Done Deal

by Les Standiford

  The cops tried to roust him, but he was far enough out in the water to avoid any applicable law. Every morning, every evening, out there snarling traffic, pissing everybody off, the papers hounding the U.S. attorney’s office—“Just why did you take the poor guy’s house,” etc.—until a winter squall whipped across the shallow water and flipped the pontoon upside down on top of its owner. The guy lived, but he’d been underwater a long time before they fished him out. He was still on feeding tubes at Jackson.

  Penfield finished his water and sat down behind his desk. Deal met his gaze. His best rational gaze. Deal heard his own voice, even, logical. The closest thing to warm in his veins since the accident.

  “I want to nail the bastards, make them admit what they did.” His voice was rising, but he couldn’t help it. “I have to do something, Mr. Penfield. I have to do something.”

  Deal felt his fingertips digging deeply into the soft leather arms of the chair. He took another deep breath and waited for Penfield’s reaction.

  Penfield sank back in his chair. He made a sound in his throat that might have started out as a laugh. He stared up at the ceiling, drumming his fingers against the silk tie on his chest. Deal noticed the pattern: dozens and dozens of tiny yellow men each holding a golf club aloft, about to strike.

  Finally, Penfield raised his hands in surrender. “I’ll do what I can. I don’t want you to expect too much, but I’ll do what I can.”

  “Good,” Deal said. “That makes me feel very good.”

  Penfield studied him carefully. “You haven’t changed much, John…” He paused. “Flivey was always calling you ‘the bulldog.’” Penfield’s eyes clouded over momentarily. “He thought the world of you.”

  “I thought the world of him, Mr. Penfield.” Deal stood and put his hand on Penfield’s shoulder. “I appreciate your doing this for me.”

  Penfield reached up and took his hand. “You did everything you could that day, John. You nearly killed yourself trying to save him.”

  Deal met his gaze for a moment, then turned away.

  Penfield squeezed his hand. “I told your father how much it meant to me. I told him many times, John. I don’t know that I ever told you.”

  Deal nodded, but he did not trust himself to meet the man’s gaze. “You didn’t have to, Mr. Penfield.”

  They were quiet then, Penfield staring out his big windows into the past, Deal at his side.

  There was a big print hung on the wall behind Penfield’s desk, an aerial photo of a bank of spoil islands surrounded by miles of wide scarlet shrouds drifting lazily in the water. Christo. A major piece of environmental art that had caused a shit storm of controversy in the city council chambers and elsewhere. Flivey had scoffed at the enterprise—why would you want to spend all that time and money on something that would just get taken down the next week, he wondered. It didn’t do Deal any good trying to stand up for the notion.

  Deal glanced out the window. Up there past Williams Island you could see those same spoil islands, shroudless now, unless you wanted to count the tons of trash that would be bobbing along their tide lines. Maybe Flivey had been right, after all. What the hell good was the grand gesture?

  But let it come to something, Deal prayed. Let it come to something.

  They stared out over the water, mourning together.

  Chapter 14

  Leon Straight tooled his BMW down Fitzgerald-Bush Boulevard, past the Opa-Locka City Hall, shaking his head at the building, which had been constructed during the 1930s to resemble some kind of camel-jockey palace. Turrets and spires and domes all over the place, over it and a bunch of other buildings in the downtown, making it look like Lawrence of the fucking A-rabs, lost in the middle of Florida.

  There’d even been a lot of fuss in the papers recently, museum people wanting the county to put up money, refurbish all the shit. Leon couldn’t believe what white people were capable of sometimes. They should pray all this would fall down and blow away, save everybody some face.

  He turned off the main street, went down a block past a gas station, a boarded up bakery, and a machine shop, pulled into a vacant lot where a grocery store used to be. The store had been a riot target, had still been smoldering embers when Leon first came here, flunked out of college for the last possible time, and desperate for help.

  On the other side of the lot was an antiquey two-story house with a brass LAW OFFICES sign on the porch, lots of gingerbread trim and stained-glass windows, as out of place as the city hall was in what had become a black man’s suburb, essentially. Kind of house more common to a yuppie white folks’ neighborhood in Georgia, Leon thought, which is probably why Wylie Odoms bought it and why Leon had felt reassured the day he first laid eyes on it. Another serious lapse in judgment.

