Deal with the Dead (23 page)

The question brought color to Alessio’s cheeks. “Fuck Tony Gargano. That needle-dick goombah is right where he belongs. I’m the one who
authorizes
now, you understand?”

Barton Deal looked into Alessio’s eyes and nodded to show that he understood. “Suppose I just picked up this gun and shot you instead?” he said.

It got something of a grudging smile from Alessio. “You could try. But even if you got lucky, there’d be blood and brains and dirty money all over your office. People running up and down the hallways, cops in here asking a bunch of embarrassing questions.” He shook his head, as if he’d come to a certain conclusion. “I don’t think so, Mr. Deal.”

“Then what makes you think I’ll kill Lucky Rhodes?”

“Because if you don’t, someone is liable to kill
you,”
the guy said. “But first they’d probably shoot your old lady, and after that, they just might put a bullet in that kid you’re so proud of. Maybe two or three bullets.” He said it all matter-of-factly, the way he might have talked about clipping a hangnail.

Barton Deal held his anger in check, remembering not to look away. “That’s all I have to do? Kill Lucky Rhodes?”

Alessio shrugged. “You want me to look around for some other jobs, I will.” Bring up irony to this guy, Deal thought, he’d assume you were talking about some kind of metalwork.

“So that’s what all this money is for?”

“Look at it any way you want to,” Alessio said.

“You put a suitcase full of money on my desk, you ask me to kill Lucky Rhodes. How I am supposed to look at it?”

“You as stupid as you sound?” the guy said. “Just do what you gotta do, everything’ll be square.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Barton Deal said.

“One of my guys’ll go along just to make sure everything goes okay.”

Deal nodded. “Why am I not surprised?”

“He’ll meet you at the Lauderdale marina, eight o’clock tonight,” Alessio continued.

“Tonight?”

Alessio waved a hand. It was not a matter for debate.

“How am I supposed to explain one of your gorillas to Lucky?”

Alessio stared at him. “You say he’s a mark. You done that for your pal before, haven’t you?”

Barton Deal felt a twinge, but he kept it to himself. “It won’t make any difference. If your guy’s packing, he’ll never get off the dock.”

“You’re
carrying the gun, asshole. My guy’s just going along to make sure. You talk to him, he’ll tell you how it’s going to go.”

Barton Deal stared back at him. Of course. He was simply being used as the cover, the stalking horse. If Barton Deal went along, could be cowed into killing his own friend, then fine. But there would be a goon there in any case, to make sure. Deal sighed inwardly. There didn’t seem much more to say.

“Don’t look so glum,” Alessio said, gesturing at the briefcase. “You think people throw all this money at you ’cause you’re a nice guy?”

“I always liked to think so,” Deal said.

“Well, welcome to the real world, dickhead,” Alessio said. He started for the door, then turned back. He reached into his pants pocket and moved to slap whatever it was down on Deal’s desk. “I almost forgot,” Alessio said. “You’re gonna need these.”

Deal stared down at the six shells that jiggled like jumping beans on the polished surface before him. Thirty-two caliber, maybe. Maybe thirty-eights. He wasn’t much of an expert. He glanced over at the pistol for a moment, then up at Sandro Alessio.

Alessio grinned, but there wasn’t much approaching humor there. “Aren’t you glad you didn’t try it?” he said.

Barton Deal said nothing.

And then the big guy was gone.

***

“Welcome, Barton,” the voice came over the intercom. A little scratchy with what sounded like electrical interference, and the sound quality terrible on the speaker bolted to the ship’s bulkhead, but it was undeniably Lucky Rhodes’ voice on the other end. Comforting as a jazz station disc jockey, and always happy to hear of the arrival of an old friend. “And tell me whom you’ve brought along.”

Deal turned to the man standing beside him at the top of the gangway, feeling the gentle roll of the ship under his feet. He’d met the guy half an hour ago at the Lauderdale Marina docks. An inch or two taller than himself, thin but wiry, he’d stepped out of the shadows of an oleander hedge a half dozen yards from where Barton Deal had parked his new Chrysler, had introduced himself as Sandro Alessio’s friend.

