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Move This Woman With Your Cursor
Johnny at Myspace
52ND ST., BIRDLAND STREET - FIVE MONTHS LATER
One night I was watching this French movie -- Breathless, 1959. Gritty. New Wave. I understood all the French, intuitively, before looking at the subtitles at the bottom of the screen. Jean Seberg, the American girl, and Jean Paul Belmondo, on the
Champs-Elysees. Fat cigarettes in black-and-white Paris. That's when the new plan began taking shape, and this new plan eventually captured my imagination.
There I was, in that military hospital in the Sahara recovering from the gunshot wounds I'd taken from the Russians -- that military hospital of khaki-yellow tents and tanned nurses in white. The smell of alcohol and bandages. The bright light coming through the mosquito net, through all flaps and openings by day; the dunes and the starry desert sky by night. The non-stop clarity of the air, sometimes still, and the fragrances it carries and holds. The heavy black fans. The nurses' quarters during those long desert evenings .
And I was watching those French movies all day and all night, lots of breezy French movies and other kinds too -- Italian epics for example. I began thinking. I was looking closely at all those
French faces, and at the Italian ones too, and thinking I should take a new one. My face, good-looking though it was, had become too well known. Too well known by some people . . . the feds, for example.
So I got the ticket and flew, still bandaged, to Baden-Baden and had the job done by the Swiss plastic surgeon, Helmut Bresson-Chalon. He worked on me for six weeks, off and on, using all these photos of
Jean Paul Belmondo through the years, from all angles. I picked every detail of this face -- some from his
twenties, some from his thirties,
forties, and fifties.
And I got one of this surgeon's specialties, too -- the fingertip reconfiguration. The feds have had my prints since I was 17, but they have them no more. I am out of their computer and out of their files. I have sprung loose, and their file has become a dead-letter box.
When the Doctor Man had finished his art work and I was freshly bandaged, this nurse and I, an R.N., took the night train to the border -- where I'd arranged to rent a 1946 Pininfarina Cisitalia. I drove this legendary car at gran-turismo speed
through the winding mountain highway over the Alps and into Italy, straightening the curves all the way. And then we cruised down the Adriatic coast to Gabicce Mare, a beach town favored by Italians but not by Brits and Germans.
There I convalesced in the sunshine, at my own pace, getting stronger and more handsome by the day. The breezes, the light, the water, the sea, the Italian people, the food, the wine. I recommend a convalescence on the Adriatic to anyone, and you should do it with someone like Katherine the Nurse in Gabicce Mare.
With my new best-of-Belmondo face and my new name, I run this lounge again. I bought it back from the feds for a song, and it's mine again. They call me Jean Paul in here now -- Jean Paul DeGaulle.
And I've made some changes. I gave the back room to the Conjure Man, for example, and he's in there every night doing The Root and dancing The Pulse -- Dr. Zanzibar YaYa from Louisiana. He draws a fevered crowd, so it's good for business. It alters the ambience a shade or two, and it also changes the mix. More black people in here now, more noir-- down from Harlem, in from the Bronx and Queens. A little more soul to this joint now, although it had plenty before.
I put a red neon root out in the alley above the beat-up steel door. Nothing else, not even the word "Voodoo" to indicate what's inside.
You can also enter the Root Man's jungle, if you wish, through the translucent glass door with the chrome handles here in the back of my lounge. Or, you can just sit in here, have a drink, and watch those dancing shadows in the blue light of this wide door. Do it this way.
So we got a real winter this year. Ice. Bitter winds here in the city. Cashmere topcoat time. Borsalino time. Silk scarf time.
New York.
And I'm here at the bar, drinking whiskey. Slow afternoon here in the middle of February, here in the black heart of winter. A song on the jukebox has caught my ear, a sax rendition of the sap song, "Dream." I've never heard it before.
Detective Rousseau continued to fine-tune the music in my absence. I gave him carte blanche with and he exercises it.
