Deal with the Dead (10 page)

Chapter Eight

“
Why don’t you go
to the police?” Janice said.

Deal pursed his lips, glancing across the corner of the L-shaped bar at Two Chefs, where a sleekly dressed couple sat toying with pale pink drinks in stemmed glasses. The woman—jet black hair, dark eyes, bright lipstick—wore a plum-colored silk dress with a plunging neckline and pressed herself to the man’s arm as she whispered in his ear. No danger of being overheard—nothing short of gunfire was likely to attract the attention of those two.

“And tell the police what, exactly?” He took a swig of Red Stripe from a squat brown bottle. “That I had a conversation with a guy?”

“He tried to blackmail you.”

“Yeah?” He glanced at her. “Where’s the evidence?”

She thought about it. “Well, if you got the contract fair and square, they could look into it, see exactly how it happened…”

Her voice trailed off, and he knew she’d realized as soon as she said it.

“There are only two possibilities,” he said. “Sams actually rigged it somehow, some way that I’d take the heat for if anyone investigated—” He broke off, shaking his head. “Or it’s all bullshit. Either way, it stalls the project and gives everybody else who wanted it the opportunity to climb back in.”

He gave her a bleak look. “It’s the biggest piece of work we’ve had since my old man died, Janice. If I get the county oversight board on the case, it could queer the whole deal before it gets off the drawing board.”

“Well,” she said, sounding petulant. “He did break into your office.”

“Maybe I left the door unlocked,” he said, feeling exhausted. A couple of hours ago, he’d been ready to celebrate the revival of his fortunes. Now it took an effort to lift his beer.

“You
do
things like that,” she agreed. He could tell by her expression that she was trying to stay calm. She raised her own glass, sipped her martini, closed her eyes tight, as if she were trying to will trouble away herself.

“This is good,” she said after a moment. “I haven’t had a martini in a long time.”

Two weeks ago, he wanted to tell her. Sitting here, on these stools, at this same bar. But he didn’t. It had been one of the not-so-good nights, when the “other” Janice had shown up. Not the beautiful, self-possessed woman he’d known for so many years there beside him, but the distracted, hesitant stranger who glanced over her shoulder every half-minute while she talked, as if she were waiting for the arrival of someone or something that had been about to swoop down for a long, long time.

Deal felt a pang going to the very core of him. If he insisted, if he tried to remind her of that last encounter, he would only wound her. She didn’t mean to drift away, to erect that self-referential shield about her very being. She simply did. It is just what happened sometimes, and just as troubling was the fact that it often seemed apropos of nothing.

The doctors could not say why, beyond positing that it was another of the seemingly endless manifestations of post-traumatic stress reaction, a disorder so protean that the best practitioners were prone to throw up their hands: “Nothing you can do about it, Mr. Deal. Nothing for you to do but be supportive, and loving, and patient.”

Easy for them to say. But Deal knew this: Men who had meant to kill him had nearly killed his wife, and ever since that time, he had lived with the possibility that the person he loved most in all the world would, without warning, simply drift away from him—for a day, a week, a month. Worst was the fear that one day it would be forever. And no amount of reasoning could ever convince him that it was not, at bedrock, his own damned fault.

He forced himself from his gloomy thoughts, determined not to let this time with her go sour. He smiled at her. “You look terrific,” he said. He poured some of the beer in the frosty glass that Cyrus, the bartender, had brought with his Red Stripe, then touched the glass to hers.

She smiled. “Thanks,” she said. “I got a haircut.” She fluffed the short hair at the back of her neck.

“I noticed,” he said.

“You must not like it, then,” she said, “if you didn’t say anything.”

“I
do
like it,” he insisted. He was about to say that it made her look younger, but he wasn’t sure if that would sound right. “I’m just a little distracted, that’s all.”

She smiled brightly, gave her head a toss. “It’s okay,” she said. “Hair grows.”

He stared at her. How anyone so lovely could have doubts about her appearance was beyond him. That was another lingering effect of the attacks. She’d been badly burned, all right, but what scars remained were virtually invisible, a fine line here and there, most of it hidden under even that short haircut. But that didn’t matter, did it?
Be supportive, Mr. Deal.
Be patient and understanding.
In this case, leave well enough alone.

