“Homer?” A voice came out of the darkness. Homer aimed a kick toward the voice but the guy had him pinned against the back wall of the shed, at arm’s length. Homer ran a quick inventory of his debts and transgressions, but nothing serious registered. He’d laid some pipe a couple days ago, an older woman he met in the lounge of the Cadillac Hotel downtown, but she’d claimed to be divorced.
“Naw, I ain’t Homer,” he said, pawing a couple of soft right crosses into the darkness. “I’m just a regular guy got caught in the wash, shrunk up a few sizes.”
“It’s Deal, Homer,” the guy said.
Deal? Homer thought.
“I didn’t mean to scare you. I just have to be careful, coming around here.”
Then it registered. Homer relaxed, going limp in the guy’s hands. He laughed, a wry, barking sound. “No, man, you don’t have to be careful. You have to be out of your fucking mind.”
They drove down Biscayne the mile or so to Homer’s place, Deal slouched down in the backseat, Homer barely visible behind the wheel of the Rivolta.
“Maybe you can find something on the radio,” Deal said, his mind still whirling from what Homer had told him.
“You don’t believe me?” Homer said.
Deal didn’t answer. Homer shrugged and began punching the buttons on the Blaupunkt until he found a bulletin that bore out what he’d already told Deal about Penfield, “victim of a vicious attack in his palatial home.” Deal hadn’t been listening to the radio. He’d spent the entire day hunched down in the Rivolta, waiting for Alcazar to show up before he decided to try Homer.
“Police have not yet established a motive for the killing,” the report continued. “But Miami builder Jack Deal is being sought for questioning. Police would not explain their interest in Deal, said to be distraught since the death of his wife in an auto accident just a few weeks ago.”
“Jesus Christ!” Deal said, as the broadcast cut away to a commercial. He thought of Alejandro and his pal, moving grimly toward Penfield’s house. Could he have been wrong about Penfield?
“I told you,” Homer called from the front seat. “Hey, maybe there’s a reward. I could just swing over to Metro Dade, drop you off at the suspect window.”
“You could do that, Homer,” Deal said, his voice flat.
“Nah. Vicious killer like you might escape, track me down. I’d never live to enjoy the money.”
They pulled up at a stop light and Homer hiked himself over the seat to smile down at Deal. “Even if you did nail the old fart, I still owe you one for what you did to Alcazar. I’d give anything to have seen it. Besides, how would you find your old lady if you were in the slammer.”
Deal stared up at him. “Thanks, Homer.” Homer waved it off. “And I didn’t kill Penfield.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Homer said, dropping back out of sight. “I ain’t the one you have to convince.”
The commercial on the radio had ended and the lady rock jock was back, schmoozing with the newscaster. “So what effect will Thornton Penfield’s death have on our chances for a Major League franchise, Gene?”
“Right, let’s get to the important shit,” Homer said.
“Be quiet,” Deal said. He was trying to sort it all out, but his mind spun in circles.
“Nobody’s quite sure, Irene,” said the newscaster. “But sources close to the local committee tell me the application is complete and in the hands of the commissioner’s advisory board. It shouldn’t affect anything.”
“Well, that’s some good news, Gene,” the disk jockey said.
“That DJ’s got community spirit,” Homer said, snapping off the radio. “Also a nice rack. I see her around the dealership now and then. She drives a Lexus, the station leases it. She’s married, but her husband’s a real schmuck. Guy runs the station’s probably banging her.”
Homer broke off, wrestling the Rivolta around a cab waiting to make a left against traffic. Deal heard horns blare behind them.
“You’re going to get us pulled over,” Deal called from the back seat.
“Stop worrying,” Homer said. “You think a Miami cop gives a shit about traffic violations? Get real.”
Deal felt another lurch as they swung back into the left lane. More horns behind them.
“Highway patrol pulled me over on the expressway one time, though. What he tells me is, the car was ‘moving erratically.’ Besides, it was dark and he couldn’t see anybody behind the wheel. He thought maybe the driver had a heart attack or something.”
