Deal to Die For (13 page)

“What is the name of this hotel?” Gabriel tried.

The little man looked at him, almost sadly it seemed, and shook his head. “I mustn’t say,” he told Gabriel.

Gabriel nodded, as if he understood. “It’s all right,” he said. “This will do,” he added, mostly to himself.

“I have it,” the little man said, at the same time. He was pointing at Gabriel now, his face a mask of excitement. “I am sitting here thinking, ‘A certain goodness is in this man,’ and then I remember. The television. Those people who tried to kill you and your friend. The robbers!”

Gabriel stared back at him, expressionless. The little man so pleased to have remembered. And then his expression abruptly shifted. His smile fell away, replaced by puzzlement as he glanced again at the big orange truck, at the strange contraption that angled out from behind it.

“But you don’t work here,” the little man said. “It said you were from China. You were coming here to…” He turned back to Gabriel, a question on his face.

“To fish,” Gabriel said. He had tucked the photograph into his own pocket. In the same motion he leaned swiftly forward, focusing all his might into the point of his fist, into the knuckles that drove like rock against the man’s frail chest.

The little man’s eyes widened sightlessly, his mouth forming an unspoken “O,” his breath rushing away.

Gabriel took him by the hair as his head fell forward, drew his arm back in an instant, sent another blow, a piston’s invisible movement, to the man’s temple. Freeze the heart, freeze the head, he thought, clutching the slumping man by the folds of his shirt front. The little man would have felt little pain, not much more than an instant’s surprise. Gabriel knew no more merciful way.

Hardly how his grandfather, who’d been too foolish—or too brave—had left this world. His eyes pleading, his hands clawing toward the surface of the filthy water as he sank, the stones in his pockets, the massive bricks tied to his bound feet, the weight pulling him forever down. Two of Sergeant Snow’s thugs standing at the bank until his grandfather’s face had disappeared, until a festering garbage scow had passed over the spot and its wake had wiped the water clean.

Gabriel had stayed hidden in the bamboo thicket where he’d watched it all, until long after the men had gone, until the sun had gone, and the night-feeding insects had bitten him into submission and his weeping had finally stopped forever. He found a soggy scrap of flower fallen from a barge at the shoreline and tossed it out into the middle of the water where he thought was the proper place, and watched it sink, and then walked home. He had been ten years old before that night. After, he had had no age.

He stood, pulling the little man’s arm over his shoulder as if he were a friend who had overindulged, then kicked the lantern, and the tackle box, and the fishing rods, one of which had begun to buck with something alive, into the water below. The lantern winked into darkness with a hiss.

He walked back toward the barrier, hardly conscious of the weight of the little man at his side, or of the sound of his shoetops dragging over the rough concrete that had once been a road.

***

Gabriel paid scant attention to the work that was required now, feeding the last of the branches at his feet into the maw of the hopper. He had had little difficulty in starting the big truck’s engines, or in operating the massive grinder tethered at its rear. The language stamped on the machinery might be strange, but its levers and buttons spoke a universal language.

The machine whined with every chunk of wood he fed it, roared and spat a pulpy mulch into the truck, layers and layers of shredded tropical wood already beginning to steam and reek in the early morning heat: striations of green leafy banyan, of feathery Australian pine, bold cordovan streaks of mahogany, spikes of Brazilian pepper, and the broken tendrils of a pencil tree, weeping its deadly white sap down the lip of the tailgate. On the top of the pile he noticed what seemed to be a shoe, but he didn’t think that was possible. By the time he had finished with the last of the branches, that apparition had vanished.

When it was over, he unhitched the grinder and backed the truck to the edge of the abandoned causeway. He found the lever that raised the bed and pulled. The shredded cargo cascaded out, most of it plunging into the water past a clamor of wheeling, screeching gulls, some of it drifting in a fine scree like a rain squall driven by the morning breeze.

The tide had gone to work before he’d finished, had hitched the chipper back to the truck, tossed the truck keys into the water. He saw, as he turned the limousine around, that what hadn’t gone under right away was already streaming off in bands that were headed out to sea. He paused, thinking of it as ashes being spread, and wondered for a moment if the goddess Mazu might be appeased.

And then, thinking briefly of his mother, and of the man who had been his father, and finally of the old man who called himself a pirate, he drove the limousine away.

