Raw Deal (16 page)

Deal took a deep breath, glanced at Tommy, who seemed to be sleeping blissfully now. He looked like a guy who’d come home from the factory, crashed in the middle of
Cheers
.

Deal found himself shaking his head again. “Where does he
get
all that stuff,” he wondered aloud.

Goodwin sat down heavily in a chair beside him. He’d been talking to himself, but she seemed to take him seriously. She sat quietly for a moment, then turned to him. “It’s our culture, Mr. Deal. It’s all around us. You don’t like your president, you shoot him. A man offends you because of his skin color, you beat him to death.” She gave him a wan smile. “‘Turning and turning in the widening gyre/The falcon cannot hear the falconer…’” She broke off, sat back in her chair. “It’s a wonder more of us don’t buckle under the weight.”

She’d been quoting Yeats. One of the few poems he’d understood, back in the days of literature class. College. Another life, of course. Another dimension. The one where life made sense and poems didn’t. Deal felt himself revising his opinion of the doctor yet again.

“What can you do for him?” Deal said.

Dr. Goodwin gave him a look. “Help him,” she said firmly. “It will take time. But we will help him.”

Deal nodded. He would have to ask the question again now. He hated himself for it, but he thought of Janice, and of Driscoll and his cold eye, and so he asked again. “Could he be dangerous? Could he do something?”

“To himself?” Goodwin said. She paused. “It’s quite possible.” She gave Deal a thoughtful look. “To others? It’s very doubtful. He blames
himself
for things, Mr. Deal. Not other people.”

Deal glanced back through the heavy glass. Tommy stirred in his sleep, licked his lips, formed a childish smile on his face. Dreaming, Deal thought. Back to being good old Tommy, having a little lie-down, and a happy dream.

Deal found himself wondering what Dr. Goodwin had shot him up with, and, momentarily, if she might be willing to share a little of her stash. He could use a couple weeks of sugarplums and toy soldiers himself. Then he sighed, shook himself, and got up to go.

Chapter 25

Driscoll piloted the white Ford down US 1, past the University of Miami, where the elevated Metrorail train whisked past him going the other way. Something he’d have to take a ride on, one of these days. Something a retired old fart should be doing.

He drove on through South Miami, then swung west, out Kendall Drive, past the Dadeland Shopping Mall, its lots bursting at 2:00 p.m., a Thursday, middle of a recession, or so they said.

Apparently no one had told the throngs piling into the mall. He shook his head, pulling around a long line waiting to turn into the parking lots. Driscoll had never been to Dadeland, not to shop, that is. He’d had a few calls there, once had to chase a purse snatcher through an indoor fountain, ruin a good pair of shoes, but he couldn’t imagine shopping there. The immensity of the place overloaded his circuits, made him sleepy. Besides, all those things to buy, how could you ever choose?

Some people liked that, lots of glitter, lots of action. Driscoll preferred quiet and grubby. When he needed something, he went to Gabby’s, an outlet store in West Miami, a place that sold stock overruns and discontinued items of every stripe: clothes, small appliances, even canned goods. You had to be careful the pants you bought had the pockets sewn in, check the expiration date on the canned hams, but it was quiet and dimly lit, and the shoppers pawed silently through the bins like numbed survivors of disaster.

On top of that, the prices were right. He’d been going to Gabby’s for years, had even outfitted the new apartment with things from there, including the first piece of art he’d ever bought: a big painting of a zebra running across a plain, which he had hung over his sofa, first thing you saw when you walked in, $49.95, frame included.

He liked the zebra painting a lot, even if the animal seemed a bit too big, too sleek, too graceful-looking when you really studied it. That was one thing about living alone. If Marie were still around, he’d have had to settle for a seascape or still life or something. At the very least, he’d have had to hear about how his zebra looked like a horse with stripes, bunch of shit like that.

Now, with her in California, living with her sister, he could do exactly as he pleased, she could too. He’d given her all the furniture—good riddance to a lot of floral-printed rubbish—and he had let her sell the house and keep the equity. She’d also taken the good car, a three-year-old Chevy wagon. Never mind it was Marie leaving
him
. He’d kept the Taurus—long since stolen—his books, his collection of 78s, and his less than glorious pension fund: Sayonara, Marie, it was a great twenty-eight years and write if you get work.

He hung a left in front of a wall of oncoming traffic—more people headed for Dadeland, he supposed—ignoring the blasts of horns behind him as he bounced across the low storm curb and entered the long curving driveway of Presbyterian Hospital. Thirty years on the force, catch you later, guys. Twenty-eight years with Marie, ciao baybee. A lot of change when you thought about it. And, none of it having been his idea in the first place, he did his best not to think about it.

