Tricky Business Page 3

  “OK,” Nestor said. “If the boat goes, I take you.”

  “Not me, you won’t,” said Phil. “I’m too young to die.”

  “Die, schmie,” said Arnie. “A big boat like that, this weather is nothing. A little rain. Besides, you got something better to do? You wanna spend your night here, running away from Mrs. Krugerman?”

  Phil winced. Mrs. Krugerman was an 80-year-old woman who had the hots for him. He could usually maintain his distance from her, because she used a walker and moved slowly. But she never stopped coming.

  “Another thing,” said Arnie. “You know what the entertainment is here tonight? The broad that sings the show tunes.”

  “No,” said Phil. “The one that killed Mrs. Fenwick?”

  “Same one,” said Arnie.

  Two weeks earlier, the woman who sang show tunes, a Mrs. Bendocker, had performed a medley from The Sound of Music, and during her big finale, “Climb Every Mountain,” while she was shrieking out the high notes for “. . . till you find your dreeeeeeeeeam,” Mrs. Fenwick, who was sitting in the front row, had emitted a gack and keeled over, dead as a doornail. A lawsuit had already been filed.

  “I can’t believe they’re bringing her back,” said Phil.

  “Point is,” said Arnie, “you stay here tonight, you could die anyway.”

  Phil looked around the dining room at his fellow Beaux Arts patrons, some eating, some sleeping, some staring and drooling. None were talking.

  “OK,” he said. “I’ll go.”

  “Regular time?” Arnie said to Nestor.

  “OK,” said Nestor. “But you people are crazy.”

  “We’re off our medication,” said Phil.

  “I’m Harold Tutter,” said Tutter, extending his hand.

  AT A SMALL MARINA IN THE BAHAMAS, TWO men, one large and one small, shrugged their way through the gusting rain toward a cabin cruiser tied to the dock.

  When they reached the boat, the large man, whose name was Frank, cupped his mouth and shouted, “Hey! Anybody here?”

  There was no response.

  “Maybe he’s not here,” said the smaller man, whose name was Juan.

  “Oh, he’s here, all right,” said Frank. “He just likes watching us get wet.” He shouted at the boat again: “TARK! OPEN UP!”

  Still no response. Frank and Juan stood still in the rain for thirty seconds, a minute. Frank looked around, found a boat hook. He picked it up and clanged the metal end against the boat hull.

  Instantly, the aft cabin door burst open, and a lean, weathered man emerged, wearing only cutoff shorts, holding a knife.

  “You touch my boat again,” he said, “I’ll cut off your goddamn hand.”

  “And good morning to you, Tark,” said Frank. “You gonna invite us in outta the rain?”

  “Nope,” said Tark, then, looking at Juan: “I just got rid of the smell from last time you was on.”

  “Fuck you,” said Juan.

  Tark ignored him, looked back at Frank. “You’re way early.”

  “We just want to make sure you know it’s still on for tonight,” said Frank. “We don’t want you thinking this weather’s gonna stop the operation.”

  “Weather don’t bother me,” said Tark. “I ain’t the pussy who pukes every time we hit the Gulf Stream.” He was back to looking at Juan, who did in fact puke the last time they hit the Gulf Stream.

  “You want to see who’s a pussy?” said Juan. “Put down the blade, get off the boat, we find out who’s a pussy.” Juan had boxed some, professional.

  “You afraid of a knife, Pancho?” said Tark. “I thought spics liked knives.”

  Juan made a move to climb onto the boat. Frank put a large restraining hand on his shoulder. “Boys, boys,” he said. “Can’t we all just get along?”

  “Not with that prick,” said Juan.

  “No,” agreed Tark.

  “I didn’t think so,” said Frank. “But we have to get along for a little while. Big job tonight. After that, we get back, everything’s put away nice, then you boys can kill each other, OK?”

  “I’m ready,” said Tark, staring at Juan.

  “Anytime, asshole,” said Juan, staring back.

  “That’s the spirit!” said Frank. “Kumbaya. We’ll be back at six.”

  “I’ll be here,” said Tark.

