Tricky Business Read online

  A pause, then: “Benny’s not here.”

  “Benny, goddammit, I know that’s you. This is me, Bobby Kemp. I got a . . .”

  “Whoever this is, I don’t hear you. It’s a bad reception here.”

  “Benny, wait, I need to . . . Benny? Hello? Benny?”

  Nothing.

  “Fuck,” said Kemp, slamming down the phone. He thought for a moment, looked up a number, called his lawyer’s office.

  When the lawyer got on the line, he said, “Listen, you got to get over here right now, because this Tarant asshole is fucking up my entire . . .”

  “I, ah, Bobby, I don’t think we can do that,” said the lawyer.

  “What?” said Kemp.

  “I just feel . . . that is, we feel, here at the firm, that, ah, in the interest of insuring that you get the best possible legal representation, to which you are absolutely entitled, no question, it’s, ah, our feeling that—and this is, believe me, strictly for your benefit—to avoid any suggestion of conflict, it would be for the best if there was, ah, a discontinuance, insofar as . . .”

  “They got to you, you little needle-dick weasel,” said Kemp.

  “Now, Bobby, there’s no call for . . .”

  “Three hundred fifty fucking dollars an hour I been paying you to read leases I can already read myself, and now the one fucking time I need you to actually do something, you bail on me?”

  Dee Dee stuck her head in the door.

  “Mr. Kemp? That guy? With the arms? From yesterday? He’s here. You want me to . . .”

  “Hey, Bobby,” said Tarant, coming around Dee Dee. “How’s things?”

  “You know how things are,” said Kemp, hanging up on the lawyer.

  “Things look good to me,” said Tarant, examining the front of Dee Dee’s dress.

  “You want me to get the guard again?” asked Dee Dee.

  “No,” said Kemp. “Just get out, OK?”

  “You don’t hafta get snippy,” said Dee Dee, leaving.

  “Should’ve come out to Doral with me yesterday,” said Tarant. “Beautiful day, no wind. I’m hitting the ball like Tiger Friggin’ Woods, swear to God. I’ll take you out one of these days.”

  “What if I go to the feds?” said Kemp. “You ever think of that, Guido?”

  “It’s Lou, Bobby. Lou Tarant. Out of curiosity, why would you want to go to the feds?”

  “To tell them I got organized wop greaseballs leaning on me, my business. I bet they’d love to hear about that.”

  “Could be, Bobby. Could be. But, sake of argument, say you call them in. First of all, you want to wind up in the Witness Protection Program? You familiar with that? Instead of Bobby Kemp, big-time Miami businessman with a big office, friends with the mayor, has a secretary with a major pair of garbanzos, all of a sudden you’re a guy named Hiram Schmutz, living in a trailer in Albuquerque, checking your bedroom slippers for scorpions. And suppose the feds start poking around. You know how they are, always poking around. Maybe they start checking into, I dunno, serial numbers on air bags. Offshore accounts. Immigration violations. Taxes, Christ, just think about the taxes. You know, all that federal shit.”

  Kemp stared at him.

  “Did you know,” said Tarant, “you mess with air bags, that’s a federal offense? You believe that? Doing time, federal prison, for an air bag?”

  Dee Dee stuck her head in the door.

  “There’s some people out here?” she said. “From TV? With cameras? They want to talk to you about some lady, her butt or something.”

  “Tell them I’m not here,” Kemp told Dee Dee.

  Dee Dee turned and announced to the reception area: “He says he’s not here.”

  “Jesus,” said Kemp. “Just close the fucking door, OK?”

  “How come everything around here is always my fault?” said Dee Dee, slamming the door.

  Kemp sat at his desk, turned the chair, looked out the window.

  “OK,” he said. “What do you want?”

  “Just like I told you yesterday, Bobby,” said Tarant. “The group I represent, we want to do business with you. You’re gonna find we’re very businesslike. You work with us, you got nothing to worry about. For example, looks to me like you got some problems right here today. We can help you with things like that.”

  Kemp was quiet for almost a minute, then: “OK.”

  “Good,” said Tarant. “Real good.” He came around to Kemp’s side of the desk, stuck out his hand. Reluctantly, Kemp reached out. Tarant took Kemp’s hand and, seemingly without effort, pulled Kemp to his feet. He squeezed Kemp’s hand.

