Done Deal (23 page)

He imagined shooting backward into the gleaming Hatteras just opposite, or cutting too sharply from the slip, gouge into the dock, rend the hull just about waterline. They could go full fathom five, right in the slip. And maybe he’d just stay down with it. Be like that rock star who drowned under his own boat in the marina somewhere in California, could have come up, but just didn’t want to.

He remembered those Sundays coming in from fishing, his father making him practice docking the Aquasport over and over again, back in, cut the power, try to slip it up against the boards, “like kissing a girl,” his dad saying, the guy who ran the marina watching, leaning over a railing, chewing on his cigar and shaking his head, obviously thinking,
What a sorry piece of shit
, no matter how Deal managed. He’d wanted to tie the guy’s dick to the prop of the Aquasport, run him around the bay a few times. All of that maneuvering difficult enough, and that had been in calm weather.

He forced himself to stop thinking. It was just stalling, putting off the moment.

“Okay,” he called to Barbara. “Cast off.”

She nodded, undid the line and slung it aboard. Deal gave her a wave, dropped the boat into reverse and hurried to add some throttle before he stalled out. Suddenly, he felt a lurch at the bow.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. What now? What had he done? He turned to see Barbara heaving herself over the front rail, wanted to do something about it, but
Miss Daisy
was whisking backward, a nice swing out of the slip, but a little too quick, really, and he hurried to throttle back, then drop into forward before he circled around into the pilings that separated
Miss Daisy
from the neighboring berth.

The boat shuddered, but the engines held, and suddenly they were moving forward, out into the channel, rain spattering his face. Barbara pulled herself back along the line that ran the foredeck, then joined him in the cockpit.

“That was really pretty good,” she said. “I didn’t think you knew what you were doing.”

Deal shook his head. The boat was forging through the waves, already edging past the lights of some houseboats anchored in the free water at the edge of the marina waters. He’d forgotten how fast things happened out here, his eyes searching for the first marker buoy. Miss the channel, they’d be hard aground in a second. If you had a pair of stilts and knew where to step, you could walk a couple miles offshore down here, never get wet. Get
Miss Daisy
stuck in the muck here, they wouldn’t drown, but Deal could fold his tent, do nothing but wait for the Coast Guard to pick him up, drop him off at the slammer.

He glanced over at Barbara. “What are you doing here?”

She shrugged. “I was standing up there and remembered, I can’t drive a stick shift.”

Meaning the Rivolta. He’d had Homer give her the keys. “You could have taken a cab,” he said, still searching the surging waters ahead. Where was the goddamn channel buoy?

“I left my purse home,” she said.

“You don’t need my trouble,” he said.

“That’s nice,” she said. “But let’s call it my trouble too, okay? My chance to help even the score. Thornton Penfield wasn’t any saint, but he sure didn’t deserve what Alcazar gave him.”

Deal stared at her, nodding. He wondered if she were right, whether Penfield deserved such loyalty. Whether he did or not, you’d love to have someone like Barbara on your side, he thought. He glanced back over the bow, searching for something to say, when suddenly his stomach clenched. He leaned hard into the wheel straining to swing
Miss Daisy
away from a blocky houseboat that was moored just off the buoy, hiding the goddamn light, not ten feet away from them…

“Holy shit,” Homer cried, going over backward down the hatchway. Barbara bounced off the rails securing the deck hood, then back against Deal. Her feet flew out from under her and she landed in a tangle at his feet.

Deal struggled to keep upright, keep the wheel in his hands, could they maybe just plow right through the goddamn thing?

…and then, their bow was whisking by the houseboat, barely clearing it, but crashing into a wooden dinghy tied off at its side. The dinghy disappeared into the foaming water with a crunch, the houseboat rocking wildly in their wake. He heard a dog barking from somewhere and imagined the people inside the houseboat, bouncing across the decks, still lost in their dreams, wondering where the bus had come from.

Already
Miss Daisy
was thirty feet away, chopping the waves, Deal still with a death’s grip on the wheel, trying to get his breath back.

Barbara dragged herself up, clutching his pant leg. “I guess I spoke too soon,” she said, grabbing at him again as they crested a bigger wave.

Homer clambered out of the hatchway, checking a busted lip. “What
was
that?”

“Cheap bastards moored up without running lights,” he said. He stuck out his hand, helped Barbara to her feet. Probably sneaked in after dark, trying to save a few bucks dockage, and they’d nearly sunk him. Well, they’d have fun getting ashore without their dinghy.

