Book Deal (8 page)

He heard a heavier thud then. Heard a gasp unlike any sound he’d ever heard before. More heavy blows, each one ending with an awful sound like a heavy stone falling into mud, until finally there was silence. Something hit the floor then, and tumbled, and Els realized that he was staring down through the crack in the staircase at one of the crystal bookends from his Americana case. Half its heavy globe sheared away now. The other half bathed in blood.

“All these goddamned books,” he heard a voice say. And then the lights went out.

Chapter 5

It was Monday morning when Deal got the call. He was back on site in Gables-by-the-Sea, going over yet another series of changes on the house he was building there, this time with the architect.

“We decided we want to go with marble out here on the portico floor,” the architect was saying, pointing at a spot on the plans. For lack of a better place to work, they’d unrolled them on the hood of the Hog. There was a breeze coming in off nearby Biscayne Bay, and Deal had tucked one corner of the thick sheaf of prints under a windshield wiper.

He stared down at the elevation sheets, which were rattling in the rush of the wind. He had one hand braced on the hood, could feel the heat of the engine seeping up through the metal. “Marble,” Deal repeated. “On the floor of the porch.”

The architect nodded without meeting his gaze, staring off over the skinned half-acre before them, as if he could see the portico already in place. Deal straightened, surveyed the site himself. It was situated on a narrow spit of land that jutted out into Biscayne Bay, had an amazing view. You could see six miles or more south along the ragged coastline, all the way to the stacks of the nuclear power plant at Turkey Point. To the east, across five miles of bay, was Key Biscayne, its low-lying silhouette punctuated here and there by condo towers and, at its tip, in Bill Baggs Park, the old lighthouse, a structure that looked as though it might have been plucked from a site somewhere off the coast of Maine, tossed to stick like a dart from the distant coral outcroppings of a tropical paradise. To the north of the Key, another mile or farther, lay the skyline of Miami and the glistening half-moon of the bridge on the Rickenbacker Causeway. The bridge connected the mainland and the Key in a graceful arc that seemed at this distance about what a marlin running at full tilt might manage.

With this view, you were talking land value about a million, maybe a mil and a quarter, Deal thought, as he simultaneously felt an urge to be out there, cutting a wake across the cobalt water, trailing that grand imaginary fish. Add another million and a quarter for the house, and that estimate going up every time he and the architect met.

Of course there had been a perfectly good house here, until a month or so ago. One of the first built out this far on the point maybe thirty years ago, it had taken a direct hit from Hurricane Andrew, seven feet of tidal surge that came in through the front doors and windows and went straight out the back, sweeping everything inside along with it. Though the structure itself had held fast, the owners had not. They’d ventured back from whatever refuge they’d found inland, had one look at their doorless, windowless, newly-divested-of-furnishings place, then taken their insurance settlement and lit out for the mountains of North Carolina, well above the storm-surge line. The house had sat boarded up and untended ever since, until it finally sold to a South American distributor of tapes and CDs, and the architect had called Deal out to estimate a redo of the original.

Though no work had been done since the storm, the place had been sealed up dry, and Deal had thought the concrete-block shell salvageable. But the new owners, a childless couple in their fifties, had somehow determined that they were in need of more room, so the original three-bedroom, two-bath Bahamian-styled bungalow had been razed (add another thirty-five thousand just for demolition) and was going to become the six-bedroom, six-bath colossus laid out on the plans heating up on the hood of the Hog. Not what Deal would have done, but then he was about two million and a half shy of the price tag for the project, so what did it matter what he thought? He was going to build this house, and put a nice chunk of the proceeds into his daughter Isabel’s college fund, and then he was going to go on to the next project, that is, if they ever got off ground zero here.

Fonseca was the architect’s name. A slender kid in his late twenties, thin little mustache, manicured nails, drove a three-year-old Buick that looked like it had come off the showroom floor yesterday. Just standing next to him made Deal feel untidy. Still, he wasn’t a bad kid, never gave Deal that supercilious attitude some architects liked to hand builders, as if they were brain surgeons patiently explaining things to a scrub nurse.

“This wasn’t your suggestion, was it?” Deal said finally.

Fonseca shook his head, still staring off.

“First time it rains,” Deal said, “that marble porch floor is going to turn into a skating rink. Did you mention that to the missus?”

