Gold Coast

22

JESUS DIAZ was taking his suit and some pants to the dry cleaner, getting ready for his trip, whenever it was going to be. He was walking past the place on the corner of Eighth Street and Forty-second Avenue that gave spiritual readings and advice, when the car turned the corner, stopped hard, and the voice said, “Hey!”

Jesus almost dropped the clothes and took off. But it was Lionel Oliva motioning him to come over to the car.

“I thought you went to Cuba.”

“Pretty soon.”

“I got your job. Man, it’s a lot of work.”

“Keep it,” Jesus said.

“What’s he want with Vivian Arzola?” Lionel asked.

Jesus moved in closer, stuck his head in the window, resting his clothes against the dusty car.

“He’s looking for her?”

“He came to the trailer yesterday, insulted me, then hired me to find her. What does the pimp give you for a job like this?”

“Different amounts. What he feels like,” Jesus said. “You have any luck?”

“That’s what it was,” Lionel said. “You know she owns some houses to rent. I was talking to this guy used to know her, lives in the Grove. He said yeah, this house of Vivian’s on Monegro was vacant for a month. But then he saw a light on, and he thinks he saw her go in there the other day. So I went over, I look in the window. There she is in the hall, going into the kitchen or someplace. I knock on the door, no answer.”

“She probably don’t want to see anybody,” Jesus said.

“Stuck up, owning all those houses,” Lionel said. “Fuck that, I’m not going to bother with her.”

“I wouldn’t,” Jesus said.

“Let Roland see if he can talk to her.”

“You tell him yet?”

“Yeah, I just called him a few minutes ago.”

Ten-fifteen, another fifteen minutes before show time, Brad Allen was addressing his “gang”-Lesley, Robyn, Hooker, Chuck, and Maguire-sitting around on the lower grandstand benches, while Brad, in pure white, stood between them and the pool. The main-show dolphins would surface and watch them from the holding pens along the side. Brad half-turned to point across the pool to the deck that served as the stage.

“What we’ll do, we’ll light some paper in some kind of shallow metal container. Maguire, you’ll still be backstage. Wait there after the intro. So you’ll ring the firebell.”

Seascape opened at ten. There were people on the grounds already looking around, coming past the roped-off grandstand area and looking in, wondering what all those kids in the red T-shirts were doing sitting there. No, they weren’t all kids, were they?

Robyn said, “Brad, it’s a dynamite idea, but do you light the paper and you’re the one that yells fire?”

“No, you’re right,” Brad said. “You light the paper. That’s good thinking, Rob. And I’ll be distracting the audience, my back turned to you.”

Maguire saw Jesus Diaz approach the chain across the entrance and the sign hanging from it that said: THIS AREA CLOSED UNTIL SHOWTIME, Jesus looking at the sign and then looking in anxiously at the group sitting in the grandstand. Maguire raised his arm. He stood up.

“Sit down,” Brad said.

“I got to talk to that guy for a minute.”

The others were turning to look up at Maguire and then over to the Cuban waiting by the chain.

“Sit down till we get this straightened out,” Brad said. “I turn around, I see it and yell, ‘Fire!’ Cue for the firebell. No, wait’ll I say, ‘This is a job for Smokey the Dolphin.’ Yeah. Then ring the bell. Then Hooker? You’ve got the hat on Dixie, right?”

“Right,” Hooker said.

“Maguire, sit down.”

“I just have to see the guy a minute.”

“When we’re through,” Brad said. “Okay, Hooker-you give Dixie the signal.”

“Right.”

“She comes over, gives a couple of tail flaps-”

Maguire was staring at Jesus, trying to read his mind.

“-and puts out the fire.”

“He knows where she is!” Jesus called out to him.

Maguire was moving.

“Where you going?… Maguire!”

Brad and the “gang” watched him hurdle the chain-brush the sign with his foot, causing it to jiggle-and take off with the Cuban.

“Any idea where he’s going?” Brad asked.

“He probably don’t know himself,” Lesley said. “He’s weird.”

Virginia Hill was really Virginia Hauser, or Virginia Hill Hauser; but no one referred to her by that name. She was Virginia Hill, who told the Kefauver Crime Committee in 1951 that men kept giving her money because they were friends. Period. She didn’t know exactly how much she had. Yes, she knew Bugsy Siegel, he was one of the friends. No, she didn’t know what he did for a living.

Karen wore a white scarf over her hair (tied in back), sunglasses, and a beige and blue striped caftan that reached to the brick surface of the patio.

She said to the feature writer from The Goldcoaster, a pleasant, nice looking but unyielding girl by the name of Tina Noor, “I was Karen Hill much longer than I was Karen Stohler or Karen DiCilia, that’s all I’m trying to say. I think of myself as Karen Hill.” And only thinking about the other Hill, not mentioning her. “How do you think of yourself?”

“As Tina Noor.”

“You’re married.”

“Yeah.”

“But you don’t think of yourself, ever, as who you used to be?”

“Yeah, but that’s exactly the point. I’m not really that person anymore.”

“Well, we’re different,” Karen said. “You want to sell magazines, and I want to maintain my identity. Karen Hill. Don’t you think it sounds better?”

“It’s a nice name,” Tina Noor said, “but no one knows who Karen Hill is.”

“I do.”

“I mean everyone’s familiar with Karen DiCilia. You were in the papers again when Ed Grossi was killed. People are interested in what you think about… what it’s like to be associated with those people and live a normal life.”

“A normal life,” Karen said.

She moved to the umbrella table, reached into a straw beachbag and brought out a pack of cigarettes. Tina’s eyes remained on the bag, lying on its side, open now. She looked at Karen lighting the cigarette, Karen sitting down in one of the deck chairs. Tina’s eyes returned to the straw bag.

She said, “Is that a gun in there? In the bag?”

Karen nodded.

“Can I ask why you have it?”

“Why does anyone have a gun?” Karen said.

“I mean, of course for protection; but do you feel for some reason your life might be in danger?”

“I’m Karen Hill, I was born in Detroit, Grosse Pointe. I’m forty-four. I was married to Frank DiCilia five and a half years. I never asked him what he did. I never asked him why he had a gun. That particular gun, as a matter of fact.” Karen paused. “But now I know.”

“Would you tell me?”

Karen drew on the cigarette, the smoke dissolving in the afternoon glare. Karen seemed unaffected by the heat, though she was perspiring beneath the caftan, and when the writer left she’d go in the pool… come out, shower, it would be time for cocktails. Wait for someone to come.

She said, “Until Ed Grossi’s death, I hadn’t had a cigarette in sixteen years.”

Tina waited. “You feel the need?”

“It’s something to do.”

“Are you… in good health?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know, I just wondered. You seem a little tired.”

“Or bored,” Karen said. “In a way, bored. In another way-well, that’s something else.”

“What is?”

“Why don’t you ask what my hobbies are?”

“What’re your hobbies?”

“I don’t have any.”

“Well, what do you do all day?”

“Nothing.”

“You have friends-”

“Are you asking?”

“Yeah, don’t you have friends?”

Karen drew on the cigarette, looked at it and let it drop to the brick surface.

“Not really.”

“Well, why don’t you go out more, do things? Travel maybe.”

“There are reasons,” Karen said.