Homer hit the brakes suddenly and Deal had to brace himself. Homer levered himself up on the seat with his elbow and looked back at Deal, his face going pink with the exertion.
“So anyway he puts his flashlight in my face to see if I’m plowed, you know, and this guy, who is clearly no Sherlock Holmes, finally notices there’s a broad in there with me, got her head in my lap, right?”
They pulled away from the light with a squeal of tires, and Deal slid back against the seat. “Christ, Homer. Why don’t we just call the station house, turn me in?”
“Tricky clutch, that’s all,” Homer said. “Lot of horses up front. What would you guess they put under the hood?”
“I don’t know, Homer. It’s not my car.”
“Great. Do a guy, steal a car, that’s a hell of a day. Too bad the banks are already closed, you could go for the hat trick.”
“It’s not funny, Homer,” Deal said. The car made a hard right, then bumped over something and it was suddenly dark inside the Rivolta.
“Covered parking,” Homer said. “One of the attractive features of life at the Shabby Arms.”
They squealed up a couple of ramps and finally pulled to a stop. Homer levered himself up on the seat again and glanced around outside. “It’s okay,” he said, finally.
Deal followed after him into the stairwell, which stank of urine and other, unidentifiable odors. “Only four flights up,” Homer assured him, moving into a kind of gallop that Deal had trouble keeping up with. His knee was still a little tender, but he suspected he’d have trouble staying even with Homer even if it weren’t.
At the door marked Six, with Seis scrawled under it in magic marker, Homer motioned Deal to wait, then poked his head out into the corridor.
Abruptly Homer stopped. “Christ, officer, don’t shoot!” he cried, throwing up his hands. “He’s right in here.”
Deal stood frozen. Homer turned to him with a manic smile on his face.
“Just kidding,” he said. He pushed the door open on an empty hallway.
“Hilarious,” Deal said, his heart pounding.
He followed Homer down a hallway that was even stuffier than the stairwell. There were graffiti scrawled along the walls, as mystifying as cave paintings, a carpet that had once been a green shag, an odor of mildew adding to the ripe musk of the air. Breathe this a few hours a day, maybe you’d turn out like Homer, Deal thought.
At the end of the hallway, Homer worked two keys, then let them into his place. Deal felt air-conditioning rush over him and took his first deep breath since he’d left the Rivolta. He followed Homer in, stepped aside as the door swung shut.
More surprises. A tidy efficiency, dishes stacked neatly at a drainboard, a couple of sling chairs, a futon bed beneath a pair of windows that gave a view north and east over Biscayne and out to the bay where the running lights of boats were beginning to glow in the dusk.
Deal became aware of a pink light pulsing on the rear wall of the apartment. He turned to Homer who pointed out one of the windows.
“Coppertone Girl’s right outside,” he said. “We’re right about bare-ass level on the big sign. Wanna look?” Homer went to throw the window up.
“I want to use the phone, Homer.”
Homer turned, clearly disappointed. He pulled the window closed, brought Deal a phone from a concrete block that sat as a table beside the futon.
Deal punched in Cal’s number, and waited.
After the fourth ring, a man’s voice answered. Familiar, but not quite right.
“Cal?” Deal said, uncertain.
“This isn’t Cal,” the voice said. “Who’s this?”
Deal took a breath. “I must have dialed the wrong number.”
“You got the right number,” the voice cut in. “This is Vernon Driscoll, Metro Dade Police. Who am I talking to?”
Deal felt an unreasoning dread sweep over him. “It’s Deal,” he said. His voiced seemed almost a whisper. “John Deal,” he repeated. “What’s wrong?”
“Where are you, Deal?” Driscoll’s voice had lost the kindly undertone Deal remembered from the night before. Had it only been last night? It seemed like a century ago.
Deal felt as if a huge wave were rolling toward him, its crest about to come crashing down. The light was nearly gone outside. The ocean was slate gray all the way out to an even darker horizon. Deal watched the pink glow from the Coppertone girl paint and unpaint the windowsill in front of him.
