Havana Run

by Les Standiford

  “What about the desk?” Driscoll said. He’d poured them each a drink from a decanter on a sideboard. He’d poured a couple of drinks in fact. Maybe his mother had the right idea after all, Deal thought, swirling what was left in his glass.

  “The guy who owned it was a Cuban named Chibas, Eddy Chibas.”

  “That’s funny?”

  “He was a politician, the last honest politician in Cuba according to my old man. This was back in the forties. He was a real pain in the ass for Batista, but it wasn’t going anywhere for him.”

  “You’re right, it’s a real scream,” Driscoll said.

  “I’m getting there,” Deal said. “Anyway, this Chibas is so down and out about how things are going, he arranges a radio interview in his office there in Havana, where he lays out his case against the Batista government point by point, and when he’s finished, right in front of the interviewer, mind you, he reaches into the drawer of his desk—that desk—and he pulls out a pistol and blows his brains out, right on the air.”

  Driscoll finished his drink, reached back for the decanter and poured another. “For a minute there, I thought you’d never get to the punchline,” he said.

  “What my old man found so funny,” Deal continued. “Chibas couldn’t even kill himself right. He went on so long with his speech, the station had cut away to a commercial. He shoots himself, my old man liked to say, while ‘the Cuban people are hearing about “a spic and a span.”’” Deal found himself shrugging in a way that Driscoll favored. “Everybody read about what happened, of course, but it wasn’t exactly the drama that Eddy had in mind.”

  “I guess not,” Driscoll said. He glanced up at Deal. “Your old man had a strange sense of humor.”

  “He bought the desk for a song,” Deal said. “I think that’s what he liked as much as anything. Brought it back on his own boat.”

  “I never heard that story,” Driscoll said.

  “Well, he had a million of them,” Deal said.

  Driscoll nodded. He had another sip of his drink, seeming to ponder something. “You have any idea why he did it?”

  Deal looked at him. “You being a detective?”

  Driscoll stared back. “I was just asking. You don’t have to talk about it.”

  “I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner, that’s all.”

  “You sure he was as upset with the way his life was going as you seem to be?”

  Deal thought about it. “I’d say the facts speak for themselves.”

  “Maybe there were some health problems…”

  “My mother would have known, I’d have heard about it.”

  “You sure?”

  “Reasonably.”

  “How about his finances?”

  Deal raised an eyebrow. “You see any signs of poverty around here?” Deal tossed the rest of his drink back. “Look, Driscoll, when it comes right down to it, there isn’t any logical reason to kill yourself, and the only guy who really knows won’t be talking.”

  Driscoll dropped his eyes at that. He seemed about to respond when his gaze caught something over Deal’s shoulder. “Hold on,” he said, pushing himself up quickly from the heavy table.

  Deal turned in his chair, his eyes widening at the unmistakable form in the doorway. A tall, angular-featured plain-clothesman with a white-sidewall haircut from the sixties cut him a disdainful stare, the same expression Deal had knocked sideways a few weeks before. “Schnecter…” he said in disbelief, starting out of his chair.

  Driscoll’s heavy hand was on his shoulder in an instant, shoving him back in his seat. “I’ll take care of it,” he said.

  Deal tried to shrug him off, but Driscoll’s grip was unyielding. “I said sit down.”

  Schnecter looked away, stepping backward into the gloom of the hallway. Deal felt himself give. Driscoll shot him a last meaningful stare, then moved out into the shadows after the detective.

  Deal heard murmurs passing back and forth, then Driscoll’s “The hell you say.” There was something else from Schnecter, then silence. After a moment, Driscoll came back into the room, his face solemn.

  “What?” Deal said, as if anything could top what had happened so far. “My mother…” he began.

  Driscoll cut him off with a shake of his head. “It’s not about your mother,” the big man said. He paused for a minute, cutting his gaze back toward the departed Schnecter. “They found some stuff in that hilarious desk you were telling me about, John…”

  Deal stared, trying to read a sudden stiffness in Driscoll’s posture. “What kind of stuff?”

