Presidential Deal (26 page)

Chapter 43

“John Groshner must be out of his mind,” the President said. He stared at Chappelear in disbelief.

Chappelear glanced down at his shoe tops. “I know how you feel, sir, but he feels it’s essential. Senator Hollingsworth will be featured on every network news program this evening. Groshner got a look at some of the tape. He manages to come off as sympathetic to your personal plight, but he comes down hard on the administration in general.”

Chappelear threw up his hands helplessly. “He doesn’t implicate you personally, of course. But he talks about a climate of ineffectuality…”

“Bullshit!”

“…the old soft-on-communism line…”

“This is incredible.”

“He wants to be the President, sir.”

“You think the American people are going to listen to such bullshit at a time like this?”

Chappelear swallowed. “They’re shell-shocked, sir. Malcolm Jesse’s got some figures, a small sample really, but…”

“But what?”

“The nation’s distraught. They’ll listen to anyone who can promise them nothing like this will ever happen again.”

They stared silently at each other then. After a moment, the President looked away. “What in the hell would you have me do?”

Chappelear drew a breath before he spoke. “Groshner’s certain he can get full network coverage. Schedule a national heart-to-heart. Present the image of a man determined…”

“Turn all this to my political advantage, is that what you mean?”

Chappelear ran his fingers through his hair. “The sharks are out there, Frank. Groshner’s a shark. He knows how they operate.”

The President closed his eyes, snorted. “Unbelievable,” he said. After a moment he opened his eyes again, sighing. “But the thought of turning this government over to a man like Hollingsworth…” He broke off, shaking his head.

Chappelear nodded. “You want me to tell Groshner to go ahead, then?”

The President had his gaze out the window at the overcast sky, but his chin made a nearly imperceptible nod.

“I’ll do it. I’ll stay on top of it, sir.”

Another, almost invisible acknowledgment.

Chappelear turned to leave, but hesitated, feeling the need to inject something positive into the moment. “The weather’s clearing in the Caribbean, sir. We’ll be able to expand our search down there today.”

The President nodded again. “Let’s find her, Larry,” he said. He kept his eyes on the water. “Just let’s, please God, find her.”

Chapter 44

“I think you need a new travel agent,” Ray Brisa said, bracing himself against the boat’s wild pitching. They had moved out of the shallow seas surrounding the islands, were well into what was called the Tongue of the Ocean by now.

“Next trip, I promise,” Driscoll said. He checked his watch, noted that they’d been out just over an hour. According to the guy behind the wheel, who had turned out to be Cork himself, the trip would take about six hours altogether, if the weather didn’t get any worse, that is.

He’d started to feel a little green himself. There were a couple small portholes in the boat’s tiny cuddy cabin, but trying to see anything that way was like staring into a front-loading washer gone spastic. He was doing better keeping focused on the square of sky he could see out the hatch behind him. Not much there—the sky had gone gray again, the bland view interrupted now and then by a flash of Cork’s red windbreaker fluttering back from where he stood at the wheel—but the pitch and yaw of the craft seemed lessened somewhat that way.

He found himself trying to recalibrate the odds, factor in the weather. Maybe it would knock down some of the surveillance craft, lessen the chances of a routine stop. On the other hand, wouldn’t it make them that much more obvious? What kind of diehards would be out on a pleasure cruise in crud like this? Of course, the weather might clear the closer they got to the Keys…

…and on and on. He knew he was just spinning his wheels, trying to distract himself from the frustration he felt, nothing he could do until he was back on land and meantime just another sack of potatoes in the hold of a groaning boat.

“Why can’t we stay on top?” Brisa asked. “We see anybody coming, we can just duck inside.”

“Time we saw anybody coming, it’d be way too late, Ray,” Driscoll told him. They had gone belowdecks to don the rumpled sweat clothing that Cork’s mate had provided, but Driscoll thought it best that they stay out of sight now that they were approaching more isolated waters.

He’d had a look at some of the imaging technology during his last visit to Washington, cameras up in space that could just about read your watch while you walked down the street on a moonless night, and that had been a dozen years or more. Who knew what they were capable of now. Maybe x-ray vision, they could be peering down through the top deck of the boat, watching Ray Brisa hustling his balls at this very moment.

“We get back, you seen the last of me,” Brisa said, noticing his gaze.

“Soon as we finish up, Ray.”

“No way,” Brisa said. “I did my part. You are looking at a ghost. Ray Brisa is gone from this world. I am somebody else already.”

Driscoll nodded. “I thought you wanted a shot at the guys who tried to kill you.”

“I took my shot,” Ray said. “If they’re as bad as you say, I don’t need to be messing in that business.”

“Too late, Ray. You already messed.”

