Bone Key (24 page)

Deal looked more closely at the old man. “You didn’t tell anyone what had happened?”

“I worked for the senator,” the old man said. “He was the only one to tell. Sooner or later he’d send for me, that was the way it worked. When I found out that he was dead, I knew I could end up that way, too.” He glanced up at Deal. “That’s just how it was.”

Deal nodded. “But you could have made yourself rich a long time ago,” he said, gesturing at the stacked cases.

“It might seem that way to you now,” the old man said. “But back then, I figured there’d be somebody coming along for it, sooner or later. And before long, there did come an end to Prohibition. After that, there was booze everywhere. This was just a bunch of wine in a hole in the ground, something that didn’t belong to me, something that I wanted nothing to do with.”

“So how’d Dequarius come to find out about it?” Russell asked.

The old man looked over at him and drew a weary breath. “There was a box of it in the house,” Ainsley Spencer said, his voice mournful.

“Just the one I took. Had been there forever. Me and June Anna opened a bottle of it once, one anniversary. But we didn’t much care for it. June Anna kept what was left to cook with. I kept the rest in the closet. I shouldn’t of, I know.” He gave Russell a hopeless look.

“One day a couple of months ago Dequarius was rooting around like he was fond of doing and come across it.” The old man was staring off now, talking as much to himself as to them, or so it seemed.

“He started asking questions. I loved the boy, you know. He had a persistent turn of mind.” He turned back to Deal, his eyes flashing. “One thing just led to another, you know. Once he had it on his mind, he was determined.”

Deal nodded his understanding. “Who else did he tell about all this, Mr. Spencer?” he asked gently.

“That’s Ainsley,” the old man said.

“Ainsley,” Deal repeated patiently.

The old man registered the correction, then shook his head. “I wouldn’t know. I didn’t want to know. I told him to be careful, that’s all.”

“How about Franklin Stone?” Russell asked. “Maybe Dequarius was tired of dribbles and drabs. Maybe he thought a guy like Stone had the bucks for a big score, he could unload the whole thing.”

The old man shook his head. “Maybe, but I don’t think so. It was the same as fooling around selling those coins. If anybody knew there was a lot of it somewhere, who knows what might happen? I think Dequarius was smart enough to understand that much. He’d have never let on about all this.” The old man swept his arm at the treasure stacked around them, then stopped, an odd look on his face.

“What is it?” Deal asked.

“Forty-nine,” the old man said. A hollowness had returned to his voice, as if he were talking to himself again.

“Forty-nine?” Deal repeated, shaking his head. Why did that number seem significant suddenly?

The old man’s eyes regained their focus. “It’s a restaurant, a new one, place one of those chefs from New York opened up, some Froggy fellow, I think.”

“Boussier,” Deal cut in, feeling his pulse spike. Stone’s pet pit bull of a chef.

The old man glanced up and shrugged. “Maybe that’s the name. Anyways, when things slowed down with Stone, Dequarius got him a side job busing tables there. He used to go on about the prices, what they sold their wine for. I couldn’t believe it. Maybe he tried to sell this Boussiy-waz something and just didn’t tell me.”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Deal said, his gaze turning toward the stairs. “Do you know where this restaurant is?”

“Just the other side of Old Town,” Spencer said, naming a street that Deal had never heard of. “Across from the power plant.”

The latter was a city landmark Deal was well aware of. He’d noted its steam-belching stacks towering above the gumbo-limbo trees every time he’d driven in and out of the Pier House’s parking lot. He checked his watch, amazed to see that it was nearly six.

“I was out the whole night?” he said to Russell.

Russell shrugged. “I didn’t see the point of waking you.”

Deal nodded, then felt an answering throb at the base of his skull. He glanced at the old man, trying to digest everything he’d heard, order it inside a head that seemed ready to crack open with uncertainty. So Dequarius Noyes had been trying to lead him to this treasure trove all along, because he’d thought him a less dangerous go-between than Stone in some scheme to sell this cache. Then again, maybe Dequarius had tried to unload the lot on a restaurateur who’d decided to take negotiations to an unexpected level; perhaps that’s why he’d come to Deal for help.

