He and Deal were standing on one of the decks outside, staring out at the bay as they talked. The warm winter easterly had calmed, and the flat water had begun its transformation from crystal blue to pewter as the sun drained out of the sky. It seemed very peaceful out there, Deal thought, watching a solitary pelican lumber through the balmy air toward shore. Of course, just below that deceptively lovely surface, a big fish had his sights on a little fish, and there was a bigger one yet, just waiting in the wings. Why was tragedy so much more poignant in the tropics? he wondered.
“I went through the standard bureaucratic inquiries, but nobody in the system is owning up to Talbot Sams being an employee of the Justice Department.” Deal cut Driscoll a glance, but the big man held up his hand. “That don’t mean much, of course, because there’s a lot of outfits who keep guys in key positions out of the public eye. I could be some kind of headhunter who wants to steal Mr. Terrific Employee Sams away for a competing firm.”
“Sure,” Deal said. “The KGB, MI5, there are lots of them out there.”
“More importantly,” Driscoll continued, “I ran him on the computer six ways from Sunday, every national and state public record database, couldn’t get anything that matches up.” He brandished an inch-thick stack of paper at Deal and shook his head. “I did come across an ex-government employee named Talbot Sams in Beaufort, South Carolina. The guy’s retired from the IRS—now he’s a minister. And he’s eighty-two. That seem like a fit?”
Deal laughed mirthlessly. “How about Tasker?”
Driscoll shrugged. “There’s not really much to go on, there. Low-level guy, no first name, or maybe Tasker is a first name. Hanging around with somebody goes by Talbot, after all.”
Deal glanced at the stack of papers. “So that’s how you do it these days, spend a couple of hours on the Internet, you get everything there is to get?”
Driscoll gave him an apologetic look. “I used to watch Marie fool around on her computer, I’d think to myself what a hell of a time-sink that is. Now I do half my business on the Net…or Osvaldo does, that is. I still couldn’t tell you the difference between a hard drive and a soft.”
Deal nodded. Osvaldo Regalado was a computer geek, one of a long line of contacts Driscoll had carried over from a twenty-five-year career in law enforcement. A few years back, Osvaldo had turned state’s evidence against a couple of his employers—major white-collar criminals from Boca Raton who’d concocted a phony mortgage scam—and had found himself tossed in front of a Metrorail train for his trouble. He’d survived, but lost both legs as a result. Driscoll had gone to great lengths to see the man through rehab, as well as an ensuing alcoholic nosedive, and now employed him as a researcher in D & D Investigative Services, the company that Driscoll had convinced Deal to invest in.
“There’s other ways, of course,” Driscoll was saying. “But now we know the easy way isn’t going to work. This is a guy who’s made a point of burying himself. It’ll take some time, that’s all.” Driscoll gave Deal his what’s-a-guy-to-do look, then glanced through the open patio doors to where Russell Straight was bent over, apparently beating a wooden partition into submission.
“How’s your new help working out, by the way?”
Deal followed Driscoll’s gaze, watching Russell. The man set one sixteen-penny nail with a tap of his hammer, then drove it all the way home with a single blow. “He’s a human nail gun,” Deal said. “Watch him go.”
Russell sent another nail to the bone—the last one he needed, apparently—then stood back and levered the skeleton of the partition to a standing position as easily as if it were constructed of balsa wood. He grasped the ten-foot section of wall by one of its central members and swung it into position, then bent and slammed another nail through the cleat and into the plywood subflooring in one fluid motion. In seconds, he had moved catlike to the opposite end of the partition, where it butted up against another wall, and nailed it firmly into place with a couple more strokes.
“So what’d you do, fire everybody else?” Driscoll asked.
Deal glanced at his watch. Gonzalez and his men had been gone nearly an hour. “What can I tell you, Driscoll, he’s eager.”
“Once, I heard about a guy that could pound nails like that,” Driscoll said. “Turned out he kept a bar of soap in his nail pouch. Shortly after the house was built, the nails started working loose, the damn thing almost fell down.”
