Raw Deal (18 page)

“Does the name John Deal mean anything to you?” he asked after a moment. There was no response. “Or Janice Deal?”

She lay quietly, staring at the ceiling as if he weren’t there. “They’d been to your place the day of the explosion,” he persisted.

Her eyes flickered at that.

“Maybe you ran into them…”

“Mr. Driscoll, I do not know these people. I have never met them. If they were guests of the museum, I can only be happy they were not there when the others were killed. Now leave me alone, please.” Her gaze had not left the ceiling.

“Maybe they saw something while they were there, who knows. Something that could have put them in danger…”

She turned on him then, her eyes flashing. “Then ask
them
, Mr. Driscoll. Ask
them
what they saw!”

He shrugged. “The missus,” he said. “She’s still in the hospital. Burned over most of her body.”

Her gaze faltered and he nodded at her. “But her face got it the worst. They’re not quite sure how that’s going to come out.…”

She fell back on her pillows, uttering a cry. Anger, frustration, pain, all of it mixed together in a peal that brought Margaria to the door in alarm.

“
Señorita
?” Margaria called.

Miss Marquez lifted her hand, waved at Margaria in dismissal. “Nothing. I turned in the wrong way.”

Margaria gave Driscoll a suspicious glance and edged back down the hall. Driscoll listened to the boards signaling her departure, then continued.

“My friends,” he said. “They’re not mixed up in international politics. They’re just average people. He builds houses. She’s interested in art. They’ve got a little girl.…”

“It wasn’t the paintings,” she said, her voice flat and listless.

Driscoll glanced at her. Her gaze was back on the crumbling ceiling, but it wasn’t defiant this time. She looked defeated, as if she were staring at something in the pattern of water stains that made her infinitely sad.

“Excuse me?” Driscoll said.

“The bombing,” she said. “Everyone assumes it happened because of the paintings. Because of Sucrel, the young artist I had invited to this country.” She paused then, biting her lower lip.

“You think it wasn’t,” he said cautiously.

“That is correct,” she said. “At first I thought it was all about the paintings, too.” She paused then, still staring deeply into the pale brown swirls above her. For a moment he thought he had lost her, but then she turned to him. He thought he saw tears forming in her eyes.

“I try to understand them,” she said, her voice fervent. “I
try
. My own parents were driven from their homeland. I understand the outrage. I understand the dream of return.” She fell back on her pillows, the tears flowing freely now. “But these things that some of these people
do
.”

Her voice had risen dangerously and Driscoll nodded in what he hoped was a reassuring way. He’d done some checking on Ms. Marquez. Her father had been an international trader, a man smart enough to see Fidel coming. He had maintained foreign accounts for years, had cashed in his Cuban holdings and sent the money out months before Castro and his forces descended like apocalyptic weather from the mountains. It occurred to him that Ms. Marquez’s views were tempered by the fact that she was sitting on a $100 million nest egg, but he kept the thought to himself.

“When a group of people is so violently wronged,” she said, her voice intense, “you would think they would understand. That they would never do such things themselves. Would you not?” She turned to him, her eyes beseeching.

“You’d like to think so,” he said. “But then you go out on a thousand domestic abuse calls, some guy beating the crap out of his wife and kids, you come to find out he’s just doing what his daddy taught him to do, when he beat the crap out of
him
.”

He shrugged, turned away. He should be encouraging her, not making her feel stupid, but he couldn’t help it. Maybe he was getting tired.

People were stupid, that’s what he’d found himself thinking.

Creatures about a minute and a half removed from the jungle, cosmically speaking. You can’t count on reason, logic, or judgment. The best you could do was to find somebody to love, hang on tight, hope you could find cover when the shitstorm hit. He found his thoughts wandering back to the fresh-faced clerk at Presbyterian Hospital. Say she was twenty-eight. Sure, Driscoll, what’s thirty years’ difference? Time she gets to be your age, you’ll be crowding ninety. Jesus.

He shook his head, came out of his reverie to find Ms. Marquez staring at him.

“You were saying you didn’t think the bombing had anything to do with the painter you brought in,” he said. His brain felt fuzzy. The words were coming automatically, out of the part of him that had coaxed victims and witnesses to talk since before he could remember.

