Done Deal (21 page)

“My wife’s alive,” Deal heard himself saying. His voice sounded hollow in his ears. Driscoll didn’t respond. “She’s alive. She called me.”

“Your
wife
called you?” Deal heard the disbelief in his voice.

“I’m going to go now,” Deal said, woodenly.

“Look, Deal, you been under a lot of stress. Make it easy on yourself, okay? All you gotta do—”

Deal dropped the phone back in its cradle and sat staring blankly at the television set where Don Noe was pointing excitedly at a vortex of red and yellow computer paint obliterating the Caribbean.

“It looks like a bad one, Don,” the anchorperson said as the scene cut away.

“It’s still a tropical depression,” Don said. “But we’ll be keeping an eye on it. We could be looking at the first hurricane of the season.” He seemed enthused.

Homer was back by the phone, handing Deal a beer he’d retrieved from the refrigerator.

“Of course, bad summer weather is one of baseball’s concerns with our area,” the anchorman said. “Here with a report on what’s coming out of the owners’ convention is Frank Forte—”

Homer snapped the set off and Frank sizzled away. The room was dark now, except for the glow from the sign outside. Half of Homer stood pink for a moment, then went dark. Then went pink again.

“We talking about the Cal I know?”

Deal nodded slowly. “That was a cop answered his phone. Somebody killed him, Homer.”

Homer shook his head and went to the refrigerator for another beer. “Goddamn,” he said, taking a long pull from the bottle.

“The same people who killed him were coming after me, Homer.”

“Yeah? How do you know that? Maybe it was just some garden-variety crack head broke in…”

“Homer…” Deal said. “You know who it was. Who ordered it, anyway.”

Homer stared at him for a moment. “Alcazar,” he nodded, finally. He took another slug of his beer, thinking about things. “The cop thinks you did it, right?”

“I might as well have,” Deal said. He put the beer on the windowsill and rubbed his face in his hands. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so tired. “First he killed Penfield, now Cal.”

“Wait a minute,” Homer said. “So you piss Alcazar off, fuck up a million dollars’ worth of his cars, fuck with his ego. That’d be his style, to off you, for it. And Cal happened to get in the way, his goons wouldn’t worry about that, either. But where’s Penfield figure into it?”

Deal glanced up at him. “Alcazar had gotten involved with the baseball thing somehow. Penfield needed money, Alcazar wanted to make some…” Deal trailed off, trying to think it through.

“But why would he kill Penfield, then?” Homer shook his head.

“I don’t know.” Deal stared at him. “If he wanted to buy a baseball team, Alcazar would need Penfield as a front man.” Deal threw up his hands. “It just doesn’t make sense. But I have this funny feeling, like I gave Alcazar the excuse for all of this.”

Homer thought it over.

“So you spent last night with Cal and then you went to see Penfield this morning. I’m the only other guy you spent any time with the last twenty-four hours, what do you think that makes my chances?”

Deal looked up at him. “I wouldn’t write you an insurance policy, Homer.”

Homer laughed. “Sense of humor. Maybe there’s hope for you yet.”

Deal took a breath. It seemed to take a long time to get his lungs inflated. He stood up, finally, and went to stare out the window. “I have to find Alcazar, Homer. If I’m going to find Janice, I’ve got to find Alcazar first.”

Homer stared at him, incredulous. “You think he’s got her
too?
”

Deal stared at him. “Where does he live, Homer?”

After a moment, Homer’s gaze wilted. He shrugged. “I ain’t exactly on his guest list.”

“You never drove him home, delivered a car?”

“Naw, he’s got a thing, thinks somebody’s gonna blow him up. Leon does all that shit, or one of those Cuban muscleheads.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Deal said, turning back to the window.

“All I know, it’s out on one of the islands there.”

Deal stared out toward the east. Separating the beach—that mile-wide strip of hotels and apartment houses—from the mainland, lay the waters of the bay, dotted here and there with manmade islands that showed up as ragged shadows now that the light was gone. Most of them—like Sunrise, where Penfield’s house was—were connected to the beach or one of the causeways by bridges. A few you had to be ferried to. That would suit Alcazar and his paranoia, Deal thought. Maybe he and Homer could rent a boat, go island hopping. Sure.

