Deal with the Dead (27 page)

Chapter Thirty-six

Off the Miami Coastline
The Present Day

“There is much I may never know, but one thing is certain,” Rhodes said to Deal as he wound down his tale. “My father never got the chance to come back for his money.” He held his key up in the gray morning light. “My guess is that what’s left is resting in a deposit box somewhere. And though I have a key, it won’t do me any good. I’m wagering your father’s name is on that box and that you’re the only one who can get it open now.”

John Deal was shaking his head as Rhodes finished the story. All pieced together from a few facts, some scraps of memory, and a whole lot of conjecture, or so Deal was telling himself. The two of them stood side by side at the rear of the boat, staring out into the dissipating mists. After a moment, he turned to the man beside him.

“What you’re telling me, my old man took
care
of you.”

Rhodes shrugged. “I don’t think he thought of it that way. I never saw him, not once. The money changed hands several times before it reached me. My father set it up that way, to keep me safe.”

“Why wouldn’t he have put everything in a bank account somewhere, or tell my old man to do it that way? The money could have gone out automatically.”

“And bring the IRS baying like hounds? The kind of business my father conducted involved great quantities of cash and a limited amount of bookkeeping, Mr. Deal. If he had lived longer, he might have developed a more creative accounting procedure.”

Deal thought about it. “Yeah, you seem to have gotten pretty good at that.”

“I don’t see the purpose of insult,” Rhodes replied mildly.

Deal looked away, still shaking his head. “So the way it turns out, I’m hitching rides to school back then, carrying hod on construction sites because my old man thinks it’ll be good for me, and you’re tooling around in sports cars—”

“Your father was simply fulfilling an obligation. He had no way of knowing how the money was spent—”

“Jesus Christ, Rhodes,” Deal said, whirling back on him. “Don’t you get it? It’s like I had some brother, some evil twin the family never told me about. He screwed up, they gave him cashmere coats and sent him to Europe, I got to stay home and work in the shop.”

“Your father never even knew the name I was using,” Rhodes said. “He simply did what he’d promised to do. All those years.”

Deal released a breath then, one it seemed he’d been holding for most of his life. He’d spent the best part of the last decade trying to rebuild what his old man had pissed away, trying to live down a legacy of shame that rose as high in his mind as the downtown bank towers he might have taken pride in, and now he was to supposed to accept a conman as a virtual brother?

“My old man died broke,” he said, at last. “My guess is that if there was cash anywhere at hand, he’d have spent it. Yours or anybody else’s.”

“That may be so,” Rhodes replied. “But those payments reached me just like clockwork, every quarter on the quarter, year after year after year. As nearly as I’ve been able to discover, they stopped precisely when he died.”

Deal stared at him for a moment. “Everything else aside, Rhodes, aren’t you a little old to be chasing after a trust fund?”

Rhodes dropped his gaze for a moment. “I’ll grant you that, Mr. Deal. I will indeed.” In the next moment, he was staring brightly at Deal again, apparently recovered. “But it’s
my
money we’re talking about, isn’t it?”

Deal laughed, but there wasn’t any humor in it. “What makes you think I haven’t spent it?”

Rhodes gave him a rueful look. “I thought about that possibility, of course, but as I said before, I’ve had a good long look at your balance sheets. If you’ve made anything to speak of these past few years, I’d like to know where you’ve put it.”

Deal felt heat rising at the back of his neck. He heard footsteps on the deck behind him and saw that Kaia Jesperson had come to join them on deck. She’d tied her hair back in a knot, had scrubbed the makeup from her face. You might take her for a teenager if you didn’t know better, he thought.

“Let’s say you’re right, Rhodes. Let’s say there’s a pot of money resting behind a door these keys will open. Even so. What makes you think I’d be willing to help you find it?”

Rhodes stared back as if the question were outlandish. “Because, Mr. Deal”—he glanced at Kaia, then back again, something like a smile on his face—“
you
are an honest man.”

Chapter Thirty-seven

“
Not a bad life
you lead down here,” Russell Straight said to Driscoll. Straight had his gaze on the retreating backside of their waitress, an image that reminded the world why Spandex shorts had been invented.