“Did you say something?” she said, glancing up from the menu Cyrus had left.

“No,” he said. “Unless I was thinking out loud.”

She shrugged and lay the menu down. Her gaze traveled over his shoulder at the couple opposite them. “I think that woman intends to have sex with that man,” she said.

Deal glanced over his shoulder, then back at her. “People do that,” he said.

She gave him a look that didn’t discount the possibility. “Do they?” She bent to her drink and sipped, so that Deal couldn’t tell if she was hiding a smile. Living apart hadn’t put an end to their sex life, but it had certainly had an effect. Sex with the “other” Janice was out of the question, so that every one of their “dates”—weekly, more or less—loomed for him with all the charged uncertainty of a college boy’s blind date.

“Stop thinking about it,” she said, putting her drink down.

“Thinking about what?”

“You are
so
obvious,” she said. “We haven’t even had an appetizer.”

“Neither have those two,” he said, nodding over his shoulder.

She rolled her eyes. “Would you like me to behave that way?”

He shrugged. “Not
here,
maybe.”

She shook her head, and he could tell by the new set of her features that she was back to business. It was like watching weather sweep across a plain from a great distance, he thought. No trouble reading Janice’s moods.

“So how much of this do you really believe?” she said. She was leaning toward him on her elbows, staring at him over her drink.

He shrugged. “I’m going to talk to Vernon Driscoll. He can find out if the guy’s for real.”

“And if he is?”

Deal gave her a bleak look. “That’s all I’ve been thinking about since I called you.”

“Say it’s all true,” Janice said. “About your father, about everything. Would you do what this man Sams wants?”

Deal took a deep breath. “That’s just it. I don’t know what he really wants. If it just means keeping my eyes open, picking up some dirt on a major scumbag, I don’t know. Maybe I can justify that much.”

He broke off as Cyrus the bartender approached and slid a plate of something between them. “Did I order this?” Deal asked.

Cyrus shrugged. He was in his fifties and had once tended bar on a yacht owned by Aristotle Onassis. He had perpetually squinted eyes and a bushy mustache that sometimes made it difficult to read his facial expression. “It’s an artichoke and lobster thingy,” he said. “Franco’s experimenting,” he added, referring to one of the chefs. “He wants to know what his favorite diners think.”

“I already know it’s good,” Janice said. She had leaned to cut a piece of the dish with her fork. “Anything Franco does is good.”

“Where’s the lobster?” Deal asked, peering at the arrangement on the plate. Carved rosettes of what he presumed were artichoke hearts drizzled with a mustardy lacework of sauce…it seemed too attractive to eat.

“Tell Franco it’s an awesome thingy,” Janice said. There was a tiny yellow dot of sauce on her upper lip. Deal reached for it with his finger, but she beat him to it with her tongue.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Cyrus said.

“Bring more food when it’s ready,” Janice told him.

“Did you want to order?” Cyrus said.

“Just take care of us,” Janice said.

Cyrus smiled and nodded.
You’re smitten by her too, pal,
Deal thought, watching the man walk away.

“You were saying?’

“It’s never as simple as what they make it seem, that’s all,” Deal said. He noticed his beer was empty and wished he’d asked Cyrus for another. Then he saw the man coming back their way, squat brown bottle and fresh frosty glass in hand.

“The guy’s not just saying he’ll pull the job away,” Deal continued as Cyrus glided away, “he’s threatening to ruin me if I don’t cooperate, have me sent to prison for bribery.” He stared at her, feeling fresh anger at Sams’ references to the medical bills, a part of the encounter he’d left out. “He wouldn’t go to those lengths unless there was more to it than what he was telling me.”

“You want to call his bluff, don’t you?”

He gave her a look. “If things get really tough, we could set you up in business: Madame Janice, sees all, tells all.”

She smiled, but her heart wasn’t in it. “I want to tell you to do it, just blow him off and see what happens, but—” She broke off, shaking her head. “It all seems so crazy. I think we need to wait and see. Maybe it’s some crazy con job, like you say. Maybe this will all just go away.”

Deal nodded. “I’m hoping,” he said. He didn’t think he sounded very convincing.

