Done Deal

by Les Standiford

Deal raised his head as the cruiser disappeared. Homer glanced at him over the back of the seat.

  “Your old man always did right by me, Deal. The bones were good to him, he’d give me a nice tip for watching the door. He didn’t do so well, he took care of me anyway. Him and the Carneses too. No midget jokes, no Homer get me a drink, Homer get that. Those were different times. I already told you how things changed down there.”

  Homer turned back to the wheel. “So don’t ask me what I am, okay? Tonight, I’m doing you a favor. Maybe you’ll find your old lady, maybe you’ll take the cocksucker out.” He shrugged. “And if it don’t happen that way, tomorrow, I’ll get up, go in to work, wash some fucking cars.”

  Deal leaned back in the seat, trying to ease the stiffness in his back. “I appreciate it, Homer,” he said finally.

  Homer grunted. The rain drummed harder on the roof. Deal heard the radio volume go up, a new Bonnie Raitt song, which seemed perfect for the situation.

  Deal wormed his way into another position, and lay staring up at the headliner, trying to put it all together, but it just wouldn’t come. Alcazar and Penfield’s little business deal, that made sense. And Cal, poor goddamn Cal had just been in the middle, Deal’s fault. They’d killed him, then made it look like Deal had done it. Maybe they figured it would get him picked up and out of the way. But why would Alcazar kill Penfield too? One frame was plenty. What on earth had he done to deserve all this trouble? And where did Janice come in? What if he was wrong? What if Alcazar didn’t have her? What if Deal had dreamed it all up…

  And then a radio announcer’s voice had gradually wormed its way into his consciousness: “…here in Atlanta, where the announcement of Terrence Terrell’s participation in the south Florida ownership group seems to have swung everyone around. Baseball will be coming to south Florida, folks, and you can take that one to the bank.”

  “Who gives a shit,” Homer said. “What we need’s casino gambling, OTB—”

  “Quiet,” Deal said, coming up from the backseat.

  It was Terrell’s voice then, as full of smooth confidence as Deal remembered from the party on Penfield’s yacht, “…just pleased to have the means to play a part in this effort. But I want to emphasize that making money has nothing to do with it. I consider baseball an inalienable American right and I’m proud to help bring it to south Florida.”

  “My aching ass,” Homer groaned.

  “Shut up,” Deal said, his mind spinning, as the announcer came back on.

  “…Terrell, whose genius with computer systems built the largest privately held company in that industry, lends both the business savvy and the financial clout that the other owners have been looking for in an expansion package. From the depths of despair to the highest of highs, that’s the kind of ride south Florida fans have had this day, and Terrell had this to say about the passing of Thornton Penfield…”

  Deal fell back in his seat as Terrell intoned his sorrow at Penfield’s demise. Deal felt his spirits sinking. If Terrell was the major player the baseball group had been praying for, then what in the world was going on between Alcazar and Penfield? Maybe all of Deal’s speculations were off base. Maybe he was wasting time even now…

  “Here she comes,” Homer said, as another gust of wind rocked the car. Barbara was hurrying across the empty street, her head bent against the driving rain. As she ran around the front of the Rivolta, Homer leaned across to throw open the door for her.

  She fell inside, breathing heavily, water streaming down her face. “They weren’t going to let me in,” she said, still gasping from her run. “I told them I left my birth control pills upstairs.”

  Homer blushed, and turned to stare out the window. Barbara reached over the backseat to Deal. “Here,” she said, handing him a card from a Rolodex. “It’s a place out on Vanderbilt Key.”

  “More rich people,” Homer muttered.

  Deal stared at the card, still distracted by what he’d heard on the news. But what choice did he have? He forced himself to concentrate on the card he held. A place he knew, all right.

  Originally the family estate of the Vanderbilts, who didn’t fancy neighbors when they wintered in Florida, the place had been sold off by the heirs and its acreage divided into a few slightly less ostentatious compounds. You got there by helicopter, seaplane, or boat. The owners maintained a ferry for themselves and their guests, but Deal doubted he and Homer could qualify.

  “Where’s everybody want to go?” Homer said, starting the Rivolta.