  “If you need us,” said Frank, “we’re at the inn.”

  “I won’t need you,” said Tark. “Fact is, I could do this whole thing without you. You and puking Pancho just get in the way out there.”

  “Ah, but we’d miss you, Tark,” said Frank. “Your smiling face, your sparkling wit.”

  “Bite me,” said Tark.

  “See?” said Frank. “Sparkling. Bye for now, Tark.”

  Frank and Juan turned and headed back toward the village. When they’d gone about twenty yards, Juan said, “I hate that prick. Why do we gotta use him? Why can’t we use some other boat? Plenty of boats around here.”

  “Tell you the truth,” said Frank, “I don’t know why we use him. I just do what they tell me, and they tell me, use Tark.”

  Juan shook his head. “I don’t trust him.”

  “Me either,” said Frank. “That’s why we watch each other’s back tonight, right?”

  “OK,” said Juan. Then: “I hate that prick.”

  Back on the boat, still holding the knife, Tark watched the two men recede in the rain. A voice spoke to him from inside the cabin.

  “That’s the guys?” it said.

  “That’s them,” said Tark.

  “Big one looks like a handful,” said the voice.

  “He won’t be no problem,” said Tark. “Rough seas like this, a boat can jerk around a lot, ’specially if you steer it wrong. I’ll make it easy.”

  “What about the little one?” said the voice.

  Tark, looking down at his knife, said, “You leave the spic to me.”

  FAY BENTON WAS STARTLED FROM SLEEP BY A 27-pound weight thumping down on her abdomen.

  “Bear!” said the weight. “Bear! Bear!”

  “OK, honey,” said Fay. “But first Mommy has to go potty.”

  She sat up, wrapped her arms around her daughter, Estelle, age two, got out of bed, and went into the bathroom. She set Estelle gently on the floor and sat on the toilet.

  “Mommy potty,” said Estelle.

  “That’s right,” said Fay. “Mommy’s going potty.”

  “Peepee,” said Estelle, hearing the tinkle.

  “Peepee,” agreed Fay.

  “It smells like smoke in here,” said Fay’s mother, appearing in the doorway.

  “Mother, do you mind?” said Fay, pushing the door closed.

  “Bear!” said Estelle. “Bear! Bear! Bear!”

  “In a minute, honey,” said Fay. “Mommy’s going potty.”

  “Peepee,” said Estelle.

  “Have you been smoking?” said Fay’s mother, through the door. “Because I smell smoke.”

  “No, I haven’t been smoking,” said Fay. “The people on the boat smoke, and it gets in my clothes.” She wiped, flushed, stood.

  “Bye-bye, peepee!” said Estelle, waving to the swirling water.

  “That secondhand smoke can kill you,” said Fay’s mother.

  “Bear!” said Estelle. “Bear! Bear! Bear! Bear! Bear!”

  “OK, honey,” said Fay. “We’ll go see the bear.” She opened the bathroom door.

  “You look terrible,” her mother said.

  “Thanks, Mom,” said Fay. “I got to sleep at two-thirty.”

  “Bear!” said Estelle. “Bear! Bear! Bear!”

  “You need to get out of that job,” said her mother. “You’re gonna kill yourself.”

  “Bear!” said Estelle.

  “OK, honey,” said Fay. She picked up Estelle and carried her into the living room, where she turned on the TV and VCR and shoved in a videotape of Bear in the Big Blue House, which Estelle watched a minimum of five times a day. Estelle stood directly in f
ront of the TV set, perhaps six inches away, waiting. When the bear appeared, she said, “Bear!”

  “She shouldn’t stand so close,” said Fay’s mother. “Those cathode radiations, you can get brain cancer.”

  Fay went into the kitchen, filled a small Winnie-the-Pooh bowl with Froot Loops, brought it back and set it on the coffee table. She picked up Estelle and set her down next to the table.

  “Fwoops!” said Estelle, spying the cereal. She reached into the bowl, carefully selected a purple Froot Loop, and put it into her mouth. When she had swallowed, she began selecting another.

  “That cereal is nothing but chemicals,” her mother said. “Those things can kill you.”