Chapter 22

“Hell of a night, John.” Driscoll was shaking his blocky head in
commiseration. He swallowed the chunk of Cuban toast he’d been working on, washed it down with the last of his coffee. A green-aproned waitress wearing a hair net came by to give him a refill before his cup had hit the saucer.

That was one thing about having breakfast on
Calle Ocho
, Deal thought. No ferns, no frills, no fooling around. People came to the
Rincón Norteño
, the Northern Corner, to eat.

The waitress eyed Deal’s plate uncertainly. “
Es problema? Quieres otra cosa
?” She’d scaled her Spanish down to Deal level, wanting to know what was wrong, if he wanted something else. He managed a smile, picked up a forkful of eggs, shook his head. She nodded and bustled off, he dropped the eggs back on the plate. He’d been hungry when he ordered, still was, in fact, but the moment he’d start for the food, the images from the night before would rush back upon him.

“You think this is your fault or something?” Driscoll said, watching him.

Deal glanced up at him. Driscoll had his no-nonsense face on, was pouring an inch or two of sugar into his coffee. He was trying to think of the right response when Driscoll went on.

“Like, this lady who saved your life once, as you put it, you might have said something different to her on the phone that night, like maybe if you’d got to her place a couple minutes earlier it wouldn’t of happened?”

Deal was about to admit it, say yeah, I guess, something like that, when Driscoll held up his big paw to stop him.

“Let me tell you something, my friend. You remember twenty, twenty-five years ago, while the Republican Convention was going on out at the Beach?”

Deal nodded. That was Driscoll, a story for every occasion.

“Yeah, well, I was still in uniform then, and me and my partner, guy name of Ray Robertson, we’re on the way out to help keep the Huns off Tricky Dick and Tricia, like every other cop in the county, when we get this call: there’s some jumper on top of the County Courthouse.”

Driscoll shook his head at the memory of it, went on before Deal could cut in. “So we have to turn around, go down to the old tower, ride those ancient elevators that take forever, climb a little catwalk up to the very top, it’s hot as shit because it’s the middle of the summer and they don’t air-condition that part of the building, of course. But anyway, we finally find the door the guy’s jimmied open and look out, and sure enough, there he is, Cuban guy in his early twenties, sitting on the edge of the parapet in the middle of about fifty tons of buzzard shit, because that’s the only other living thing that’s been out there for about ten years, and this guy is giving us this pissed-off look like who in the hell invited us to the party, right?”

Deal nodded. It wouldn’t have done any good to do anything else. He could get up and walk away, or erupt in spontaneous flame right there in his seat, robbers could storm into the place, make off with the till, the coffee machine, the green-aproned waitress, it wouldn’t matter. Driscoll was intent.

“Of course, by this time we have received a little background on the matter. The guy out there is of the gay persuasion, he’s still living at home, him and his mother get along just fine, but his old man has come to the realization that his son’s macho index is seriously out of whack.”

“Driscoll…,” Deal began.

“So naturally the old man called him in for a discussion and you can still see where the kid’s face is swollen up from this little talk: couple of black eyes, lip all busted up, nose over sideways.” Driscoll shook his head again. “Just a real pretty picture.”

He held up a finger then. “Which is compounded by the fact, as we come to find out, that the kid has dropped a bunch of acid and is higher than a very large kite.” Driscoll leaned across the table. “You can grasp this, can’t you?”

“Very clearly, Vernon.”

“So we try moving out onto the ledge after this guy, but it makes him understandably nervous, not to mention the fact that buzzard shit is extremely slippery and we’re looking to skate right out into thirty floors of air if we’re not careful…” Driscoll broke off, raising his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

“So?”

“So I’m suggesting to Ray, why don’t we just wait in the doorway where there’s a nice draft, decent view out over the bay, pretty soon somebody with a better idea is going to show up to help, when my partner figures that we should talk to the guy, get inside his head, you know, convince him this is not the way to deal with his problems.”

The waitress came by, hit Deal’s coffee, gave him another look about the eggs, but he ignored her this time.

“So Ray starts in like, ‘Hey asshole, your mother’s down there on the street, your sisters, all your friends. Is that what you want to do, splatter yourself all over the sidewalk in front of them because you can’t handle your problems?’ or words to that effect.”

