Deal with the Dead (20 page)

Chapter Twenty-seven

“
Red…right…returning,” Deal’s
toneless voice called out. The Cigarette’s motors were a soft rumbling backdrop as Basil Wheatley guided them at near-idle through the shallow Bahamian waters toward shore.

“What’s he talking about?” Frank Wheatley said, glancing down at Deal’s tightly bound form.

“That’s nautical talk, Frank,” his brother said. “Sort of like ‘full fathom five,’ or ‘I’ll keelhaul ye landlubbers,’ stuff like that.”

Frank nodded dubiously. He pointed at one of the red buoy markers materializing out of the darkness ahead of them. “That red one’s on the left.”

“Uh-huh,” Basil said. “Who you going to trust, little brother? Me, or some guy who’s talking in his sleep?”

A contemplative look came to Frank Wheatley’s features. “I guess I don’t have much choice,” he said finally. He glanced down at Deal again. He was blinking, licking his lips, the picture of a man unaware. “He’s awake, by the way.”

Basil nodded, his eyes fixed on the gathering shoreline ahead. “Just in time,” the big man said. He’d spotted the lights at the end of the jutting dock and was making toward landing. “See how he’s doing. Maybe he’s thirsty.”

“My brother wants to know if you’re thirsty,” Frank said, staring down at Deal.

Deal stared upward, trying to blink his eyes into focus. The side of his head ached, pulsing with every chugging beat of his heart. He watched as the image of the bearded man above him—his face softly illumined by the lights of the Cigarette’s console—shimmered into two, then coalesced again. He tried to move his arms, to lift himself into a sitting position, and thought that maybe he had been paralyzed by the blow to his head. Then he realized he’d been tied.

“What’s going on?” he managed. His tongue felt thick and cottony. He
was
thirsty, he realized. Extremely thirsty.

“Here,” the bearded man said, extending a plastic water bottle his way.

Deal stared at him.

“Oh, yeah,” the bearded man said. He reached for the snap top of the bottle, pulled its built-in spout open so that Deal might drink.

“Why don’t you untie me?” Deal said after he’d managed a few swallows.

“You think I’m stupid?” the bearded man said.

Deal decided not to answer.

“We’ll untie you,” the big man behind the wheel of the boat said. “Just as soon as we get on shore.”

Deal tried to get a look over the side of the cockpit, but it was hopeless. “Where are we?” he managed.

“Quicksilver Cay,” the man behind the wheel said.

“As in…?” Deal said, still groggy.

“As in the Bahamas,” the big man said.

“I’ve never heard of it,” Deal said, though some distant bell seemed to be ringing in his head.

“It’s private,” the big man said. “There’s different names on some of the maps. That’s what it’s called now.”

Deal sank back, resting his aching head against the still-thrumming sideboards of the cockpit. “Do you mind telling me why I’ve been kidnapped?”

“Kidnapped?” the bearded man who towered above him said. “Who’s kidnapped?”

“Shut up, Frank,” the big man said as the boat nudged up alongside the dock. “Jump up there and secure that aft line.”

“Fore and aft,” Frank said, hopping up onto the dock. “I always get those two mixed up.”

“Back there,” the big man said, pointing. Then he glanced down at Deal. “You got any brothers?”

Deal shook his head.

“You’re lucky,” the big man said, gesturing at Frank, who was busy tying off the rear of the craft.

“If I’m not kidnapped, what am I?” Deal asked.

“We tied you up so you wouldn’t come at us again,” the big man said.

“It was self-defense,” Frank called down from the dock.

“This is fore,” the big man said, tossing up another rope to his brother. He turned back to Deal. “He’s right, you know. I got a knot on my head the size of a hen’s egg. My eyes are still burning from whatever you threw at me. Frank’s ear is going to need stitches from where you hit him with that pan. All in all, I’d call you a pretty violent individual.”

Deal stared up at him, not sure he’d heard correctly. It was the blow to his head, he thought. He wasn’t really tied up in a boat somewhere in the Bahamas. It was all a lunatic dream. It would have been easier to believe his story if his head didn’t hurt so much.

In the next moment, the big man had cut the engines. He turned and grabbed Deal under the arms, lifting him as easily as if he were a child. “Coming up,” the big man called to his brother.

Deal felt another strong pair of hands underneath his arms, and then he was on the dock. “Don’t try anything funny,” Frank was saying, propping him against one of the thick wooden pilings. “You fall in the water, you’re gonna drown.”

“Don’t worry,” Deal said. In the greenish glow cast from the pale dock lamp, Deal got a look at his tightly bound hands and feet. Plastic grocery bags, he realized. They’d tied him up with knotted-together bags from Publix—an item Janice had never saved a single one of in all the time they’d been together.

In another minute, the big man had vaulted onto the dock as well—a graceful movement for a man of that size, Deal thought. “You’re all calmed down now, right?” he said to Deal.