Fonseca turned back to him. “I pointed that out.”

Deal took a deep breath. “But she likes the look of marble.”

Fonseca nodded. “She thought maybe we could put some kind of coating on it, something nonskid.”

Deal stared at him. “Right,” he said. “We could cover it with a couple inches of roofing tar. Of course, that’d take something away from the appearance.”

Fonseca shrugged. They’d already had a half-dozen of these change conferences and the footings for the house hadn’t been poured yet.

“Okay,” Deal sighed. “I’ll refigure it for marble. But why don’t you suggest shellstone or something. Plant the suggestion, anyway. Marble is never going to work. First person that sails on through the stained-glass entryway is going to be suing you and me both.”

Fonseca nodded. “We’re five months away from the tile work. I figure we’ll have worked our way well beyond marble by that time.”

There was a pause and they shared a smile then, and Deal was about to ask him what other changes were on the agenda when he felt the chirping of the beeper at his belt. He checked the number on the read-out, wondering if it mightn’t be one of the men he had waiting for materials to be delivered to the endless Terrence Terrell project in the Grove this morning, but this series of digits didn’t register. Someone to get back to later, he was thinking, and in fact had turned to Fonseca, was about to make some wisecrack about the burden this job had turned out to be for them both, when it finally sank in.

He checked the beeper again, and this time saw what he’d nearly passed over before. An unfamiliar Gables exchange, all right, but preceded by the three-digit code he had formulated to identify emergencies. He’d shared the code with only two people, and one of them was dead.

“I’m sorry,” he said to Fonseca. He was already jerking open the door of the Hog. “I’ve got to get to a phone.”

Fonseca looked at him oddly. “Here,” the architect said without hesitation, reaching into his jacket pocket. “Use mine.”

Deal hesitated, halfway into the Hog. He stared at the cell phone Fonseca extended to him. A tiny clamshell of plastic, about the size of a ladies’ compact, if a bit fatter. There was an expression of puzzlement on Fonseca’s face, as if he were waiting for Deal to explain where his own cellular had been left. Deal glanced around, calculating how far he’d have to drive through this residential area before he’d find a pay phone.

“Thanks,” he said finally, and took the tiny phone.

Fonseca waved it away and strolled off toward the portico-to-be, giving Deal his privacy.

Deal unfolded the phone, took a moment to find the right switches, finally punched in the number he read from the beeper. There were two rings before the connection made and a voice said something in what might have been Spanish.

Deal covered his ear against the rush of the breeze. “I didn’t understand you.”

More of what sounded like Spanish, ending with what sounded like, “…
a cleaner
.”

“Look,” he said impatiently, “this is John Deal. Somebody beeped me…”

“
Oh
,” he heard, the person breaking in. “
Momentito!
”

He heard clattering at the other end, as if a wall phone had been left to dangle, the sounds of a cash register ringing, then, finally, “Deal?” It was Janice’s voice, pained, breathless. The sound of trouble on the way.

“It’s me,” he said. “What is it, Janice?”

“The store,” she said. “The bookstore…” Her voice trailed off as she struggled to get her breathing under control.

“You’re at the bookstore?” He felt his own pulse thudding in response suddenly. He glanced at Fonseca, who was on the other side of the lot, gingerly digging the toe of his shoe at something in the loose earth near one of the foundation markers. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m at the dry cleaner’s, down the street,” she said, her voice straining. “The phone in the store doesn’t work. Deal. They must have cut the lines…Wait, just a minute…” He heard a siren in the distance, excited voices in rapid-fire Spanish. He glanced northward, out over the water where a pair of frigate birds hung motionless against the incoming breeze, pointed toward the shimmering skyline of the city.
I can see very nearly to where she is
, he thought…and it only made him feel more helpless.

Then she was on the line again. “I called an ambulance, Deal. And the police…” she broke off, her voice nearly lost in her sobbing. “Oh Deal…I have to go…”

“Janice,” he shouted, his head light, his ears ringing with dread. More sirens in the background, the thudding of the phone as it bounced along the wall.

“I’m on my way, Janice,” Deal cried, already sliding behind the wheel. He fired up the Hog, dropped it into gear, and mashed the accelerator, fishtailing across the building lot in a billowing cloud of dust. He leaned out the window to toss Fonseca his phone, and caught a glimpse of the architect’s astonished expression as the thing bounced off his chest and out of his clumsy grasp.

