Raw Deal

by Les Standiford

  Ms. Marquez put her fingertips on Margaria’s lips to silence her. “I am sorry, Mr. Deal,” she said weakly. “For what has happened to you and your family.”

  Deal nodded. “I’m sorry for you, too,” he said, meeting her gaze. She was a beautiful woman. Or had been, at least. He found his thoughts drifting back to Janice, her bandages, her blistered skin…had to will himself to stop.

  “You had a lovely place. Some wonderful paintings,” he said sadly. “My wife and I enjoyed it very much.”

  She nodded, sinking back into her pillows as if the memory of it exhausted her.

  “I guess they told you someone killed Alberto Valles, Ms. Marquez,” Driscoll cut in. “They wrapped him up in copper wiring, plugged him into a two-twenty socket. He was still smoking when we found him.”

  Ms. Marquez’s face had turned a shade paler. She shook her head weakly against her pillow. “Animals,” she said, her voice faint. Even Margaria seemed shaken by Driscoll’s words. In the silence, Deal heard the distant sound of a powerboat on the river, the muffled sounds of men talking out on deck.

  “Whoever it was had torn Valles’s place apart, ransacked his files,” Driscoll continued. “The police’ll go through everything, but it looked like a pretty thorough job to me. I expect they got everything they were after.”

  “They always do,” she said.

  “Pardon me?” Driscoll said.

  Ms. Marquez was staring at the ceiling, forlorn. “They are ruthless, Mr. Driscoll. They take what they want. They take and they take and they take. And they let no one stop them.”

  She struggled up on one elbow. “Now what do you want from me?” She stared at them wild-eyed from her bed, ignoring Margaria’s comforting hands at her shoulders. In a moment, Deal thought, the voodoo brigade would come through the door, put an end to this.

  Driscoll gave his imperturbable shrug. “I thought maybe you’d have something stashed away. A copy of the manuscript, some of the files. Anything that might substantiate the charges…”

  Ms. Marquez’s eyes were on Deal now. Her face was haunted, as if Deal and Driscoll were demons come to rob her of her last shred of repose. “I have told you. Efrain Valles was very protective. He left nothing with me. He was to deliver the completed manuscript the day that he was killed. So far as I know, there was only one copy.”

  “I checked with the boys downtown,” Driscoll said. “They never found a trace of any manuscript after the blast.”

  “It was written on paper,” she said. “Not stone tablets. The explosion took place in the editorial offices. You told me that yourself.”

  Driscoll nodded as if she was reminding him of the obvious. “What do you know about this Rafael Quintana, your editor?”

  She stared back at him, spots of color coming into her cheeks. “What about him?”

  “How long did he work for you?”

  “Not long,” she said finally. “A few months.”

  “Where did you find him?”

  She turned away from Driscoll’s gaze. “A friend in New York recommended him. She knew I was looking for someone to help expand my publishing activities and she knew Rafael. He was a junior editor in a small firm in New York City. He was quite anxious to come back to Miami, quite enthused about our goals.” She glanced up at Driscoll, her face pained. “I wanted to provide a forum for other voices in the exile community, Mr. Driscoll. Rafael understood that. He was excited at the possibility. He actually went out searching for authors who had important things to say, manuscripts of value.…” As she spoke, her gaze clouded, until, as if she’d heard the suggestion in her own words, she finally trailed off.

  “Were you involved with Quintana, Ms. Marquez?” Driscoll asked the question softly, but she seemed to expect it.

  “What relevance would that have?” she said. She seemed very tired.

  “Maybe none,” Driscoll said. “Except if you were, you might not have noticed certain things.”

  “What sorts of things?” she asked. She was staring off somewhere far away, her voice faint.

  “Did this person who recommended him tell you what kinds of books Rafael Quintana used to publish in New York, Ms. Marquez?”

  She shook her head, numb. Driscoll reached into his pocket. Deal saw the guard at the door tense, then relax as Driscoll withdrew his little pad and began to flip through the pages. He found what he was looking for, glanced up at Deal, then began to read.