He saw the ragged fringe of the mangrove island that sheltered the marina coming up on their starboard side, and nosed
Miss Daisy
around a bit, dead into the wind and the heaving waves. He’d made it this far, he thought. There was some small satisfaction in that. He nodded, feeling the spray cool on his face as they headed out into open water.

Chapter 31

“I’m Mr. Terrell’s assistant,” the man in the vested suit was saying. “Maybe if you explained what it was about, Mr. Al-
kiz
-er, then I could help you.”

Alcazar shook his head patiently. He wondered if this person knew how to pronounce his name properly, if he were actually trying to insult him. Alcazar motioned for Alejandro to take a seat at the small conference table that stood between them and this fool wearing an ill-fitting suit.

They were in the anteroom of a suite near the ballroom where a celebration was in progress, no formal announcement yet, but everyone in Atlanta for the commissioner’s meeting agreed. Tomorrow, when the agenda moved to the matter of the expansion vote, the Tropics were a lock to get the franchise.

Three years of lobbying, wheedling, cajoling, junketing—even some attempts at outright bribery—on the part of a dozen U.S. cities were about to come to an end. Two municipalities had erected budget-crushing stadiums to house the team—“If you build it, they will come,” went the literature of one city’s effort—and those two faced the specter of servicing one hundred million dollars or more of debt with flea markets and rock concerts, tractor pulls and evangelical convocations, where they’d hoped to have the crack of bats, the slap of horsehide into gloves. Pity the poor losers, Alcazar thought. He could afford to.

Alcazar’s view was out a bank of windows overlooking the hotel’s lavish inner court. There was a waterfall cascading several stories into an acre of planted rain forest where walkways wound, linking up the bars and restaurants tucked away here and there among the foliage. Huge banners carrying the logos of the various American and National League teams had been hung off standards about the balconies. On the far side of the vast courtyard, escalators zigzagged up from through the trees, linking the hotel to an exclusive shopping mall. He imagined the owners and executives down below, swilling martinis, toasting the banners that hung above them, while their wives swarmed the larded shops.

Earlier, killing time, Alcazar had strolled through the shopping area—which made Worth Avenue look a bit down at the heels to his way of thinking. There was a certain flair in this city—he’d give them that—and for a moment, he entertained the notion of moving his base into new territory, though he just as quickly dismissed it. Too many clownish southerners to test him with their egregious smiles. “Why shoor, Mr.
Az
-kizzer, we’d be glad to do bidness with you, if’n we
can
…” Why put up with it?

He could hear the muffled drone of music through the walls behind him. He wondered briefly what kind of orchestra had been engaged. Had it been
his
celebration, it would be something vibrant, something that exuded heat. The Sound Machine, perhaps, Gloria Estafan there to kick sparks from the stage, melt the speakers, let these moon-faced burghers from the North know what they were in for in the tropics.

Of course, it wasn’t his celebration, but Terrence Terrell’s, and Penfield’s cohorts who’d finally convinced Terrell to buy their baseball team for them. That clutch of good old boys had probably exhumed someone from the dead to play at their celebration, someone remembering sweet strains of something from college, but nothing too exuberant, let’s show our friends from the North that we’re just like they are, every penny we own ground from some poor man’s sweat when you got right down to it, but we’re going to pretend like we picked it off these trees that grow about us…well, never mind, Alcazar thought. Never mind that his money hadn’t been good enough, that he hadn’t had a prayer of participating in the ownership group. There was a future, and there were always unexpected developments to come. And meantime, he would still benefit, and benefit greatly.

The man in the suit did not seem happy that Alejandro had sat down without being asked. “Tell Mr. Terrell I won’t keep him,” Alcazar said.

“I’m afraid this isn’t the time…”

“Just explain that it’s about the Republic Holding Group,” Alcazar said. “I think he’ll want to see me.”

The man considered it. Alcazar watched the gears turning. Throw the greasers out, or go pester his boss who was probably holding court with half the net worth of America, his hand down the back of some scooped out cocktail gown nearby.

“It is important,” Alcazar assured the man.

The man fingered a thread that had unraveled at one of his buttonholes, then sighed. “Just a minute,” he said, and disappeared through a doorway.

Alejandro glanced up at him, his cratered jaw swinging back and forth. “These people do not know how to act.”