Deal stared in disbelief.

“Hey,” Driscoll said, “maybe Ray saw it in a movie or took a psychology class or something, I don’t know. The point is, he goes on like that for a while, figuring that he’s going to shame this guy in out of buzzardland, and all of a sudden the kid just bursts into tears, puts his face in his hands and bawls like a baby. I’m thinking maybe Ray is a genius after all, I can just sneak out there and put a comforting arm around the kid and we’ll all go home together…”

Driscoll broke off, a quizzical expression on his face.

“And,” Deal said.

“The ‘and’ is, I’m about two steps out along the ledge when the guy stops crying long enough to glance over at Ray and say ‘Fuck you’ in some kind of Spanish and kick himself right off of the side.”

Driscoll gave his characteristic shrug. “What I will never forget,” he said, “is all those people down there screaming, running for cover like there was an atom bomb coming down.” He pursed his lips. “I guess in a way it was. Turns out his mom and sisters
were
down there, after all.”

He stopped then, lost in the memory, lifted his coffee cup absently.

Deal shook his head. “It’s a terrible story, Vernon. But…”

“I’m not finished,” Driscoll said, putting his coffee down. “The point I’m trying to make has to do with Ray.”

“Ray,” Deal repeated.

“That’s right. Because this whole thing shook Ray up pretty bad. He’d been having a rough time of it anyway. His old lady had left him a couple of months before, he had a shitpot full of bills, he’s trying to figure out where he made his wrong turn in life, then this happens. Two or three weeks later, he starts telling me how he’s having dreams, this kid hanging on to the ledge by his fingernails, Ray is stomping on his hands until he screams and lets go, takes a header to the sidewalk…”

“Wait a minute,” Deal said. “Did your partner get in trouble over this?”

“Naw,” Driscoll said. “There was an inquiry, of course, but I didn’t bring up what Ray said to the guy.” He shrugged again. “I didn’t see the need. But Ray couldn’t get it out of his mind. ‘I did it to him,’ he started telling me. ‘I might as well have pushed him off the side.’ Didn’t do me any good to try and convince him otherwise.”

“So I’m Ray, and Barbara is this guy who threw himself off the County Courthouse,” Deal said. “Where does that get us?”

Driscoll made a noncommittal gesture with his hands.

“So what’s the point? Ray finally goes for counseling, Deal should too? I don’t get it, Driscoll.”

“Well,” Driscoll said, “Ray did seek help, as a matter of fact. He contacted Doctor Smith and Doctor Wesson, had an intimate conversation with them. He hadn’t called in for a couple of days, I was walking up the stairs of his apartment to see why, when it took place.”

Deal stared at him as it sunk in. “Jesus Christ, Vernon.”

“The
point
is, that it wasn’t Ray Robertson’s fault that kid took a header off the buzzard perch, and it wasn’t my fault or anybody else’s fault that Ray Robertson redecorated his place with the inside of his head. The
point
is,” Driscoll thumped the table with one of his thick fingers, “you got troubles of your own to worry about. Barbara hadn’t done what she did last night, she would have done it some other time and it wouldn’t have had a damn thing to do with you. She had big-time problems, Johnny. You were just a blip on her screen.”

Deal stared at him for a moment, then turned away.

“Go ahead,” Driscoll said. “Grieve for her. But don’t start thinking this was your fault.”

Deal stared out at the traffic on 8th Street, already bustling, never mind it was still early on a Sunday morning. The kind of morning where he ought to be in bed, cup of coffee on the nightstand, Sunday paper strewn all over the place, Janice at his side doing the crossword, maybe a chance he could distract her for a little fooling around while Isabel watched cartoons in the den. That wasn’t asking for the moon, was it?

And Barbara. What had she wanted? How much would it have taken to make her content, to allow her to want to wake up in the morning, at least? Was it her job? Her love life? Some weird chemical, or the lack thereof, in her brain? Some or all of that taken together and then your mother dies and your only friend pisses you off so bad you decide to teach him and the rest of the world a lesson once and for all? He supposed that was the way it worked, but something seemed wrong.

He forced himself from his thoughts and turned calmly to Driscoll. “She didn’t do it, Vernon.” The words were out before he realized he was going to say them.