  Leon glanced around. Only other car in the lot was a glossy black Jag with a personalized plate: GETBACK. Leon shook his head. Wylie’s idea of class.

  Leon took the back way in, although he knew the girl was gone. He’d called just a minute ago, told her she’d have to get right down to the post office, sign for an important package for Mr. Odoms. Leon had been in the lobby of the post office at the time.

  He knew she’d be on her way. Leon had seen Wylie open more than one package of money that had come in the mail. Yeah, the line at the post office had looked about an hour and a half long to him. If the brothers in Opa-Locka had any suck, they’d have a branch office here and there, cut down on the traffic. Meantime, too bad for them. And for Odoms’s girl.

  “Wylie,” Leon said, by way of greeting. He was standing in the doorway of his ex-agent’s office. He’d already slipped out front, made sure the door was locked, taped a closed sign to the window.

  Odoms glanced up from some papers he was reading, startled. When he saw who it was, his natural frown dissolved and was replaced with his bullshit smile. “Well, goddamn, look what fell to earth.”

  Leon nodded, came on in the office. What used to be the dining room, maybe. Big desk, some file cabinets. Bunch of sporting goods cluttering up the place: basketballs, footballs, baseball caps, boxing gloves, you name it, all of it signed with somebody’s name: Dr. J, Mean Joe Greene, Magic, Iron Mike T.

  Leon suspected Wylie had signed all the names himself. “First Round” Odoms, was how he introduced himself to Leon, way back when, “crown prince of sports agents.” Leon had been impressed at the time. Now he knew better. Odoms had never had an actual client go higher than free agent.

  “Mr. Le-on Sta-raight,” Odoms said, rising to shake his hand. Saying it like Leon was walking across the ring in Caesar’s Palace, ready to slap skin with Don King or somebody, watch a championship fight.

  It looked like Wylie had tried to copy Brother King’s hairstyle, in fact, but the color was wrong and he wasn’t using the right brand of hair spray or something. Where it should have looked like smoke was rising up out of his brain, Wylie’s ’do more resembled some kinky garden of snakes fallen over to one side, never going to get up again.

  “How you been, Wylie?” Leon shook the man’s flabby hand. Saw the gold watch, took in the spilling gut, the flashy suit. Wylie hadn’t been denying himself, that was plain to see.

  “Moving and grooving, Leon.” Wylie straightening his tie. “Any better I’d have to be two people.” A black tie with some planets and comets and whatnot swooshing through space. “What brings you up this way? You slip your boss man’s leash?”

  Leon ignored him. He could afford to ignore him.

  “I need some legal advice,” Leon said, settling himself in one of the leather chairs across from Wylie’s desk.

  “None finer available,” Wylie said, smiling, sitting on the edge of his desk. He was toying with a pinkie ring, had a diamond in it the size of a pea.

  Leon thought about what Wylie had said, his pitiful estimation of himself, but decided to let it pass. “I was wondering about how the law reads in Florida,” he said. “Say if a married person dies, who’s in c
harge of the property that’s left.”

  Wylie studied him for a moment, trying to read what this was about. “Well now, that depends.”

  “On?”

  “On whether or not there’s a will, for one thing.”

  Leon nodded, reached in his pocket for the papers there, things he’d borrowed from Alcazar’s files. He found what he was looking for, handed it to Odoms. Odoms scanned it quickly.

  “Tenancy by the entireties,” he nodded, looking up at Leon.

  “Say what?”

  “It’s a standard way for spouses to hold property. It means if one of these people dies, the whole of their common property passes on to the surviving spouse.” Odoms glanced at the document again. “Who’s John Deal, anyway?”

  “Nobody,” Leon said. “This just an example.”

  Odoms stared at him. “Where’d you get this, Leon? You into B&E now? Lawyer’s offices?” His fucked-up grin, thinking he was funny.

  Leon took the papers back from Wylie. “So, let’s say two people like this were to own a company. Then one dies, the other one wants to sell it.”

