Deal edged forward but Leon raised the pistol toward his chest. “Careful, now.”
Deal stopped. Leon heard something in the phone and pulled it away from his ear with a sigh. “Some bitch givin’ me the time and the temperature, you believe that?”
He dialed again, jammed the phone back under his chin. Barbara moaned once more, stirring slightly on the couch.
“Yo, Alejandro,” Leon was saying into the phone. “You on the way or no?”
Deal felt a growing dread.
Leon was still talking into the phone. “Yeah, it’s okay. Tell Alcazar we’re at the Stiltsville place. Her old man showed up. That’s right. He’s right in front of me.” He paused, his eyes going from Janice to Deal, back again. “Sure,” he said finally, “everything’s just fine.”
Deal was shaking his head, his stare vacant. Lost. Everything lost.
A distant hum of engines cut the silence of the room. Leon cocked his head at the sky.
“Yeah, man going to give us a ride home,” Leon said to Janice. Her eyes, filled with tears now, had not left Deal’s.
“Some of us getting a ride,” Leon was saying. He tossed the phone onto the couch at Barbara’s feet and turned to level the pistol at Janice. “Most of us won’t be needing no ride…”
“That’s the last part of it, Janice,” Deal said. “You’re already dead, I’m about to be. You were swept out to sea. I killed myself in grief.”
Leon glanced at him, chuckling, then flicked something on the stock of the pistol. Deal started forward.
Leon turned to meet Deal’s charge, a weary expression on his face, more hero shit to deal with. He raised the pistol, was about to fire, when Janice reached behind her, flung the pot of boiling tea into his face.
Leon screamed, clawing at his eyes. Steam curled out between his fingers.
Deal hit the big man hard, driving him back against the door frame. Leon was blindly trying to level the pistol, but Deal grabbed his arm, slamming his wrist against one of the sidelights. The glass panel exploded in a shower of fragments.
“Gonna fuck you up, white folks,” Leon wheezed. “Gonna fuck you up bad.” A strip of skin had bubbled up from his cheek. As Deal watched, it slid away, leaving a bright pink scar from the corner of his mouth to his ear, a permanent, terrible grin.
Deal gripped Leon’s arm, levering himself against the big man’s bulk. All those years pounding nails, lugging concrete blocks, unloading eighty-pound bags of Sakrete by the dozen. Priding himself that there wasn’t one man in ten who kept himself as well. And what did it matter, because now he was up against the one guy in a hundred, or a thousand, more like it.
Any second now, he was going to lose his grip, go over backward…and then he felt a sudden lurch.
Leon was staggering forward, in from the doorway, his eyes wide, the skin about them blistered and still steaming, his gaze unfocused. And Janice was screaming. And screaming.
Leon pitched on forward, as if the floor were erupting beneath his feet. “Uhhhha…” the big man mumbled, a pink froth at his lips. He tottered sideways, fighting to keep his balance. There was a brief brrrrrppp as his finger tightened on the pistol waving in his hand. Janice sagged into one of the dinette chairs, both hands wrapped tightly about her stomach.
Deal gaped at the scene before him. Something had burst from Leon’s chest, something covered red and dripping, something with the long curved jaw of a gar or an eel, a creature from a horror film that had ripped out with a life of its own.
“Whuuuuaaa…” Leon groaned again, taking little mincing steps now, his eyes glazing. There was a terrible sucking sound coming from inside his chest.
Deal ducked as the big man swung wildly at him. Leon careened on past, against the far wall of the living room. The shaft of Miss Daisy’s fishing gaff trailed behind him, one end buried in his back, centered in a widening stain of blood.
And clinging to the gaff was Homer, drawn and exhausted, seawater still dripping from his sodden life vest, his face battered and bleeding. He held desperately on to the bucking end of the spear as if he were riding some monster hobby horse.
“His gun,” Homer croaked. “Get his fucking gun.” He clung to the shaft of the spear, clawing at his belt where he’d stuck the flare pistol.
Leon swung wildly behind him, clubbing Homer’s face with the strange pistol. Homer tumbled loose from the spear and crashed into the legs of the dinette. The kerosene lantern went over with a sound of breaking glass.
