“I went out and got some of that stuff we had at the Pier House,” he said to Deal. “I had a glass myself before dinner. Not bad for ten bucks.”
“Well, then,” Russell said, lifting his glass.
They toasted, Deal waiting for Malloy to swallow before he brought the conversation back. “That’s one reason I came over, Rusty. I was hoping you had some book on wine we might look in, I could spot the label that Dequarius had.”
Malloy brought his glass from his lips and popped his hand against his forehead. “Why didn’t I think of that?” he said.
He put his glass down on the bar, still shaking his head. “I’ll be right back,” he said, then turned to hurry from the room.
Chapter Twenty-six
When Malloy returned, he was carrying a thick gilt-lettered volume that he placed on the top of the bar with a thud. “The Encyclopedia of the Grape,” Deal read as Malloy turned over the cover. The attorney regarded the table of contents for a moment, then began to flip through the pages.
“Here we are,” he said presently, spinning the book around. “Was it one of these?”
Deal found himself staring at a glossy page with a bold heading: WINES OF THE CENTURY. Beneath it was an array of bottles representing what were apparently a series of outstanding vintages beginning in 1921, then 1928, then 1929…
“I’m fairly certain this is it,” he said, pointing. The picture was no larger than his thumbnail, but the image of the label he’d taken from Dequarius’ fingers suddenly burned clearly in his memory.
Malloy glanced at the spot where Deal’s finger rested. A suitably gray-green label with the image of a French château stamped boldly upon it. “Château Haut-Brion,” he said. “A favorite of Thomas Jefferson, history tells us.”
“Get out of town,” Russell Straight said.
“Read the caption,” Malloy said, pointing.
“It’s a very old winery,” Malloy added, as Russell bent to examine the tiny print. “Founded in the seventeenth century, in fact.” He turned to regard Deal more closely. “You’re sure this is it?”
Deal scanned the page again, his eye drawn back to the ghostly, gray-green cast of the label he’d pointed out to Malloy. “It wasn’t any of the others, that much I know.”
“Haut-Brion,” Malloy said again, shaking his head. “Sounds French, doesn’t it? Actually, the family was Irish. O’Brien. They crossed the channel to France and established one of the finest wineries of all time. Got sick of whiskey, I guess. Lucky for us all.” He smiled and raised his glass.
Deal nodded. “I knew you’d be the one to ask, Rusty.”
The three of them toasted briefly, then drank. The beer was cool but not cold, Deal realized, a rich maltiness blooming in his mouth. Maybe six or eight of these, he thought, with another glance at the bottle, some of the aches in his body would recede to simple agony. Then he could find a big sword somewhere, go slay some dragons of his own.
Malloy had finished his own drink and put his empty glass down on the counter. He came out from behind the bar, then walked to the wine rack and pulled a bottle carefully from its nest. He came back, tilting it so they could get a look at the label, bending to blow away a film of dust. Château Margaux, Deal saw printed on the label, a vintage from the 1960s.
“This is the most valuable bottle of wine I own,” Malloy said. “It’s worth maybe a hundred and fifty bucks.”
Deal tried to imagine the Rusty Malloy he’d known as a kid plunking down $150 for a bottle of wine. No wonder he was carrying the bottle like it was full of nitroglycerin, he thought. “I guess we’re not having it with the hamburgers,” Deal said.
Malloy gave him a brief smile. “But this is piddling compared to one of those first growths.”
“They’re really that good?” Deal asked.
“Forget about good,” Malloy said. “From what I read, think more like superb. Heavenly. Beyond the human ken.”
Deal nodded at Malloy’s rhapsodizing, but he wasn’t sure he’d been convinced. “So Fausto was right about that bottle being worth fifteen grand?”
Malloy shrugged. “I had a client told me he once paid thirty grand for a magnum of Bordeaux. Of course, the guy was in Raiford doing twenty years to life for cooking meth. It’s possible his memory was impaired.”
“Fifteen grand?” Russell was shaking his head. “Do you get a discount on a case?”