  “You made the right decision, Bobby.” He did not let go of Kemp’s hand. His grip tightened. Kemp felt his hand bones grinding.

  “Now that we’re working together,” he said, “couple of minor things.” The pain was getting unbearable, but there was no hint of strain in Tarant’s voice. “Number one, you never call me Guido again, OK, Bobby? Or greaseball. Or especially wop.” When he said wop, Kemp felt an agonizing stab of pain in his hand, like something had snapped in there. He whimpered, tried to pull his hand away, but could not move it.

  “I said, OK, Bobby?” Tarant said.

  “OK,” whispered Kemp.

  “OK, Lou,” said Tarant. “I want you to call me Lou.”

  “OK, Lou.”

  “Good, Bobby. Excellent,” said Tarant. “I’ll be back in touch with you tomorrow, start setting up arrangements.” He released Kemp’s hand, went to the door, opened it, looked back.

  “One more thing, Bobby.”

  Kemp looked up from massaging his right hand.

  “Manny Arquero?” said Tarant. “The guy you fired?”

  “What about him?”

  “Hire him back,” said Tarant, and left.

  IN SOME WAYS, BOBBY KEMP’S NEW BUSINESS associates actually did make his life easier. He never had any trouble with labor, with suppliers, with any government bureaucracy. If a problem came up, he’d mention it to Lou, and whatever it was, poof, it disappeared.

  But that did not make up for the things Kemp hated about the new arrangement. Mainly he hated that he was not really the boss anymore. He was most aware of this when he was on the ship, where Manny Arquero always called him “Mister Kemp,” acting very respectful, so Kemp knew he didn’t mean it. He started to get the same feeling in his other businesses, a vibe from his employees that told him they knew that he wasn’t really the man anymore, that he was taking orders from somebody, just like them.

  And he was. He still made money; he still was, officially, the CEO. But Lou was the boss. Lou’s people were keeping the books now; Lou’s people were “helping” Kemp’s people manage things. And everybody understood that if Lou’s people wanted something done, it was done.

  A lot of it clearly involved money laundering. Like, a guy would come on the Extravaganza and buy a ridiculous amount of chips—maybe $50,000 worth, way more than anybody ever spent on a sleazeball casino ship. The guy would play some blackjack, some craps, not paying attention, not caring if he was winning or losing, usually losing. At the end of the night, he’d just leave, not cashing in the rest of his chips, leaving a huge profit for the house. Except Bobby Kemp, who was supposed to be the house, wouldn’t see that money. It’d get spent on something else, some supplier who, as far as Kemp could tell, wasn’t supplying anything. Just like that, a big wad of money from God-knows-what became part of legitimate business cash flow.

  That part of the operation Kemp understood right away. It took him longer to see the other thing going on. He heard about it in bits and pieces from his people who spent time with people who worked on the ship. From what he could piece together, it happened maybe one or two nights a month. The tipoff was the presence on the ship of four particular guys—guys who wore crew uniforms, but didn’t perform any crew duties, just kept to themselves. When they were on board, the Extravaganza would, at some point, break out of its usual pattern of circling just outside the three-mile limit and move out
farther from shore, the Miami skyline getting small on the horizon. It would turn north, then slow down, then stop, just drifting with the Gulf Stream, the captain using just enough throttle to keep the ship pointed steady.

  Then a cabin cruiser, its lights out, would approach from the east, turn, and back up to the Extravaganza’s stern, where the deck was low to the water. Lines would be tossed, and when the two ships were tied together, the four guys would get to work moving heavy canvas sacks. They went both ways: first, sacks from the cabin cruiser to the Extravaganza; then, sacks from the Extravaganza to the cabin cruiser. This went on for maybe ten minutes, and then the ships would untie, the cabin cruiser would head east, and the Extravaganza would go back to circling. The gamblers never noticed; the stern deck wasn’t visible from the public area, and besides which, they were too busy yanking slot-machine handles to care what the ship was doing.

