“The guy’s not just saying he’ll pull the job away,” Deal continued as Cyrus glided away, “he’s threatening to ruin me if I don’t cooperate, have me sent to prison for bribery.” He stared at her, feeling fresh anger at Sams’ references to the medical bills, a part of the encounter he’d left out. “He wouldn’t go to those lengths unless there was more to it than what he was telling me.”
“You want to call his bluff, don’t you?”
He gave her a look. “If things get really tough, we could set you up in business: Madame Janice, sees all, tells all.”
She smiled, but her heart wasn’t in it. “I want to tell you to do it, just blow him off and see what happens, but—” She broke off, shaking her head. “It all seems so crazy. I think we need to wait and see. Maybe it’s some crazy con job, like you say. Maybe this will all just go away.”
Deal nodded. “I’m hoping,” he said. He didn’t think he sounded very convincing.
“You’ll talk to Vernon, then?”
Deal nodded. “He gets back tomorrow.”
She looked at him. “He’s working out of town?”
“Orlando,” he said. “He hired out to Disney, doing background checks for the seasonal Santas.”
“Come on,” she said, her face a mask of disbelief.
“Seriously,” Deal said. “The company has to be very careful about who runs around their parks dressed up like that.”
“God,” she said, shaking her head. “What a world.”
“You can say that again,” he said. And then Cyrus was back with more food.
***
“Okay now,” Janice whispered, her breath hot at his ear. “Just lean back all the way. Try to get your hands flat on the bed.”
“I liked my hands where they were,” Deal said.
“So did I,” she said, “but I want you to try this.”
He leaned back, then dutifully pressed his palms into the mattress beside his ears. “There,” she said, adjusting herself atop him. “Doesn’t that feel good?”
“It was feeling pretty good already,” Deal said. If she moved again, he thought, if she so much as breathed too deeply…
“It’s the stretching part,” she said. “It makes everything feel better.”
“Have you been doing this with other people, Janice?” Best to ask, to hear about it straight out, he thought. At a moment when he felt good enough to absorb almost anything.
“Of course not,” she said, bending to kiss his chest. “Exercise sex. It’s not a secret, Deal. I read about it in a magazine at the doctor’s office.”
“I’ve got to try your doctor,” he said.
“She’s a gynecologist,” Janice said. He felt her breath at the hollow of his throat, her tongue teasing his breastbone, her teeth nibbling the prong of one nipple. “Just stay where you are now,” she said.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he managed. She sat up, then leaned backward, her hands locked beneath him, pulling at the small of his back.
“Good,” she breathed. “That’s so good.”
“I take it back,” Deal said. “I am going somewhere.” He felt, in fact, like he was heading for a different universe.
“Oh yes,” she said, moving, twisting, and then he knew that she had joined him and they were flying through the spangled dark together.
***
Hours later? Days later? Another lifetime altogether?
“Mommy?” It was Isabel’s voice, sounding meek in the early morning light.
He felt Janice tug the sheet higher over their shoulders. “Yes, sweetheart?”
He’d been lying in that dazed pre-awake state, stupid with contentment, all his concerns banished, far too greedy to let himself simply back into sleep. Not without the guarantee that he could relive it all in his dreams, at least.
“Is Daddy here?” she asked. The door was halfway open now—he could tell by the sound of her voice.
“Daddy who?” Janice said softly.
“Mommy!”
“Who’s that knocking at my door?” Deal said.
“I thought you were here,” she said, giggling. She came quickly across the carpeted floor and sat down on the edge of the bed.
Deal sat up now, and she eyed his T-shirt speculatively. “You slept over,” she said.
“I did,” he agreed.
“That means we get pancakes,” she said.
“Of course,” Deal said.
“Give us a few minutes, Isabel.” It was Janice’s voice, muffled beneath the covers.
“Okay,” said Isabel, smiling at him. Janice’s eyes, his cheekbones and chin. She would be a handsome woman, he thought. Maybe not delicate, but beautiful just the same.
“Pancakes it is,” Deal repeated.
