Deal with the Dead (13 page)

Chapter Thirteen

“So let me make sure I got it right,” Vernon Driscoll was saying. “A guy jumps you, tries to kill you, it ends up with you offering him a job.”

Deal nodded and reached to pick up his coffee. It was Sunday morning and the two of them were sitting at a tiny Formica-topped table inside the cafeteria at Parrot Jungle, one of the holdover attractions from the tamer days of Florida tourism. It was a junglelike place on the far south end of Coral Gables, once a far-flung destination for area citizenry. Now it was an anomaly for the neighborhood, an out-of-time aviary
cum
arboretum surrounded by million-dollar estates. But inside the old coral walls, you could still buy a breakfast for less than an hour’s wage, sit in the other-era cafeteria, and watch out the big glass windows as the staff groomed and readied the various species of birds for another arduous day of being looked at by visitors.

Deal had been bringing Isabel here since she’d been old enough to walk. She’d taken to the big birds immediately, drawn, or so Deal thought, by the similarity in their raucous modes of speech: a couple of words, a squawk or two, then another non sequitur—why wouldn’t a toddler feel at home?

Of course, Isabel was no toddler anymore. Eight years old, getting tall, rail-thin, looking more and more like her mother every day.

Right now, she was out in the petting area watching raptly as one of the trainers held a large black cockatoo her way. After a moment, Isabel extended her hand: in it a soda cracker. The bird cocked its head, seeming to check with the trainer for permission. The trainer, a young woman with bronze skin and a close-cropped haircut, nodded. The bird turned and used one of his claws to take the cracker delicately from Isabel’s fingers. The thing held the cracker to its formidable hooked beak and began to nibble: first one corner, then the next, until the last speck was gone. The smile on his daughter’s face as she watched it all made Deal’s eyes water.

He turned back to Driscoll, who stared at him as if he were one of the zoo attractions. “What?” Deal said. “Were you waiting for an answer?”

“No, I was just practicing for the parrots,” Driscoll said. “Polly’s a fucking idiot, like that.”

“This is a family place, Driscoll,” Deal said.

“Yeah, but there’s nobody else in here,” Driscoll said.

True enough,
Deal thought, glancing around the empty room. Almost eleven, the morning grooming just about at an end, the breakfast eaters dispersed, the lunch crowd yet to form. Deal sighed and leaned across the table toward Driscoll. “Russell Straight is a kid, Vernon. He made some mistakes—”

“Two plus two equals five, that’s a mistake,” Driscoll said. “Grand theft auto is a felony. So’s assault with intent.” The ex-cop tasted his coffee, stared down at it like he could see Straight’s reflection there. “If you were somebody else, the guy might have accomplished just what he set out to do.”

Deal turned his palms up in a placating gesture. “Look at it this way, Vernon. If the guy were to come to work for me, then at least I could keep an eye on him.”

Driscoll snorted. “If you’d have called the cops last night, you’d know exactly where he was right now.”

Deal rolled his eyes. They could continue like this right on through the arrival and departure of the lunch clientele, and probably the late-afternoon snack contingent as well.

“I wonder what it was like being partnered up with you on a long stakeout, Vernon.” Deal glanced out the window, noting that the big cockatoo was sitting on Isabel’s shoulder now.

“In what way?”

“I wonder, did the other guy ever get the last word?”

Driscoll was staring out the window now, too. “All the time,” he said. “What’s to argue about? Cops tend to think a lot alike.”

Deal nodded, watching idly as the big bird ducked its head toward Isabel’s ear. The thick glass dampened the sound, but it looked as if the thing might be offering his daughter advice. The expression on Isabel’s face suggested she was seriously considering it. “Can you remember being eight years old?” he asked, glancing over at Driscoll.

“I was never eight years old,” Driscoll said. “I was promoted straight to adulthood.”

“Seriously,” Deal said.

“I am serious,” Driscoll said. “My old man walked out when I was four. I had three paper routes by the time I was eight—after school I carried
The Daily Jeffersonian, Grit,
and
TV Guide.
Saturday mornings I sold donuts to the same people. Saturday afternoons, I cut yards. I got a real job when I was twelve.”

Deal turned from the idyllic sight outside the window. “What’d you do for fun?”

“I didn’t have any fun.”

Deal stared at him—the big man’s face was neutral. “How about Sundays?”

“Sundays, my old lady took me to church.”