He took it easy up the drive, a half-mile or more, enjoying the look of the place, more like a Venetian palace than a hospital, big rust-colored towers and clay-tiled roofs poking up into the blue sky, a sizable pond off to the right surrounded by rangy malaeluca trees and an exercise path that was full of people doing just that: young women jogging in spandex, old codgers walking determinedly, a stroke victim struggling along in a walker.

It made Driscoll tired just looking at it. He tried to imagine jogging, getting himself up in a pair of bike pants (as if they made them that big), trailing along after one of those skinny butts. He imagined the engine of his body, all the chambers getting the news. Organs: “Jesus Christ, what’s going on?” Brain: “Batten down the hatches, men, lardass is
jogging
!”

He could see it, every blood vessel in his body, rigid as old PVC tubing, suddenly sloughing off God knows what kind of crud in the surge created by actual exercise. All that stuff would slosh up to his heart, if he was lucky he’d get in half a lap around the pond before he keeled over, be dead before they could gurney him the hundred yards to the emergency entrance.

Still, he needed to make some kind of effort at regrouping, didn’t he? He’d made exactly zilch progress on his big postretirement plan of opening his own investigative agency. He’d reneged on his promise to himself to move out to a place near the beach. He’d seen exactly one Manatees game with the season pass the guys had given him at his going-away party. Pitiful.

He’d seen it in plenty of ex-cops before him, the life-implodes-upon-you syndrome: All those big talkers, full of plans, “just wait ’til I’m out of this place, I’m going fishing, hunting, golfing every fucking day…” and three years later they’re sitting at home alone, wife long gone, sick of being around a guy so batshit crazy he can’t get out of his pajamas before it’s time to go back to bed, sitting there alone at the kitchen table with a bottle of store-brand booze, and forget the ice—shit, forget the glass—spinning the old .38 around in circles on the Formica, waiting to see if it comes up pointing at you…

Driscoll wiped at a sheen of sweat on his face, guided the Ford up to the curb near the entrance, killed the motor, and got out. So maybe that was why he was running around, poking his nose into Deal’s business, trying to make something where there really wasn’t anything, because he could look down the barrel of the future and see his mouth closing around the opposite end. Elementary, my dear Driscoll, elementary.

“’Scuse me?”

The voice brought Driscoll out of his reverie. He realized he was already at the entryway of the building. The rent-a-cop who patrolled the front was staring at him as if he’d said something. Driscoll wondered if he’d been muttering to himself as he walked.

“Nothing,” Driscoll said. He flashed a shield, a joke badge that said
HONORARY MIAMI VICE COP—SONNY CROCKETT, CHIEF
if you were given the time to read it, another going-away present from the gang. “The car okay there?”

“Sure,” the rent-a-cop said. Even if he had any doubts about the badge, one look at the white Ford, another at Driscoll himself, the rent-a-cop put them aside.

It was the same at the reception desk, again with the records clerk. “Marielena Marquez,” the clerk repeated after a glance at the badge, already punching the name into her computer. She was in her twenties, a perky young woman with dark, frizzed-up hair and an ingenuous smile, like maybe she hadn’t been fried one bit poking around in computer records from nine to five, five days a week. Watching her pound the keys, the color high in her cheeks, her tongue poking out of her frosty lips, Driscoll found himself wishing he were twenty years younger.

“Lots of Marquezes,” she said. “Would you believe it?” She glanced at him, smiling. Driscoll found himself with an irrational urge to weep. It was just a young woman being nice to him. Lord, he would have to get a grip.

She was back to her screen before he had thought of anything to say. “Here it is,” she said cheerily. “Marquez, Marielena.”

She smiled and swung the monitor around so he could see. She pointed. “Checked out ten days ago, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, copayment by check, missed an appointment with therapy last week.”

Driscoll nodded his thanks. “I don’t see an address there,” he said.

She nodded, spun the monitor back, tapped some keys, squinted at the screen, hit another key. A printer sprang to life, whined a couple lines of type, chinked out a sheet of paper that the clerk handed to him with her open smile. “What else?” she said, ready to please.

Driscoll had to smile. He stood, folded the address away, patted her on the shoulder. “Sweetie, if you only knew,” he said.

She stared at him. For a moment he thought he’d offended her.

“And thanks,” he added, going out. He felt her gaze on him all the way to the door.

***

He had the computer printout in one hand, the wheel of the Ford in the other, was poking along halfway down the block checking house numbers before it hit him. “Jesus Christ,” he said, gliding the Ford to a stop.

He got out, walked around the front of the car, went across the sidewalk, stopped at a little strip of raggedy grass. He stared out over the faded police ribbon at the place where a house had once been. A fairly substantial house, to judge by the size of the property, and by what was left of the foundations. A fairly impressive house, to judge by its neighbors. But why hadn’t he thought to check the address that clerk had given him, anyway? Some cop. He’d driven all the way back across the city, mooning about some girl thirty years his junior, thinking he was going to Ms. Marquez’s house, to find himself staring at the ruins of the bombed-out museum.