They’d pulled over for coffee at an outdoor café in Coconut Grove, the place just coming to life as the sun struggled up behind a thick morning fog and a screen of banyan trees on the far side of the street. There was a crowd of birds hidden somewhere in all the foliage, screeching loud enough to make Russell raise his voice.

Driscoll could smell salt and seaweed on the desultory breeze that filtered toward them through the thick, tendril-trailing trees. Biscayne Bay was just a couple hundred yards from where they sat—there would be people already out on its glassy surface, frolicking on sailboats and sail-boards, others in motor-driven stinkpots headed for the distant reefs and mangrove shallows to fish and dive. Straight was right, he supposed: There was just a whole panoply of pleasures having to do with sun and water and balmy temperatures around here, including the sight of a well-built young woman in tight shorts.

“Beats the shit out of Wheeling…” Driscoll said, shifting his bulk uneasily in the canvas director’s chair they used at the curbside tables, “most of the time.” He would have been more comfortable indoors, hunkered on a solidly anchored stool in front of a counter, kitchen odors and burping coffee makers and the clanking of pans instead of all this pleasantness, but there was a maintenance crew cleaning and waxing the floors inside. Paradise it would have to be, then, though the surroundings seemed incongruous with the mission at hand.

“So what’s next?” Russell Straight asked, staring at him across his steaming coffee cup.

“I’m thinking,” Driscoll said, though he hadn’t been thinking at all, not the way Straight would take it, anyway. They’d spent a fruitless night searching for Deal, had caught a few hours’ sleep in the car, waiting outside the DealCo offices off Old Cutler. “I can drop you off anytime, you know.”

Straight shook his head. “Long as you’re on the case, then count me in.”

“Up to you,” Driscoll said, giving his all-purpose shrug. “We can go back by Janice’s condo, try to find someone who saw something.”

He didn’t think there was much point in it, of course. Janice’s porch opened out directly into the thickly landscaped grounds. A person could hop over the rail and in a few short steps reach the canal that led out to open water. You could tie off a boat and load—or unload—just about anything, carry it in or out of one of the apartments without ever being seen by a soul. It was one of the reasons why a certain brand of tenant liked living on the property, Driscoll understood. There was probably as much drug traffic flowing through secluded dockside condos like these as there was through the Port of Miami.

The neighbors he’d talked to last night—who gave the distinct appearance of having smoked a couple of bales themselves—had neither heard nor seen anything, at least nothing corresponding even vaguely to events in the real world. Driscoll had no reason to think he’d have any more luck today.

The waitress was back now, setting down a plate in front of Straight that bore three eggs, a slice of ham, some bacon strips, a short stack of pancakes, and a pie-shaped chunk of shredded hash-browns. “You want a side of beef with that?” Driscoll asked. He’d been feeling guilty about asking for cream cheese along with his bagel.

Straight glanced at him. “I got a certain metabolism,” he said.

Driscoll nodded. “So does a rhinoceros.”

“You need to exercise more,” Russell said, pouring syrup over all the items on his plate.

“You got me there,” Driscoll said. He scooped all of the cream cheese out of its little dish, smashed it on a single half of his bagel. He’d see how that went. He could always ask for more.

He nibbled at his bagel, watching Straight down an egg in a bite, chase it with half of a pancake. Straight swallowed, then paused, his fork held over the plate. “I got something on my face?”

Driscoll shook his head.

“Chewing with my mouth open?”

Driscoll shook his head again.

“Then what are you staring at?”

Driscoll gave him a shrug. “I was just wondering what makes you tick.”

Straight shook his head. “You gonna keep on with that suspicious cop stuff till you die, drop right in the harness. Like that old fart we went to see at the bank yesterday.”

Driscoll glanced up at him. “Who’s we?”

“Deal and me.”

Driscoll thought about it. He’d always found it useful to ponder any information that came as a surprise. “You went to the bank with Deal? For what?”

“Don’t go getting any ideas,” Straight said.

“What kind of ideas should I get?” Driscoll pushed his bagel aside with the back of his hand. The squawking in the trees had ratcheted up a notch, it seemed. The way it used to get at his in-laws’ house, Marie and all her aunts and cousins crammed into the same kitchen, everybody talking at once, the noise would drive you clean out of the house.

