“And you’re guessing that maybe the night of the fire, somebody was actually trying to kill Tommy?”
“You gonna get pissed off at me if I say yes?” Driscoll asked.
“But why, Driscoll? Why would anyone want to kill Tommy so badly that they’d be willing to kill us all in the bargain?”
“Somebody who didn’t want to call attention to the matter,” Driscoll said. “Somebody who wanted it to look like an accident. Some retard and an ex-cop die in a fire, ain’t it a shame.”
“And me,” Deal said. “And Mrs. Suarez. And my wife and child.” He glanced up at Driscoll. “Who would do that? Who could do a thing like that?”
Driscoll looked at him as if he was a slow student. “There’s basically two reasons why people kill other people,” he said wearily. “One has to do with love, which I think we can eliminate here. The other’s money. Put enough money on the line, a person’s liable to do just about anything.”
Deal thought about it for a moment. About Driscoll’s dogged pursuit of the case he never cracked. “Torreno,” he said finally. “You think he did this too, don’t you?”
Driscoll gave him his who-would-think-otherwise look. “I think that he had somebody—even if it wasn’t Chuy-Chuy—set the fire, and I think he sent somebody back to finish the job.”
“But there isn’t any proof!” Deal said, exasperated. “What connection could a guy like Tommy have with Vicente Torreno?”
Driscoll gave his philosophical shrug. “I dunno, Deal. But there is one. We keep digging, we’ll find it. That’s the way it works.”
He broke off then, and Deal knew that for Driscoll speculation time was over.
“I got an old buddy lives up in Broward, still does some work for the ME,” the ex-cop said. “I’m going to let him have a look at this slug, see what he can tell us. That is, if you don’t turn me in for impersonating an officer first.” He gave Deal a neutral stare.
Deal was about to say something, tell him what he could do with his bloodhound’s “instinct” and his phony badge, when he noticed the clock on the wall above Driscoll’s head. “Oh my God,” he said.
“What?” Driscoll said, turning in alarm. But Deal was already at a dead run toward the elevators.
“Janice,” he said. “Her operation…it was at ten o’clock.” He reached the elevators and stabbed the buttons until he thought his thumb would break. He was pounding on the panel with his fist when the doors finally slid open and he rushed inside, heedless of the crowd of orderlies and visitors who had to squeeze aside, then shift again as Driscoll lumbered into the car.
“I should’ve woke you,” Driscoll said. “I forgot all about it.”
Others stared at them, curious. Deal held his hands up to cut him off as the car inched maddeningly down through the floors. He massaged his face again, feeling ready to explode with anger, with frustration. The entire blessed world, he thought. The entire world was coming apart. If the cables on this elevator car were to part and send them hurtling toward the center of the earth, he would not be surprised.
Never mind that there was no logical reason for him to be frightened. If a man could do what Driscoll claimed had been done, then what was a mere elevator car? Or an explosion here or there. Or, he thought, his blood chilling inside him, arranging that a knife should slip during routine surgery.
Chapter 35
For once, Deal had no quibble with Driscoll’s driving. The ex-cop covered the few miles from Jackson Memorial to Coral Gables General in what seemed half the normal time. Even a brief morning thunder-shower didn’t slow him. They took the last several blocks down a low-lying residential street leaving a high rooster tail of water behind the Ford.
“All these hospitals, I feel like an ambulance driver,” Driscoll muttered as he sped up the circular entryway.
Deal didn’t bother to reply. He flung open his door, was out of the Ford before it had stopped, sprinting through a curtain of water that cascaded off the side of the canopy, then down the covered walkway and inside the crowded lobby. He took one look at the crowd in front of the elevators and headed for the stairs, taking them two at a time up to the third floor.
He hesitated when he came out of the stairwell onto the ward, then got his bearings and hurried down the broad corridor, doing his best not to break into a run. He passed the nurses’ station without a glance, ignoring the call of someone behind a typewriter. He ticked off the doorways as he passed—one, two, three—and then reached Janice’s room, catching the door frame by one hand, swinging himself in.