“Go take your shower,” Janice said.
“Okay, Mommy,” Isabel said. She leaned to kiss Deal on the cheek and then scampered out. “Daddy’s here!” she announced as she closed the door after her.
Deal felt Janice’s hand find his and squeeze. “Pancakes,” she said. “You spoil her.” She raised herself up on one elbow and stared at him sleepily.
“Everyone needs spoiling once in a while,” he told her.
She gave him a speculative look. “Since you put it that way,” she said. “Why not?” And came his way.
Chapter Nine
“So, how’d the Santas check out?” Deal said, his thoughts still drifting over the events of the night before.
Saturday evening now, he and Vernon Driscoll were sitting in the breezeway on the second floor of the fourplex Deal had built in Little Havana, taking a moment away from the matter of Talbot Sams. As they had arranged earlier in the week, Deal had picked Driscoll up at Miami International and filled him in on what had happened on the twenty-minute drive back to the building where they both lived.
Deal kept one of the apartments for himself and rented out the others. Driscoll, an ex-Metro Dade homicide cop and now a private investigator, was one of his steady tenants. Another was Mrs. Suarez, a Cuban lady of indeterminate age who had come to function as Isabel’s grandmother in absentia. The fourth apartment had been occupied by a revolving cast of characters over the last few years: the last tenant, and far and away the most attractive, had been a dancer at the Copa Club on Southwest Eighth Street, which featured a forties-style review said to be reminiscent of the grand old days in Havana. The dancer had recently married one of the club’s owners, however, and one of the downstairs units was currently vacant.
“Every one of them clean as a whistle,” Driscoll said. He rummaged in the cooler beside his chair and brought out a beer. “You want one?”
“I’m fine,” Deal said. It was after five on a Saturday—he could open a beer if he wanted, but the prospect didn’t appeal to him. He felt weary, his early-morning euphoria having gradually waned over the course of the day, in direct proportion to the length of time he’d been away from Janice and Isabel. Next weekend, he’d have his daughter with him, but it seemed a distant prospect…and while his time with Janice had gone far beyond what he might have expected, he knew better than to call so soon. They hadn’t spent consecutive nights together for more than a year. Your frustration is natural, Mr. Deal. But the last thing she needs is to feel pressured…
“The problem is,” Driscoll was saying, having downed half his beer at a gulp, “you can’t find anything on a guy, you have to figure he’s dirty, you know what I mean?”
Deal looked at him. “So if you find something on a person, he or she is a dirtbag. If you don’t, they’re dirtbags for sure.”
Driscoll nodded, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “Almost invariably.”
Deal rubbed his face, trying to bring some energy back. “They teach this at the academy, I guess. Cop Logic 101.”
Driscoll grunted. “You pick it up on your own, my friend. The real world is not a pretty place.”
“Give me a beer, Vernon. I fear a claiming c
ontest coming on.”
“I’m just telling you what you already know.” Driscoll pulled out a beer for Deal, flicked its cap away with his thick thumb. He turned the bottle around so he could read the label, then glanced at Deal. “Hatuey? What the hell is that?”
“They were out of Red Stripe up at the market,” Deal said. “This was on special. It’s an old Cuban brand. Made in the U.S. now.”
“Are we referring to our corner market?” Driscoll pointed in the vague direction of the neighborhood grocería that sat a block or so away, a dusty, out-of-time operation run by a Cuban couple in their sixties.
“Where else?” Deal felt a fierce loyalty to Rogelio, the old man who ran the place. Rogelio had spent seven years in one of Castro’s prisons, had escaped and come to the United States in a cargo container via Mexico.
Driscoll grunted again. “I bet they ran out on purpose. I went in there the other day for a loaf of bread, all they had was Cuban. Sure, we have pan, the guy is telling me. I told him never mind the pan, I want a nice soft loaf of Wonder Bread, the kind I can squeeze up and put it in my back pocket if I want to. He looked at me like I was crazy.”
“Maybe you need to move away, Vernon. You could find a nice retirement home in West Virginia, rediscover your roots.”