  “Mom, I’m really, really tired,” said Fay. “Let me just get some coffee, OK?”

  She headed back to the kitchen, trailed by her mother, who said, “Your hair smells like cigarettes. You need to get off that boat.”

  “Mom,” said Fay, “like I told you, I’ll get out of this as soon as I can. I really, really appreciate you staying here with Estelle all these nights. I’m hoping the boat thing is only another few days. I don’t like it any more than you.”

  “I don’t see why Todd can’t take the baby at night if you have to work,” said Fay’s mother.

  “He won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s an asshole.”

  “There’s no need for that language,” said her mother.

  “OK,” said Fay, “he’s a shithead.”

  “Fay!” said her mother.

  “OK, then,” said Fay, “he’s a dickwad.”

  “DIT wad!” said Estelle, toddling into the kitchen. “DIT wad!”

  “Now look what you’ve done,” said Fay’s mother.

  “Go watch Bear, honey,” said Fay. “Bear is on TV!”

  “Bear!” said Estelle, toddling back out.

  “Todd is that baby’s father,” said Fay’s mother. “He has a responsibility.”

  “If he had any responsibility,” said Fay, spooning coffee into the Mister Coffee filter, “I’d still be married to him. Truth is, I don’t even know where he lives right now. With some bimbo, probably. I’m not gonna leave Estelle with him.”

  “Is that caffeinated?” said her mother. “That caffeine can give you a heart attack.”

  “Mom, please,” said Fay.

  “Anyway,” said her mother, “you won’t need me tonight, because that boat isn’t going out in this weather.”

  Fay looked out the window. “I have to call in and check,” she said.

  “It won’t go out,” said her mother. “It’s a tropical storm out there. Tropical Storm Hector. Bob Soper said it could be fifty-five-mile-per-hour winds.

  “Well, I still have to call.”

  “Well, it shouldn’t go out. Winds like that, you could get killed.”

  Estelle toddled in, holding out her empty Winnie-the-Pooh bowl with both hands.

  “Fwoops!” she said.

  “OK, honey,” said Fay, reaching for the Froot Loops box.

  “Pure chemicals,” said her mother. “You should give her fruit.” She bent down to Estelle, and, in the hideously unnatural high-pitched voice that many older people use when addressing babies, said: “Gramma give Estelle some nice prunes!”

  “DIT wad!” said Estelle.

  Two

  THE EXTRAVAGANZA OF THE SEAS WAS A 198-foot, 5,000-ton cash machine, an ugly, top-heavy tub with 205 slot machines and 29 gaming tables in two big rooms glowing with cheesy neon, reeking of stale smoke and beer-breath curses. The ship’s sole function was to carry gamblers three miles from the Florida coast each night, take as much of their money as possible, then return them to land four hours later, so they could go find more money.

  Gambling cruises are a big business, especially in South Florida, where more than two dozen ships take roughly 8,000 customers out nightly. Nobody really knows how much money these ships make; it’s a cash business, which means it’s easy to prevent nosy outfits such as the United States government from finding out where it all comes from, and where it all goes.

  There are many mysteries in the gambling-cruise business, besides the profits. The identities of the real owners of the ships are often hidden via dummy corporations and silent partnerships. And since the gambling takes place unregulated, in international waters, nobody has any idea how honest the games are. If you were a gambler, you might suspect that the roulette wheel was rigged, or the blackjack deck was stacked, or your chances of hitting a jackpot on the slot machine were about as good as if you’d been throwing your coins directly overboard. But who are you going to complain to? Seagulls? There’s no state gambling commission out there in the Gulf Stream.

  Of course, none of this keeps the gamblers from coming. Gamblers need action, even when the odds suck. And so they return to the ships, night after night—the slot-machine ladies, clutching their plastic cups of quarters; the shouting, hard-drinking craps-table crowd; the roulette addicts, who truly believe, all evidence to the contrary, that there is something lucky about their birthdates; the blackjack loners, with their foolproof systems that don’t work—all of them eager to resume the inexorable process of transferring their cash to whoever owns the ship.

