Deal with the Dead (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-two

“
I
understand you’ve been
asking after me,” came the voice over Driscoll’s shoulder. He had just slid behind the wheel of the Ford where he’d parked it in a corner of the always crammed and poorly lit parking lot of Osvaldo’s building, had his seat belt pulled halfway toward the catch.

Fucking A
,
he thought as a pair of arms encircled him. He’d been as careless as a schmuck civilian. Which, though he
was
a schmuck civilian these days, hardly qualified as an excuse.
Too many days running credit checks and following adulterous businessmen around,
he thought, feeling the fabric of the seat belt wrapping his arms, then coiling up under his chin. No real danger, no threat to keep him trim and on his toes. He was pinned back against the headrest of his seat now, choking, gasping for breath. Plenty of danger here. Threat potential plenty high, thank you very much.

“Careful, Tasker,” he heard the voice behind him say. “We don’t want to give the Department a bad name.”

“He’s got a gun.”

Driscoll heard what he assumed was Tasker’s voice, felt a hand sliding beneath the lapels of his coat, sensed his .38 sliding free.

“I’m going to assume you have a permit to carry this,” the purring voice behind him said. “Possession of an unlicensed firearm is a serious matter, you know.”

An armed citizenry is a polite citizenry,
Driscoll wanted to tell the man.

Something he’d read somewhere recently. But his voice wasn’t working at the moment. Strangled by his own seat belt, he found himself thinking,
What a way to go.
Maybe they’d chisel it on his headstone.

“Let him breathe, Tasker,” the voice came.

Driscoll felt the pressure at his throat lessen. The sensation was accompanied by the press of something cold and steely under his ear. Shot with his own gun, he was thinking. The very worst fate of all.

“Is that you, Sams?”

“We can use that name if it suits you,” the voice came. “By now I’m sure you realize that it refers to no one, truly.”

“There’s an eighty-two-year-old minister who’d puke if he knew you were using it,” Driscoll said.

“Do tell,” the voice said. “I’d like to know why you were so interested in finding me.”

“I’m a private investigator,” Driscoll said. “That’s privileged information.”

“Are you charging your friend and business partner, then?” Sams said, his voice as mellifluous as a radio announcer’s. “Has John Deal put you up to this?”

When Driscoll didn’t respond, the seat belt at his throat coiled tighter. “If you know everything, why bother asking?” Driscoll managed.

“There are also significant penalties for interfering with a government investigation,” Sams continued. “You could find yourself in very serious trouble.”

“That means I’m doing fine right now?”

“I don’t need your interference,” Sams said. Driscoll thought that a certain hiss of anger had crept into the man’s voice. “Now tell me what you’re after.”

“That’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? You break into a guy’s office, threaten to blackmail him unless he engages in some industrial espionage on your behalf. Why wouldn’t he want to find out who you really are?”

“I identified myself, I assure you,” Sams said.

“Maybe it didn’t seem too convincing, the way you conduct your business and all,” Driscoll said.

“I’m trying to apprehend one of the more elusive fugitives from justice,” Sams said. “It’s hardly the sort of thing that’s handled under the sunshine laws.”

“So it would seem,” Driscoll said, struggling to swallow. “But I don’t think the Justice Department would condone blackmail.”

Sams laughed dryly. “I’m certain you never did anything of the kind when you were trying to gain the cooperation of an informant,
detective.
”

“I leaned on scumbags, if that’s what you mean,” Driscoll told him. “Deal’s no scumbag. Just the opposite, in fact. He’d do a hell of a lot better for himself if he wasn’t so honest.”

“It’s a wonderful cover story, that much I’ll grant you,” Sams said.

“What are you talking about?” Driscoll asked.

“It’s my experience that the apple rarely falls far from the tree,” Sams replied. “Or to put it another way, like father, like son.”

Driscoll found himself struggling against the restraints at his arms. “If you think John Deal is crooked, you’re crazy,” he said. “And if you think he’s just going to roll over and do what you tell him, you’re crazier still.”

“Oh, I think he will,” Sams said. “Particularly if he’s made of the stuff you seem to think he is. He’d never want to see harm befall those he cares about—”

“You’re no government agent,” Driscoll said, still struggling at his bonds.

“Such a naïve man,” Sams said. “But this has been a useful conversation after all. I do believe you’re motivated by your fervent belief in Mr. Deal. Perhaps he’s sold you a bill of goods, or perhaps your vision of the man is an accurate one. Either way, I’m going to get what I’m after.”