“I like it here,” Driscoll said. “It’s interesting. All I’m saying is keep some Red Stripe beer and Wonder Bread on the shelf. Is that too much to ask?”
Deal sighed. “Sounds like the Bruce Jenner diet to me,” he said.
“You can forget the scare tactics,” Driscoll said. “Remember what happened to that Fixx guy, the one who started everybody jogging?”
“He had a heart condition to begin with. Jogging prolonged his life.”
Driscoll glanced at his watch. “That’s what you say. The way I figure it, all the rest of the joggers are about to start dropping like flies.” He held up his beer between them. “What your heart really needs,” he said, “is a nice little cushion of fat wrapped around it. Keeps it insulated from the extremes of hot and cold.”
They could go on like this forever, Deal knew, at least as long as the beer held out. “Maybe you should write a book, Vernon.”
“I have contemplated that very thing, Johnny-boy. Don’t think I haven’t.”
That nickname again. Okay coming from Driscoll, of course. Vernon Driscoll had known his father, from back in the glory days. But it spun him right out of the dull-edged torpor he’d let himself fall into, forced him right back to contemplation of the specter of Talbot Sams leering out from behind his own desk.
He leaned forward himself then. “So what do you think, Vernon? Can you find out about this guy Sams?”
Driscoll nodded. “If he’s on the screen.”
“Meaning?”
“Some of those guys are spooks,” Driscoll said. “Whatever name he gives you, that doesn’t have to be him.” He shrugged.
Deal nodded, remembering something. “He said I’d find his name in the DealCo files.”
“It’s worth checking,” Driscoll said, “but even so, it could still be an alias.”
“I suppose,” Deal said.
“You tell anybody else about this?”
“Janice.”
Driscoll glanced at him. “You tell her to keep it to herself?”
“She knows that much,” Deal said.
Driscoll nodded his head slowly. “It’s a hell of a note, isn’t it? Just the thought of your old man under the thumb of the Feds all that time.”
“You think it was possible, then?”
Driscoll stared at him. “Anything’s possible, that much I’ve learned.”
He straightened in his chair. “But whatever else he was, your old man was stand-up. He wouldn’t have screwed anybody that didn’t deserve a screwing. Matter of fact, it makes me feel better thinking it could have been him sending some of the scumbags away.”
Deal thought about that for a moment. Maybe there was some solace there, but it couldn’t make up for all the rest.
“This Sams would have to be pretty good at what he does,” Deal said finally. “I mean, to have used my father all that time and never blow his cover.”
“Yes,” Driscoll agreed. “He would have to be very good indeed.”
“Does that make him good enough to hide from you?”
“Possibly,” Driscoll said. “But I’ve dug people up from the witness protection program before. Finding anyone’s usually just a matter of time.” He cut another glance at Deal. “Meanwhile, how bad can it be? You just won yourself a nice little piece of a great big pie.”
“If it’s true,” Deal said. “I’ll find out Monday for sure. I called Jack Tate at the business desk of the Herald, but they hadn’t heard anything. So far, all I have is the word of a con man and a spook.”
“Well, I don’t know about this guy Sams,” Driscoll said. “But you can trust Eddie Barrios to smell a buck at a hundred paces.”
Deal sipped his beer. The light was fading and he saw a lamp go on in Mrs. Suarez’s apartment across the way. Music was playing somewhere in the distance, a plaintive ballad in Spanish, more Mexican than Spanish by the mellow sound of it. “I keep telling myself, Assume it’s all true, then what’s the worst part? I take the job, and along the way I help bring down one of the bad guys.”
“There’s a point,” Driscoll said.
“And just about that time, I think of my old man putting that pistol in his mouth.” He stared at Driscoll, his jaw rigid.
“You don’t know why that happened,” Driscoll said softly.
“That’s what I used to think,” Deal said. “Now all of a sudden, I’m not so sure.”
