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“Nobody would believe it.”
“I believe it. I look like I just got off the boat with a spear in my hand and a bone in my nose?”
“You said it’s not 1861. You got that right.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Try four hundred years earlier.”
Clete finished his first drink and started on the fresh one. He leaned closer to Johnny. “Here’s the truth about the Mob. Most of them skipped toilet training. They smell like salami and hair tonic and BO. They were either lazy or too stupid to hold honest jobs, so they terrorized their fellow immigrants and thought up a bunch of crap about burning pictures of their patron saints and slicing their hands and smearing blood on each other and swearing themselves to secrecy and calling themselves men of honor. You think Adonis Balangie does shit like that? He wouldn’t let those guys lick his toilet.”
“I got to get back to work.”
“I’m not good with words,” Clete said. “Hey, kid, this is what it is. You make other people see the glass rings on the bar, the honky-tonk angels, Dallas at night from a DC-9. Don’t let these bums destroy your life.”
Johnny looked at Clete, then at Clete’s drink, then at Clete again. “You talk pretty good for a guy who—”
“A guy who what?”
“Nothing.”
“A guy who drinks too much? You’re right. My head glows in the dark. At night I don’t have to use a reading lamp,” Clete said. “After you get through here, let’s grab a steak. I knew Louis Prima and Sam Butera when they played at Sharkey Bonano’s Dream Room on Bourbon. My favorite lyric from Louis was ‘I’ll be standing on the corner plastered when they bring your body by.’?”
“No more sermons, Mr. Clete.”
“Me?” Clete said.
* * *
AT TWO-FIFTEEN A.M. Clete picked up Johnny Shondell at the curb. They ate at an all-night diner and drove down to Johnny’s motel on the southern tip of the island. Clete had put away half of a large bottle of Champale while he drove, the cold bottle swishing between his thighs. His arm ached from the knife wound that had not yet healed; his eyelids felt like lead, and his vision was starting to go out of focus. He looked at Johnny’s profile in the glow of the dash and wanted to speak but couldn’t remember what he’d planned to say.
“You’re not going to drive back to Lauderdale tonight, are you?” Johnny said, getting out of the car.
“I’ll find a rest stop,” Clete said.
“You don’t want to get arrested in Key West, Mr. Clete.” Johnny was leaning down, the car door still open, the breeze puffing his shirt on his wide shoulders. There was an unnatural shine in his eyes. “I get weirded out sometimes at night. You know that expression ‘the night has a thousand eyes’? That’s the way I feel.”
“We’ll sit on the dock,” Clete said.
The motel had been built on the southernmost tip of the key. The water was dark green under the moon, a small boat bumping against a piling beneath the dock. Johnny and Clete sat down in a pair of recliners. Clete felt two hundred years old. He offered the Champale bottle to Johnny. “No, thanks,” Johnny said.
“You’re not big on alcohol?”
“Not much.”
“It’s better if a guy can do without it.”
“So why don’t you?” Johnny said.
“I never think about it. That’s what happens when you’re on the juice most of your life. You don’t think about it.”
Johnny sniffed and pulled his cuffs down on his wrists. “It’s getting cold.”
“Want to tell me why you’re putting up with your uncle’s bullshit?”
“About Isolde?”
“Yeah, what do you think I’m talking about?”
