“Here you go, Mr. King. Whole wheat bagel, cream cheese, café con leche.”
Sammi set his food before him, and Stanton King rewarded her with a smile. For the past two months she’d been his waitress. College girl, nineteen, with wide hips and an unflagging resolve to flash her bejeweled belly button. As was her habit, Sammi stole a glance at the port-wine stain that marked Stanton’s right cheek, then blinked and looked away.
Vascular lesion. Nevus flammeus. The vessels and capillaries were enlarged and dilated. As the decades rolled by, the color had deepened, and nodular and papular hemangiomas developed, causing increased disfigurement and irregularity of the skin texture. Classic case.
To make matters worse, that patch of skin seemed directly wired to his emotional switching station. When he was calm, the stain merely tingled, but in times of stress it became a scalding sore, pulsing brightly as if to broadcast his agitated inner state.
Once a South Florida power broker, Stanton King was now reduced to a mere Coconut Grove eccentric who each day at this late-morning hour pedaled his bike from his estate on St. Gaudens Road up the bumpy bike path, along Main Highway, past Ransom Everglades School, into the shade of towering banyans that had been giants even when Stanton was a boy. To onlookers he no doubt seemed to be yet another ancient hippie cruising the streets in search of his stoned youth. Few locals knew his name, or the role he’d played in shaping the city’s destiny, not to mention the influence he once wielded in matters more far-reaching.
His grandfather was a two-term governor of Florida and his father a congressman and golfing buddy of a Democratic president. Even as a child, Stanton had been groomed for higher office. Though certainly the position his ancestors had in mind was loftier than the only one he’d attained. Mayor Stanton King. One brief stint in the limelight of city politics. A boy wonder whose meteoric career fizzled just as suddenly from a single disastrous misjudgment.
Now his only striving was to disappear into the sameness of each day. At exactly eleven Stanton rode his Schwinn to Café Europa. Same tiny table, same teetering metal chair out on the sunny sidewalk. He had his café con leche, his bagel, his dollop of cream cheese, and watched the world pass. Each afternoon he whiled away the hours at the Japanese Gardens on MacArthur Causeway, an oasis of quiet.
As Sammi departed, Lola appeared and drew back a chair and planted herself across the table from him. Her jaw was locked as though she were clamping back a rush of hateful words.
Despite her fuming mood, and even in the harsh full sun, Lola was still beautiful. Finely boned with untamed hair, bright red that was lately streaked with lightning bolts of gray. She dressed with stylish casualness in the Hepburn manner. Tailored slacks and linen blouses in quiet tones. A Yankee princess whose dear departed father had been something of a religious fanatic. It was, in fact, his pious devotion and severity that sent Lola off into a lifetime of rebellion.
When Stanton first met her at a gala at the French consulate, she was only twenty-five but was already notorious in the Miami social scene. That first night she was making introductions between men in gold-trimmed robes to men in dark silk suits. Touching each with familiarity. Moving with the bright and fluent ease of a koi through those exotic waters. She had lovers. Lovers in the room that night, lovers in distant lands. Young lovers and old lovers, and Stanton had heard talk of princes and dictators.
That night he watched her from afar. She noticed him, made fleeting glances, even granted a private smile to the young mayor everyone was talking about. But she didn’t cross the room to speak. Stanton took that as a demure invitation. At that moment he resolved to win the heart of this extraordinary woman at any cost. A price, it turned out, far exceeding anything he might have imagined.
Now decades removed from those heady days, late at night after a sip or two of sherry, if Stanton tried very hard, he could imagine he and he alone engaged Lola’s heart. But the thrill of that fantasy never endured long. For the foul odor of his true circumstance always came sneaking back. Stanton might be the man Lola married, but he had certainly never been the man she loved.
“I thought you had a United Way luncheon.”
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or sit there like a damned fool?”
“You mean the photograph.”
“Of course that’s what I mean.”
“I sent Snake and Carlos to destroy it and all the copies. I don’t think it turned out so well.”
“You sent our sons? You got them involved in this?”