Whoever this saxophone man is, he's rendering this song in a way I've never heard, or imagined. The saxophone man is soaring through the sap song "Dream." Before this, it was another one I'd never heard before -- Carmen McRae rendering "I Have The Feeling I've Been Here Before." Before Carmen McRae, it was Victoria Spivey, "Christmas Morning Blues," from my hand-made Xmas CD, the only Xmas music which remains on the jukebox year-round. And supremo deluxe, before her it was Louis Armstrong, "West End Blues,"
1928. I'm out here in Musicland in my musicland lounge.
It is my high-quality observation that great musicians get with the band and then they render. Rousseau believes that a great rendering of a song is an achievement -- up there with the highest art. Shakespeare, Vermeer, Walt Whitman, Chekhov, Poe, Helmut Bresson-Chalon, Matisse.
And now, as I look out over my joint, smooth Lou Rawls is singing about those autumn leaves of red and gold. We have
some
caviar; we're at the bar eating it straight, with teaspoons, and talking
about the types of
sturgeon you might find around the Caspian Sea or in a Russian River.
Half an hour ago an interesting thing happened in here. I'm doing some things behind the bar and this woman walks in and sits down about ten feet away from me. Somewhat good-looking. About my age. Maybe younger. Then, fifteen minutes later, this dutto with slits for eyes comes in. Crisp-looking, but no eyes.
He sits down beside her and they talk. Soon I hear her say " . . . well, after all, this is accidental. It's a
chance encounter . . ."
And as they continue to talk, I realize that they've met through some online dating service or in a chatroom. They would have a chance encounter. It would be an accidental seduction. And they're playing it out, this chick and Mr. Slits. A little pocket drama in here. It caught my ear.
What I'd like to read is a transcript of their exchanges, what went back and forth to get them in here doing this.
THREE DAYS LATER
So she came back last night, and soon after her arrival another
chance encounter began. This sap was short and small-shouldered and had a bandage over one eye. Somebody had roughed him up.
Same routine. As it was unfolding, she began to remind me of Ava Gardner, the way Ava Gardner looked just after the Sinatra years.
This time she sent the chump on his way after maybe ten minutes, and she began talking to me. She was drinking Dry Sack, for warmth she said, and as she warmed she began to loosen and glow. Those are the best words to describe what she did.
"He advertised himself as powerful, athletic, and fiery," she said,
"but . . . you saw him."
The girl was jaunty.
Later, she told me she fears that she has an addictive personality. She told me, as time passed and the music played, that she fears she is addicted. She says she
can't help herself. She dates two men in the usual way and is almost engaged to one of them, but she is in here too. The anticipation, the mystery, the ritual, the game. She's a fool for it, these scenarios.
"Sometimes it works out," she tells me. "And when it does . . .
it's like nothing else."
"Surely you understand," she says.
She's sort of squirming, as if she were at home, alone
on her sofa.
"And if I feel urgent, we can hook up in fifteen minutes," she says. "A taxi ride is all it takes."
"So why you using my lounge?" I ask her.
"I like the way you run it," she says. "It's safe in here. You and your staff take care of business. I've seen you in action."
All this was a come-on, of course, and after another half hour, maybe longer, I got two glasses and shared some
private stock with her. She wanted me to take her upstairs, but that would have been rock-bottom love and I was in the mood for something else that night.
But back to
Ava Gardner some other time. Right now, Jefferson is slamming some customer up against the wall beside The Root Man's glass door and I got to drift over there and see what's going on. Wanda's back there trying to break it up, trying to talk to him.
As I move out from the bar onto the dance floor, I see Rousseau emerge from one of the private booths in the corner . . . where he's been hiding with a dark-haired woman. I didn't even know he was in here. We have chosen the same moment to intervene.
Jefferson is slamming this poor dutto who looks like Bill Clinton back into the wall, then jerking him up to his face saying "So how about this?," then slamming him back against the wall again.
Rousseau grabs Jefferson by the shoulder, smiling, and says, "You want a piece of me, Sonny Liston?," but Jefferson ignores him and keeps it up. He's engaged. And Bill Clinton is wide-eyed with fear.
You could say that Jefferson is exercising restraint. Bill Clinton
doesn't know it, but he could be dead. Jefferson's on the edge of being out of control, and has been for weeks. Since Velma left, Velma who's now calling herself "Velocevita." Since Velma ran off with George Jackson in a
Euro-Urbano.
His sister's been staying with him, taking care of the kids.
So I dance in between them and grab not Jefferson, but Bill Clinton. Chaka Khan is singing "Tell Me Something Good." I take Bill Clinton by the
shoulders and it's out the door for him.
