Presidential Deal (18 page)

“You know I quit being a cop, don’t you, Eddie?”

Izquierdo gave him a speculative look. “That’s like saying Michael Jackson got married, he don’t care about little boys anymore.”

“This thing with the First Lady,” Driscoll continued, “I think a friend of mine may have gotten tangled up in it. That’s all I’m doing, Eddie. I’m trying to help my friend out of a jam.”

“Yeah?” Izquierdo said. “So you think I know something? Forget it, Driscoll. This is some serious, bad-news,
terrorista
shit. Anybody who even thinks they talked to somebody who might have
heard
about this business is in deep
chingada
.” He took a healthy slug of his drink. “I do whores and emergency lending,” he said. “I don’t get involved with politics.”

“I hear you, Eddie,” Driscoll said. “But I find myself standing here looking out at all that pretty green grass, I wonder what it’s going to look like when the
federales
turn it into a landing strip, cuz that’s exactly what’s going to happen, my friend, the minute I get back to town and sic ’em on your ass.”

Izquierdo gave him a look. “What if you was to maybe have a riding accident while you were out here visiting, Driscoll? Say you hit your head on a big limb, fell off out in the swamp someplace where nobody could ever find you?”

Driscoll stared back at him. “Horses don’t turn me on, Eddie. Besides, it’s not me who’s important. It’s Ray Brisa. He’s scared shitless. He doesn’t need me to tell him how to cut a deal with the Feds.”

Izquierdo regarded him for a moment. Crunch time, Driscoll thought. Would Izquierdo make the natural assumption, no way an ex-cop would be stupid enough to walk into the lion’s den, not without some kind of insurance backing him up?

Izquierdo sighed, and by the sound of it, Driscoll could guess that his bluff had carried.

Driscoll walked to the bar, flipped up a hinged section of burnished mahogany, stepped through to where the bottles were arranged on glass shelves. He found a bottle of Scotch with a label that looked like medieval monks had printed it by hand. He brought it down on the bar, then selected a pilsner glass from a glittering array on another shelf. He drew himself a Bass, skimmed the head with one of his fingers, topped it off. He tasted the beer, made a sound of approval from deep in his chest, then turned and saluted Izquierdo with what was left.

“Come on,” he said to Izquierdo, wiping foam off his lip with the back of his hand. “I’ll buy you a drink, you point me in the right direction, everybody stays healthy, everybody stays friends.”

Izquierdo hesitated, but came toward the bar. He hiked himself up on a stool, slid his glass across to Driscoll. “You know what that stuff costs?” he said, nodding at the bottle.

Driscoll poured for him, sniffed the bottle before he corked it. He shrugged. “About what it costs for fifteen minutes with one of your girls.”

Izquierdo ignored him. He took the bottle, turned it so the label was there for Driscoll to see. “It’s a hundred years old. You can’t even buy it down here, man. I got a guy in Connecticut ships it to me, three grand a case.”

Driscoll nodded. “That’s about what I spend on beer in a month.”

Izquierdo nodded as if it were true, still inspecting the label on the bottle. After a moment he put the bottle down and turned to Driscoll with some interest. “What did you do to Ray, man? Make him say all this crap, I mean.”

“I reminded him of his duty as a patriot,” Driscoll said.

Izquierdo shook his head, still finding it hard to believe. He took a sip of his drink. “This ain’t going to do you no good, you know?”

“Let me be the judge of that, Eddie.”

Izquierdo sighed, put his drink down. “You know what? Let’s forget this shit. Let me call a couple of girls over, you and me, we’ll have some drinks, some dinner, we’ll have a little party, man. Take a helicopter ride you want to. You ever fuck in a helicopter? Come on, man, what do you say?”

Driscoll put his glass down, started around the open end of the bar. “I’m out of here, Eddie. I gotta see some people down at the Federal Building.”

“Okay,” Izquierdo said, his voice taking on something of a whine. “I’m sorry I offended you.”

“I’m tired of wasting time, Eddie.” Driscoll hadn’t broken stride.

“I thought it was about drugs, man,” Izquierdo cried. “Colombians and drugs, you know how they are.”

Driscoll paused. Izquierdo had turned on the barstool, palms turned up in a gesture of innocence. “Or maybe home invasions, you know, where they dress up like cops? I didn’t know it was gonna be something like this.”

Driscoll nodded. “So you’re a patriot at heart, too.”