“You’ll talk to Vernon, then?”

Deal nodded. “He gets back tomorrow.”

She looked at him. “He’s working out of town?”

“Orlando,” he said. “He hired out to Disney, doing background checks for the seasonal Santas.”

“Come on,” she said, her face a mask of disbelief.

“Seriously,” Deal said. “The company has to be very careful about who runs around their parks dressed up like that.”

“God,” she said, shaking her head. “What a world.”

“You can say that again,” he said. And then Cyrus was back with more food.

***

“Okay now,” Janice whispered, her breath hot at his ear. “Just lean back all the way. Try to get your hands flat on the bed.”

“I liked my hands where they were,” Deal said.

“So did I,” she said, “but I want you to try this.”

He leaned back, then dutifully pressed his palms into the mattress beside his ears. “There,” she said, adjusting herself atop him. “Doesn’t that feel good?”

“It was feeling pretty good already,” Deal said. If she moved again, he thought, if she so much as breathed too deeply…

“It’s the stretching part,” she said. “It makes everything feel better.”

“Have you been doing this with other people, Janice?”
Best to ask, to
hear about it straight out,
he thought. At a moment when he felt good enough to absorb almost anything.

“Of course not,” she said, bending to kiss his chest. “Exercise sex. It’s not a secret, Deal. I read about it in a magazine at the doctor’s office.”

“I’ve got to try your doctor,” he said.

“She’s a gynecologist,” Janice said. He felt her breath at the hollow of his throat, her tongue teasing his breastbone, her teeth nibbling the prong of one nipple. “Just stay where you are now,” she said.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he managed. She sat up, then leaned backward, her hands locked beneath him, pulling at the small of his back.

“Good,” she breathed. “That’s so good.”

“I take it back,” Deal said. “I
am
going somewhere.” He felt, in fact, like he was heading for a different universe.

“Oh yes,” she said, moving, twisting, and then he knew that she had joined him and they were flying through the spangled dark together.

***

Hours later? Days later? Another lifetime altogether?

“Mommy?” It was Isabel’s voice, sounding meek in the early morning light.

He felt Janice tug the sheet higher over their shoulders. “Yes, sweetheart?”

He’d been lying in that dazed pre-awake state, stupid with contentment, all his concerns banished, far too greedy to let himself simply back into sleep. Not without the guarantee that he could relive it all in his dreams, at least.

“Is Daddy here?” she asked. The door was halfway open now—he could tell by the sound of her voice.

“Daddy who?” Janice said softly.

“Mommy!”

“Who’s that knocking at my door?” Deal said.

“I
thought
you were here,” she said, giggling. She came quickly across the carpeted floor and sat down on the edge of the bed.

Deal sat up now, and she eyed his T-shirt speculatively. “You slept over,” she said.

“I did,” he agreed.

“That means we get pancakes,” she said.

“Of course,” Deal said.

“Give us a few minutes, Isabel.” It was Janice’s voice, muffled beneath the covers.

“Okay,” said Isabel, smiling at him. Janice’s eyes, his cheekbones and chin. She would be a handsome woman, he thought. Maybe not delicate, but beautiful just the same.

“Pancakes it is,” Deal repeated.

“Go take your shower,” Janice said.

“Okay, Mommy,” Isabel said. She leaned to kiss Deal on the cheek and then scampered out. “Daddy’s here!” she announced as she closed the door after her.

Deal felt Janice’s hand find his and squeeze. “Pancakes,” she said. “You spoil her.” She raised herself up on one elbow and stared at him sleepily.

“Everyone needs spoiling once in a while,” he told her.

She gave him a speculative look. “Since you put it that way,” she said. “Why not?” And came his way.

Chapter Nine

“So, how’d the Santas
check out?” Deal said, his thoughts still drifting over the events of the night before.

Saturday evening now, he and Vernon Driscoll were sitting in the breezeway on the second floor of the fourplex Deal had built in Little Havana, taking a moment away from the matter of Talbot Sams. As they had arranged earlier in the week, Deal had picked Driscoll up at Miami International and filled him in on what had happened on the twenty-minute drive back to the building where they both lived.