  In the case of the Extravaganza of the Seas, the owner of record was a man named Bobby Kemp, who was usually described in the newspaper as a millionaire entrepreneur. Kemp liked the look of that, entrepreneur, although he personally could not pronounce it.

  Pretty much the entire reason that he wound up as the owner of the Extravaganza of the Seas was that he’d wanted to impress a date who had big tits. This happened after he’d made his fortune. He was a rags-to-riches story, the son of a white-trash welfare mother and a disappeared alcoholic father, a high-school dropout who’d been scraping by in the field of freelance auto-body repair and insurance fraud when he got his first big entrepreneurial break. This was the federal law requiring all new cars to be equipped, at considerable expense, with air bags, to protect motorists who were too stupid, lazy, or drunk to go to the trouble of buckling their seat belts.

  This meant that whenever a car hit something hard enough that its air bags deployed, those bags had to be replaced. A new bag from the factory could cost $1,000 or more. But Bobby Kemp had realized that he did not need to pay the factory: He could get air bags for free! All he had to do was remove them from unattended cars. This enabled him to sell them to customers for as little as $500, and still make an excellent profit.

  In short order, Kemp was the unofficial air-bag king of Miami-Dade County. Demand was so great for his bargain air bags that he could no longer steal them fast enough. And so, again using his entrepreneurial brain, he came up with the idea of replacing deployed air bags with . . . pretend air bags. He simply repacked the customer’s old air-bag canister with whatever random trash he had around the shop—wadded-up newspaper, McDonald’s bags, whatever—sealed the canister back up, and reinstalled it in the car, as good as new, except that it no longer contained an actual air bag.

  Business continued to boom, and soon Kemp was employing a staff of illegal immigrants, paid a sub-minimum wage, to do the actual work. Occasionally, this led to quality-control problems, most notably when one of his workers, having run out of trash, repacked the driver-side air-bag canister on a Lexus LS-400 with dirt. This particular batch of dirt happened to contain some kind of prolific egg-laying insect, and a week later, while the car’s owner was inching home in heavy rush-hour traffic, her steering wheel suddenly popped open and dumped a mass of wriggling larvae into her lap, causing her to leap, screaming, from the car, in the middle of South Dixie Highway.

  Fortunately, Kemp had been able to convince the woman that insect infestation was a common problem in South Florida air bags. He graciously offered to pay her dry-cleaning bill, and he personally made sure that when his shop installed a replacement air-bag canister in her car, it was packed with clean, bug-free newspaper. You had to take care of your customers.
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  With his air-bag operation running smoothly and cash pouring in, Kemp was looking for another investment opportunity with a steady demand and room to cut corners. He decided on fast food, and opened a restaurant called the Happy Conch. The house specialty was the conch fritter, a South Florida delicacy traditionally made with the ground-up meat of the conch, a large saltwater snail that, when removed from its shell, looks markedly unhappy, even by mollusk standards.

  The Happy Conch concept was an instant hit, thanks to amazingly low prices; for $2.49, you could get two dozen fritters, made with Bobby Kemp’s special conch-fritter recipe, which was a fiercely guarded secret. The secret was that the fritters contained absolutely no conch. Kemp had figured out that not only did conch cost money, but also that the chewy, funky little pieces of meat were the least-appealing element of the fritter. So he eliminated this element, which meant he was basically selling balls of cheap dough, deep-fried in used fat. It was kind of like fried chicken without the chicken. The public loved it. A tasty seafood meal for the whole family, for only $2.49!

  Soon there were more Happy Conch restaurants, now housed in violently pink buildings, which Bobby Kemp designed himself. In front of each was a fifteen-foot-high pink sign depicting a cartoonish conch shell with big goofy eyes, a toothy smile, and a waving hand. This was Conrad Conch, official theme character of the Happy Conch chain. When a new Happy Conch opened, Kemp paid a homeless man twenty dollars to put on a Conrad Conch costume—a big pink foam shell with pink arms and legs—and stand next to the highway all day, waving at motorists. Nobody knew the homeless man’s name. Everybody just called him Conrad, which in time is what he called himself.