He ducked under the plastic ribbon, walked closer. A broad stone entryway led up five steps into nothingness. A few feet away, another set of steps led down into what had once been a basement. A basement. That was a rarity in Miami, he thought.

He glanced around. This side of the street seemed to be elevated. Most likely he was standing on a coral ridge, an ancient deposit of shells and sea life, one of many that crisscrossed this city where everything had once been under water. The ridges, seldom more than a few feet high, gave the landscape what little variation there was.

The rear of the property was a tangle of ficus and underbrush that hid the waters of Biscayne Bay not more than a hundred yards away. Once the water had covered the spot where he stood, had covered most of Florida, for that matter. He was tempted to think of that as a better time, nothing but sun and tide—but even then there had been little fish and big fish, he thought.

He walked around the basement and found some shade under a big poinciana tree. Or what was left of one. The side of the tree away from the building still had most of its limbs. The other half had been sheared away by the force of the blast. He caught a glimpse of something shining in the dirt at his feet, bent down to check.

It was a shard of wood, half-buried. He caught the edge, pulled, brought up a foot-long chunk of gilt picture frame. He dusted it clean on his pantleg, had another look. One edge smooth, elegantly curved, glinting in the sunlight, the other a series of jagged splinters. He stood, hefting the wood, trying to comprehend. What had it been like, anyway, when it happened? One moment you’re walking along with a bunch of nice people, drink in hand, looking at all the pretty paintings, the next instant a bomb goes off, you’re flying through the middle of Hell. And all because somebody doesn’t like your politics? Not even
your
politics. The politics of the guy who runs the country where the guy lived who painted one of the pretty paintings.

He tossed the fragment into the quagmire of shattered boards and brick and muck where a wonderful house had once been and turned to go. Then stopped short. There was a face staring at him, over a hedge that separated one side of the museum property from one of the neighboring estates. An Hispanic guy in a battered straw hat, his leathery face a map of wrinkles stubbled with a grizzled beard, watery blue eyes that stared at him for a moment more and then disappeared.

“
Momento
,” Driscoll called. “
Momentito
!” A bit louder. He found himself ready to run after the guy, but where would he run
to
? The thick hedge stretched unbroken for a city block in either direction. By the time he got around, the guy could have gone anywhere.

Then the old guy appeared, coming around the other side of the poinciana tree. “You are wanting something?”

Driscoll craned his neck, trying to see around the tree. “How’d you get over here?”

The old man followed his gaze and shrugged. “Walking,” he said.

Driscoll still hadn’t spotted any gap in the hedge. He gave up, flashed his phony badge. The old guy barely glanced at it. Apparently Sonny Crockett was as good as any other cop. The old guy waved a gnarled hand over the ruined lot. “Bad business, eh?”

Driscoll looked at him. “Bad all right,” he said. The guy might have been seventy, might have been eighty, his skin a relief map in bronze. “You here when it happened?”

The old guy stared out at the rubble. “I was in my country. On one vacation.”

Driscoll gave the guy another look. “Not Cuba?”

The old guy shook his head. “I am from Zacatecas,” he said solemnly. “In Mexico,” he added.

Driscoll tried to imagine the guy flying on a plane, but the image didn’t work somehow. How long would it take to go to Mexico by bus, about a month and a half? “You’re a long way from home, pardner.”

The old guy nodded. Driscoll pocketed his shield, was ready to pack it in. He’d go down to City-County, see if he could pick up another address for Ms. Marquez, maybe something on the tax records.

The old guy was rooted to his spot, however. Apparently he’d come to talk. “You don’t see this kind of thing in Mexico,” the old guy said.

Driscoll followed his gaze at the rubble. “Yeah?” he said. “Why not?”

The old guy gave him a grin. “Too tired,” he said. “Everybody too tired.”

Driscoll smiled back, gave him a clap on the shoulder. It felt like he’d struck a gnarly fence post covered by a work shirt. “Well, you take it easy, Pop.”

The old guy gave him a look, the same one he’d used on Driscoll’s phony badge. “The lady,” he said. “She is better?”

Driscoll hesitated. “Ms. Marquez?”

The old guy nodded.

Driscoll shrugged. “I guess so. She’s out of the hospital. She must be.”

The old guy considered it. “At home?” he asked.

Driscoll had taken a step toward the car, but stopped. He turned back to the old guy. “Yeah,” he said. “She went home. You wouldn’t happen to know where she lives, would you?”

The old guy nodded.

“You
do
know where she lives?”

He nodded again. Driscoll took out a pad. “Well, that’s good, because I need to talk to her.” He found a pencil stub in his jacket pocket. “You want to tell me where it is?”