“All day?”

Instead of answering, Driscoll made a pistol out of his hand, cocked his thumb, winked, and fired.

“What kind of church?”

“The kind that comes out of a Cracker Jack box,” Driscoll said. “A lot of praise-the-Lords and turning yourself in to be saved a couple times a month. There was talking in tongues, too, as I remember.”

Deal shook his head. “You never mentioned any of this stuff before.”

Driscoll shrugged. “I don’t recall you asking.”

Deal glanced back outside. The trainer had the cockatoo back on her arm. She and Isabel were chatting animatedly. It was the kind of scene that could come out of a dream of childhood. Thank God for small favors, he thought. Given all that his daughter had gone through, she deserved it. The thought of Talbot Sams and his veiled threats rekindled a steadfast rage inside him, but he pushed it back. He was not going to have this morning with his daughter spoiled.

He turned back to Driscoll. “So you worked hard, Vernon. You stayed out of trouble; therefore everybody else should be just as capable as you.”

Driscoll’s eyes widened slightly. “Doesn’t matter what I did or didn’t do. Just because you grow up hard, that doesn’t mean you get a free pass.”

“Agreed,” Deal said. “But I’m thinking maybe Russell Straight got something out of his system last night.”

“You better hope,” Driscoll said. “Meantime, I’d lock my door if I was you.”

“You think a lock is going to stop a bad guy?”

Driscoll stared at him. “It’s a figure of speech, that’s all. You’re getting to be as bad as me.”

“Daddy!” It was Isabel, running breathlessly into the cafeteria. “I got to hold the bird. Did you see, Uncle Vernon?”

“I sure did, sweetheart,” he said. Whatever Driscoll had missed in his own childhood hadn’t kept him from appreciating Isabel’s, Deal thought.

“The bird said I was pretty, Daddy.” She turned to him, her eyes shining.

“Smart bird,” Deal said, gathering her in his arms for a hug. She smelled like the shredded eucalyptus that covered much of the grounds outside. Eucalyptus and fresh little girl.

“Are we going to see the show? Oscar’s going to ride a bike on a wire stretched all the way across the stage, Gaby says…”

Deal gave her a wistful smile. There was a small amphitheater inside the grounds of the attraction, where they’d seen a dozen versions of the act: birds riding bikes on the high wire, birds soaring through flaming hoops, birds adding and subtracting, birds reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. “Not today, sweetheart. I’ve got to get you back to Mommy.”

“Please?” She gave him her most plaintive look.

“Next week,” Deal said. “We’ve got the whole weekend together then, remember?”

“Daddy!” she said, in a tone somewhere between complaint and resignation.

“I had a bird like that once,” Driscoll said.

Isabel turned. “You didn’t.”

“Sure I did,” Driscoll said. He turned to Deal. “You remember
Baretta,
right? I had a snitch who lived over on South Beach before it got fashionable, liked to think of himself as Robert Blake. The guy got whacked, his landlady was going to put this bird out in the trash, I kid you not. I took the thing home with me.”

Deal glanced at Isabel, who seemed to have missed most of Driscoll’s implications. “Where is it, Uncle Vernon?”

It was the kind of setup that Driscoll lived for, Deal knew, but the burly ex-cop simply smiled and rubbed Isabel’s dark curls. “He lives with Marie, now, sweetie.”

“Marie and Vernon used to be married, Isabel,” Deal said.

She nodded. “Like you and Mommy.”

Deal felt a pang. “Right.”

“Anyways, Marie decided she liked the bird’s company better than mine,” Driscoll added.

“She did not,” Isabel said.

Driscoll shrugged. “Ask her.”

“He’s kidding,” Isabel said to Deal.

“He does that,” Deal said. He stood and lifted her up in his arms. “Time for us to go now, kiddo.”

“Can we go to Marie’s and see your bird sometime, Uncle Vernon?”

“Sure, if we can get a SWAT team to cover us,” Driscoll said.

“What’s that?”

“He’s kidding again,” Deal said. “He means that he and Marie don’t get along very well anymore.”

“Oh,” Isabel said. Her eyes clouded, and Deal felt another pang, one that he felt all the way to the back of his knees. He and Janice had been doing their best, trying to maintain some sense of family despite everything, but as time wore on, it became more and more difficult to convince Isabel that they were any kind of a unit. He tried to imagine Vernon Driscoll, slogging along the slushy streets of a West Virginia winter, three different paper bags slung over his eight-year-old shoulder, but somehow the image simply would not come into focus. It wasn’t the kind of difficulty Isabel had had to face, granted, but tough times came in many guises, that’s what he decided.

