Back in his police days, faces were Lawton’s strength. Faces and the names attached to them. But that other stuff, time and dates, chronologies, what happened when, he was never good with that. Like he’d gotten a head start on old age. So when all the rest of the stuff started evaporating in his head, like the fizz going out of a soft drink, it took Lawton and everybody else, even his daughter Alexandra, a good while to notice anything strange was happening.
Right then it was lunchtime, Wednesday. Easter coming up. Beyond the curtained windows the sky was full of juicy spring light, while the interior of Neon Leon’s Riverside Café was as murky as an underwater cave, most of the light coming from one big-screen TV that was tuned in to a pro wrestling match.
Charlie had another tug on his beer, wiped his mouth, and fixed his glare on the box in Lawton’s lap like he was cranking up his X-ray vision.
‘So that’s it?’ Charlie said. ‘You got it.’
‘Like I promised,’ Arnold said. ‘My word’s my bond.’
‘So what do you want from me, Arnold? Credit report? Take a polygraph, what?’
Arnold said nothing. Just eyed the young man in that leisurely way he had.
The boy was wearing khaki slacks and a blue button-down. A long way from the scruffy crowd around the rest of the bar. Tattoos and pierced eyelids everywhere you looked. Ratty T-shirts and torn jeans.
Brandy was silent, smiling nervously at Lawton. Brandy had on a shapeless shirt of pale green and baggy jeans. But the clothes didn’t conceal her. Already several of the guys at the bar had quit watching the wrestling match, swiveling their stools around to give Brandy their total attention.
‘Always in a hurry, this generation. Can’t wait to get to the end of the story, find out what happened. Lost the ability to savor. Isn’t that right, Lawton? Not like us old guys, sitting back, swishing the wine around in our mouths before we swallow it, enjoying every tick of the clock.’
‘True,’ Lawton said. ‘But I gotta say, this young lady certainly has nice bosoms. Firm and round. They’ll come in very handy for suckling her young.’
‘All right, that’s it,’ Harrison said. ‘Come on, Brandy, we’re out of here.’
Arnold reached out and thumped his knuckles on the manila envelope.
‘Keep your ass planted right there, Charlie. You’ll get what you want, but first I got to get what I want. Quid pro quo. You know your Latin, right?’
Charlie stared down at the baskets of fried food that sat in front of him and resettled himself in his seat.
For thirty years Arnold and Lawton had been friends and in all that time Arnold hadn’t changed a bit. Still master of ceremonies wherever he went. For five decades he’d run a sports book out of his condo up in Hallandale. Anybody that was anybody in South Florida knew Peretti.
Seventy-two and still commanded respect. Didn’t matter he was silver-haired with a short, stocky build. Didn’t matter he dressed like a dork. Like today in his lemon-yellow shirt, black shorts, and sandals with white knee-high socks. Big square glasses with gold frames. Behind the thick lenses his eyes were watery and dark. Everywhere he and Lawton went, people knew Arnold. The right people. They were always happy to see him, slapping him on the back, buying him drinks, lighting his cigars.
‘I think it’s me,’ Brandy said. ‘I think I’m the problem, Charlie. Your friend doesn’t want to do business with a woman present.’
Arnold glanced her way, then looked at Lawton, gave him a small, disappointed shake of the head.
‘What’re you going to do with this generation? Never had a decent war or a good Depression to give them any depth of character. Minute they were born, they thought they were entitled to the first-class seat without doing a damn thing to earn it.’
Brandy scooted to the edge of the booth.
‘Would you gentlemen excuse me? This lady needs a potty break.’
She stood up and ambled across the room, with Arnold and the gang at the bar following her movements reverently. As she passed by the last stool and turned into the murky back room, a rack of pool balls exploded.
‘Nice girl,’ Peretti said. ‘At least we know that much about you, Charlie. You got good taste in broads.’
Someone cheered at the bar, and Lawton turned in time to see a big guy on the TV with long hair and a beard toss a guy who looked just like him over the ropes into the first row of the crowd. A murmur passed along the bar. A couple of guys talking on cell phones pulled them away from their ears to watch.
‘I can’t tell which ones are the bad guys,’ Lawton said. ‘Used to be, you could tell.’
‘They’re all bad these days,’ Arnold said. ‘That’s what sells.’
‘Bad against bad? Where’s the fun in that?’
Out on the river a Haitian freighter piled high with mattresses and bicycles moved slowly downstream. Along the dock Arnold Peretti’s big Bertram bumped lightly against the pilings in the swell of the freighter’s wake.
Arnold selected a fried shrimp, dunked it in the cocktail sauce, sucked it down. He patted his lips with the napkin and smiled at Charlie.
‘Look, kid, I like to have a feel for the people I’m doing business with. Especially a thing like this, the likely repercussions.’
‘I’m an average guy. Let’s just leave it at that.’
Arnold settled a sharp look on Charlie. He tapped the manila envelope.
‘When you write this exposé, you’re going to piss some people off. You ready for that, Mr Average Guy? You ready to go into hiding for a while?’
Charlie pushed his Heineken aside. His eyes settled on the envelope.
‘Don’t worry, kid. It’s all there. Everything I promised. Blueprints, schematics, the whole deal.’
Charlie swallowed.
‘How’d you get hold of it, Arnold? Tell me that.’
‘Not to worry, kid. It came into my possession, now it’s about to pass into yours. And this thing, it’s a prototype. You know, a scale model. I don’t know if the goddamn thing even works, but there it is.’
‘It seems damn small for what it’s supposed to do,’ Charlie said.
‘Like I told you, all I know is what I overheard. Sounds to me like it’s a contraband weapon. Somebody’s doing a little arms dealing on the side. I thought somebody with some investigative training should look into it, expose the bastards.’
Arnold helped himself to another onion ring.
‘I need to know if you stole this stuff, Arnold.’
‘What? You think they said, Hey, Arnold, why don’t you take this thing out for a test drive? Damn right I stole it.’
‘So my article would be based on information acquired illegally.’
Arnold waved the thought away with his big paw.
‘Tell me something, Charlie. All this time I been talking to you, not once have you asked me why I’m exposing this guy.’
Charlie closed his eyes and opened them again, like Peretti was trying his patience.
‘All right, Arnold. So tell me. Why’re you exposing him?’
Arnold