The guy made a decent appearance for a killer, Barton Deal thought: wore his dark hair slicked back, kept his mustache pencil-thin, had found himself a decent suit. Maybe Alessio had his own tailor make up some cheaper knock-offs for his henchmen. Deal leaned close to the speaker and pressed the intercom button under the watchful eye of two big men in white dinner jackets who guarded the way toward the foredeck. Party lights glittered along the rigging lines up there, and the strains of Cole Porterish dance music drifted out over the gentle swells accompanied by the chatter of unseen guests:
Just one more night of joy among the lotus eaters,
Deal thought, and wished that’s all it had to be.

“This is my cousin Mel, from Cleveland,” Barton Deal spoke into the intercom.

About certain things, Alessio had been correct. “My cousin Mel from Cleveland” was a phrase that he and Lucky had settled on long ago. It stood for something like, “I am bringing you a pigeon who is so loaded he can hardly fly.”

Nor did Barton Deal really mind setting such marks up for a fleecing. After all, they were the types who were bound and determined to get rid of their money anyway. Why not let Lucky relieve them of the burden? At least they’d be well entertained in the process, and there was no chance that they’d be slipped a Mickey, rolled, and dumped in an alley somewhere to wake up the next morning with a knot on the back of the head and nothing to show for it but the vague memory of a pretty girl’s smile. No. If a mark was intent on a screwing, then that’s what he got at one of Lucky Rhodes’ clubs, and he could get it in every imaginable way.

On this evening, most of the passengers had already boarded the
Polynesia
in Palm Beach. Because the sheriff of Broward County was running against a reformer bent on cleaning out the scoundrels from the bailiwick, the ship would not make port in Fort Lauderdale until after the elections. Barton Deal and “Mel” had been ferried out to the
Polynesia
aboard a gleaming wooden water taxi—all gloss-lacquered and gleaming brass—an accouterment that Lucky had brought in all the way from Venice. Just getting in the damned thing made you feel otherworldly, Barton Deal thought, though he hadn’t asked if his traveling companion felt the same way.

There had been a couple of girls to jump leggily onto the boat just as they were about to depart—one redhead, one blonde, both wearing upswept hair, sequined dresses, and smiles that promised the world. Barton Deal had accepted a dollop of champagne in a flute from the water taxi captain, as had the two women, but “Mel” had declined. It was left to Deal to entertain the girls during the short run out to the
Polynesia.
Despite all the distracting thoughts in his mind, he’d done his best to oblige.

The girls had clambered up the gangway ahead of them—
The view, the view,
Barton Deal thought—and had presumably already passed the checkpoint to join the party on the foredeck. Too bad he wouldn’t be partying tonight.

“Well, you and Mel come on down,” Lucky Rhodes’ voice came over the speaker. “We’re about to set sail. I’m eager to meet your cousin.”

That was Lucky for you, Barton Deal thought, watching as the two gatekeepers moved to pat Mel down. They were quick but thorough: “Mel” with his hands above his head like a man being robbed at gunpoint, one of Lucky’s men working his hands above the belt, the other working deftly below.

“That’s fine, sir,” said one of the men as he straightened up. Mel gave him a grudging nod.

“You’re okay, Mr. Deal,” the guard said, waving him along without a search.

The two of them followed after the second guard, who moved a short way along the rail toward the foredeck, then stopped and turned to motion them through a bulkhead door.

“Mind your step,” the big guard said, ushering them through.

“Guy’s a faggot,” Mel said to Barton Deal as they moved down the plush carpeted passage ahead of the guard. “Had his hands all over my prick back there.”

“Maybe he thought it was a little gun,” Deal said.

Mel shot him a dark look.

“Or maybe he thought you were just happy to see him,” Deal added.

“Fuck you,” Mel said. “You got the piece, right?”

“I have it,” Deal said. He remembered the feel of the heavy weapon as he’d holstered it. Handle a gun out on the target range, it’s just a piece of machinery. Hold one you might have to shoot someone with, it’s got blood and guts of its own.

“Just keep thinking how it’s going to go.”

Barton Deal nodded, leading the way around a turn in the passage.
Helpful hints from your local assassin,
he thought, wondering how he’d gotten himself into this, anyway. He’d introduce his “cousin,” they’d spend the evening playing on the DealCo tab. When the ship reached port back in Palm Beach, they’d go see Lucky again to settle up.

