Straits of Fortune Read online

  “What will you do now?”

  “That’s no longer your concern.”

  I thought for a moment. Something he’d said earlier was bugging me, and I’d almost forgotten it.

  “You mentioned that Vivian had stolen some of your research,” I said. “Supposedly for Matson. He used the film for leverage, is that it?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “What would Matson want with your work? The closest he ever came to chemistry was working behind the bar at Monty’s.”

  “Good-bye, Jack. It was nice of you to come. I hope I haven’t wasted too much of your time.”

  Suddenly I was the one who wanted to protest. My curiosity was winning out over my common sense. I wanted to know more, but I knew damned well I should get out of there. The trouble fuse had been lit, and it was just a matter of time before the whole thing blew. I knew it, and yet it still took considerable effort to walk away.

  “So long, Colonel,” I said, forcing the hollow words out. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you out.”

  “I was a fool to think you would.”

  I started to say something, but he had already turned his back and was staring out at the yacht. I watched it with him a moment. Then I turned and walked toward the house and left him sitting there with the sunlight, the yacht, the bottle of scotch, a lot of money, and no way around the fact that he had a daughter who would probably have to go to jail. I was walking away from a lot of trouble, and I knew it. I only wished that doing it were easier than it felt.

  Williams was outside standing by my car when I came out. The sun was in my face, and I lowered my shades.

  “I told him you wouldn’t do it,” he said.

  I went around to the driver’s side and unlocked the door without answering him. He took one step and placed his hand against the window.

  “You’re a piece of shit, mister. Don’t let anybody tell you different,” he told me.

  “You better have your blood pressure checked, Williams,” I said. “You’re about to explode. Now, get your hand off my car.” I pulled the door open, and he stepped away, watching me. I got in and started the engine. It was so hot I had to immediately roll down the windows.

  “Look,” I said to him through the open window, “you know I used to be a cop, right? So listen to me: Have her go to the police. It’ll be loud and it’ll be messy, but eventually it’ll be over. That’s the best advice I can offer you.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know. The old man’s in trouble.”

  “He’s not the only one,” I said. I gave him a salute and hit the gas.

  As I drove away, I saw Williams standing in the center of the driveway still watching me, getting smaller and smaller as I approached the gate. Like me, I’m sure he sensed that there was something left unfinished between us. I just didn’t know what it was. One thing I did know was that I didn’t owe the Colonel anything. I didn’t owe Vivian anything, and for sure I didn’t owe Williams anything, but the feeling of incompleteness remained, made me restless. I turned on the radio and began working the dial east and west, wandering through the songs. Nothing sounded good.

  I listened to the rich baritone voice of a Baptist minister, but his words on the nature of sin and salvation drifted past me like birds finding no place to land. On a channel far to the left, a woman talked at great length on the many benefits of tofu and other soy products. Around the dial again and Howard Stern was interviewing a man who had become a woman and a woman who had become a man. After a while I turned off the radio and listened to nothing, and I liked that a lot better. It was one of those days when the only thing that makes any sense is silence.

  I drove south on Biscayne Boulevard until I reached the Kennedy Causeway up on Seventy-ninth Street, then turned east toward the beach, my usual route, past the crab place and Mike Gordon’s with its big steaks and redwood waitresses. Two years on Miami Beach and the sight of a pelican still made me stare like a tourist. The wingspread of a ptero-dactyl; the focused, unblinking eye; the steady flight and the sword thrust of its long, gray beak into the bay. Then I was on the main bridge with Biscayne Bay flashing north and south, the sailboats placid and going nowhere.

  In a place like Miami, there is always the ongoing battle between the paradise visions of the past and the nightmare prophecies of the future. Depending on where you were at the time, it could be hard to tell which was winning, but today my windows were open and the sky was endless in all directions, and it seemed to me that paradise, my paradise, still had a few more good years left in her. New York was another life, crowded with memories, like a love affair that had been good while it lasted but you wouldn’t want back again, even if it could somehow be arranged.

  I had come to think of my life here as the “Miami Years,” both words capitalized and in quotes, like the heading of a chapter in a memoir I would probably never write. After the troubles in New York, I had headed for Miami because of Gus Santorino, an old cop who had broken me in on the force and then taken his savings south and opened a nightclub on the beach just as the party crowd began crowding the old folks out of “God’s Waiting Room,” as the beach used to be called. Come on down, Gus said, and so I did.

  So too began “The Uncertain Years.” Gus made me chief of security, but I was really just the king of the bouncers, battling with machos at three o’clock in the morning, and wearing a black bow tie and a tuxedo shirt that more often than not ended up with blood on the sleeves by the end of the night. The violence was part of the music, and it came in waves, rising through the pulse of the dancers like a tsunami. Someone would be given the old heave-ho, and the dancing would go on. The broken glass would be swept away, and the hips of the Cuban girls would start swaying again on the dance floor. Endless free drinks from the bartenders who watched my back and who never stole enough from Gus to get themselves fired. That, too, had been another life.