“And what’s that, Sams?” Driscoll demanded.

“It doesn’t matter,” Sams replied calmly. “You’ve served your purpose, I’m afraid. We’re only wasting time.”

Driscoll felt the chill the words conveyed and tried to struggle free. But suddenly the pressure at his throat was tremendous. And then the lights went out.

Chapter Twenty-three

“
Come on, Janice,” Deal
said, speaking to himself.

He gave up on the doorbell and moved to pound on the door of the condo she rented on the edge of Coconut Grove. It was a lively place, a smoked-glass-and-redwood holdover from the sixties, close to the water and still populated largely by a set that at least considered themselves younger—and so it was impossible to tell whether the throbbing of bass notes he felt through the deck at his feet came from inside Janice’s apartment or one of those above, below, or on either side. He’d also noted that Janice often cranked her stereo high these days, something she’d never done when they were living together.

No such throbbing of music back at the fourplex, he reflected. Mrs. Suarez might turn up the Neil Rogers talk show midmorning, especially when the sardonic host played one of his satirical musical spoofs, and Driscoll sometimes overdid the TV volume during a ’Canes or Dolphins game, but that was about the extent of it. Maybe he ought to loosen up, Deal thought, soup up the volume when he delved into his Coltrane tapes, never mind if he annoyed his neighbors. He was the landlord, after all.

And it wasn’t that the entire array of Janice’s new behaviors unsettled or annoyed Deal. In fact, he welcomed, sometimes applauded certain of these changes. Her newly aroused tastes in music, in exotic foods, an awareness in the subtleties of wine, had drawn Deal out as well. But there were troubling inconsistencies, signs of a lingering fragility, suggestions that no matter how much patience he expended, no matter how great the reserves of tender memory, respect, and longing, that the bond that they’d once shared would never mend again.

On a given day, he might find his hand brushing hers, their shoulders touching as they walked, and he would look into her eyes and see that everything that he still felt for her was mirrored precisely in her gaze. They even continued to have sex, though on a basis so random, so unpredictable, that chaos theorists would be disarmed. Teeth-rattling, eyeball-aching sex of a sort that left Deal exhausted and stupidly satisfied as a bludgeoned ox…and Janice up and out of bed as though she’d finished a workout at the gym and was now ready to pick out a new set of drapes.

Far more worrisome was the sense he sometimes had that he’d unaccountably become a stranger to her. In passing conversation, he’d recall some outing, some encounter with a casual acquaintance, only to be met with a blank stare or sometimes an outright denial that she knew the person in question or that such and such had ever happened. Worse yet were the times when he saw the distrust creeping into her gaze. They might be discussing the time that Deal promised to bring Isabel home from an outing, or his assurances that he understood her need for “space,” or for time…and despite anything that he might say, Deal would see the doubt in her eyes and—worst of all—at times, the fear.

He checked his watch then, saw that he was a few minutes late, but didn’t think much of that. He gave the door a solid pounding this time. He’d picked up Isabel’s call on his answering machine at home. “All A’s, Daddy. You know what that means.”

And he did indeed. “All A’s” meant a double-scoop cone at Whip ‘n’ Dip, Isabel’s favorite purveyor of ice cream. It was an arrangement conjured up by Deal, a somewhat shameless ploy to garner an additional bit of time with his daughter and one that even Janice countenanced, given her concern with the status of their daughter’s schoolwork.

There’d been times during the past couple of years that something—most likely the strain of her parents’ separation, according to the family therapist—seemed to have overwhelmed Isabel. Her effort would suddenly drop unaccountably, her attention span in class and study would dip to near nothing, her interest in school become nonexistent. Bad enough that it should happen, Deal thought. Even more galling to have someone like Talbot Sams use his daughter’s difficulties as a lever.

But he was not going to think about such things tonight, he thought. He was going to take his daughter out for a treat. He’d spoken to his wife about it earlier, received her blessing, and now he and Isabel were going to go and have a good time together, nothing else to consider. If he could ever get his wife to answer the door.

He knocked again, hard enough to rattle the door in its frame. He stopped, realizing that something was odd. He reached for the door handle itself and shook. That heavy wood rattling loose in its frame. No way it could do that if the heavy bolts were shot, Deal thought, and bolting her doors was something else that Janice never failed to do these days. She’d grown up in rural northern Ohio and had displayed a tendency—alarming to Deal, a Miami native—to leave car and house doors blithely open. The first thing she’d installed in the Grove apartment, however, had been a hardened steel deadbolt to supplement the one already there, a purchase she’d even consulted Vernon Driscoll about.