Whatever had set this chain of events into action, Deal realized that once again he had stepped inadvertently into the path of a train intent on grinding him to gut and gristle. They’d managed to escape the debacle on Dequarius’ houseboat, but they’d left three bodies and the Hog behind. He doubted he’d get a free pass from his friends in the sheriff’s office this time around. For all he knew, in fact, those were the very people who’d been ready to put them away. He drew a breath that threatened to split his aching head, then turned to Russell.

“We’re going to need a car,” he said, checking his watch again. “Probably best we get moving before it’s light.”

Russell nodded and started toward the stairs. Deal started after him, pausing to put a hand on Ainsley Spencer’s shoulder. “All this is no more your fault than it is mine,” Deal told him. “We’ll find out who killed Dequarius.”

When the old man glanced up at him with a doubtful look, Deal added the bitter truth. “We’ll damn well have to,” he said, then followed Russell up.

Chapter Thirty-three

If there’d been anyone in the maintenance area of Stone’s Truman Town marina awake at such an hour to see them, it might have seemed as though three men were climbing up from an open crypt, Deal thought. He paused to steady himself as he emerged into the predawn air, waiting for a slight giddiness to dissipate as he surveyed their surroundings.

There was a hint of sulfur off the exposed flats, along with the familiar tang of a salty breeze, helping to clear the fogginess in his brain. Maybe he’d picked up a concussion back there on the houseboat, or maybe it was just his brain’s way of signaling overload. A couple days ago, all he’d been worried about were the depths of some pilings at a construction site in Miami. And, for all the trouble that now surrounded him, what a trifling life that suddenly seemed.

He turned at the sound of Russell lowering the door to the chamber back into place. There was a scudding cloud bank passing over that reflected the distant lights of the city, casting enough of a glow for him to get his bearings. They were at a secluded spot near the seawall at the far end of the marina, on the other side of a cyclone fence that separated Truman Town from the grounds of Fort Taylor, another piece of the nineteenth-century network of fortifications that had been constructed when Key West was presumed to have a position of strategic military importance.

Decommissioned for more than a half century now, the place had been turned into a state park, underfunded and barely developed, a fact which probably accounted for Ainsley Spencer’s cache lying undisturbed for all these years. Fifty acres of prime waterfront property that Stone would love to get his hands on, Deal mused. If he knew the man, there was probably a long-range plan outlined somewhere to accomplish that very mission.

He glanced down at the slab in which the doorway had settled, saw nothing to distinguish the entranceway. Even if you bothered to come back to this lonely corner, you’d never suspect what lay beneath your feet.

“Phone’s right down there,” Ainsley Spencer said, pointing along the seawall past a low-slung maintenance building. Rigging clanked dully on the masts of sailboats moored down that way, and waves slapped quiet counterpoint nearby.

Russell nodded and started off along the seawall. Deal turned to the old man. “Where will you be?” he asked.

The old man rolled his palms upward in a “who can say?” gesture. “I’ll be close by,” he said. “I see anybody come looking around these parts, I’ll let you know.”

“How?” Deal said.

“Don’t worry,” the old man said with a grin. “This here’s just a little island.” And then he was scurrying away toward his tied-off skiff.

***

Russell spent a few minutes with Deal, making sure he understood the plan, then went to make his call to Denise, speaking softly into the receiver while Deal listened to the receding hum of the old man’s skiff. Farther out in the channel, he saw the lights of a lone shrimper on its way out of port. At the horizon, a slender golden band had already wedged its way between the dark Atlantic waters and the even darker cloud bank above. Another day on its way to paradise, he thought as Russell hung up the phone. Anything could happen here.

“She’ll meet us in ten minutes,” Russell said as he walked to join him. “Right where you said.”

“Good,” Deal said and led them off.

The walk took a bit less than that, a few blocks inland from the marina to the other side of Truman Town, along a series of quiet streets that might have been picked up from a New England village and dropped down in the Tropics, a couple hours’ Donzi ride from Havana harbor. Neatly manicured lawns laid out in front of Cape Cod clapboard homes with wide verandas and dangling wooden swings. The picture of the safe, secure lifestyle, Deal thought. He pictured his daughter rolling around on one of those patches of dark emerald lawn, wrestling a Lab or a golden retriever into submission, then tried to fit Annie Dodds into that same vision.

