He leaned forward, bracing himself with one hand, driving the heel of his other into the point of the old man’s chin. His old man’s eyes blinked once, then closed as if a switch had been thrown. In the next second, he had slumped over sideways in the raft.
Deal stared for a moment until he saw the rise and fall of his old man’s chest begin. He shook his head, then picked up the paddle the old man had dropped. It was dawn now, the sun a slivered red thumbprint on the eastern horizon. He glanced at the flat face of the paddle, just to be sure, then gave his father another glance before he tossed the thing overboard and began to row again.
He could do this, he told himself, as the waves rose and fell before him. Thousands before him had. He would do it for as long as he possibly could.
Chapter Forty-three
“You going to let us know exactly what happened?” Driscoll asked Vines.
He and Russell and the government agent had the flying bridge of the Coast Guard cutter to themselves, now that Vines’ man had descended back to the communications room to monitor the progress of the search. There hadn’t been much time to talk since the moment Vines had come to rush them from the reconnaissance center at the Interests Section. There had been an accident with the Bellísima, that’s all he would say. A search was being mounted in the Florida Straits.
While it had still been dark, the three of them had been driven to a small fishing village just east of the city, where they’d boarded what looked like a smaller version of Fuentes’ yacht, piloted by a crew that seemed as Cuban as it was possible to get. Inside an hour, they’d rendezvoused with the Coast Guard cutter and transferred on board.
Now, it was well past dawn and half a dozen ships were out in the Straits, or so they’d just been informed, and a pair of reconnaissance planes had been diverted from their normal drug-intercept surveillance to join the search. Still, there were hundreds of square miles of featureless water to cover. Every day drug runners in boats the size of freight cars found their way to Florida undetected. What were the chances of finding two men adrift and bobbing in these waves? For that matter, what were the chances that they had survived the sinking of the Bellísima to begin with?
“It’s a pretty simple story,” Vines said without taking his binoculars from his eyes. “There were two ships out here—the one we had our eye on and a Cuban naval vessel following it.” He turned and dropped the binoculars, staring at the two of them bleakly. “First, the Bellísima disappeared.” He raised an eyebrow. “Now the Cuban vessel’s gone as well.”
“You can do better than that,” Driscoll said.
“Not officially I can’t,” Vines said.
“I don’t give a crap about official,” Russell Straight said, staring past Driscoll.
“Hold on,” Driscoll said, holding Russell off. He turned back to Vines.
“Are you saying the Cubans sank the boat that Deal was on?”
Vines stared back at him, his expression glum.
“And then something happened to this Cuban boat, too?”
Vines lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. “I can’t tell you how it all played out. All I can say is that the Bellísima is missing.”
“Fucking-A,” Russell muttered, still struggling in Driscoll’s grip.
“That’s not going to do much good,” Driscoll said.
Vines nodded, then undraped the binoculars from his neck. “He’s right,” the agent said, thrusting the glasses toward Russell. “Why not try doing something worthwhile.”
Chapter Forty-four
Deal had no idea how long the sun had been up, but it seemed like a long time. Complicating it all was the fact of his vision. Whenever he tried to read his watch, the numbers pulsed and waved in a way that made figuring time impossible. He had discovered himself unbuttoning his shirt, however, and had forced himself to stop, remembering that undressing yourself was what happened to people who became delirious with thirst.
Counterproductive to strip down, actually. The more skin exposed to the sun, the quicker the cooking. Then again, he thought, maybe it would be best. Maybe his old man had the right idea. He had yet to reawaken after the blow that had sent him under.
Good going, Deal. Put your old man in a coma. Now die.
He noticed his hands fumbling automatically with the buttons of his shirt. Who cares, really. Strip down, maybe go for a swim.
He found himself thinking of Angelica, then. Wasn’t that her name? She’d undressed him and that had gone quite well, if deliriously.
A voice from another country suggested that he might never see that woman again if he let this tiny boat founder. Once in the water without vests, they’d be sunk.
A good one, Deal. Sunk. Har-de-har-har.
He saw other faces swim past his hard-to-focus eyes. There was Janice, of course, and Mrs. Suarez, and the one that stopped him cold for a moment.
Dear Isabel. How lonely he would be swimming in the deep without her. How tired he was, though. How sorry he felt that Daddy could not explain.
There was Daddy lying at his feet, in fact. That man had not bothered to do any explaining of his own, either.
Oh my, Deal thought. How hard this life had been.
It was time to rest. He could not deny it. He brought his paddle to his breast and lay back. His head struck the survival box, and he reached to move it aside.
There was a flare pistol inside, which he’d meant to use at a time when it might do some good.
His shirt had somehow come off, he noted. Still, he’d fire the pistol.
He cocked it and held it firmly in both hands and believed it to be pointing skyward when he fired. There was a popping sound, and a recoil, and a puff of smoke up high somewhere, but not the kind of fireworks you’d see if it were night. Oh well.
He was comfortable there on the cushiony floor of the boat, the water slipping under him like silk, now, and splashing over him as well. He couldn’t help but close his eyes.