He gave his daughter another hug and set her back on the floor. “You ready?” Deal said, turning to Driscoll.

Driscoll glanced up at him. “I’m always ready,” he said, pushing his bulk up out of the spindly looking chair. He leaned toward Deal as the three of them moved to the doors, where a teenaged kid in a hair net was polishing the glass, readying for the afternoon crowd. The ex-cop put his hand on Deal’s shoulder and squeezed. “That’s the point I was trying to make there a little earlier. You should always be ready, too, my friend.”

Deal thought about an answer, but by that time, they were outside the heavy glass doors and the shrieks of the parrots had taken command.

Chapter Fourteen

“
Château Margaux,” the sommelier
intoned in an appropriately reverential way. “Nineteen sixty-four.”

Rhodes barely glanced at the bottle and nodded his head at the proffered cork. The sommelier nodded and handed the bottle carefully to an assistant, who transferred it to a pouring cradle as carefully as if it were formed of sugar glass.

“It looks like blood,” Kaia Jesperson observed as the assistant turned a smoothly working crank and the crystal decanter began to fill.

“Far more valuable than that,” Rhodes said, staring across the candlelit linens at her. She wore a black cocktail dress with a plunging neckline, had her auburn hair knotted tightly atop her head. Every man in the elegant room had been stealing glances at her. He’d spotted one couple with their heads bent close, their eyes darting her way. Obviously they were trying to agree on just who she was, Rhodes thought. What movie star, what society prominence, had graced their presence tonight?

The sommelier himself set out their glasses, first for Rhodes and then Kaia. “For the lady,” he said with a bow, then disappeared like smoke.

She was about to say something to him then stopped, turning back to the goblet at her place. She registered it then and glanced up at him, a smile teasing her lips. “Rubies,” she said, taking hold of the necklace that trailed up over the rim of the glass. “At least they
look
like rubies.”

She had the necklace uncoiled from the goblet by now and had draped it around her neck. The couple who’d been watching them were agog.

“That was quite a trick,” she said.

He shrugged. “A high compliment, coming from you.”

She glanced him. “Meaning?”

“That stunt you managed in Kusadisi, of course. I’ve been wanting to ask how you did it.”

She stared at him levelly now. “I wouldn’t call it a stunt.”

“I don’t mean to—”

“It’s not a trick, Richard. To try to explain it to someone who hasn’t been there…”

“Been where, exactly?”

She paused and looked away momentarily. “Even if I explained it to you, you wouldn’t understand. It would be like trying to teach a person to swim who’s never been in the water.”

“Try me,” he said.

She sighed then. “All right. This much, no more.”

She closed her eyes, drawing a breath that lifted her shoulders a fraction—
summoning energy,
Rhodes found himself thinking. After a moment, she opened her eyes and lifted her hand from her lap and brought her palm above the candle that burned in an ornate silver holder between them.

When Rhodes realized what she was doing, he started for her wrist, but she stopped him with a sharp nod of her head. Her eyes had not left his. He felt like a rabbit caught in a snake’s crosshairs.

She held her palm to the tip of the flame for what seemed an eternity. Rhodes saw what was happening, but still found it difficult to believe. He’d played childish games with fire himself: pinching out candle flames with his fingers, slashing his hand karate-fashion through the flames of a campfire until the fuzz on his arms had been singed away. But this was altogether different, her hand unmoving, the tip of the flame blossoming against her skin…

Reason told him that Kaia’s hand should be burning, the flesh blistering, her skin crisping…

But she stared back at him steadily, her gaze unwavering, not the least flicker of pain on her features. Finally, she withdrew her hand from the tip of the flame and held it across the table to him, palm up. Where he might have expected charred flesh was nothing but an indistinct smudge, the slightest dot of soot.

He glanced up at her, dumbfounded. He noticed that the woman who’d been stealing glances their way was gaping at them, her mouth open, a forkful of dessert frozen above her plate.

“Take my hand, Richard,” Kaia commanded.

He did as he was told, cradling it gently in his own.

“Go ahead,” she told him, “feel my palm.”