  Bobby Kemp spent a lot of time thinking about it, what was going on out there. He decided it had to be drugs in the incoming sacks, most likely cocaine. The outgoing sacks had to be cash, headed for some offshore bank. That had to be it. These fuckers were bringing in coke, right past the Coast Guard station on Government Cut, in a ship with neon lights all over it. And it was Bobby Kemp’s ship. That’s what really pissed him off. Not that it was illegal, but that he, Bobby Kemp, who would surely go to jail for this if the shit ever hit the fan, wasn’t getting a piece.

  This gnawed at him until finally he’d found the balls to ask Tarant to come to his office for a meeting.

  “Lou,” he’d said. “I realize we got off on the wrong foot, about the Extravaganza and all, me saying some things I shouldn’t have.”

  “Forget about it, Bobby,” said Tarant. “Water under the dam. The important thing is, we’re partners now, everybody’s happy.”

  “Well, that’s the thing, Lou.”

  “What’s the thing?”

  “What I mean is, I don’t feel like, don’t take this wrong, I don’t feel like a one-hundred-percent full partner here, in some areas.”

  “What areas, Bobby?”

  “Well, OK, this operation on the Extravaganza, which, I mean, I’m the owner, Chrissakes, so it seems to me . . .”

  “What operation you talking about, Bobby? It’s a casino ship, makes a nice profit, you get a nice taste of that.”

  “I don’t mean the gambling.”

  “What do you mean?” said Tarant, looking at Kemp hard.

  “You know what I mean,” said Kemp, making himself look back. “The other shit.”

  “What other shit, Bobby?”

  “Listen, Lou, I got no problem with, I mean, I just think, since I’m taking a certain risk here, it seems to me that . . .”

  “Bobby, listen to me.” Tarant moved closer. “There’s nothing else. Who told you there was something else?”

  Kemp didn’t answer. It took all his willpower to keep from backing up.

  “Because if somebody was to go around saying that,” said Tarant, now right in Kemp’s face, “I’d want to straighten their ass out. My associates and I can’t have people talking like that. You understand, Bobby? I find out somebody is spreading that shit around, believe me, it would not be good for that person. We clear on that, Bobby?”

  He put his hands on Kemp’s shoulders, squeezed just a little. Kemp felt some pee dribble from his dick.

  “I said, are we clear, Bobby?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What?” A little more squeeze pressure. A little more pee.

  “Yes, Lou.”

  “Good,” said Tarant, dropping his arms, stepping back. “Was there anything else you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “No, Lou.”

  “OK, then, Bobby. I’ll let you go. I know you’re a busy man, got important things to do.”

  As he said this, Tarant glanced down at Kemp’s crotch. Kemp looked down, saw the spreading pee stain. He looked up. Tarant was watching him, not moving a muscle on his face, but Kemp could see it, deep in those dark eyes, Tarant laughing at him.

  “One more thing, Bobby.”

  “What?”

  “Your secretary out there? With the tits? Who can’t work the phone?”

  “Yeah?”

  “She works for me now.”

  THAT I WAS SIX MONTHS AGO. IT HAD TAKEN Kemp that long to figure out a move he could make, gather the information, work out the plan, get everything lined up. He was very careful. He knew he had one shot at getting himself out of this situation, and that if he screwed it up, he’d be one of those people the Miami-Dade police divers find from time to time inside the trunk of a stolen car on the bottom of a canal, crabs crawling through their eye sockets.

  So he couldn’t afford to mess up. But things were looking good. The canvas-sack exchange was definitely on for tonight; his source on the Extravaganza had assured him of this. In fact, word was that this was a big exchange, which was a piece of unexpected luck. So was this tropical storm, Hector. Weather like this, nobody would see what was going on out there. That was good.

  Kemp knew it was going to be tricky. People might get hurt. Probably would, in fact. Too bad. These assholes were going to find out they’d made a big mistake, fucking with Bobby Kemp.

  A big mistake.

  Three

  WALLY FOUND THE PIECE OF PAPER IN HIS WALLET, dialed the number.

  “Yeah?” said a voice.

  “Hi,” said Wally. “This is Wally.”

  “Who?”

  “Wally. Hartley. From the band. We’re playing on the . . .”

  “What do you want?”

  “I was just wondering if it’s going out tonight. I mean, I’m assuming it’s not, what with this—”

  “It’s going out.”

  “It is? Because according to the weath—”

  “It’s going out.”