  “El Problema de las Razas de Cuba,” he managed. He screwed up his face. “Cuidado la…” He broke off. “The hell with it,” he said. “Bottom line is it’s all racist, fascist stuff, things that would make the Ku Klux Klan Press seem liberal. In New York, Rafael Quintana worked for an outfit committed to the spread of right-wing propaganda. Its whole operation was funded by the Patriots’ Freedom Foundation.”

  “How do you know these things?” Ms. Marquez asked dully.

  “I’m a suspicious person by nature,” Driscoll said. “I look at a situation, I try to imagine the worst about everybody.” He shrugged. “After that, it’s simple. You just get on the phone, ask a bunch of questions.”

  “What are you getting at, Vernon?” Deal asked.

  “Rafael Quintana was a plant in Ms. Marquez’s operation, that much seems certain…”

  “You think he would sacrifice his life for those madmen, just to stop the publication of a book?” Ms. Marquez broke in.

  “Maybe he didn’t.” Driscoll shrugged. “They still haven’t found his body.”

  She stared at him for a moment, absorbing the implication. Finally she gathered herself.

  “In any case,” she said, “it is over. The manuscript is destroyed, Alberto’s records are gone.…” She shook her head, weary.

  “If we could prove a link between Quintana and the bombing,” Driscoll offered, “link Quintana to Torreno…” He shrugged. “You’d make a pretty credible witness.…”

  Ms. Marquez gave a dry laugh that sounded more like a cry of pain. “My word against that of Vicente Torreno? And that is assuming I would live long enough to testify. Spare me, Mr. Driscoll.”

  “Sure,” Driscoll said. “I can understand. You’re ready to go off on vacation, who wants to get tangled up in some messy trial.” He glanced around the stark cabin. “You got yourself a first-class stateroom, a nonstop ticket to Haiti—jeez, you’re the first people to willingly go to Haiti in years. They’ll probably give you the key to the island…”

  “Leave her alone, Driscoll,” Deal broke in. “She’s right. They’d eat her alive.”

  “Stay out of this,” Driscoll said.

  “Find some other way to do it, Vernon. You want the guy that bad, find another way.”

  Margaria had gotten Ms. Marquez back on her pillows, was smoothing her hair from her sweat-dampened brow. The guard was watching the confrontation between Driscoll and Deal with something resembling a smile. He could watch them fight, then finish off whoever was left.

  Driscoll turned back to Ms. Marquez. “How about the man who was mentioned in Valles’s manuscript?” Driscoll said. “The man from our government who knew what Torreno was up to. Do you know his name, where we might look for him?”

  Ms. Marquez gave him a forlorn look. “He is dead,” she said, giving them a bitter smile. “I too wanted to speak to this man, to hear it from his mouth. I insisted to Efrain Valles that I speak to him, but he told me he was dead, shot on a Cuban beach during one of the ‘raids’ Torreno manufactured.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me all this before?”

  She shook her head, helpless. “I thought it would sound too convenient. That it might make you doubt me.”

  Driscoll shook his head. “What was this man’s name?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Efrain would not tell me,” she said, falling back on her pillows. “He wanted to protect him.” She gave her bitter laugh, and turned her face to the wall.

  “Now, please,” she said. “I am
very tired. You must leave me alone.”

  The big guy turned and motioned them out. Deal heard footsteps on the decks. Driscoll was making a note on his little pad as the big guy shoved him on through the bulkhead. Something they’d be able to check out in the afterlife, Deal supposed. He gave Ms. Marquez a last glance, then felt a thick hand on his arm propelling him out into the humid darkness.

  He stumbled back down the decks, something hard and unyielding prodding him in the back all the way to the gangway, where the same enormous man stood with his AK-47 in his paw.

  “Down,” one of the big men behind him said, pointing toward the docks below. Deal followed Driscoll down the swaying gangway, steadying himself along the rope handhold. When they reached the parking area, Deal saw that the priest’s van had disappeared. In its place was Driscoll’s white Ford, the paint glowing softly in the reflection of the Miami skyline.

  “Go,” said the big man behind them. And Deal and Driscoll went.