“I think it was because of the book,” she said.

He glanced at her. “The book?”

He’d had a reasonably thorough chat with various of his contacts in the department. A detective here, bomb-squad technician there, asking just enough of each to keep the collective guard down, getting just enough to piece things together: sure, we know what type of device was used; yes, we suspect the group or groups responsible; no, we have no firm suspects, no arrests on the horizon; sure, the investigation continues, along with about six thousand other things we’re looking into, Vern. Nobody had said anything about a book.

“What book are you referring to, Ms. Marquez?”

He was careful to keep his voice quiet and casual. Finally, as he had hoped, the dam broke. And as she began to talk, he reached into his pocket for his pad and pencil like the good detective he was. And then he began to write.

Chapter 26

Deal circled the crowded visitors’ parking lot of Coral Gables General Hospital twice before he gave up and parked on a grassy berm near the street. There was just enough room between two
NO PARKING
signs to angle the pickup in and still open his door wide enough to get out.

He stopped a moment to lock the toolbox that sat out in the bed, up against the cab, then hesitated when he noticed a shovel and pickax lying there. Both had picked up a patina of rust, rattling around exposed the past couple of weeks. Someone had managed to get roofing tar all over the handle of the pick and the thing looked welded to the bed liner. You’d probably need a pry bar to lift it up. If a person wanted the things that badly, they were welcome, he decided. For that matter, why not just leave the keys, let them take the tools, the whole damned truck?

A strange attitude, he had to admit. The truck was nearly new, a spanking candy-apple-colored machine that Janice had christened “Big Red” the day he brought it home, all excited about the bells and whistles he was hardly accustomed to in a work vehicle. They’d buckled Isabel’s car seat inside, cranked up the air conditioning, the powerful stereo, and driven around for a couple of hours, just being together to celebrate getting the truck and Deal’s landing the big Terrell renovation in the Grove, alternating the three cassette tapes he’d picked up on the way: Delbert McClinton and his raspy blues for Deal, Natalie Cole’s ballads for Janice, Raffi for Isabel.

They’d ended up far out Tamiami Trail at The Pit, a down-home barbecue shack with a screened-in porch and a bunch of picnic tables scattered around outside. He and Janice had sat at one of the tables under a chickee hut, braving the mosquitoes, watching a stray rooster scratch in the dust, while Isabel dozed in the air-conditioned truck, the engine purring under its brush-barred nose a few feet away.

“It’s not a good idea to leave her alone like that,” Janice had said. She licked barbecue sauce from her fingers, stared thoughtfully through the windshield. The sun was no more than an orange band out over the Everglades, but Deal had switched the dome light on inside the truck. The interior glowed like some kind of jeweler’s showcase. Isabel lay in her car seat, her eyes closed, her head lolled back, her hair dark against the white quilting. It
was
a jeweler’s showcase, he remembered thinking.

“Jesus, Janice. She’s six months old. She’s buckled in. You could reach out and touch her.” He smiled, swiped at a dot of sauce on her cheek. He’d had two beers, what seemed like five pounds of ribs and thin sliced pork, was working on his second round of key lime pie.

He had a new truck, a half-dozen good jobs lined up, a wife he loved, a baby girl. They were sitting on the edge of the Everglades on a night still too cool for the bugs to be out in force, listening to the tree frogs’ chorus, watching the sun paint the sky in fiery streaks of orange and red. An occasional car or eighteen-wheeler hauled past out on the Trail, headed across the glades for Naples, or boring in toward the glow of Miami. He felt so good he ached.

“I know,” Janice said. She gave him a wistful smile, took his hand, licked away the sauce he’d taken from her cheek. “But things happen, Deal.”

Things happen. Sure. He was standing now in the afternoon sun, not six months later, alone, watching the heat ripple off the bright red hood of the truck. Things happen. They sure as shit did. Were a Scud missile to come piling into the parking lot at that very instant, blast Big Red and those tar-laden tools to kingdom come, Deal would not express surprise when he reached the pearly gates. “Things happen” is what he’d say.