“Yes. It was a stupid thing to do. An impulsive overreaction. It came at me so fast last night, it knocked me off balance. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
Sammi came over to ask if Lola was having coffee, but Lola was looking off at the treetops across the street and did not reply. Stanton shook his head at the girl, and she let them be.
“It’s just a photograph, dear. Two hundred people got a look at it last night at the gallery, and apparently no one registered a thing.”
“It’s starting again,” she said. “I always knew it would. Something like that won’t stay buried. It scratches its way out of the ground and there it is, the monster is staring you in the face again.”
“I called the Agency,” Stanton said. “A couple of hours ago.”
Lola brought her eyes back from the trees, but there was still a great distance in them, as if she were peering past the flimsy veneer of this moment.
“The Agency.”
“Yes, Langley.”
“Who did you speak with?”
“No one. I left a message for Pauline.”
“Oh, God. Not Pauline.”
“There’s no one else to turn to, darling. If we’re going to make this right, we have to involve Pauline.”
“They wouldn’t take your call at Langley?”
“No, but it was early. I’m sure the message will work its way up. They can’t ignore this.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Just the general outline. A photograph of Liston-Clay. The potential to implicate the Agency in matters it would rather not be made public.”
With the table knife, Stanton glazed his bagel with cream cheese.
Lola stared at him in disbelief. Eating at a time like this.
He’d just begun to chew the first morsel when he noticed the large man crossing Main Highway without concern for the traffic.
The man’s grim and familiar gaze was fixed on Stanton.
So it was happening already. Two hours. Far quicker than he’d imagined.
Though he had to be nearing seventy, Edward Runyon had aged damned well. Head shaved and well tanned, mustache neatly clipped. Muscles plumped and firm, head held high. No wattles, no shadowy circles beneath his eyes. Garbed in a bright green Hawaiian shirt, baggy tan slacks, and clunky sandals, as though Runyon had just been delivered to Miami by cruise line.
Stanton searched for the telltale bulge of a handgun, but the shirt was too loose-fitting to be sure. There might be others nearby as well, of course, Runyon’s confederates. They frequently worked in pairs, sometimes in larger groups to swarm their target. Though Stanton doubted a man of his age and fragility warranted anything so extreme.
“In fact, I believe my message was delivered,” Stanton said.
“What?”
“Must be off,” Stanton said to Lola. “Ta-ta.”
Ten yards away Runyon stepped onto the sidewalk.
Stanton palmed a piece of silverware, rose from his metal chair, dropped his napkin in his plate, and led the man away from his wife in what might very well have been a final act of chivalry.
She called out to him, but Stanton didn’t reply. He kept an unhurried pace, drifting away from Main Highway, up Commodore Plaza toward Grand Avenue. At that weekday hour the sidewalks were nearly deserted.
Within half a block Runyon was beside him, step for step.
“Long time,” Runyon said.
“Not long enough.”
“You look like death, old man. Some reprobate on welfare.”
“And you have the appearance of a condo commando. What is it, Boca Raton, land of self-righteous privilege?”
“Bingo,” Runyon said. “Yanked from the sixth fairway to wipe the shit off your ass.”
“Why you?”
“Why not me? I got a stake in this, right? And I’m local. Makes sense.”
“Please tell me, old friend, this is not wet work?”
“Don’t piss your shorts, King. If they wanted you dead, you’d already be on a slab.”
“They can’t remove me. There’ll be consequences.”
“Whatever you say, old man. Got a preference where we talk?”
“Suddenly I’m not in a garrulous mood,” Stanton said. “Maybe later after I’ve gathered my wits.”
Locking a grip onto the back of Stanton’s neck, Runyon steered him into an alcove at the front of a kitchen shop. A CLOSED sign hung on the door. In the windows were shining copper pots and pans, the tools of a pampered chef.
Runyon shoved Stanton forward, crushing his face into the storefront.
“You called, we came,” Runyon said. “What’d you expect?”