He looked at her uncertainly, then pressed his palm to hers.
Cool to the
touch,
he thought. And dry. As if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

“It’s impossible,” he said. “How—”

“No,” she said. “That’s it. We can talk about other things now.”

He released her hand. The couple who’d been eavesdropping were whispering busily to each other.

He opened his mouth as he turned back to her, then saw the look in her eyes and reconsidered. He had determined that this would be the perfect evening. He glanced at the necklace that she had donned and lifted his glass in submission.

“It becomes you,” he said.

She allowed her smile to blossom for him at last. He felt the blood beating at his temples, an ache at the back of his throat. He wanted whole pitchers of rubies to pour for her. A tub of diamonds for her bath.

“I’ll take your word for it,” she said, glancing down at the snowy plane of her chest.
King Solomon’s mines,
he was thinking, they were nothing compared to what he was staring at.

“And thank you,” she added, bringing her gaze to his. “That
was
very clever.”

The sommelier was back with another glass, his face as impassive as ever. Rhodes felt a moment’s giddiness. He wanted to clap the man on the shoulder, assure him it would be perfectly acceptable to demonstrate pleasure.

The sommelier, meantime, had poured half an inch of wine into Rhodes’ glass and stood offering it to him in his massive black hand. Rhodes tasted and nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Quite good.”

Quite good?
His own words echoed inside his head. The wine was magnificent. The enigmatic woman across the table from him was beyond that, a woman who could, it seemed, walk through fire—and never mind just how she managed it.

He had spent a lifetime making and spending money, more money than he’d ever dreamed of, none of that had ever pleasured him as he was pleasured now. Suddenly there was a
reason
for what he did. Approval to be sought. Admiration to be gained. For the first time in years, he found himself yearning for The Lucky One’s presence. The one man in all the world who could appreciate his find as Rhodes himself could.

“I was wrong,” she was saying, holding her glass aloft toward him. Her lips glistened in the candlelight. “Not blood at all. It’s like drinking rubies.”

Rhodes nodded. He brought his own glass up and toasted her. “To rubies,” he said. “And to you.” He waved his hand to indicate the wine and the necklace she wore. “All these things have been waiting for you to give them life.”

“That’s a charming thing to say,” she said. She tossed her head and glanced at the whispering couple across the room. The two immediately averted their eyes. She turned back to him, taking another sip of her wine.

“Everything is charming here.”

“I’m glad you like it.”

“Why on earth wouldn’t I?”

He shrugged, glancing around their surroundings.
Stresa,
it was called these days: the cuisine northern Italian; the décor, French. The staff all local Bahamians. Broad plate-glass windows looking out upon a forested glade a stone’s throw from a gaudy resort, but most of the tourists kept to the tiki bars and the Americanized restaurants closer to the water’s edge. Rhodes felt comfortable here, more comfortable than he’d felt in years.

“My father had this place built, you know.”

She shook her head, bemused. Her gaze swept around the room once again. “When was that?”

“A long time ago,” he said. “It was different back then. More ‘New York night spot.’”

She nodded. “Is that why we stopped in Nassau? Auld lang syne?”

He shook his head.

“Then why?”

“This is home,” he told her.

She stared at him. “I thought we were going to the States…” She trailed off, her glass tilted slightly in her hand.

“You don’t want to spill any of that,” Rhodes said with a nod. A waiter had materialized at their table to set down gilt-edged plates bearing what looked like pâté dotted with caviar. He couldn’t be sure. Beyond the wine, Rhodes had left the menu to the captain.

When the waiter was gone, he turned back to her. “My father was born in New York. He moved to Florida early on. He did well there. But things eventually took a turn.”

“They always do,” she agreed.

“Yes,” Rhodes said, nodding to her. “It was required of him to leave rather suddenly.”

“When was this?”

“In the fifties,” Rhodes said. “About the time that everyone else in the Caribbean started going the other way.”

“And this is the place he came to?”

“My father found gracious haven in the islands,” Rhodes said.

“And you grew up here?”

“Off and on,” he said. “I went to school in the States, got my start in business there.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “Your father was a criminal?”

He looked at her gravely. “Who isn’t?”

“What exactly did he do?”

“He gambled.”

She nodded. “Who doesn’t?”

He tipped his glass to her. “He had clubs on the mainland and a party ship that anchored just off Palm Beach for many years. This was in the forties and fifties, before Las Vegas, before gambling became tawdry. He was a charming host and very good at what he did. The Lucky One, that’s what the Hispanics called him.”

