Gold Coast

12

“THE FIRST THING YOU BETTER DO,” Maguire said, “is fire your maid, and anybody else around here. How about the brother?”

“No, he doesn’t work for me.”

Karen was wearing big round sunglasses and a brown and white striped robe, open. Maguire couldn’t see her face, her expression, as she looked at him and then out across the lawn; but he could see her brown legs and firm little belly and the strip of tan material almost covering her breasts. Maguire wore jeans and a shirt over his red Seascape T-shirt. He had come here from work and now, on the patio, he was trying to make Gretchen go away so he could concentrate on Karen.

She said, “I can’t believe it. Marta’s been here as long as I have. I think she was seventeen when we hired her.”

“Give her a reference then,” Maguire said. He’d push Gretchen away and she’d come back to him, thinking he was playing.

“I can’t just fire her.”

“Can you get rid of her for awhile? Send her on an errand.”

“She did the grocery shopping yesterday-”

“Tell her you need some Spaghetti-O’s, something. We’ve got to get her out of here.”

“For how long?”

“An hour anyway.”

Karen got up and went into the house.

Maguire watched her. She didn’t seem worried or upset. She didn’t have nervous moves or do anything with her hands. Andre Patterson would try to sign her up.

Maguire had told her about Jesus Diaz and the other one coming to see him, not telling her all of it, but making a point of the warning. That was clear enough, wasn’t it? Jesus worked for Roland. If they knew things about Karen that Marta could have observed, then Marta was telling them. And if they knew things Marta couldn’t have known, then the house was bugged or there was a tap on the phone. Probably a tap. Karen had said, “Really?” quietly interested. Was she different again? She seemed different every time he saw her.

There was a newspaper on the umbrella table, part of the Miami Herald, the “Living Today” section. Maguire reached for it. It wasn’t today’s “Living Today” though. It was last Sunday’s, and he didn’t immediately recognize the woman in the photo. Karen DiCilia and a man, her former husband-yes, somewhat familiar to Maguire from newspaper photos years ago-Frank DiCilia. Both dressed up, both wearing dark glasses, coming out of someplace, a doorman standing behind them.

The headline said, WHAT IS KAREN DICILIA’S SECRET? A smaller line, above it, said, WIDOW OF MOBSTER WON’T TALK.

In the Miami paper, taking up the top half of the page. He didn’t know how he could have missed it.

The story below, with before-and-after shots of a woman, said, TWENTY-YEAR WAR ON FAT TAPERS OFF IN VICTORY, and maybe Aunt Leona had cut it out of the paper. There were usually things cut out of the Herald by the time he got it Sunday evening.

“Widow of Mobster…” Jesus, he bet she loved that. The photo with Frank was dated four years ago. She looked the same.

“Why would an attractive forty-year-old widow, comfortably situated, chic, outgoing…”

Forty years old?

And that was four years ago.

“… give up her independence to marry a former (?) Detroit mob boss relocated in Fort Lauderdale’s fashionable Harbor Beach area?”

Maguire’s eyes moved down the columns. Background stuff. Formerly Karen Hill. Married to an engineer. Daughter an actress.

“Since Frank DiCilia’s death, Karen has become virtually a recluse, seldom venturing out to the fashionable clubs or attending the charitable benefits that used to be de rigueur for her.

“Turn to Page 2D Col. 1”

Maguire turned.

“Woman of Intrigue”

And a current shot of Karen in a pale bikini, hands on her hips, white sunhat and sunglasses, a grainy photo that had been blown up or shot from some distance.

Maguire looked out past the lawn to the seawall, where she might have been standing in the photo.

The hands on hips defiant rather than provocative. The soft hat brim straight across her eyes behind round sunglasses. Nice shot. The slim body somewhat slouched, but in control; yes, with a hint of defiance.

A phrase caught his eye. “The mystery lady of Isla Bahía,” and he thought, It’s a good thing she doesn’t live on Northeast Twenty-ninth Street.

It didn’t look as though the reporter, a woman, had learned much about her. There seemed to be more questions than facts. Maguire was still reading the piece when Karen came out.

She said, “Oh,” for a moment off guard.

“I didn’t know I was with a celebrity,” Maguire said. He held the newspaper section aside, looking up at her.

“You didn’t?” Karen said. She took the paper from him and folded it into a small square, hiding something thousands of people had already seen.

