Raw Deal

by Les Standiford

  It had happened so quickly that Coco felt as if he were awakening from a dream. He turned and motioned the others forward. “Go!” he shouted, waving his machete toward the crackling cane.

  Coco led the way, pushing the rough stalks aside, pausing now and then to listen to the path of el jefe. Edgar moved more quickly, slipping sideways through the tangle like a greyhound bred for thickets, while Manrique crashed along without bothering to clear a path, flattening the cane stalks as if they were grass. A buffalo, Coco thought. A human rhinoceros.

  Coco stopped again, held up his arms to halt the others. He listened, but heard nothing. El jefe’s thrashing had stopped. Coco remembered the polished leather holster that hung at the old man’s hip, imagined the soft clasp sliding open, a trembling hand on the pistol’s steel.

  Still, what could he do? Run away? Assuming he’d ever get out of these fields, where would he go? Slink back to Miami and explain to his employer that there had been an error, he had lost their prey in a cane thicket? He would prefer the bullet of el jefe’s pistol to what would happen to him then.

  Coco’s eyes were fixed on a dense clump of cane and stray pepperbush a few feet ahead. He stared hard at it, willing his eyes to disregard the green patchwork of leaves, to penetrate the tiny lattice-work of shadows. A mosquito whined through the silence near his ear. Was that a fleck of white behind a fluttering leaf? The heat seemed to urge itself up a notch and Coco felt sweat rolling down his brow. He didn’t try to wipe it away.

  A vision overlaid itself on Coco’s sight, a boy standing on a crate, peering through the shutters of a shack into a tiny bedroom, a sheet ripping away inside like a sail shorn in a windstorm. Coco watches a man’s glistening buttocks rising and falling, his mother’s bare legs waving skyward. Her sounds sharp, shrill, as if she was being hurt, as if this strange man was hurting her. “Mami,” the boy calls, and the woman lunges up on her elbow, outraged.

  “Get away,” she shrieks, though the man is pumping still. “I am working. Get away.” And Coco does.

  Coco felt a mosquito pierce the flesh of his cheek, felt another settle on the sweaty nape of his neck—fat, healthy mosquitoes, nourished on the dark blood of cane workers—but he had not moved his gaze from the tangle of brush in front of him. He saw another fluttering movement there, thought he caught a glimpse of dull steel. But it might have been a trick of his eyes. If he could see the past in a tangle of brush, he might see anything.

  He turned to Manrique, who was standing nearer the spot, and motioned the big man forward with the slightest motion of his chin. Manrique hesitated, then started forward.

  Manrique reached out to part the brush, his machete raised. Coco tightened his grip on his own blade. Manrique took another step…

  …and staggered backward as a gunshot blew away the silence. Manrique tottered, gave a spinning little half-step, a black dot sprung up on one of his doughy cheeks, a patch of bone and scarlet red opened up by his opposite ear. His eyes were aimed at Coco, but they were seeing something far away.

  Coco was already running forward. He saw the brush moving, glimpsed a hand, then the same flash of dull steel, pointing at him now. He lunged forward and lashed out with his machete, swinging blindly into the labyrinth of green and shadow. His feet tangled in the pepperbush’s roots as he swung and he went down, his ears ringing with the sound of another blast.

  He lay with his cheek in the cool muck, his head still ringing from the explosion, which must have gone off at his ear. He was vaguely aware of movements through the cane, sensing only that they were moving away from him as he blinked his eyes into focus.

  He was trying to push himself up when he realized what was lying on the ground before him. He hesitated, his face inches above the musty-smelling earth. He closed his eyes, thinking that perhaps he was dying and this was another vision. When he opened his eyes, it was still there.

  A hand. Or a part of one, its forefinger still curled in the ring of a pistol. A thin trail of smoke rose from the barrel of the weapon. On another finger, a gold ring, twisted in some shape like vines. A thumb, still twitching. And where the rest should be—wrist, arm, elbow—there was nothing, nothing but a spray of red pepper berries and a splash of blood.

