Presidential Deal (17 page)

Another pause. “Sure, Vernon, I think I can manage that,” she said. “And thanks.”

For what? he wondered. And then the connection broke.

Chapter 28

It was the tree crashing onto the roof that got Deal’s attention. He’d been inspecting the door hinges, thinking idly about
The Prisoner of Zenda
, where he thought he remembered that the guy had managed to tunnel out of a dungeon using a spoon, except it had taken him twenty or thirty years, or maybe it had been
The Count of Monte Cristo
…

Suddenly there’d been a sharp splintering sound from somewhere close by outside, and another, then a breathless
swoosh
of needles sweeping the rain-striped air, and the crash of metal when the branches slammed against the roof.

He’d turned in time to see the branches fly up in recoil, then settle back toward the ground, slinging a fresh shower of water through the open windows as they whipped about. There was a gaping hole now where two sheets of roofing had buckled, and the rain was already cascading through.

“What? What was that?” Linda came out of a doze, her face panicked. While Deal had canvassed the place, searching for nails, crevices, anything that might suggest the possibility of escape, she’d dragged the mattress into the driest corner, propped herself into a sitting position, and nodded off. Maybe she’d had a half hour of rest, he thought. It couldn’t have been more.

“A tree,” he said on his way to the window. He glanced out. “A big tree,” he added.

He saw now that it was one of the Australian pines he’d noted as they’d arrived on the island, not really a pine at all, but some shallow-rooted weed of the tree family, which had been brought halfway around the world earlier in the century. About as steady as a fifty-foot man doing a handstand, they’d been the first trees to come down when Hurricane Andrew had swept into Miami. And then—as Deal stared out over the fallen tangle of branches, the shattered trunk, the great clod of root and earth that loomed up out of the storm like some shaggy creature thrust to life—it finally occurred to him what was really happening.

“We’re in trouble,” he said, as much to himself as to Linda.

She’d gotten to her feet, was on her way to the window. She laughed at what he said. At least it was a sound that resembled laughter.

“Because there’s a hole in the roof?” she asked. She glanced dolefully at the water splattering onto the floor.

“The weather,” Deal said. “We could be looking at a hurricane.”

She stared at him, uncomprehending. “It seems like one to me.”

He started to say something, then stopped himself.
She wasn’t there, Deal. No one who wasn’t there can understand
.

For a moment he wavered, fighting against the fear rising inside him. Just a patch of bad weather, he wanted to tell himself. Another tropical wave, characteristic of the season down here.

He might have been able to dismiss his troublesome thoughts, but he’d felt the same thing when Andrew had made its final approach toward Miami a few short years back, some subtle shift in his inner chemistry that told him that it was no false alarm: he’d had this same sick feeling in his gut—as if the bottom had fallen away, as if the all the cells were clamoring for something to hold on to. The utter certainly of his body that this time was no false alarm. Duck and cover, John Deal. Find someplace to hide.

He hoped he was wrong. But he hadn’t been then. And if he were right again now…

“This is nothing,” he said to Linda, waving his hand at the fallen tree. A branch just outside the window continued to whip strangely about, and he saw that a two-foot Cuban lizard had emerged from the tangle, probably wondering what had happened to its home. The bright green thing was dangling upside down, its claws clamped fast to the slender branch, its ponderous head swiveling about like some tiny dinosaur looking for someone to take out a grievance upon. They were surly creatures, and Deal had been bitten by them more than once, clearing rocks, felling trees. He decided not to point it out to Linda Sheldon. There were plenty of worse things to talk about.

“It starts this way and you think you’re getting nailed,” he found himself saying. “Then when the storm really hits, you can’t believe how bad it is.”

“If you’re trying to cheer me up, it’s not working,” she said, staring at him uncertainly.

“I don’t want to frighten you,” he said. “I just want you to know.”

She stared at him, the tough countenance she’d maintained so stolidly a little shaky, it seemed. “Know what?” she asked, her voice quiet.

Deal took a deep breath. He noticed that the lizard had disappeared. Maybe it was trying to dig a hole, he thought, pull the top in after itself.

