Raw Deal

by Les Standiford

  He reached over his shoulder automatically, caught a fistful of shirt and hair, leaned forward, and threw. The same jujitsu moves he’d learned in Korea. Forty years later, and still going. There’d been a karate craze down at the Department a few years ago, and they’d tried to force Driscoll into the class. He’d had to throw half a dozen Japanese guys through the walls before they’d left him alone.

  The guy who’d been trying to kill him was writhing on the ground in front of him now, his face covered by some kind of ski mask. He didn’t seem like he was going anywhere, but Driscoll wasn’t taking chances. He dropped down, pinned the guy’s chest with his knee, and snatched off the mask.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Driscoll said when he was finally able to talk. This was some kind of night, all right.

  It was Tommy’s face staring pathetically up at him in the moonlight. His guileless eyes were wide, his mouth popping soundlessly open and shut as he tried to get his own breath back.

  “What in the hell are you doing?” Driscoll said, and then remembered to ease the pressure on the poor guy’s chest.

  “You thought I was that same one, the guy tried to do you in the alley at work? Is that it?” He popped a beer, put it on the kitchen table, slid it across to Tommy.

  Tommy fumbled for the can, nearly missed it, ended up sloshing suds into his lap. He sniffed the can, shook his head, pushed it back across the table at Driscoll.

  “Drink the goddamned thing,” Driscoll said. “Maybe it’ll do you some good.”

  Tommy gave him a look, picked up the beer, sipped cautiously at it. “Wow pend?” he said. He was pointing outside, puzzled.

  “Wow pend?” Driscoll repeated. He turned to follow Tommy’s gesture.

  “Wow pend,” he said again.

  It was like hearing Deal’s little girl jabber, trying to interpret what she wanted. Suddenly a light went on. He turned back to Tommy. “What happened? Is that what you said?”

  Tommy nodded vigorously.

  “When you tried to kill me, you mean?”

  Tommy stared at him. His mouth twisted up and he put his hands awkwardly against his chest, a pained expression in his eyes. Driscoll had never gone in for charades, but as a cop he’d seen this one about a hundred million times: “Who, me?”

  Driscoll wiped his hand across his face. He tried to imagine how they dealt with this guy down at the restaurant where he worked: “Here’s how we grill a burger, Tommy. No, no. Don’t put your hand on the grill. It’s the meat patty. That’s right.…”

  He rearranged his features, started over again. “Tommy, I’m coming home a minute ago. I park my car. I get out. I think I see something moving around in the other apartment, the one that’s burned. I walk up to see.” Driscoll paused. “You with me so far?”

  Tommy nodded, a guy eager to please.

  “Then you goddamn jump out of the shadows, put a move on me. You remember that?”

  Tommy shook his head vehemently.

  “You were choking me, you jerkwad. You were trying to fucking kill me and you don’t remember??” Driscoll slammed his hand down on the table between them. Tommy’s beer went over on its side. He tried to catch it, but only sent it into a worse spin. A band of foam shot across Driscoll’s chest, more into his lap, before he could kick his chair back and stand.

  “Jesus Christ,” he growled, trying to brush himself clean. “What the hell is the matter with you…”

  He glanced up at Tommy, feeling his own face glowing with anger. Then he stopped. Tommy had the empty can in his hands now, clutching it against his chest hard enough to mangle it. His face was beet red, twisted in anguish. “Sowry,” he gasped, as big sobs racked his body. He looked like a kid who’d been scolded to the point of abject shame. “I’m sowry.”

  Driscoll sighed, put his hand out to soothe him. “Tommy,” he crooned. What was going on here? Tommy the killer? Tommy the baby? A two-hundred-pound, fifty-five-year-old baby? Driscoll felt the shudders beneath his heavy hand, and his weary heart gave.

  “It’s okay, Tommy,” he murmured, trying to stanch Tommy’s tears. “Come on. Cut it out. It’s okay.”

  Chapter 22

  “I think he needs some help,” Driscoll said.