“Hey, buddy,” a voice called.

Deal turned. There was a city cop who had stepped out of a traffic scooter a dozen yards away, out on the street. The guy had been writing a ticket on a car nosed up to an expired meter by the curb.

“You can’t park there,” the cop said, gesturing with his ticket book. He wore aviator’s sunglasses, his hair cropped short. His sleeves were so tight around his biceps, it looked like they’d been taken in after he got dressed. A weight lifter on traffic patrol.

Deal still hadn’t spoken.

“You can’t park on the grass in Coral Gables,” the guy said. He was walking toward Deal now, working up his badass glare.

“There’s no place else to park,” Deal said.

“Well, you can’t park there.”

They both turned to look at the truck. The cop was beside him now and Deal put his hand on the cop’s shoulder. The cop started, but Deal kept his hand there a moment, not really grasping, just making contact.

“I’m going to see my wife,” he said. He patted the cop on the shoulder then and walked away, toward the looming hospital.

“I’ll have to write you up,” the cop called after him. His voice was somewhere between a warning and a whine.

“Things happen,” Deal said, nodding. But he was only talking to himself.

***

For a moment Deal thought he had wandered into the wrong room. He stopped in the doorway, glanced over his shoulder, then stared back at the person in the bed.

“It’s me, Deal.” It was Janice’s voice, faint but unmistakable. “Don’t look so surprised,” she said.

He looked up and down the empty hallway again, then walked on inside. Some of the bandages that had wrapped her head and neck had been removed. Her face was still covered, and her ears, but they had left decent-sized openings for her eyes and nose and mouth. He could see her lips now, smooth-skinned and tender-looking, little stubble where her eyelashes were coming back, a shiny pink hint of skin at the bottom of her nose.

He came to the bed, took her outstretched hand. He ached to hold her in his arms, squeeze her with all his might. They had pulled the gauze away from the top of her head, revealing a sizable portion of scalp and a peach fuzz of hair growing in.

“You’ve got a crew cut,” he said, nuzzling her finger-tips. He thought he saw her lips curl into a smile.

“Sinead O’Connor has nothing on me,” she said, her voice faint, straining to sound upbeat.

He felt her squeeze his hand. “When did all this happen?”

“This morning,” she said. “Dr. Plattner changed the dressings himself. He cleaned me up, snipped away some of the underbrush. He said the danger of infection has passed. We’re ready to begin the renovation work.” Another squeeze as she continued, “I told him you had plenty of experience in that line of work, maybe he’d want to talk to you.”

“That’s great,” he said. And it
did
seem great. Still, he felt a hesitation. Kicking out the walls of a house, tossing up a few partitions, that was one thing. This was another.

“We’re going to take some skin off my bum,” she said, her voice determined to sound cheerful, “and a little fatty tissue, see if we can fix my ears up. I told him he could take all the fatty tissue he wanted from down there.…”

Deal felt the tears rolling down his cheeks before he realized what was happening.

“Deal? What’s wrong? I thought you’d be happy.…”

He was shaking his head. “I am happy,” he said. “Jesus Christ, Janice. I
am
. It’s just that…it just seems…I don’t know…
unfair
, you having to go through all this, that’s all.” He had her hand at his cheek, felt the coolness of her skin. “I guess it just took me by surprise, seeing you.”

“Well,” she said, settling back on her pillows, “I’m the one who’s supposed to be emotional. Buck up, buckaroo.”

He laughed, gave her hand an answering squeeze. “You look great,” he said.

“Let’s not get carried away,” she said. “Straightforward encouragement will do fine.” She took a deep breath and let it out. When she spoke again, her voice sounded faint, as if she’d used up her store of energy. “How is Isabel?”

“Great,” he said. “Mrs. Suarez buys her a toy every hour on the hour. She’s starting to babble in Spanish.”

“How do you tell what language someone’s babbling in, Deal?”

He ignored her. “She wants to come see her mommy.”

Janice nodded. “Mommy wants her to come.”

“I’ll talk to Plattner,” Deal said. “I’ll smuggle her in if I have to.”

“That would be nice.” He saw the smile come back again, briefly. “And you, Deal. How are
you
doing?”