  “You can take me home, I guess.” It was Barbara, sounding tired.

  “We’re going to need a boat,” Deal said.

  Homer turned to stare at him. “Are you nuts? Look at it out there.”

  “It’s okay, Homer, you don’t have to go,” Deal said.

  Homer glared at him. “I never said that. I just said, look at the weather. You gonna ask a guy, ‘Rent me your ship, I’d like to go down at sea’?”

  A peal of thunder punctuated Homer’s words, but it was distant. Deal avoided his gaze. “It’s blowing over.”

  Homer threw up his hands and sat back in his seat, disgusted. Deal glanced up at the sky. At least there was no lightning. It’d have to clear, sooner or later, didn’t it?

  “Penfield has a boat.” It was Barbara’s voice, surprising them. They both turned to stare at her.

  “The Mandalay Queen? That’s not what I had in mind,” Deal said.

  She shook her head. “This is something no one knows about. It’s a kind of a Gary Hart fishing charter. He keeps it down at Traynor’s.”

  “This is a serious boat?” Homer said, doubtful.

  She shrugged. “It’s big enough. Cabins fore and aft. Nice galley. A cozy little stateroom in the middle.”

  Deal stared at her, trying to picture it: Barbara in a sundress mixing up margaritas at the teak bar, Penfield and another guy in their yacht caps talking baseball.

  She stared back at him, tossed her wet hair back. “I liked the boat. It was clean and clear out there, all the stink blows away, you know?”

  Deal raised his eyebrows. “Maybe. My old man had an Aquasport. An open fisherman. He liked to drag me along deep-sea fishing. Maybe I wasn’t old enough to appreciate it.”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “Let me get this straight,” Homer said. “We just go down to Traynor’s, overpower the dock master, and steal this yacht, right?”

  Barbara shook her head. “You take me with you,” she said.

  “I don’t think so,” Deal said.

  “They know me down there. I’ll get you past the gate, then you’re on your own.”

  Deal thought about it. The rain had eased to a drizzle on the windshield. He could see the ragged outline of a cloud, backlit by the moon. Barbara smoothed her hair back, still watching him. She might have been someone’s secretary, caught in the rain, ready for a ride home. He found himself nodding.

  It was a long shot, but finding Janice was the important thing. If Alcazar could lead him to his wife, that’s all that mattered. He’d worry about the whys and wherefores later.

  “Okay,” he said, motioning to Homer. “Let’s go to Traynor’s. Let’s get ourselves a boat.”

  ***

  Never mind that it was a stormy Tuesday night, an occasional downpour still sweeping in off the bay. The parking lot outside the popular Grove hangout was packed. There was a real restaurant and bar inside, but all the action was on the huge terrace outside. There was a reggae band blasting under a chickee hut, plastic sheeting unfurled around the sides to protect the musicians and their equipment. The dance floor was under the roof that slanted out from the main building and most of the crowd had simply left the open-air tables to jam in under the eaves, drink their Red Stripes, their Meyers and Coke, their Rumrunners.

  The place had been remodeled, rebuilt, given a coat of pink-and-aqua stucco, but it had maintained its laid-back atmosphere over the years. After Lindy Trayn
or sold out, off to federal prison on tax evasion charges, the new owners hung a bunch of ferns off the porch rafters, brought in a series of bands with horns and girl singers who wore spandex. Before that, Deal had always liked to stop for a beer at Traynor’s, if he was ever in the neighborhood, unwind after a day of wrangling with the subs. He was gratified to see reggae was back, at least.

  They’d had to park way out near the street. As they passed the walkway to the terrace, the off-duty cop looked the three of them over, then turned back to his bored, tough-guy chat with the young woman who was collecting the covers.

  They continued on along the sidewalk that skirted the back of the bandstand, weaving through thick hibiscus hedges to the water’s edge. Deal sensed something and glanced at the bandstand, at a rift in the thick plastic sheeting where a big Jamaican in a flowered shirt stood guzzling a beer. Their eyes locked momentarily and the guy nodded slightly, as if they knew each other. A stage hand? A body guard? One of the musicians? There was no way to tell. Deal nodded back and moved on after Barbara.