“Excuse me?” Driscoll had turned back to his neglected breakfast, had a sausage patty speared on his fork.

“That’s what’s bothering me,” he said. “Barbara. I just can’t believe that Barbara killed herself.”

“Is that right?” Driscoll said. He took the sausage down in a gulp.

“This detective I was telling you about,” Deal said. “He doesn’t think she did it, either.”

“What makes you think so?” Driscoll said. He’d cleaned his plate, was eyeing Deal’s plate now. “You going to eat those eggs?”

Deal pushed his plate across the table. “The way he looked at
me
, for one thing,” Deal said. “Like I was a suspect.”

“That’s what cops do,” Driscoll said. “It’s their nature. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything.” He took a sizable forkful of Deal’s cold eggs.

“Listen to me, Driscoll. A minute ago, you were giving me a life-and-death sermon, now all you care about is your breakfast.”

“A minute ago I was worried you were going off the deep end. Now I see you’re just deluded.”

“It’s not funny.”

Driscoll sighed, put his fork down. “A cop gives you a fishy look, that means Barbara didn’t kill herself?”

Deal shook his head. “He took me through it a half-dozen times: what I was doing before she called, who I was with, what I did when I got there…but the way he was going over the details, it was like he was fishing for the slightest discrepancy…”

“Sounds like SOP,” Driscoll said. “Anyway, the guy already called me. He’s not on your case.”

Deal gave him an astonished look. “This detective called you? Why didn’t you say anything?”

Driscoll shrugged. “I’m telling you now,” he said.

“Jesus Christ, Driscoll.” An old guy with an unlit cigar in his mouth glanced over from his place at the counter and Deal lowered his voice to a hiss. “How do you
know
he isn’t on my case?”

“Giverty?” Driscoll laughed. “I know Buzz Giverty from the time we used to drive a patrol car up and down this street right here, before he joined the white flight up to Broward.” Driscoll nodded out the window that gave onto 8th Street. A low-rider had pulled up to the light, its windows smoked to obsidian, the bass from its throbbing speakers pushing enough air to rumble the plate glass at Deal’s elbow. “I told him the whole thing, how you met Barbara in the first place, what you told me about her mother and sister and all…” He broke off to signal the waitress for more coffee, then turned back, “And that you’re basically the squarest, most law-abiding citizen that it has ever been my pleasure to rent an apartment from.” Driscoll opened his meaty palms on the table, resting his case.

“I guess that’s a compliment,” Deal said. He considered things a moment, then turned back to Driscoll. “But the point is, he seemed to think there was something worth following up on.”

“Giverty’s just doing his job. The ME says it’s a suicide, it’s a suicide.”

“That ME’s just off the boat. He could hardly
pronounce
suicide,” Deal said.

Driscoll paused, giving Deal a look of concern. “Something does occur to me,” he said finally.

“What’s that?” Deal said.

“That you’re doing just what I was talking about earlier.”

“Come again?”

“This whole guilt thing,” Driscoll said. “You don’t want to accept that Barbara did herself in because that gets you all screwed up thinking you could have prevented it.” He gave him a look. “So if Barbara didn’t kill herself, you’re off the hook.”

Deal stared back, dumbfounded. “Terrific, Driscoll. You should forget the private eye business, go into psychiatry.”

Driscoll raised his hands in innocence. “I’m just trying to figure out why you’re having these feelings.”

“Goddammit, Driscoll. Even her sister said it. Barbara just wasn’t the type. She was too pissed off to kill herself.”

Driscoll feigned surprise. “Aha, now
there’s
your proof.”

Deal stared at him for a moment, then turned away. “Forget it, Driscoll. You’re right. She blew herself away, let’s forget about it and eat.” He raised his hand to signal the waitress. “What do you want,” he said over his shoulder. “Couple rashers of bacon? A roast pig? How about a side of beef to go with that?”

Driscoll pulled his hand down, gave him a weary look. “Look, Deal, somebody gets killed, there are usually reasons. Robbery, jealousy, fit of rage, stuff like that.” He ticked off items on his fingers as he continued. “We know that nothing was taken from Barbara’s place. Do you have any knowledge of anyone who was angry with her, anyone who would have wished her harm?”

Deal turned back to him. It was true—all logic argued against his feelings. “No,” he admitted. “
She
was angry with her sister.”