  Deal was busy at the ruined doorway, trying to get the hinges set in the battered frame without straining his aching ribs. He paused, looked up at Driscoll, who’d already removed the tape from his nose. It was true, Deal thought, Driscoll’s nose did seem straighter. He set down his drill, took away the screws he’d been holding in his mouth.

  Tommy was heading down the sidewalk, away from the building, spiffed up in T-shirt and jeans for work. He stopped to lean into the playpen Deal had set up under a ficus near the sidewalk. Isabel was in there playing with a crew of stuffed animals. Tommy poked her in the ribs and Isabel squealed happily. She jabbered at Tommy, who smiled and made gestures back at her. Isabel screamed with laughter. Tommy turned to Deal and Driscoll.

  “Bipe,” he called, waving.

  “Bye, Tommy,” Deal said.

  Driscoll gave him a wave in return.

  “You ought to keep your voice down,” Deal said as Tommy moved out of earshot.

  “As if he knows what I’m talking about,” Driscoll said.

  “Driscoll,” Deal began, feeling pained. “If he’s smart enough to do what you said he did, he’s smart enough to understand.”

  “Wait a minute,” Driscoll said, “you don’t believe me? You think this is my imagination, too? The numbskull tried to kill me. He put a first-class move on me and damn near pulled it off. You don’t hear my voice? I sound like a frog.”

  Deal stared at him. “Driscoll, you’ve been on his case since he moved in. Maybe he finally snapped, decided to give you some of your shit back, I don’t know.”

  “I’m telling you, the guy is goddamn dangerous. First he’s telling me somebody tried to kill him at work…”

  “At work?”

  “Out in the alley.” Driscoll waved at his disbelief. “Then he comes after me.” Driscoll stopped. “You ever talk to his keepers? The ones who sent him over? Maybe he’s a psycho.”

  “Come on…”

  “Bullshit, come on. Do you know anything about this guy, really? For all you know, he’s our firebug.”

  Driscoll stopped abruptly, as if the thought had just occurred to him in its speaking. Deal too felt stunned. He turned and stared off after Tommy, good old Tommy, whistling a cockeyed tune and waving hello and goodbye to things you couldn’t see.

  “You don’t believe that, do you, Driscoll?” Deal’s gaze was on Isabel now, Isabel playing nonchalantly in her crib. “Bah,” she was saying. She bopped one animal over the head with another. “Bah bunny.”

  “Call HRS, that’s all I’m telling you. They got shrinks on the payroll, they must have. Take the guy in, let ’em check his valves. Then you’ll know. Know who you got living in your house, anyway.”

  Deal went over to the playpen, hefted Isabel up into his arms. He hugged her, breathing in the scent of her baby’s tender skin, then turned to face Driscoll. He realized a faint sickness was gathering in the pit of his stomach, and he held Isabel even tighter.

  “I can’t believe Tommy is dangerous,” he said, sensing how hollow his own words rang.

  “Uh-huh,” Driscoll snorted. “Jeffrey Dahmer’s mama said the same damn thing.”

  Chapter 23

  They stood upwind at the edge of a broad canal that cut through the endless cane, Torreno and Coco Morales, along with Dagoberto Real and his men, all of them save for Coco dressed up like bankers, waiting for the signal from the State Forestry Office for their private ceremony to begin.

  Real was, in name, a partner of Coco’s employer, a man whose name was often linked in print with Torreno’s: for the record they were fellow business men and leaders of the expatriate community, united in their desire to lead their countrymen back home again. At least that was the public front. In privat
e, Coco thought, matters were not so clear-cut.

  Coco studied the two with Real carefully. Although they wore coats and ties and were intended to appear as businessmen, he knew they performed the same function for their master as he did for his. He knew also that they had measured him as he was now measuring them. After all, anything might happen. At any time.

  There was a shrill ring, and Torreno removed a folding telephone from his breast pocket. He listened a moment, nodded, then turned to the group of dark-skinned men standing a hundred feet downwind, at the edge of the rustling cane field. Torreno, who might have allowed a momentary smile, motioned with his arm, and one of the workers picked up a strange-looking can. The worker struck a match and the snout of the can blossomed into flame.