“I don’t think this island’s very big. I doubt that where we’re standing is twenty feet above sea level, if that.”

“So?”

Again he hesitated.
Keep your mouth shut, Deal
.

“I have to tell you these things,” he said. “If it is a hurricane, I want you to know what we might be in for.”

Her eyes widened slightly, but she was nodding assent.

“It’s not so much the wind,” he said, glancing about them at the walls of the makeshift prison. The concrete block had been laid haphazardly in places, but the seams were solidly mortared even if they wavered drunkenly along. A solid concrete cap beam had been poured atop the top course of block, and there were lengths of half-inch steel rebar jutting from the cap to hold the roof rafters down. “This place isn’t very pretty, but I don’t think it’ll come down on us.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” she said, her eyes still fixed expectantly on him. “Are you going to tell me the bad news now?”

“It’s the storm surge,” he said.

“Storm surge?”

“The wind gets going hard enough out there over the water,” he said, waving his arm, “it pushes a wall of water up in front of it, just piles it up, drives it forward.”

“A tidal wave?”

“Something like that.” He shrugged.

“As in how big?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It depends on the wind speed, the size of the storm…” He broke off. “We had fifteen feet come ashore ahead of Hurricane Andrew, maybe more in some places…”

“Fifteen
feet
?”

He met her stare, nodded.

She glanced around. “How high up are we?”

He shrugged. “Six feet, maybe. Maybe eight, I’m really not sure. All of this is just speculation, you know.”

She glanced out the window, then back at Deal. “We have to get out of here.” Her voice had taken on an edge of panic.

It was what he’d warned himself against.
Way to go, Deal. Scare her good. Misery loves company, was that it
? “There really isn’t any way to know if I’m right,” he said.

She studied him for a moment. “How about Angel and his people? They must be concerned about this storm. They must have a radio…”

“Maybe,” Deal said.

“So if there was a hurricane coming, they’d know, they’d have moved us.”

Deal shrugged. “You’d like to think so. But maybe they’ve got bigger things on their minds. Or maybe there’s no place else to go.”

She stared at him. “You think that’s possible? That they just wouldn’t tell us?” She broke off, stared up at the rattling tin above their heads.

“Whatever’s happening,” he said, “it’s too late to try and get off this island now. Not in the boat they used to bring us here. If we had an ocean liner, maybe we could put out to sea…”

“Stop it!” she cried.

He stared at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m scared, that’s all.
You
scared me. I don’t want you to joke. I want you to do something about…” She broke off, staring about them. “…about
all
of this,” she finished.

“Yeah, me too,” he said.

She glared at him in frustration. “I should have told Frank to forget it,” she said. “I should have let him pass out his own damned medals. I should have been a selfish person just once in my life and done just exactly what I wanted to do, which was go down by the pool of that expensive hotel and park myself in a chaise longue and read a book and let myself be pampered just like all the rest of the people with any sense.”

Deal nodded as she finished. “Right. It could have been Frank and me sitting right here hashing things out. Maybe we could have made some progress on the Cuban situation.” He glanced around. “At least the bathroom situation wouldn’t have been so awkward.”

She had her mouth open to say something else, but that stopped her. She took a breath. “Okay, Mr. Deal. What do you propose?”

Deal gestured up at the gap in the corrugated roofing. “We could wait for the wind to blow that tin away,” he said. “Or we might try giving it a hand.”

She looked. “How would we get up there?”

He glanced at the wobbly stool in the corner, but knew it wasn’t tall enough. A five-foot ladder, that’s all he needed. And why not a cellular phone, too, since he was wishing?

“Come on,” he said, kneeling down on his hands and knees. “I want you to stand on my shoulders.” He glanced up at her.

“Come on,” he repeated. He indicated the wall with a jerk of his head. “Steady yourself against the wall with your hands.”

She gave him a doubtful look, then hiked her skirt up and stepped forward.

“Okay,” he said as he felt her bring her feet together in the middle of his back. “Now lean forward.”