“Where’s Cal?” he said, dread filling him. “What’s happened to Cal?” Homer had punched on a tiny black-and-white television he kept on his dinette table, was flipping around the dial. When he registered Deal’s tone, he turned to stare. Driscoll’s voice was muffled now, as if he had covered the receiver, was shouting to someone at the other end of the line. Could they trace this call somehow?
Abruptly, Driscoll came back. “Somebody beat him to death, Deal. Then, just to be sure, they set him on fire.”
Deal felt himself go numb. “Jesus Christ.”
“It’s real pretty up here, Deal.” Driscoll’s voice was angry now. Accusing. “I’d like to talk to you about some things, okay? Including a tip from a concerned citizen who says you’re the one who tore up Surf Motors last night. Why don’t we set up a place to meet.”
Deal steadied himself against the windowsill. Homer shot him a worried look, hurried over with one of the chairs from the dinette. “Cal? Is he all right?”
“Just tell me where you are,” Driscoll was saying. “I’ll send somebody for you.”
Deal sagged into the chair. “I can’t do that right now,” he said. They had come to Cal’s looking for him. That’s what it was. “Process of elimination,” as Cal had said. Some irony. Poor Cal. And all because of Deal, as surely as if he’d shoved him out in front of that big, runaway truck.
“Suppose you tell me why not?” Driscoll’s voice brought him back.
He could meet with Driscoll, explain it all. Tell him who killed Penfield, who killed Cal. Sure. And while they were dragging him to his cell he could tell him where the Easter Bunny lived too. He stared across the room vacantly. Homer was in the kitchenette, rooting through the refrigerator for something.
“My wife’s alive,” Deal heard himself saying. His voice sounded hollow in his ears. Driscoll didn’t respond. “She’s alive. She called me.”
“Your wife called you?” Deal heard the disbelief in his voice.
“I’m going to go now,” Deal said, woodenly.
“Look, Deal, you been under a lot of stress. Make it easy on yourself, okay? All you gotta do—”
Deal dropped the phone back in its cradle and sat staring blankly at the television set where Don Noe was pointing excitedly at a vortex of red and yellow computer paint obliterating the Caribbean.
“It looks like a bad one, Don,” the anchorperson said as the scene cut away.
“It’s still a tropical depression,” Don said. “But we’ll be keeping an eye on it. We could be looking at the first hurricane of the season.” He seemed enthused.
Homer was back by the phone, handing Deal a beer he’d retrieved from the refrigerator.
“Of course, bad summer weather is one of baseball’s concerns with our area,” the anchorman said. “Here with a report on what’s coming out of the owners’ convention is Frank Forte—”
Homer snapped the set off and Frank sizzled away. The room was dark now, except for the glow from the sign outside. Half of Homer stood pink for a moment, then went dark. Then went pink again.
“We talking about the Cal I know?”
Deal nodded slowly. “That was a cop answered his phone. Somebody killed him, Homer.”
Homer shook his head and went to the refrigerator for another beer. “Goddamn,” he said, taking a long pull from the bottle.
“The same people who killed him were coming after me, Homer.”
“Yeah? How do you know that? Maybe it was just some garden-variety crack head broke in…”
“Homer…” Deal said. “You know who it was. Who ordered it, anyway.”
Homer stared at him for a moment. “Alcazar,” he nodded, finally. He took another slug of his beer, thinking about things. “The cop thinks you did it, right?”
“I might as well have,” Deal said. He put the beer on the windowsill and rubbed his face in his hands. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so tired. “First he killed Penfield, now Cal.”
“Wait a minute,” Homer said. “So you piss Alcazar off, fuck up a million dollars’ worth of his cars, fuck with his ego. That’d be his style, to off you, for it. And Cal happened to get in the way, his goons wouldn’t worry about that, either. But where’s Penfield figure into it?”
Deal glanced up at him. “Alcazar had gotten involved with the baseball thing somehow. Penfield needed money, Alcazar wanted to make some…” Deal trailed off, trying to think it through.