While Rhodes’ men were occupied with securing the evening’s take and escorting the main body of the passengers off the boat, that’s when it would happen. And though getting down to Rhodes’ cabin from topside was complicated, going the other way was a piece of cake. They’d be off the ship with the rest of the crowd before anyone discovered the body. That was the plan, at least.

Something caught his eye as he rounded the turn, something that stopped him short. “Take a look at that,” Deal said, pointing as the wiry guy made his way up beside him.

The passage had opened up here, the dim orange-ish light cast by the wall sconces behind them replaced by a shimmering blue-green glow that filled the hallway like a ghostly liquid. The guy stopped, his seen-everything expression unsettled for a moment.

There were a series of thick glass windows lining one side of the passageway that stretched off in front of them, offering a view into the depths of what might have seemed a swimming pool at first. Deal had been in a bar in Honolulu with a similar setup once—he and his wife had sipped mai tais and watched big-busted girls made up like mermaids swirling around in some kind of underwater ballet.

But this was no swimming tank, or at least there were no mermaids frolicking inside. Instead there were fish: schools of little teal-and-fuchsia ones whirling around like neon smoke, some medium-sized snapper and jack in there as well, but those fish, too, were moving especially fast whenever the shadows of the two featured creatures swept across the deep.

For it was two massive hammerhead sharks who were the showpiece, the big gray things swirling endlessly around the made-up reefs and phony shipwreck set in the midst of it all: hammerheads gliding here, hammerheads swooping there, up to the top, and down again, around and around the confines of an artificial sea. From where Barton Deal stood, you could see all the way across the huge tank to the windows on the opposite side: he had a murky view of a cocktail lounge, or a ballroom maybe, where men and women in suits and evening gowns milled about, and danced, or held drinks and watched the fishies, too.

“Fucking A,” the wiry man said.

“I had a malamute with eyes like that once,” Barton Deal said, caught by the rhythms of the sharks’ endless dance. “But his were on the front of his head.”

“What do they
feed
those things?” the wiry guy said, his studied cynicism evaporating for the moment.

“Meat,” said the guy in the white dinner jacket who’d caught up to them. “Lots of it.”

“Fucking A,” the wiry man repeated. And then the three of them moved on.

***

“It’s all right, Andrew,” Grant Rhodes said, dismissing the man who’d escorted them down the labyrinthine passageways. “These gentlemen are friends of mine.”

Andrew gave his boss an uncertain look, but turned to go out the way they’d come. Barton Deal felt a twinge: maybe it was the weight of the pistol beneath his dinner jacket, he thought, or maybe he was sad to see Andrew go.

“Quite a setup you have here,” said the wiry man to Grant Rhodes.

The three of them stood in front of a one-way glass that offered a soundless view into a room where a tall, rail-thin man in a tuxedo dealt a hand of chemin de fer. On the other side of the felt-covered table sat two couples—the men steely-haired, titan-of-industry types in black tie, their companions more reserved, evening-gowned versions of the women who’d been on the water taxi, everyone intent on the game.

One of the men made an almost imperceptible gesture toward the cadaverous dealer, and another card was offered up on a paddle by an assistant. It seemed like a glimpse into another dimension, Barton Deal thought: fortunes might be won or lost, but somehow, real trouble would not dare intrude. Rhodes pressed a button then, and a heavy wooden panel closed over the glass.

“Happy to have you aboard,” Rhodes replied. He was in tux shirt and tie, his jacket draped over the back of his desk chair. “Those folks shouldn’t be playing until we’ve cleared the twelve-mile limit, but”—he shrugged—“we’re among friends, aren’t we?”

When they’d been buzzed through the thick bulkhead door into his office, he’d been in his desk chair on an intercom phone with what sounded like a pit boss. The moment he’d seen Barton Deal enter, however, he ended the conversation and was up and around to greet the two of them, a broad smile crossing his avuncular features, as if their arrival was something he’d awaited for years.

They could have been camel drivers just made it across the Sahara bearing gifts untold, knights returned home with the Grail itself. Nor did it have anything to do with Cousin Mel’s feathers about to be plucked, Barton Deal thought. If men were going to lose their money, time had shown they’d mind it less losing to Lucky Rhodes. With his reassuring arm around your shoulders, whatever got inserted elsewhere simply hurt less somehow.