“I’m trying!” He felt her feet stutter-stepping about, as if she were doing some kind of dance step up there. “This isn’t going to work,” she cried.

“Come on,” he called back. “Lean into the wall, steady yourself with your hands.”

After a moment he felt her weight settle, her movements even out.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to stand up now. Keep yourself leaning into the wall, move your feet on top of my shoulders.”

“I flunked gymnastics,” she called to him. “I just want you to know that.”

“Put it in your autobiography,” he said. “Here goes.”

He strained against her weight, got one foot beneath him, rose up as slowly as he could. “Let yourself slide,” he called. “Come on.”

He felt the resistance lessen then, got his other foot under them, rose into a crouch. “Can you touch the rafters yet?”

“You mean the wood things across the ceiling?”

“Right,” he called. “The wood things.”

“A couple more inches,” she said. He felt her wavering on his shoulders and willed himself still. He could do this. He could turn himself to stone if that’s what it took.

“Okay,” he said. His face felt like it might blow out from the pressure. “When I straighten up, grab hold of the rafter that’s closest to you.”

“Got it,” she called. He felt one foot dig into his shoulder, then straighten. “What now?”

He clasped a hand over each of her ankles then. He wanted to glance upward, guide her movements, but worried that the movement might dislodge her. “I’m going to back away from the wall,” he said. “I want you to reach out for the next rafter with one hand. When you’ve got it, bring your other hand along, and let me know. We’re going to walk ourselves over to where the hole is, just like that.”

“I’ll try,” she said, her voice doubtful.

“You’re going to do it,” he said. “Just get yourself ready.”

“Right,” she corrected herself. “I
will
do it.”

He felt her lurch then, heard the smack of her hand on wood. He staggered back, trying to keep himself centered beneath her.

“You okay?” he called, gasping for breath now.

“Got it,” she answered.

He sidestepped more neatly this time, spread his legs for balance. He felt the spray of rain, caught sight of the gap in the roofing from the corner of his eye. “One more,” he said. “You can do it.”

“Go,” she said. And he staggered under her once again, feeling his foot slip in the water that had puddled beneath the hole.

For a moment he thought they would both go down, but then his sole caught on a ridge in the poorly troweled concrete.
So there was something to be said for poor craftsmanship
, he thought, steadying himself.
What do you think about that, old man
?

“So what do I do now? It’s hard to see up here. The rain’s splashing in my face.”

“Try pushing up on the panel that’s already loose, see if it gives.”

“It’s hard,” she said. Then she cried out.

“What happened?”

“I cut myself. This stuff’s all rusty.”

The water was cascading directly down upon him now, and he felt himself beginning to waver. He turned his head from the torrent as best he could and shouted. “Can you push harder? Go ahead, give it everything you’ve got.”

His breath was coming in shorter gasps now, and his legs were going leaden. It was the beginning of the end, he knew. The last time he’d struggled this way had been twenty years and twenty pounds ago, he was on the football field, wearing full pads, and was at the peak of physical condition.

“What if they’re out there?” she was calling.

“It doesn’t matter,” he cried. “Come on!”

“Here goes,” she said.

He felt her feet dig into his shoulders, felt the tendons and muscles in his shoulders quiver as she strained upward. He heard her cry—whether from effort or pain he couldn’t tell—then heard metal buckling.

“It’s giving a little,” she cried.

“Push, goddammit,” he said. “Don’t stop. Push.”

He drew his legs together as close as he dared, stiffened his spine, threw his chin up so that the water poured fully into his face. He felt her cry out again, but the crashing water drowned it out and he wasn’t sure what had happened until he heard the rending shriek of metal and felt the pressure on his shoulders lessen, and he knew then that they still had hope.

Chapter 29

Driscoll piloted the Ford due west out Sunset Drive, his eyes wary on the line of thunderheads that blanketed the horizon, about to rush up to meet him, or so it seemed. It was angry weather, steel gray and blue and black, but it had nothing to do with whatever was brewing in the tropics, that much he knew. These storms were a clockwork phenomenon this time of year, fueled by a blistering sun that cooked the Everglades like a shallow pot all the hours of every morning, June through October, until these monster clouds were born and the sky seemed too swollen and bruised not to split.