Deal nodded. Even if he were somehow to overcome the two of them, what would he do next? Commandeer that Cigarette, rocket out across a set of unfamiliar shoals in the middle of the night?
No,
he thought, breathing in the odors of beached seaweed and sulphur that rose from the tidal shallows surrounding them. Right now he was willing to settle for getting his hands untied, working out the kinks in his stiff arms and shoulders, see if the pounding in his head might then subside.

“Call up to the house,” the big man said to Frank, “let them know we’re here.”

Frank nodded and moved off toward a phone mounted on a stanchion nearby. There was a stainless-steel-topped cleaning table there, a hose neatly coiled underneath, but something in its pristine aspect told Deal there hadn’t been a fish filleted there in a long time. As if he were attuned to such thoughts, the big man pulled what looked like a boning knife from a scabbard on his belt and bent down at Deal’s feet. He glanced up—a last warning there, Deal thought—then flicked out with the knife, severing the bonds at Deal’s ankles as if they were spider’s threads.

Deal allowed his feet to work apart in tiny sidelong steps. For a moment, he felt himself teetering, ready to go over backward, but he gritted his teeth and forced himself to steady.

“Hold out your hands,” the big man said, eyeing him.

Deal did as he was told. He felt the cool brush of the knife blade as it slid between his wrists, and then his hands were free. “Don’t forget,” the big man said, tapping the slender point of the knife at Deal’s chest. “It’s nothing personal, but I’ll gut you as soon as look at you.”

Deal nodded, unwrapping the knotted plastic from his wrists. He noticed that Frank had finished his mumbled conversation on the phone. “He says to come on up, Basil.”

“Now there’s a surprise,” Basil said dryly.

Basil,
Deal thought. Never had a name seemed more apt. Bass drum. Bass fiddle. Base element. One giant load of Basil.

Basil stared at him. “That way, my friend,” he said, pointing over Deal’s shoulder.

Deal had the last of the plastic off his wrists now. He turned, realizing he was looking for a place to dispose of the scraps. Kidnapped by Man Mountain Basil and his bodybuilding brother Frank, and here
he
was, worried about despoiling the environment, Deal thought. He was almost distracted enough to miss the sight before him, might have walked along the pier too far, gotten too close to shore, where he quite possibly would have lacked the right perspective to put it all together.

But he hadn’t. He’d glanced up at the right time, had seen it, and the realization that swept over him was enough to start his head pounding like the steel drummer’s part in an island street-corner band.

It was dark, sure. So there was no way of seeing the sparkling green sweep of lawn that lay up ahead. And even though most of the house lay in shadow and all that he really registered was its shape and its commanding presence at the top of the rise, Deal knew.

Quicksilver Cay. The legend scrawled on the back of a faded snapshot. No ghost of his father standing there on the dock, smiling back at the camera, of course. And no shimmering presence of his mother tucked against that imposing, hail-fellow form. But still Deal saw it all, the snapshot he’d discovered in his father’s secret cache conjured in his mind as if he were a human camera and time had no meaning at all. The image, Deal realized for one fleeting instant, would be forever burned into his mind: the enduring touchstone for everything he quietly aspired to, and—how could it be?—all things in life to avoid.

The only person missing in the tableau seemed to be that simulacrum of Gatsby, who’d been caught in that long-ago photograph—whoever he was. And as Deal stumbled on, prodded by the very real hand of Basil at his back, he wondered if that might be the person he was going to meet.

Chapter Twenty-eight

“The cops told you
what?
”
Driscoll asked Janice. He saw her lower lip trembling and reminded himself to keep his voice on an even keel. Contending with the Russell Straights of the world was one thing. Janice Deal was a far different matter.

“The officer in charge said all this was no proof of anything other than a break-in.” Her eyes flashed as she swept her arm around the devastated kitchen of her condo. “He didn’t even seem too convinced of that.”

“You get his name?”

She nodded, biting her lip, and handed him a card.

Driscoll glanced at it but didn’t recognize the name. He nodded, staring at the spatters of blood across the otherwise pristine face of the refrigerator. “Maybe this is the way they cook at his house,” Driscoll said.

“Cops…” Russell Straight said, shaking his head. Driscoll had introduced the two of them at the door. To his credit, Straight had offered to wait outside, but Janice had insisted he come in.

Driscoll shot him a look, but Straight paid no attention. Worse yet, the look Janice gave Straight made Driscoll realize she couldn’t agree more.

“What’s
happened
, Vernon? I’ve called Deal’s apartment, his office, his cell phone…” She stared at him, her eyes pained.

“Now, we don’t know for sure that this has anything to do with Deal,” he cautioned.