“That’s a nice shot of you in the swimsuit.” The same one he was looking at now, the robe hanging open, very thin waist, tight little tummy curving into the tan panties that crossed her loins in a straight line. Maguire moved in the canvas chair, reseating himself.

“It was taken here, wasn’t it?”

“From a boat. I didn’t know it was a news photographer.”

“They’re starting to move in on you.”

She looked at him, but didn’t say anything. Her expression almost the same as the one in the photo.

“The woman that wrote it,” Maguire said, “why didn’t you tell her what’s going on?”

“How could I do that?”

“Why not? Get it out in the open.”

“Don’t you think I’d look a little stupid? The dumb widow involved in some Sicilian oath.”

“Well, you’re not dumb and it is happening, isn’t it? What I’m thinking, you expose Roland and maybe he’ll go away.”

“And expose Karen DiCilia,” Karen said. “Would you like to read about yourself, involved in something like this, in a newspaper?”

“I don’t know,” Maguire said, “if I thought it would do the job.”

“I have to handle Roland,” Karen said, “if Ed Grossi doesn’t.” She folded the newspaper section again and shoved it into the pocket of her robe. “I gave Marta the evening off.”

“Good,” Maguire said.

“She didn’t want to go.” Karen was watching him now from behind her sunglasses. “I told her we wanted to be alone. It doesn’t matter now what she thinks, does it?”

“It never did,” Maguire said.

He located the telephone line coming in from the street, through the mangrove trees, to the house, and pointed to the piece of metal clamped to the line, an infinity transmitter. A second line ran from the terminal point at the house to a corner window and entered Marta’s room between the brick and the window casing.

In the room itself the line led to a voltage-activated recorder beneath Marta’s bed. Maguire explained it-part of an accumulation of knowledge picked up along the way to nowhere; though sometimes bits and pieces came in handy.

“The telephone rings, the voltage on the line automatically turns on the cassette, and the phone conversation is recorded on a cartridge tape. Marta gives the tape to her brother or Roland and they know who you talk to, where you’re going-I guess they learn all they need to know.”

Karen didn’t say anything. She stared at the recorder, her words in there, the sound of her voice contained within the flat cartridge, with its window and two round holes. Telling what?

“You want to give Roland a message?” Maguire flicked a switch on and off.

Still she didn’t say anything.

“Get rid of Marta,” Maguire said.

“Or keep her. Let them listen,” Karen said. “Which is better, if Roland finds out we know about it or if he doesn’t?”

“That went through my mind,” Maguire said. “I let it go.”

Karen looked up from the recorder. “It might be to our advantage.”

“We talk,” Maguire said. “I phoned-that’s how they knew we were meeting the other night.”

“But what do they learn, really? We could use some kind of code.”

She was serious, taking off her sunglasses now, her eyes quietly alive.

“The question is, what did Roland hear before,” Maguire said. “Something he might’ve learned that turned him on, you might say, to go independent.”

“What do you mean, turned him on?”

“Like money,” Maguire said. He hesitated, then took a chance. “Maybe he heard you tell somebody you keep money in the house.” She was staring at him now, and he looked down at the recorder again, fingering the different switches. “It’s just a thought. Or he heard you talking to your accountant, your banker, somebody like that. It’d be a way of finding out what you’re worth.”

“Maybe he’s not the only one who’s interested,” Karen said.

“No, your maid, her brother-”

“What do you think I’m worth?” Karen said.

“I don’t know, three million, thirty million,” Maguire said. “You get into those figures, I don’t see much difference. But how does he get his hands on it unless it’s sitting there. You’re not gonna write him a check.”

“He hasn’t asked for anything.”

“No, but he’s leading up to something. We’re pretty sure of that.”

“You haven’t asked for anything either,” Karen said.

“What am I, the help? You hiring me?”

“That’s not an answer,” Karen said.

“Why don’t I go home and get dressed,” Maguire said. “We’ll go out, have dinner, hold hands, look at each other. You can tell me what you want, and I’ll tell you what I want. How’s that sound?”

“I’ll tell you right now what I want,” Karen said.

Maguire picked up a pizza on the way home (Were they ever going to go out and have dinner together?), took off his shirt, put a cold beer on the table, and began eating, starving.

There were three rattling knocks on the front-door jalousie. Lesley came in still wearing her white shorts, no shoes, and a striped tanktop. She said, “I just got in, too; I was out all evening. Hey, can I have a piece?”