He stopped, thinking for a moment that he might have miscalculated. There was a heavyset black woman in a pink uniform stripping the sheets from Janice’s bed. The monitors, the glucose bottles, the charts had disappeared. The closet door stood open. Where the robes and duffel bag had been, placed there by Deal himself, a few empty hangers dangled.
The black woman stared at him warily. Deal heard a sound behind him and turned. The nurse who’d called after him from the nurses’ station stood in the doorway behind him.
“Can I help you?” she said. He did not recognize her face. Weeks of coming to this hospital, and he did not recognize this woman’s face. He could feel his heart thudding in his chest.
“My wife,” he managed. “She was in this room. She was having an operation this morning.…”
“They told me that lady isn’t coming back.” The aide said it defensively, as if someone were criticizing her work.
“Are you Mr. Deal?” the nurse asked.
Deal ignored her question. He was ready to leap upon these women, pummel them, strangle them.
“Where is my wife?” He heard his own voice rising dangerously.
The nurse shook her head. “They didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“She’s graduated,” the nurse said. Deal realized she was smiling. “She’s been moved to a regular ward.”
Deal stared. His heart was still pounding, and his knees felt as if they might give way. But he could breathe again.
Deal shook his head. He still could not speak. He felt incapable of movement, as if the molecules of his body were busy, reorienting themselves to this new state. The two women stared at him, uncertain.
Finally, the nurse broke the silence. “Well, I’ll bet you’d like to know what room she’s in, wouldn’t you?” she said. And still all Deal could do was nod.
***
“She’s asleep,” another nurse told him, intercepting Deal on her way out of the room. “Don’t worry. Everything went just fine.”
Deal nodded his thanks, resisting the urge to sling the nurse out into the hall. He even managed a smile, edging on past her, inside the room. The blinds had been pulled shut, but enough light spilled in for him to see Janice’s quiet form, her chest rising and falling in rhythmic sleep.
She lay with one cheek upturned. He stared at that one taut, shining patch of skin that had been bared, ready to burst into tears of gratitude. Just a few square inches of unmarred skin, and yet it seemed he was witnessing a miracle. How long had it been? All the bandages had been removed from the top of her head now. He could swear that the stubble of her hair had thickened measurably in the recent days.
He sank down on his knees beside the bed, brought his lips to her hand. After a moment, he felt her fingertips flutter. He glanced up, saw her eyes open momentarily. Her lips worked beneath the bandages that still covered the other cheek, the lower part of her face.
“What do you think, sailor?” she said after a moment, her voice faint, raspy.
“You look great,” he said. He laid his head against the back of her hand.
“I told the doctor to make me look like Sean Young,” she said.
He smiled. “Janice is just fine,” he said.
“I’ve seen the way you look at her,” she said.
He squeezed her hand. “That cheek is one hundred percent Janice Deal,” he said.
; “Well, too bad,” she said. “I tried.”
He gave her another smile, kissed the inside of her palm, her wrist. He was vaguely aware of some antiseptic scent beneath the bandages on her arm, but it seemed as fragrant as perfume. He was quiet then, listening to the beat of his own heart as it slowed to something near normal.
“I missed you,” she said after a bit.
“I know,” he said. He looked up, meeting her gaze. “I was with Driscoll,” he began, trying to gauge how much to tell her.
“And?” she said, giving his hand a gentle squeeze.
He took a breath. “It’s Tommy,” he said finally. “Something terrible happened to him.”
“What?” She was trying to push herself up on her elbows. “What’s happened, Deal?”
He hesitated, but knew there was no holding back now. “He shot himself last night,” he blurted. Janice sank back on her pillows with a groan.
“Mrs. Suarez found him. He’s still alive. They took him to Jackson for surgery. I was waiting to see how it turned out, and fell asleep. That’s why I wasn’t here for you.…” He realized he was beginning to ramble.