  Coco pushed himself to his knees, shook his head groggily, listening to the sounds of el jefe crashing through the brush, of Edgar chasing after. He hauled himself up, felt his tender ear, but found no signs of blood. He found the big blade where it had fallen in the crook of a pepper root, took it up, and followed the sounds of the chase.

  Coco found el jefe’s spoor soon enough, a fist-sized smear of blood in a sandy patch here, a swipe across a stand of cane there. He could hear harsh breathing, grunts of effort, muffled curses up ahead. He plowed through a marshy spot where the cane seemed stunted, found himself bathed in a stinging black cloud of mosquitoes. He slogged on, fighting the urge to chop at the insects with his blade, then heard a cry up ahead, followed by the splash of something heavy falling into water.

  Coco hurried on through a last canebrake, emerged on the bank of a canal. Was it the same one they’d started from or another of the endless network that crisscrossed this steaming land? Impossible to tell. Coco had lost his sense of direction long ago.

  What he could be sure of was this: el jefe was down there in the murky water, thrashing with one good hand, one awful stump, trying to drag himself up onto the muddy bank.

  “I cannot swim,” el jefe called, but to whom it was not clear. “I cannot swim.”

  Edgar stood above el jefe on the bank, his blade poised like a housewife with a broom, daring the mouse to take one step farther. Edgar grinned as Coco emerged from the canebrake.

  “I’ll help him out,” Edgar said as el jefe levered his good arm onto the shore. The old man’s face was a mask of effort. He seemed strangely unaware of the spidery little man with the huge knife above him.

  “I cannot swim,” he gasped, dragging himself forward on the mud.

  “No matter,” Edgar said. He was about to strike when Coco’s blade took him in the back.

  Edgar stiffened, gasped, lost his grip on his knife. He staggered at the edge of the bank for a moment, clawing weakly at his back, then fell over, into the water.

  Coco watched him sink, did not flinch as Edgar’s sightless gaze passed over him. The last he saw of Edgar was the tiny birthmark, a doomed continent sinking with its stubbled globe.

  Strange, Coco thought, how indifferent he was to Manrique’s death, how he’d come to despise Edgar. How for a moment he had regarded el jefe almost as a comrade. It was indeed a very strange world.

  He turned back to el jefe then, feeling weary, feeling almost sad. The world turned and turned and sometimes things were upside down. Nevertheless…

  He was about to do what had to be done when he realized it was already over. El jefe lay where he had dragged himself, half in, half out of the water. His old man’s eyes were closed as if in sleep, his lips parted, pressed into a shallow puddle of water.

  Coco nudged him with the tip of his shoe, then again. El jefe, king of the sugar, Coco thought. You get what you get, but then someone else wants it, hires Coco, and see what happens.

  Coco shook his head, made a sound that might have been a sigh. The world turns, he thought, and as luck would have it, he would go on turning with it. Clean this mess up now. Go back to Miami, tell this story. See what job comes next.

  Strange. He pushed the old man lightly, almost gently, with his toe, and the body slid down the bank, out of sight.

  Chapter 2

  “‘The sleep of reason produces nightmares.’” It was Janice’s voice, lilting, echoing in the stone-floored room.

  “What’s that?” Deal said. They were in the largest room of a museum-cum-gallery of Latin-American art, a place he’d never heard of until a week ago. That was Miami for you. Live here a lifetime, it was still full of surprises.

  He’d been studying the elaborate, other-era f
iligree work on the museum’s ceiling molding. The whole place, which had probably been some family’s mansion before taxes and upkeep drove them out, was full of touches like that. Where would you find subcontractors who could do work like that these days, he wondered. You couldn’t, of course, not at any price. It was hard enough finding subs who would work, period.

  “Look at this, Deal.” She tugged at his arm. “Do you think it’s real?”

  Deal turned his attention to the piece Janice was admiring, an engraving, it looked like, a fellow in knickers collapsed at an old-fashioned desk with his head in his arms. Bats and strange-looking owls flapped in the shadowy air above him.

