The Pope of Palm Beach Read online

  “Will you take me shooting?”

  “Maybe.”

  Kenny closed the closet and ambled over to Darby’s last and largest collection of stuff: the handmade bookcase that took up the entire back wall of the living room, floor to ceiling. “Anything good here?”

  “It’s all good.”

  Kenny started with the first photo-filled surfing book and ended a few weeks later with the last photo-filled history book. Everything else—all the novels—was considered filler and skipped. To Kenny, books that were just entire gray pages of words were like high noon to a vampire. Not his fault. When he was in school, publishers weren’t targeting his age group the way they are now. And as for the curriculum, Beowulf and Wuthering Heights. No disrespect intended, but young boys are the highest-risk group of becoming non-readers, and the Brontë sisters weren’t helping the cause. He learned to hate books before he could learn to love them.

  One evening he stood staring at the bookshelf. And staring. He finally walked away.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Darby. “Couldn’t find something you liked?”

  “I’ve read them all,” said Kenny.

  “You haven’t read any.”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “You’ve just been looking at pictures.”

  “The others aren’t for me,” said Kenny, grabbing the dinner tray off Darby’s chair-side table and heading for the kitchen.

  Not for me? Darby gazed incredulously at a wall of titles that constituted an entire curriculum on twentieth-century American lit. He heard dishes and utensils clanging in the kitchen sink. This was a serious problem.

  Kenny came back into the living room. “Want some of these chips?”

  “Sit down,” said Darby. “You don’t read books?”

  “I did in school.” Kenny shrugged. “Didn’t like it.”

  Darby rested his head back in thought. “Did they make you read Beowulf?”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “Wuthering Heights?”

  “Gag.”

  “That explains everything.” He pointed at the back wall. “Middle shelf, fourth book from the end.”

  Kenny grabbed it. “Here you go.”

  “No, it’s for you.”

  “What for?”

  “I want you to read it.”

  “Why?”

  “Why read a book?” said Darby. “If you read books, you’d understand that question is like ‘Why breathe?’”

  “But I don’t want—”

  Darby held up a hand. “The schools back then got it all wrong. Watch any kids eat: They never start with the vegetables.”

  Kenny looked at the orange-and-yellow dust jacket. “Breakfast of Champions?”

  “For my money, Slaughterhouse-Five was his masterwork, but this one is a better gateway drug.”

  The next morning, Kenny stuck the book back on the shelf.

  “What?” said a surprised Darby. “You didn’t like it?”

  “I finished it.”

  “Finished? But I just gave it to you last night.”

  “Couldn’t put it down,” said Kenny. “I never knew there was a book like that.”

  “There’s a whole world of books like that,” said Darby. “When did you have time to sleep?”

  “I didn’t.” Yawn. “I have to go to sleep.”

  When Kenny awoke, he went straight for the bookcase. “What else you got?”

  “Third shelf, book eight.”

  “Catcher in the Rye?”

  “Its appeal is a bit younger,” said Darby. “But since you’re just getting started . . .”

  “I know. Vegetables, gateway.”

  The next day.

  “Bottom row, second from the last.”

  “Better give me another while I’m here.”

  Darby hid his amazement. “Same row, number six.”

  “Heller, Thompson,” said Kenny, disappearing into his bedroom.

  And so on. “. . . Top shelf . . . fourth shelf . . . ninth book . . . the one on the end . . .”

  On a Friday night, Kenny sat next to Darby in the living room. He turned the last page of his current book and closed it. He realized Darby was staring at him. “What?”

  Darby just blinked a couple times. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Neither do I,” said Kenny. “Why on earth didn’t they teach these in school?”

  “Did you notice that most are a bit anti-authority?”

  “So?”

  “So they teach you how to think,” said Darby. “So that’s why they don’t teach them in school.”

  Then on to the Florida authors. MacDonald, McGuane. Darby pointed. “Try the Willeford you bought me.”

  One morning, Darby was on his second grapefruit, reading the Post. He heard a clattering sound from the kitchen. He raised his eyes and stared blankly at a point on the wall. “This I’ve got to see.”

  Darby grabbed his cane and hobbled into the next room. “Where’d you get the typewriter?”

  Clack, clack, clack. “Pawnshop.”

  “Why?”

  “To write.”

  “What are you writing for?”

  “That’s like, ‘Why breathe?’”

  “Don’t be smart,” said Darby. “I meant, is that a résumé or a letter to the editor?”

  “I’m just writing because I like it.”

  “Since when do you write?”

  “Three minutes ago.” Clack, clack, clack. “I really like it.”

  “What are you writing?”

  “A novel.”

  Darby rubbed a hand over his eyes. What have I done? He pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and struggled into it. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I just don’t want you to get frustrated.”

  Clack, clack, clack. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “You’ve never written before,” said Darby. “You never read before a few months ago.”

  “I always got A’s when we had to do reports in school.” Kenny stopped typing and turned with the happiest face that Darby had ever seen. “Remember when you were a little kid and watched a big football game on TV? And after it was over, you were so jacked up that you just had to run outside with the other kids and play football and fantasize you were in the game you just saw? Remember?”

