Deal to Die For

by Les Standiford

  The only thing that had changed when he’d finished back then was that he’d been poorer at the end of it all. There was a score on the counter of the machine, to be sure, but the enemy bombers were still whining across the artificial sky, waiting for the next boy who wanted to imagine he could wipe away evil with a quarter and the bucking of an imaginary gun.

  It was the same today, of course. He emptied the automatic pistol into the sky, and the enemy plane whined on, untouched. “Here,” Driscoll said, extending his .38. “You finish with this, we’ll find you some rocks to throw.”

  “It’s all right,” Deal said. He held up his hand, exhausted. “It’s all right.”

  The plane arrowed on, its engines not flaming, not smoking, but seeming to gain strength and speed as it flashed on across the lake. And it was all right. He’d done what he could. He would do what he could. That’s all you could expect from a life, wasn’t it?

  He had turned away, back toward the house, to see what they might do for Paige, when he felt Driscoll’s hand on his arm.

  “Look there,” the big man said, and Deal turned in time to see it happen.

  He still couldn’t believe it. From their vantage point it seemed that the bluff that rose up out of the water was somewhere in the distant background, nowhere near the path of the plane as it roared unwaveringly on.

  But it was one of those tricks of perspective, something to do with clear air, distances he wasn’t used to gazing across, or maybe it was just the hand of justice that nudged the headlands up another dozen feet or so. He’d never know for sure, would never care to know.

  All that mattered was this: The plane did not seem to waver an iota before it slammed into the cliff. There was an instant’s pause and then a great fireball erupted where a moment before there had been immutable rock and silence. The huge cloud of flame and black smoke bounded off the rock face and flew skyward like some hideous creature, and finally the sound reached them, sweeping across the vast expanse of lawn in a wave of thunder.

  Vaporized, Deal thought. The plane had literally vaporized with the impact. A few boulders tumbled, one piece of flaming metal spiraled down into the water, a fine mist of sand and earth drifted along the cliff, where a black scar was slashed across the rock. It was as if the earth had opened to reclaim some object that should never have been allowed to assemble itself in the first place.

  “Fucking A,” Driscoll breathed as the shock wave passed over them and the explosion echoed dimly in the distance. “You got him. You fucking blew them right out of the sky.”

  Driscoll’s voice was full of awe by now. But Deal was already on his way toward Paige.

  Chapter 42

  Quite a room, Paige was thinking. Several stories up, broad windows wrapping a corner with a view down over the Palisades to the Pacific, where the sun was setting in a welter of bruised red and purple shadings behind a bank of winter clouds. There was even a balcony with a settee and tiny table where you could go out and breathe in the steady breeze that had washed the entire basin clean this day. A Hockney on one wall, a Miró on another, a huge crystal vase of just-bursting gladioli on a lacquered Chinese table in the corner. If she kept her view just so, there was nothing to suggest she was in a hospital.

  But then, Paige thought, Rhonda had always enjoyed the best. Paige turned back to the bed, smiled down wistfully at Rhonda’s sleeping form. Given what the woman had been through, she deserved this. This and a hell of a lot more. Paige brushed a tear aside, pulled her gown close around her throat, let her other hand drift down to rest lightly on Rhonda’s, careful not to disturb the IV tube that was taped on the back of her palm.

  Paige had a room here too, on this very floor, where it was convenient for the team of doctors who were treating them both. Her room was comfortable, too, though nothing quite so grand, of course. No Hockney, no Chinese tables, no balcony. Half the size, and with a view that faced the wooded foothills and the corner of some millionaire’s barrel-tiled estate poking out of the trees a few hundred yards away. But she felt safe there, felt her body strengthening every day, had even come to control her impulse to flinch when Dr. Wu, head of the team that had flown from Hong Kong to direct the treatment of the two of them, came in to check on her progress.

  It had taken nearly a month, but Paige could walk again, could connect her thoughts with the ability to speak, could sometimes even smile. For the past few evenings, after the meals had been served and cleared, the visitors shooed away, and the floor tended to be quieter, she’d been coming down to Rhonda’s room just to talk.