  The others stood back as the man tilted the can and began to stride quickly along the edge of the canebrake, dispensing bright burning gobs of fuel oil as he went. One of the field workers followed along, a machete beating time idly at his side. The Jamaicans called the big knives “collins,” or “bills,” and while they were the principal tools of the harvest, this man would not be cutting cane tonight. He had his eye out for the things that might come bolting out of the brush, especially the snakes. Coco was glad to be where he was, with but two creatures to keep his eyes on, and those two of small threat, he had already decided.

  Real’s men were nudging each other excitedly as the flames grew, their eyes sparkling in the reflection. Fools, Coco thought. The sort who amused themselves with matches as children.

  “If the wind turns, we’ll have to jump in the canal,” Torreno said, his own grin reflecting the glow of the flames.

  Dagoberto Real, dapper in a double-breasted suit that lay like a silk glove about his shoulders, glanced at the water as if it was the last possibility in his mind. They had scarcely stepped down from the Jeep that had brought them to witness the burn when he had stopped to wipe the muck dust from his shoes with a handkerchief. Coco was surprised the man had not ordered one of his bodyguards to do it.

  The flames were climbing high into the twenty-foot stalks now, crackling and snapping with heat’s own voice. The sky was suddenly alive with birds swirling in the updrafts, drawn to the clouds of insects fleeing the fire. Coco saw a gull wheel and dive straight into the flames, rise again with something struggling in its beak. He heard a shrill scream and turned to see a flurry of movement near the group of workers with the firepot.

  A flock of rabbits had burst out of the flaming underbrush and darted about in a panic, caught between the men before them and the flames at their back. One of the creatures sprouted fire from its fur. It fell to its side and made a frantic, scrabbling circle in the dust, its screams louder now. Coco saw the worker raise his long blade, bring it down, and the screaming stopped.

  Closer by, a creature that might have been a dog emerged from a screen of tall grass, trotted forward a few paces, then stopped. A gray fox, not a dozen yards away.

  Coco looked to see if the others had noticed, but the two bodyguards still had their eyes fixed on the fire, and Torreno and Real were engaged in intense conversation, leaning close together over the roar of the flames.

  The fox, who must have grown fat on a diet of rabbits, his coat sleek in the glow of the fire, gave Coco a last, disinterested look, then padded quickly down the bank of the canal. It paused, tested the water with a paw, cast a backward glance at the fire, and dove. The fox paddled rapidly across the canal, head held high at the front of a spreading V. It emerged on the far bank, shook itself once, and disappeared into the gloom.

  Although the fire had advanced a good hundred yards into the cane, the heat had grown intense. Coco felt sweat trickling down his armpits, saw Real pull out his handkerchief again, this time to pat down his face.

  Torreno’s face glowed like a foundry master’s. He swept his arm at the wall of flames. Sparks and embers were shooting up from the twisting cane stalks, dancing past the egrets and gulls like fireworks. Black smoke had spread like a giant thunderhead high into an otherwise crystal evening sky. The group with the firepot was nearly lost in the distance now, their silhouettes seeming to drag the sheet of flames along into the night.

  “Magnificent,” Torreno called. “Is it not magnificent?”

  Coco, rarely given to enthusiasm, found himself nodding in agreement.

  “Hot,” said Dagoberto Real, mopping at his face and heading back toward the waiting Jeep. “Damned hot, is what I’d call it.”

  Torreno and Coco shared a look. Then Torreno shrugged and motioned everyone along.

  ***

  “The fire burns away the leaves,” Torreno was saying. “The men cut the stalks that are left.” Miles away from the burn now, the group followed him through the door of the building that looked incongruous in the rural landscape, an ironworks, possibly, plucked out of an urban setting and dropped down in the middle of nowhere.

  Coco flipped on a light switch, illuminating the cavernous interior. Looming boilers in a far corner, huge turbines crouched closer by. They walked on inside until they came to a railing. Below them lay a series of glowing pools connected by conveyor belts and heavy steel rollers placed here and there along an apparent processing route.