Then I take Jefferson up to my office. I put on some Frank Sinatra. He sits down on the couch and I fix him a heavy drink.
"We're gonna talk about this," I tell him.
About this time, Rousseau drifts in talking about how that sap had three friends with him at his table and not one of them got up.
Then he looks over at Jefferson and says, "Dutto, you need some of the root. And each of us knows that the Root Man himself, the powerful Dr. YaYa, will be IN tonight. The jungle will be alive. The afro women in shorts and tight skirts will be down in the position and they will be shaking
their black asses."
"Hey look, dickhead," I tell Rousseau, "we're having a serious conversation in here.
Jefferson has his fist against his jaw, looking out the window -- his knee going up and down. He is taking this drink down, and while watching him do it my mind drifts for a moment to this
memory from somewhere.
"Yeah," Rousseau says, "Well I got the serious conversation right here," and then he gives it to me. "You can serious conversation this," he says.
Then, when he's finished strutting around, he adds, "I am serious. This buncha craziness sitting on this couch needs to slip into the jungle. And I propose that we do it -- together, tonight. It's time for some jungle."
"Yeah," I tell him, "that might be a good idea, but right now we're talking. So sit down and shut up."
He dances over to the bar singing along with Frank Sinatra, trying to out-croon Frank Sinatra on "Angel Eyes," and pours a double shot of Wild Turkey.
So I turn my attention back to Jefferson. He hasn't said a word -- just smiled at Rousseau once, that's all.
"You gotta snatch some attitude," I tell him. "Listen, your
Angel Eyes is history. This is fatal. We gotta think best-case worst-case here."
He looks at me, half-focused, and I keep talking. "Worst case is -- she comes back, you work it out, and the poison goes dormant, into remission. Then, in a few weeks or months or years, it comes roaring back again, big time. It's inevitable. Best case is -- you never see her again."
Rousseau lights a cigarette, lets these ideas hang in the air for a few moments, in the air with the voice of Frank Sinatra, and then says that I'm right.
Jefferson is still looking out the window. Then, after maybe thirty seconds, he turns to me and says, "I'll kill him. With my bare hands. That's the only way to do it -- up close."
"You got it backwards," I tell him. "George Jackson is just being George Jackson. If you're gonna kill somebody, kill her. She's got a mind of her own. She's got a will of her own, even if she did grow up in The Hound of Heaven Baptist Church. She's doing it of her own free will. He didn't hypnotize her."
"Her too then," he says as Sinatra breezes into "Dancing in the Dark."
"You're taking the broad too seriously," I say.
LATER THAT NIGHT
The Root Man's voodoo room is rockin' tonight. Big fire in the open trench, Doctor YaYa's long fire-trench. Blue neon light.
Rousseau and Jefferson and I are drinking shots and dancing in the jungle with all these dressed-up-black-chick wonders of the world. It's hot in here. Perfume and sweat and smoke. Everybody's shaking the wrist down low and snapping fingers. All kinds of music -- Howlin' Wolf, Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter, Big Mama Thornton, Willie Dixon and Koko Taylor, Bessie Smith, the Rolling Stones, Ike and Tina Turner with the Ikettes, John Lee Hooker, James Brown, Sam and Dave. Lots of saxophone. And some Louis Jordan and some Cab Calloway, the Kings of Jive.
We're doing it, we're here, and Jefferson too, in The Root Man's voodoo room. And The Root Man himself is over there -- on this slightly elevated dancing platform, with a woman who's shaking it and about fifteen or twenty other couples . . . over there in this smoky corner of his heavy crowd. Doctor YaYa is shining in the blue neon and dancing.
Two German women are over in
their own corner.
And Floyd Z saunters in through the alley door with two other cats.
Floyd is looking sharp tonight, he's cutting a figure, a bella figura -- big camel's hair topcoat concealing you name it, wide-brimmed hat down over one eye, big starched white collar, long white silk scarf, slick black gloves, those black and white spectators catching light. The walk. We're gonna have some trouble in the jungle here tonight.
And it doesn't take long to arrive. Floyd Z gets one drink and works his way straight to me. His boys are working the chicks and Rousseau and Jefferson are out on the floor somewhere. I'm here at the bar with these two Jewels. I'm calling both of them "Jewel." The honeygates are open and we're having fun.