  Wylie shrugged. “There shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Even if the company owns property?”

  Wylie gave him another of his mind-reader looks. “What are you getting at, Leon?”

  “You know, going through all that bank shit when you have to sell a house. Waiting forever till the thing’s done.”

  Wylie rolled his eyes. “Closing on the property, you mean. No, you don’t have to go through all that. The property stays with the corporation, if that’s what it is.”

  Leon nodded, handed Wylie another paper. Odoms scanned it, glanced up at Leon. “DealCo? I heard of that.”

  “Just tell me, Wylie, is it set up the way you say?”

  Wylie looked through the papers again, pursing his lips, nodding, looking backward, then forward, sucking on his teeth. Looking like a guy trying to pretend he could read, Leon thought. Finally, Wylie handed him the papers. “It’s a corporation all right. With two stockholders, the guy and his wife. That’s it.”

  “So if one of them is dead, the one who lives can sell. Sign the documents and all that shit.”

  Wylie nodded. “And all that shit.”

  “No waiting around to read the will, getting the lawyers involved?”

  Wylie chuckled, shaking his head. “No, Leon. You’ve been watching too much TV.”

  Leon tented his big fingers under his chin. Tone of Wylie’s voice like Leon was two degrees above brain dead. Guy fucking with him, but let him have his fun. “You’re certain of all this, Wylie?”

  Wylie seemed insulted at the question. “Any first-year law clerk knows this stuff.” He stood, pulled down a thick book from one of the shelves behind his desk, thumbed through it. “Florida Statutes, Chapter 689. ‘Blah, blah, blah.’” Wylie tossed the heavy book on the desk. Leon judged it to weigh quite a bit by the stir of air it sent up, ruffling the other papers, sending Wylie’s coffee cup into a rattle.

  Leon stared at him. “I was just bein’ sure,” he said. “I seem to remember some other things you were sure of, once upon a time.”

  Wylie stared at him, wary. “Such as?”

  “Such as my contract, for instance. The one that was an iron-clad motherfucker, what you called it. You know, the one the Dolphin lawyers went to work on after I tore up my knee?”

  Wylie waved it away. “We could have sued those bastards.”

  Leon nodded. “We did.”

  Wylie stopped. Leon watched him remembering. How they got worked over downtown, reporters laughing, it’d have to be embarrassing, even for Wylie. Even the judge was calling him names.

  Finally Wylie shrugged. “Hey, they agreed to pay the hospital bills, didn’t they?”

  Leon stared at him until Wylie dropped his gaze. Finally, he let his breath out.

  “Never mind, Wylie. Wasn’t what I came to talk about.” He tossed the last of the papers he’d brought down on the cluttered desk. A copy he’d made of what Reyes had signed. “I wanted you to have a look at these, too.”

  Wylie gave him a suspicious look, then unfolded the papers. He scanned them briefly then looked back at Leon. “These are standard corporate stock certificates. So what?”

  “I just want to be absolutely certain,” Leon said. “Say I had some blank ones just like that. Say I fill in the blanks for some other outfit, DealCo, whatever, the person signs on the dotted line, then I own what it says?”

  Wylie shrugged. “Assuming anybody’d want to sign under those terms.”

  “Assume they would.”

  Wylie threw up his arms. “It’d have to be notorized. Some consideration—that’s money—change hands. Then you’d own the goddamn thing.”

  “Simple as that?”

  Wylie gave him another of his what’s-this-really-about looks. “You’d have a valid contract, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I’d be in control of the property involved? No having to close, no title company, no bank, none of that.”

  “I already told you, Leon.” Wylie getting impatient, his manners starting to fray. Leon checked his watch.

  “But,” Wiley was smiling now, his oily smile this time, the one that came from his heart, “you’d probably want someone like myself around to help out, Leon. Just to be sure.”

  Wylie turned back to the contracts, was scanning the descriptions, when Leon reached over and snatched them away, folded them back in his coat. “I’ll keep that in mind, Wylie.” He remembered something then, the other thing he’d meant to ask.

  “How about Doc Hammer,” Leon said. “You ever see him around?” Hammer was short for Jameroski, a washed-up old Pole, ex-fight doctor, a steroid and painkiller connection for Wylie’s needy clientele.