“Like he withdrew a bunch of money, somebody would want to take it from him.”

Driscoll folded his hands patiently in front of him. “No, Russell. If you took a bunch of money from Deal, I don’t think you’d still be hanging around. But why don’t you tell me what happened at the bank?”

“He went down to find out about this key he found,” Straight said. “A safety-deposit key, he said.”

Driscoll nodded. “And which bank was this?”

Straight shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. The guy said it wasn’t from their bank.”

“This is the old guy you mentioned earlier?”

“You do it just like a cop,” Straight said. “Come up with a question for every answer.”

“I know, Russell,” Driscoll said patiently. “The old guy—a bank officer, I’m guessing—he looked at this key and said it didn’t come from his bank.”

“He wasn’t even supposed to say that much,” Straight said. “The woman who went and got him was pissed off he gave any information away—”

Driscoll held up his hand as if he were halting traffic. “Let’s drop back here. Why was Deal so interested in this key to begin with?”

Straight shrugged. “I think it had something to do with his old man.”

“And why would you think that?”

“Because he found it in an envelope, a bunch of stuff that belonged to his old man, hidden away in some of the office files.”

Driscoll reached to pinch the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “Let me make sure I’m following, Russell. Deal found an envelope that his father had put somewhere, and inside it was this key?”

“Yeah,” Russell Straight said.

“And where did this happen, exactly?”

“I already said. Back at the DealCo office.”

“And where is this envelope?”

Russell Straight shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he put it back in the files. All he had when we went to the bank was that key.”

“Well,” Driscoll said. “I think we have solved the problem of what to do next.” He was already pushing himself up from the table, looking around for their waitress.

“Hey,” Russell Straight was saying, piece of toast halfway to his mouth. “I’m not finished.”

But Driscoll was already moving toward his car.

Chapter Thirty-eight

“I thought we were going to the bank,” Russell said. He was staring suspiciously across the climbing elevator car at Driscoll.

“We most definitely are,” Driscoll said, holding his arm up to show his wristwatch, “but the bank isn’t open yet.”

“We could have finished breakfast, then.”

“I miscalculated,” Driscoll said. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll buy you a big lunch.” He was watching the numbers jump across the elevator panel. The higher the floor, the more important the office, in this building, anyway.

“But what are we doing
here
?”

Driscoll glanced at him. “You worried I’m going to turn you in or something? Relax, Russell. You’re not a federal case. Yet.”

Russell nodded, but he wasn’t agreeing with anything. “That’s another thing about a cop,” he said.

“Tell me.”

“Thinking things are funny when they’re not. A crack like that is a form of abuse, it really is. Psychological. A kind of police brutality.”

“You should go to college, Russell. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

“I graduated from college,” Russell said. “Me and Leon both. Hard-Knocks College. Knocksville, U.S.A.”

Driscoll nodded soberly. “You’re not as funny as I am,” he noted. The elevator doors were sliding open now, and he moved out. He didn’t care if Russell Straight followed him or not, but he sensed the man’s footsteps in his wake.

They were high enough up in the building that the linoleum in the hallways had turned to carpeting, and no indoor-outdoor crap with a pattern meant to disguise coffee stains, either. This was carpet that cushioned your steps, the kind meant to remind you—if you were to tread upon it every day—that you were somebody now. And the walls themselves were different, as well. Instead of gray-green finished concrete, there was wooden paneling halfway up, then some tasteful dark-blue linen wallpaper the rest of the way to the stuccoed ceiling. Every half-dozen steps there was a brass sconce set that threw the light out in a golden globe, just so.

Thank God it wasn’t his ex-wife trailing along with him, Driscoll thought. He’d have to hear about a remodeling plan for his apartment the next several years of his life.

Driscoll passed three doors that didn’t interest him, found the one he was looking for at the end of the hall: “United States Attorney” was the legend formed in raised brass letters, “Chief of the Criminal Division” in slightly smaller letters, just below.

They’d been screened and had picked up visitor’s tags in the lobby below—but he still had to announce himself through an intercom mounted in the wall. There was a camera mounted somewhere as well, he knew, though he didn’t spend any time looking for it. When the buzzer sounded, he turned the knob and Russell Straight followed him into the office.