“Help yourself.”

“What kind is it?”

“Pepperoni, onions, cheese, a few other things.”

“Yuk, anchovies.”

Like they were worms. Lesley being sensitive, delicate. He wondered when she’d ask about the car, the silver-gray Mercedes 450 SEL parked in front. She took dainty bites, holding an open palm beneath the wedge, bending over the table to give him a shot of her breasts hanging free in the tanktop.

“You still have Sunday’s paper?”

“How should I know?”

“Aunt Leona keeps newspapers, doesn’t she? Gives them to some charity drive?”

“She sells them. She’s so goddamn money-hungry. Where you going?”

“I’ll be right back.”

Maguire went in through the manager’s apartment, past Leona asleep in her Barcalounger, with a TV movie on, to the utility room off the kitchen. There were several weeks of newspapers stacked against the wall. He began looking through the first pile and there it was, last Sunday’s edition of the Herald, finding it right away. Sometimes that happened. He pulled out the “Living Today” section, glancing at Karen and Frank DiCilia, then took the sports section, too, and slipped “Living Today” in behind the sports pages.

Lesley was sitting now, her chair turned away from the table, one foot on the seat, a tan expanse of inner thigh facing him. A lot of flesh there.

“Why’re you so interested in the paper?”

“There’s a story on the Tigers I missed.”

“I think baseball’s boring. Nothing ever happens.”

Maguire was eating. He didn’t care what Lesley thought. He wondered, though, how she’d get around to the car.

She said, “Brad’s really pissed at you, you know it?”

“Why?”

“You were supposed to stay after and work with Bubbles.”

It sounded like she was talking about school.

“I forgot,” Maguire said. He’d left without looking back, not wanting to see the two Cubans again.

“Brad saw you take off in the car. He goes, ‘Jesus Christ, where’d he get that, steal it?’ ”

That was how she did it, indirectly. Maguire worked his way through another pizza wedge, not giving her any help.

“Brad goes, ‘He didn’t have it yesterday. He must’ve got it last night.’ ”

Maguire drank some of the cold beer: really good with the salty anchovy taste.

“ ‘Somebody must’ve loaned it to him.’ Then he goes, ‘But who would he know that owns a fucking Mercedes?’ ”

“I bet you said that, not Brad,” Maguire said.

“I might’ve. Somebody said it.”

“It’s a friend of mine’s,” Maguire said. “I’m using it while he’s out of town.”

“Well, let’s go someplace in it.”

“I’m not allowed to take passengers. He’s afraid it’ll get messed up.”

“You big shit, you’re just saying that.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Who’s is it?”

“Guy by the name of Andre Patterson.”

“The one you were talking to on the phone?”

Talking about on the phone to Andre’s wife, but it didn’t matter. “Right. He went on a vacation.” Christ, 20 to life. He should write to Andre, tell him how things were going. He wanted to read the newspaper story again and look at the picture of Karen on the seawall.

“How would he know the difference?” Lesley said. “I mean just me, not a lot of people.”

“Maybe,” Maguire said. “You want some more?”

“No… I feel like-” She gave him a sly look. “You know how I feel?”

“How?”

“Horny. Isn’t that funny? I don’t know why.” She looked over at the bed. “You want to lie down, see what happens?”

“Your feet are dirty,” Maguire said.

“My feet?”

“Actually I’m awful tired. You mind?”

“Jesus Christ,” Lesley said, getting up. “You have a headache, too?”

“No, but I don’t feel too good. I think maybe the pizza.” He said, “Why don’t you catch me some other time, okay?”

“Why don’t you catch this,” Lesley said, giving him the finger and slammed the jalousie door, rattling the frosted-glass louvers.

There were times, yes, when he didn’t mind dirty feet. Or, there had been times. But going from one to the other, from the woman to the girl, he couldn’t imagine ever having to try and compare them. Hearing Lesley’s voice, “Brad’s really pissed at you.” Serious. A crisis because he’d forgotten to stay after closing to work with the young dolphin. “Brad goes, ‘What’d he do, steal it?’ ” Brad and Lesley, the whole setup, like a summer camp. Then hearing Karen’s voice:

“What do you think I’m worth?”

Karen’s voice:

“I’ll tell you right now what I want.”