Malloy gave him a thin smile. “I check the auction websites sometimes. I’ve never seen a case offered.” His tone suggested it was a far-flung notion.
“But say that’s what Dequarius had,” Deal cut in. “Would it be worth even more, then?”
Malloy looked at Russell as if they might have something in common after all. “It’s possible, assuming it was in the original packaging, that it had been carefully preserved, and the rest. Then, a collector might well be moved to pony up a bit more.”
“But you have your doubts?” Deal said.
“The idea of someone like Dequarius Noyes coming into the possession of a case of the rarest wine in the world does strike me as unlikely, if that’s what you mean,” Malloy said.
He turned, moving back to the wine rack to replace the bottle he’d shown them. “Not to cast any aspersions, mind you,” he said as he came back, “but it’s a bit of a stretch to imagine Dequarius even knowing the value of such a thing. As we’ve heard, his scams tended to run along more mundane lines.”
“On the other hand,” Deal said, “let’s say Dequarius did find this hypothetical case of wine and managed to figure out what it was worth. At best, he’d have something worth a couple hundred thousand dollars, maybe a little more, is that about right?”
“Possibly.” Malloy nodded. “What’s your point?”
“I’m not sure it’s a figure that merits all that’s happened,” he said. “Dequarius murdered, me assaulted, Russell shot at. It seems a little extreme, even for two hundred grand.”
Malloy seemed unconvinced. “For Dequarius and his crowd, a couple hundred dollars was a big score.”
“You saying Dequarius had help on these scams?” Russell cut in.
Malloy shrugged. “I spoke with Detective Dickerson at the sheriff’s office earlier today. He told me Dequarius and Ainsley Spencer used to work the sunset crowds together back when the old man could still get around.”
“Doing what?” Russell asked, his tone doubtful.
“Who knows?” Malloy said. “Something about the old man being a diver on a lucrative salvage operation or like that. Dickerson wasn’t too specific. He told me he’d hauled them in more than once when he was working that beat—the old guy would be in a wheelchair, Dequarius pushing him past the fire-eaters and the iguana trainers, looking for marks.”
“Sounds pretty cynical,” Deal said.
“This is Key West.” Malloy shrugged.
Deal glanced around the living room. “You seem to like it here, Rusty.”
“Hey, Key West has been good to me,” he said. “I’m not knocking the town. There’s no place else quite like it.”
Deal nodded. “A long way from South Miami, huh?”
“You’d better believe it,” Malloy said, raising his glass. He drained the last of his wine, then glanced at Deal and shook his head. “So what did you have in mind next? Fullblown assault on the sheriff’s office? High-noon shoot-out with Chief of Detectives Dickerson?”
Deal gave him a weary smile. “I don’t think my beef’s with the sheriff.”
“Then who?”
Deal glanced at Russell. “I’ve been asking myself who on this rock would have the resources and the interest in some extremely valuable wine, and I keep coming up with the same answer.”
Russell nodded. “The same guy who seems to have all the cops down here in his hip pocket.”
“Franklin Stone?” Malloy said, his tone skeptical.
“You don’t think so?” Deal said.
“I don’t know, Jo
hn,” Malloy said. “Stone has a lot of influence, and he might not think twice about foreclosing on Mother Teresa and the Sisters of Mercy Orphanage, but I’m not sure that murder’s his style.”
“Maybe no one was supposed to get killed,” Deal said. “Maybe what happened to Dequarius was an accident.”
Malloy thought about it. “That could be,” he said, glancing at Russell. “Your friend here presents a formidable target. Those shots could have been meant to keep him at bay—”
“Or I was just lucky,” Russell cut in.
“Whatever,” Malloy said, turning back to Deal. “But it still doesn’t strike me as something Franklin Stone would engineer.”
“Maybe it’s really good wine,” Deal said, throwing up his hands.
“So what did you intend to do, go ask Stone if he’s the one who’s behind all this?”
Deal gave him a glum look in return. “I thought about it, but I wasn’t sure it would work.”
