"You come back, hear? I"m off at nine tonight."

"Wish I could, Kay. I really do. But this one is priority."

The desk tried to brush me off. I told the cold-eyed old man to check with Mr. Nucci before he made it final. He went over and murmured into the phone, studying me as he talked. He hung up and came over and told me that if I would go to the Winner"s Circle Bar, Mr. Nucci would join me there in a few minutes.

It was more like twenty minutes before he slipped onto the stool beside mine. He wore a brown denim suit with lots of pockets and ropes and zippers, and a yellow velvet shirt, open to the umbilicus. His face was bland-brown, hairless as his brown smooth chest. Sleepy eyes, languid manner, a thin little mouth, like a newborn shark.

w.i.l.l.y Nucci started as a bus boy and now owns more points in the Contessa than anyone else. This is an unlikely Horatio Alger story along the oceanfront. He managed it by making various pressure groups believe he was fronting for other, just as deadly, pressure groups. He did it by expert intelligence work, bra.s.s, guile, persistence, and hard work. Nearly everyone thinks he is a front for New Jersey money, money that comes down to be dry-cleaned and flown back or flown abroad. I am one of the very few people who know w.i.l.l.y is clean and that he owns the biggest piece of the hotel. Maybe the IRS knows.

The motif of the bar is horse. Everything except saddle horns on the bar stools. In season it is a good place for the winners to spend and the losers to cry.

"I kept you waiting," Willie said in a flat voice. Statement of fact. I nodded. Silence is the best gambit with w.i.l.l.y Nucci, because it is one of his useful weapons. He makes people edgy by saying nothing. It"s always handy to use the other man"s tricks, because he never knows if he is being mocked.

I outwaited him, and finally he said, "It"s your dime, McGee."

"Look at the edge of my gla.s.s."

He leaned toward it, tilting his head, and saw the little pale pink smear of stale lipstick. He called the barman over and chewed him in a small terrible voice. The man swayed and looked sweaty. He brought me a new drink, delivering it with a flourish and a look of splendid hatred.

"What else is bothering you?" w.i.l.l.y asked.

"I have a name, an address, a description, and I want a fill-in."

"I don"t know many people anymore. The Beach keeps changing."

"You have have to know, w.i.l.l.y." to know, w.i.l.l.y."

"All I have have to do is run this place and turn a dime on it for the owners." to do is run this place and turn a dime on it for the owners."

"w.i.l.l.y?"

He gave me a quick, sidelong glance. Silence. A barely audible sigh.

"w.i.l.l.y, there is a young lady with a lot of energy on the paper in Lauderdale, and she keeps after me, saying she wants human interest stories about playtown, USA. She digs pretty good. She knows how to use courthouse records."

He got up slowly, looking tired. "Come on, d.a.m.n you."

We went out past the guard and the empty pool and up the stairs to the roof of the cabana row of the Contessa Hotel. These are the days of exotic bugs, induction mikes, shotgun mikes. People like w.i.l.l.y Nucci talk in the open, at night, near surf roar or traffic roar. Or they rent cars and turn the radio volume high and drive around and talk. They never say anything useful over the phone, and they put in writing the bare minimum information required by the various laws and regulatory agencies.

We crossed the recreation roof to the ocean side and stood side by side, leaning on the railing. Freighters were working south, inside the stream. The sleepy ocean whacked listlessly at the little bit of remaining beach, with a little green-white glow of phosph.o.r.escence where it tumbled.

In my Frank McGee voice instead of my Travis McGee voice, I said, "When w.i.l.l.y Nucci quietly acquired his first small percentage of the Contessa Hotel, it was laboring under the crushing burden of a sixth and a seventh mortgage. Today, hiding behind a bewildering maze of legal stratagems, Mr. Nucci is not only the princ.i.p.al owner, but he has managed to pay off most of the indebtedness-"

He responded, his voice rising with exasperation. "Look. Okay. I wanted to tell somebody. I somebody. I wanted to brag. We had a lot of time and nothing to do, and neither one of us figured we had a chance of getting out of there once it was daylight and they could use those G.o.dd.a.m.n rifles." wanted to brag. We had a lot of time and nothing to do, and neither one of us figured we had a chance of getting out of there once it was daylight and they could use those G.o.dd.a.m.n rifles."