He thought he felt the paddle being lifted from his chest. He thought he saw an old man rise grimly above him, digging into the water for all he was worth, but visions are a dime a dozen when you’re around the bend.
He wasn’t sure how long it took until the violent wind began to press down upon him and the water came alive with sudden waves. It was the mark of the end, though; he understood that much.
He saw something huge and dark and sharp-winged sinking down upon him, until it had blotted out the very sun. The angel that comes, he thought.
So sorry, Isabel. So sorry, old man. So sorry, Angelica and everyone. So long.
Chapter Forty-five
“…he no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife…”
The words drifted down to Deal in a halting monotone, the voice familiar but otherworldly, as seemed only befitting. He was floating along somewhere, high up and wherever it is you go, wrapped in a giant cotton cloud, a vague light hovering above his eyes, a sense of peace and well-being pervading all. It was only right, he thought, after all the goddamned struggle his life had been.
“He only dreamed of places now,” the voice continued, “and of the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy.”
It was a very familiar voice, he realized, and the words were not so much being spoken as read aloud. Truly he had died and gone somewhere else, but what kind of afterworld was it that featured Russell Straight reciting the works of Hemingway?
“Are you waking up?” He heard another voice then, this one much closer by. Another man he’d come to trust in that other realm, he was thinking. “It’s about damn time, I’d say.”
Deal felt his eyes come open. He lay quietly, seeing nothing but whiteness hovering above him. A skyscape as blank as a popcorn-finish ceiling, he thought, another odd feature of the afterworld.
But that is exactly what he
was staring at, he realized. The popcorned ceiling of a cool and dimly lit institutional room.
Furthermore, no angels hovering there. Just the face of beefy ex-detective Vernon Driscoll peering down at him in concern.
“Welcome back,” Driscoll was saying. “You been out the best part of a day, my man.”
Deal blinked as Driscoll’s face wavered in and out of focus. He tried to speak, but his tongue felt far too thick.
His head lolled back on his pillow and he found himself staring now at a silver pole with a hook that held a plastic fluid sack. He traced the plastic tube that ran from the bottom of the bag down to the rail of a hospital bed, and then to an arm that lay on a mattress. He realized finally that the flesh the tubing was fastened to was his own.
Driscoll was nodding as he turned back. “They spotted you just in time. You two wouldn’t have made it another day out there. Kind of gives you a new appreciation of what all the rafters go through, doesn’t it?”
Deal worked his tongue at his swollen lips. “Two?” he managed. It sounded as if someone with a boozer’s ruined foghorn voice was speaking.
“Yeah,” the ex-cop said, nodding. “He made it. He’s in the next room, still unconscious, though. That’s Russell over there reading to him. The nurses said it might help bring him around.” Driscoll pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. Russell’s recitation had quieted, but the cadences still rumbled though the wall.
Deal had spotted a water pitcher by this time—a blue plastic obelisk flanked by a couple of matching glasses on a nearby table. He pointed, and Driscoll reached to pour for him.
Deal drank the water greedily, spilling some of the cold liquid down his cheeks and neck. “Better take it easy, pard,” Driscoll began. “Maybe I ought to get a nurse in here.”
Driscoll’s hand was headed for the call button, but Deal caught him by the sleeve. Deal used the strength in the big man’s arm to pull himself up to a sitting position. He waited for the walls about him to stop their pulsing, then fought his gaze into focus on Driscoll. He had another hit of the water, then willed his unwieldy tongue into action.
“Help me up,” he said to Driscoll, swinging his legs out over the side of the bed.
“Hey…” Driscoll began, but stopped when Deal held up his hand.
“I’m all right,” he said, his voice croaking.
“Yeah, sure you are,” Driscoll said.
“I want to see the old man,” Deal said. He had his feet on the cool tiles of the floor now.
“There’s plenty of time for that…”
Deal yanked the IV out of his arm and reached for Driscoll. “Now,” he said.
Driscoll glanced down at the wad of shirt Deal was holding in his fist. Deal unclenched the fabric.
“Come on, Vernon,” Deal managed, “help me out here.”
Driscoll hesitated for a second, then muttered a curse. He hooked his arm about Deal’s shoulders and heaved him up from the bed, then waited as Deal got his footing steady.
“Okay,” Deal said. “Let’s go.”
Inside the next room, Russell Straight sat in an uncomfortable-looking gray-metal chair at the bedside of the old man, tracing his finger along the page of a paperback book as he read. When he heard the commotion at the door, he glanced up.
“What the hell?” he said. He rose from his chair, his finger bookmarking his page. He took a step toward Deal and Driscoll, a smile slowly erasing the surprise on his coppered features. “We thought you were history there for a while.”
Deal nodded, reaching to clasp Russell’s outstretched hand. “Me, too,” he said. He untangled himself from Driscoll’s grasp and moved on toward the silent figure in the hospital bed.