  Or unburden herself, was more like it, for Paige was the only one who could speak. There had been no change in Rhonda’s condition, in fact. She slept, woke, accepted food, just as she had when she’d been closed away in her Bel Air home. But despite every effort of the doctors, there’d been no reversal in her case, not the slightest sign to date.

  “Time,” that was all Dr. Wu could counsel. “And love. Let her know how much you want her back,” he’d said in his impeccable British accent, encouraging her visits. “This is uncharted territory, medically speaking,” he’d continued, gently opening his palms. “We will do everything we can, but we are only scientists. We can address the physical matters, but as to the real engine here, perhaps only you have the capability of reaching that.”

  And so Paige had come each evening to carry on her monologue, holding Rhonda’s hand, praying all the while for some telltale sign, some blink, some twitch, some answering squeeze that would let her know she was getting through. But so far, nothing. As likely as not, Rhonda would simply drift into sleep as Paige talked. She’d been avoiding mention of the more painful details, assuming that the anguish it was sure to cause should Rhonda be able to understand would be even more reason to stay wrapped up in the shell of whatever world she now inhabited.

  But when she’d mentioned her fears to Dr. Wu, he had shrugged. “You told me Rhonda Gardner was a strong woman. Tell her the truth, Ms. Nobleman. It’s something you Americans like to say, isn’t it? ‘The truth will set you free.’”

  And so this evening she’d decided to go through it all, step by step, as much of it as she had been able to piece together, that is. With Mahler and his cohorts dead, a great deal had been guesswork, of course. But the accounting trail was clear, and the worst of it was undeniable. It had all been about money. Or perhaps what money had signified to Marvin. She shook her head. Maybe she could understand his actions to some degree. She’d once heard a speech by Clifford Irving, the writer who’d been sent to prison for bilking his publisher out of a fortune for a fraudulent “autobiography” by Howard Hughes. Once the contracts for the book had been signed and the advances paid, Irving had said, he’d intended to come clean with his editors, admit the book was a fraud but convince them that it could still be marketed successfully. So why hadn’t he done that, a member of the audience wanted to know. “Because,” Irving had responded, to thunderous laughter from those assembled, “when someone puts $750,000 in your hand, whole new emotions are born.”

  So Mahler had sensed the opportunity for a fortune and had been seduced by it. Paige could understand that. There were enough women in the world content to marry a man who would give them a house, along with a checkbook and a budget, women who would trade any real sense of selfhood for the illusion of security. But it was an arrangement that sooner or later bred terrible resentment, and in a way, she supposed, Mahler had come to see himself in the same light, some kind of handmaiden whose fortunes were bound to the well-being of others. And if he had ceased to have any caring, any respect for those others, well…perhaps she could understand his desires to become someone other than what he had become. But the fashion in which he had gone about it, that was another matter altogether.

  Paige sighed and sat gently on the bedside. Such wearisome thoughts. And what was the difference whether Rhonda slept or not as Paige shared them? The effect seemed to be the same. When she’d described what had happened
to Barbara, how she had found her on that awful night, Rhonda’s eyes had been staring directly into hers, but there’d been not the slightest flicker. Maybe she had heard, maybe she hadn’t.

  “The men whom Marvin was dealing with apparently had sources in the research hospital where the Alzheimer’s experiments were being conducted,” Paige continued, her gaze on the brilliant sunset in the distance. “They’d switch the labels on the two sets of drugs before they were shipped to your doctors. Instead of the experimental antidote, you were receiving the same aluminum solutions they used to induce the symptoms in the lab animals in the first place.

  “He needed every cent he had and much more…and there was only one ready source. But he knew you’d never stand for this scheme of his,” she continued. “So he worked on it until he’d found a way of incapacitating you, but keeping you alive, so he’d still have access to your money. He leveraged everything,” she said, “even took out a second mortgage on the Palm Springs property.” She paused once more. “He’d found your will, you see.” She put her hand on Rhonda’s. “He knew what would have happened to everything if you had died.”