“Not you, too, Vernon,” she cried. “I don’t think I could take it. I didn’t want to argue with the police in front of Isabel, but I’m scared to death—”

Driscoll stepped forward then, wrapping her in his arms. Lending aid came naturally to Driscoll, but comfort was another matter. He felt awkward, patting her back like some kid playing Joseph in the school play, supposed to know just how Mary felt.

“Come on now,” he said. “We’ll sort this out. Whatever it adds up to.”

After a moment, Janice’s sobs had subsided. “I’ll be okay,” she said, stepping back from him, managing something of a smile. She tore a paper towel off a tumbled roll, inspected it for blood, then raised it to give her nose a hearty blow.

Driscoll noted that even in the red-eyed, glowing-nosed shape she was in, Janice was an extremely attractive woman. Maybe even more lovely when she was distraught, he thought. And given Deal’s recent history, there’d been plenty of distress. Things ever got on an even keel with them, it could be she’d look ordinary enough for Deal to get over her. Sure, Driscoll.

“Isabel’s asleep?” he asked, cutting his glance toward the back of the place.

“Thank God,” Janice said, blotting her eyes with the back of her hand. She stopped, looking at him more closely. “What’s the matter with your chin?”

Driscoll realized he’d been massaging the aching muscles in his throat. “Got tangled up in my seat belt,” he said, shrugging it off. That’s all they needed to get into right now. Send her shrieking right off the planet.

“How about this message you picked up from Deal?” he said, forcing his hand away from his rubbed-raw throat. “When did that come in?”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t Deal himself,” she said. “It was a call from someone’s office. A secretary, I assumed. She said that Deal had asked her to call.”

“Let’s listen to it,” Driscoll said, pointing toward the answering machine that sat undisturbed on a nearby counter. It was one of the few items that hadn’t been knocked askew.

Janice shook her head again. “I erased it before we went out.” She turned toward the machine. “Unless you do, you have to listen to everything all over again. I hate that thing. I’ve been meaning to get a new one…”

Driscoll nodded. “You don’t remember any names?”

She looked at him helplessly. “She must have said the name of the firm, but I wasn’t paying too much attention at first. I thought it was somebody who wanted to sell me something. When I realized what it was really about, I jotted down what’s there.”

She gestured at the pad that Driscoll held in his hand. “Out of town,” he said, glancing up at her. “This woman didn’t say where?”

“No,” Janice said. “It was stupid not to keep the message, I know—”

“Hey—” Driscoll tried to stop her.

“—but I was so upset that he’d do something like that, on such short notice. It’s a little thing, I know, but Isabel always looks forward so much—”

“Janice—” Driscoll said.

She broke off and stared at him. “I’m sorry, Vernon. I don’t mean to babble.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I ask all these questions, it doesn’t mean anything. I’m just thinking out loud, okay?”

She managed a nod, but Driscoll wasn’t sure he’d eased her burden. She sighed and turned away to right a fallen vase on the counter. “The police said I couldn’t file a missing-person’s report, it was too soon,” she said. Her voice was softer, barely above a whisper.

“Yeah,” Driscoll said. “It’s a little too early for that.” He glanced at Russell Straight, who stared back at him with that look that seemed to question Driscoll’s every word.

He glared back at Straight, then turned to Janice. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “I’m going to swing by the DealCo offices, see if our boy might be working late.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but Driscoll held up a hand to stop her. “You know that phone’s always going on the blink. He could be over there crunching numbers on this new contract, all the worry’s for nothing—”

“But—”

“Then I’ll check at Terrell’s place, and that strip center he’s finishing up down south, just to be sure. It wouldn’t be the first time he went back to work at midnight.” She stared back at him, maybe calmed a bit by the reassurance in his voice. “You left a message on his phone at the apartment, right?”

“Of course.”

“Then he’ll call if we cross paths somehow.” He paused, glancing around the wrecked kitchen. “You need some help with all this?”

She shook her head. “It’ll give me something to do.” She glanced up at him. “You’ll call me?”

He saw it in her gaze then, the bedrock anguish, the unmistakable connection she still felt. He wanted to take her by the shoulders, tell her then and there,
Cut the shit, Janice. Take Deal back. Get your life under way again
…but it was hardly the time, and that wasn’t his job anyway, now, was it?

Instead, he simply nodded. “I’ll keep you posted, every step of the way.”

She managed a smile then and bent down to retrieve something from the floor. “I’m throwing everything away,” she said. “All of it.”

He got a look at what she was holding when she stood. It looked like a miniature turkey, but he realized that it was actually a Cornish game hen. He’d seen them in grocery stores all his life, but he’d never seen anybody actually buy, or eat, one. It crossed his mind to say something of the sort to Janice, but she’d already pitched the thing into the trash can with a thud.

What the hell did it matter anyway, Driscoll asked himself, his thoughts on Cornish game hens or anything else? All that really mattered was the task at hand. He was headed for the door, turning his attention to that. He noted that Russell Straight was right behind him.