Alcazar nodded. “That is true, Alejandro. But it is important to walk among them now and again. To remind yourself with whom you must contend.”

Alejandro nodded, grudgingly. He clearly had ideas about how to contend with such cretins.

The door opened then, and the man with the unfortunate suit was back, followed by Terrell, whom Alcazar recognized from the many photographs he’d seen: America’s techno whiz, the answer to the Japanese threat, young, handsome, dynamic, ballyhooed as if the hopes of the very nation were pinned to his star.

Foolish, jingoistic stuff, Alcazar thought. He envied the man only the Palm Beach estate he’d purchased, the same venerable property that had once belonged to a railroad titan and which Alcazar, despite his wealth, had no hope of acquiring. He gave an inner shrug. So that made two things. No baseball team. No Palm Beach mansion. Perhaps it would not always be so. Meanwhile, he would do the next best thing: profit.

“Mr. Alcazar?” Terrell said, smiling affably.

Alcazar nodded. No veiled insult there. Terrell wore a lime green pair of slacks—linen—a white cotton shirt with a soft collar unbuttoned at the neck, a navy blue blazer. Deck shoes, no socks. Not Alcazar’s style, but bounds above his minion’s taste. Perhaps he would be able to talk with this man after all.

“Claude here tells me you’re with Republic Holding?” Terrell’s gaze curious, wondering what might have sent some holding company’s underling scurrying all the way up to Atlanta at such a time.

Alcazar nodded again. “I
am
Republic Holding, Mr. Terrell.”

Terrell’s expression went blank for a moment. The signals in his brain scrambling for an instant, then rearranging themselves, synapses clanging, reopening—let’s try that again—channeling, processing: Yes, yes, we copy, we understand.

No more affable team owner, his gaze was suddenly hard. He turned to his assistant. “Go on back to the party, Claude.”

Claude hesitated.

“It’s okay,” Terrell said, flashing the we’re-just-folks smile. “You see what Mrs. Spidel wants to drink. I was right in the middle of that.”

Claude gave Alcazar another distrustful look, then slunk back out of the room.

When the door closed, Terrell turned, shaking his head. “What’s your first name, Mr. Alcazar?”

“I am who you think I am,” Alcazar said.

Terrell nodded, taking it in. “That goddamn Penfield,” he said. “He assured me he and a bunch of his country club buddies controlled that property.”

Alcazar smiled. Terrell was quick, that much was apparent. “I assume he showed you the documents to prove it.”

“Of course he did,” Terrell said.

“Then, so far as anyone else is concerned,” Alcazar said, “that is the truth of the matter.”

“Son of a
bitch
,” Terrell said, turning to gaze out the window, turning it over in his mind. “He stood to make plenty on this franchise. Why was he worried about some pissant land deal?”

Alcazar shrugged. “One gets older, one gets impatient to see the returns on an investment. Your baseball team will take years to turn a profit. This ‘pissant land deal,’ as you call it, stands to return eight million dollars on an investment of less than three.”

Terrell stared at him skeptically. Alcazar shrugged. “It is a simple concept, Mr. Terrell. Buy low, sell high.”

Terrell swung about to face Alcazar. “Earning your money is one thing. But to cut some sneaking deal with a…” Terrell was searching for the right insult, but Alcazar brushed it aside.

“We all have our skeletons, Mr. Terrell.” Alcazar pointed at the briefcase in front of Alejandro. “For instance, my associate has with him some very interesting photographs taken aboard a certain pleasure craft Mr. Penfield owned.”

Terrell’s tanned face turned a shade darker. He was married, of course. The recent story in
Newsweek
made much of his “solid family values.”

“If you think you can walk in here and threaten to blackmail me…” Terrell began.

“I have no such intention,” Alcazar said. “I was simply making a point.”

There was a lull in the music then, and Terrell took a breath, getting himself under control. “I’ve got some people to attend to, Mr. Alcazar. Suppose you tell me what you want.”

Alcazar gave him a bland look. “Nothing, Mr. Terrell. Nothing you haven’t agreed to already, that is. I just wanted to introduce myself, and ascertain that nothing would hold up the closing.”

Terrell thought a moment. “Last I spoke to Penfield, there were still some title problems outstanding, the whole parcel hadn’t been cleared.”

“We are prepared,” Alcazar said.