  I avoided the cocaine that was everywhere at the time, but I drank too much. Then one night I got into a footrace with a purse snatcher outside the club and wound up doubled over, out of breath, out of shape, and sucking wind big time. That was something I couldn’t tolerate. I found a gym owned by an old-timer named Cal (a friend of Gus’s) a few blocks from where I lived and slowly started on the road back. I lifted weights and I ran. I took kickboxing classes and yoga. My social life was a series of workouts. I trained alone and didn’t make any friends, and then one day when I was on the treadmill, I noticed Cal looking at me from where he sat behind the counter selling memberships and protein shakes. Our eyes met, and the old man nodded.

  Then he offered me a job.

  And so the segue from cop to bouncer to personal trainer was complete, and I became a gym rat for hire. I took a test and got a certificate, and Cal set me loose on the clientele, but I knew what I was doing. The biggest problem was the amount of talking required, and I was not in a talking frame of mind back then, but there was no way around it. Clients, especially the women, expected you to talk, but, being a cop, I was a lot better at listening. It got so that I became some kind of damned hairdresser or psychologist. I could write a book with the stories I heard. If you ever want confirmation that most of the people in the world are crazy, then my advice is to set up shop as a personal trainer. Fifty bucks an hour minus the split with Gus, and a new nut every hour.

  It was an unexpected life, and there were many times when I felt that it was the wrong life. Not a bad life, mind you, just a sidebar to the main story, the threads of which I had somehow lost. A year turned into two years. I made money, but that didn’t help relieve the feeling that somewhere out there my “real” life was waiting for me to come and live it. I was wrong about that, of course. There is no other life besides the one you’re living in the here and now. To think otherwise is just another brand of self-pity, and remember: The speed bumps are there for a reason, and it’s not the one you think.

  More than once I found myself on the verge of becoming a police officer again. Even Gus and Cal
thought it was a good idea. As trainers went, I was good, very good. I spent a lot of time in the library studying exercise physiology, nutrition. There was a lot to know. I even thought of going back to school to get a degree, but my heart just wasn’t in it. Finally I gave in and took the cop test for the city of Miami, but when they called me down for an interview, I decided not to show. The truth is, I just couldn’t see myself in a uniform again.

  Then one day in the spring of ’99, Cal calls me into his office, and sitting across from him is this beautiful, black-haired Asian woman—about twenty-five or so—whom I had never seen before. She had a bold look in her eye, I’ll tell you that much. She stood up and offered me her hand, and suddenly I was facing a lot of leg. She was wearing a pair of white shorts that in Kansas City would have been scandalous. Fortunately, however, my brothers and sisters, we were not in Kansas City. Down here those little white shorts made perfect sense. Like a pith helmet on the banks of the Zambezi River. They were even a bit on the conservative side—not by much, though.

  “Vivian Patterson,” she said. “You must be Jack Vaughn. Cal was just telling me about you.”

  The vibe that came off of her was different from her appearance. That happens with the beautiful sometimes. You’re so busy looking at them that you don’t see them. You miss the extra glint in their eyes, that extra burst of life and the gift of mystery some people have. She had it.

  The legs had thrown me off for a moment, but that was understandable. Impeccable manners and the voice were not what I would have expected. Another surprise to sweep away the veil of her appearance. She could have passed for a Valley Girl, but the accent had a trace of England mixed with something else that brought it home again.

  The boldness in her eye was not sexual in cast or in intensity of expression, just appraising and self-assured. The sex was there, though, lounging in the background like a black cat on a Persian rug. You know what I mean. It was blended in, natural, nothing artificial, no need to force it.

  We sat down, and Cal got called out of the office for a moment. There was the usual awkward silence that hangs in the air like an invisible piñata waiting to be broken. I let it hang. No sense saying anything stupid until it was absolutely necessary. Besides, if you’re quiet, you can feel people. I caught a lot of people that way when I was a cop.

  “Cal said you used to be a police officer,” she said.

  “Yeah, in New York.”

  I was a little pissed at Cal for having told her about the cop thing. I understood why he did it, though, especially with the wealthy, the famous, or the nervous. People figured that it made me that much less likely to haul off a Hummer or talk to a tabloid. Maybe they were right, but I didn’t think so. Either you’re honest or you’re not. I wasn’t a thief, and I knew how to keep my mouth shut, but I hadn’t learned that at the academy. My father had beaten it into my head with his shoe and other sundry objects. Plus, I read the right comic books.

  “I’m looking for someone to train my father,” she said. “You’d have to come to the house. It’s quite nice there, really. Would that be a problem?”

  I was glad she was talking to me mainly, because it gave me an excuse to look at her without being impolite. She had the glossy black hair of a Chinese, but she looked mixed, maybe Eurasian. Everything about her seemed to come from someplace else.

  “Mind if I ask you a question?” I said.

  “Not at all.”

  “That’s almost a British accent you have, but not completely.”

  “I went to school in England when I was little. I guess I haven’t lost it yet—the accent I mean. Well, what do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “Training my father. What did you think I meant?”

  Cal had come back into the office, and I was conscious of him sitting back in his swivel chair watching us.

  I laughed. “I thought you were asking me about your accent. I mean, what I thought about it.”

  “Well?”

