“The hell with that, Driscoll.” Deal had already punched in 911, had tucked the phone under his chin, was cursing himself for not having installed one of those antitheft homing devices they advertised on the radio all the time. Hide this little transmitter under the hood, then if someone steals your car, it sends out this little signal. The cops go out and pick up your car, haul the bad guys away. Except who were the bad guys in this situation, he wondered? A chill had descended over him, chasing away whatever satisfaction he’d gained with his little scheme.
“Dade County Police. May I help you?” The female voice in his ear, curt, professional.
“Yes,” he said, glancing at Driscoll again. He had to stay focused. Someone had to get the job done. “My car. Someone’s taken it…”
Driscoll threw up his hands in disgust. For a moment, Deal thought the ex-cop was going to come after him, snatch the phone away.
He was starting to back away when he heard Mrs. Suarez’s voice behind him. “Madre dios!” she cried, and Deal turned to see her pointing over his shoulder, out the living room window.
“Someone’s stolen your car?” the voice repeated in his ear.
Driscoll was already at the window, staring down at the street. “Put the phone down,” he called, disgusted.
Deal’s gaze traveled out the window, feeling a lurch in his gut. There it was: The Hog, in all its resurrected glory, gliding to a halt below.
As he watched, one wheel climbed awkwardly onto the curb, the passenger door swung open, Isabel’s tiny feet popped into view. In moments, she was running across the lawn, clad in some bulky furred jacket he’d never seen before, a massive ice cream cone aloft in her hand like a pink torch.
He felt a flood of relief wash over him, felt himself break the phone connection, cutting off the police operator in midsentence. The driver’s door was open now, and Janice was getting out, coming around the nose of the clumsily parked Hog after Isabel.
At least it seemed like Janice. It took him a moment to realize something was wrong. This Janice—this woman—who wobbled over the curb in tall spiked heels was also clad in a fur jacket, a stylish waist-length model of fox, maybe, wearing huge sunglasses and a scarf around her head. As Deal stared, she undid the scarf and shook her hair free, unleashing a mane of blonde curls.
A wig, Deal thought, stunned. A wig??!!
She stood on the sidewalk, adjusting a handbag that hung from her shoulder, reaching inside her coat to straighten her clothes. What there were of them.
“Jesus God,” Driscoll breathed beside him.
Deal stared, still trying to make sense of what he was seeing. A wisp of gold lamé blouse, a black leather skirt that barely reached midthigh, black fishnet stockings.
She removed the sunglasses, flicked at something on an eyelash that seemed even at this distance to droop with the weight of mascara. She replaced the sunglasses, pouched her bright red lips into a smile, and started unsteadily toward the building.
Down below they heard the workings of the front door, the sound of Isabel’s feet on the tiled entryway. The portable phone had begun to chirp and Deal handed it dazedly to Driscoll. He pushed away from the window, moving like a man in a dream toward the door.
He was out into the hallway then, had made it to the head of the stairs as Isabel, halfway up the flight, caught sight of him. “Papi!” she cried, her face lighting up.
She took the rest of the stairs two at a time, throwing herself into Deal’s arms. He pulled her close to him, closing his eyes, breathing in the smell of her—the tingle of cool air, woolen tang of fur from the new coat she wore, little girl flesh basted in ice cream—savoring for a moment her precious weight in his arms. It was all he cared about for that instant, never mind that Driscoll had thought him crazy, Driscoll whose voice even now carried out into the hallway as he explained to the police operator: “No ma’am. It was a mistake. No. He found the car. That’s right…”
Never mind, for that one moment, that he was going to have to open his eyes back to the world and wrestle with all its demons. For in that one instant he had his daughter back, squealing in his arms, dribbling pink ice cream down his neck and back—and for the brief eternity that it lasted, it was all that mattered.