  There was more than one weighty implication in what Paige had just said, of course. He’d have killed you if he could have. That’s one thing Paige’s words implied. The other she still had difficulty articulating, even to herself.

  She glanced up at Rhonda’s face, was surprised to see that her eyes had flickered open. Usually, once she was out, she was good for a two-hour nap at least. She managed a smile. “You finding this interesting?” she said.

  Rhonda’s eyes opened a bit wider, blinked. Just a waking-up reflex, Paige knew, but she could pretend otherwise. She gave Rhonda’s hand a little squeeze. “It must have driven him crazy, knowing you’d left everything to me,” Paige said.

  She stared away, thinking for a moment. Searching for the right way to put this. She was angry and resentful, yes, but most of all, she felt a great ache of sadness, for all the years they had missed.

  For there had been some payoff for this terrible adventure. Something to show for what they’d had to endure. For that much she was grateful.

  Finally she turned back to Rhonda. “I just wish you could talk,” she said. “There’s so much. I wish you could explain it to me. It must have been so hard for you all these years, trying to mother me from a distance, do everything you could, and never let it show.”

  The clear blue eyes staring steadily back at Paige, the hand so limp in hers. “You’re my mother,” Paige said, her eyes brimming. “I know it now, and I know there’s a father somewhere I don’t know about and I wish you could tell me about him and I wish you could just say it: ‘I’m your mother, Paige.’” She broke off. “I wish you could have come to me twenty years ago and told me. But I want you to know that it doesn’t matter. I want you to know it’s all right. You’ve taken care of me all these years and now I’m going to take care of you for as long as it takes.” She squeezed her mother’s hand tightly.

  “I love you. I’ve always loved you.” She swallowed. “And I forgive you.”

  Paige didn’t know where that last statement came from, for it was nothing she’d intended to say. She put her hand to Rhonda’s face, searching for words that might explain what she’d meant, then stopped again, drew her hand away. Stared down in wonder at the glistening wetness on her fingertips, then back into that steadfast gaze and the tears that had gathered there, that were streaming down her mother’s cheeks like long-awaited rain.

  Chapter 43

  “It’s lovely here, isn’t it?” Janice was saying. They sat opposite each other in a corner booth of the restaurant, a place on the water that she had directed them to. The windows overlooked a marina where hundreds of sailboats bobbed in their blue rigging blankets, snug as big seabirds settled in for the evening. On a dock outside, Isabel stood with Mrs. Suarez, giggling, dancing back nervously as a freeloading pelican snatched bread scraps from their hands.

  “It’s pretty,” Deal said. His daughter was growing older before his eyes, he thought. Three years old and the spitting image of her mother. “The food was good.”

  She nodded. “I spoke to Vernon, you know. He told me that you saved that actress’s life. He told me everything.”

  He glanced at her, shrugged. “I lived through it,” he said. Then, “I didn’t want to worry you.”

  She stared at him for a moment. “That’s the thing about you, Deal. Someone you care about, you’d step in front of a train to save them.”

  He opened his hands on the table between them. There was nothing he could say to that.

  She sighed. “You’d do it for me, for Isabel, I know that.” She turned away, her face twisting as if it were knowledge that pained her.

  The silence lingered. They’d covered the basics long since. She’d been here in Sarasota for nearly a month, had finally called to arrange this first visit. They’d toured her apartment, a tidy one-bedroom place on the second floor of a building that overlooked the Gulf, as spotless and orderly, to Deal’s eye, as a monk’s cell. She’d shown them the gallery where she worked, one of several dotting the posh shopping circle on St. Armand’s Key. They’d driven out to the beach, watched Isabel chase the waves until she was dizzy with exhaustion. And then it had been time for lunch. Shrimp cocktail and conch fritters for appetizers. A beer for Deal, Shirley Temple for Isabel, Pellegrino for Janice. Excruciating small talk. A fish sandwich for Deal that he’d barely tasted. More small talk, and silences so painful that even Mrs. Suarez had sensed it and fled outside with Isabel.