Driscoll sighed and stood to put his hand on Deal’s shoulder. “I’ll make a couple calls in the morning,” he said, “but it’ll probably be Monday before I can get much accomplished. Meantime, why don’t I buy you dinner down at Fox’s? Uncle Walt was so happy his Santa Clauses were clean, he gave me a fat bonus.”
Deal shook his head. “Uncle Walt’s dead.”
“I’ll buy you dinner anyway,” Driscoll said.
“I appreciate it,” Deal said. “But I’m not so hungry right now.”
Driscoll lifted an eyebrow. “Whatever you say, Johnny-boy.” He clapped Deal on the shoulder and headed toward the stairwell. “Meantime, I wouldn’t worry too much. All you’ve heard so far is a bunch of talk.”
Deal managed a smile, lifting his beer in salute as Driscoll descended the stairs. “You’re right, Vernon,” Deal said. “So far it’s all just talk.”
He remembered then that he’d wanted to tell Driscoll that he’d hired a new man himself, that perhaps the ex-cop could exercise his background-checking skills on a Mr. William Brown of south Georgia, but the matter hardly seemed pressing.
Something that could wait for another day, he thought, listening to the echo of Driscoll’s receding footsteps. The sound seemed to blend perfectly with the beat of that plaintive Spanish song and the thought that was looping through his mind, that he realized bothered him more than anything else:
Bad enough that you shot yourself, old man. But why couldn’t you at least have left me a note?
Chapter Ten
Deal had intended to drive back to the trailer office off Old Cutler and begin his search through the company files for any sign of Talbot Sams. After Driscoll left, he’d gone into his own apartment and showered, trying to muster up something resembling energy. He put on a T-shirt and jeans, suitable attire for digging through musty papers, he thought as he slipped into a pair of Top-Siders and made his way out, past Mrs. Suarez’s glowing windows and down the staircase to the street, where he’d parked the Hog earlier.
He made a U-turn in front of the building and piloted the Hog north a couple of blocks to Southwest 8th Street, then turned, cruising eastward past the long line of mercados and ferreterías, dressmakers and storefront cigar factories, cafés and farmacías. Many of the shops
were shuttered by this time on a Saturday night, but the street was still lively with foot traffic, far more so than most urban streets these days, he reflected. An anachronism, perhaps, to find a citizenry afoot on a weekend night, but just one more mark in Miami’s favor, at least so far as Deal was concerned.
He moved along out of the brightly lit commercial district and underneath the elevated roadways of I-95 and Metrorail, the barrier that effectively divided Little Havana from downtown Miami. Here, shabby apartment buildings, low-rent offices, and once-impressive homes, most of them converted into rooms for rent, lay in the eternal shadow of the elevated roadbeds. If there were people afoot in this area, they were being cautious about it.
A couple more blocks, however, and everything changed again. He brought the Hog to a stop at a traffic light on Brickell at the southernmost end of the banking district that trailed down from Miami’s central city in a parade of high-rise steel-and-glass monoliths. Most of the buildings on his left were fronted with broad plazas, splashing fountains, and impressive plantings, and many of them bore signage in a welter of languages far beyond Deal’s capability to translate. No foot traffic here, of course—none for hours now. He was staring across the broad boulevard at the imposing façade of the Bank of Brunei, fourteen stories of gleaming glass and marble, and one of the last great gasps of DealCo, when he heard the tap of a horn behind him.
He noticed that the light had turned green and gave an apologetic wave of his hand as he swung south onto Brickell, where the banks gave way to even grander condominiums and where, sixteen stories up a thirty-two-story residence tower, the salad days of DealCo had come to an end. They’d had to default on the construction loan and lay off two hundred men less than a month before Christmas. His father had emptied his personal bank accounts to provide some form of severance pay. A week after that, Barton Deal had emptied his brains onto the walls of his study.
Deal glanced at the building as he went by. Long since finished by whomever the trustees had engaged, the building was now a showpiece, glimmering against the night sky. Floor-to-ceiling windows, broad balconies, penthouses that promised a view all the way to Paradise itself. Full of happy people, Deal thought, though he knew that was hardly true.
Deal with the Dead Page 10