  The dock master’s shed sat at the end of the path, blocking the way onto the floating docks. There was a chain-link fence with a gate, a little window where you rang a bell and hoped someone let you through.

  Barbara tapped on the window and an old guy wearing a T-shirt that read IRIE in big black letters peered out. After a moment the window slid up.

  “Hi, Miz Cooper,” the guy said. He glanced at Deal briefly, then came back to her. “Kind of a rough night, didn’t it?”

  She nodded. “We just want to look at the boat, Harry.” She nodded at Deal. “I’ve got a friend from up north. He’s never been to Florida before.”

  “That right?” Harry said, punching a button that unsnapped the gate with a buzz. “Well, be careful he don’t fall in.”

  Barbara smiled and turned to take Deal’s arm. “We’ll be careful, Harry.”

  The old guy turned away with a wave, headed back toward the little television he had set up on the desk inside. Homer moved through the gate along with them. The old guy had never even seen him.

  “Miss Daisy?” Homer said, turning to Barbara. “That’s what he called it?”

  “He called it ‘The boat,’” she said.

  They were standing at the end of the slip, braced against the rolling caused by the incoming swells, watching as Deal clambered aboard. It was dark out here, and quiet, except for the clanking of halyards against the masts of the sailboats docked nearby. Although the rain had eased off to a mist, the sky had closed up again. Deal worried the storm hadn’t truly blown over. Still, he was committed. What else could he do? By morning he could find himself in a small room downtown with Driscoll, listening to the evidence they’d stacked up against him, running his finger down a list of public defenders. Or maybe they’d have him in a padded cell, certain he was taking phone calls via the fillings in his teeth…

  He found a set of steps stowed along the starboard rails and folded them down for Homer, who climbed up, followed by Barbara.

  “What are you doing?” he said, as she stepped over the rail.

  She looked at him neutrally. “You want the key, don’t you?”

  He nodded and stepped aside, steadying himself against the rolling of the boat, watching as she made her way to the hatchway, ran her fingers under a teak overhang. She turned to Deal, surprised, then tried the overhang on the other side of the passageway.

  “Shit,” she said. “It’s always here.”

  Deal glanced up at the bridge, which sat a few steps above them, the wheel open, but protected by a canopy. No key in the ignition, that much was certain.

  “Maybe Jimmy Swaggart borrowed it, forgot to put the key back,” Homer said.

  “Funny,” Barbara said. She bent to check the deck at her feet.

  Deal turned to Homer. “Did they ever show you how to hot wire a car down at Surf?”

  Homer gave him a look. “They never did.” He shrugged. “It got to be sort of a lost art after all the locking steering columns came out. What you do these days, you want to boost a car, is you get hold of a flat-bed tow truck, winch the damn thing on board, drive away.”

  “There’s no steering lock on this thing,” Deal said, nodding at the wheel.

  Homer glanced up. “Sure isn’t.”

  “So can you start it, or not?”

  “I can start it,” Homer said. “Who’s going to drive it?”

  “Don’t worry,” Deal said.

  Homer shook his head. “I knew we were going to steal a boat.” He started up the steps to the bridge. “I just goddamn knew this was going to happen.”

  ***

  The rain had picked up again by the time Deal had gotten the twin diesels idling smoothly. Inside of fifteen minutes, Homer not only had jumped the ignition wires but had also picked the hatchway lock leading down below. He poked his head up and tossed a poncho at Deal, who stood at the wheel, ready to back from the slip.

  He turned to Barbara, who had already cast off the stern line and stood on the dock, ready to undo the bow line from the big cleat there. Deal glanced over his shoulder. The rollers were still coming in. And there wasn’t much space between him and the boats moored across the way.

  He imagined shooting backward into the gleaming Hatteras just opposite, or cutting too sharply from the slip, gouge into the dock, rend the hull just about waterline. They could go full fathom five, right in the slip. And maybe he’d just stay down with it. Be like that rock star who drowned under his own boat in the marina somewhere in California, could have come up, but just didn’t want to.