  Driscoll glanced toward the ceiling, clearly uncomfortable. “I can’t get into it with you.” When his gaze came back to Deal, there seemed a hint of pain in his eyes. “The captain needs to see you, John. This isn’t good.”

  “What are you talking about…?”

  Driscoll held up his meaty hand as if he were directing traffic. There were footsteps in the hallway again, several men this time.

  “John Deal?” asked the first plainclothesman through the door. No one Deal knew, but he could guess what division the guy worked.

  Deal nodded, and the detective displayed his shield. “Stoneleigh. Internal Affairs. I need you to come with me.”

  Deal glanced over his shoulder at the two burly uniformed cops who stood blocking the doorway. He turned to Driscoll, who held up his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I’m sure it’s all bullshit, John, but you gotta go with the man.”

  “I’ll need your piece,” Stoneleigh said.

  Deal turned to stare in astonishment. “What the hell? What is this about?”

  “Right now, it’s about your piece,” Stoneleigh said. “The rest of it you can take up with the captain.”

  Deal gave one last glance at Driscoll, but the veteran detective had his face turned away. Deal pulled open the flaps of his jacket then and felt Stoneleigh’s practiced hand lighten his holster.

  ***

  “It’s a terrible thing, John,” William Garrity said, as he ushered Deal toward a chair in his office. Garrity, a gravelvoiced Irishman who’d been around the department even longer than Driscoll, looked like he’d been called up straight from central casting. A pair of piercing blue eyes, steely hair swept back from a commanding brow, a way of moving that dominated the space—and usually the people—around him. He’d been chief of detectives for what seemed forever, turning his back on more than one offer to move on up the line. “Barton Deal was one hell of a man,” Garrity added.

  Deal nodded but didn’t say anything. There was a certain resemblance between Garrity and his father, it occurred to him. Another larger-than-life dinosaur. It wasn’t awe or disdain that kept him quiet, however. Just the feeling he was part of a play that was headed toward a scripted finish, no matter what lines he used.

  Garrity gave him a clap on the shoulder, then turned to Stoneleigh, who’d stopped just inside the doorway, his two grim-faced yard dogs right behind. “We’ll be fine, Detective. Just close the door on your way out.”

  Stoneleigh showed no surprise. He nodded and was gone in an instant. “Sit down,” Garrity said, pointing to a tufted leather chair flanked by a side table with a reading lamp. In other circumstances, it might have sounded like an invitation.

  It was a cozy enough place, Deal noted as he sat. Wood paneling, bookcases, plaques and trophies and manly bric-a-brac scattered about. You might take it for a reading room in a gentleman’s club. The sixth-floor corner windows provided an impressive view of the Freedom Tower illuminated in the distance, a soaring neo-Renaissance relic on the bay front that had once housed the offices of the Miami News, then had later become a processing center for Cuban refugees. An émigré builder had refurbished the building and was angling for tenants with a sense of history. Garrity must have liked the view. He’d held the office long enough.

  Garrity waited for Deal to settle himself, then perched himself on the corner of his desk. He pursed his
lips thoughtfully, as if unsure how to begin.

  “I knew your father well, John. He had a certain reputation, but I think that had more to do with some of the people he associated with than anything he did himself…”

  “Big dogs draw lots of fleas,” Deal said.

  It stopped Garrity momentarily. “That’s one way of putting it…” He cleared his throat and glanced at a manila folder that lay on the desk beside him. “Do you have any idea why you’re here, John?”

  “Not the slightest,” Deal said.