“What are you talking about, man? I wouldn’t mess with the President, blow up airplanes, put nerve gas on the streets, that’s all. I’m happy right where I am.”

“Just tits and ass and a hundred percent interest,” Driscoll said. “What’s not to like?”

“Fuck you.”

“Never mind,” Driscoll said. “Who was this Colombian you talked to?”

“Maybe he was Colombian, I’m not sure,” Izquierdo said.

“You need to do a little better than that,” Driscoll said.

Izquierdo glowered at him, but finally reached into his coat pocket, pulled out an address book, flipped through the pages. He found what he was looking for, glanced up at Driscoll. He rolled his eyes, tore a piece of paper off a pad, pulled out a pen, and scribbled something. He handed the paper to Driscoll, a sour expression on his face.

“Angel?” Driscoll said, examining the note. “This is the guy you dealt with.”

“
Ahn-hel
,” Izquierdo corrected him, nodding. “How long you lived here?”

“An-
hell
,” Driscoll repeated. “Whatever.” He folded the note. “It mean the same thing as it does in English?”

Izquierdo managed a laugh. He shook his head. “Not this guy,” he said. “Not even a little bit.”

Driscoll nodded, held the folded note up between his fingers. “Two-four-two, that’s the area code for the whole Caribbean.”

“I didn’t need his address. It was all cash and carry, okay?”

“You want to stay friends, Eddie?”

Izquierdo gave him a pained look. “I think he was in Nassau. You got ways of finding that stuff out, man.”

“I got lots of ways, Eddie. I find out you forgot to tell me something, I’m going to come at you from all of them.”

Izquierdo nodded. “You see Ray, you tell him I say
hasta la vista
.”

“As in goodbye?”

“Like that,” Izquierdo shrugged. “Also I’d watch my ass if I was you.”

“An-hell is no angel,” Driscoll said. “I got it. I got it in English
and
Spanish.”

Izquierdo shook his head. “Just keep my name out of it, man.”

“Don’t worry,” Driscoll assured him. “I find this guy, that’s one thing you don’t have to worry about.”

He tucked the note away, went out the door of the study. One of the goons was in a chair just outside the door while the other was down the hallway, engaged in a muttered conversation on a cellular phone. Something that had to do with girls and helicopters, Driscoll guessed.

Driscoll shouldered his way past the second goon, ignoring his growl of protest.
Brave words
, he was thinking, recalling his parting shot at Eddie Left. But one thing at a time. First he would need to find this Angel. After that, there’d be plenty of time for the worrying.

***

He had stopped
at a pay phone in front of a Farm Store, a minimart with a Guernsey cow on its sign. “Cow store” was what Deal’s little girl Isabel called the places. “Let’s go to the cow store, Uncle Vernon. Can we? Can we?” Her voice rang clearly in his mind as he listened to Harvey Clyde’s number ring and ring and the ache he felt transferred itself directly into frustration at Clyde. By the time the machine picked up, he was ready to break the connection.

A woman who sounded to be in her eighties told him in a recorded voice that Mr. Clyde was not in his office, that he could leave a message if he chose. “It’s Driscoll,” he told the machine after it beeped at him. “Maybe I found something of interest with that break-in at Southern Police Supply.” He hesitated, checking his watch. Did Clyde keep regular business hours during a crisis? Was Driscoll supposed to go home and wait for a call? If Dedric Bailey and the entire Special Investigative Section was on traffic detail, where did that put Vernon Driscoll and his suspicions?

“I’ll get back to you,” he said to the machine, and hung up.

The thunderheads had dissipated now, but the light was nearly gone. Bugs were already swirling in the glow of the sign, and he reached to slap something stinging the back of his neck. Maybe he’d come down with malaria, Driscoll thought idly, wiping a smear of blood from his palm onto his trouser leg. He stood for a moment, staring up into the purpling sky, glanced once more at the phone, then made up his mind.

An ice cream bar and a quart of beer, he thought, glancing at the number Izquierdo had given him. And as soon as he finished dinner, he’d take step two.

***

Osvaldo Regalado
lived on the ground floor of a mildewencrusted apartment complex just off the Palmetto Expressway. It had been attractive once, Driscoll supposed. Now an expressway connector cut through what had been its parking lot, and the developer had had the adjoining green belt rezoned for storage and light industry. Unending roar of traffic on one side, the whine of a cabinet fabricator’s plane on the other.