Malloy gave him an exasperated glance. “Maybe you ought to call Dickerson, tell him what happened over there just now.”
“Fat chance,” Deal said. “He might decide to press a few charges of his own.”
“We could plead temporary insanity,” Malloy said. “At least you’d have someone looking for the person who assaulted you.”
Deal shook his head, his gaze drawn to the salt-water tank, where the moray eel had lazily uncoiled itself, a movement that sent the blue dollar fish flashing to a distant corner. He hadn’t told Malloy about the brief look he’d gotten at his assailant before the mirrors caved in. It had only been an instant, and there hadn’t been much light, but Deal had little doubt that the growling voice in his ear had been Conrad’s. Still, there was no need to further fuel Rusty’s fears that he was a paranoiac, Deal thought, even though they were out to get him…
He pushed those thoughts from his head and glanced again at Malloy’s wine rack. Could all this have happened over a few bottles of wine?
“I was hoping I could get myself cleaned up,” he said after a moment, glancing down at the ripped pocket on his shirt. He took another look at Malloy’s physique. They traded clothes as teenagers; a few more pounds had accrued on both sides, of course, but it still looked to be possible. “Maybe I could borrow a shirt.”
When Malloy hesitated, Deal went on. “It’s just a dinner date,” he said. “I’ll try not to get any bullet holes in whatever you lend me.”
“That’s hardly my concern, John,” Malloy said, managing a worried smile. He turned to glance toward the entryway of the house. “That’s Stone’s car out front, I gather.”
“We’re traveling in style.”
Malloy thought about it. “Maybe the best thing would be just to go on home to Miami. Let things settle down a bit. Tell Stone you’ll think about his proposal and get back to him.”
“It’s a thought,” Deal said, surprised at how vividly the mere mention of a return to Miami had sent his mind to flashing images of his afternoon with Annie Dodds. “But I owe it to Stone to hear him out about his project, at least—” here he turned to Russell. “And we haven’t had dinner yet, either.”
Malloy sighed. “I can’t tell you what to do, John, but I’d sure as hell be careful.”
Deal gave him a smile, trying to stop the run of images in his mind. “Don’t worry, Rusty,” he said. He meant for his words to sound full of confidence, the sort of thing that a man who knows where he is headed tosses off like a line in a film. At the same moment, though, he’d been reliving the sight of Annie’s tanned back as she slithered her way down some electrified portion of his flesh, and he knew that caution had become a meaningless concept in his recently rewired universe.
The question of who killed Dequarius Noyes, and what it might have to do with fabled wine and assaults upon his person, was weighty indeed. And there was a score to be settled between himself and a man named Conrad. But there were even more important questions to be resolved before he left Key West, and how could he explain such matters to Rusty Malloy when he could barely comprehend their significance himself?
Besides, Malloy was already calling out to his housekeeper, making sure there were towels in the guest bathroom, and Russell Straight was helping himself to another glass of good red wine. The moray eel had recoiled itself around its fearsome head, and the electric blue fish had resumed their hypnotic glide. Deal would take a shower now, and after that, he reasoned, things would take care of themselves.
Chapter Twenty-seven
“I thought we were meeting at a restaurant,” Deal called up the long cabin as the limo made an unexpected left on Truman Street. They were headed eastward now, away from town.
“Sí, Forty-nine,” Balart replied.
Deal stared at the driver. “Forty-nine? Is that some kind of code?”
“Is a restaurant, Forty-nine,” Balart said. “Is new. And very good.”
“There’s a restaurant out this way?” Deal asked, his tone doubtful. They were turning onto the isolated Beach Road now.
“Oh no,” Balart said. “Not the restaurant. The chef. He is coming to do the dinner.” Balart turned with an earnest glance.
Deal started to say something else, then gave up, settling back against the leather seat. It seemed there was indeed a destination in mind and that food would be involved. He would let it go at that. There had been a second beer waiting for him when he’d finally forced himself out of the guest room shower, and he was still feeling the last of its buzz.
