguire said, “What?” Not sure he heard him right. He looked past the gate to see the other Cuban pulling himself up on the platform. Wet-gray bottlenose heads came out of the water to watch. Maguire waited until the Cuban’s hand reached the top of the wire gate, his face appearing, coming up slowly, and slammed a right hook into the face, sending the man back into the tank as the dolphin heads disappeared.

“I’m talking about Missus DiCilia,” Jesus said. “Keep away from her or we gonna throw you in that tank for good.”

Maguire scowled. His hand hurt something awful. He said to Jesus, “You work for Roland or what?”

Jesus said, “Be smart, uh? Stay away from her.”

Or what? Maguire thought. He took two steps toward Jesus, saw the man’s hands go behind his back and reappear with a gun, a heavy automatic, Colt or a Browning. The other guy was coming up out of the water again.

Maguire said, “Well, I got to go.”

Jesus said, “Don’t work too hard.”

Maguire went down the stairway holding his sore hand, shaking his head.