“It gets a little quieter on the third shift,” Osvaldo told him. “The cabinet business is on the downswing.”

Driscoll nodded. It was hard talking over the noise.

“You want a Yoo-Hoo?” Osvaldo had wheeled himself over to a tiny refrigerator that propped up one end of a makeshift door-desk jammed with computer equipment. He reached into the fridge, held up a yellow can of something.

Driscoll shook his head. “You think you can trace that number for me?” he called.

“You kidding? Ask me for something difficult, like dance the tango.”

He gave Driscoll a goofy smile as he popped the top on his drink, then deftly turned his chair with one hand, scooting back toward his computer. The man had reclaimed his beefy torso, Driscoll noted, and had built up a pair of powerful arms, presumably with all the Nautilus gizmos crowding the other half of the living room.

Osvaldo was a computer hacker whom Driscoll had met during an extended period of bank-wire surveillance. They were about to go to trial with Osvaldo the star witness when somebody pushed him off a Metrorail platform into the path of a train. He’d survived but lost both legs, then his job with Southern Bell in an alcoholic aftermath. The bad guys, of course, had walked.

Driscoll, who’d felt a certain responsibility, had done what he could for the man. He’d stayed in touch, talked Osvaldo into a rehab clinic, had later sent him as much freelance programming work as the department could hand out. In turn, Osvaldo had evidenced no bitterness: he had always been willing to help Driscoll out whenever modern technology was required. “Any asshole I can help you get, that’s one for me, too.”

He arranged himself in front of a keyboard, wiped his thick glasses on his T-shirt, then took another look at the paper Driscoll had handed him. “I oughta get myself over to the islands,” he said to Driscoll. “What’s their take on crips, you suppose?” He glanced up, his smile intact.

Osvaldo’s way of dealing with it, Driscoll supposed. The man had been dry for a couple of years now. Whatever worked.

“They like the ones with money,” Driscoll said, handing him some bills.

“Everybody does,” Osvaldo said. He began tapping his keys.

Chapter 30

Deal staggered back, shielding his face from the spray of rain, saw that Linda was half in, half out of the fractured roof, her legs kicking wildly beneath her. The loose section of corrugated metal had ripped away with the gusts, leaving a gaping hole behind. The rain was driving into their cell in torrents now.

“I’m slipping,” she cried, the words tearing off in the wind.

He glanced into the corner, ran for the battered stool. He rushed back, clambered onto the stool, then steadied himself against its rocking. The rain washed over him in sheets and the sky lit up in formless lightning, the same eerie greenish glow he hadn’t seen since the onslaught of Hurricane Andrew. He reached up, caught her legs, steadied her.

“Pull yourself on up, turn around toward me,” he called, his voice firm. “I’ll steady you.”

She gave a cry of anger, of frustration. He felt her legs stiffen beneath his touch, and for a moment he thought she might be about to kick him off the wobbling stool.

“This is
awful
,” she cried.

Yes
, he thought.
Beyond awful
. “Come on,” he called. “One leg at a time…”

He urged her on, his hand levering one heel, knowing that she would only need to give the slightest nudge, he’d go flying himself…

“Catch hold, now…that’s it! I’m going to let go…”

He boosted her other leg up, heard a muffled thump as she disappeared…and then he saw her other hand groping at the edge of the torn metal. She pulled herself around until her head appeared. She ducked through the gap, away from the force of the rain, and stared down at him, a sodden, angry latter-day Kilroy.

“Can you see anything? Anybody moving out there”

She glanced up, had to fling her hand before her face to shield it from the driving rain. “Are you crazy?” she called. Rain was pouring off her chin, and her blouse billowed up from her back like a wind sock.

“I’m coming up,” he called. He was down off the stool, dragging it along the rough floor under the gaping hole to a point where the roof sloped a bit. Not much, but even a couple of inches might help. He checked the positioning of the stool, tried to get its legs arranged in a position approaching steadiness.

He backed off a few paces, then made as much of a run as he dared across the puddled floor. His jaw was throbbing again, his head seeming to swell with each beat of his heart. Maybe the effort would blow an artery, he thought, all the worrying, all this effort could end.

