Gone Bamboo

  They were halfway back to Saint Martin. Tommy sat sullenly by the bow with a beer forgotten in his hand, Cheryl asleep below. Frances approached Henry at the wheel and whispered in his ear. "How'd it go?" she asked.

  "Mezza mezz," said Henry. "We'll just have to wait and see."

  16

  Charlie Wagons, in an apron, baggy blue jeans, espadrilles, and a T-shirt that said HEY MON! stuck a bony finger into Tommy's lobster sauce and took a taste.

  "Nice flavor," he said.

  Tommy, standing next to him at the range, arms crossed across his chest, explained. "It's all about reduction. You gotta reduce, reduce, reduce. And you don't let the brandy flame the shells. That's the mistake everybody makes. You burn the little hairs the lobster got on his tail there, you do that . . . you get a burnt taste. And you roast the garlic first, before you use it."

  "You gonna put some butter?" Charlie wanted to know.

  "At the end I put the butter," said Tommy. "Right at the end. That's called monter au beurre you wanta know."

  "The fish... can I flip'em?"

  "Yeah, go for it."

  Charlie turned down the flame under the copper sautoir next to the saucepan and drained the extra oil into a coffee can by the edge of the range, holding three grouper fillets in place with a spatula. He confidently turned the fillets over, skin-side down now, and put the whole pan into the oven.

  "What's that gotta go, like, five, six minutes?" he said, wiping his hands on his apron.

  "Little more," said Tommy, "if you don't want it wet in the center."

  "I don't," said Charlie. "Call me a fuckin' philistine all you want. I like fish cooked alia way through. Meat, that's another thing. I can have that rare. But fish . . . I want that cooked."

  "Okay. Seven minutes." Tommy sighed. In another pan, he sweated some shallots in butter, added some mussels, some stock, and some white wine, threw in a few sprigs of fresh thyme from Charlie's garden and, as the mussels began to steam open, tossed them with a few medallions of lobster and some bay scallops.

  "Again . . . you mount with the butter. Heart attack food, that's what I like." At the very end, as he removed the pan from the flame, he stirred in a heaping teaspoon of red lobster roe. "Where's the vegetables? The vegetables! Shit!"

  "Awright, awright!" said Charlie. "You're a fuckin' ball-breaker . . . Here." He sprinkled some blanched, julienned vegetables in with the mussels - carrots, zucchini, yellow squash, and snow peas. "I know, I know . . . correct seasoning . . . I'm tellin' ya, I dunno how that broad puts up with you over there." He ground some fresh pepper into the mix and then sprinkled a little kosher salt.

  "Okay. Now all we gotta do is eat it," said Tommy. "I wish I was hungry."

  "What's eatin' you is what I wanna know," said Charlie. "You been on the rag all day."

  "I gotta talk to you. After," said Tommy.

  "Talk to me now, you got a problem."

  "After. We'll talk after," said Tommy, turning his back and yelling down the hall. "Cheryl! Where the fuck is she? Che-ryl!"

  Don, the lead marshal, an older man with a barrel chest and gray hair, stuck his head into the kitchen from the patio. "I think she's still in the shower, Tom, I can hear the water running."

  Tommy shook his head, pissed off.

  "You smell what those jerks ate for dinner tonight?" asked Charlie, when Don disappeared. "You can still smell it. Smells like a buncha chinks livin' here . . . boilin' dogs or some shit."

  "They burned the garlic and the ginger," said Tommy, in no mood.

  "I got a nice wine picked out. Nice an' cold," said Charlie, proudly. "Pooly Foomay. That okay?"

  "That's fine," said Tommy. "I'm gonna go get her. The food's fuckin' dyin' here."

  "Give the girl a fuckin' break, willya?" said Charlie. "She's inna shower. You don't want her clean? What's with you?"

  Tommy stalked down the hall into the bedroom he shared with Cheryl, opened the bathroom door, and said, "Dinner's ready. You're holding up dinner."

  "I'll be out in a second," said Cheryl. "I'm just rinsing."

  "Hurry," said Tommy, closing the door.

  It was an uncomfortable dinner with little conversation. Cheryl, still wet from the shower, ate in her bathrobe, not speaking to Tommy. Tommy, anticipating his talk with Charlie, picked at his food, lost in thought. The fish was dry and overcooked, and Charlie was defensive and a little hurt that no one was saying anything nice about the meal.