Finally, though, he had to give it up, let the moment pass, set her down, let her run her carefree way inside to Mrs. Suarez, dispenser of milk and cookies, of care and all things good. He had to turn then, face this woman who came unsteadily up the stairs toward him, tottering on the impossible heels, her mouth moving askew beneath the lipstick caked crookedly there.
“Hello, sailor,” she said, smiling as she clutched the handrail for support.
“Janice,” Deal said, feeling his heart clench inside him. “Oh, Janice,” and his woe filled the hallway to the brim.
Chapter 10
Paige, who rarely used alcohol, had a drink while the plane was still on the ground, another before dinner, a split of wine with the pasta she barely tasted, a brandy afterward. By the time the plane landed, she was reeling.
She moved unsteadily down the broad concourse of the Fort Lauderdale airport, sensing the onset of a headache with the potential to blossom into a full-blown screamer. Her legs felt flaccid and heavy beneath her, as if she’d disembarked on a planet with stronger gravity.
She scanned the faces of the small crowd lining the concourse exit, not really expecting to see her sister’s among them, but unable to keep herself from hoping. She’d phoned ahead, left her flight numbers and itinerary on Barbara’s machine, left a message about her message at the restaurant where Barbara worked.
But despite all that, there was no familiar face as she walked out into the lobby. That was all right, she reasoned, it was nearly midnight. Barbara would be at the hospital, or somewhere doing something important. She couldn’t expect her sister to drop everything and rush to the airport, could she? Not when they hadn’t exchanged a dozen words in the past several years, the most recent phone call discounted.
Paige had swung away from the knot of people gathered on the other side of the metal detectors, headed toward an escalator labeled “Baggage Claim—Ground Transportation,” when she noticed the man with the sign.
“NUBBLEMAN” was the name scrawled in Magic Marker on a piece of cardboard, and at first she paid no attention. The man who held it was short and thin, and wore a chauffeur’s uniform that engulfed him, too large by a couple of sizes. He held the sign in one hand and consulted something in his other palm, scanning it and the departing passengers with intensity.
Paige had almost reached the escalators when he caught up with her. “Miss Nubbleman,” he said, thrusting the sign in her way.
She turned, noticing that he was Latino, that his mustache and sideburns were peppered with gray, that even his hat seemed too big to stay on straight. He was holding a facsimile of a still picture the studio often used for publicity releases. “Es you, right?”
She stared at him, uncertain.
“Mr. Mawlul send me,” the man said.
Paige shook her head, still puzzled…and then it dawned on her. “Mahler,” she said. “Mr. Mahler.”
The little man checked something on the back of her picture, then nodded. “Right,” he said. “Mawlul.”
Paige shook her head in disbelief. He was so painfully thin she felt the urge to guide him to a restaurant.
Just like Marvin to arrange a car for her. For a moment she wished he were there with her, and then, as she tried to imagine Marvin with his smile and his can-do attitude, one arm around her shoulders, another around her sister’s, “Hey, let’s just sit down and talk this out, ladies…,” it all came crashing back upon her, every aspect of her life that she had tried to push away during the long flight, and she sighed, feeling as weary as she ever had.
“I’m Paige Nobleman,” she said to the little man, finally.
“Bueno,” he said. He tossed the sign into a trash can, wadded the photo in his hand.
“Car is outside,” he added, smiling.
“Let me just get my bags,” she said, and motioned toward the escalators, which, coming as no real surprise, she found to be closed for repair.
***
“In Miami?” the driver said, when she gave him the name of the hospital. She’d tried Barbara’s house again from a pay phone, then the restaurant, too. The hospital was her best guess, but no one was answering at Patient Information at this hour and she didn’t have a room number. At least she’d find her mother there, that much seemed certain.
“Miami Beach,” Paige said.
“Long way,” the driver said. He glanced into his outside mirror, tossed his wobbling hat aside, then cut the limo through a line of traffic onto a freeway ramp.