In the next instant, he was launching himself upward, one foot banging hard onto the top of the stool, jamming down, giving it all he had, his hands thrust up, fingers extended…

…there was a splintering sound and he felt the stool blow apart beneath him as he pushed off…
You won’t have this to do again, son
…

…and then his hands caught ragged metal—both hands digging in, or wasn’t it the other way around, the metal slicing into him? It didn’t matter: he gripped furiously and pulled himself up against the pain.

The tendons in his arms were searing. He flung one elbow up over the edge, brought his head up after, felt his cheeks go rubbery with the force of the wind, felt the stinging tattoo of the rain against his face.

Outside
, he told himself.
You’re outside
. But his feet were windmilling beneath him, threatening to pull him back down again. He clawed about with his free hand, but the roof was slick with water, and there was nothing there, nothing to hold on to.

He sensed movement at his side and caught sight of Linda, dragging herself hand over hand along the gash in the roof until she was beside him at last. She reached out, snatched a wad of his shirt in one fist. She pulled for all she was worth, her face working with strain, but it was no good. He could feel himself beginning to slide backward, and he knew where that slide would end.

He turned, about to utter some last-minute encouragement to Linda Sheldon, some inanity out of the old movies—“You’ve got to go on without me, kid…”—found her struggling to untangle her blouse from something. She pulled herself free, and he saw the nail then, a sharp, headless spike left behind when the metal sheeting ripped away.

He thought about what he would have to do, but he didn’t think long. She yelped in alarm as he flung his arm toward her, slammed his palm down. The she screamed in earnest when she saw what he had done.

“Linda,” he called to her. The pain was electric, beyond anything he’d felt…but he wasn’t falling.

“I’m going to need your help here.” He fought to keep his eyes off the spike that protruded from the back of his hand. His breath was coming in gasps, and a wave of blackness threatened to claim him.

She turned to him, her face pale.

“I want you to grab hold of my arm…” He nodded his chin, scooted his free hand forward as far as he could. “With both hands,” he added. His own throat was tightening; the waves that pulsed up his arm from his hand were pure agony.

Her eyes widened as if he were suggesting she throw herself off the building. “Your weight’s going to anchor me,” he said, trying to keep his voice even. “I want you to hold on to me and let yourself slide on down the roof.”

She was still staring at him as if he’d lost his mind. “It’s the only way,” he said. Oddly, the pain was lessening, but he felt the darkness closing in again. Maybe it was shock, maybe he’d simply worn the synapses out.

Not much time left, any way he figured it.

He fixed his gaze on Linda Sheldon and said it simply, forcefully. “It’s the only chance we have.”

She gave him a look, then clutched his sleeve with one hand, dug her other into the fabric at his shoulder.

He felt his weight shift at once.
Physics, my boy, the simple laws of physics
…some unbidden voice doing a W. C. Fields impression to cheer him on. She was sliding slowly toward the lip of the roof now, working the wind, the wind working her—and somehow he had managed to heave his chest fully onto the outside surface.

There was a hesitation as his belt buckle hung up on the rusted metal beneath him, but he closed his eyes and wrenched his hand free of the spike he’d impaled himself on. Once more a bright sheet of pain flooded the darkness behind his eyes, but this time he could stand it, for they were sliding free.

She cried out, caught a handful of his hair as they picked up speed, and then they were over the side and through the air, crashing breathlessly, deep into the tangle of fallen limbs below.

They lay there motionless for a moment, Deal on his back, Linda Sheldon facedown atop him. After a few seconds, he felt her breathing start up against his chest and he realized he’d been holding his own breath as well. A branch was jabbing him painfully in the back, but when he tried to shift his weight, the tangle of limbs shuddered in response, threatening to send them tumbling again. He eased himself back against the limb and took that pain.

Stay a moment, Deal
. No one was shooting, no alarms were ringing. He could still himself that long.

“Are you okay?” he asked. He didn’t have to shout. They were sunk deep in the clutch of the feathery limbs, and though the force of the wind was enough to rock the tangle of fallen trees, they were shielded from the worst of the blast.
A cave
, he thought.
A blessed haven
.

She didn’t lift her head from his chest. “I told you not to ask that question,” she said.

He felt something warm trickling down his left arm. The pain was still there, searing his palm, but it was nothing to what he’d felt when he’d been holding all his weight against the spike. He turned his palm toward his face and tried gingerly flexing his fingers.

More pain, enough to send comets and pinwheels across his vision, enough to send his head back against the pillowing needles. But he forced himself to keep on until he knew each finger still worked. At least until tetanus or some other godawful tropical island rot-your-flesh-to-ribbons set in.