“But why would he kill Penfield, then?” Homer shook his head.
“I don’t know.” Deal stared at him. “If he wanted to buy a baseball team, Alcazar would need Penfield as a front man.” Deal threw up his hands. “It just doesn’t make sense. But I have this funny feeling, like I gave Alcazar the excuse for all of this.”
Homer thought it over.
“So you spent last night with Cal and then you went to see Penfield this morning. I’m the only other guy you spent any time with the last twenty-four hours, what do you think that makes my chances?”
Deal looked up at him. “I wouldn’t write you an insurance policy, Homer.”
Homer laughed. “Sense of humor. Maybe there’s hope for you yet.”
Deal took a breath. It seemed to take a long time to get his lungs inflated. He stood up, finally, and went to stare out the window. “I have to find Alcazar, Homer. If I’m going to find Janice, I’ve got to find Alcazar first.”
Homer stared at him, incredulous. “You think he’s got her too?”
Deal stared at him. “Where does he live, Homer?”
After a moment, Homer’s gaze wilted. He shrugged. “I ain’t exactly on his guest list.”
“You never drove him home, delivered a car?”
“Naw, he’s got a thing, thinks somebody’s gonna blow him up. Leon does all that shit, or one of those Cuban muscleheads.”
“For Christ’s sake,” Deal said, turning back to the window.
“All I know, it’s out on one of the islands there.”
Deal stared out toward the east. Separating the beach—that mile-wide strip of hotels and apartment houses—from the mainland, lay the waters of the bay, dotted here and there with manmade islands that showed up as ragged shadows now that the light was gone. Most of them—like Sunrise, where Penfield’s house was—were connected to the beach or one of the causeways by bridges. A few you had to be ferried to. That would suit Alcazar and his paranoia, Deal thought. Maybe he and Homer could rent a boat, go island hopping. Sure.
He turned his gaze back toward the city, wincing at the glare pulsing from the Coppertone girl. A few blocks away was the bank tower where Penfield had kept his offices, all lit up itself in gold and green floodlights.
Come back from the dead, old man. Tell me what you know, he thought. Tell me where my wife might be…and then, as he stared at those blank glass walls, something occurred to him.
He turned to Homer. “You got a phone book?”
Homer gave him a loo
k. “How do you think I get comfortable at dinner?”
Deal glanced over at the other chair by the dinette. Sure enough, two thick phone books arranged like the couch cushions in the cars Homer drove, building up the seat and chair back. Deal went to the table, grabbed one of the books.
“He ain’t listed,” Homer said, as Deal flipped the book open, traced a finger down the long list of Coopers. A Betty, a Benjamin, no Barbara. Two initial B’s, one in Hialeah, one without an address. He tried the one in Hialeah first, just to be sure, hung up when he got a message machine speaking Spanish.
He dialed the second number and she answered on the second ring. “Barbara?” Deal asked.
“This is Barbara,” her voice strange, wary, on weirdo-guard.
“It’s Deal,” he said. “John Deal.”
“Oh,” she said, her surprise there, but muted.
“I get you up or something?”
“I’m up,” she said, her voice gathering strength. “Way up.” She laughed, a strange, sad laugh. “You heard about Mr. Penfield, I guess. They sent us home early this afternoon.…”
“I heard,” Deal said. “They think I might have been involved.”
“Is that right?” she said, sounding dazed. “Did you?” she asked, after a moment.
“No,” Deal said.
“I didn’t think so,” she said, her words slurring.
“Listen, Barbara, I think I know who did it…”
She broke in. “I’ve just been sitting here having a glass of wine…well, more than a glass of wine, really, trying to make sense of things, you know. I mean, it’s really a pretty scary world…” Her voice trailed off and Deal wondered if she might be about to hang up.
“Barbara, are you all right?”
Her voice was abruptly bright—too bright. “So you probably called for something, right? I mean, if you heard about what happened. So why are you calling?”
Done Deal Page 20