“Anybody live in these places?” Russell’s voice cut through the silence and into his reverie.

Deal glanced at him. “A few,” he said. “Most of these are third and fourth homes for snowbirds. It’ll be different come December.”

Russell nodded. Automatic porch lights were winking off here and there as dawn filtered down through the thick canopy of banyans and ficus above them. “Hardly looks like the same town in here,” he said.

“This is Franklin Stone’s vision of the perfect life,” Deal said.

Russell nodded. “Compared to where I grew up, it just might be,” he said.

“He’s got even bigger things in mind for that property out by the beach,” Deal said.

“I seem to remember something about that,” Russell said.

“We’ll talk to Stone yet,” Deal said.

“Expect we will,” Russell said, nodding at something up ahead.

Deal turned to see the tiny white coupe idling just outside one of the pedestrian gates up ahead, its exhaust puffing luminously into the morning air, Denise’s profile visible through the open passenger’s window. She turned when they came through the gate onto Fleming Street, her gaze flickering immediately past Deal toward Russell.

Deal felt a pang. Whatever had transpired between the two of them in a few short days, that moment’s gaze had been something to behold—a woman who had her sights locked down, beside whom a loon’s mate would seem fickle. He wondered if Russell had noticed, or if it was just something that the one who
didn’t
get such glances could see. He wondered if Janice had ever looked at him that way. He tried to recollect if Annie had.

“I’ll get in the back,” Denise was saying, unfolding herself from behind the wheel as Deal approached the car, holding up her hand when he started to protest. “You guys would never fit.” She was out—wearing little besides an oversized T-shirt, it appeared—and had climbed into the backseat in a second.

“Appreciate you doing this,” Russell said, as he wedged himself behind the wheel. Deal would have turned to add something, just for another glimpse of her legs, but the close quarters and the pounding in his head held him to a nod and a murmur of agreement.

“Hey,” she said. “You want to take over the payments, you can keep the damned thing.”

Deal glanced in the rearview mirror to see her smile, run her hand through her tousled hair. She’d looked good in her perky Pier House getup, but in this guise she seemed absolutely spectacular. No wonder Russell didn’t care when he got back to Miami, and never mind that studied show of indifference.

“Turn here.” She pointed, and Deal glanced up as Russell obeyed, the front porch he’d seen a couple of nights before emerging from the early gloom up ahead. He got out of the car and waited for her to extricate herself from the tiny backseat, trying to keep his gaze mildly discreet. For his part, Russell sat staring forward stolidly, as if he were a cabbie dropping off another fare.

Denise seemed to think about something for a moment, then reached into the tiny bag she was carrying and came out with a tiny, nickel-plated pistol. Deal stared at the weapon. Did every woman in Key West pack heat?

Denise, oblivious to his surprise, leaned into the car and thrust the pistol at Russell. “You might need this,” she said.

Russell stared at the weapon for a moment, then reached to take it from her. He turned it over in his hand a couple of times and glanced up at her, something of a smile on his face. “Any rabbits come after me, this just might help.”

“It’s better than nothing,” she said, then glanced at Deal as she started away.

“Try not to get any bullet holes in my car,” she said. “It knocks the shit out of the resale value.”

Deal managed a nod as he got back into the passenger’s seat. “Thanks again,” Deal called to her, but her gaze went back to Russell, passing Deal as if he were a ghost. In the next moment, they were off.

Chapter Thirty-four

“Who would put a fancy restaurant across the street from a factory?” Russell Straight asked as he pushed himself to a standing position beside the tiny coupe. He worked his head and rolled his shoulders like some giant version of a hermit crab who’d been trapped in too small a shell.

Deal followed Russell’s gaze toward the towering stacks of the power plant, at the huge white columns of steam and smoke belching high into the air. “At least it’s not a paper mill,” Deal said, glancing around the quiet side street where they’d parked. He pointed at the plant’s superstructure. “That’s all lit up at night,” he added. “Maybe if you have enough drinks it looks like there’s a cruise ship moored across the street.”