“Shhh…,” she said, cupping his face in her hand. “It’s all right, Deal. You’re here now. I’m so glad you’re here.”
She stared at him for a moment, her eyes glittering, and then she lay back, already drifting off.
“Poor Tommy,” she murmured. “Very sad Tommy…” Her words had begun to slur.
He knew he might have let it go at that, let her drift back into sleep, let her dream some hopefully untroubled dream, but he couldn’t. It would have been like trying to keep some awful secret from a part of himself.
“He didn’t do it, Janice,” he said. He squeezed her hand, waiting until her eyes flickered open again. “He didn’t shoot himself.
“We think someone tried to kill him, Janice,” he continued. “I think that’s who they were after when they burned our place.”
Her eyes were wide now. She shook her head in confusion. “Tommy? Someone wanted to kill Tommy?”
“I know,” he told her. “It sounds crazy. But…” He thought of Alberto Valles, his hands still quivering as the current jolted through his lifeless body. He turned back to Janice.
“Driscoll’s turned up some things. Nothing you could take to court, but enough to make me believe it’s possible.” He gripped both her hands in his now. “I’m still not certain, but if it’s true, if they’d do what they did trying to kill Tommy…” He stopped short. There was, after all, no reason to frighten her, no real reason to believe they were in danger. Even if Driscoll was right, he and Janice had been mere bystanders, hadn’t they?
“We’ve got to find out, Janice,” he went on. “If someone did these things, they’re going to pay, goddammit. They’re going to pay…” He broke off when he realized she was asleep, her hand gone limp in his.
He waited a moment, watching her breathing deepen. Her lips twitched as if she was dreaming. If she was, let it be a pleasant one, he prayed. Set in a place where the world was bright and vengeance was a word that no one knew.
Chapter 36
The phone call came as they were stepping down from the new truck that Torreno had had delivered that morning. It was a boxy all-terrain vehicle that he had decided was perfect for forays into the farther reaches of his estate. They had spent an hour splattering through the bogs at the far end of the lake, and Torreno had been so pleased at his inability to mire the thing, no matter how deep the mud, that he had asked the salesman to deliver a second to the offices of American Sugar in Belle Vista.
“It is British,” Torreno said proudly to Coco, waving at the mudcovered vehicle. “They know how to build these things.”
Coco nodded. The salesman who’d delivered the vehicle waved happily to them as he drove off with his partner in a similar truck. Coco had seen the price on the contract the salesman carried. His employer had spent nearly a hundred thousand dollars on two massive toys.
The mechanical chirping sounded again, and a look of annoyance crossed Torreno’s features. He reached into the pocket of a bush jacket he had donned despite the heat, and withdrew a tiny wallet-sized phone. His employer often used it to place calls, but almost never had Coco heard it ring.
Torreno unfolded the phone, held it to his ear. “I am here,” he said tersely. He listened to someone on the other end, his face showing gathering concern. “Repeat,” he said at one point, his face coloring.
His accusing gaze had come to rest on Coco. “You are certain?” Torreno said into the phone. Coco could hear the gnatlike whine of a voice on the other end. The sound broke off abruptly as Torreno snapped the phone shut and slammed the side of the muddy vehicle with his fist. He stared down at the ground in the gathering heat, ignoring the dent he’d put in the side of the door, his gaze focused somewhere far away. Finally he glanced back up at Coco.
“Something is wrong?” Coco said.
“He is alive,” Torreno said after a moment. He glanced up sharply at Coco. “You tell me you have killed him, and yet he is alive.”
It was impossible, Coco thought. Some mistake on the part of one of his employer’s minions. If either of the men he had dealt with the night before were to be living, it would be no less a miracle than the Resurrection itself. Still, there was no mistaking the expression on Torreno’s face. He stared back impassively, waiting for the rest of it.