Leon wavered in the middle of the living room floor, his eyes struggling to focus on this steel flower that had sprung up from his chest. He touched the dripping metal carefully, then held his fingertips in front of his face, studying his own blood with an infant’s fascination.
Deal scrambled on his hands and knees toward the flare pistol, waiting for the searing pain that would rip into him any moment, bullets from a goddamn gun that didn’t even sound like a gun. Or maybe Leon would jerk the spear out of himself like John Wayne would shrug off a redskin’s arrow, impale Deal on it. Or…
…he got his hands on the flare pistol, made sure there was one of the giant shells in the chamber and rolled over onto his back, the weapon upraised. But Leon had disappeared. The hum of engines outside had become a roar. Helicopter blades popping, Deal realized. Practically on top of them, now.
Deal made it to the doorway to see the helicopter setting down on the platform near what was left of the lumber pile, Leon tacking across the deck toward it like something from a nightmare. The wash from the props was even worse than the winds of the storm. Loose shingles ripped from the roof and debris from the scrap pile clattered against the siding.
Deal turned away as a blast of sand stung him. When he looked again, Alejandro had jumped down from the helicopter. He stood by the scrap pile, trying to brace himself against the wash of the helicopter blades. He had a pistol in his hand, but stared uncertainly as Leon staggered toward him. Alcazar clung to the doorway of the helicopter, shouting, gesturing frantically in Deal’s direction.
Alejandro glanced at his boss, his long hair flaring in the wash of the props. The hand with the gun wavered, swung from Leon, to Deal…
…the same hand, and pistol, and suit coat…
…the freeway shooter, the man in the Supra. Deal had never seen the man’s face, couldn’t see it well even now, but he knew they had come full circle.
“You must be more careful…You don’t know who’s out here. You could die.”
Alejandro turned back, ready for business now, ready for Deal, ready to finish the job at last, no cops to drive up to the rescue…
Alejandro fired, but it was wasted, the bullet ripping into an empty door frame. Deal had dropped to his stomach, his elbows banging the sodden deck. He propped himself up, struggling to bring the flare pistol in line. His thumbs slipped off the rain-slicked hammer, fumbled, then caught, finally cocking it.
Alejandro fired again. Deal felt a stunning blow at his temple, the sharp sting of splintered wood at his face, the trickle of something wet in his eyes.
He squeezed the trigger of the flare pistol, praying, praying, praying…then the shell exploded, ripping a fiery trail toward Alejandro. There was a dull thud, then a scream, and Alejandro went over backward, clawing at the flare that had burst in his stomach.
He spun in frantic circles on the wet decking, spewing phosphorous smoke and bright flame like some human pinwheel rocket, his cries rising above the growing whine of the helicopter. Alcazar saw it all from the doorway of the ’copter, his face gone ashen. He turned, clinging to the door frame, and shouted at the pilot, who was working wildly at the controls.
Alejandro arched his back in one last spasm of pain, then went over the side of the platform as Deal pulled himself up. His legs felt like lead, his vision alternately clear, then blurry.
The helicopter’s engines raised another notch, and the machine lifted off the deck, slowly at first, a few inches, a foot,
then two, then six…so long, Alcazar, Deal thought, so long…
…and then Leon crossed the plane of Deal’s vision, launching himself into one last, gargantuan leap, the desperate, career making lunge for a quarterback he never got to make on the football field. But this one was good. Better than good. Not just a sack. Way beyond that. Every defensive lineman’s dream. A cataclysm.
Leon’s fingers clawed, clawed, and closed over one of the helicopter’s skid rails. The craft lurched and dipped to its right, and Alcazar came out of the doorway backward, his arms and legs windmilling as he slammed onto the platform.
Leon clung to the listing helicopter’s rail with one hand, pulling himself inexorably over the lip of the cabin with the other. The pilot slid across the seats and kicked wildly at him, one hand still on the controls. The engines were screaming, the machine struggling skyward.
Alcazar lay stunned for a moment on the deck below, then rolled onto his hands and knees, groggy. He looked up, his head lolling, as Deal started toward him.