“I told you that story,” Deal said. “It was a guy who used to work for my old man.”
“Is that right?” Driscoll said. “I guess I forgot. Anyways, I don’t see any soap in Russell’s hand.”
“Nor do I,” Deal said. The sky was leaden now, the water’s surface dark, the pelican safe at roost, or so he hoped. He turned back to Driscoll. “What’s next with finding Sams?”
Driscoll gave him his patented shrug. “Lots of things. We could let Osvaldo set up a tap on your phones, wait for him to call again. Of course, if he does work for Big Brother, he’ll be sweeping the lines himself. Or he’ll have his phone hooked to a rerouter, we’ll be running him back to the switchboard of some VA hospital in Santa Monica. It’ll be like ‘Spy Versus Spy.’”
“What are you trying to tell me, Driscoll? That it’s hopeless?”
“Not at all. It’s just not like on TV, that’s all. You want me to bring in a couple of guys, have ’em stake you out, we could do that. The guy shows up again, we just follow him.”
“Which would be expensive.”
Driscoll rolled his thick shoulders. “It wouldn’t be cheap. I got a couple of guys owe me favors, though.”
“I don’t know,” Deal said.
“If it was me,” Driscoll said, “I’d wait. See what develops. Meantime, you got yourself a nice piece of work. Who cares if this joker says he set it up?”
“I told you what he said about Janice and Isabel.”
“Yeah, and it could be a bunch of smoke he’s blowing, too,” Driscoll said. He glanced out over the nearly dark waters. “I vote we start with Osvaldo, let him hook into your phones, what do you say?”
“All right by me, I guess,” Deal said. He massaged the back of his neck, working against a headache he felt coming on.
“Pretty out there, isn’t it?” Driscoll asked, nodding at the glittering Miami skyline that was flickering now on the opposite crescent of the bay.
Deal was about to agree when he heard footsteps at the doorway behind them. Russell Straight was coming out onto the porch, untying a canvas nail bag from around his waist. “About out of light inside,” he said to Deal.
“That’s all right,” Deal said. “You’ve done more than a day’s work. It’s time to go home.”
Straight was about to turn away when Deal spoke again. “Meet my friend Driscoll,” he said. “Vernon Driscoll, say hello to Russell Straight.”
Driscoll turned from the railing and nodded. Russell Straight regarded him for a moment, then nodded back. “You the cop,” he said.
“I was a cop,” Driscoll said evenly. After a moment, he added, “Your brother was Leon Straight.”
“He was,” Straight said.
The way the two stared at each other was as if they’d created an energy beam between them that could fry anything that tried to cross through it. “Your brother could have been a good ballplayer,” Driscoll said finally.
“Was a good ballplayer,” Russell said, his tone neutral.
Driscoll nodded. “How about you? You a ballplayer?”
“I box some,” Russell said, shrugging.
“You any good?”
“I did all right.”
“You don’t box anymore?”
“Not for a while.”
Driscoll nodded. “It’s a tough sport.”
“That it is,” Russell agreed. He glanced out at the nearby bay as if something had caught his attention there, and indeed something had, though it was only Russell who could see it, a vision he’d be condemned
to for the rest of his days.
***
Ten years ago, himself seventeen, the same person, but a different life—or where his life had turned, more like it…
Not a gym at all, but a rinky-dink all-purpose auditorium in Cordele, Georgia, a building three quarters of a century old, the air stale, the lighting dim, the padding of the rickety row seats thin and tattered. There was a gray-looking movie screen hanging lopsided high in the flies above, and a set of wood-backed basketball goals set up on either end of the creaking stage, which, presuming basketball had actually been played there, would make for a court little more than half the size of regulation.
The ring, scaled down by a foot in each direction by a promoter eager to encourage more close-quarters action, had been erected squarely between the goals and was set out close to the edge of the stage, above a boarded-over orchestra pit. Folding chairs had been set up to create some semblance of a ringside. Anyone sitting too long in the front rows was sure to develop a monumental neckache, staring practically straight up at the fights, but the seats were full there, as were most of the others in the auditorium, and no one had complained.
