He gave up on the doorbell and moved to pound on the door of the condo she rented on the edge of Coconut Grove. It was a lively place, a smoked-glass-and-redwood holdover from the sixties, close to the water and still populated largely by a set that at least considered themselves younger—and so it was impossible to tell whether the throbbing of bass notes he felt through the deck at his feet came from inside Janice’s apartment or one of those above, below, or on either side. He’d also noted that Janice often cranked her stereo high these days, something she’d never done when they were living together.
No such throbbing of music back at the fourplex, he reflected. Mrs. Suarez might turn up the Neil Rogers talk show midmorning, especially when the sardonic host played one of his satirical musical spoofs, and Driscoll sometimes overdid the TV volume during a ’Canes or Dolphins game, but that was about the extent of it. Maybe he ought to loosen up, Deal thought, soup up the volume when he delved into his Coltrane tapes, never mind if he annoyed his neighbors. He was the landlord, after all.
And it wasn’t that the entire array of Janice’s new behaviors unsettled or annoyed Deal. In fact, he welcomed, sometimes applauded certain of these changes. Her newly aroused tastes in music, in exotic foods, an awareness in the subtleties of wine, had drawn Deal out as well. But there were troubling inconsistencies, signs of a lingering fragility, suggestions that no matter how much patience he expended, no matter how great the reserves of tender memory, respect, and longing, that the bond that they’d once shared would never mend again.
On a given day, he might find his hand brushing hers, their shoulders touching as they walked, and he would look into her eyes and see that everything that he still felt for her was mirrored precisely in her gaze. They even continued to have sex, though on a basis so random, so unpredictable, that chaos theorists would be disarmed. Teeth-rattling, eyeball-aching sex of a sort that left Deal exhausted and stupidly satisfied as a bludgeoned ox…and Janice up and out of bed as though she’d finished a workout at the gym and was now ready to pick out a new set of drapes.
Far more worrisome was the sense he sometimes had that he’d unaccountably become a stranger to her. In passing conversation, he’d recall some outing, some encounter with a casual acquaintance, only to be met with a blank stare or sometimes an outright denial that she knew the person in question or that such and such had ever happened. Worse yet were the times when he saw the distrust creeping into her gaze. They might be discussing the time that Deal promised to bring Isabel home from an outing, or his assurances that he understood her need for “space,” or for time…and despite anything that he might say, Deal would see the doubt in her eyes and—worst of all—at times, the fear.
He checked his watch then, saw that he was a few minutes late, but didn’t think much of that. He gave the door a solid pounding this time. He’d picked up Isabel’s call on his answering machine at home. “All A’s, Daddy. You know what that means.”
And he did indeed. “All A’s” meant a double-scoop cone at Whip ‘n’ Dip, Isabel’s favorite purveyor of ice cream. It was an arrangement conjured up by Deal, a somewhat shameless ploy to garner an additional bit of time with his daughter and one that even Janice countenanced, given her concern with the status of their daughter’s schoolwork.
There’d been times during the past couple of years that something—most likely the strain of her parents’ separation, according to the family therapist—seemed to have overwhelmed Isabel. Her effort would suddenly drop unaccountably, her attention span in class and study would dip to near nothing, her interest in school become nonexistent. Bad enough that it should happen, Deal thought. Even more galling to have someone like Talbot Sams use his daughter’s difficulties as a lever.
But he was not going to think about such things tonight, he thought. He was going to take his daughter out for a treat. He’d spoken to his wife about it earlier, received her blessing, and now he and Isabel were going to go and have a good time together, nothing else to consider. If he could ever get his wife to answer the door.
He knocked again, hard enough to rattle the door in its frame. He stopped, realizing that something was odd. He reached for the door handle itself and shook. That heavy wood rattling loose in its frame. No way it could do that if the heavy bolts were shot, Deal thought, and bolting her doors was something else that Janice never failed to do these days. She’d grown up in rural northern Ohio and had displayed a tendency—alarming to Deal, a Miami native—to leave car and house doors blithely open. The first thing she’d installed in the Grove apartment, however, had been a hardened steel deadbolt to supplement the one already there, a purchase she’d even consulted Vernon Driscoll about.