Deal kept one of the apartments for himself and rented out the others. Driscoll, an ex-Metro Dade homicide cop and now a private investigator, was one of his steady tenants. Another was Mrs. Suarez, a Cuban lady of indeterminate age who had come to function as Isabel’s grandmother in absentia. The fourth apartment had been occupied by a revolving cast of characters over the last few years: the last tenant, and far and away the most attractive, had been a dancer at the Copa Club on Southwest Eighth Street, which featured a forties-style review said to be reminiscent of the grand old days in Havana. The dancer had recently married one of the club’s owners, however, and one of the downstairs units was currently vacant.

“Every one of them clean as a whistle,” Driscoll said. He rummaged in the cooler beside his chair and brought out a beer. “You want one?”

“I’m fine,” Deal said. It was after five on a Saturday—he could open a beer if he wanted, but the prospect didn’t appeal to him. He felt weary, his early-morning euphoria having gradually waned over the course of the day, in direct proportion to the length of time he’d been away from Janice and Isabel. Next weekend, he’d have his daughter with him, but it seemed a distant prospect…and while his time with Janice had gone far beyond what he might have expected, he knew better than to call so soon. They hadn’t spent consecutive nights together for more than a year.
Your frus
tration is natural, Mr. Deal. But the last thing she needs is to feel pressured…

“The problem is,” Driscoll was saying, having downed half his beer at a gulp, “you can’t find anything on a guy, you have to figure he’s dirty, you know what I mean?”

Deal looked at him. “So if you find something on a person, he or she is a dirtbag. If you don’t, they’re dirtbags for sure.”

Driscoll nodded, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “Almost invariably.”

Deal rubbed his face, trying to bring some energy back. “They teach this at the academy, I guess. Cop Logic 101.”

Driscoll grunted. “You pick it up on your own, my friend. The real world is not a pretty place.”

“Give me a beer, Vernon. I fear a claiming contest coming on.”

“I’m just telling you what you already know.” Driscoll pulled out a beer for Deal, flicked its cap away with his thick thumb. He turned the bottle around so he could read the label, then glanced at Deal. “Hatuey? What the hell is that?”

“They were out of Red Stripe up at the market,” Deal said. “This was on special. It’s an old Cuban brand. Made in the U.S. now.”

“Are we referring to our corner market?” Driscoll pointed in the vague direction of the neighborhood
grocería
that sat a block or so away, a dusty, out-of-time operation run by a Cuban couple in their sixties.

“Where else?” Deal felt a fierce loyalty to Rogelio, the old man who ran the place. Rogelio had spent seven years in one of Castro’s prisons, had escaped and come to the United States in a cargo container via Mexico.

Driscoll grunted again. “I bet they ran out on purpose. I went in there the other day for a loaf of bread, all they had was Cuban. Sure, we have
pan,
the guy is telling me. I told him never mind the
pan,
I want a nice soft loaf of Wonder Bread, the kind I can squeeze up and put it in my back pocket if I want to. He looked at me like I was crazy.”

“Maybe you need to move away, Vernon. You could find a nice retirement home in West Virginia, rediscover your roots.”

“I like it here,” Driscoll said. “It’s interesting. All I’m saying is keep some Red Stripe beer and Wonder Bread on the shelf. Is that too much to ask?”

Deal sighed. “Sounds like the Bruce Jenner diet to me,” he said.

“You can forget the scare tactics,” Driscoll said. “Remember what happened to that Fixx guy, the one who started everybody jogging?”

“He had a heart condition to begin with. Jogging prolonged his life.”

Driscoll glanced at his watch. “That’s what you say. The way I figure it, all the rest of the joggers are about to start dropping like flies.” He held up his beer between them. “What your heart really needs,” he said, “is a nice little cushion of fat wrapped around it. Keeps it insulated from the extremes of hot and cold.”

They could go on like this forever, Deal knew, at least as long as the beer held out. “Maybe you should write a book, Vernon.”

“I have contemplated that very thing, Johnny-boy. Don’t think I haven’t.”

That nickname again. Okay coming from Driscoll, of course. Vernon Driscoll had known his father, from back in the glory days. But it spun him right out of the dull-edged torpor he’d let himself fall into, forced him right back to contemplation of the specter of Talbot Sams leering out from behind his own desk.