  When the plates were finally stacked in the dishwasher, after the espresso was finished and Charlie had lit his after-dinner cigar, Cheryl went back to the living room to do her toenails in front of the TV.

  "Can I talk to you now?" asked Tommy, worried about the marshals overhearing. "Downstairs?"

  "Let's have an Amaretto," said Charlie. "Maybe we can shoot some pool." He pushed his chair back and headed for the recreation room.

  He had difficulty on the stairs, a tightly wound spiral of decorative wrought iron. Tommy had to help him down. The room was done all in green. Back in the late fifties, it had been a sort of sanctum for the old man; now, with the difficulty of negotiating the steps, he seldom came down here.

  Behind a broad teak bar, an enormous picture window faced into the swimming pool below water level. On the other side of the thick glass, there was a muted splash, and two pairs of legs, exercising marshals, swam silently past. There were trophy fish, marlins and sailfish, mounted on the walls. An antique pool table stood in the center of the room, green felt lit by a Tiffany chandelier, color, green. The other light fixtures, scallop-shaped wall sconces, only added to the undersea effect, and the moving ripples from the pool lights played over the green leather easy chairs, green felt card table, green and beige carpet. A few listless tropicals hung in the water in a recessed aquarium, opening and closing their mouths, and the liquor bottles behind the bar were illuminated from below by little spots, recessed into the wood, the tiny green points reflecting off Charlie's glasses.

  Tommy took the photographs from his back pocket and slid them across the bar to Charlie.

  "What's 'is? Dirty pictures?" said Charlie, coming around the bar with two snifters of Amaretto. He glanced up at the swimmers, not yet touching the photos.

  "We went sailing with that American couple," Tommy began. "I told you about them . . . Anyways, I'm sitting on a rock out there in the middle of the ocean, and this guy - his name's Henry - he asks me to take these pictures." He paused for a sip of Amaretto, his mouth dry. "So I take the pictures, right? And this is the thing . . . He says to me, he says he wants me to give the pictures to you."

  "To me?" said Charlie, startled. "He mention my name?" He lifted the photographs in one hand, lost his purchase, and they spilled onto the floor. Tommy got down on his hands and knees and collected them. This time he laid the pictures out on the bar for Charlie to look at.

  "He said, 'Give these to Charlie.' He says he wants to meet with you, talk . . . without, you know, them knowin' about it."

  "You didn't tell him nothin' . . ."

  "No!"

  "I mean before. I mean, how's 'is sonofa—"

  "That's the whole thing. I didn't say nothin', nothing. He knew it all already. He knows you. He says you know him."

  Charlie leaned over. His eyes moved slowly along the row of color snaps. He picked one up off the bar with hands that trembled slightly and stepped over to the pool table to examine it under the light. It was a full-length pose, Henry leaning naked over the edge of the rock, hand shielding his eyes, a silly grin on his face. Charlie went back and looked at another one, the color gone from his lips.

  "And what's this guy callin' himself?" he asked.

  "Henry."

  "That's right, Henry. You said that. Henry what?"

  "I don't know," said Tommy, feeling foolish. "Just Henry is all I know. I . . . I never asked. I could probably find out for you, you want."

  Charlie looked at each photograph carefully, each pose more ridiculous than the one before.
>
  "Where'd you meet this guy again?"

  "On the beach. Cheryl met them on the beach."

  "She didn't say nothin'?" Charlie thought better of the notion and dispelled it. "Nah . . . she didn't say nothin'."

  "She wouldn't."

  "I know, I know."

  Charlie shook his head, exasperated by a picture of Henry, this time posing as a nude King Tut, high atop the peak on Isle Forchue.

  "The wife . . . She a good-lookin' broad, tall, dark, green eyes . . . name a' . . . Frances?"

  "Yeah!" said Tommy, anxious to know what was going on. "You know them?"