“You look pretty good in the dude’s clothes,” Russell observed.
“Glad to hear it,” Deal said.
Malloy had brought him a pair of linen trousers that were a little loose in the waist, but his belt took care of that. He’d also had his choice of shirts: a crisp white oxford with long sleeves—meant to hide the scratches on his arms, Deal supposed—and a vivid green Hawaiian print with yellow parrots that seemed to shimmer in and out of view like holograms, depending on the light. In Miami, Deal reflected, he’d have almost certainly gone with the button-down, but here in Key West, he’d barely hesitated before donning the garish Hawaiian print, further proof that familiar gravity was losing its hold.
As they made another turn onto White Street, heading southward at last, light spilled inside the limo’s cabin from a street lamp, and he caught a glimpse of himself reflected in the window. He’d read a short story in one of his college English classes, he recalled, in which an escaped convict had disguised himself in such a shirt, then murdered an old woman who’d spotted him.
Was that what he was doing? Deal wondered idly. Disguising himself? But from whom? And for what purpose? At least there hadn’t been blood on his shoes, a fairly new pair of Top-Siders that went well with his borrowed ensemble, he thought. He felt comfortable in his own shoes. Anchored, even.
He blinked, forcing himself out of his wildly leaping thoughts. Another one of those dragon-blood beers and he’d have been dreaming himself into a plot by Wagner.
The limo was purring down Beach Road now, headed in the opposite direction from the one he and Russell had jogged along just a couple of days before. It was too dark to make out the spot where they’d tussled with Conrad, and the calm, reef-protected waters were hidden as well, but Deal found himself oddly comforted by all that darkness that stretched away on his right. Out there lay the unknown. He could deal with that. It was the here and now that was tough to get a handle on.
Just short of the glow that hovered above the island’s airport and its surrounding facilities, the limo swung across the opposite lane of the lonely highway and jounced over the shoulder into a parking lot that had seen better days. As they pulled to a stop, Deal saw the shadow of a dark Town Car off to one side, and a light-colored panel truck parked beside that.
“What’s this?” Deal called to Balart, as the engine died.
“Where the boss say,” the driver answered.
Russell sat unmoving, glancing dubiously out hi
s window. “I don’t suppose the good counselor slipped any heat into a pocket of those pretty-boy slacks,” he said.
“Relax,” Deal said. He was already halfway out his door and had caught sight of the familiar tower that Stone envisioned as the centerpiece of his new development silhouetted against the faintly glowing skyline. There was a staggered procession of flickering tiki torches that outlined the coral pathway to the tower’s entrance and the sounds of jazz drifting above the faint crash of waves in the distance. “We’re having dinner now,” he added, and followed Balart by torchlight.
***
“If a picture is worth a thousand words,” Franklin Stone was saying as a waiter set their plates before them, “then how would you judge the power of this?” He finished with a sweeping gesture that encompassed the swaying palms and the other-era battlements in the background, all of it illuminated from this side by discreetly placed landscape lighting.
“At least a dictionary’s worth,” Deal said, glancing around the newly constructed terrace where Stone envisioned a series of outdoor parties meant to tout the project once the winter season was in high gear. Even in August, with the sun down and the light breeze off the ocean, it was a heady place, Deal thought.
“I’d say the whole damned encyclopedia,” Russell Straight added.
“And the food?” Stone prompted with an eager smile.
Deal nodded, glancing after the departing white-jacketed server. It was just the three of them at the linen-clad table that had been set up by the caterers, an operation conducted by the chef and owner of the aforementioned Forty-nine, who’d been on hand only briefly to supervise the preparations for the evening.
Though Deal had caught only a fleeting glance of Boussier before the man had departed, it had been more than enough. As they’d arrived, the man—a looming, hawklike presence—had been loudly berating his employees, a trio of white-jacketed men huddled before a workstation tucked away behind a screen of palms. Stone had noticed and deftly intercepted Deal and Russell, escorting them on a tour of the nearby grounds while the restaurateur concluded his tirade and stalked away toward the parking lot.
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