Paige wondered, the way he said it, if the guy were paid by the mile. He was good behind the wheel, though, unlike some of the drivers you’d get with a service, gunning the accelerator, then slamming the brakes, goosing you along. This one was as smooth as L.A. Eddie, and any other time she’d have laid her head back, tried to rest.
Instead, she found herself staring out the window, lulled to a zombielike trance by the gentle motion of the car. She noted an exit for “Hollywood,” and wondered briefly why there were no hills in the distance, why her clothes were sticking to her despite the fact that it was December, and then she remembered where she was, that this Hollywood was a collection of high-rises on the ocean…and with great weariness, she remembered what had brought her here.
Odd that she’d keep blanking out like that, or not so odd, maybe. Maybe it was like a mind fuse. You could take just so much and then—pop—the circuits would overload and you could sink into the zombie zone. Fine with her. She’d be happy to take a nice long nap, wake up and find everything behind her like some awful dream, some part she’d played in a grade-Z film.
The limo was snaking through a gauntlet of barricades now: little yellow lights everywhere, a quick glimpse of men in hard hats caught in the glare of some portable lights, and a great boiling of dust about some unearthly machine, two idling police cars with their flashers turning—it looked more like a disaster zone than a highway, she thought.
Barely was all that behind them, the road back to itself and humping high over some ribbon of darkness below—a river, a chasm?—when a pair of cars roared up, passing the limo on either side. There was an instant of deafening motor thunder that vanished as quickly as it came, the taillights shrinking into nothing as she watched. How fast had they been going? A hundred? Maybe more? She’d never seen cars go that fast before.
“Was that the police?” she called to the driver.
“Race,” the voice came back, crackling over an intercom speaker at her ear.
It took her a moment to understand. She sat back in the spongy seat, feeling disoriented again. What was this place she had come to, anyway? Hollywood without mountains, drag races on the freeway, no one answering the phones at the hospitals…maybe she was in a dream.
They were turning again, looping toward the east, it seemed, toward the water. The freeway rose up, giving her a brief view of the broad Intracoastal Waterway, red and green buoy lights, the glitter of Miami Beach beyond.
She found herself in memory, suddenly, one happy Sunday from her childhood, or at least it seemed happy: her father appeared in his normal form then, at the wheel of some ungainly houseboat, chugging down that same broad channel of water, she and her sister tossing bread off the stern to a crowd of wheeling gulls, her mother asleep in a chaise lounge in the sun. One shining moment when they were still pretending to be a regular family, she thought with a pang…and then her mother was awake and shouting, at them for the noise they were making, at their father for permitting it, or maybe at them all, just for just being alive…and the image fell apart.
“Is over there,” the driver’s voice crackled at her ear. Paige blinked out of her reverie to see the massive hospital complex looming up on their left. The limo wound through a series of turns, past another long line of traffic barricades, ended up on a broad entryway to the main building.
The driver stopped under a brightly lit awning, turned to her as the compartment window slid down. “I am waiting for you here,” he said.
“It’s not necessary,” Paige said.
“Here,” the driver repeated, his voice firm.
“You can go on,” she said. “I don’t know how long I’ll be. I’ll get a taxi.”
The driver shook his head, his face twisted in concern. “Is all taken care of,” he insisted. “All the time while you are here.” He smiled at her and tapped a picture ID on the visor above his head. “I am Florentino. At your service.”
Paige sighed. “All right, Florentino,” she said finally. “Right here.” Then she turned, gathering herself for more important things, and stepped out into the humid night.
***
She should have prepared herself, she was thinking. She should have tried to picture the worst. But even then, how could she have conjured up anything like what lay before her now?
“Just for a moment,” the ICU nurse at her side was saying.
Paige nodded, her mind numb. If the nurse had not led her to this bed, she would not have recognized her mother. The person who lay there inert, hair fallen away in patches, innumerable lines and tubes trailing from her body into the darkness, was a stranger, a wraith. Her mouth was open as if she’d been felled by a stunning blow, her yellowed, nearly transparent skin stretched tightly across her cheekbones, like some ghoulish decoration for a death’s head.