  She had been reading the title of the piece aloud. Deal gave her a smile. “You’re not imagining it. There’s a painting right there on the wall.”

  Janice made a face. “Don’t be funny, Deal. It’s a Goya. I just wondered if it was original.” There was a leatherbound book inside a glass case nearby. The book lay open at a page bearing a reproduction of the same engraving on the wall.

  Deal checked the book, then turned back to the engraving. He inspected the little brass plaque nailed to the engraving’s frame, then took a step back, cocking his head for a new angle. Finally he shook his head. “It’s not original,” he said with authority.

  Janice glanced at him, curious.

  He shrugged. “I feel like that every month when it’s time to pay the suppliers.”

  “You’re awful,” she said. “We should have gone to the boat show.”

  “No,” he said, making a grab for her. “This is a great building. I’m glad we came.”

  She swatted his hand away. A matronly woman inspecting a massive abstract across the room glanced disapprovingly at them. “Stop it, Deal,” Janice whispered.

  “What do you say we hide in this place?” he said, tagging close on her heels. He gestured at a massive bronze sculpture in the middle of the room, Adam and Eve with their backs to one another. “We’ll pretend to be statues. When everybody’s gone home, we’ll reenact the Fall on that bench over there.”

  Janice tried to look stern, but her face was coloring. The matronly lady stiffened and turned back to her abstract.

  “You’re going to get us thrown out,” Janice said. He could tell she was holding back her laughter.

  You ever get married, make sure it’s to a woman with a sense of humor, that’s what his father had told him. Given him that along with a bunch of other advice, most of which had turned out to be worthless, just like the construction business he had left, Deal thought. Still, one pearl of wisdom made up for a lot.

  Janice stopped in front of a Picasso. “I can’t believe all these things are here,” she said. They had heard about the place from a friend, David Coetzee, who collected Latin-American paintings. “A hidden gem,” David had called it. “Right here on Brickell Avenue.”

  And he was right, Deal thought. In a city without a proper museum, it was doubly surprising to find this collection, and nearly as surprising that few people seemed to know of it. They hadn’t seen a dozen others. He and Janice, along with the frigid matron, who’d fled the room, seemed to be the only visitors left, and if it hadn’t been for the rain that had kept him off the job that morning, there might have been only one person in the place.

  As it was, Deal had taken a rare Saturday off and fulfilled the idle promise he’d made to Janice the night David had told them about the place. He’d been cranking hard on the job, a massive home in the Grove he was rebuilding for Terrence Terrell, the computer genius who’d brought major league baseball—the Manatees—to South Florida.

  Although home-building had not been Deal’s major interest, the hurricane had changed all that. People had been desperate to put their lives back together, and Deal had come to find more satisfaction in that, less in throwing up storage warehouses and strip shopping centers.

  Terrell had seen some of Deal’s work, the renovation of a home in Gables by the Sea that had taken the brunt of the storm surge, eight feet of Biscayne Bay right through the doors and windows. Although Deal had his reservations about working for such a legendary stickler, Terrell had badgered him until he’d finally relented. And he was glad he had. He and Terrell’s architects, a group Deal had worked with before, had free rein. No more project managers urging him to cut corners, find a way around the building codes. Terrell had money to burn. “Just tell me what you need to do the job right, John Deal. I plan to live here a long, long time.”

  It had turned out to be a sweet deal, as he’d told Janice, who laughed when he’d said it. “You’re sweet,” she’d said, laughing until he figured it out.

  Deal sidled up to Janice, put his arm around her waist. He’d been grinding on the job for far too long. Forgetting his own life. She was a warm island in the supercooled room. “Let’s not tell Terrell about this place,” he said. “He’d just buy everything, have it put in his new entryway.”

  She smiled up at him, finally. “Are you going to behave?”

  “Only if you want me to,” he said. She was silhouetted against a pair of French doors opening onto a tropical garden. The light cast soft shadows across her features, heightened the natural pout of her lips.