  Darby nodded.

  “That’s the effect these authors have on me.” He squeezed his hands together. “I’ve never had bigger idols in my life. I don’t know how they can possibly do what they do with just black-and-white words on a page. They make me feel and laugh and suck me into another world until I forget they’re just words. They’re doing the impossible.”

  Darby chuckled. “I had a mild inkling that you might like reading.”

  “I love it!” Kenny turned back to the typewriter. “And I want to know what this feels like, even if it’s just fantasizing. I don’t care if it’s bad.”

  Clack, clack, clack.

  Darby had found his replacement piece.

  Chapter 12

  The Present

  The brown wooden boat was a close cousin of a Chinese junk, the kind you might see packed shoulder to shoulder with Haitian refugees. The kind that sank.

  Many such vessels were scuttled and abandoned, half sticking out of the water, littering the mangrove coastline of South Florida from Fort Lauderdale to Biscayne Bay. And those derelicts were in better shape than this one, riding unnaturally low in the water, somehow still able to negotiate a truce with buoyancy.

  But the boat didn’t attract attention docking in the Miami River, where questionable maritime was the norm. Pickup trucks and men waited. A dozen had jumped aboard before the mooring lines were secure. And by the time those ropes were tied, the men were off again. They swiftly packed cocaine bricks under tarps and bungees. Someone slapped the side of a truck, and the pickups were off.

  It was a loose convoy of six. They preferred Fords. Only two had the drugs, the middle trucks. The rest were for eventualiti
es. The leading trucks beat the bushes for police. They had special switches installed so they could feign broken taillights if needed to draw the heat. And if, somehow, the cops tried to pull over one of the middle trucks, then there were the trailing drivers, who would promptly crash into the police cars and apologize.

  They arrived at the warehouse between Hialeah Gardens and the Glades on Okeechobee Road. The black predawn sky had just begun to yield as a string of high beams hit unpainted metal, and other men on the ground quickly slid open the twin galvanized doors.

  It was a profitable little business that was compartmentalized in a much larger octopus. Everyone knew they were part of something bigger, but nobody knew what. Except the leader of the crew, Greco.

  Greco got his start as many had, unloading those boats on the river. Lean, ambitious and uneducated. Both his strength and weakness was a wholesale lack of sophistication. His business sense remained basic, but more essential, so did his relationship with violence. Casual, no hesitation or self-reflection. He would go far.

  The lines of secrecy about the chain of command might have been strict, but everyone knew the top bosses. One Saturday at dusk, the seven-year-old grandson of one of these kingpins hopped on a new shiny bicycle and zoomed down the driveway without looking.

  The mangled bike still lay in the street when the ambulance took the child away unconscious. Police tried to console the shaken driver, who lived four doors down. The boy would make a full recovery, but right now all that anyone knew: He lay in a coma with broken legs. The neighborhood whispered that the driver should get out of town. But it was an accident, he thought. Surely that counted for something.

  They found the driver a week later, piece by piece, in a road-fill quarry circled by vultures. The next night, Greco was down at the river about to unload a Jamaican trawler. A tap on his shoulder. Someone pointed toward the open back door of a Lexus.

  “But I’m supposed to unload,” said Greco.

  “You have the night off.”

  They frisked Greco, and he got in.

  It was an anonymous three-bedroom Mediterranean house. The screen door featured the original wire sculpture of a sailfish. The den had discount wood paneling and paintings of saints. An older man relaxed in his favorite chair. A tray sat in front of him with a TV dinner, and in front of that, a TV. The man used the remote to switch the set off. He turned to the four people who had just entered the room.

  “Are you the one they call Greco?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have heard an interesting rumor about you concerning a certain one of my neighbors.” The old man scooped up a final fork of corn niblets from his tray. Then he silently pointed around the room with the utensil, meaning there had been recent problems with listening devices. “From now on, I only want a yes or no. Leave out any details. Is it true what they say you did?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did anyone tell you to?”

  “No.”

  “You just decided to do this thing without any authorization?”

  “Yes.”

  The old man faced the blank TV. A pause. The trio who had escorted Greco were on call for whatever they were asked next. The remote control clicked the TV back on and turned the volume up extra loud. “If you haven’t heard, I am a man who likes to show his appreciation. I have some work that requires someone with your talents. I’ve already assumed you will accept.”

  The old man raised a palm slightly, meaning he would now watch TV, and they would now leave.

  Greco got to work, which was what they call wet work, and he received high marks. People began disappearing, then turning up. In metal drums, in the river, in burning cars. The disappearances were perfect vanishing acts, and the discoveries high drama. Messages received loud and clear.

  From there, Greco was given his own crew and assigned the leg of the smuggling operation from the Miami River to the Georgia state line on I-95. The simple, unambiguous assignment was an exact fit for his business instincts.