“How’s he doing?” he said. He’d reached the bedside now and stood steadying himself with a hand on one of the rails.
“The doc says all his vital signs check out okay,” Russell’s voice came from over Deal’s shoulder. “He just doesn’t seem to want to wake up.”
Deal stared down at the old man’s grizzled face. “He was awake out there on the raft. He kept us going after I folded up.”
“Is that so?”
Deal turned to see the doubtful expression on Driscoll’s face. “I caved in,” Deal said. “Passed out. I looked up right before the helicopter found us—he was at the controls.”
Driscoll shrugged. “Whatever happened, you made it.”
True enough, Deal thought. Why argue the point? He turned, staring down at his father’s sleeping face. Even if he’d imagined that his old man had taken over the paddling, what did it matter? That was nothing compared to the fact that he lay here before him now.
“By the way,” Driscoll was saying, “we had a hell of a time getting hold of Janice and Isabel. They were all in some smoke lodge on top of a frigging mountain in New Mexico. They had to send an Indian hiking in on foot to tell them. They should be in Key West sometime this evening.”
Deal nodded and gave Driscoll a grateful smile. He’d get to see his daughter again after all.
“Janice was pretty upset when she heard about it,” Driscoll continued, “what with all the fuss in the papers and everything.”
Deal stared at him, uncomprehending. “Papers?”
“Man, you don’t know what kind of fuss you caused,” Russell said. “You’re the biggest thing since the Cubans went after Brothers to the Rescue.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Cuban boat that blew you out of the water, that’s what I’m talking about. Exploded and sunk out there in the Straits, all hands missing, including the head of Cuban State Security, some guy named Zeneas. The Cubans claim one of our fighters did it.”
Deal stared at him. “Did we?”
Russell shrugged. “Ask Vines, if you can find him.”
“So far, your name’s been kept out of it, on both sides,” Driscoll said. “The Cubans claim it was an unprovoked attack on one of their ships that was in protected waters.”
“What do we say?”
“Nothing, officially,” Driscoll said. “So far as the U.S. is concerned, the Cuban boat went down in international waters, there must have been some kind of accident on board. There’s been no mention of Fuentes, the Bellísima, any of that business.”
“How long do you figure that’s going to last?”
Driscoll gave his all-purpose shrug. “For as long you want, I’m guessing. The Cubans have no motivation to let it be known what their ship was doing out there that night, and we sure as hell don’t, either.”
Deal stared back, letting it all sink in.
“I just wish I’d been there to see that Cuban boat go down,” Russell said.
“It was a bright light in the sky,” Deal said.
“I’ll bet,” Driscoll said, giving him a look. “Of course, nobody knew at the time that you’d made it.”
Deal gave him a look. “I wasn’t so sure we had.”
“Hey, I almost forgot,” Russell said. “The woman who helped you get your old man out…she met us at the dock just after you took off with Fuentes. She gave me something for you.”
Deal turned to find Russell digging in his pants pocket. “Here,” he said, extending his hand. “She said you’d want this.”
Deal stared down at the gold signet ring in Russell’s open palm. A hundred images seemed to explode inside his head simultaneously, accompanied by an array of emotions that seemed just as diverse and bewildering. Resentment. Anger. Most of all the ache of loss.
“Yes,” he heard himself saying. He reached to take the ring from Russell and hefted it for a moment in his own palm. As a child, he’d sometimes begged his father to let him hold the ring, had been amazed by its density, by its is ness that exuded his father’s very being.
The sort of thing that matters to children, he thought. As if you could hold the whole of a person you loved cupped inside your hand.
“It’s his, you know.” He nodded at th
e sleeping form before them, then reached for his father’s hand. The ring slipped easily onto the old man’s finger, Deal noted, a fact that gave him little comfort.
“Hard to believe he’s back,” Driscoll said at his shoulder.
“It is,” Deal said. He turned after a moment and gave Driscoll a speculative look. “I don’t suppose you know anything about that night he disappeared, how he made it out of the country and all that?”
Driscoll’s face registered surprise. “You’re kidding, I hope.”
“I’m asking, that’s all. Someone in the department had to have been in on it.”
“Well, it wasn’t me, buddy boy.”
“There was something else I heard mentioned, too,” Deal said. “A pot of money he left behind, supposed to tide my mother and me over.”
Driscoll stared back at him. “Maybe whoever it was who helped your old man out of the country misplaced it.”
“Anything is possible,” Deal said. “It remains a mystery, though.”
Driscoll nodded. “It does indeed.” He pointed at something over Deal’s shoulder. “Maybe the old boy can help us out with it.”
Deal turned, realized with a start that the old man’s eyes were open. He felt the slightest pressure at his hand and glanced down to see his father’s fingers clasping his own.
“How about it, old man?” he found himself saying. “Are you coming back to join us, then?”
The old man blinked. “I thought I heard someone telling a story,” he said. He glanced dazedly around the room, at Driscoll and Russell, then back at Deal. “I like a good story,” his old man said at last. “Why don’t we hear some more?”
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