He turned the knob then, felt the latch give. He pushed, and the door swung slowly inward.
“Janice,” Deal called. He thought the music was louder now. A good sign? Or was it bad?
In any case, there was no response to his call, and Deal glanced over his shoulder before stepping inside. Sandalwood hung in the air, a stick of incense still smoldering on a table in the entry—another proclivity of the new Janice. To Deal, incense was no accouterment of a New Age life, but something you burned to cover the smell of the pot you smoked. Of course, that may have been why she was burning the incense, Deal told himself. That would be something he could understand, at least.
“Janice,” he called again as he moved on down the hallway. The music was more intense inside, some concoction of sitar, chimes, gongs, and bass designed to make a listener mellow. Sure. A couple of joints, an hour of this music, your head would turn to cheese, he thought.
He moved quickly down the hallway toward the living room, telling himself there was nothing unusual. Janice and Isabel were in one of the bedrooms in the back of the unit, the music too loud for them to hear the bell, or his knock.
He came out of the hallway into the main living area of the condo, a spacious combination of living room and dining room that looked out onto the jungly outdoors, separated from an open kitchen only by a serving bar, above which shelving dangled from the open-beamed ceiling. There was a light on above the serving counter and another reading lamp burning near the fireplace in the corner of the living room. Enough light to see that there was no one there.
He was moving more quickly now, across the tiled floor of the living area and down the back hallway toward the bedrooms: one doorway dark, the other a square of light. Isabel’s room, Deal registered, the two of them in there figuring out what his daughter ought to wear.
“Janice,” he called again. They’d been married all these years, but just strolling into her new “space” was an act not to be taken lightly, unlocked entry door or not.
He tapped on the half-open door to his daughter’s room before poking his head inside, then stopped short. Sure enough, what looked like half a dozen discarded outfits were tossed haphazardly across his daughter’s bed, and several pairs of shoes and sneakers were scattered on the nearby floor as well. But no Isabel and no Janice inside the room.
Deal checked his watch again, then turned back to the hallway, puzzled. The bathroom door ajar, the lights dark. He glanced inside Janice’s room, saw in the reflected light a neatly made bed, the doorway to the master bath dark as well. Had he gotten the time wrong? He was sure he’d said eight-thirty, a little late for a school night maybe, but it was still short of nine.
He went back down the hallway, trying to remember Janice’s cellphone number, but was drawing a blank. He’d had to memorize three of them in the last year. First she’d changed her service, then she’d lost her new phone. The old Janice had never misplaced so much as a matchbook. She’d kept old magazines stacked up by month of issue, had meticulously labeled and organized video tapes of birthday parties and family outings. Now, she might keep things neat on the surface—witness that tidy bedroom—but open an underwear drawer or a closet door and whole new intimations might spring up.
He was back in the kitchen now, forcing aside his tho
ughts and flipping open cabinet doors to find the list that was always taped to the back of one, all the necessary phone numbers. He could just go jump in the Hog, he thought, try to catch up with them at Whip ’n’ Dip, but what if they’d gone somewhere else? One thing was certain: As surely as he made any assumptions about what Janice might have in mind these days, he could count on being absolutely wrong.
He had opened up all the cabinets now, but still found no such sheet. He was about to give up, when he saw the notepad lying on the counter near the kitchen phone. He picked the pad up and checked Janice’s scribble: “D. out of town thru Sat. Switch weekend with I. to next?”
It took a moment for things to sink in. Someone had called Janice? Said he’d be called away, wanted to change his days with Isabel? What the hell was going on?
He tossed the notepad down, his mind racing. Talbot Sams, he thought. Something the sonofabitch had cooked up. But what could the man intend? And why would Janice just take the word of whoever might have called? She ought to know he’d never entrust such a call to someone else. Again, he cursed whatever fates had changed his happy and contented life. What had he done to deserve it, after all? He’d never asked for much, never even aspired to the kingpin status his old man had always seemed to chase. A family. A decent life. Work he enjoyed, and which he felt mattered. Such presumption, he thought bitterly.