  “What’s with you today? You never act like this.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve decided I’ve been working too hard. I’ve been too serious. But that’s going to change. You’re looking at a new man. The new Deal.”

  “Sure,” she said, rolling her eyes again.

  “I love this place, really,” he said, pulling her closer. “I love you. And if you don’t want to do it here, let’s go get a room at the Mayfair. We’ll call Mrs. Suarez and tell her we had a dead battery, they had to send a tow truck from Homestead. It’d be the truth, if we had a dead battery.”

  “We can’t afford a room at the Mayfair,” she said, twisting away from him.

  “Okay, the Ramada,” he said. “The Motel Six. Any place where you’re not on call…”

  “Deal…” she said, affecting exasperation. But she was still smiling. Their daughter, Isabel, was almost nine months old now, but she had resisted all attempts at closing down Mom’s milk bar, especially at bedtime. This was their first time alone since Isabel had been born.

  “I can’t help it,” he said. “Great art affects me this way.”

  “I thought maybe it was me,” she said. She turned away.

  “Oh, it’s you all right,” he said, reaching for her. She tried to duck, but he got one finger in a belt loop. He hadn’t intended it, but as she spun around, he found his other hand against her breast. Her face flushed crimson. “Deal!” she said, but her voice was throaty.

  “Make up your mind,” he said. He hadn’t moved his hand. Couldn’t, somehow. He felt light-headed. Sixteen again. “The bench over there, or the Mayfair.”

  Her lips parted, her eyes beginning to focus on that place far, far away. Deal felt himself press closer. He could feel the heat of her stomach through his jeans. He remembered moments like this. From college? From high school? Times when it was impossible to distinguish between all the promise of life and his body’s mindless urge to pop.

  Then again, maybe there wasn’t any difference. Didn’t seem so now. He bent to brush Janice’s forehead with his cheeks. Maybe the bench was a possibility, he was thinking, when the voice came echoing behind them.

  “I must ask that you leave.” It was a man in a cream-colored suit, standing in the doorway.

  Deal glanced over his shoulder, deadpan. “You’re not allowed to kiss in here?” He was still holding Janice.

  The guy was unfazed—the elegant suit, the careful trim of his beard and hair, he must have practiced being fazeproof.

  “We are closing now,” the man said. His voice was neutral, slightly accented. His gaze was averted. Deal suspected he spoke Spanish in the Castilian style.

  “We must prepare for an opening this evening,” the man added.

  “You have to
close so you can open up again?” Deal said. He was wondering what it would take to get a rise out of the guy.

  “You’ll have to excuse my husband,” Janice said. She’d extricated herself, was tugging at Deal’s arm. “You have some wonderful things here,” she added.

  The man nodded. “The new exhibit opens Monday,” he said, ushering them out. “Come again.”

  Deal tried to get a backward look at the guy, maybe come up with something else to say, but Janice had found the doorway, braced herself with one hand and levered him out into the bright sunshine with the other.

  “This was a lot better than the boat show,” he called after her.

  She was shaking her head, moving quickly across the courtyard. “And I had to sign our names to the guest book,” she said. She turned to glare at him, but it didn’t hold. Then they both began to laugh, peals of laughter that echoed across the lush courtyard and into the Florida sky.

  Chapter 3

  “Let me be certain I understand this,” Marielena Marquez said to the smiling young man. “You are going to broadcast the weather program from our opening?”

  The young man nodded confidently. “Action Weather, we call it.”

  Marielena shook her head, still trying to comprehend. They were standing near the fountain in the courtyard of her building, Galeria y Ediciones Catalan, while a bevy of technicians swarmed about, running cables, stationing lights and reflectors, even mounting a large blue screen that seemed suitable for projecting outdoor films near the entryway. One of the cables had snagged in the dwarf hibiscus she’d had set out last week, uprooting one of the rare plants, splitting another at the root. A large piece of carbon paper floated in the reflecting pond. There was a diet Coke can sitting in the lap of a bronze garden nymph. Someone had ground out a cigarette on the limestone paving.