  “The cane is piled and gathered, brought here by truck,” Torreno continued, his voice echoing up to the vast corrugated ceiling. He nodded at Coco, who moved across the dusty concrete floor to a control panel nearby. Coco found the proper breaker switch, pulled sharply. A heavy rumble began, as much vibration as sound.

  Torreno had to speak louder now. “The stalks are fed in through the hoppers over there,” he pointed into one gloomy corner, “then go down the conveyors through the rollers.”

  Real stared without interest at the heavy manglers. Steel rollers like silos laid side to side, they whirled noisily, whining for something to crush.

  “A few passes through those gears, and every atom of liquid has been driven out of the stalks, into the catch-basins you see,” Torreno said, indicating the glowing pools. “After it is done, we burn the fiber that’s left to help fire the boilers. Those power everything to begin with.”

  “A neat circle,” Real said grudgingly. He had the look of a schoolboy being dragged through a field trip.

  “Precisely,” Torreno said. If he noticed Real’s distaste, he was ignoring it. “The waste fiber was originally used to make a kind of wallboard, until they found that mice had an inordinate appetite for it. Now it is burned, the excess power sold off to the local electrical cooperative.” He smiled at the efficiency of it.

  “By the end of the week, this plant will be in full operation, twenty-four hours a day. It will not stop until the last stalk of cane is processed.”

  He motioned Real to a table near the switchbox, a place where workers might take lunch when the plant was operating. Real swiped a disapproving finger across a dusty chair bottom, brought his handkerchief out again before he sat.

  “So,” Torreno said, spreading his hands out on the wooden tabletop between them. “To our proposal. What are your thoughts?”

  Real shrugged his shoulders. “Vicente,” he began, as if it was painful, a pain he had endured many times. “We have had our differences…”

  Torreno started to protest, but Real held him silent with his upraised palm. “And yet we have always managed to accommodate one another in the pursuit of a common goal.”

  Torreno held himself in check as Real continued. “But now,” here Real’s eyes flicked away, toward his two men, who loitered in the shadows, “this sugar business.” He spat out the word, threw his hands up helplessly.

  “We have here the opportunity of a lifetime,” Torreno said.

  “I have had my people look into this ‘opportunity.’” Real withdrew a sheaf of papers from a breast pocket, donned a stylish pair of bifocals, and began to read. “You rely on a price of twenty-one cents per pound for a product that sells on the world market for roughly half of that. The present quotas restri
ct imports to something less than twelve percent of United States consumption.

  “However,” Real said, pausing for a glance at Torreno, “there is considerable political opposition to the maintenance of such protections. The Hemispherical Free Trade Agreement could allow the importation of sugar from Mexico, perhaps even from Cuba, into this country. The proposed General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade would end all agricultural price supports worldwide.”

  “This is all political talk,” Torreno said dismissively.

  “Also,” Real continued, “as one of the largest holdings in this area, Florida Sugar is liable for a significant part of the proposed Everglades Restoration Project, estimated cost: four hundred million dollars, not to mention what might come in the future.”

  “We are already working on alternatives to that plan.…”

  “It is an environmental nightmare that will only get worse,” Real said. “And you are also a signatory to a negotiated settlement on behalf of the sugarcane workers of Florida in the amount of fifty-one million dollars.…”

  “The attorneys have filed for an exception to that ruling…”

  Real sighed, waved away Torreno’s protest. He was about to read on but something seemed to stop him. He folded up his papers and leaned earnestly forward. “My question is this, Vicente: Have you lost your mind?”

  For a moment, the only sound in the enormous room was the low-pitched rumble of the big rollers. The two men stared at one another across the dusty tabletop. It occurred to Coco that were he to pass his hand through the space that held their gaze, he would feel heat.

  “There is risk in all things,” Torreno said, breaking the silence at last.

  “Vicente…” Real began, shaking his well-coiffed head. The aggrieved tone had returned to his voice.

  “Hear me out,” Torreno said, growing exasperated. Real glanced up, startled.

  “You will forgive me for feeling strongly on the matter,” Torreno continued, “but we are speaking here of something more than money, or of the petty politics of the Americans.”