Before he can say one word, I look deep into those brown and caramel eyes of his and say, "Looks like you just finished walking in the pimp parade. Pimp parade must be over now." Both Jewels are laughing.
In thirty seconds it's a zoot suit riot. Full zoot suit riot spreading in waves from Floyd and me. Chairs flying. Knives flashing out. There's some rockin' the house going on in here -- Dr. YaYa's small wooden tables being used as battering rams and as shields, women up on men's backs, one waving a .38. People being thrown in all directions. Eight dudes down in the fire trench going at it in this gray cloud full of sparks and embers and flame too.
These other fighters, Johnsons and women also, keep flying in between
Floyd Z and me -- but the fight is on. We've both got our coats off, we're in shirts, and this is the real thing.
Eventually, after Z is down on the floor getting some attention from this bigass woman with a red dress on, it's me and Root Man and Rousseau and Jefferson back to back -- taking on the world from 360 degrees. And we are a finely tuned and fully-synchronized knockout machine. We got the moves.
Jefferson has more battle-style than anyone in this place, except maybe me.
5:00 THE NEXT AFTERNOON
So it was a night to remember. I got some sore spots, some bruises, and I got this huge fingernail scratch all the way across my right cheek. I have no idea who the woman was, but know she intended it for somebody else.
Rousseau hasn't been in yet, YaYa's probably still asleep downstairs, and Jefferson will be blowing through the door in about 25 minutes.
I'm at a table here in the window with my shoes up on the chair across from me, smoking a Camel Wide, reading the Post, and there's a huge snow coming down. It's been like this for the last two hours -- small dry flakes thick in the air, piling up heavy on the street and the sidewalks, piling up fast on these city sidewalks filling now with people leaving work, leaning into the storm, their coats turning white in seconds, their faces turned away from the wind, their hair blowing to the left. New York.
I got fresh coffee in this white mug and I'm also sipping a glass of porto from Portugal. Billie Holiday is filling this lounge with "What do I care if icicles form, I've got my love to keep me warm. So off with my overcoat, off with my gloves . . . ."
Wanda's back in the kitchen making hot chocolate her way, which means whole milk, malt, melted bittersweet, sugar, and freshly whipped heavy cream on top. She drops a double shot of Cointreau into the ones she makes for me.
So I'm leaning back, lazy and slow, watching the street and the people, when I notice this woman breaking from a group and slipping ahead, moving with purpose through the snow toward my door. It's
someone I recognize.
I watch the approach. I watch as she looks straight at me, straight through the snow to me at this table behind the glass, and sees a stranger. She sees Jean Paul Belmondo, looking exceptionally good. Without thinking, I smile at her slowly and naturally. Not a micro-moment of recognition.
And I continue watching as, without ever changing pace, she eases back into the crowd and keeps walking.
Who knows? Maybe she had an impulse to see Rousseau. Maybe she had an impulse to see Johnny. It could be either one or it could be
something else. Maybe she's back at NYU or maybe she's just visiting. Maybe she's still married to El Salsa.
The greatest white lounge trumpet man, Chet Baker, comes on doing "Let's Get Lost."
The fat man down on South Street woke me up this morning at 7:15 with a phone call. We had a shipment hijacked on the docks last night -- from Karachi, one I've been expecting for six weeks.
The Fat Man thinks it was the Russians, but whoever it was, they knew everything, so I got a traitor to deal with. And this means I gotta get mean and I gotta get busy.
FIVE DAYS LATER
I'm here in the car on the docks, on the waterfront in Brooklyn. Engine running, heater on max. It's about five degrees. Low grey sky. The deal was, I would drive to this spot, alone, and wait for somebody to come up to my window. He'd be wearing red gloves.
They told me to park and keep looking straight ahead, at the harbor and at Jersey City. So I parked, just like they said, but they can forget the rest of their instructions. I gave some instructions to myself.
I got all three mirrors going, plus I'm scanning the 180 in front of me. I will see them coming, and if they don't like this idea, they can take their problem to the United Nations. Plus, I got my Smith and Wesson on my lap, keeping it warm under my topcoat.
I'm in this
Citroen sedan I picked up. Viper's gone. The Sea-Island Camaro's gone. Jaguar's gone. I'm toning it down on the cars, although for long-distance getaway speed and muscle I keep a supercharged Mustang waiting in the garage down the street from my lounge.