  Chapter 32

  “You never thought they were going to hurt us, did you?”

  It was Driscoll’s voice, filtering back to him through the underbrush. It was still dark, and Deal struggled to keep Driscoll’s jiggling flashlight beam in view. They were on a wild stretch of property behind the ruins of the bombed-out museum, although Driscoll had refused to tell him what they were doing there.

  “I suppose you didn’t?” Deal called to him.

  “I’m suspicious,” Driscoll called. “Not paranoid.”

  He had stopped, and Deal fought his way through the clutch of a Brazilian pepper bush into a clearing where Driscoll stood.

  Deal stopped short, surprised by the unexpected view. They were on a rare elevated stretch of ground that overlooked Biscayne Bay. To the north, the same brightly lit buildings they had viewed from the banks of the Miami River were visible, now jutting up over the fringe of mangrove and banyans to mirror themselves on the placid backwaters of the Atlantic.

  To the south he saw the graceful arch of the causeway looping out from the mainland to Key Biscayne. One car made its way up the span as he watched, silent at this distance. Its lights coned steadily through the darkness and then disappeared abruptly at the crest of the bridge, as if it had driven off the edge of the world. A million-dollar view, he thought, forgetting himself for a moment.

  From where they stood, it was a dozen paces down an embankment to the water, which lapped gently at the shoreline. Driscoll guided his flashlight beam in that direction. There was a foot-thick band of seaweed at the verge, studded with chunks of Styrofoam and plastic jugs, a few pilings, and what was left of a dock that listed half-in, half-out of the water.

  “Lookit that,” Driscoll said, guiding the beam over a tumbledown boathouse that ran back from the dock onto the shore. The rear of the building was bunkered into the embankment where they stood, its roofline ending just about level with the ground beneath their feet. “Come on,” Driscoll said. “I’ll show you something.”

  He took Deal’s arm, guiding him down the incline to the boathouse entrance. The outer door to the place was long gone. Inside, a pair of rusty davits listed like skeletal arms waiting for a phantom ship. A dank mustiness emanated from the open doorway. The walls were streaked with mildew, prodigious sheets of it, fed by the constant heat and humidity. Every board of the place, Deal thought, doing its best to succumb to the call of the tropics, transform quickly back to mulch.

  Driscoll directed his light against the rear wall inside. There was some kind of doorway there, covered by a rusty steel grating. Driscoll started forward and Deal took his arm.

  “You’re not going in there, are you?” he said to Driscoll. “You’re not going to walk across that floor?”

  Driscoll ran the light over the boards. The planks of the rotted dock where they stood continued on inside, becoming the floor deck of the boathouse. The whole structure looked ready to fold into the water.

  “Why not?” Driscoll said to him. “I bet Rafael Quintana did.”

  Deal stared at him.

  “I ran into an old guy that does the groundskeeping for some of these places around here,” Driscoll continued. “He had some pretty interesting stories. You’d be surprised what’s come ashore right where we’re standing.”

  Deal shook his head. “I’m tired, Driscoll. Show me what you wanted to show me and let’s go home.”

  Driscoll nodded. “That’s what I was getting to. Come on.”

  He stepped through the open doorway of the boathouse. As he took a second step, there was a mushy, snapping sound, like someone slapping a wet towel against concrete. Driscoll’s right leg plunged through one of the rotted floorboards, sending him down to one knee, his hands splayed, the flashlight skittering across the deck like something alive.

  “Jesus Christ,” Driscoll muttered, struggling to get his leg free.

  Deal stared at him, caught in the beam of the flashlight that had come to rest in a corner. In another context, it might have been funny. Now he found himself wishing the rest of the floor would give way, teach Driscoll a lesson.

  “You gonna give me a hand?” Driscoll stared up at him, helpless.

  “Only if you promise we can go home,” Deal said.

  Driscoll glared up at him. Finally he nodded. Deal picked his way carefully along a row of nails that marked where a stringer would be running underneath the decking boards. He edged on across the musty room, bent to pick up the flashlight, then came back to Driscoll, ran the beam over his beet-red face.