  He remembered those Sundays coming in from fishing, his father making him practice docking the Aquasport over and over again, back in, cut the power, try to slip it up against the boards, “like kissing a girl,” his dad saying, the guy who ran the marina watching, leaning over a railing, chewing on his cigar and shaking his head, obviously thinking, What a sorry piece of shit, no matter how Deal managed. He’d wanted to tie the guy’s dick to the prop of the Aquasport, run him around the bay a few times. All of that maneuvering difficult enough, and that had been in calm weather.

  He forced himself to stop thinking. It was just stalling, putting off the moment.

  “Okay,” he called to Barbara. “Cast off.”

  She nodded, undid the line and slung it aboard. Deal gave her a wave, dropped the boat into reverse and hurried to add some throttle before he stalled out. Suddenly, he felt a lurch at the bow.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. What now? What had he done? He turned to see Barbara heaving herself over the front rail, wanted to do something about it, but Miss Daisy was whisking backward, a nice swing out of the slip, but a little too quick, really, and he hurried to throttle back, then drop into forward before he circled around into the pilings that separated Miss Daisy from the neighboring berth.

  The boat shuddered, but the engines held, and suddenly they were moving forward, out into the channel, rain spattering his face. Barbara pulled herself back along the line that ran the foredeck, then joined him in the cockpit.

  “That was really pretty good,” she said. “I didn’t think you knew what you were doing.”

  Deal shook his head. The boat was forging through the waves, already edging past the lights of some houseboats anchored in the free water at the edge of the marina waters. He’d forgotten how fast things happened out here, his eyes searching for the first marker buoy. Miss the channel, they’d be hard aground in a second. If you had a pair of stilts and knew where to step, you could walk a couple miles offshore down here, never get wet. Get Miss Daisy stuck in the muck here, they wouldn’t drown, but Deal could fold his tent, do nothing but wait for the Coast Guard to pick him up, drop him off at the slammer.

  He glanced over at Barbara. “What are you doing here?”

  She shrugged. “I was standing up there and remembered, I can’t drive a stick shift.”

  Meaning the Rivolta. He’d had Homer give h
er the keys. “You could have taken a cab,” he said, still searching the surging waters ahead. Where was the goddamn channel buoy?

  “I left my purse home,” she said.

  “You don’t need my trouble,” he said.

  “That’s nice,” she said. “But let’s call it my trouble too, okay? My chance to help even the score. Thornton Penfield wasn’t any saint, but he sure didn’t deserve what Alcazar gave him.”

  Deal stared at her, nodding. He wondered if she were right, whether Penfield deserved such loyalty. Whether he did or not, you’d love to have someone like Barbara on your side, he thought. He glanced back over the bow, searching for something to say, when suddenly his stomach clenched. He leaned hard into the wheel straining to swing Miss Daisy away from a blocky houseboat that was moored just off the buoy, hiding the goddamn light, not ten feet away from them…

  “Holy shit,” Homer cried, going over backward down the hatchway. Barbara bounced off the rails securing the deck hood, then back against Deal. Her feet flew out from under her and she landed in a tangle at his feet.

  Deal struggled to keep upright, keep the wheel in his hands, could they maybe just plow right through the goddamn thing?

  …and then, their bow was whisking by the houseboat, barely clearing it, but crashing into a wooden dinghy tied off at its side. The dinghy disappeared into the foaming water with a crunch, the houseboat rocking wildly in their wake. He heard a dog barking from somewhere and imagined the people inside the houseboat, bouncing across the decks, still lost in their dreams, wondering where the bus had come from.

  Already Miss Daisy was thirty feet away, chopping the waves, Deal still with a death’s grip on the wheel, trying to get his breath back.

  Barbara dragged herself up, clutching his pant leg. “I guess I spoke too soon,” she said, grabbing at him again as they crested a bigger wave.

  Homer clambered out of the hatchway, checking a busted lip. “What was that?”

  “Cheap bastards moored up without running lights,” he said. He stuck out his hand, helped Barbara to her feet. Probably sneaked in after dark, trying to save a few bucks dockage, and they’d nearly sunk him. Well, they’d have fun getting ashore without their dinghy.