Brisa gave him his uncertain look, the one that was supposed to be a sneer. “No too late about it.”

“You think they don’t know who you are? You think they won’t find you?”

“I’m out of town, man. I already forgot my own name. I done that before.”

“You could get yourself an operation, start dancing in a titty bar, Ray. These people will find you.”

The boat clipped a wavetop, landed hard in a trough. Driscoll felt the wallop from his tailbone to his neck.

“You’re just guessing about all of it. So this Angel guy was a CIA spook once. Maybe he retired.”

“Sure, just like if he was mobbed up, Ray. Wiseguy turns in his resignation, he gets a pension, nice little place in the country, raises flowers and volunteers for the Community Chest. You know how that goes.”

Brisa sat up as straight as he could on the narrow seat that doubled as a bunk, worked his head around like a fighter. “Even if you were right, what good would it do going against guys like that? How do you expect to win?”

Driscoll nodded. He noted that the sky was darker all of a sudden. Maybe a squall to ride through. Maybe a typhoon, or was that something that only happened in another part of the world?

“I don’t know, Ray,” he said finally. “But it’s like what happens when you find a bad dog snapping at your butt. Don’t matter how fast you run, the dog’s gonna get his. Only chance you got is to turn around, make your stand.”

Brisa stared at him, thinking about it. The boat had evened out, Driscoll noted. He prayed it might last.

Finally Brisa nodded. “I had a buddy was taking down a fancy-ass joint over on Star Island, that very thing took place.”

“Is that so.”

“Yeah. Big dog came after him when he was almost at the gate, and my friend with all this loot in his arms, you know, when he hears all this slobbering dog noise behind him.”

“So what’d he do?” Driscoll asked. Outside, the rain had started, dark sheets that looked like smoke plumes peeling away in their wake.

“Like you said,” Brisa told him. “Guy turned around, stared right in the bastard’s eyes. Big dog, too, they were almost nose to nose.”

“Then your pal backed right out the gate with his loot, huh?” Driscoll felt the boat launch itself off the top of a wave, felt like they were heading out into space.

“No,” Brisa said, the engines whining, churning nothing but air beneath them now. “Dog ate his fucking face off.”

Chapter 45

“That’s it for me,” she said, collapsing in the sand Indian-style. Her skirt had hiked far up her legs, but she seemed not to notice.

Deal noticed, but it was only an intellectual point. She was an attractive woman, all right, but…so much for all those stranded-on-a-deserted-island jokes. He’d trade a conga line of Penthouse pets for a jug of water right now.

She pointed out over the water to where what
looked
like a section of roof poked up from the shallows. She stared up at him, wiped sweat and grime from her face with an even grimier, more sodden sleeve. “This is where we started.” She sagged back on her elbows. “Now I’m really thirsty.”

Deal nodded, trying not to think about his own cottony tongue. They had been all the way around the island, found nothing but fish and more fish.

He stared out over the water at the improbable sight jutting up from the now-gentled waves: the roof he’d seen flying off Oz-like the evening before, a sizable chunk of it, at least.

“Looks like a house that went down at sea,” she said.

“I wish it
was
the whole house,” he told her. “Those guys had to have something inside to drink.”

“A house blows away, wouldn’t you think there’d be something left behind?” she asked, closing her eyes wearily. “A refrigerator, a cooler with a can of Coke, a canteen,
something
.”

Deal wanted to remind her how cleanly the house on the windward side of the island had been lifted away. He wanted to tell her other stories, dip into his endless stock of hurricane lore. Like how he’d gone with a friend to check out what had happened to the home in far south Dade the friend had fled as Andrew had approached.

Country Walk, the name of the development. A series of wood-frame houses built by people with the instincts of the first two Little Pigs. He and the friend had had to park a mile from the development’s entrance, in the middle of a six-lane boulevard blocked by deadfall, clamber over and around endless massive piles of debris, had struggled all the way past the friend’s home site until they’d realized they’d reached the end of his block and had to double back. Easy enough to become disoriented, after all: not a house left standing on that street, not a wall, not a tree.

They found his friend’s house by dragging away fallen limbs and studying the numbers that had been painted on the curb. And then, still disbelieving that they were on the right street, they’d walked up the sidewalk to a bare concrete pad where once a house had stood, a couple of tendrils of electrical conduit waving in the air, not a scrap of anything else left to see. Deal had had to hold the man tight to keep him from falling over—his whole world had been jerked out from under him, after all.

Not so different from what had happened here, except that he’d had the luxury of returning to civilization with his friend, stopping for an icy beer along the way. He swallowed again, turned back to Linda.