  “I wish I had a camera,” Deal said, hesitating.

  “Kiss my ass,” Driscoll said.

  Deal found himself laughing then. It started off as a child’s giggle, but when he tried to stifle it, it turned into gulps, then fully throated, bellyaching whoops that seemed to go on forever. Finally the laughter subsided to sighs, and he was able to breathe normally again. He wiped at the tears that leaked from his eyes. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed. His stomach ached and he felt drained, but he also felt better, as if some of the tension that had been eating him up these past weeks had finally found a vent.

  “Sorry,” he said to Driscoll, who had endured it all in silence. “I couldn’t stop.”

  “Just help me up,” Driscoll said impatiently.

  Deal swung his other foot over to a parallel course of nails, braced himself, and bent down to take Driscoll’s meaty hand. He caught hold, felt the man’s bulk up the length of his arm.

  “Go,” he called, giving it everything.

  Driscoll heaved back. There was another great slapping sound and Deal felt the floor give way beneath his feet.

  In the next instant, he was weightless. Then he was plunging into bath-warm water, his head going under, his nose and mouth filling, his feet shooting down into bottomless muck.

  He was still holding on to Driscoll, he realized. He shook his hands loose and kicked wildly at the muck until he felt himself begin to lift free. They broke the surface together, sputtering, Driscoll thrashing about like a rhino trying to tread water.

  Deal noticed the flashlight bobbing in front of him, still sending out its light into the silty water. He reached out and snatched it, aimed it up at the gaping hole in the decking above their heads. Driscoll was already moving toward the shore in an awkward breaststroke. After a moment Deal turned and followed after him.

  They struggled up onto an outcrop of coral boulders that marked the edge of the breakwater and sat together, still sheltered by the listing dock, dripping water back into the bay. “Honest to Christ,” Driscoll said finally.

  He stared at Deal, his hair plastered over his forehead, the picture of exasperation. Deal slung a reeking piece of seaweed from around his neck back into the water.

  And then they both began to laugh, great honking, gasping bursts that echoed off the sides of the rotting building and out across the water, where the moon cut a long path of glittering light.

  “Oh, shit,” Dris
coll managed finally, getting himself under control. “What a night.”

  He glanced at Deal, who nodded his agreement in return.

  “Take me home, Vernon,” he said.

  “If you insist,” Driscoll said. He put his hand down and was about to push himself up when he saw something and stopped. “What’s this?”

  He reached his hand into a cleft between the boulders and withdrew a wrinkled sheet of paper. “Let me see that light,” he said.

  Deal handed him the flashlight, watched as Driscoll scanned the paper. The ex-cop nodded, handed the sheet back to him, holding the light so that Deal could see.

  The paper had turned a pale yellow, but the type was sharp and unmistakable. “Master of Deceit, by Efrain Enrique Valles,” Deal read aloud.

  Deal turned to say something to Driscoll, but the ex-cop was already on his hands and knees, the flashlight in his teeth, pawing at the boulders beneath them like a man who’d just caught the glimmer of a vein of gold.

  ***

  “Well, at least it proves what I figured was right,” Driscoll said. He’d spread the single sheet of manuscript on the seat of the Ford between them, nodded at it as they swung off Brickell and onto the northbound approach to I-95.

  They had spent another hour or so combing the shoreline and mangrove outcroppings near the boathouse, to no avail. Driscoll had even persuaded Deal to tiptoe back across the floor of the boathouse and venture into the passageway that, as Driscoll had learned, had been hacked through the coral back toward the house. Deal had felt the ghosts of countless pirates, rumrunners, and dope smugglers crowding in on him as he inched up the airless passage. He was not disappointed to find the whole thing blocked by a slide the blast had likely caused a dozen feet inside.

  He was leaning back in the seat of the Ford, groggy with exhaustion, listening to Driscoll’s continuing monologue: “So I figure this Rafael Quintana had to have been hotfooting it down the passageway toward the boat he’s got docked there, he isn’t going to miss one little page when the bomb goes off and lights a rocket in his ass.”