Paige felt her legs give, had to steady herself against the foot of the bed. Machines sounded out the shallow rhythms of her mother’s breath; another electronic thrum kept erratic time with her heart. A heavy line snaked out from beneath the sheets, draped itself across her mother’s exposed feet like some power cord left behind by workers at a building site.
Paige reached out, gently moved the cord aside, the urge to scream vying inside her with an equally powerful impulse to weep. Her fingers carefully found her mother’s feet. There seemed no hope of finding her way further around the bedside, past all those lines and tubes, past the pulsing machines and printouts that tumbled like failed streamers to the floor. Her mother’s feet were like cool, featherless birds in her hands. The bones were hollow flutes, the skin the thinnest of membranes.
“Oh, Mother,” she said, forgiving everything in that moment, feeling a flood of guilt for all the years she’d kept herself away. She could have come back long ago, when there was still time, when they might have set things right, or at least made a stab at it. But now…
“Oh, Mom,” she said, staring at the pitiful form in front of her, at the bank of machines and monitoring equipment. “We’ve got to let you go.”
“She’s not your mother,” the voice came from behind her, bitter, accusatory.
Paige turned, startled. Her sister had appeared in the doorway to the room, her face drawn and haggard, but a mask of fury now.
“Barbara,” Paige managed. “You scared me…”
“You don’t breeze in here from California, tell us what we’re going to do,” she said. “That’s not the way it works.”
Paige shook her head, confused. “Barbara, I just…”
“As long as my mother can draw a breath, she’s going to live,” Barbara said, biting the words off, her voice rising dangerously.
“I just meant…”
Barbara strode forward, her eyes glittering as if she were ready to strike. “She’s not your mother!” Barbara said again, and this time her voice had risen to a shriek.
“I don’t…,” Paige began, her words seeming to stick in her throat. Her heart was thudding in her chest. Her sister, she was thinking, her own sister. The hatred. The venom. “What are you talking about?” She swallowed, tried to get her breathing under control. She saw nurses bolting from the central station, hurrying down the hallway toward the open door.
“This
is my mother, too,” she cried, staring at her sister in disbelief, in fury, in dismay. Her sister’s words were incomprehensible. Impossible. But there was something inside her that was also crying “What? Explain yourself.”
And then, before she could continue, the machines and monitors left off their measured beeps and pings, and joined the screaming chorus.
Chapter 11
“Most of our office temps are women,” the guy behind the desk was saying. Carl Cross, his nameplate read. Paco seemed to remember that the outfit was called Cross Employment. Middle-aged guy, a little gray in his good haircut, a little soft around the gut. Paco noted the soft drape of the guy’s suit, the Rolex on his wrist.
So that meant he’d gotten right to the top. Ten days holed up in his apartment, picking buckshot out of his hide, eating delivered pizza and Chinese food, he’d finally decided he was safe, mustered the nerve to go out, get his life in gear. Maybe this was an omen, getting to talk to the boss.
Cross was staring thoughtfully at the form the secretary had left on the way out of the room. “You did a heck of a job on the typing test, I’ll have to give you that!” He looked up from the form. “What kind of a name is Paco, anyway?”
Paco shrugged. Might as well make it easy. “My mother was Mexican,” he said.
The guy nodded, scanning Paco’s broad face, his fair hair, looking for some sign of the genes.
“From Spain, originally,” Paco added.
Cross gave him a closer look.
“My father was a diplomat.”
Cross raised his head in acknowledgment. He still looked hesitant. Paco wondered if he’d overdone it. They probably didn’t get a lot of diplomats’ children applying for these jobs.
“He died before I was born,” Paco said.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Cross said. He looked like he might be ready to say something else, then changed his mind. He turned back to the form Paco had filled out. “You didn’t put down your Social Security number.”
Deal to Die For Page 7