  Garrity nodded, fixing him with the same gaze he must have used on several thousand suspects in a forty-year-plus career. “From the moment you joined the department, there was talk—your father being who he was and all—then once you made detective, it only heated up…”

  “Captain…”

  “Let me finish,” Garrity said. “You’re here right now because your old man was a friend of mine. I never paid any attention to that kind of tongue wagging. In my estimation, Barton Deal was stand-up all the way. When I heard about what happened between you and Schnecter, that didn’t bother me either. But John…” He broke off, then turned to pick up the folder beside him. “What the hell am I supposed to do about this?”

  “What is it?” Deal said.

  Instead of answering, Garrity tossed the thick folder to him, his gaze one of challenge. “It’s hard for me to look at what’s in that folder, John. Hard for me to believe you’d compromise the department that way, even harder for me to accept your old man would put you in such a position.”

  Deal stared at Garrity, thoughts forming and reforming in his mind quicker than he could possess any one of them. “I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about, Captain, but I can tell you…”

  Garrity shook his head. “These documents were found in your father’s files. It’s all there, John. Reports in your handwriting, notes from your old man, financial transactions in payment for your services…”

  Deal turned to the folder, flipped it open, saw a copy of one of the transcripts he’d signed off on: Dagoberto Saenz in conversation with officials of the National Bank of the Caymans. Beneath it was a note in his father’s unmistakable hand dated a month before. “Johnny-boy,” it began. The man hadn’t written Deal so much as a Christmas card in the last five years. Deal glanced back at Garrity in disbelief. “This is all bullshit. I don’t know who’s responsible…”

  “Listen to me,” Garrity broke in, his face darkening. He cut a glance at the doorway of his office and pushed himself away from his desk, looming directly over Deal now. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to know about it. In fact, I do not give a good goddamn. I brought you in here for one reason and one reason only.”

  He snatched the folder from Deal’s hand and shook it in his face. “I can make this go away,” he said. “I will make it go away, in fact. But you are going to go away with it.”

  Deal stared, uncomprehending.

  “You can stay and fight this, John, but you’ll go down, trust me.”

  “You’re asking me to resign?”

  “The chief was no friend of your father’s. He won’t stop at driving you off the force. What’s in this folder will send you to prison.”

  “What’s in that folder is bullshit.”

  Garrity seemed not to have heard. “You’re not the only one who stands to lose.”

  Deal hesitated, an iciness sweeping over him. “You’d go after Driscoll, too?”

  “I wouldn’t go after anyone. But you’re not listening to me. No one wants a scandal. You don’t want your mother dragged into court. Listen to reason, John.”

  Deal rose, swatting with the back of his hand the folder Garrity held. “Did Schnecter cook this up? Whose idea was this?”

  Garrity took a step backward. “You can save all that, John. This room is clean. No one’s listening. For the sake of your father, I’m imploring you…”

  The broad windows at Garrity’s back seemed to beckon. For a moment, Deal considered it: Drop his shoulder, drive ahead, find out if Garrity could fly. He’d been small at linebacker, by Gainesville standards, but he could stick.

  “Don’t let them do it to you, John,” Garrity was saying. “Your old man would tell you the same thing. He knew when to pick his fights.”

  Deal stopped, blinking. The rage that had possessed him only moments before seemed magically to vanish.

  Seconds ago, Garrity had seemed the very image of a devil in a dance. Now Deal found himself staring at a frightened, aging man. He saw the image of his father sprawled backward in his chair, saw his mother’s desolated stare. At a certain stage of the game, everyone’s dreams go flying, he thought.

  What crazy dream had moved him to this pass, what kind of round-peg thinking in a square-peg world? The son of Barton Deal become a cop? How could such a notion end otherwise?

  He reached into his pocket and saw Garrity start. A little pleasure in that, maybe. He withdrew the case and tossed the shield on the shiny desktop, and then he turned for the door.

  “I’m sorry, John,” he heard Garrity say.

  “You don’t know what sorry is,” he said. And then the door was closed, and he was gone.