He reached for the phone then, his first thought to call Driscoll. He’d managed to get the first three digits dialed when he saw the unmistakable shape of a man stepping out of the shadows toward him.
Chapter Twenty-four
“You okay?”
Driscoll heard the words coming to him as if he were lying far below the surface of the earth—at the bottom of a pit, maybe. The place they toss your carcass when you’re too old, too slow to run with the herd any longer.
“Come on, now. Talk to me, man.”
Driscoll realized his cheeks were being slapped. Whoever was doing it was trying to be gentle, but it was like Driscoll trying to whisper, or dance the minuet.
“I’m okay,” he managed. “Cut it out, already.” He blinked his eyes, saw that he wasn’t at the bottom of a pit at all. There was the shadow of a burnt-out light stanchion looming over him, outlined like a curious Martian against the dim glow of the night sky. The distant reaches of the parking lot of Osvaldo’s building, he realized. There was someone with him, too. Somebody with one hand propping him up, another hand still batting his cheeks.
“Cut the crap,” he said. He got a handful of the guy’s shirt front, was trying to pull him down.
“Take it easy,” the guy said, brushing Driscoll’s groping hand away as if it were a child’s. “It’s me. It’s Russell Straight.”
Driscoll lay still a minute, doing his best to gather his thoughts. “What happened?” he managed finally. “Where the hell’d you come from?”
“You’re lucky I was here, my man. Those guys saw me coming and took off. Elsewise, you might be dead.”
Driscoll glanced around. Sure enough, there was his Ford a few feet away, the driver’s door still gaping open. Like the damned thing was embarrassed for him, he thought.
He got a hand beneath himself, pushed against the gritty pavement. He managed a sitting position and felt at his throat, raw from where the goon had choked him. At least the dizziness had evaporated. He glanced through the darkness at Straight, who still squatted beside him. “You been following me, Russell?”
Straight shrugged. “I came over to Deal’s place. I needed to talk to him. But I don’t see his car. Then you show up and go inside his place. When you take off again, I figure I’ll follow you, see what the hell you’re up to.”
Driscoll pinched the bridge of his nose. “You saw me go into my own apartment, dumb-ass.”
“I’d watch my mouth, I was you,” Russell said evenly.
“I live there,” Driscoll continued. “Deal’s my landlord.”
There was a moment. Driscoll saw Straight’s shoulders go up in a shrug. “I guess that makes you really lucky, then,” he said.
Driscoll rose to one knee, then felt Straight’s hand under his arm. “I can manage,” Driscoll grumbled.
“Sure you can,” Straight said. “I just happen to be here, that’s all.”
Driscoll was standing now. He felt his head teeter for a moment, then settle back between his shoulders where it belonged. “You get a look at these two guys?” he said to Straight.
“More or less,” Straight said. “It’s pretty dark back here.”
“How about the car they were driving?”
“Other side of that wall,” Straight said, pointing.
Driscoll saw a vine-covered cinder-block wall running along the border of the parking lot. There was another apartment complex over there, with its own exits and entrances to a different set of streets.
“I heard tires squeal, a big engine cranking,” Russell continued. “I was more interested in what happened to you.”
Driscoll nodded. “I appreciate it,” he said.
“What was it I interrupted, anyway?” Russell asked.
Driscoll looked at him. “Couple of asswipes wanted my wallet,” he said.
“Uh-huh,” Straight said. “How come you still got it, then?”
Driscoll felt in his pocket. “Just lucky, I guess.”
“Whatever you say,” Straight told him.
“What was so important to tell Deal, you couldn’t wait till tomorrow?” Driscoll asked.
“Tell you what,” Straight said. “You want to be up-front with me, maybe I’ll be up-front with you. Elsewise, we’re at squares.”