The Hog took out a line of blue-ribboned marking stakes along one side of the property, and then Deal had to grab the wheel with both hands as the big car launched itself off the back side of the building pad, hurtled through space for a second or two, then slammed down hard, chewing fill dirt and powdered coral into a plume that raced with him all the way out to the street.

***

“I know who did this, Deal,” she said, her voice flat, hollow. He’d had to steady her, hold her upright while they were loading Arch’s body into the coroner’s wagon. Now that the van had pulled away, now that it was disappearing down the street, she had steadied. She’d stepped away from his grasp, stood with her arms wrapped about herself, staring after the departing vehicle with a frightening intensity.

Deal glanced through the propped-open door inside the ruined store, where a team of investigators combed through the wreckage. Vernon Driscoll was in there somewhere as well. Deal had called him from the same dry-cleaning shop Janice had used earlier, and the excop had turned up at the store inside ten minutes. Driscoll was a good four years off the force, but still had his connections. There’d been a moment of hushed conversation between Driscoll and the lead detective on the scene—burly, hangdog Driscoll in his rumpled coat and baggy slacks, and a wiry counterpart twenty years his junior wearing a close-cut Italian suit—and then Driscoll had ducked inside, under the crime scene tape that fluttered in the breeze at the door.

“Are you okay?” Deal said, turning back to Janice. He had begun to feel lightheaded himself. “Do you want to sit down somewhere?”

She turned, studied him for a moment. “He wanted to build a café, did you know that, Deal?” She waved her hand aimlessly. “He’d have made it a sidewalk café, if they would have let him, the zoning and all.”

Deal nodded, reached a comforting hand her way. “I know, Janice.”

“This town,” she said, her mind flipping somewhere else abruptly, the way your TV cable company might toss you right out of the world you thought you were in. “You own a pickup truck, you can’t even park in your own driveway.” She turned back to him, her eyes blazing. “Everything’s about appearances. How everything looks.”

“Janice,” he said warily, stepping toward her. His stomach was hardening into a knot. He’d lost her down such a path before, had watched the Janice he knew and loved dissolve before his very eyes, vanish from his life as surely as if she’d been whisked away inside some alien space beam.

She stepped back, just out of his reach. “Arch didn’t care all that much about cafés, though.” She glanced at him as though she were explaining something to a stranger. “He just felt he had to, you know. Because all the big stores have them now. Cafés and croissants and stages where a band can play…” She broke off, shaking her head. When she glanced at him again, her eyes were glistening. “Damn it, Deal. All he ever wanted to do was sell books. To people who loved to read. And they
killed
him, for
that
?”

One of the detectives inside glanced out the open doorway, then went back to his work, carefully stacking book after book, shaking each one as if some message might come tumbling out from between the pages. Deal stepped forward, caught her shoulders. “Janice, is this something you’ve talked about with the police?”

She glanced inside, shook her head. “No,” she said, and suddenly her voice was calm again. She glanced at him, somber, but composed. A different person, somehow, as though the things she’d just said were thoughts that had never been uttered. “They think it was a robbery.”

Another detective inside had cleared a pathway to a tumbled set of shelves blocking the passage to the magazine room, was dusting the edge of the wood for fingerprints. Just a bunch of guys doing their work, Deal thought, images of hurricane cleanup flitting across his mind. Disaster strikes, and you carry on. “Being not the ones dead…” The words echoed in his mind. Some fragment from a poem Arch had quoted to him once, that much had never left him.

“And you think it wasn’t robbery?” he tried again, gently.

She glanced up at him as if he’d made an accusation. For a moment she seemed ready to snap at him. And then, suddenly, her expression shattered and she collapsed against his chest. “Oh, Deal,” she sobbed. “It was awful. It was terrible.”

“I know,” he said, holding her tightly, patting her back. “I know.”

The words came hesitantly at first, then began to pour. “I came in the back door,” she paused, gulping a breath. “…and when I found it unlocked I started to worry. And then when I walked in and saw the mess…I mean, if the door had been forced open I’d have thought, okay, someone broke in, in the night…” She stopped to look up at him. “But I knew Arch would never forget to lock that door, and I started walking through the rooms, calling his name, because his car was outside, and I had to crawl over those shelves to get into the front, and by that time I knew something terrible had happened…”