He leaned forward himself then. “So what do you think, Vernon? Can you find out about this guy Sams?”

Driscoll nodded. “If he’s on the screen.”

“Meaning?”

“Some of those guys are spooks,” Driscoll said. “Whatever name he gives you, that doesn’t have to be
him.”
He shrugged.

Deal nodded, remembering something. “He said I’d find his name in the DealCo files.”

“It’s worth checking,” Driscoll said, “but even so, it could still be an alias.”

“I suppose,” Deal said.

“You tell anybody else about this?”

“Janice.”

Driscoll glanced at him. “You tell her to keep it to herself?”

“She knows that much,” Deal said.

Driscoll nodded his head slowly. “It’s a hell of a note, isn’t it? Just the thought of your old man under the thumb of the Feds all that time.”

“You think it was possible, then?”

Driscoll stared at him. “Anything’s possible, that much I’ve learned.”

He straightened in his chair. “But whatever else he was, your old man was stand-up. He wouldn’t have screwed anybody that didn’t deserve a screwing. Matter of fact, it makes me feel better thinking it could have been him sending some of the scumbags away.”

Deal thought about that for a moment. Maybe there was some solace there, but it couldn’t make up for all the rest.

“This Sams would have to be pretty good at what he does,” Deal said finally. “I mean, to have used my father all that time and never blow his cover.”

“Yes,” Driscoll agreed. “He would have to be very good indeed.”

“Does that make him good enough to hide from you?”

“Possibly,” Driscoll said. “But I’ve dug people up from the witness protection program before. Finding anyone’s usually just a matter of time.” He cut another glance at Deal. “Meanwhile, how bad can it be? You just won yourself a nice little piece of a great big pie.”

“If it’s true,” Deal said. “I’ll find out Monday for sure. I called Jack Tate at the business desk of the
Herald,
but they hadn’t heard anything. So far, all I have is the word of a con man and a spook.”

“Well, I don’t know about this guy Sams,” Driscoll said. “But you can trust Eddie Barrios to smell a buck at a hundred paces.”

Deal sipped his beer. The light was fading and he saw a lamp go on in Mrs. Suarez’s apartment across the way. Music was playing somewhere in the distance, a plaintive ballad in Spanish, more Mexican than Spanish by the mellow sound of it. “I keep telling myself, Assume it’s all true, then what’s the worst part? I take the job, and along the way I help bring down one of the bad guys.”

“There’s a point,” Driscoll said.

“And just about that time, I think of my old man putting that pistol in his mouth.” He stared at Driscoll, his jaw rigid.

“You don’t know why that happened,” Driscoll said softly.

“That’s what I used to think,” Deal said. “Now all of a sudden, I’m not so sure.”

Driscoll sighed and stood to put his hand on Deal’s shoulder. “I’ll make a couple calls in the morning,” he said, “but it’ll probably be Monday before I can get much accomplished. Meantime, why don’t I buy you dinner down at Fox’s? Uncle Walt was so happy his Santa Clauses were clean, he gave me a fat bonus.”

Deal shook his head. “Uncle Walt’s dead.”

“I’ll buy you dinner anyway,” Driscoll said.

“I appreciate it,” Deal said. “But I’m not so hungry right now.”

Driscoll lifted an eyebrow. “Whatever you say, Johnny-boy.” He clapped Deal on the shoulder and headed toward the stairwell. “Meantime, I wouldn’t worry too much. All you’ve heard so far is a bunch of talk.”

Deal managed a smile, lifting his beer in salute as Driscoll descended the stairs. “You’re right, Vernon,” Deal said. “So far it’s all just talk.”

He remembered then that he’d wanted to tell Driscoll that he’d hired a new man himself, that perhaps the ex-cop could exercise his background-checking skills on a Mr. William Brown of south Georgia, but the matter hardly seemed pressing.

Something that could wait for another day, he thought, listening to the echo of Driscoll’s receding footsteps. The sound seemed to blend perfectly with the beat of that plaintive Spanish song and the thought that was looping through his mind, that he realized bothered him more than anything else:

Bad enough that you shot yourself, old man. But why couldn’t you at least have left me a note?