So I see this black Lexus SUV with the chrome pak appear in my rear-view mirror and stop about 40 yards behind me. There are five people in it, and the one in the center of the back seat is a woman. One of the back doors opens, and this thick caramel-colored dude gets out. I've never seen him before. I don't recognize the moves, the walk. And he comes up to the passenger window rubbing his red gloves together.
I send the window down a couple of inches, and he's breathing frost as he bends over to ask if he can open the door.
"Where's your gun, chump?" I say. He slides a Glock from this puffed-out nylon parka, points it at me, and asks about mine. I whip out the roscoe, point it at him, and tell him to get in.
And so we talk like this -- him leaning back against the window holding his gun down low, and me doing the same thing. He says he's been authorized to speak for a man who might be in that Lexus behind us, and this man is willing to sell my Karachi shipment back to me for only $800,000 or some smaller number of euros.
"It's a bargain," he says, "a real bargain. He could snap three million for it someplace else. Probably more."
"The problem with that is, it's mine," I say. "You tell your man he can euro this" -- and then I give it to him. "You tell your man who might be
in that Lexus back there to shiver on up here and talk to me about this real bargain himself."
"What's your name?" I ask him.
"Mars," he says. Or maybe it's "Marcel." I can't tell. He's mumbling.
Then I tell Mars to get out, that his cologne's too heavy.
When he gets back to the Lexus, they talk for maybe thirty seconds and then drive off fast. Mars' red glove pops out the window and he fires off one round -- barely looking at what he's doing. I think I recognize the woman in the back seat, and it's Floyd Z beside her.
So I coast over toward the doorway of this brick warehouse, where Bobby Three-Heads has been poised behind the door, ready to burst into action with the M-16 if it had come to that. He would have laid down some withering fire.
And Bobby comes trotting toward the car, in rhythm with that beautiful American assault rifle, his coat flying in the wind. He looks like he's coming in under the blades of a waiting helicoper.
TWO HOURS LATER
I'm here at the table in the window with some porto from Portugal, thinking about Floyd Z, thinking about some other things. Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli are doing "Vous et Moi" -- 1946, at Le Club Hot.
Bobby's back there at a table with his girlfriend and they're laughing around. He and I drove back off that dock at
high speed, under power and focused, but no ambush -- the Lexus hadn't pulled off anywhere to lie in wait. And all through that long minute of possible shootout, Bobby was complaining about Puff Daddy's cologne.
He and I did the streets of Hoboken together, all through high school. He and I and four other guys. Bobby was the ugliest one, in a category all by himself.
We weren't very good in school. We were back-row guys, and mainly we made jokes. Like the time Mrs. Watson With The Ass was teaching MacBeth.
Now, Bobby Three-Heads and I are adults. We grew up and now we're
here after driving through Brooklyn ready to kill if attacked, ready to kill from a high-speed Citroen on the icy streets of Brooklyn.
After an intro where he says he'll be singing this song until he dies, Bobby Darin comes on doing "Mack The Knife." Bobby Darin socks a song and this is a rolling classic, this and "Beyond The Sea" and "Lazy River." He owns this song and I feel the energies coming on fast.
AROUND MIDNIGHT
I'm back here in the big booth with Jefferson, Rousseau, Bobby Three-Heads, and the Root Man. I've also asked Frankie Panorama to cruise over from Hoboken and sit in -- as a wise man, as an elder, as a friend of my father's and as a friend of my family. We're talkin' about what to do with Floyd Z and this offer of his, this offer to sell my own Karachi shipment back to me for $800,000 or some smaller number of euros. This bargain.
Bobby says we oughta take him out, fast, after finding out where it is. Jefferson wants to lure the whole SUV-full of them back to the docks and then hit them with a rocket-propelled grenade or two. He doesn't care about the shipment, and he says he won't miss. Rousseau thinks we should bring him in here tomorrow night and reason with him in the back room. "Maybe he'll listen to reason," Rousseau says. Dr. YaYa's working a root, and Frankie's laying low, listening to everybody.