He turned the knob then, felt the latch give. He pushed, and the door swung slowly inward.

“Janice,” Deal called. He thought the music was louder now. A good sign? Or was it bad?

In any case, there was no response to his call, and Deal glanced over his shoulder before stepping inside. Sandalwood hung in the air, a stick of incense still smoldering on a table in the entry—another proclivity of the new Janice. To Deal, incense was no accouterment of a New Age life, but something you burned to cover the smell of the pot you smoked. Of course, that may have been why she was burning the incense, Deal told himself. That would be something he could understand, at least.

“Janice,” he called again as he moved on down the hallway. The music
was
more intense inside, some concoction of sitar, chimes, gongs, and bass designed to make a listener mellow.
Sure. A couple of joints, an hour of this music, your head would turn to cheese,
he thought.

He moved quickly down the hallway toward the living room, telling himself there was nothing unusual. Janice and Isabel were in one of the bedrooms in the back of the unit, the music too loud for them to hear the bell, or his knock.

He came out of the hallway into the main living area of the condo, a spacious combination of living room and dining room that looked out onto the jungly outdoors, separated from an open kitchen only by a serving bar, above which shelving dangled from the open-beamed ceiling. There was a light on above the serving counter and another reading lamp burning near the fireplace in the corner of the living room. Enough light to see that there was no one there.

He was moving more quickly now, across the tiled floor of the living area and down the back hallway toward the bedrooms: one doorway dark, the other a square of light. Isabel’s room, Deal registered, the two of them in there figuring out what his daughter ought to wear.

“Janice,” he called again. They’d been married all these years, but just strolling into her new “space” was an act not to be taken lightly, unlocked entry door or not.

He tapped on the half-open door to his daughter’s room before poking his head inside, then stopped short. Sure enough, what looked like half a dozen discarded outfits were tossed haphazardly across his daughter’s bed, and several pairs of shoes and sneakers were scattered on the nearby floor as well. But no Isabel and no Janice inside the room.

Deal checked his watch again, then turned back to the hallway, puzzled. The bathroom door ajar, the lights dark. He glanced inside Janice’s room, saw in the reflected light a neatly made bed, the doorway to the master bath dark as well. Had he gotten the time wrong? He was sure he’d said eight-thirty, a little late for a school night maybe, but it was still short of nine.

He went back down the hallway, trying to remember Janice’s cellphone number, but was drawing a blank. He’d had to memorize three of them in the last year. First she’d changed her service, then she’d lost her new phone. The old Janice had never misplaced so much as a matchbook. She’d kept old magazines stacked up by month of issue, had meticulously labeled and organized video tapes of birthday parties and family outings. Now, she might keep things neat on the surface—witness that tidy bedroom—but open an underwear drawer or a closet door and whole new intimations might spring up.

He was back in the kitchen now, forcing aside his thoughts and flipping open cabinet doors to find the list that was always taped to the back of one, all the necessary phone numbers. He could just go jump in the Hog, he thought, try to catch up with them at Whip ’n’ Dip, but what if they’d gone somewhere else? One thing was certain: As surely as he made any assumptions about what Janice might have in mind these days, he could count on being absolutely wrong.

He had opened up all the cabinets now, but still found no such sheet. He was about to give up, when he saw the notepad lying on the counter near the kitchen phone. He picked the pad up and checked Janice’s scribble: “D. out of town thru Sat. Switch weekend with I. to next?”

It took a moment for things to sink in. Someone had called Janice? Said he’d be called away, wanted to change his days with Isabel? What the hell was going on?

He tossed the notepad down, his mind racing.
Talbot Sams,
he thought. Something the sonofabitch had cooked up. But what could the man intend? And why would Janice just take the word of whoever might have called? She ought to know he’d never entrust such a call to someone else. Again, he cursed whatever fates had changed his happy and contented life. What had he done to deserve it, after all? He’d never asked for much, never even aspired to the kingpin status his old man had always seemed to chase. A family. A decent life. Work he enjoyed, and which he felt mattered.
Such presumption,
he thought bitterly.

He reached for the phone then, his first thought to call Driscoll. He’d managed to get the first three digits dialed when he saw the unmistakable shape of a man stepping out of the shadows toward him.