Driscoll stopped at an intersection, watched a couple of long-haired kids push a battered VW bug through the intersection, hustling to make the light, one guy at the driver’s door, one guy at the rear. A couple of surfboards were lashed to the top, and Driscoll wondered if maybe they were intending to push the thing all the way to the beach, which would be about twenty miles from where he sat. Two more people for whom the world continued to turn.
Good
, he thought.
Good for them
.

There was a backfire, and a plume of blue smoke out of the rear end of the VW, and the two kids were suddenly racing after the car, which was picking up speed, jouncing up over the curb, heading toward the crowded parking lot of a Publix supermarket on down 117th Avenue. Driscoll couldn’t see anybody behind the wheel. It didn’t surprise him that the car was now driving itself away. He’d read about it tomorrow, if the casualty count was high enough, that is.

He had the light now and pressed the accelerator down, getting a last glimpse of the two kids still chasing their car, which had careened off a coconut palm and was now heading toward a drive-in branch bank on the edge of the lot. Only in Miami, right?

He’d been listening to some guest of Ted Koppel’s on
Nightline
last night, this “terrorism consultant” talking about the history of corruption in the Miami Police Department, the sorry, confused response by the city in the face of the triple disaster, making it sound as if it were the place itself who’d kidnapped the President’s wife, as if the event could have taken place exactly nowhere else in the world. As if that weren’t bad enough, the guy’d closed his stint by reminding Ted that wasn’t everyone lucky, it could have just as easily been the President who’d been taken, and still no mention of anyone named John Deal.

Well, Driscoll thought, so much the better if such lamebrained thinking kept the Clydes and terrorism consultants of the world in Washington or Beirut or wherever they felt more comfortable. Let them lambast Miami, give the hundred-best-places-to-live-in awards to the Orlandos and the Duckburgs, let the walking oatmeal of the race go live in such places and leave Driscoll to his Doc Jameroskis and Ray Brisas and the guys off the street who’d take a dollar not to steal his hubcaps. What had happened was dreadful, but it had been born of the twisted impulses of human beings, not by geography, not by the design of some sentient landscape.

Speaking of landscapes, Driscoll realized that the one surrounding him at the moment had taken a marked change. Since he’d passed under the elevated bridge carrying the Florida Turnpike, the strip malls and condo developments had fallen away, replaced now by nurseries and day schools and sprawling estates surrounded by the kind of whitewashed rail fencing more typical of Kentucky than South Florida.

“Horse country” was what the locals called it, an oasis of grassy farms on the far western verge of buildable land where horses were kept and bred and presumably ridden, though the latter was an impulse Driscoll couldn’t fathom. The day a horse would deliver a verbal promise to him not to try anything funny, that was the day he’d mount up. He’d had a couple of friends on the Mounted Patrol, the horses were always biting them and stepping on their toes and aiming kicks at their heads, and those animals were city employees, the next thing to commissioned officers, for Christ’s sake. Imagine what civilian horses were capable of.

A couple of fat raindrops hit the windshield of the Ford as he swung off Sunset, traveling northward now along a narrow lane that ran between a palm grower’s fields and a sod farm. The rain began to pick up then, and after a while the farms fell away and the sawgrass took over, a ten-foot wall of green rising up on either side of him. The grass, which seemed to need about a week and a half to take over any patch of untended land in this part of the county, was for Driscoll a reminder of the area’s natural state of affairs.

Do your worst, it seemed to suggest, set off your explosions, spread your gases, litter the landscape with bodies, and when you tire of it all, in a few thousand years, the grass will come back, the roots will split the seams of the concrete, the heat and the moisture and the rot will do the necessary work, and all will be as it was before anybody got any big ideas.

The rain had become a blinding, roof-thrumming downpour, and Driscoll flipped his wipers onto high, slowing the Ford to a pace just above reverse. Hard enough under the best conditions to find the entrance to Eddie Izquierdo’s compound, which is the way Eddie must have intended it, Driscoll thought. He gave a glance in his rearview mirror, just to be sure that no produce truck was about to flatten him from behind, then looked ahead in time to see it, a break in the sawgrass and Brazilian pepper that was what he was looking for.