In the middle of this, I glance over toward the door and there's Roxanne, throwing her hair back, unfurling her scarf, and unbuttoning her coat. She's looking around, maybe looking for a familiar face, and soon she catches sight of Rousseau. So she eases through the crowd toward us. And as I, Jean Paul Noir with the new best-of-Belmondo face, stand to greet her, she walks to Rousseau and steps into his arms. She holds on to this hug, whispering to him, and she's bothered by something. She's tight.
Roxanne nods to each of us, tries to give Jefferson a smile, and then Rousseau takes her arm and they go over to the bar.
And here in this booth there's no consensus, although I really didn't expect one. Even if one did emerge, I wouldn't go along with it if it didn't feel right to me.
Finally Frankie speaks. He says I shouldn't make contact with Floyd Z. He says I shouldn't negotiate. He says I should capture Floyd Z, take him somewhere, and tell him to give it up or die. Die right there. Die on the spot.
"So maybe you lose a shipment," Frankie says. "Maybe you don't. Maybe you get it back after Z is dead. Maybe his boys will see the light when you dump his dapper dead body on their doorstep. Maybe they won't. But what you won't lose is the respect of your enemy. Lose that, and you lose everything."
I couldn't have said it better myself.
So it's settled. Frankie and Bobby Three-Heads take off, and the Root Man slips through the blue door into his jungle. I tell them I'll have the Z plan ready by noon tomorrow.
Jefferson orders another drink and I light a cigarette and lean my head back into the leather. As Jefferson is firing up a cigar, Rousseau comes over with Roxanne. He's smiling and she has loosened up. I can see it in her eyes. And after he introduces us, after he tells me she's an English professor at NYU, she says I remind her of Johnny, the previous owner -- the way I smoke, she says. I tell her that I'm flattered, that I've heard wonderful things about this Johnny. I ask if she can quote any Shakespeare, something from MacBeth.
Instead, she quotes Hotspur from Henry IV, Part One. She says, "O, the blood more stirs to rouse a lion than to
start a hare."
"Hey look," Rousseau says. "We got some news." He's half-dancing to Artie Shaw, trying to get Roxanne to do it too.
The news is that Z and the boys left for Miami this evening in a red van. And they have the shipment with them. They're gonna sell it to some Ecuadoreans.
So I was right. It was Roxanne in the back seat with Z at the docks.
I look over at Rousseau and
Roxanne, I look over at Jefferson, and I propose that we all fly to Miami tomorrow -- Bobby and Doctor YaYa too. Everybody seems to like this idea.
"So what's an Ecuadorean look like?" I ask Roxanne. "You're a professor. You should know." Then I ask her to name one Ecuadorean, but she can't do it. Neither can I.
"Simon Bolivar," Bobby says.
After they've gone, I drift up to my office and book six seats on Delta out of JFK for tomorrow afternoon -- I tell them we want a big convertible
waiting for us. And I call the Delano and book three suites, ocean-side. We're gonna enjoy this job.
THE NEXT NIGHT
So we're here. 83 degrees when we got off the plane. The winds at JFK were blowing the snow sideways when we left and it was 11 above.
I took a window seat, and during takeoff I watched those dirty banks of plowed snow and ice shoot by faster and faster as those smooth engines wound out and we lifted off.
I shipped all our guns Fed Ex overnight, and they'll be here in the morning. Before picking up the Lincoln, we ducked into this airport shop and bought some all-cotton Island shirts. We cut the tags off and wore them out of the store. Dr. YaYa was doing some dancing in the corridor. Me too. And Roxanne and Bobby and Rousseau.
Roxanne's shirt is royal blue with parrots on it, tomato-red parrots. And bright green parrots too. I grabbed this one up first, but they didn't have
my size.
This hotel has some appeal for me. Wanda and I stayed here once. Big white linen sheers suspended from the ceiling and blowing in the ocean breezes all through the lobby and through the first floor. This is a white place. Alcoves, hammocks out back under the palms. And the pool of pools, an olympic-size infinity pool where the water stays at ground level. The Atlantic in the distance. A bar whose looks I like, but some of the people are a different story.
1:00 A.M.
Rousseau and Roxanne and I are here at the bar having some drinks, standing up and dancing around at the bar, the three of us. Champagne for Roxanne and me, shots of Wild Turkey and icewater for Rousseau. Heavy concentration of international beautiful people. It's like Aspen -- so many beautiful people that you find yourself looking for flaws, preferring these flaws. Soon it's the more flaws the better. And after that, it's flaws only.