There had been half a dozen bouts before this main event, moving up steadily through the weight classes, if not in level of talent. The last fight had ended when an eager light heavyweight, a farm boy from Damascus, had lost his mouthpiece, then stepped into a head-butt from his opponent. There were still teeth scattered across the blood-streaked canvas out there. From the corner where he sat, Russell Straight could see them glinting yellow as corn kernels.
“This is when it happens,” came the voice at Russell’s ear. “Don’t forget yourself.”
Russell nodded as if he were getting good advice. His so-called trainer, an ancient black man—he’d had to have been old when this place had been built, Russell thought. “Why they wasting money on that fool?” Russell said, staring across the ring at his opponent. A white man from Atlanta, supposed to have been a kick-boxing champ, had all the moves and reflexes of a heavy bag.
“Don’t matter,” said the old man at his ear. He sponged tepid water from a plastic bucket onto Russell’s brow. “Do what you supposed to do.”
The old man was gone then, the pail withdrawn, the stool slipped away beneath him as the bell rang. Scheduled for ten rounds, it would go four. Russell knew why, of course, but it had made him feel better to ask.
He danced out to the center of the ring, feinted, jabbed, stepped back, feeling a fallen tooth grind beneath the sole of his shoe. Just fooling around, waiting for his lumbering opponent to come on, get things over with.
“You ain’t Cassius Clay,” someone yelled from the predominately white audience. Russell smiled. His opponent had finally made it to the center of the ring and pawed a jab his way.
Russell dodged it easily, circled to his left, and fired a jab of his own that snapped the white man’s head back. His opponent lunged forward, clamping his arms over Russell’s and pulling him close. “Get cute, nigger, I’ll bust your ass.”
“Uh-huh,” Russell said. “Gotta make it look good.” He could hear the rasp of the man’s breathing, the guy winded just from getting off his stool. Russell leaned in hard, shoved him forcefully away. The crowd booed as the man staggered back.
“Head-butt,” screamed the same heckler from ringside. “Come on, ref.”
The referee, a florid-faced man who looked like he’d be at home on the seat of a tractor, shook his head at Russell reprovingly and motioned the two to resume. Russell’s opponent stepped forward, unleashing a combination: a left hook that glanced off Russell’s shoulder and a right that missed altogether. Russell, sidestepping, sent a left high on the man’s cheekbone. The man staggered into his own corner, his head bouncing off the frayed turnbuckle.
When the man’s head snapped back, a spray of blood flew from a cut that had opened on his forehead. Russell turned away, but it was like trying to duck a bucket of water tossed his way. His eyes were burning suddenly, his vision blurred. He felt a solid blow—bone against bone at his forehead—and though he was stunned, instinct sent him backpedaling away. There was a blow at his midsection, then a third that struck him in the groin. He felt some fragile thing burst inside himself and doubled over, staggering back, out of control now.
His back drove against the tightly strung top rope and sent him hurtling again toward the center of the ring. He blinked, seeing two white men coming toward him, both with faces masked by blood. The crowd, rowdy enough all evening, was in a frenzy now.
“Kill him,” shrieked the man at ringside. “Kill that nigger sonofabitch!”
Russell, his legs gone rubbery with the last low blow, saw the white man’s fist draw back in a blurry mirrored action, saw two gloves blossoming huge his way. He ducked and fell as much as stepped on forward, driving a desperate right of his own toward what he hoped was the actual man. Miss, and his momentum would be enough to send him out of the ring, a dozen rows up.
He felt his fist strike flesh solidly, though, and knew that he’d guessed right. As hard a punch as he’d ever landed, coming off the ropes like that, and never mind that luck was what had guided him. He spun on a step or two, thrown aside by the force of his own blow, then turned to find the white man tottering upright, one hand clutched to his throat, the other pawing blindly at the air.