Terrell tried out his businessman’s gaze. “We don’t have to go with the city-center site, you know. We can go back up north of the county line, talk to the people in Broward, save a hell of a lot in taxes, have all the parking, road access we need.” Terrell smiled. “That’d leave you with a whole bunch of worthless property, would fuck you and the Republic horse you rode in here on, wouldn’t it?”

Alcazar sighed. “Mr. Terrell, you and I both know there isn’t time for that. There are three other cities ready to walk away with your precious baseball franchise. Your participation has tipped the scales one way. But if you were to walk into those hearings tomorrow without a firm site commitment…” Alcazar broke off, letting the implication hang.

“You can’t be sure of that,” Terrell said, smiling. “They know I’ll iron out anything that comes up. Pave it over with cash.”

“You could take that chance,” Alcazar said. “Or you could leave things as they are. You will simply conclude the arrangement to purchase the necessary land outlying the city’s stadium for road access, stadium expansion and ancillary development, said lands and properties to be conveyed by the Republic Holding Group, and everyone will be happy. You’ll save money in the long run, and the civic good will be served.” Alcazar nodded. “There will be a baseball team in our city.”

Terrell was quiet then, ignoring Alcazar’s irony, chewing thoughtfully on the inside of his cheek. Alcazar recognized the pose from a cover of
Time
. He turned and nodded to Alejandro, who unsnapped the briefcase, withdrew a document and slid it across the table toward Terrell.

Terrell glanced down at it, then stared back at Alcazar. “That doesn’t mean a thing unless the titles are clear,” he said.

“We are prepared,” Alcazar repeated.

The door swung open and Claude peered in. “Mrs. Spidel said you promised her a dance,” he said to Terrell.

“I’ll be right there, Claude,” Terrell said. And then bent down to sign.

***

“I told you, I was out,” Leon Straight said into the phone, his eyes following a dancing fork of lightning that leapfrogged across the horizon. “I had some business.” Thunder had nearly drowned out the voice on the other end of the line. He was sitting at the bar, looking out the big windows at the back of Alcazar’s house, his sore leg propped on a stool across from him.

Alcazar raising hell with him on the other end. Leon sat up, punched a button, put Alcazar on the speaker phone. He added a little of the orange to his Gatorade mix.

“…extremely important, Leon. Everything is in place. Everything is on the line.” His voice sounded a little nervous to Leon.

There was another bolt of lightning and a crash of thunder. Leon sipped his drink. Too much orange, now.

“…depending on you.” Alcazar paused. “What’s all that noise?”

“Looks like a storm blowing in, Mr. A.” Kinda nice, he thought, sitting in here watching it blow.

“Now listen to me, Leon. It is all arranged. If the police apprehend Deal, our friends in the department know what to do. He will resist, there will be an unfortunate accident, everything will go on as planned.”

Yeah, Leon thought, but we ain’t gonna get that far.

“And if you should get your hands on him in the meantime…” Leon took a breath. He didn’t like the thought of going out in this weather, but if he was going to make his own thing happen, now was the time. “You can stop worrying about Deal,” he said. Some spidery lightning now, way up high.

“What did you say, Leon?”

“I said you could stop worrying about Deal. I’ve got something worked out.”

“
Leon
…” Alcazar’s voice, big-time agitated, so loud it was making the speaker box rattle. Leon reached over, punched the button again, picked up the receiver.

“Mmmm-hmmm,” Leon nodding, waiting for the man to calm down. “Ain’t nothing we can talk about on the phone, Mr. A. But don’t worry. You get yourself back down here from Hot-Lanta, I’ll explain it all to you.”

Leon smiled, hanging up the phone in the middle of Alcazar yelling. He settled back in his chair, enjoying the thought of Alcazar shitting his britches.

Alcazar and Alejandro up there in a fancy hotel, eating the kind of food you couldn’t even spell, fat chance Leon ever get a trip like that. No, he got the dirty work. “Stick around the home front, boy. We’ll bring you back some scraps from the table.” Well, all that was about to change.

More thunder, then, shaking those big panes in the doors, like to break them. He caught a glimpse of running lights out in the Intracoastal, but then they were gone. Dumb bastard probably sunk.

Leon finally heaved himself up off the stool. Last thing in the world he wanted to do was go out on a night like this. But that was the business world for you. You had to adapt.

He stared down at his knees, his offending knees. Body like his. Speed like he had. And the mean. Nobody’d dealt with mean like his. That was what they meant when they talked about “desire.” What they meant was “how
mean
is the boy?” Which in Leon’s case was plenty.