  Suddenly, Charlie exploded with laughter, his whole body shaking. "Yeah," he wheezed. "I know this guy. I know this testadura. Henry. Sure, I know him pretty good." He kept laughing, wiping his eyes with a cocktail napkin from the bar, his face growing red. "Tommy, I'm slippin' . . . I tell you. I shoulda heard this guy comin'. This guy, this guy, you can hear his balls clankin' together a mile away. An' the wife. The wife! Minchia! She got balls even bigger. The biggest! Sonofabitch . . . Henry an' Frances . . . She still look good? She was a good-lookin' woman. It's . . . it's been a while."

  Tommy just nodded, confused and somewhat displeased at Charlie's reaction. He'd felt betrayed at being used to get to Charlie. He'd expected, hoped for an ally, and now this reaction. It wasn't at all what he'd anticipated.

  "They live here?" asked Charlie.

  "In the hotel, the yacht club over there, the other side a' the pond."

  "They stayin' in a hotel?"

  "They live there, he says. They say they been in the same place for years."

  "You believe him?"

  "About what? About livin' here? Yeah. They know everybody, everything on the island. They're wired up down here."

  "That's fuckin' rich," said Charlie, chuckling now, his color returning to normal. "Them livin' here the whole time."

  "You're gonna talk to the guy?"

  Charlie looked again at the photos. "He's worried, I bet, right?" He jerked a thumb at the pool, the two marshals still swimming back and forth. "About them. He knows I'm a rat now, an' he's worried."

  "You ain't a rat, Charlie."

  "You call it what you wanna call it. So. What else he say?"

  "He said it was up to you. He said you had to decide whether to tell anybody or not, that it would mess him up bad if you did."

  "I'll bet it would," said Charlie. He picked up the picture of Henry leaning over the edge. "Look at this guy . . . Look. He's got his balls hangin' right over the cliff. You know what he's sayin'?"

  Tommy had not the slightest idea.

  "He's sayin', 'Here I am, Charlie.' That's what he's sayin'. An' he's askin' me what I'm gonna do about it. He's bettin' I ain't gonna do nothin'. That's what he's sayin'."

  "What are you gonna do?" asked Tommy. "You gonna see him like he wants?"

  "Of course I'm gonna see him," said Charlie. "Are you kiddin'?" He laughed out loud again, a thin, raspy cackle. "I wouldn't miss this . . . I wouldn't miss this for the world."

  17

  United States Marshal Donald Burke, fifty-two years old, divorced, with two teenage kids who hated him, $820 in the bank, and a painful case of sciatica, sat on the edge of his bed in the guesthouse, considering Charlie's request to go fishing.

  As senior marshal of the unit charged with protecting the peripatetic gangster, he had two divergent instructions: Keep Charlie safe, and Keep Charlie happy.

  Burke was having a difficult time making a decision. He'd immediately cabled Washington, requesting information on Henry Charles Denard and wife, which was all he could do at the moment. He'd even watched Mr and Mrs Denard, through binoculars from across the pond as they headed off to the beach on their little Honda scooter. He'd told Charlie he could of course go fishing with his friends, if Woody and Burt could tag along with their radios and their weapons.

  Charlie wouldn't play along. He wanted solitude. Just him and Tommy and this mysterious "fishing guide" who lived in a three-hundred-dollar-a-night hotel. Burke didn't like it, and he didn't want to make the call. He decided to pass the buck. Let somebody else take the blame if things went bad. He picked up the phone and called Washington.

  "So?" said Charlie, padding onto the pool patio in his bare feet. He was wearing a T-shirt Cheryl had bought him, depicting the continent of Africa in black, green, and orange with a large marijuana leaf superimposed over it. "Can I go, Dad? Huh? Can I? Huh? All my friends are goin'. Huh?"

  Burke shook his head. "I don't know yet. I don't know. They have to call me back." He almost felt bad for the old gangster. Charlie just wanted to go fishing, and here he was, waiting for permission from some pencil-necked suit in New York, a kid, really, who was probably conceived about the time Charlie was making his bones.

  "Whaddya think they gonna say?" asked Charlie, sitting down at the small table and lighting a stogie-size joint.

  Burke winced at the sight and found himself reflexively looking away. Cheryl had taken to providing little packets of Jamaican pot to the old man. He seemed to love the stuff, said it helped his appetite after all the operations. Burke had felt it was better to ignore it, but lately Charlie had begun taking a perverse delight in lighting up next to him. Burke had a horrifying vision of Charlie on the stand, recanting his depositions, telling the jury how the prosecutors and marshals had supplied him with mind-altering drugs.