Driscoll hesitated. By all appearances, Russell Straight might have just saved his life. On the other hand, Driscoll hardly knew the man, had no idea what his true agenda might be.
“I was on my way to get a beer,” he said finally, his hand rubbing at his raw throat. “Maybe we could sit and talk.”
“Beer sounds good,” Straight said, his voice neutral.
“Then follow me,” Driscoll said, and moved as steadily as he could manage toward the Ford.
Chapter Twenty-five
“You’re John Deal?” the big man asked, moving into the glow cast by the countertop light.
“Who the hell are you?” Deal asked, gauging his options. He’d been expecting Sams or, more likely, Tasker. And while Tasker was no pipsqueak, the man before him was huge, Wrestlemania huge, his bulk filling the passage between the end of the counter and the facing cabinetry.
The big man, who must have come through the opened balcony doors, held up his hands in a pacifying gesture. “Don’t get yourself worked up,” he said. “Everything’s okay.” Under other circumstances, the guy might have looked benign, a round-bellied appliance repairman called out on a late-night gig.
“Everything’s okay?” Deal said, edging toward the other end of the counter. The guy was big, but he couldn’t be that fast. “Maybe you’re in the wrong apartment.”
“Not unless you are, pal.” A new voice, from behind him.
Deal spun around, found a second man—bearded, taller, thinner, but only in relation to the other one—approaching from the hallway. No escape in either direction, then. What to do now—go for one of the frying pans that dangled down from a set of ceiling hooks?
“You two work for Sams?” he managed. He knew there had to be a knife drawer somewhere in the cabinets behind him, but there was no telling which of them Janice had decided it would be.
“Uncle Sam?” the taller man asked, an odd lilt to his voice.
“Shut up, Frank,” the big man said. He pointed at Deal. “You can take your hand out of that drawer. Right now.”
Deal stared back at the man, feeling his hand close around what felt like a balled-up pair of socks. Jesus Christ, Janice.
“Where’re my wife and daughter?” he said, as though he hadn’t heard the man. He’d let go of the socks, had found what felt like a smal
lish pair of pliers. How every modern kitchen should be equipped.
“I saw two ladies headin’ out of the parking lot just before you got here,” the big man said. “Get your hand out of that drawer.”
“Sure,” Deal said. He’d found what was surely a spice bottle, had spun the cap off with his finger. The smell of curry had already risen up from behind him, but it blossomed huge as he snapped his hand upward and out, flinging the contents of the bottle toward the big man’s face.
“Goddamn!” the big man cried in pain, flinging his hands to his eyes.
The other man, the bearded one, was coming toward Deal, but he’d expected that move. Instead of ducking away, Deal strode forward, maybe a surprise for a man accustomed to having his quarry flee. Deal brought his forearm up under the onrushing man’s chin, always an option for a shorter, smaller blocker facing a too-eager pass rusher, and no one to call a penalty on this play.
The bearded guy caught the blow full force and careened into the side-by-side refrigerator, snapping off one pull handle and sending the freezer door open as he fell. A ceramic bowl full of fruit fell from the counter to the floor and smashed. Deal tried to step over the fallen man, but felt a big hand clamp on the back of his shirt.
He lunged up, caught hold of one of the dangling cooking pots, and jerked, bringing the entire rack crashing down from the ceiling. He ducked as the rack swung past him, metal clanging off steel and glass and tile like a bus going through a storefront. He heard a groan from the big guy behind him, but the grip on his shirt held fast.
Nothing had hit Deal—or if it had, he hadn’t felt it. He now had the saucepan he’d snatched by its handle and glanced down to find the thinner guy he’d put on the ground sliding around in the mess on the floor, trying to get to his feet.
Deal swung down mightily and the guy looked up just in time to catch the bottom of the pot across his cheek. There was a dull clonging sound that reverberated all the way to Deal’s shoulder. The pot itself cracked cleanly off its thin aluminum handle, rebounding crazily somewhere into the living room.
Deal with the Dead Page 19