Stanton couldn’t speak, his teeth sliced into the back of his lips, the glass was cold and unyielding. Tasting blood now. A clump of his frizzy hair was caught in Runyon’s clasp, and Stanton’s scalp burned as roots tore loose.
Runyon relaxed his grip enough for Stanton to turn his head and speak.
“I tried to handle it myself. But it didn’t work out.”
Runyon drew Stanton’s face away from the glass and held him in place for a moment. His reflection came back to him as a ghostly echo. An ethereal Stanton King who stared at him with eyes so desolate, it was as if this other self were looking back from the land of the unliving.
Then Runyon slammed his face into the wall of glass. Across the black heavens of Stanton’s mind, holiday sparklers spewed and flickered.
“That’s for fucking up forty years ago,” Runyon said. “Putting a giant turd in my file. That cost me, old man. You waltz away from the stunt without a bruise, I get docked five pay grades.”
Stanton groaned but couldn’t muster a coherent reply.
“And this is for fucking up today.”
He drew Stanton’s head back for another jolt against the glass.
Before he could administer that act, Stanton jammed his hand backward and the table knife he’d pilfered entered Runyon’s belly just above the belt line, sliding into the big man’s spare tire with only slight resistance. What a pleasant surprise to find Runyon more blubbery than he first appeared.
Though it was an awkward strike, backhanded and coming at an oblique angle, it accomplished its goal. Runyon dropped his hold on Stanton’s neck and stumbled back. An inch or two of the knife handle gleamed through his shirt, not a fatal blow by any means, but blood was already staining the crotch of his tan slacks.
“You fuck,” Runyon grunted. “You fucking fuck.”
“Brilliant, Edward. Such eloquence.”
Stanton reached out and tugged the knife from Runyon’s love handle. The big man retched, staggered backward against the opposing window, and gripped his gut with both hands like a woman feeling the first jolt of labor.
Then Stanton eased forward into the brute’s striking range and wiped the blade, one side, then the other, against the sleeve of Runyon’s surfer shirt.
“Shall I finish you now? A swipe across the throat?”
Runyon growled, but the rage in his face had collapsed. He blinked erratically, as if only seconds from blacking out. Stanton fingered his nose. A stab of pain rang through his sinuses, but apparently the nose was not broken.
“I’ll speak with Caufield,” Stanton said. “And no one else.”
With his back flat against the window, Runyon slid down until his butt thumped against the sidewalk.
“Pauline Caufield doesn’t waste time with trash like you.”
“It’s either talk to me or the whole bunch of you are going down.”
“Big talk.”
“Oh, this threat is well grounded, my friend.”
Runyon drew a precise breath.
“Listen to me, Edward. Listen well. Back in the old days when you and I were in our prime, I filed away certain paperwork that passed through my hands. That fiasco you mentioned. I still have every last document.”
Runyon closed his eyes against the pain and growled, “You don’t blackmail these people.”
“Oh, it’s not blackmail, Edward. It’s life insurance. If I’m killed or disappear suspiciously, poof, our misspent youth is in the headlines. Splashed in bold print across the heavens. Names, dates, all of it. Just imagine the newspaper stories, the gleeful bloodletting. Oh my, think of the drama.”
“You’re lying. Shit like that never trickled down to riffraff like you.”
“You forget, Runyon. Before my excommunication, I was their fair-haired boy. The next big thing. For that brief time it all flowed through me.”
Stanton King glanced back to see if his spectral other-half was still witnessing from the windowpane. But no, the phantom had vanished in the mid-morning glare. Retreated to his haven in the beyond.
“The files are put away in a safe location, Edward, so it will do no good for a pack of goons to tear apart my house. Pass that along, if you would.”
Runyon’s tan was turning milky. He swallowed and swallowed again.
“But rest assured, old friend, I’m fully prepared to take everyone down with me. So tell Pauline, won’t you? I want a sit-down. Just the two of us. Like old times, a couple of spooks chewing the fat.”
“You’re fucked, Stanton. Royally fucked.”
“Yes, yes. But then, who among us isn’t?”