Russell nodded, but he didn’t seem convinced. “Even dumber, why would you want to live there?”

Deal shrugged. “Maybe he got a good deal.” Denise had already confirmed what a glance at the Key West phone directory seemed to suggest. François Boussier had remodeled the upper two floors of the three-story turn-of-the-century mansion he’d bought to house his restaurant, creating a pleasure pad said to go beyond even jaded Key West standards for moneyed bachelor’s quarters. The windows he could see on the upper stories seemed to be clad in stained glass, as a matter of fact. Maybe all of them were.

Russell checked his watch as they crossed the street. “This guy doesn’t sound like one of your early-to-bed, early-to-rise types.”

“Why don’t you ask me if I care?” Deal told him as he mounted the opposite sidewalk.

There was a pair of stone lions perched on pedestals beside a staircase leading up to the broad front porch, where a massive beveled glass and oak door gave access to the restaurant during normal hours. There was a tasteful brass plate bearing the street number beside it. Probably the mean price for entrees on the menu, given the look of the place, Deal thought.

He walked down to the end of the porch where a smaller door was set in an alcove, a buzzer and intercom mounted nearby. Deal pressed the buzzer and held it, releasing it for a second before jamming it down again.

“What is it?” a clearly annoyed voice cut over the speaker. “Release the buzzer, please.”

Deal kept his thumb pressed tight for an extra beat, then flipped a little toggle switch from “Listen” to “Talk.”

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Boussier, but I need to talk to you. It’s important.”

“Impossible,” Deal heard on the other end, and immediately jammed the buzzer down again.

“This is outrageous,” he heard when he flipped over to “Listen” once again. “Who
are
you?”

Deal hesitated. “Gene Dickerson,” he said. “Detective Dickerson, Monroe County Sheriff’s Office.”

There was a pause at the other end. “Who is that with you?”

Deal stopped, startled by the question. He glanced up, finally noticing the surveillance camera mounted high up in the porch eaves. Something he’d hardly anticipated, to be sure. He was confident that Boussier had not gotten a good look at them the night before, but he was less certain the two of them looked sufficiently like cops.

He’d removed the makeshift bandage Russell and the old man had fashioned, brushed his hair down over the seeping gash high on his forehead, but a close look might still suggest doubt. On the other hand, he reassured himself, that was one of the things about Key West—there was virtually no way to distinguish the wealthy from the penniless, the scammers from the sincere, the good guys from the bad.

He turned back to the intercom, mustering his confidence. “That’s Detective Conrad,” he said, his voice firm. “He’s assisting me.”

“You’ll have to come back this afternoon,” Deal heard. “You can find me in the kitchen anytime after four.”

Deal turned back to the camera. “If I come back at four, I’ll have the Health Department supervisor with me, along with someone from INS,” Deal said. “If you’re lucky, you’ll be open again by Christmas, which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. Maybe it’ll give you a chance to get all those kinks worked out of your menu.”

Deal raised his hands in a “let’s be friends” gesture. “Or you could come down here and open your door right now.”

Deal flipped the speaker back to “Listen,” but he didn’t hear anything, unless that background hissing was really the sound of synapses short-circuiting in Boussier’s brain. After a moment, there came an angry buzzing noise at the formidable-looking door plate, accompanied by the sound of a lock snapping free.

Deal pushed the door inward and turned to gesture to Russell. “After you, Detective.”

“Fucking-A,” Russell said after a moment. Finally, he shook his head, moving past Deal with an expression that might have been mistaken for a smile.

***

“I’d like to know what is so important it could not wait for afternoon,” Boussier demanded once they’d ascended the staircase to his living room. His gaze flicked from Deal to Russell in a way meant to convey intense disdain. Certainly there was no hint of recognition there. For once he felt comfortable before such a presence, Deal thought. Given Boussier’s native imperiousness, they probably could have brought along Charles Manson, passed him off as a deputy.

“Don’t worry,” Deal said. “This won’t take long.”