“You damn near pulled it off,” Deal said, praying his legs would hold him. “Almost paved those streets with gold.”
Alcazar edged away, but his silk pants snagged on a splinter of planking that jutted from the deck.
“I’m not going to use a hatchet, Alcazar. I’m going to do it with my hands.” Deal felt his head reeling. It was like one of those awful dreams where you know what you have to do, but the car has no wheels, the gun you’ve got has a sagging barrel that curves its way back at you. But he would reach Alcazar if he had to pull himself across the platform with his teeth. With his eyelids.
For it had all come to this. All the effort he’d put forward, just a little guy trying to get along, look what it had got him. And yet, he wasn’t going to give up now. There wasn’t an atom inside of him that was going to give up now.
Alcazar was clawing at the fabric of his snagged trousers in a panic. But then he stopped. And smiled back up at Deal.
Deal wavered, watching this dream go wrong once again. Watched Alcazar’s hand as it reached out for Leon’s bizarre pistol, which had fallen to the platform a foot away. Deal staggered back toward the doorway, knowing it was over.
Alcazar tugged at his pant leg. Then stood, inspecting the strange mechanism of the weapon. In a moment, he would turn and level it at Deal and end this forever.
Deal was groggy, his head pounding, and the blood was leaking into his eyes. He felt the weight of the flare gun heavy in his hand. A little heavier than regulation. Not round. No stitching. Dark gray and all out of shape.
Like maybe it was a baseball that had rolled under a big, rotting log and lay there for years and years and years. Got so soggy and rotten and pressed out of shape it was good for only one thing. One last toss. One last fastball, and please, let it be over the plate.
Deal stepped forward and threw, gave it everything he had. Felt something tear inside his arm. Ignored the ripping pain there. Had a flash of some impossible baseball dream like the times he was a kid and thought, let me do something special, let me just once do what nobody else could do…
He watched Alcazar throw up his hands to shield himself. Watched the flare gun crack against Alcazar’s upraised arm. Watched Alcazar’s finger tighten upon the trigger in reflex, and the gun begin to fire.
There was a shrieking from the helicopter’s engines, which wavered just above the roofline of the house, the pilot slumping over his controls, the bubbled windshield blown to fragments by Alcazar’s wild firing. And then, the roaring machine, with Leon still clinging to the skid, threw itself down on them.
Deal dove back inside the shelter of the house, slamming into Homer, who had managed to pull himself up in the doorway. As they untangled themselves, the big rotor blade dug into the platform with a scream and a shower of sparks, chewing through planking and concrete until it hit something it could never cut.
A long section of tempered blade glanced upward, shearing from its mounts. Alcazar was running desperately for the stairwell when the hurtling chunk of helicopter blade sliced into him, at just about the level of his hand-stitched alligator belt. There was an agonized rending of metal as momentum carried the rest of the craft over the side and into the water. And then, for the first time in what seemed like days, there was silence.
“I’d have called that pitch of yours high,” Homer said as Deal dragged himself to the doorway. “’Course what counts is, the asshole went for it.”
Deal stared out across the platform. No Alejandro, no Leon, no helicopter. Only a pair of disembodied legs clad in expensive, blood-soaked silk trousers, tottering by the stairwell. The legs wavered impossibly in midstride, something out of a sick cartoon, or a nightmare, and then the awful vision toppled down the steps, out of sight.
Deal felt his stomach lurch. A smell of kerosene, of burning wood, had crept into his nostrils and an alarm was ringing somewhere, somewhere down a distant corridor. He saw it again, in memory, Leon spraying gunshots wildly about the room, the lantern going over with a crash…
Deal struggled to his feet, and stood wavering. Yes, there it was, the pine paneling of the kitchen a mass of flames already, smoke boiling off the ceiling and massing toward him. Homer was dragging himself from the tangle of chairs where he had fallen.
“Barbara!” he shouted at Homer, pointing, and the little man groped his way toward the unconscious form on the couch.
Deal turned, still groggy, the smoke choking him. He blinked away blood and sweat and smoke, searching for Janice, the smoke thick now, impenetrable. He couldn’t see her. But she was here. She had to be here. Then the smoke whisked away in a draft of pure heat and he stopped.