  “Keep it. It’s nice.”

  She smiled. “Thank you.”

  “Let’s stick to business, okay, kids?” Cal said mercifully. “I’m trying to make a living here.”

  “Where does he live?” I asked. “Your father, I mean. We have to tack on a bit for the travel time.”

  “Not a problem. He’s out on Sunset Beach.” She studied me to see what effect the address was going to have on me. I wasn’t surprised. She had the look of money without being obvious about it. Everything top-shelf but inconspicuous—Cartier watch, small diamonds. Was it old money? I didn’t think so. It didn’t have that musty, old-book smell to it.

  “Sunset Beach? Sure, I’ve been there,” I said. “Except they always make me leave when it gets dark.”

  She looked at me for a long moment, as though I’d said something strange or more revealing than I had intended. Then she laughed.

  “I think my father will like you.”

  “Really, why so?”

  “You’re in disguise. You have secrets. He likes that. People look at you, but they don’t see you. But my father will see you. And I see you.”

  “I see you, too.”

  She looked around. “I guess smoking in here is out of the question.”

  “I don’t think Cal would like that. He smokes his cigars outside.”

  She studied me for a moment. “I’ve seen you before,” she said. “Do you go to the clubs?”

  “I did when I worked at one.”

  “Which one?” she asked. “I’ve been to all of them.”

  I told her.

  “Let me guess: You were a bouncer. Don’t take it personally, but you’re the type they’d stand by the door.”

  “Really?” I said. “I thought of it more as public relations. The darker side, of course.”

  “You see?” Vivian said triumphantly. “I told you, another disguise,” she said. “Tell me, who are you really, Jack Vaughn?”

  I decided to give her a serious answer. “I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “I really have no idea.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Cal said. “All this talking is killing me.” He sprang out of his chair and stalked out of the office. I was glad to see him go.

  Something in my tone must have convinced her that I was telling the truth. We stared at one another for a moment. I sensed a certain hunger in both of us to keep up the conversation. She was the kind of person you could really talk to.

  “I know what you mean,” she said, looking around the room. “Sometimes I think that perhaps I’ve traveled too much. After a while everything seems foreign.” She looked at me earnestly as though to see what I would make of her statement.

  “I think I know what you mean,” I said.

  “Yes, I think you do.”

  Then Cal had come back. I know the three of us talked, but I don’t know if I made any sense that day. She wanted someone she could trust to come out to the house and train her dad, a Colonel Patterson. It didn’t matter, though. I would have buried dead mules in her backyard with a tablespoon if she had asked me to. We had known each other for a thousand years. It was just a question of getting reacquainted. No need to rush.

  When she had gone, Cal frowned at me for long moment. He twirled a pencil around in his gnarled fingers and shook his head.

  “What the hell was that all about?” he asked in that gruff voice of his.

  “What? You heard her,” I said. “I’m going to train her father.”

  “It’s not what I heard, shithead; it’s what I saw.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “My ass you don’t. You two really hit it off. I about expected her panties to fly off when she stood up.”

  “You’re crazy,” I told him.

  “I’ve been crazy, and I’m going to stay crazy, too, but there was something pretty jazzy going on between you two.” He looked more worried than pleased when he said it. “You know what they say about business and pleasure.”

  “Y
ou’re telling me I should stay away from her? You don’t have to tell me that, Cal. And you’re forgetting one thing: I am a certified personal trainer. That has to mean something in this crazy world.”

  “It means shit. Look, wise guy, I didn’t say you had to stay away from her, not necessarily, but you’ve got to play it right. And sometimes that means not playing it at all. Can you grasp the subtle fucking mystery of what I’m telling you? Sometimes you just got to grin and bear it. You got to stand like Cary Grant with his hands in his pockets. You’re smart. You know what I’m saying. Don’t give me that certified bullshit.”

  “I know what you mean. I’ve got to stand like Cary Grant.”

  “Is that right? Say that when she’s sitting by the swimming pool, wise-ass; when it’s hot and you’re thinking, What the hell? When she’s asking you to put the suntan lotion on her back. What are you going to say then, Charlie Chan? What? ‘Cal, I fucked up. Her father’s on his way over here with a flamethrower. Save me, Cal.’”

  I laughed. “What the hell movie did you get that from?”

  “No movie, real life. I been in this business for fifty years. Right after the war. I was real cute then, muscles and everything. Not out of a bottle like Raul. He’s on the juice again, by the way. You know how many women have tried to kill me? Go ahead, guess.”

  “All right,” I said. “Ten.”

  “Actually, it was nine. Then I got old and retired from being stupid. You’re still on active duty in that department. I’m thinking of making a comeback, though. I can still get a boner you can hang a mink coat on. Hah! I bet you never heard that one before!”

  I had an apartment that year near the beach up in Surfside, not far from the old movie theater that some friends of mine had leased and converted into a gym. I trained a few of my clients there. I had moved up there after the northerly migration created by the hurricane back in ’98 had driven up the rent prices down on South Beach to the point where I had to either buy a condo or spend the rest of my days resigned to the task of helping send my landlord’s kids to Harvard. In the end I moved north.