Boussier was a tall man, with an inch or two—maybe even a few pounds as well—on Deal, and a way of leaning in close to claim more than his share of negotiating space. He had a wild head of tightly curled hair, intense dark eyes, and a sizable hooked nose that he’d obviously used to great advantage, homing in on hapless underlings.

Boussier was barefoot, wrapped in a jade-green silk robe that reached halfway down his calves, exposing a pair of legs that looked as if they’d never been in sunlight. He’d headed the two of them off at the top of the stairs, but Deal could see past him into a chrome-and-steel living area, a granite-topped kitchen bay opening just beyond, and above that, the railing of an elevated loft, where a young man with the face of a Botticelli angel leaned, a sheet slung toga-style over one shoulder, his chin propped on his hands, watching this paltry drama being played out beneath him as if such diversions appeared before him every day.

“He’s of age, I assure you,” Boussier said, noting Deal’s gaze.

“I’m certain,” Deal said.

“I asked you what this was about,” Boussier said, shifting from foot to foot.

“Do you know a man named Dequarius Noyes?” Deal asked.

When Boussier looked blank, he went on. “Wiry little black guy, bused tables for you sometimes.”

There was a spark of recognition in Boussier’s eyes. “I know who you mean,” he said after a moment. “I fired him for stealing. What’s he done now?”

“He’s dead,” Deal said. “Someone shot him.”

Boussier faltered, his gaze swinging up toward the young man poised at the railing. When he turned back to Deal, he’d regained something of his imperiousness. “I’m sorry to hear that, though I’m hardly surprised.” He sighted down his nose at Deal again. “In any case, what does it have to do with me?”

“It’s about the wine,” Deal said mildly.

Boussier stopped again. A gut shot this time, Deal thought. “The wine?” He shook his head. “I found that Dequarius had struck up a deal with my meat purveyor. If he was stealing wine, I knew nothing of it.”

Deal glanced at Russell as though to convey great tolerance. “I’m talking about the wine he wanted to sell
you
,” Deal said, turning back to Boussier.

“I assure you—”

“Mr. Boussier, you’ve got a gram of cocaine chopped up on that coffee table over there and a sixteen-year-old kid upstairs in your bedroom—”

“This is outrageous,” Boussier tried, but there was a pale line of fear tracing his flapping lips now. “You have no warrant—”

“I don’t need a warrant,” Deal said mildly. “This is Key West.” He waited a moment but Boussier was quiet now. Apparently his few months in the city had taught him a few things. Deal had seen it often enough in Miami over the years, hotshots down from the big city to run roughshod over the natives in paradise.

“Besides, I don’t care about any of that.” Deal waved, mildly. “All I want you to do is tell me about this wine you bought from Dequarius Noyes.”

Boussier glanced again toward the railing, then at Russell Straight, who stared back at him like the Buddha incarnate. Deal thought he saw a smile cross the features of the kid at the railing.

“I can’t see the importance of this,” Boussier said, turning his sour gaze back on Deal. His lip curled in a way that suggested impatience. “It was just one bottle of wine, for God’s sake.”

Deal felt his heart beginning to race, but he simply nodded, as if what Boussier had just told him was the most natural thing in the world.

“Why don’t you tell me about it?” he said. He sensed that Russell’s posture had shifted ever so slightly, a tiny forward pitch that suggested a great mass ready to come thundering down.

“There isn’t much to tell,” Boussier insisted with a nervous glance at Russell. “Dequarius showed up in my office one afternoon about a week ago, already late for his shift. I thought he was there to make some excuse, possibly beg off work for the night. It had happened before and I—”

“Why don’t you stick to the point, motherfucker?” Russell Straight cut in.

Boussier gave Deal a pleading look, but Deal simply shrugged. “We’ve been up all night,” he said. “You’ll have to excuse my partner.”

Something seemed to register inside Boussier at that moment. He looked closely at Deal, drew himself back, as if he might be poised to run. “I’d like to see some identification,” he said. He glanced up at the boy leaning at the railing. “Tommy, dial nine-one-one. Ask for the sheriff’s office. I—”

He broke off when Russell Straight’s big hand flashed out and caught a fistful of his hair. Russell jerked him backward off his feet, pulling Boussier’s face close to his own. “If you don’t tell us what you know, Tommy’ll be calling for an ambulance.”