"Wouldn"t you like other people to know?"

He calmed down. "Sure I would. But it would cost me. I get nibbled pretty good. The unions, the a.s.sessments, the graft, the public servants on the take, the gifts you make like insurance premiums. But there"s restraint. They have the idea that if the bite gets too big, some very important muscle is going to come down here and straighten some people out. If they knew it was just w.i.l.l.y Nucci, owner and operator, there would be a big grin, and they"d smack their lips and move in very tight and close. I don"t have much margin to play with. I"ve got sixteen years invested. The books look good right now. Last season was good, and this one will be better. You might as well know this too. I"m going to try to move it this season. I can come out well. And cut out of here. How come I always run off at the mouth to you, McGee?"

"I win friends and influence people."

He frowned at his private piece of ocean. "You could have used what you know, but you haven"t. Except you use it to leverage me."

"Not often."

"I make this the third time. In three years. Maybe this time I can"t help you."

"The man is big and broad and suntanned. Officially or unofficially, he"s in a penthouse at the Seascape. He moves around with some fetch-and-carry people. Frank Sprenger."

Silence. He pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked up at murky stars.

"w.i.l.l.y?"

"I don"t know how much you know about the way things are. For all I know you think that soft, romantic crock of s.h.i.t, The G.o.dfather The G.o.dfather, was for real."

"I thought it was real, like a John Wayne western."

"There"s hope for you. All the action is divided up. There are independents, and when they get big enough, they are absorbed or smashed. There are three neutral areas. Places where anybody can go who is part of the national action and not get pressured. Sanctuaries. Miami, Vegas and Honolulu. There are hits sometimes, but outsiders, amateurs. Discipline situations. "Do not c.r.a.p in your own nest" is the motto. There"s enough for everybody in the sanctuaries. That"s how come you have maybe nine different groups from elsewhere, owning lots of pieces of property and pieces of action along the Beach here. Like there are twelve groups operating side by side in in Vegas. Other areas are strictly territorial. That"s how come all the trouble in New York lately. Now suppose every one of the nine organizations operating here sent down their own bag men and bankers and enforcers? It would get too hairy. People would start pushing. People would push back. It would stop being a safe place for the topside people to come and relax, and it would hurt trade. So there"s been a working arrangement for maybe thirty years. The local group has their own operations, like a franchise area, but you can see how it wouldn"t be fair to cut the out-of-town groups out of the picture entirely because a certain substantial piece of business comes through their owning certain situations here." Vegas. Other areas are strictly territorial. That"s how come all the trouble in New York lately. Now suppose every one of the nine organizations operating here sent down their own bag men and bankers and enforcers? It would get too hairy. People would start pushing. People would push back. It would stop being a safe place for the topside people to come and relax, and it would hurt trade. So there"s been a working arrangement for maybe thirty years. The local group has their own operations, like a franchise area, but you can see how it wouldn"t be fair to cut the out-of-town groups out of the picture entirely because a certain substantial piece of business comes through their owning certain situations here."

"Example?"

"Okay, say that Minneapolis has substantial points in a couple of hotels and owns a steak house franchise and a taxi company. The local group will be scoring from every part of the operations. Hookers and games and drugs at the hotels on top of linen service, union dues, kickbacks, dozens of angles. And they will work the steak houses and the taxi company pretty good too. So it works almost like a money-room skim. The extra costs of doing business get built into the books as legitimate expenses, and then out of the unrecorded cash flow, an equal amount gets bundled up and couriered to Minneapolis. The profit is minimized, which cuts taxes, and the rebate is under the table, ready for more investment."

"And somebody has to be the bookkeeper and enforcer, somebody everybody agrees on, to see that the skim is honest?"

