Driscoll nodded. “I thought I was the conspiracy theorist around here.”
“Maybe it’s rubbing off,” Deal said. He was trying to comprehend it, all the things a man might be willing to do if enough money was involved. Or maybe he was looking at it from the wrong end, picking all the nits. To Torreno, a killing here, a firebombing there, those were tiny details in an operation that was so big it dwarfed old-fashioned notions like morality.
“Still,” Driscoll said. “I don’t know why he’d do it. I mean, you hear all those stories,” he continued, “a guy gets bad service, he buys the restaurant and fires everybody. But twenty-seven million dollars. That’s a lot of revenge.”
“Maybe that’s what Torreno wants to do next, become a sugar baron.”
Driscoll shook his head. “He’s got to be smarter than that. Carbonell himself told me he was losing money. The land’s eroding, they got all kinds of labor problems, the price of domestic sugar is propped up by price controls that everybody in Congress is pissed off about…” He trailed off. “The entire industry’s on the edge. It’d be like buying a steel mill in Pittsburgh because you liked the football team.”
They stood quietly for a time then, Deal running it all over in his mind, fighting the feeling that threatened to overwhelm him altogether. If it was true, if Tommy was the target of Torreno, then he was simply an afterthought; he and his family were mere nuisances caught up in the backwash of a high roller’s rush to the money trough. Driscoll, Tommy, Janice, Isabel, all of them like fleas to a man who, apparently, could do anything without fear of reprisal.
He stared down at the inert form before him. Tubes ran from both nostrils, both arms, a battery of equipment stacked near the bed. What had he done? What threat could this man have posed to Torreno?
“Anthony Everett,” he said, shaking his head. “Whoever the hell he is.”
He was about to turn to Driscoll when he felt the brush of something at his pantleg. He glanced down, surprised to see Tommy’s fingers clutching feebly at the bedclothes. Tommy’s lips moved then and a sound came. At first he thought it was a moan or Tommy babbling nonsense in his sleep…then Tommy’s eyes flickered open and his hand reached toward Deal.
“Suh…” Tommy said, “suh…suh…,” his mouth twisting as if each syllable racked him with pain. One of the monitors at his bedside had begun to beep urgently.
“A nurse,” Deal said to Driscoll. “Get a nurse.”
He grasped Tommy’s hand as the ex-cop bolted for the door.
“Easy now,” Deal said. He felt a spasm run through Tommy’s body. “Take it easy.”
“Suh-gah,” Tommy said, his voice almost a wail. Deal leaned close, hearing shouted orders, footsteps approaching in the hall. Tommy’s gaze was locked desperately on Deal, his mouth still twisting painfully. “Gave…him…suh-gah. We did…”
He squeezed Deal’s hand once more. His eyes began to roll, and he fell back on his pillows. “…gave him the suh-gar!” He fought to stay awake, reaching out to Deal with a panicked expression, like a man about to go backward off a cliff. “We…gave…him…the…sugar…” he said, his voice halting but clear. And then, as if the effort to articulate the words had taken everything, he collapsed. The machine was beeping furiously now.
Deal looked up as the door to the room flew open and a cadre of nurses and technicians rushed inside.
“You, out of here!” one of the nurses barked.
An orderly stepped in front of Deal, taking Tommy’s hand away. Deal allowed himself to be guided into the hall, where Driscoll waited.
He still felt the charge that had transferred itself from Tommy’s urgent grasp, could still hear his words echoing in his mind.
He turned back to Tommy’s room, where the beeping of the bedside monitor had mercifully slowed. An aide hurried out, heading back toward the nurses’ station.
“He okay?” Driscoll demanded.
“He’s still alive,” the aide said. He didn’t look at them, didn’t break stride.
Driscoll gestured through the open doorway where the crew still worked. Tommy lay quiet again, unprotesting as they probed him, reattached lines and tubes. “That guy is one tough sonofabitch,” Driscoll said, marveling. He glanced at Deal. “He say something to you?”
“Something.” Deal nodded. Deal felt the heat inside him gathering, focusing into the tip of a blue-white flame.
