“I don’t get it,” said Danny Pogue. “I thought the FBI paid big bucks—what’s a baby Magnavox go for, two hundred retail? You’d think he could spring for color.”
“Who knows, maybe he spends it all on clothes. Come on, let’s take off.” Bud Schwartz wanted to be long gone before the mailman arrived and noticed what had happened to the front door.
Danny Pogue turned on the portable TV and said, “That’s not a bad picture.” The noon news was just starting.
“I said let’s go, Danny.”
“Wait, look at this!”
A video clip showed a heavyset man in golf shoes being hoisted on a stretcher. The man’s shirt was drenched in blood, but his eyelids were half open. A plastic oxygen mask covered the man’s face and nose, but the jaw moved as if he were trying to speak. The newscaster reported that the shooting had taken place at a new resort development called Falcon Trace, near Key Largo.
“Lou! He did it!” exclaimed Danny Pogue. “You were right.”
“Only trouble is, that ain’t Mr. Kingsbury.”
“You sure?”
Bud Schwartz sat down in front of the television. The anchorman had tossed the sniper story to a sportscaster, who was somberly recounting the stellar career of Jake Harp. The golfer’s photograph, taken in happier times, popped up on a wide green mat behind the sports desk.
Danny Pogue said, “Who the hell’s that?”
“Not Kingsbury,” grunted Bud Schwartz. The mishap confirmed his worst doubts about Lou’s qualifications as a hit man. It was unbelievable. The asshole had managed to shoot the wrong guy.
“Know what?” said Danny Pogue. “There’s a Jake Harp Cadillac in Boca Raton where I swiped a bunch of tape decks once. Is that the same guy? This golfer?”
Bud Schwartz said, “I got no earthly idea.” What was all this crap the TV guy was yakking about—career earnings, number of Top Ten finishes, average strokes per round, percentage of greens hit in regulation. To Bud Schwartz, golf was as foreign as polo. Except you didn’t see so many fat guys playing polo.
“The main thing is, did they catch the shooter?”
“Nuh-huh.” Danny Pogue had his nose to the tube. They said he got away in a boat. No arrests, no motives is what they said.”
Bud Schwartz was trying to picture Lou from Queens at the helm of a speedboat, racing for the ocean’s horizon.
“He’s gonna be pissed,” Danny Pogue said.
“Yeah, well, I don’t guess his boss up North is gonna be too damn thrilled, either. Whackin” the wrong man.”
“He ain’t dead yet. Serious but stable is what they said.”
Bud Schwartz said it didn’t really matter. “Point is, it’s still a fuckup. A major major fuckup.”
The Mafia had gunned down a life member of the Professional Golfers Association.
Pedro Luz finally emerged from the storage room, where he had been measuring his penis. He rolled the wheelchair out to Kingsbury Lane for the morning rehearsal of the Summerfest Jubilee, a greatly embellished version of the nightly musical pageant. Pedro Luz needed something to lift his spirits. His leg had begun to throb in an excruciating way; no combination of steroids and analgesics put a dent in the pain. To add psychic misery to the physical, Pedro Luz had now documented the fact that his sexual wand was indeed shrinking as a result of prolonged steroid abuse. At first, Pedro Luz had assured himself that it was only an optical illusion; the more swollen his face and limbs became, the smaller everything else appeared to be. But weeks of meticulous calibrations had produced conclusive evidence: His wee-wee had withered from 10.4 centimeters to 7.9 centimeters in its flaccid state. Worse, it seemed to Pedro Luz (although there was no painless way to measure) that his testicles had also become smaller—not yet as tiny as BBs, as Churrito had predicted, but more like gumballs.
These matters weighed heavily on his mind as Pedro Luz sat in the broiling sun and watched the floats rumble by. He was hoping that the sight of Annette Fury’s regal bosom would buoy his mood, and was disappointed to see that she had been replaced as Princess Golden Sun. The new actress looked familiar, but Pedro Luz couldn’t place the face. She was a very pretty girl, but the black wig needed some work, as did the costume—buckskin culottes and a fringed halter top. Her singing was quite lovely, much better than Annette”s, but Pedro Luz would’ve preferred larger breasts. The lioness that shared the Seminole float was in no condition to rehearse; panting miserably in the humidity, the animal sprawled half-conscious on one side, thus thwarting the cat-straddling exit that culminated the princess’s dramatic performance.