  “Well, OK, but, I mean, have you been watching the—”

  “It’s going out,” said the voice, hanging up.

  “Shit,” said Wally. He dialed bandmate Ted Brailey.

  “Hello?” said Ted.

  “Hey,” said Wally. “It’s me.”

  “Tell me something,” said Ted. “How many shooters did I do last night?”

  “I would say, conservatively, two hundred fifty,” said Wally.

  “Feels like more,” said Ted. “Feels like dogs humping inside my skull.”

  “Poetic,” said Wally.

  “Best I can do,” said Ted. “These are big dogs.”

  “You wanna feel worse?” said Wally.

  “I don’t think I can.”

  “The boat’s going out tonight.”

  “What? Have you looked outside? It’s a monsoon out there.”

  “Technically, it’s a tropical storm. Hector.”

  “Whoever it is, it looks nasty. Maybe we should quit this gig.”

  “Right. We can quit this gig, and since we have no other gigs lined up, we can live off all the shrewd investments we made over the years. Leather pants, for example.”

  “Good point,” said Ted. “Maybe we need to rethink our careers. Use our skills, get real jobs. No, wait, I forgot. We’re musicians. We have no skills.”

  “I’m gonna break the bad news to Jock and Johnny,” said Wally. “I’ll see you at the boat.”

  “If I live,” said Ted. “These are really big dogs.”

  Wally and Ted’s band—which Wally had rejoined after his brief, unhappy foray into the business world—was currently called Johnny and the Contusions. For the past three weeks, they’d been playing nightly on the Extravaganza of the Seas, where they replaced a band whose female vocalist suffered from seasickness, as became evident when she released a major stream of projectile vomit while singing “Wind Beneath My Wings.”

  The band—Wally on guitar, Ted on keyboards, Johnny Clarke on bass, and Jock Hume on drums—had been together for sixteen years. Wally was much closer to his bandmates than to either of his brothers, both of whom were older and had wives and kids and jobs inv
olving spreadsheets.

  For most of the band’s existence, they’d called themselves Arrival. This was the pathetically hopeful name they’d come up with when they’d started the band in tenth grade, begging their parents for money so they could buy instruments and amplifiers, figuring out chords, playing way too loud in somebody’s family room until somebody’s mom made them stop, or some neighbor called the cops. But they kept practicing, because they had a dream, which was to become the first major rock stars ever to emerge from Bougainvillea High School. Or at least get laid.

  By their senior year, they were semi-famous in their peer group. They won the talent show and played for a couple of class parties; on occasion, they actually did get laid. Not wanting to see this glamorous lifestyle come to an end, they decided, upon graduating, to stay together in Miami. They enrolled in community college, but only to placate their parents. What they really did was try to make it as a band.

  They did not make it far. Despite countless hours of practice, dozens of auditions, many artistic disputes, seven demo CDs, and two radical changes in hairstyle, Arrival never arrived. It wasn’t that they were bad; it was just that, as they reluctantly came to understand, they really weren’t anything special. They were competent. The problem was, there were competent bands everywhere. Competence wasn’t the key to stardom; you needed something else. Whatever it was, Arrival didn’t have it.

  In time, they accepted their lot and morphed into a generic cover band, taking whatever gigs they could get, mostly bars, sometimes private parties. Eventually, despite having vowed many times that they would never do this, they bought used tuxedos, learned “Wonderful World” and “Hava Nagilah,” and began playing weddings and bar mitzvahs.

  The worst was this: They’d be in some hotel ballroom on a Saturday afternoon, bone-tired from a Friday-night bar gig, their tuxedos soaked with hangover sweat, trying to feign enthusiasm as they croaked their way through some bogus party-hearty song (Cel-e-brate good times, come ON! Everybody get out on the floor and help Josh celebrate his special day!). And then, during a break, a guest would come up and say, “Didn’t you guys go to Bougainvillea?” And he’d turn out to be some guy who’d been in their class, some chess-club dork they’d been way too cool to know back then, and now he was giving them that look, the one that said, I’m a senior partner in an accounting firm; I live in a luxury condo, drive an Audi, and have a big corner office in a high-rise on Brickell Avenue; and you guys are still doing THIS?