Not putting it on, trying to act sultry, but straight. Looking at him without the sunglasses. “I’ll tell you right now what I want.”

She wanted it, too. She had said the first time, “I could hardly wait.” This time was like the first time multiplied, more of it, more free and easy with each other, fooling with each other in that big broken-down bed, then getting into it, picking it up, beginning to race, feeling the rush. It was as different as day and night, the girl and the woman. The girl okay, very good in fact, but predictable: the same person all the way, making little put-on sounds-“Oh, oh, oh, don’t stop now, God, don’t ever stop”-she must’ve read somewhere and decided that was how you made the guy feel good. The woman, the forty-four-year-old woman didn’t fake anything. She watched him with a soft, slightly smiling look that was natural. She moved her hands all over him, everywhere, which the girl never did-as though the girl was supposed to get it and not give unless she gave as a special favor; the girl very open and, quote, together, saying, “You want to fuck?” if she felt like it; except that it had no bearing on how she was in bed-the girl not aware of the two of them the way the forty-four-year-old woman was. The woman in the photograph. The lady in the million dollar home. The lady. That was the key maybe. The lady, with a poise and quiet tone, easing out of the role as they moved over and around each other on the bed, not being tricky about it but natural, touching, entering the special place of the slim, good-looking lady, moving in and owning the place for awhile, right there tight in the place, and the lady trying to keep him, hold onto him there. Yes, there. Now that was different. That was being as close to someone as you could get without completely disappearing into the person, gone. Man. To look forward to that for another-how many years? Wondering if it was a consideration, a possibility. Maybe not. But at least feeling close enough to be able to say, “They got your age wrong in the paper.” Smiling.

“They got a number of things wrong,” Karen said, “including the way it was written.”

“All the questions. It was like a quiz.” Kissing her shoulder, her, neck, feeling it moist. “I don’t care how old you are… we are. What difference does it make?”

“None that I can think of,” Karen said.

Her tone was all right, but what did it mean? None, because the way they felt, it didn’t matter? Or none, because nothing was going to come of this anyway?

“I’m almost forty,” Maguire said. “It’s just another number. Forty, that’s all.”

“Then why are you talking about it?” Karen said.

They went downstairs and sat in the living room, with drinks Karen made at the built-in marble bar. Maguire checked the room for hidden mikes planted behind figurines and paintings or in the white sofa and easy chairs. They talked about Roland, what he might ask for, wondering if they could get him to ask for it over the phone, make an extortion demand and hook him with his own device. Which wasn’t likely. Sometime, Karen said, she’d like him to look at the antiques and art objects and tell her what they were worth. Maguire was ready to do it now, but they went outside instead, all the way out to the seawall. They stood looking at tinted points of light in the homes across the channel, at cold reflections in the water. He thought of the photo again that had been taken here, Karen standing with hands on hips, legs somewhat apart, sunhat and sunglasses-the slim, good-looking woman who was close to him, in a skirt now, barefoot.

He liked skirts. He liked the idea of lifting up a skirt, something from his boyhood, something you did with girls. She moved against him when he began to kiss her. She let herself be lowered to the grass where he began to bring her skirt up to her hips and put his hand under it.

Gretchen came out and hopped around them, sniffing their legs. Maguire told the dog to get the hell out of there.

Sitting on the patio, another drink; were they going to go out to eat or not? It was strange the way she brought up the question of the dog, surprising him, asking him why he wasn’t nice to Gretchen.

He said, “What do you mean I’m not nice to her? What do you say to a dog that’s not nice?”

She said, “You ignore her. Until tonight you only said one word to her, the first time you came here, you told her to relax.”

“Well, that was nice,” Maguire said. “What do I want to talk to a dog for? I talk to dolphins all day, and I don’t ordinarily, you’re right, talk to animals at all. I don’t have that much to say to them.”

She said, “You know who’s nice to Gretchen?”

He said, “I’ll talk to the dog when I have time. I’ll be very happy to.”

“Roland,” Karen said. “He can’t keep his hands off her.”

Maguire said, “Well, I’d keep an eye on him if I were you.”

He said that, and they were friends again. The strange part was feeling a little tension between them over the dog. Or else he imagined it.

No, the dog wasn’t a problem. What mattered was, they always got back to Roland.

He said to her, “I guess I’m gonna have to meet him, aren’t I?” A few moments later he said, “I don’t see you having conversations with the dog.”