He hit the brakes at the same time he twisted the wheel and the Ford took the turn more like a skidding luge than an automobile, bottoming out in a mammoth pothole that stretched the width of the driveway. The Ford coughed, then caught its rhythm again, the wheels chewing and sliding along the ruts. God help him if the vehicle bogged down, Driscoll thought. He might as well be in the middle of the Amazon jungle now.

He goosed the accelerator and the Ford lunged forward, spitting mud and rock fragments up into the wheel wells with a clatter. And God help him if anyone were on the way out of the compound, he thought as the Ford wallowed around a curve in the narrow road.

It wouldn’t be Izquierdo, of course. He wouldn’t be caught dead using this miserable excuse for a driveway. If Eddie had to go out, he’d use his helicopter, and pray that no ground-to-air missile encampment had been set up nearby by one of his competitors. Though Eddie didn’t go out much these days. He’d finally achieved the dream, Driscoll thought. He’d made so much money, had come to exert so much influence in the Miami underworld, that he risked annihilation any moment of the day, so he’d become a virtual prisoner in his compound, had taken up more or less permanent residence in what had originally been an afterthought: a thoroughbred farm where Izquierdo could launder a significant portion of his ill-gotten gains as well as party down with some of his ladies and henchmen in relative privacy whenever the mood struck.

Abruptly, the muddy track turned solid beneath his wheels, and the wallowing Ford stopped its boatlike pitching. Getting close, Driscoll knew. The road was still a tunnel through the underbrush, but it was a brick-lined tunnel now, a couple hundred yards of roadway paved with what had once been the walls of some factory or school or apartment building in Chicago, knocked down, demortared, and shipped by the trainload to become the driveway of a rich South Florida pimp. About a hundred dollars a yard to lay this road to nowhere, Driscoll guessed. Too bad Deal hadn’t gotten any of the work.

He pulled the Ford to a stop outside a set of iron gates that looked like they’d been stolen from some European baron’s castle, and probably had been. Driscoll had passed through this portal once before, but it had been nighttime, and the gates had been swung open then, and there had been a squadron of thugs directing traffic to a party that Izquierdo had tossed back in the days when such a gathering was still possible. Just like the old days in one respect, however: Driscoll wasn’t on any guest list of Eddie Izquierdo’s.

The rain seemed to let up for a moment, and Driscoll rolled down the window of the Ford, reached out, mashed the button of the driver’s-side intercom with his thumb. He waited, hit the button again, and finally a voice crackled out of the speaker.

“
Quién es
?”

“It’s Vernon Driscoll,” he said. “I need to talk to Eddie.”

There was a pause, then a crackling of static and the voice was back. “
No esta
. Eddie gone.
Véte
.”

Driscoll sighed. The person doling out Spanglish on the other end probably knew as much English as he did, could use it better, too. He reached to push the button again. “Cut the shit,” he said. “Tell Eddie I’m here to save his ass from Ray Brisa, see how that plays, all right?”

Another pause, a gust of wind and a splatting of water from the overhanging branches onto the Ford, then finally a different voice on the line. “This Vernon?” Suspicion there, but not necessarily dislike. Driscoll had never hidden his disdain for the man, but he’d never had to nail him, either. Maybe that made him a friend, in Eddie Izquierdo’s view.

“Eddie,” Driscoll said affably. “Open the gates.”

“I’m pretty busy, man.”

“Open the gates, Eddie, or I’m going to turn Ray Brisa loose on people that matter, you hear me?”

Another pause, then Izquierdo again, sounding resigned. “You by yourself?”

“No, I got Bobby Kennedy and Eliott Ness here with me. Now open the goddamned gates, Eddie.”

Izquierdo didn’t bother to answer, but Driscoll heard a squeal of metal from somewhere and saw the gates starting to glide backward. He rolled his window up and urged the Ford on down the lane.