  Chapter Four

  Key West, Present day

  “So that’s how you and Driscoll hooked up?” Russell said. They were out on the street now, Deal’s story finally finished, their sizable tab at the Pier House paid. He’d been locked so deeply into the memories of his Miami past that Deal felt a little light-headed now, navigating the bright streets of Key West.

  They were headed down Duval toward the Key West offices of DealCo, passing a T-shirt shop with a rack dragged out on the sidewalk. Deal stepped down from the curb to let a tourist foursome pass between them: two dark-haired women in shorts and tank tops, probably sisters, two gut-heavy, close-cropped husbands in T-shirts and cut-off jeans. Canadians, Deal guessed from the season and the rare pink glow of their skin.

  After they passed, Deal rejoined Russell on the sidewalk. “It was something else that brought us back together,” Deal said. “Something that happened later, to my wife.”

  Russell gave him a look. “Anything I know about?”

  “Some other time, maybe,” Deal said. “It’s too nice a day.” And it was, he thought, glancing up into the slice of Wedgwood sky above the storefronts along Duval. Some heavy cumulus in the distance, out over the Gulf Stream, but if there was rain there, it was hours away.

  Hot, of course, but it was August, and they were near the southernmost point of land in all the United States, closer to Havana than Miami. It was the kind of tropical day when you could break an honest sweat just thinking about work, but that was all right with Deal. He’d still go out with a crew some days, peel off his shirt, start framing alongside his men. A better workout than Bally’s, and the jokes were better, the company far less genteel.

  “You ever find who set you up?” Russell asked.

  Deal paused at the bottom of the wooden outdoor staircase that ran up the side of a red-brick building to the offices he’d rented. There was a title-search and surveying company on the ground floor, its shades drawn shut, a CLOSED sign hanging in the window.

  “Once that folder was gone,” Deal said, shaking his head, “there wasn’t much to go on. And with me being on the outside…” He trailed off, trying to stop his thoughts from squirreling back down those twisted memory trails.

  “Maybe it was a setup, maybe it was just a convenient way to get me out. No doubt my old man was plugged into the department. He was plugged in everywhere. Anybody could have been feeding him information, even Garrity, for all I know.” He gave a Driscoll-like shrug, implying a world of possibilities.

  “What I found out soon enough was that Driscoll was right about my old man’s finances,” he said, his hand gripping the peeling banister. “DealCo was up to its eyebrows in debt. I had my work cut out just trying to keep the company afloat and my mother’s docto
r bills paid.”

  He glanced up at the doorway at the top of the stairs: DEALCO DEVELOPMENT it said in old-fashioned gilt letters across the beveled-glass insert. KEY WEST OFFICES was added just below. He gave Russell something of a smile. “It seems like that’s what I’ve been doing ever since, just fighting to keep my head above water.”

  Russell followed his gaze up toward the doorway. “Even now?”

  “Things are better,” Deal allowed. “Maybe that’s why I’ve been enjoying Key West so much.”

  Russell nodded, watching a young woman in a floralprint dress coming across Duval Street toward them. Orange dress with swirling white flowers, tanned and slender legs, flat white sandals that showed off her just-done, orange-tipped toes. She gave them a smile as she passed, on her way to unlock the door of the shuttered title-search and survey company.

  “What’s not to like?” Russell said, as the woman disappeared inside, leaving the smell of citrus cologne in her wake. “Good weather, rum drinks and beer, all this fine scenery.”

  “It is Lotus Land,” Deal agreed, his thoughts drifting again. He, too, had met someone in Key West, just about the same time that Russell had met Denise. But what city was it that Annie Dodds enjoyed right now?

  “You remember those phone messages?” Russell’s voice cut into his thoughts.

  Deal came out of his reverie, gave Russell a helpless look.

  “I didn’t think so,” Russell said. He reached into his pocket then and withdrew the pink wad, thrusting them Deal’s way. “And don’t forget to call the bookkeeper,” he said, pointing up the stairs. “You’re the boss of this outfit, okay?”

  Chapter Five