“Well?” Driscoll asked, waiting.
“Let’s go see Osvaldo,” Deal said. He glanced up, seeing that for once the puzzled expression was on Driscoll’s face. “Let’s find out who Anthony Everett really is.”
Chapter 39
“Well, whoever Tommy Holsum really is,” Osvaldo said, “he ain’t any Anthony Everett.” He’d gathered a sheaf of papers from the tray of his printer, tossed them on the desk in the direction of Deal and Driscoll.
Deal reached for the papers, scanned them as Osvaldo continued.
“I ran the license first—stuff on that comes back fast, so if you got a guy stopped at the side of the road, you can get a make on him before he decides to pull out his MAC-10, give you early retirement.”
He glanced at Driscoll, who motioned for him to get to the point. “Anyway, there’s no such license issued by the Maryland Department of Motor Vehicles. Never has been.”
“How about the Social Security number?” Deal said, flipping through the papers.
“There was an Anthony Everett who had that number once,” Osvaldo said. He was trying to sound authoritative, but his absurd voice didn’t help. “That Anthony Everett died in Fargo, North Dakota, in 1972, at the age of eighty.”
Deal stared at him. There was silence for a moment, broken only by the steady rush of the air conditioning. The room seemed colder suddenly.
“He’s a spook,” Driscoll said. “Somebody made him up, gave him a cover.”
“Torreno?” Deal asked.
Driscoll shook his head. “I doubt it. The bad guys usually don’t bother with that kind of stuff.”
Deal nodded. Letting it sink in.
“Who wants to go first?” Driscoll said. “Guess who it was, which famous Uncle created Anthony Tommy Everett Whoever?”
Deal nodded. “The government. Our own government.”
“They gotta cover themselves, just like anybody else,” Driscoll said. “The foundation has a well-funded lobby in Washington. You lend Torreno and his cronies a guy like Tommy, some spook from an agency you never knew existed, let him train true believers how to play guns in the jungle. Makes it seem like you’re doing the crazies a favor, also gives you a way to keep track of what they’re up to.”
Driscoll gave Deal a look. “You told me Tommy had a pretty vivid fantasy about a bunch of guys invading a beach in the tropics somewhere, right? Everybody got the shit shot out of them?” He waved his hands like he was building something in the air.
“He was there,” Deal said, the realization flooding over him. “He had to be. He was part of it.”
Driscoll nodded. “So Torreno put a bullet in his head, tossed him into the ocean. Told whoever that Tommy got blown away in the operation and figures that’s the end of Anthony Everett.”
Deal had a vision of Tommy Holsum on the deck of a boat, good old Tommy, Tommy the spook, seeing it all go bad. Turning, throwing up his hands, just that much too late, tumbling into the water, where he’d surely die. And might as well have died, given what had happened to him. Two rafters bound for freedom in the U.S. pick up the guy who’s helping to run the last great Cold War scam of the century, give him a new life. All the irony. It would make quite a story, except the ending had gone to shit.
Deal shook his head finally. “It just might have worked, until Tommy showed up in the newspaper on his way to my house. Torreno or one of his people sees he’s still alive, they come after him.”
Driscoll nodded. “Makes sense to me.”
“But why go to the trouble?” Osvaldo said. “What’
s this Tommy or Everett gonna say? Everybody’s gotta know we’re helping train these Cuban commando guys. Who cares if they’re dumb enough to get their brains blown out?”
“According to this book,” Driscoll said, “this book that doesn’t seem to exist anymore, Torreno set his own guys up. Sent them in there knowing they’d get blown away.”
Osvaldo shook his head. “For what?”
“It’s a long story,” Driscoll said, “but the bottom line reads money.” He threw up his hands. “Only thing is, there’s no way to prove it.”
“We gave him the sugar,” Deal said abruptly. He’d been listening to the two of them going back and forth, the words Tommy had uttered twisting through the thoughts in his mind like some musical counterpoint.
“What’s that?” Driscoll said.
“It’s what Tommy said in the hospital when you went for the nurses,” he said. “‘We gave him the sugar.’”