A spacious anteroom with comfortable chairs and an array of magazines, and an opaque window with sliding panels set high up on the opposite wall. Just like an upscale doctor’s office, Driscoll thought, though in these quarters, you couldn’t take a pill for what ailed you. He was on his way to rap on the glass when a door beside it swung open.

“Mr. Driscoll?” the male receptionist asked. “Come this way.”

As Driscoll started forward, the receptionist planted himself in Russell Straight’s path. Driscoll hesitated, then stopped, annoyed by the officious prick’s manner. “He’s my assistant,” he said, the words more or less a surprise to his own ears.

The receptionist stopped. “You’ll have to wait,” he said. He turned and went back into the inner chambers, leaving them in the anteroom.

“Assistant, huh?” Russell said as the door clicked shut. “What’s the pay?”

Driscoll didn’t smile. “How’s jack-shit sound?”

“About what I’d expect,” Russell said mildly.

In a few moments, the door opened again and the young guy reappeared, a look of true annoyance on his face. “Follow me,” he said grudgingly. Which they did.

***

“Nice view,” Driscoll said, gazing down through the still-gauzy sky at the vast sprawl that was Miami: an endless grid of streets and low-slung buildings, stitched through by drainage canals and dotted here and there by shallow lakes that had once been quarries. Where they got the rocks to build all the buildings and pave the roads, he thought. Fill the holes with water, and an ugly thing gets pretty, how it all works out. In the distance was the bay, with all those sailboats and other conveyances he’d been imagining earlier, all the tiny pleasure craft etching wake lines across the mirrored image of the sky. Nothing to do out there but have fun.

“I’m glad you like it,” the man behind the desk said. He didn’t bother to look out himself. His expression suggested that scenery bored him.

“Sit up here, keep an eye on the whole damned town,” Driscoll said. “Something goes wrong, you can just push a button, have it taken care of.”

The man glanced at an appointment book that lay open by his telephone. “I’m talking to you as a favor,” the guy said. “I don’t have a lot of time.”

Driscoll nodded. The guy wore a good suit, had a neat haircut. Trim, with a handball player’s build, a touch of steel at the temples. Bucking for a kick upstairs, all the way to Washington, Driscoll supposed. He had the proper look about him, anyway. The nameplate on his desk said his name was Scott Thomas. No one he’d ever heard of, but then he’d been out of the loop awhile.

“People probably get that wrong all the time,” Driscoll said, gesturing at the nameplate.

“Excuse me?” Thomas said.

“Your name,” Driscoll said. “Thomas Scott, Scott Thomas. Nobody ever called me Driscoll Vernon, that much I can tell you.” Driscoll sensed Russell Straight shifting uneasily at his side.
Let him learn a few things
,
Driscoll thought.

“Driscoll Vernon,” the guy behind the desk said without missing a beat. “Now what did you come here for?”

“Talbot Sams,” Driscoll said. “There’s one for you.”

Thomas stared at him without expression. “This is someone I should know?”

“I was hoping,” Driscoll said.

“Then abandon hope,” Thomas said.

Driscoll was unfazed. “He confronted a client of mine, identified himself as a special agent in charge of an undercover task force operating in Miami. He wanted my client’s cooperation in providing information having to do with the free-trade port project.”

“There is no such task force,” Thomas said.

“If there was one, would you admit it to me?”

“Divulge the existence of an undercover operation? What do you think?”

Driscoll shrugged. “How about this guy Sams? Does he work for you?”

“I’ve never heard the name,” Thomas said.

“Maybe this is an operation directed out of Washington,” Driscoll said.

“If one were, I’d be aware of it,” Thomas said.

“Maybe they don’t want you to be aware of it.”

The man gave him a tolerant smile. “There’s not much I don’t know about.”

“I’ll bet,” Driscoll said. “But there’s a lot of guys working for Justice down here. Maybe you could check your computer, see if one of them goes by the name of Sams.”

Thomas glanced at the thin LCD monitor on the credenza behind him. There was a screen saver displayed there, an endlessly repeating three-sixty panorama of a desert landscape. “I can give you the number of someone to speak to in Washington,” Thomas said. He laced his fingers together, set his hands down on the desk to indicate the matter was closed.