"For the last six years, Frank Sprenger. Phoenix. Before that it was Bunny Colder, for years and years. He died of a stroke. I heard that some kinky girlfriend got him smashed and then ran a sharpened piano wire into his brain through the corner of his eye, but n.o.body ran an autopsy to check it out."

"What is Sprenger like?"

"I"ll tell you what he"s like. He"s like exactly the right man for the job. He doesn"t use anything, not even booze or tobacco or coffee. He"s a body freak. Not muscle building. Conditioning. He lives like a good heavyweight six weeks away from a t.i.tle shot. Except for women. He takes care of more than his share. He spends a lot of time crosschecking the action. He"s found some people clipping off a little as the money went by them, and they are not seen around anymore. I hear the local group has stopped trying to con him, because it isn"t safe or healthy."

"What"s his cover?"

"Investment consultant. He has a second-floor office on Lincoln Road. He"s in the yellow pages. He pays his taxes. I think maybe he has some legitimate clients. He"s a careful man."

I waited until I thought of the right kind of hypothetical question. "w.i.l.l.y, I want you to listen to some stuff I am going to make up and tell me if it could happen. Let"s say that in the past year and a half Frank Sprenger has been buying important paintings. He has been using an expert and paying a fee for his judgment. Four hundred thousand worth of art. It"s been going into a storage warehouse.

"Possible?"

"Sure," w.i.l.l.y said. "Especially if it"s on a cash basis."

"Say it is."

"Money makes more problems every day. You hear how they want banks to report everything over five thousand? Now they are beginning to crack the Swiss and get the numbers. The islands used to be good, but what"s going to happen to the Bahamas, the Caymans, Jamaica the next couple of years? It"s very hard to set up a corporation and feed cash into it in such a way you can get past an audit. You put cash in a jar in your back yard, it isn"t working for you. It"s shrinking all the time it"s buried. Dry-cleaning money gets more expensive all the time. One way they are using lately is you buy yourself a broker, one who"ll fake back records for the sake of the commission and a little present. Then you set up a buy five years ago for something that has gone up like eight hundred percent. Then you have the sale records faked too and pay capital gains, and what you have left is legitimate and you can invest it legitimate. You have to be your own fence, for G.o.d"s sake. So why not paintings? I like it. He would be handling it for one of the out-of-town groups or individuals. He handles investment money right here. The local group has legal talent he can use. Raw land has been good. Pieces of home-building outfits have been good. In-and-out marinas have been good."

"How much would he be supervising in a year? I mean, how much would the total skim be, the amount he"d be watching?"

"McGee, this has to be absolutely horseback. I could be off, way way off."

"Take a guess."

"Well... working it backward and saying that the total take for the Florida group in this area is seventy-five million with fifteen million expenses, and maybe twenty-five percent of the net is reimbursed on account of special ownership... Sprenger keeps an eye on maybe fifteen million."

"And invests invests that much?" that much?"

"Oh, h.e.l.l no! The groups mostly have got their own way of handling a cash rebate. It goes back by messenger. Frank might have to find a home down here for one mil, or one and a half, or even two."

"Okay. Now here is the final suppose. Suppose that right now all those paintings in that bonded warehouse are fake."

He snapped his head around, eyes wide open for the first time that evening. "You have some weird sense of fun there, McGee."

"Think out loud."

"Well... Sprenger wouldn"t know it. He wouldn"t get into that kind of a con. Unless, of course, he had orders to spoil somebody"s day. But I don"t think they"d use him for that. He"s too good doing what he does. Okay. Sprenger doesn"t know. Then he"s dead."

"Literally?"

"Literally. Because there are only two choices when the news gets out. Sprenger is either getting cute or getting stupid. And they can"t take a chance either way. The only reverse leverage he has is what he knows. So he has to be taken dead before he can get a chance to use it. It"s a standard risk. A man like Sprenger makes as much money as the president of Eastman Kodak. He accepts the occupational risk. If he goofs, he gets more than fired. And if he goofs and has any small chance of covering himself before the news gets out, he would gut his brother, peddle his sister and feed his father and his G.o.dfather to alligators, a hunk at a time, to earn that small chance."