The crowd was beyond reason now, the noise an unrelenting din. Russell saw one moon-faced bald man—surely the one who wanted a nigger killed—clawing at the edge of the canvas as if to drag himself into the ring. But he didn’t care about that one now. He cared only about the man who had butted heads with him, then sent the blow that had broken something deep inside, none of that necessary, Russell scheduled to lie down all the while.
There was still a red film that shrouded his sight, but whether it was blood or rage, Russell could not tell, nor did he care. He ignored the pain that had ignited in his bowels and strode forward—a left to the white man’s chin that sent him to the ropes, another flush to the face as he rebounded back…and then fell down.
Russell didn’t know how to account for what happened next, might never be able to find the words, in fact. He was intelligent enough to know that the manner of his upbringing figured in, as he also realized the deep hatreds fostered in the place he’d grown up had encouraged it as well. And he was honest enough to admit that some part of what had always been inside himself had surely figured in. But still, he could not truly explain it, not to judge nor jury, not to psychiatrist nor prison counselor, not even to himself.
All he knew was that he had done it, had found himself on top of the fallen white man in a makeshift boxing ring in a pissant south Georgia town, shrugging off the referee who tried in vain to stop him. Ignoring—if not inspired by—that frenzied crowd of white men, to strike again and again at the motionless form beneath him…
Fist after falling fist…
Until there was a moment of blessed darkness, followed by light as bright as truth, and he was standing on the unfinished porch of a rich man’s guest house somewhere in the tropics of Florida, shivering as if with fever and as if it all had happened only moments before.
***
“I said, it’s a tough sport,” Vernon Driscoll repeated. “But then again you look like a tough guy.”
Russell regarded Driscoll calmly. “You don’t know the half of it.”
Driscoll lifted an eyebrow then turned to Deal. “I’ll give Osvaldo a call when I get home,” he said. “I’ll see things get handled.”
“I appreciate it,” Deal said. He noticed Driscoll seemed to be waiting for something. “I have to close up here, Vernon. You don’t have to wait.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure,” Deal said.
Driscoll nodded then and started down from the deck.
“Nice to meet you, Russell,” Driscoll added as he started toward the front of the main house.
“You too,” Russell Straight replied, his fac
e an equally neutral mask.
Two big dogs, Deal found himself thinking. They’d done everything but hike their legs on the corners of the porch. He sighed and turned to Russell. “You got everything picked up in there?”
Russell held out the hammer he’d been using. “This belongs to Gonzalez. He said give it to you when I’m done.”
Deal stared at the hammer. He heard the sound of Driscoll’s car starting, the sound of gravel crunching as the ex-cop drove off. “Go ahead and keep it. Soon as you pick one up, you can give it back to Gonzalez yourself.”
“You’re the boss,” Russell said doubtfully.
“That I am,” Deal said. “Go on, Russell. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Russell saluted him with the handle of the instrument, then stepped down and traced Driscoll’s path toward the front of the house.
Chapter Twenty
“You can’t dock that boat here.” The voice came out of the shadows, startling Frank Wheatley so that he almost went backward over the rail of the Cigarette.
That was the down side of a tropical lifestyle, he thought. All these plants and trees and underbrush, a zillion birds squawking, bunch of creepy nocturnal animals on the prowl, how were you supposed to see if somebody was sneaking up on you?
“Yeah?” Frank said, peering up through the evening shadows toward the top of the seawall where Basil had tied them off. His voice was steady, but he was sure the guy had seen him nearly go overboard. He hated that, feeling the least bit vulnerable, but what could he do now but make the best of it? “Why’s that?” he added.
“Because I say so,” the guy responded. He moved a step or two out of the shadows to loom over the boat, his silhouette about as thick as one of the concrete pilings that rose at the edge of the seawall. “This is private property.”
Frank nodded. He knew that there was a snazzy condo hidden back there behind all the foliage, but he wasn’t really agreeing with anything. He was nodding because he saw that the guy had a stubby-barreled pump-action shotgun tucked under his arm. He also noted that the guy carried the weapon in a decidedly casual way, which suggested that he knew very well how to use it.
Deal with the Dead Page 17