She was still in the dinette chair. Her head was flung back, her lips parted slightly. A bright red stitching ran across her body where Leon’s shots had hit her, staining her sweatshirt from navel to neck.
There was a soft popping noise as the plastic tabletop bubbled, then burst into flames.
He staggered to the chair, took her by the shoulders. Her eyes fluttered open, then closed again. “Deal,” she whispered, and he thought she was trying to smile. “Don’t you ever give up?”
He pulled her to him. “Never,” he said.
“So sorry,” he heard her say.
He found himself on the floor then, beneath the flames, dragging them both toward the door. The decking seemed to be buckling under him. He felt himself going down into a vast darkness.
“So sorry,” she repeated. Her breath was shallow at his ear. He was wet with her blood.
He found the door frame with his hand. Felt the heat in the wood. Searing him if it were flame itself.
“Oh, Deal,” she said.
“It’s all right,” he told her. “It’s all right.”
He was so very, very tired. But he would take them out of this. He felt her sigh and go quiet against him. So unfair. He had gotten them into this. And he would get them out.
He made one last surge toward the cool air outside. Then everything was black.
Chapter 37
Deal heard the helicopter blades descending on him and came up from the darkness, his arms flailing.
Someone pushed him back down. “It’s all right, son.” A familiar voice. “Rest easy.”
Deal struggled. Rain was pelting his face again. The sky dark, darker than ever. Blinding sheets of lightning. Thunder blasting. The storm on them again. And Driscoll’s moonlike face hovering over him, holding him quiet on the soggy deck.
Flames still danced at the far side of the platform. The house still burning.
“Janice,” he called, fighting to sit up.
“You got her out,” Driscoll said, soothing him. “You did. You and the midget.”
Homer’s face had appeared over Driscoll’s shoulder, nodding, peering anxiously down at Deal. “She’s on a chopper, Deal. Headed for the hospital.”
Deal fell back, his head reeling. “A dwarf,” Deal said, the faces begin
ning to swim above him. “He’s a dwarf.”
He sagged back on the deck. Deal wanted to believe it was over. That Janice was safe. That everyone was safe, so that he could rest. He wanted so badly to rest.
…his eyes rolled back and drifted in the darkness, fighting to see…
…and then he saw it, near the hatchway that led down the steps to the water. Something huge and lumbering, rising up there. A big man. The very biggest he’d ever seen. Gouts of sea water and blood pouring from his wounds, the spear gripped in one hand, something writhing in the other.
Something terrible. Deal couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He drove himself backward, toward the edge of the platform as Leon advanced. It wasn’t a hand at all, but some terrible eellike creature that had grown there, taking the place of Leon’s hand. Its jaws snapped hundreds of yellow teeth as it advanced on him, soon, soon, soon…
…and then Deal sat up in the hospital bed, his heart thundering, his gown soaked, the nightmare still replaying itself in his head.
He glanced about the dimly lit room. An IV frame and some tubing in his way, but someone asleep in a chair, someone who stirred and murmured “Deal?”
He was still shaking as he sank back into the pillows. He was lightheaded, pinwheels exploding behind his eyes. Already fading out. But that dream. He didn’t want that dream again. He tried to force his eyes open, but it was so very hard. He thought he saw Barbara leaning over him, one arm in a cast, one hand moving toward him.
“They’re going to make it.” Barbara’s voice, coming from somewhere far away. “They’re going to make it.”
He thought he felt her hand on his forehead. He felt a twinge of something like peace and went to sleep again.
Epilogue
Joe Robbie Stadium, The Following Spring
Deal had arrived at the park early, partly to avoid the traffic, mostly because everything took longer these days, all the things he had to carry. But he wasn’t complaining. And besides, it reminded him. He’d always been the first one at practice, usually one of the last to leave. It was the best time. He’d have the place to himself, the smell of the fresh-cut grass, the clay still wet and sticking to his spikes as he jogged, went through his stretching routines, enjoying the silence and the sense that all the field were his.
Done Deal Page 27