  One night a tiny rat hole was found in one of the cocaine bricks. A shot was heard outside the warehouse. Greco walked back in. The crew was down one unloader. But no more rat holes. Another time, a member of the group got picked up on a Saturday night for a concealed gun in a nightclub. Sunday morning, guards found him shivved in the county lockup. No margin for plea bargains. Everyone else began behaving on the weekend. The bosses liked Greco’s tight ship and left him alone.

  The old millennium became the new. Greco’s crew had tripled. So had business complexity, technology and banking laws. They assigned him an accountant. Greco didn’t understand why, but didn’t say so.

  The accountant was gnomish and seemed bent over even when he wasn’t. He wore glasses with unfashionable round lenses that lent the impression of a scurrying little creature with tiny claws. He always smelled like cucumbers from the sandwiches he ate every day. Greco thought he was funny. His name was Salenca.

  Salenca kept coming to his boss with his latest ideas.

  “No, no, no,” said Greco. “Just the cocaine.”

  “But identity theft is the future,” said Salenca. “Do the math. The difference in prison sentences alone makes it a no-brainer.”

  “You do the math,” said Greco. “That what you’re paid for. Not ideas.”

  Salenca was undeterred. “We steal the information from the magnetic strips and sell it to Russia and China. We bundle them and make a killing.”

  “Steal how?”

  “Just walk by a person,” said Salenca. “They have these new electronic receivers that you hide in a briefcase or handbag. I can go out at lunch in downtown Miami and come back with a hundred cards.”

  “No, no, no, cocaine. Leave me alone!”

  “Can you at least ask your bosses? Maybe I could have a tiny crew of my own and try it out as an experiment.”

  “You? With a crew?” Greco cracked up. “I like you. But seriously, leave me alone.”

  Salenca went back to work, keeping his ideas to himself. He kept records in code, and then those codes were encrypted on special flash drives used by military contractors with security clearance. It was tedious and lucrative. Salenca wanted it to be more lucrative. He began using a different accounting method. Without permission. He wasn’t worried; it would all be Greek to Greco.

  A month later, a black Mercedes arrived at the warehouse. They called for Greco and Salenca. This type of meeting was more than rare.

  All the top bosses.

  It was held at a mothballed safe house in Tamarac, where there was a certainty of no FBI bugs. The three kingpins were all sitting, and there were no more chairs. The row of bosses gave the general appearance of the logo from Pep Boys automotive repair.

  “We noticed that you’ve started using a new accounting method,” said boss number one.

  “We have?” said Greco.

  “Yes, one that allows someone to skim from us,” said boss two.

  “What?” said Greco.

  “Frankly, we’re surprised,” said number three. “You have a reputation for running a tight ship.”

  “I don’t know . . . what you’re talking about,” said Greco.

  “No need to explain,” said the first boss. “Perhaps we were expecting too much. You came to us with a certain skill level that has worked out quite nicely. We know you don’t have a degree in accounting.”

  Greco went to speak, but boss number two held up a hand. “We’ve had our people look into the books, into certain bank accounts we weren’t expecting to find. And we located an interesting one that was recently opened by your ledger man, Salenca here.”

  “Salenca!” said Greco, spinning toward his accountant with the shock of underestimation.

  “Me?” Salenca shouted as two goons seized him by the arms. “There must be some explanation!”

  “There is,” said boss three. “Small amounts have been regularly deposited and quietly withdrawn from a money market fund in your name.”

  “What fund?
” said Salenca.

  “You son of a bitch!” Greco yelled. “Let me kill him myself!”

  “That won’t be necessary,” said the second boss. “But you can help us.”

  “I’m so sorry for all of this,” said Greco. “It won’t happen again. Anything you want. Name it.”

  “Who do you think should be your successor?”

  “Wait . . . What?”

  “Who should take over your crew?”

  “Can’t we talk about this?” said Greco. “I’m going to lose my crew just because this weasel tricked me with some numbers?”

  Boss three shook his head. “That’s not why.”

  “Then what is it?” said Greco.

  “Apparently you understand far more about accounting than we could have ever imagined,” said boss one.

  “Uh, no, I don’t.”

  “I didn’t finish explaining the results of our investigation,” said boss two. “After the money left Salenca’s account, it was wired directly to the Caymans.”

  “So it’s about the money.” Greco began nodding. “I understand now. But I’m sure we can get it back. I’ll see to it personally.”

  “We’ve already gotten it back,” said boss two. “That’s not the problem.”

  “Then what is it?” asked Greco.

  “The Caymans are an interesting place. We do most of our banking there, too, and with much bigger assets, so we draw a lot of water in those islands. They take bribes.”

  “The account the money went into had your name on it,” said boss three.

  “You’re looking at me?” Greco pointed. “You mean Salenca.”

  Boss one shook his head. “No, we’re positive. We took the liberty of going through your cell phone. And we discovered something else interesting: the account number and access PIN of Salenca’s money market. Any explanation what those were doing in there?”

  “I barely know how to use that damn phone!”

  “At first we thought the two of you were in it together,” said boss three. “But we found no connection between Salenca and his account. All the information was solely in your possession. And all the transfers were made electronically from your phone. In case the skim was ever detected, you had framed your own accountant to take the fall. Tragically, we almost fell for it.”