Free Florida Straits by SKLA Page A

unofficial, but they are—it's like an open
secret. Your father's people, supposedly they're not. But no
offense, Joey, your father's crew has this like superior
attitude—"
    "I hear ya," Joey cut in. "I ain't offended,
believe me."
    "Yeah, well, to them," Bert went on, "it's
like the guys that are in drugs are outlaws, outsiders. They don't
respect 'em, they think of 'em as fair game, like as if they
weren't friends of ours.
    "So, what happens with Charlie Ponte is
this. He's expecting a two-million-dollar shipment from the
Colombians, and the shipment is seized by the Feds. Charlie doesn't
even get a look at it. So now he's pissed. He's got dealers without
product, his business is disrupted. But the Colombians, they're so
fucking rich it's unbelievable. Their attitude is like, 'Oh well,
that shipment was only a few million. Kiss it goodbye.' The main
thing to them is to keep the account active. So they want Charlie
to be happy. So they say to him, 'Look, you were expecting two
million in product, we'll give ya tree million in emeralds. Keep it
as collateral, sell it off, it's up to you.' It's like a token of
goodwill."
    "Some token," Joey said.
    "Yeah, right," Bert said. "But these guys,
the money they have, it's like you or me giving a guy a buck to
park the car. So anyway, Charlie gets his emeralds. Or supposedly
he does. They get dropped someplace in Coconut Grove—I don't blow
where, and I don't wanna know. But a safe place, a place that's
been used before, and only the Colombians and Charlie Ponte's guys
know about it. And that's where they disappear from."
    Joey tugged at an earlobe, then raked the
back of his hand across his unshaven face. Tiny squiggles of
limestone dust floated in the slashed light of the louvered
windows. "Bert," he said, "maybe I'm a little slow, but I still
don't see where this has to do with my father."
    Bert leaned over to check on the dog, and
moved it out of a stripe of sun into a stripe of shade. "Joey,
there were a coupla low-level guys who were like floating between
the two crews. They'd commute between Miami and New York, they'd do
little errands for Ponte, little jobs for your old man. They were
lookin' to get made, and they were very ambitious. They found out
more than they needed to know about the drop in Coconut Grove. They
ain't floatin' no more, Joey. They're lookin' at coral. Up close.
And they ain't got no snorkels."
    "Jesus," said Joey, and in spite of himself
he almost smiled. Not that he was happy about guys getting clipped;
it was just exhilarating to be near some action again, to be
getting information. "So you're saying these guys brought in other
guys in my father's crew?"
    Bert shrugged. "These guys were angling for
a button, Joey. A tree-million-dollar score earns a guy some
points. But of course, scoring it from another family was not too
bright."
    "Maybe the spicks welshed. Maybe they took
the stones back. Maybe they were never delivered."
    "Could be," said Bert. "But that isn't the
Colombians' style. Why would they bother?"
    Bert slowly crossed his legs and drummed his
fingers lightly on the arm of the settee. For the first time, he
seemed to be looking around at Joey's cottage, at the bad paintings
of birds and shells, the haphazard furniture made tolerable and
even likable by the fact that it was rented and not owned. "Not a
bad little place," he said without enthusiasm.
    Joey gave a modest nod. "Well, it ain't the
Paradiso. But it's fine until I really get on my feet." He shot the
older man a wry glance, which was as close as he would come to
admitting that that might be never.
    Then there was a pause. If Joey had been
watching closely, he would have noticed that Bert the Shirt was
momentarily exhausted and was marshaling his strength. But Joey
wasn't watching closely, he was slipping back into his obsession
with figuring how to pull a living out of Florida. "And that
reminds me. I was thinkin', Bert, about what you said the other
day, ya know, about money comin'