He turned his gaze back toward the city, wincing at the glare pulsing from the Coppertone girl. A few blocks away was the bank tower where Penfield had kept his offices, all lit up itself in gold and green floodlights.

Come back from the dead, old man. Tell me what you know, he thought. Tell me where my wife might be…and then, as he stared at those blank glass walls, something occurred to him.

He turned to Homer. “You got a phone book?”

Homer gave him a look. “How do you think I get comfortable at dinner?”

Deal glanced over at the other chair by the dinette. Sure enough, two thick phone books arranged like the couch cushions in the cars Homer drove, building up the seat and chair back. Deal went to the table, grabbed one of the books.

“He ain’t listed,” Homer said, as Deal flipped the book open, traced a finger down the long list of Coopers. A Betty, a Benjamin, no Barbara. Two initial
B
’s, one in Hialeah, one without an address. He tried the one in Hialeah first, just to be sure, hung up when he got a message machine speaking Spanish.

He dialed the second number and she answered on the second ring. “Barbara?” Deal asked.

“This is Barbara,” her voice strange, wary, on weirdo-guard.

“It’s Deal,” he said. “John Deal.”

“Oh,” she said, her surprise there, but muted.

“I get you up or something?”

“I’m up,” she said, her voice gathering strength. “Way up.” She laughed, a strange, sad laugh. “You heard about Mr. Penfield, I guess. They sent us home early this afternoon.…”

“I heard,” Deal said. “They think I might have been involved.”

“Is that right?” she said, sounding dazed. “Did you?” she asked, after a moment.

“No,” Deal said.

“I didn’t think so,” she said, her words slurring.

“Listen, Barbara, I think I know who did it…”

She broke in. “I’ve just been sitting here having a glass of wine…well, more than a glass of wine, really, trying to make sense of things, you know. I mean, it’s really a pretty scary world…” Her voice trailed off and Deal wondered if she might be about to hang up.

“Barbara, are you all right?”

Her voice was abruptly bright—too bright. “So you probably called for something, right? I mean, if you heard about what happened. So why
are
you calling?”

Deal stared at the receiver for a moment. What on earth had happened to the calm, together lady who’d backed down a Miami cop, bailed him out of a jam? He had the feeling that if he so much as mentioned Alcazar’s name, he’d lose her. “Look, Barbara, I need your help.”

“
My
help?” She broke off for a moment, laughing. “You
must
be desperate.” He could hear the sound of ice falling into a glass. “Shit.”

“Barbara, I’d rather not talk over the phone…”

“Well, you’re welcome to come over,” she said. “We’ll have a drink to dear, departed Mr. Penfield.”

“Great,” he said. “That’d be great. Just tell me how to get there.”

He repeated the directions out loud, motioning for Homer to pay attention. When he hung up, he held out his hand to the little man.

“Give me the keys.”

Homer stared at his hand, thought a moment. He looked up at Deal, shaking his head. “I’ll drive,” he said. “I’m the designated driver.”

“Stop fucking around, Homer. I’m going to find Alcazar. You don’t want to be in the middle.”

“You told her ten minutes,” Homer said, and was out the door before Deal could stop him.

***

It was actually closer to twenty minutes before they were pulling up in front of a high-rise off Brickell. Sheets of rain had swept in off the bay, slowing even Homer’s driving. Street lamps up and down the boulevard were dark and the wind had begun to shred the canvas canopy that shielded the front door. A matronly lady in an evening gown was holding onto her permed hair, tottering toward the entrance while the parking attendant drove off in her Town Car.

Deal knew the neighborhood well. His father had built one of the towers next door. It was a dozen years or so ago, when developers were in a contest to see who could cram the most accouterments into huge condos aimed at the South American market. Construction costs were running about two hundred dollars a square foot, sales prices twice that. Things had long since cooled off in South America, but this was still pricey territory.

“Just leave it,” Deal told Homer, clambering out of the backseat. “Take the keys.”

When he got out of the car, the air surprised him. At least ten degrees cooler, and the spray whipped under the canopy by the wind made it seem twice that. He thought of the mountains. Fly fishing. Him in a pair of leaky waders, struggling against some heavy current in the middle of a stream, Janice watching from the rocks on shore, chewing on one knuckle in concern. A trip from another life.