“Great,” he said, hating the forced sound of his voice. “I took some time off the Terrell job.”

“That’s probably good,” she said. “You’ve had a lot to take care of.”

He shrugged. “I want to get the fourplex fixed up.” He paused, looked off toward the windows. Outside a crane was at work, swinging a heavy beam atop the skeleton of a new wing for the hospital. “I want to put it on the market. I don’t want us moving back in there.”

She made a sound in her throat, something like a laugh. “I remember a time when I couldn’t get you to consider such a thing.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I know. But it’s served its purpose. DealCo’s back on track. We can afford something else. Besides, I want to get rid of the place. It’s a jinx.”

She held the sleeve of his shirt between her fingers. “I don’t believe in jinxes, Deal.”

“You were right in the first place, Janice. If I’d have sold the place like you wanted, none of this would have happened…”

“Stop it, Deal.” Her voice was soft, but surprisingly authoritative. “You stop blaming yourself right this instant.” She struggled to sit up straighter against her pillows. “You were right to finish the fourplex. If you had listened to me, there wouldn’t be a DealCo anymore. You’d be working for someone else right now. I was just being selfish. I was big and fat and pregnant and worried about feathering the nest.”

“All this apologizing is pretty disgusting,” came a voice from behind them.

Deal turned to see Driscoll standing in the doorway. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” the big man said. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the nurses’ station. “I said I was Uncle Frank come all the way from Kansas. I don’t know if they believed me but they told me I could come on back.”

“Come in, Vernon,” Janice said. “We were just voting on what my new nose should look like. Do you prefer aquiline or Roman?”

Driscoll shambled in, shrugging. “Just make sure they don’t do Karl Malden,” he said. He glanced at Deal, held something out in his hand.

Deal took it, puzzled.

“Caught one of the Gables uniforms puttin’ it on your truck, son.”

Deal shook his head, started to wad the ticket up.

“Better take a look,” Driscoll said, pointing.

Deal glanced down at the envelope in his hand: it was a traffic ticket all right, but someone had written across the face of it, big block capitals in what looked like Magic Marker. “
WARNING—YOU HAVE PARKED ILLEGALLY—FURTHER INFRACTIONS MAY RESULT IN PENALTY
.”

He stared at Driscoll. “A
warning
traffic ticket? I never heard of that.”

Driscoll shrugged again. “That’s Coral Gables for you.” He turned to Janice, took in the new bandages, her stubbly scalp. “How you doing, little lady?”

She nodded. “Much better,” she said. “Just weak…and awfully achy.”

Driscoll nodded. “Well, I won’t stay. I just wanted to say hi at you, tell you to come on home soon as you can.”

“I will, Vernon,” she said.

Driscoll looked as if he wanted to do something—hug her, pat her hand—but finally he backed off. He turned and gave Deal a nod. “I ran across something,” he said. “I’ll just wait for you outside if it’s okay.”

Deal nodded, surprised, then turned back to Janice as the big man walked out.

“What’s that about?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “I don’t know. He’s got this idea it wasn’t an accident…” He trailed off.

“What are you talking about, Deal?”

“The fire.” He threw up his hands. “He thinks maybe somebody set it. He’s been poking around.”

“Deal?” Her voice had risen in alarm.

He took her hand again.

“Do you believe him? Is there some reason to?”

He shrugged again. “No. I don’t know. It’s just…” He knelt down by her. “…I think he feels just like I do, Janice. We’d like to be able to
do
something, you know. Set the world right, find a scapegoat…” As he spoke he felt the force of it inside him. If he
were
to find a focus for his outrage…he knew it was a fantasy, the concept of revenge, but still, the possibility tantalized him, teased him with its prospect.

She shook her head. “What good would that do?” she said softly.

He nodded glumly. “It wouldn’t do any good,” he said, and laid his cheek against her hand. “It’d just make some of us feel better.”

“Oh, Deal,” she said then, and began to stroke his head. “We just have to go on now, don’t you see? We have to accept what’s happened and go forward.”

“Sure,” he said. And let her stroke him until her hand went quiet and her breathing fell away into sleep.