“Good thing I got those intercoms rigged on a hard wire,” Izquierdo was saying.
Izquierda
meant “left” in Spanish, something it had taken Driscoll a while to figure out, despite Eddie’s nickname. When he had finally managed that feat, a few years back, it had doubled his vocabulary in the language. To
cerveza
had been added
izquierda
. So now he could go anywhere in the Spanish-speaking world, order a “left beer.”

Izquierdo, who resembled a younger Charles Bronson except for the dense clusters of acne scars on his dark-skinned cheeks, was standing by the window of his den, turned to give Driscoll an annoyed glance. There’d been a couple of goons in the room when the doorman brought Driscoll in, but after they’d patted him down, Izquierdo had sent them away.

“You say things like you did over a cellular, you don’t know where it ends up,” Izquierdo continued.

“God hears everything,” Driscoll said, unconcerned. He was leaning at the corner of a bar that had been done up to look like an English pub. There were a pair of spigots back there, big porcelain jobs, one for Bass Ale, another for Double Diamond. Driscoll wished it weren’t raining outside. The weather was perfect for it, made him ache to go behind the bar, see what it would be like to draw himself one.

Izquierdo stared at him, finally shook his head. “You’re one of a kind, Driscoll, you know that?”

“I’m glad to hear it, Eddie. I’d hate to think there were any more of me out there running around.”

Izquierdo nodded, but Driscoll could tell he wasn’t sure what to think. Eddie spoke English fairly well, but there was a certain parrotlike quality to him. All the words were there, but you weren’t always sure if he caught all the nuances.

“You want something to drink?”

Driscoll had another look at the big ceramic taps. “No thanks, Eddie, I can’t stay.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Izquierdo said. He turned his gaze back out the window. The house, a massive neo-Tudor—and God knows what drug-addled fantasy had inspired Eddie to pick Tudor—sat on a slight rise, a rare variation in what had once been undifferentiated shallow sea bottom. In South Florida terms, the three-foot hump passed for serious elevation. Several acres behind the house had been cleared for the stables, the exercise fields, a training ring. Portable bleachers were scattered about the grounds, and some accoutrements of a steeplechase course. Maybe Izquierdo had envisioned becoming part of the horsy set, Driscoll thought. A person gets rich enough, he might convince himself of anything.

Driscoll also wondered if Eddie, who looked like he was dressed for company, sleek gray silk suit, a dark shirt open at the neck, mightn’t have meant it, that he really was sorry. Holed up all alone out here, hookers and horses and bodyguards for company, how long before that got old?

“So what’s this crap about Ray Breezes?” Izquierdo said.

“Breezes,” Driscoll said, thinking about what Eddie had just said. “That what Brisa means?”

Izquierdo turned to him. “You come all the way out here to work on your Spanish?”

Driscoll shook his head, distracted momentarily.
Beer, left, breeze
. How could you make a sentence of that? Maybe, if he spent a couple more years hanging around this crowd, he could become a Spanish conversationalist yet.

He came out of it, noticed that Izquierdo was swirling the glass of scotch in his hand hard enough to clatter his ice. Not quite 3:00
P.M.
, Driscoll thought. Maybe it was just boredom, but then again maybe he
had
touched a nerve.

“I ran into Ray earlier today,” Driscoll said.

“Yeah?” Izquierdo said. “Where was that?”

“Forget it,” Driscoll said. He walked over to the window, stood beside Izquierdo. It looked like maybe the rain was letting up. “He told me you set him up with some work.”

“Is that right?” Izquierdo’s expression didn’t change, but there was something new in his voice, a tightness that suggested Ray Brisa’s life expectancy had dropped a few notches down the criminal’s actuarial scale.

“I thought maybe you could tell me who wanted all that stuff from Southern Police Supply, Eddie.”

Izquierdo laughed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t seen Ray Breezes in I don’t know how long. The guy’s a head case. Tell me I’m responsible for the things he dreams up.”

Driscoll shrugged. The rain had picked up again, but he thought he saw a horse poke its head out over one of the stable doors. Maybe it wanted to see if the ark was on its way.