They’d spent that evening on the balcony of a hotel room, watching an evening storm rumble down a New Mexico mountainside a few hundred yards away. Gray mist erasing the pines in a placid smoke, the rush of cool air, the first chilling drops that hit them, sent them diving under the covers of the big, Inn-of-the-Mountain-Gods bed…

“We goin’ in or what?” It was Homer looking up at him, wiping droplets of water off his chin.

“Yeah,” Deal said, as a bolt of lightning blew everything white, the crack of thunder instantaneous, deafening. “We’re going in.”

There was an ironwork sculpture in a flagstone and waterfall garden, cast-bronze doors for the entryway, a chandelier they could have used in Versailles just inside. The matronly lady had disappeared. A guy at a desk in the lobby wearing a suit and tie gave Homer a squinty look, but buzzed them through an inner gate after he called upstairs.

“We’re going to the top,” Homer said, watching the steady blips on the elevator’s control panel. Deal nodded, feeling his ears popping as they rose.

“How do you know she didn’t call the cops?”

Deal glanced at him. “I don’t.”

“Then why are we doing this?”

“Because I’m fresh out of choices, Homer.”

Homer nodded grudgingly.

The elevator opened onto a marble foyer with a smaller version of the chandelier downstairs, all of it surrounded by mirrors that bounced the light and crystal back and forth in a way meant to hurt your eyes, but in a subtle way. There was a set of doors opposite the elevator, but they were looking for “A.”

Homer stood in the foyer, his eyes about level with an odd-shaped marble table bearing a vase of cut flowers. “Reminds me of my place,” Homer said.

Deal glanced down a long hallway on his right. There was a door open at the end, a square of light falling out into the dim corridor.

The sound of breaking glass echoed down the hallway toward them. Deal moved toward the open door, Homer on his heels, his gait rolling like a tiny sailor’s.

“What’s this lady do?” Homer called after him.

“She’s a clerk-typist,” Deal said. “Isn’t that what it looks like?” He felt his jaw tightening as he spoke.

When he got to the doorway, Barbara was on her knees in the marbled entryway of her condo, trying to pick up shards of glass in her bare hands. She was wearing a long robe, silk, a dark maroon, the kind of thing you paid a couple hundred dollars for, would make you comfortable just thinking about putting it on. He wondered what it was to feel comfortable. She glanced up at Deal, one slender leg sticking out, the front of her robe gaping open. She met Deal’s gaze, then gathered her robe as Homer joined him.

“Damn,” she said, staring down at her fingers. A bright thread of blood trickled to her wrist. She stood, weaving, licking the blood away.

“You scared me.” She was smiling now, but her eyes were hooded and glassy. Her gaze went back on Homer, uncertain.

“This is Homer,” Deal said. “He’s a friend of mine.”

“Well,” she said. “Come on in.”

She moved unsteadily down the hallway, her shoulder pushing a painting askew—it showed a man poised in middive over a swimming pool, the back of a pristine suburban home—everything so perfect you knew it was impossible to breathe there, Deal thought.

They followed her into a vast living room, black marble floors, white Natuzzi sofas and chairs, a bar that seemed to have grown out of the dark stone and mirrors of the place like live crystal.

“Sheee-ee,” Homer whispered. His gaze held on a bank of windows overlooking the city to the west.

Lightning was spidering the horizon out by the Everglades and an evil-looking bank of clouds smothered everything to the south. A pair of EMS vehicles blinked the wet ribbon of I-95, sirens lost at this distance.

“What can I get you?” Barbara was at the bar, dropping ice into some glasses.

Homer turned, interested.

“Nothing,” Deal said. “We’re kind of pressed for time.”

“Right,” Barbara said, eyeballing the vodka she was pouring into her glass. She swished the liquid around, had a taste. She stared over at Deal, working for a moment to get him into focus. “You needed some help.” Humoring him.

There was a door cut out of the mirrored wall behind her. A bedroom. Carpeted, but more of the black and white. Drawers pulled out of the dresser. A couple of bags on the bed, trailing clothes.

“Mr. Penfield was into black and white, huh?” Deal ran his hand over a sofa back. End of a hard day, you could sink into something like this, have a beer, forget about whether your subs were going to show up in the morning.

When he looked back at her, she’d put her glass down, some of the blear gone from her face. There was color in her cheeks now. Anger? Embarrassment? Homer edged backward, his shitstorm antennae starting to quiver.