“You never can tell,” I replied.
“Nice place to hang out,” he said.
“You bet. If you want a tab, I’ll talk to the bartender,” I said.
The short man laughed and accepted a stick of gum from the driver. Then he stepped close to Dallas and spoke to him in a whisper, one that caused the blood to drain out of Dallas’s face.
After the three men had gotten back into their Caddy and driven away, I asked Dallas what the short man had said.
“Nothing. He’s a jerk. Forget it,” he said.
“Who’s Whitey?”
“Whitey Bruxal. He runs a book out of a pizza joint in Hallen-dale.”
“You’re into him for sixteen grand?”
“I got a handle on it. It’s not a problem.”
Inside the bar, he pushed aside his food and ordered a Scotch with milk. After three more of the same, the color came back into his cheeks. He blew out his breath and rested his forehead on the heel of his hand.
“Wow,” he said quietly, more to himself than to me.
“What did that dude say to you?” I asked.
“One-one-five Coconut Palm Drive.”
“I don’t follow,” I said.
“I have a six-year-old daughter. She lives with her grandmother in the Grove. That’s her address,” he replied. He stared at me blankly, as though he could not assimilate his own words.
DALLAS INVITED ME to his apartment the next evening and cooked hamburgers for us on a hibachi out on a small balcony. Down below were blocks and blocks of one-story houses with gravel-and-tar roofs and yards in which the surfaces of plastic-sided swimming pools wrinkled in the wind. The sun looked broken and red on the horizon, without heat, veiled with smoke from a smoldering fire in the Glades. Dallas showed me pictures of his daughter taken in Orlando and in front of a Ferris wheel at Coney Island. One picture showed her in a snowsuit sewn with rabbit ears that flopped down from the hood. The little girl’s hair was gold, her eyes blue, her smile magical.
“What happened to her mom?” I said.
“She took off with a guy who was running coke from the Islands in a cigarette boat. They hit a buoy at fifty knots south of Pine Key. Get this. The guy flew a Cobra in ’Nam. My wife always said she loved a pilot.” He turned the burgers on the grill, his eyes concentrated on his task.
I knew what was coming next.
“Had a note under my door from Whitey this morning. I might have to take my little girl and blow Dodge,” he said.
I cracked a beer and leaned on the railing. In the distance I could see car lights flowing down a wide bend in an expressway. I sipped from the beer and said nothing in reply to his statement.
“I made a salad. Why don’t you dump it in a couple of bowls?” he said.
The silence hung between us. “I’ve got a couple of grand in a savings account. You want to borrow it?” I said, then raised the bottle to my mouth, waiting for the weary confirmation of the frailty and self-interest that exists in us all.
“No, thanks,” he said.
I lowered the bottle and looked at him.
“It’s just a matter of doing the smart thing,” he said. “I got to think it through. Whitey’s not a bad guy, he’s just got his—”
“What?” I said.
“His own obligations. Miami is supposed to be an open city. No contract hits, no one guy gets a lock on the action. But nothing goes on here that doesn’t get pieced off to the New York families. You see my drift?”
“Not really,” I said, not wanting to know more about Dallas’s involvement with Miami’s underworld.