No jukebox in here, but they have some digitized selecto sound system -- not a bad mix and the volume is right. You can still talk with maybe an extra notch of effort.
Two Rolling Stones songs come on, back to back, and as "Under My Thumb" starts to take off, Rousseau and Roxanne begin dancing. About halfway into it, this mega-tanned character standing nearby, standing nearby with his beautiful-people blonde, calls the bartender over to complain in his French accent about both the music and Rousseau's behavior.
I get interested in this . . . Rousseau and Roxanne aren't paying any attention, but I am.
What a dickhead.
So I step over. I tell this Riviera Suntan that Rousseau is my friend. And Roxanne too. I tell him that this is America. I smile at him and ask him if he's got that, if he understands.
The bartender's just standing here. I don't know what he's thinking, and I don't care, as long as he doesn't interrupt.
Later, I get off the elevator on the 8th floor and head to my
room. On my way down the corridor I step into the wrong room,
817 instead of 819. I excuse myself and leave quickly. I don't think they even noticed me.
THE NEXT EVENING -- AFTER A PURPLE, PINK, AND AQUAMARINE SUNSET
If they drove in shifts, non-stop, Floyd Z is here now. And they've probably been here for awhile. Maybe they've all had some rest, too. Maybe they're ready to meet the Ecuadoreans and unload my shipment for some big cash.
Frankie Panorama gave me a few names and numbers here in town, and I've talked to each one. Plus, I got a few contacts of my own. So when Z begins doing business or even starts moving around in his red van, I should know about it. I got the cell phone here in my pocket.
The guns arrived this afternoon, freshly oiled and ready for action, so we're packin' heat now, out here under the palms and the moon, in the wavy light of the pool, in hammocks -- the Root Man and Jefferson and I. Each of
us has a little table with a split of champagne and a plate of limes, lemons, peeled shrimp, and lump crabmeat on it. I swing slowly over to mine, pick up a little crabmeat with my fingers, and then swing away.
Rousseau and Roxanne went out on the beach about 11:00 this morning and haven't come back yet. They've had a day at the beach. Bobby's at the Dade County jail, visiting some friend of his who's
locked up down here.
So I'm in the hammock, watching the beautiful people out here by the pool, when the phone rings. It's Tommy Bahama, and he tells me that Z is staying at the Albion; he's only a few blocks away. So I thank Tommy B. I tell him he'll be remembered.
The word is that there are five of these Ecuadoreans, and they're led by
a bandito who calls himself Ruminavi. He's got a historical one-word name. They flew in this morning and rode out to Key Biscayne in two taxis, and they're described as swarthy.
TWO DAYS LATER
I'm on this dawn flight back to The City. Alone. Rousseau, Roxanne, Bobby, YaYa, and Jefferson are going to stay in Miami for a few more days, but I'm outta there. I'm rocketing back to my own true February.
After dropping down at JFK, I'm gonna take a taxi into town, stop by the lounge for a few minutes, pack one bag, and head up the river to West Park, to the Holy Cross Monastery. I've made some donations through the years, like my dad did, and I'm welcome there among the Benedictine brothers. I'm gonna stay awhile. Maybe a long time.
I'll have music in the air all day. FM jazz down low all night. Maybe do some inner dancing, some inner swaying. Read some thick novels. Get some sleep. Wake up to the trees and the long lawn and the mighty Hudson out my window. Spend some time in the woods. Wait for spring to begin arriving. Cloister up.
We had the trap ready to spring, we had the drop on them, but something happened to me.
I gave the cut signal to Bobby and that was it.
It was over. Ruminavi sped out to sea with my shipment, Floyd Z and his crew drove away with the cash, and I didn't care. It didn't make any difference to me. I had a failure of will immediately after a vision of
Garibaldi and
Braccio Fortebraccio appeared. Braccio Fortebraccio
di Montone.
I'm going incommunicado.
Hit this for
Johnny's, Part Nine this for
Part One this for
Part Two this for
Part Four this for
Part Five this for the current
Tough Talk or push here to rocket all the way up to Part Eight
Johnny
The Last Neanderthal
Lee
Hit here to see the current Tough
Talk or here to rocket back to
Johnny's, Part Nine or to
Part One or to
Part Four or to
Part Five or here for the ride up to Part Eight