  “So,” Deal said finally. “How’s this working out for you?”

  She stared at him patiently. “This isn’t easy for me, Deal. I don’t want you thinking I’m over here having a good time.”

  “All right,” he said after a moment.

  She stared down at the table for a moment. He noted the ribbon of scar tissue that ran across the back of her left hand, watched her cover it with her right. She looked up, out the window where Isabel was tossing scraps up into the air for the gulls now. “A man came into the gallery the other day,” she said.

  Deal watched her, steeling himself. “And?”

  She shrugged, smiled self-consciously, her eyes still averted. “He pretended to be interested in a painting we’d just hung. It was by a young Brazilian painter. An expensive piece. There was no question this man had the money.” She was rattling on a bit now.

  “He was hitting on you,” Deal said.

  “If you want to put it that way,” she said. She was toying with her napkin, tearing it into little bits. She turned to him, finally. “It was nearly six and I was closing up.” Her eyes on his, steady. He noticed she’d had her hair cut, had swept her bangs to the side, though her ears were still carefully hidden. Was this style more sophisticated? Or less?

  She glanced away. “He wanted to know if I’d have a drink with him.”

  Deal nodded. “What’d you say?”

  “I told him I was married,” she said. “That I had a daughter who was three.”

  Deal folded his hands in front of him. “Why are you telling me this, Janice?”

  She stared back at him. “It felt good,” she said. “It felt very good to know I was attractive to someone, Deal.”

  He felt his temper rising. “Well of course you’re attractive, Janice. You’re goddamned beautiful…”

  She held up her hand to stop him. “I don’t want anyone else, Deal. That’s not what this is about. I know it’s hard for you to understand…”

  “Then what is it about, Janice?”

  She looked at him helplessly. “Me,” she said simply. She reached across the table to take his hand. “I just need some time, Deal. Can you give me that? You saved Paige Nobleman’s life. To me, this is the same thing.”

  He stared across the table, out the window where a length of tinseled garland still hung, left over from Christmas. Over Janice’s shoulder he could see an uncountab
le flock of gulls, swarming about his daughter as if she were St. Francis incarnate. Mrs. Suarez held the bread sack and shook her head at all the fuss. Inside, Janice stared back at him, waiting.

  Men had tried to kill him, that seemed simple compared to this. He felt her hand squeeze his, felt something loosen inside him, some ineffable sadness giving way. How fragile life is, he thought. How stupidly taken for granted. How easily taken away. How fortunate he was to have a chance at all.

  “Sure,” he said, finally. “I can do that.” And he raised his hand to Janice’s cheek. “I can.”

  Author’s Note

  Deal to Die For was the third of the Deal series to see the light of day, and by the time I sat down to work on it, I was actually beginning to enjoy the thought of delving more deeply into the character of John Deal and the relationships he carried on with his estranged wife, his young daughter, and his old friends, all of it to be complicated by yet another calamity to intrude into his star-crossed life. Since the two previous installments had visited near-death experiences upon his unlucky and ultimately estranged wife Janice, I thought it was about time for someone else to take the heat. And because I was still fascinated, even ten years after my own stay in Hollywood, with the alternately glamorous and tacky culture surrounding American cinema, I determined to weave something of that experience into this new story.

  Thus the tale of a talented, perhaps too decent young actor and her unwitting collision with some of the seamiest of film business denizens, and all of this to draw John Deal into its web besides. In some ways, I look back upon this volume as possibly the most enjoyable of the entire series for me to write, probably because I had been yearning to find a way to make fictive use all my own Hollywood experiences for years. When he heard what it was about, my trusty West Coast agent Dick Shepherd opined somewhat dourly that the subject matter wouldn’t necessarily commend itself to actual movie makers, but I wasn’t about to let that stop me. I was making my own movie, right there on the pages.