There was no turning back now, Deal thought, ready to go for the stairs that led up to the loft bedroom, yank the phone out of the wall. He needn’t have worried, though. The boy at the railing never moved a muscle. Either he was stoned to the gills, Deal thought, or he was mightily pleased by what was transpiring. Possibly both.

“You’d better be careful,” Tommy called down in a dreamy voice. “He’s got a knife.”

“Is that right?” Russell asked Boussier, whose hand had already darted toward a pocket of his robe. Deal started forward, but Russell caught Boussier’s hand easily.

He wrenched upward, squeezing, and Boussier uttered a gasp of pain. A slender, pearl-handled switchblade tumbled to the floor, and Russell bent to snatch it deftly, his hand still buried in Boussier’s thatch of hair.

“What you use this for?” Russell said to Boussier, flipping the knife open an inch from the man’s bugging eyes. “Carve up quail in your fancy kitchen?” He glanced at Deal, then pressed his thumb hard against the side of the extended blade. The blade snapped like a Popsicle stick.

“Finish your story,” Deal said. “And we’ll be out of here.”

“Who are you?” Boussier gasped, his eyes leaking tears now. His head was twisted back, exposing white crusts that ringed both inflamed nostrils.

“Concerned citizens,” Russell said, ratcheting his grip a notch tighter. “We’ve got a need to know.”

Boussier’s knees had buckled, but Russell held the man off the ground as easily as if he were made of straw. “He had a bottle of wine with him,” Boussier said, his pleading gaze on Deal’s. “He wanted to know if I wanted to buy it. I started to throw him out, then I got a look at what it was.”

“Bordeaux,” Deal said. “First growth. Nineteen twenty-nine.”

Boussier tried to nod, but it was difficult, given how he was held. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I assumed it was a counterfeit, some kind of fraud…” He broke off, wincing as Russell gave another yank on his hair.

“Let him talk, Russell,” Deal said.

Russell gave Deal a glowering look but relaxed his grip a fraction. Boussier ran his tongue over his pale lips. “I told Dequarius I’d have to be sure it was genuine before I paid him a cent. I expected him to walk out, but he told me to keep the bottle, ‘give it a taste,’ as he said. There was plenty more where it came from, he told me. If I liked it, he and I could work out an arrangement.”

“So you conned him out of his wine,” Russell said, wrenching the knot of hair once again.

“It was his idea to leave it with me,” Boussier protested, his face twisting in pain.

“What happened next?” Deal said, signaling Russell to ease off.

Boussier swallowed, speaking more quickly now. “Once I’d gotten Dequarius out of my office, I examined the label more carefully, then checked the ullage—”

“Speak English,” Russell said, giving another twist.

“It’s the space between the bottom of the cork and the level of the wine,” Boussier managed with a pleading glance at Deal. “Can’t you get him off me?”

“Soon enough,” Deal said. “What’s so important about ullage?”

“It’s one measure of a wine’s actual age,” Boussier explained. “Over time, the wine shrinks back toward its natural solid state. That’s what creates the sediment. As the wine settles, the ullage increases.”

“I
am
getting an education,” Russell said, popping the fat part of his free hand off Boussier’s forehead. Deal thought he saw the ghost of a smile cross the blissed-out features of the kid at the railing above.

“Wouldn’t the label be proof enough?” Deal said, the picture of that folded scrap of paper in Dequarius’ stiff fingers still clear in his mind.

“Any garden-variety criminal could find a book, scan a copy of a label in a few minutes,” Boussier said. “An examination of the cork is a much truer test.”

Deal shook his head. “To see if the wine’s turned?” he asked. “I don’t get it.”

“That’s not why the cork is presented,” Boussier said. “You’re to read what’s stamped along the sides, to be sure of what you’re getting. The name of the château is printed there, along with the date.”

Deal rolled it over in his mind for a moment. “Couldn’t you phony up a cork, too?” he asked.