"Why are you so sure Sprenger will do what he"s told to do?"

"Where have you been? They never let anybody close to the money unless they"ve got a good lock on him. Sprenger will always be some kind of errand boy. Somewhere there is something in writing or on tape or on film that some prosecutor can"t ignore. Like with the talent they own. n.o.body goes looking for a new manager if the one you already have owns your a.s.s."

In silence he looked down at the eroded beach. He said dolefully, "They want to pump umpty-seven billion yards of sand in front of all the hotels, a big beach like in 1919 they had. Bond issues, big a.s.sessments, more taxes, just so all the clowns can go parading by on public beach land for maybe two years before a hurricane takes it all back out to sea. And after next season this old crock hotel will need a quarter mil of maintenance and redecorating. With luck I"m out by April."

"w.i.l.l.y?"

"Uh?"

"You"ve got me wondering. You have to get a rebate from Sprenger."

"I should sidestep it and give up the edge?"

"But how?"

"Maybe there is a little spin-off group of like investors in St. Louis, and maybe they have sixteen points. So a hundred percent of the skim goes there, and they take twenty-two percent instead of sixteen, in return for running it in and out of some accounts before it ends up in something which could be called maybe Acme Management a.s.sociates or Scranton Development Corporation."

"Which could be you?"

"Not entirely, but mostly. There"s no other way I can go and still make out. You can"t fight the establishment."

"Funny thing to call it."

"Why? It"s the way things are. They put a night bell captain on. I don"t have to pay him a dime. What"s your pleasure? Hash-candy from Calcutta? A Greek virgin? Table-stakes poker? Cuban cigars? A quick abortion? Mexican gold? An albino dwarf? If you can afford the ticket, you"ve got it. I can"t get rid of him. The cops probably know he"s dealing. But if they charge him, if the case is airtight, it still goes all the way to jury, and after the jury is picked, it takes two phone calls. Or three. Cash money if you vote to acquit, Pancho. And if Alfred gets convicted, you"ll come home from work some day and find something that"ll give you a weak stomach the rest of your life. Who stands up to that? n.o.body. The klutz with no connections cops a plea, and they process him into the slammer. Alfred, my special employee, will never do a day of time unless he gets smarta.s.s and they want to settle him down. n.o.body really gives a G.o.dd.a.m.n anymore, McGee. Everybody wants to keep his own a.s.s safe from harm." He paused and made a sound which was like a suppressed gag. Maybe it was laughter. I"d never heard w.i.l.l.y Nucci laugh before, so I couldn"t tell. "Even me," he said. "Especially me."

Chapter Four.

I felt guilty about leaving Meyer alone for so long. I had no way of knowing w.i.l.l.y was going to make ZsaZsa sound like a mute. I always feel guilty when I keep Meyer waiting. And there is never any need for it. He never paces up and down, checking the time. He has those places to go, inside his head. He looks as if he was sitting and dozing, fingers laced across his middle. Actually he has walked back into his head, where there are libraries, concert halls, work rooms, experimental laboratories, game rooms. He can listen to a fine string quartet, solve chess problems, write an essay on Chilean inflation under Allende, or compose haiku. He had a fine time back in there. If you could put his head in a jar of nutrient and keep him alive forever, he would wear forever that gentle, contented little smile. felt guilty about leaving Meyer alone for so long. I had no way of knowing w.i.l.l.y was going to make ZsaZsa sound like a mute. I always feel guilty when I keep Meyer waiting. And there is never any need for it. He never paces up and down, checking the time. He has those places to go, inside his head. He looks as if he was sitting and dozing, fingers laced across his middle. Actually he has walked back into his head, where there are libraries, concert halls, work rooms, experimental laboratories, game rooms. He can listen to a fine string quartet, solve chess problems, write an essay on Chilean inflation under Allende, or compose haiku. He had a fine time back in there. If you could put his head in a jar of nutrient and keep him alive forever, he would wear forever that gentle, contented little smile.

He came reluctantly back to the lesser reality of here and now and, as I drove north up A-l-A, he told me he had a confrontation with urchins. They had a needle-sharp icepick and thought a protection price of five dollars per tire was a good place to start the bargaining.