“You shot him. You told me there was no doubt.…”
Coco felt a momentary start, though the furious expression on his employer’s face had nothing to do with it. “This man, he has been marked,” he heard himself saying.
Torreno stared at him, his face turning even darker. “Don’t give me idiotic superstitions. You have failed, Coco. It is as simple as that.”
Coco stared back at his employer mildly. Coco could not have put it into words, yet what he sensed was undeniable. But his employer, despite the years of fervent rhetoric, despite his elaborate vision of a glorious return, had left that place behind in a way that he would never fully appreciate.
“Perhaps this man cannot be killed. Not by me, at any rate,” Coco insisted.
Torreno pounded the side of the vehicle again, turned away from Coco to stand poised in thought.
Coco stood, readying himself, though he was uncertain just what he might do. The picture of the jefe from the sugar fields had come into his mind. The picture of panic, of utter desperation on a face that had never known such an emotion. “I cannot swim,” the jefe had called, and then had died with his face in the mud and the slime.
Coco had seen a glimpse of that same expression on his employer’s face, though it had been supplanted with rage, and now with calculation.
“It is true,” Torreno said, as if he had given thought to Coco’s words. “The spirit of this man is very strong.”
Coco stared silently at his employer.
“But your spirit is stronger yet, Coco.” Torreno took him by the shoulder. “We must see it as a test,” he continued.
“A test,” Coco repeated.
“This one last thing,” Torreno said, almost whispering now, “that is all I am asking of you, Coco. You will finish this and then we are done.”
Coco hesitated. He had never heard a note of supplication in his employer’s voice before. Perhaps Torreno understood more than it seemed.
“You must protect me,” Torreno said, his voice as fervent as that of the jefe who had died in the sugar fields.
And finally Coco nodded.
Chapter 37
“You could have provided me with a better specimen, you know.” There was real annoyance in the little man’s voice. He had stopped his work on the computer keyboard in front of him to stare up at Driscoll and Deal, his eyes growing momentarily large and luminous behind a pair of Coke-bottle glasses. He was balding, and wore a short-sleeved dress shirt and bow tie, even here, in the garage of his own home.
“I’m so
rry as shit, Osvaldo,” Driscoll said. “Imagine the nerve of the guy we took it out of, busting it up with his head the way he did.”
Osvaldo gave him a disdainful look but said nothing. He turned, tapped some keys on the computer. They had followed him down a ramp that led from the kitchen of a nondescript suburban home into his “office,” a corner of the garage set off by a partition that still lacked a door. Door or no door, the place was freezing, chilled by the blast of a massive wall unit AC that must have been there for the sake of all the electronic equipment arrayed on a series of doortop desks laid end to end.
Osvaldo had lifted an image of the slug Driscoll had given him, using a photomicroscope, then loaded a copy into a flatbed scanner. Now he had called up what looked like a phone directory onto the screen of his computer, was paging down through the listings. He seemed to find what he was after and punched another series of keys. Deal heard the muted sounds of an autodialer, then a series of electronic squeaks and howls.
“That’s how computers fuck,” Driscoll observed.
Osvaldo didn’t look up from his screen. “If computers were to fornicate, they would find a far more creative way to do it,” he said. His voice was comically high-pitched, as if he had been inhaling helium.
“Osvaldo’s wound a little tight,” Driscoll said. “I have to drop by a little more often, get him to lighten up.”
“Be still, my heart,” Osvaldo said. He consulted a notebook full of pencil scratchings, typed in more commands.
“Who we fornicating with, anyhow?” Driscoll asked, pointing at the screen.
“A certain high-level governmental agency that shall remain nameless,” Osvaldo said.
“Got a way with words, doesn’t he?” Driscoll said to Deal. He turned back to Osvaldo. “I’m surprised they still let you hook up.”
“Who said anything about let?” Osvaldo was tapping keys intently as he spoke. “I’m a taxpayer. I’m just exercising my rights.”
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