“An interesting name,” she said. She nibbled at her pâté, made an approving sound somewhere in her throat. “That project in Florida you talked about with Babescu,” she said after a moment, a question in her voice. He nodded, noting that her gaze did not waver when she mentioned the name. “I thought that’s where you were going, that’s all.”

“I may yet,” he said. “But there’s something I need to find first.”

“You don’t strike me as the sort of man who lacks for anything,” she said mildly.

He had a bite of the pâté himself. The flavor seemed to have been designed with the explosive wine in mind. “I wish my father were here to meet you,” he said.

“So do I,” she said. “What is it you need to find?”

He dabbed at the corner of his mouth and signaled with his nearly empty wineglass. In seconds, the assistant was back to pour them more.

“The fact is, I’m nearly broke,” he told her.

She glanced at their surroundings then touched the rubies at her neck, hardly convinced. “Are these on loan, then?”

“Wealth is a relative thing,” he told her. “Babescu, the bastard, robbed me blind. You happened in on the end of our discussion.”

When she didn’t flinch, he went on. “What he didn’t squander on preposterous ideas like that spectacle in Kusadisi, he sank into this colossus in Miami.” He shook his head. “Shipping, ports, international trade. The man fancied himself the next Onassis.”

“Why not just sell out?” she asked. She turned her gaze discreetly. “It’s all yours now, after all.”

He shrugged. “It’s hardly the time,” he said. “Once the project gets off the ground, then maybe I’ll be able to unload…,” he trailed off, shaking his head. “As the old saying goes, it takes money to make money. I need cash quickly, and I can’t make myself visible in certain quarters.”

“You’re wanted in the United States,” she said. It was not a question.

He put his wineglass down and stared at her. “Kaia, I’m wanted everywhere.” He paused and waved his hand at the room. “Everywhere but
here,
that is.”

She glanced toward the entrance of the place uncertainly, as if she expected a squadron of police to burst in. “And you have money in Nassau?”

“Nearby,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“It means there’s someone in Miami I need to speak to.”

She had more wine, a full swallow this time. “You meant it when you say you have
to find
it, don’t you?”

He leaned forward. “Kaia, you
are
beautiful, you can walk through fire, but that’s the least part of it.” He reached to take her hand. “You understand me. You’re a kindred spirit.”

She was looking at him, but her mind was elsewhere, still calculating all he’d told her over the past weeks. “It’s your father’s money, isn’t it?”

He smiled. “Amazing. Simply amazing. If I’d had you with me all this time…”

She sat back in the brocaded chair. “You’ve brought me all the way to Nassau to go on a treasure hunt.”

He smiled. “To take possession of what’s rightfully mine, that’s all.”

“Who is this person you have to speak to?”

Rhodes shrugged. “He’s a building contractor, the son of an old friend of my father’s.”

“He has your money?”

He gave her a speculative look. “I believe he can point me in the right direction.”

“Assuming he would want to.”

He smiled. “Frank and Basil can be persuasive.”

She chose to ignore the implication. “Why now, Richard? Why didn’t you come here a long time ago?”

“For one thing, I didn’t need the money, or so I thought. I made a big mistake, trusting Babescu,” he said, shrugging. “And I was undergoing some extensive medical procedures that made travel impractical.”

“You’re sick?”

He thought he saw concern in her eyes. The thought only enhanced the bittersweet ache he felt every time he looked at her. “Nothing like that,” he said. “Just a bit of cosmetic rearrangement.”

She looked at him carefully. “Whatever it was,” she said, “they did it well. Make sure to give me the name of your doctor.”

“What on earth for?” he said. “You’re perfect.”

“Time catches up with everyone, Richard.” She bent to her plate and finished the pâté in a bite.

Even the way she chewed her food seemed attractive, he marveled. He knew he was in trouble now.

She put her fork down and smiled. “How old are you?” she asked.

“Does it matter?”

“Not really,” she said. “Have you ever been married?”

He raised his eyes in reply. “We’re getting to the basic questions a bit late, aren’t we?”

“Maybe it’s the wine,” she said. “Have you been married?”

He paused, gazing up at the ceiling momentarily. “‘Were a woman possible as I am possible, then marriage would be possible,’” he said.

“That’s rather lofty,” she said.

“It’s the work of an American poet,” he said. “The speaker fancies himself too eccentric ever to find a mate.”