"We had a nice conversation," Meyer said.

"You had a nice conversation."

"I told them that theirs was a profession mentioned in the first writings of mankind over thirty centuries ago. Roving bands of barbarians would demand that a village pay tribute, or they would sack it."

"They listened to the lecture?"

"A discussion, not a lecture. Questions and answers. There is a parallel, of course, in Vietnam, where the Viet Cong would spare villages in return for food, shelter, and information. And I told them about the Barbary pirates extracting tribute from our merchant vessels. Then they went away finally. After they were gone, I remembered we hadn"t decided on any dollar figure. I guess they forgot."

"Three of them."

"Age twelve, thirteen, and fourteen."

"Meyer, did it ever occur to you that one of those half-size hoodlums could have shoved an icepick into you?"

I could sense he was genuinely startled and upset. "Into me? But why?"

Why indeed? Conversely, why not? I don"t know exactly what it is about Meyer. Sometimes, for fun, when we have been at someone"s home, I have seen him do his St. Francis bit, when there has been a bird feeder visible from a window. Meyer goes and stands a few feet from the feeder. The birds come back. They look him over. They talk about him. And in a few minutes they start landing on him. Once when we took a runover dog to a veterinarian, the man told Meyer he had good hands. Meyer could hold the dog still. It snapped at the doctor. I have been on the beach with Meyer and five hundred people and had a frantic girl run directly to Meyer to tell him she was hallucinating and please help me, please. It is a rare attribute, but not all that rare. Lots of people have it in varying degrees. Maybe it is an echo of the remote past when we all lived in the peaceable kingdom. We should find out what it is, how to increase the apt.i.tude, how to teach it to others. It is symptomatic of our times that no one is studying this wild card, n.o.body thinks it important. In an icepick world, any kind of immunity is crucially important. Any avenue of loving kindness needs some directional signs.

I went up A-l-A looking for a place I had not been to in a long time. Meyer had never been there. It was near Hallandale. I know I made the right turn. I cruised a few blocks. Everything looked strange. I put my old electric blue pickup truck next to a gas island where electronic pumps squatted like skeptical Martians. After extravagant admiration, and several questions about Miss Agnes, the attendant let me ask my question.

"Huh? Oh sure. h.e.l.l, it"s been maybe two years. That old house was right down there where that big red and white chicken is flapping its wings. Chicky-Land. Let me see. It was Rosa and... and..."

"Vito."

"Right! I took the old lady there plenty of times on special occasions. They could handle maybe twenty-four people, tops. Reservations only. You never knew what you"d get for dinner, but by G.o.d it was always delicious and always more than you could eat. They treated you like guests in their home."

"What happened?"

He frowned as he cleaned the high windshield. "Something about the zoning and all. They started giving them fits. Rewire the place, then redo the plumbing, then put in some kind of sprinkler system. Then change the kitchen over somehow. They say somebody wanted that land. Every time something had to be done, they"d have to close until it was all okay and approved. Then Rosa had some kind of breakdown, and Vito went down to a meeting and broke the nose on one of the commissioners. They jailed him, but some of his old customers with clout got him out and got it all quieted down. They went away someplace. I heard one of the commissioners was in the group that bought up that whole two blocks for the shopping plaza and Chicky-Land."

"If you wanted to find a meal that good right now, where would you go?" I asked him.

He took my money and made change as he thought it over. Finally he said, "d.a.m.n if we just don"t eat that good anymore anywhere. Funny, sort of. Big, rich country like this. Everything starting to taste like stale sawdust. Maybe it"s just me."

"We are all living in chicky land," I told him.

Back in the car, heading home, I told Meyer about the little sculpture garden Vito and Rosa Grimaldi had fixed up. White cement statues of swooning maidens and oddly proportioned animals. With a dozen complicated floodlights which all kept changing color, focused on the statuary and the three small fountains and the plantings. "So incredibly vulgar, it was somehow very touching."

"As vulgar as that big red and white electric chicken?"