“You’re bleeding pretty badly,” Linda said. The limb they were tangled in gave a dip, then steadied.

He nodded. Nothing he hadn’t already figured out. After a moment, he began to grope about the tangle with his good hand, caught hold of a solid branch, moved his fingers until he found an oozing fracture in the bark. He dug up a glob of the sap with his fingers, took a breath, then bought his hand up to jam the sticky stuff against the wound, just as another blast of thunder rattled the world about them.

The pain was searing, but he had braced himself for it this time. Before the pounding could subside, he’d taken another swipe of the oozing sap, clamped it to the back of his hand. He lay back then, holding his jury-rigged blood plugs tight, trying to breathe through his clenched teeth, willing himself to think of anything other than the liquid fire that ringed his brain.

He felt her hands at his shoulders, felt her draw herself tightly against him. “God, it must hurt…” she said.

He opened his eyes, about to muster some kind of an answer, when he saw her go rigid, her hand pointing over his shoulder.

There was a rustling of limbs, a snapping sound, a cry…and he turned in time to see a pair of boots and a blur of camouflage-clad leggings plunge past, a yard in front of his nose. The man who belonged to the boots and the pants stopped suddenly, giving another sharp cry as a shattered limb dug into his groin. And then he and Deal were staring face-to-face.

The man, still clutching an M-16 over his head, had been clambering over the debris looking for them, Deal realized. He registered it all in an instant: the rifle, the man, stunned expression still on his face, struggling to bring the weapon down into firing position. But the sling was hung up in a tangle of branches, and when the guy glanced up to see what was wrong, Deal got a foot planted in the crotch of a limb and lunged forward.

He hit the man in soft flesh beneath his chin, and a burst of fire flew high into the sky. Deal hit him again, felt something give under his fist, and this time the firing stopped. The guy was making gargling noises and dropped his weapon to claw at his throat. His eyes were still open, but he wasn’t seeing any more.

Deal was reaching for the rifle, which still dangled from a pine limb, when he heard a shout, someone screaming in Spanish nearby, and an answering cry at his back.

“Deal.” It was Linda, her hand pointing to show him. He glanced up to find a second man in camouflage fatigues clambering over the fallen limbs toward them. The second man spotted Deal at the same instant and swung his weapon into position, searching for a clear shot through the branches. He fired, but hurrying had sent his aim wide. Deal sensed the rush of slugs, a warm tickle through the pine needles at his cheek.

He lunged for the sling of the dangling M-16, then felt his feet sliding off the rain-slick limb he had been perched on. He went over sideways into the tangle, the rifle flying out of his grip.

The second man saw what had happened and ducked beneath an intervening bough, steadied himself, raised his weapon carefully. There’d be no mistake this time, Deal thought. He lay on his side, wriggling like some poor-sap insect caught in a giant web, while the guy sighted down on him.

A matter of seconds, and that was all the difference, wasn’t it? Deal’s entire life reduced to the span of a few heartbeats: he’d never been late for an appointment, could count the number of projects he’d completed behind schedule on one hand. He’d been the one to nudge Janice along all the years of their relationship, hustling her out the door toward parties and movies and concerts well ahead of time. He liked to show up at the grocery with his check already made out, only the amount left to fill in, thank you very much. He was never, ever late, except he was going to be a half-second off this time, and there’d be no need to write any note of apology, either.

He could see that man’s trigger finger tensing, could see rainwater skirling off the tip of a dirt-ringed nail, rain glazing an intervening dangle of pine needles, rain silvering the blue-black metal of the barrel and the trigger guard, also had a fragment of some poem from freshman English, chickens and wheelbarrows and rainwater…so long, Deal, you always talked too much in class…

…and then there was a burst of gunfire at his shoulder, bark and wood fiber and pine needles exploding in a steaming froth before his eyes, and the man who would have killed him went over backwards, his weapon flung away.

Deal swung about, found Linda Sheldon lying across a thick branch of the fallen pine, the automatic weapon he’d been trying to reach clutched in her white-knuckled hands. She stared at him through the haze her firing had left, her eyes wild.

“You’re all right?” she cried.

Deal glanced at the two dead men, then back at her. The wind seemed to pick up a notch, and the boughs of the fallen tree groaned in response.

“I’m all right,” he said, and reached for her hand.

She lay down the weapon and wept.