  “The junkie?” Wylie laughed. “They finally pulled his license so he went straight to the source. Runs a pharmacy over on the beach now.”

  Leon nodded, making a mental note. Wylie pointed at the papers in Leon’s pocket. “I could be of some real help to you, Leon. There’s the matter of that outstanding debt for services I’m still carrying. This might be a way to clear it up.”

  Leon nodded. He checked his watch again. Assume the line at the post office was moving quickly, then what?

  He reached across the desk, caught Wylie by his planet whooshing tie before he could move, jerked him across the desk. Good silk like it was, had a hell of a lot of strength in it.

  He pinned Wylie back over his desk with his good knee, pulled that thin tie knot so tight it disappeared under the flaps of flesh at Wylie’s chin. Wylie got his hands on that heavy law book, banged it over Leon’s head once or twice, but Leon hardly felt it. On the third pass, the book fell out of his hands and fell to the floor, a bunch of its pages tearing loose.

  “Yeah, we clearing that matter up,” Leon said. Wylie’s eyes glittered, but if he’d had a change of heart, Leon would never hear about it. He put all his effort into tightening Wylie’s out-of-this-world tie.

  When he was sure Wylie was out there riding one of those comet tails, Leon tidied up, then drug Wylie out to his secretary’s desk. He used the man’s pudgy fingers to type out a suicide note, not worrying about spelling, for he’d had the opportunity to read a couple of Wylie’s handwritten letters, back in the old days.

  Then he stood on the desk to hang him by his tie from the ceiling fan there. The fan blades tilted up all cockeyed from the added weight, and a couple years of dust drifted down to powder Wylie’s fucked-up hair-do, the shoulders of his expensive suit, but the bracket held fast. One thing about an old house like that, they used solid hardware, Leon thought.

  He gave the dangling Wylie a last glance, then left by the front way, leaving the door unlocked. “Cleared up every last bit of it up,” he said as he got in his BMW and drove away.

  On the way down the boulevard, he spotted Wylie’s secretary headed the opposite direction, a pissed-off express
ion on her pretty face. He was sorry for what he’d put her through, but at least he’d left her a present. That’d perk her up when she got back to the office.

  Chapter 15

  Deal left Janice’s car under the canopy of the Shores Country Club and strode up the broad front steps, pointing at the car when the valet came trotting up for his keys. Not yet noon and already crowding ninety, Deal thought, as he registered the blast of icy air from inside.

  Down the broad hallway with the carpet that swirled with what Deal had always referred to as the chicken feather motif, then left off the hallway into the men’s grill, where there was only Henry, squaring away his glassware, getting ready for the lunch crowd.

  Deal’s father had been a charter member of the club and his privileges had been passed on to Deal, who remained dueless in perpetuity. The privilege didn’t mean much to Deal, who seldom went there, except for the occasional lunch with a client. But Janice liked it, especially the tennis and golf. He didn’t know what had brought him here today. He’d been driving aimlessly, found himself on the oak-lined boulevard that led to the place, then turning in the drive, as if he had some intention.

  Henry glanced up, surprised as Deal took a seat at the bar.

  “I was sure sorry to hear, Mr. Deal.” Henry put a napkin down in front of him. “Sure sorry.”

  “Thanks, Henry,” Deal said. “Gin and tonic. A double, in a tall glass.”

  Henry nodded, made the drink, centered it on the napkin. Deal finished half on the first swallow, drained the rest before he put the glass down. Deal stared out the tall windows of the bar. Long green fairways bordered by live oaks and rangy melaleuca trees. People in golf carts, zigzagging along, hopping out to swing, jumping back aboard, having fun.

  His father’s game. And then Janice’s game. She’d started taking lessons after she’d left her job, played a Wednesday-morning league here, up until last year, when things had gotten a little tight. She complained about her handicap, but Deal liked to watch her swing: butt out, her tongue at the corner of her lips, she let fly like nobody’s business. He liked her sweaty, her color high in her cheeks, her breasts flushed and heaving. Maybe that’s why he was here, that memory.