  "Get that away from me," said Burke. "Please. Okay?"

  "You worry too much," said Charlie. "Look at yer little partners there. They got the right idear . . . Ain't nothin' in those heads, just rabbit chow and muscle magazines . . . not a care inna world."

  "It's the other guy," confided Burke. "This Henry. I don't know anything about him."

  "He knows where the fish are. He lives down here. What's to know?"

  "More," said Burke. "A lot more."

  18

  The man lobbed a golf ball onto the green at the ninth hole, then walked slowly after it. He winked at Monsieur Ribiere, a few feet away, and carelessly tapped the ball toward the cup. It went wide.

  "Do you play?" asked the man, ignoring his ball. He was a tall man, wide shouldered; he might, when he was young, have been a football player. Now his face was jowly and deeply etched with lines; the sad Doberman eyes and dark rings under them spoke of someone who had suffered many disappointments.

  "No," said Monsieur Ribiere, looking very uncomfortable in checked Lycra golf pants and a striped, short-sleeved polo shirt. "Never."

  "Me neither," said the man. He had a deep, boozy voice, mellifluous but tired. He reached down, picked up his ball, and began walking to the next tee. Monsieur Ribiere signaled Trung, who was acting as caddy, to follow with their clubs.

  "Still got your little friend with you," observed the man.

  "Yes," said Monsieur Ribiere. "He is very loyal."

  "I remember," said the man, giving a short, barking laugh.

  Six o'clock in the morning at the Mullet Bay golf course. The sprinkler system had just been turned off. Black, desalinated lagoon water collected in puddles on the parched sod, in the tracks the golf carts had made. On a nearby hill, an earthmover cleared ground for a new hotel; the solitary figure of a black woman, visible at the foot, was setting up a folding table with tinfoil containers of food and black and yellow bananas for the construction crews. In the distance, they could hear the sound of tennis balls hitting rackets.

  "Two things," said the man, lighting a Viceroy with a tarnished Dunhill lighter. "My shop got a request for a file search yesterday from the Organized Crime Section over at Justice. I thought I better come down and talk to you before deciding whether to comply. Henri Charles Denard. Somebody over there wants to know what we have."

  "I see," said Monsieur Ribiere, walking past the tee without stopping. "Thank you. It was good of you to see me first."

  "Yeah . . . well . . . I remembered. He was a protege of yours a while back, wasn't he? I thought, you know, there might be some exp
osure on that. Figured it wouldn't hurt to ask."

  "How interested are they?" asked Monsieur Ribiere.

  "The request originated with the Marshals Service. Got piped through Justice. All Agencies Request for Information, so, you know, it got around to us. How interested? You tell me. How interested should they be?"

  "You know about our guest down here? This gentleman from New York, Iannello?"

  "I might have heard something about that. Something crossed my desk, I think . . . They got him stashed down here, don't they? Super Snitch. Gonna bring down the Cosa Nostra single-handed, right?"

  "Yes."

  "You must be thrilled."

  "Delighted to assist our ally in any way we can," said Monsieur Ribiere, acidly.

  "That what they're saying back at La Piscine, you don't mind my asking?"

  "Well . . ."

  "That's what I thought."

  "I am to cooperate."

  The man grunted.

  "Do you have an interest?" asked Monsieur Ribiere, raising an eyebrow.

  "Couldn't care less," said the man. "Not my patch, my friend. We're happy to assist other agencies, if we can, as far as that goes. It's a matter of degrees, isn't it, sometimes. Thought I'd talk to you first, though. Our relationship is somewhat . . . more sensitive."

  "Yes . . . yes," said Monsieur Ribiere, trying not to sound encouraged.

  "So you tell me. What's going on? I don't want to blow an asset for you, but I d o n ' t . . . I don't want to have to take a trip up to the hill and get asked the hard questions either. The boys back home know about this Denard?"

  "No. Not that he's here. The past, yes. I'm sure there's something on paper, but they would rather forget."

  The man laughed that short, ugly hack again. "Okay. I got you . . . It's tough all over. So what's your friend doing, crossing paths with Charlie Wagons?"