“So what’s that supposed to mean?” Osvaldo said.
“Means the guy’s been shot twice in the head,” Driscoll said, disgusted.
“Think about it, Driscoll,” Deal said. “You’re the one who compared Torreno to the guys in the Pentagon, profiting all those years of the Cold War. If that’s so, then he’d have to know the foundation’s days are numbered, right?”
Driscoll nodded.
“So if he’s the kind of businessman you think he is, he’s got to think ahead.”
“We already went over that,” Driscoll said, impatient. “He bought a sugar farm that’s likely to bankrupt him or the foundation, whoever it belongs to. It’ll happen even quicker if Castro goes.”
“That’s right,” Deal said. “It doesn’t make sense.” He glanced at Osvaldo, who was listening thoughtfully, then turned back to Driscoll. “Unless there was another reason he made that purchase.”
Driscoll shook his head. “Such as?”
“‘We gave him the sugar,’” Deal repeated. “Think about it for a second. What if we did? What if the government really did?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Driscoll said.
Osvaldo was nodding. “You’re thinking we franchised him, right? Found the bull goose Cuban with ties to sugar and gave him the franchise.”
Driscoll was still shaking his head, bewildered.
“There was economic disaster in Eastern Europe, there has been ever since the Wall came down,” Deal said. “But Cuba’s on our doorstep. We can’t afford chaos once Castro’s out of power. Somebody else could step in, screw up things even worse. There has to be a game plan to prop up the infrastructure so we don’t end up spending a ton to keep Cuba friendly.
“Once Castro’s out,” Deal continued, “what’s Torreno going to have left, a pension from the Patriots’ Foundation? Somebody’s got to run big sugar in Cuba. Somebody from the States. Just like every other concession that’ll be worth a dime down there: hotels, casinos, banking. We’re sure as hell not going to let Castro’s ministers stay on. That’s what Torreno’s doing with American Sugar: He’ll be the natural choice. Twenty-seven million’s a drop in the bucket compared to what he’ll have one day.”
Osvaldo chimed in. “Somebody gets telephones, somebody gets airports…”
“…and somebody gets sugar,” Deal said. “Just like a big game of Monopoly.”
“Except that the money’s real,” Osvaldo said. “Sugar’s the only thing in Cuba that’s worth a damn these days. Everything else—tourism, the casinos—that’s going to take years to bring back. You’re talking a billion-dollar industry, conservatively, ready to throw open the door.”
“That’s what Tommy knew about?” Driscoll said. “It’s a stretch…”
“Sure it is,” Deal said. “But give me another scenario that makes sense.”
“It would explain why they’ve been trying to kill him,” Osvaldo said, leaning back in his chair. “Possibility of him screwing up a deal that big…”
“Well, he isn’t dead yet,” Driscoll said.
Deal turned to him then, as did Osvaldo. They shared a gaze, three people on a street corner who’ve just caught sight of an old woman in a crosswalk, an out-of-control bus headed her way.
“Call the hospital,” Deal managed finally.
But Driscoll’s hands were already on the phone.
Chapter 40
“I let them die,” Tommy heard himself saying. Heard his own voice, sure and strong, even though he knew it was a dream. Such a long time since he had heard the sound of his own true voice. “I let good men die,” he repeated.
He was standing in a vast room, a courtroom, he realized, before a black-robed tribunal, his confession echoing off the unseen walls like a mantra: “I let good men die.…”
The judges wore faces from the history books, all the leaders and would-be leaders who’d died the wrong way themselves, even the one from another century with the beard and the birthday, the back of his head blown away, nodding and chatting with the others, who no longer seemed to be taking notice of Tommy. Then a stoop-shouldered man with a massive head and a bloodhound’s face, no bullet wounds on his body, stood up to say, “My fellow Americans, it is a tough life.” He smiled, and pulled a lever that yanked a square of marble floor from under Tommy’s feet and sent him hurtling, breathless, down a chute for what seemed like miles that ended when he plunged into icy water.
Tommy came up out of the water gasping, clawing for life…and then his eyes flickered open, and, with relief, he found himself in a hospital bed. This is real, he understood. This is my life now. There were lines and tubes that ran up from his arms to places he could not see. He heard the muted beeping of some machine that he sensed was counting out the pulses of his body, saw someone in hospital greens working at a table near the door.
Although his tongue was thick, and his throat felt the size of a needle’s eye, his mind raced with a clarity that had eluded him since…since when, really? That awful day on the boat?
So many things had happened, he knew. And yet he had been graced. He had been brought back. Given a chance to atone for mistake upon mistake compounded into tragedy. And still there was time to do something. At the very least he could confess his sins and bring justice to the man who had betrayed him, betrayed them all.
He swallowed, willing his voice to return to him, and called out then. The man in the green gown turned. He was tall and wore a white mask that covered his nose and mouth. He held a syringe aloft. His long, glove-clad fingers clenched, and a spray of liquid shot into the air. Tommy felt something spatter his cheek. A bitter smell overwhelmed him.
The eyes, Tommy was thinking. The same awful eyes. Then the man pulled down the mask and he saw who it was. For a moment he thought he was back in his dream. Impossible that he should be standing above him in a doctor’s clothing, an expression that looked strangely like fear on that ruined face.
Tommy tried to call out. What words were they, he wondered, as Coco bent over him? What final words?
“Sow-wry,” he heard himself moan then, in Tommy’s pitiful voice, as the needle struck home. “I’m sow-wry!” And then everything was starry light.
Chapter 41
It seemed to take an eternity, waiting for Driscoll to get through. From what Deal could tell by listening to half of several conversations, there was no information available from the operator. When he finally got a number for the nurses’ station on Tommy’s floor, a nurse transferred him to the administrator’s office. After another five minutes on hold, Driscoll was ready to hang up. Then a voice sounded on the other line.
Driscoll started to explain, then broke off. Deal couldn’t make out the words on the other end, but the look on Driscoll’s face was enough. He knew before the big man had replaced the receiver on the hook.
“Tommy’s dead,” Driscoll said. “His heart just stopped.” He looked around the room, shaking his head like a boxer who’d taken a stop-the-bout shot. “That’s what they said.”
“Bullshit,” Deal said.
The room was quiet again. The same three bystanders on the corner, who’ve just seen the old lady get flattened while the bus goes hurtling on, somebody scrapes the body off the pavement, and the world turns merrily on.
“He’d do anything,” Deal said. “Anything at all.”
Driscoll glanced at him as if he’d just remembered there were other people around.
“He’d kill me, you, my wife, my daughter,” Deal continued, “if he thought we were in the way.” So much seemed so clear now, Torreno’s motives apparent, Deal’s rage equally clear in its focus. But still, the greater mystery nagged at him: why had Deal been so loath to accept it? What was there inside himself that made him so ready to blame himself for what had befallen him and his family?
“Hey,” Driscoll said. “He doesn’t care about you. It’s over. Even if it’s the way you say it is, Tommy’s the last one who could hurt him.”
“Is that right, Vernon? What if he’s sitting around right now wondering whether Tommy came to his senses for a moment while he was living with us, said something to me, or Janice, or Isabel, for that matter? Where does a guy like that draw the line?”
“We’ll get him,” Driscoll said. “We’ll get an autopsy on Tommy…”
“They won’t find a thing, Vernon. And even if they do, how would you implicate Torreno?”
Driscoll started to say something, then stopped. He threw his hands up helplessly.
“So that’s it, huh?” Osvaldo said. “This slimewad just goes on his way, you guys sit around and wonder whether you’re gonna get whacked someday?”
“If we had anything,” Driscoll said. “Valles, or Tommy, even that cockamamie book…” He drifted off, still wondering.
The book, Deal thought. It had existed. They had the title page to prove it. But now…He stared about Osvaldo’s office, at all the equipment, the computers, the printers. It seemed as if Osvaldo had the capability to put his hands on almost any information that had ever been stored. Too bad they couldn’t access the ether, pull Valles’s records or that manuscript out of thin air somehow…
Raw Deal Page 28