“Maybe there is something,” he said, gesturing up the slope behind them. “Under a pile of bush somewhere, something behind a rock. We have to keep looking, that’s all.”

“Go right ahead,” she said, her eyes still closed.

He stared at her for a moment, debating. Give her a pep talk, never give up, never give an inch…? He shook his head finally, then turned and started up the rocky slope.

“John?”

He stopped, glanced over his shoulder. She’d pushed herself up on one hand, was staring after him, her face drawn.

“I’m just tired,” she said.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Rest awhile.”

She gave him a grateful look. “For a minute,” she said.

He nodded, was about to turn away, when something caught his eye, a little blip farther out on that leeward horizon, a tiny irregularity. He shaded his eyes, squinted hard. Something there, he thought, but he wasn’t quite sure.

“Linda,” he called.

Whatever she heard in his voice brought her up quickly. “What?” she called, scrambling up from the sand. She hurried up the slope toward him, brushing grit away from her skirt.

“What is it?” Her voice was breathless with anticipation.

“Something in the water,” he said, pointing. “I can’t make it out.”

She turned, scanned the horizon in the direction he indicated. “I don’t see anything,” she said.

He leaned over her shoulder, nudged her chin into line with his forearm. “Right out there, over the peak of the roof jutting up from the water.”

“I see it,” she said, her voice thick with excitement. “Something’s out there.”

She turned to him briefly, her face shining. “A boat,” she said. “I think it’s a boat.”

“Maybe,” he said. He turned his ear in the direction of the object, tried to catch the sound of motors.

“We have to signal them somehow.” She glanced about them. “If we only had matches…”

“Shhh…” He motioned her quiet, and a stricken look came over her features.

“Oh God. You think it’s
them
…” She’d been unbuttoning her blouse, ready to use it as some kind of flag, he supposed, but now her hands were frozen at her breast.

He shook his head. “I’m just trying to hear.” He turned back toward the distant object, cupped his ear, then shifted about, tried the other. Still no sound above the gentle wash of the surf.

He glanced at whatever it was again, squinting until his eyes burned. Again he caught it, the dot swelling, becoming an oblong shape momentarily, then subsiding once more. Whatever it was, it didn’t appear to be moving closer.

“I don’t know,” he said, as much to himself as to her. “It could be a boat, maybe someone circling around out there, but I don’t hear any motors.”

“Maybe the wind’s blowing the sound the other way,” she said.

He gave her a look. “Do you feel any wind?”

She gave him a look, then turned back to scan the horizon. “Well, maybe there’s wind out there.”

Deal started to respond, thought better of it.

“Maybe it’s another piece of the house,” she said.

He nodded. He supposed it could be more wreckage carried out by the winds. Or perhaps it was a shallow reef that barely jutted from the tide, its mass alternately rising and sinking with the waves. That would account for the swelling and shrinking, all right. But the timing seemed off for that explanation to hold.

He dropped his hands then, and started back down the slope toward the narrow stretch of beach. He had his shoes and socks off by the time he hit the sand, paused there to step out of his ruined slacks.

“What are you doing?” It was Linda at his side, her voice tight with concern.

“I’m going to swim out aways,” he said, struggling out of his shirt.

“Swim?” Her voice had risen another notch. “That thing—whatever it is—is miles away.”

He glanced out over the water. Nothing visible at all from this angle. “I doubt it,” he said. “It’s hard to judge distance over water. No points of reference.”

Her expression was wild by now. “You’re just going to jump in the water, leave me here? What if there are sharks, what if you drown…”

He tossed his shirt down atop his slacks, took her by the arms. “I’m a good swimmer,” he told her. “I’m just going out far enough to get a better look.”

“I’ll go with you,” she said.

“Linda,” he said patiently, “I won’t go out of your sight, I promise.”

She stared at him, still uncertain.

What he saw in her eyes kindled something inside himself. He paused, drew a breath, raised his hands to her shoulders. “I won’t leave you,” he said, his voice softer now. “Not after all this.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but the words seemed to catch somewhere inside. They stared at each other silently for a moment, and then he felt her moving toward him, felt himself lean toward her. His arms encircled her, he felt her hands on his back. They held each other without words, a spontaneous gesture that seemed to hold a long time.

Finally she stepped back, managing something of a smile. “You’re really a good swimmer?”

“Fishlike,” he said.

“Fishlike,” she repeated. “Well, go on, fish,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“I’ll be back here before you know it,” he said.

And then he was in the water.

***

The first hundred yards
were easy, the second more like work, the third hundred downright tough. He eased off on his stroke, rolled onto his back, gave a few easy angel sweeps with his arms, raised his head up to look back toward shore.

He was well past the spot where the roof jutted up from the water now. Linda had climbed the slope to stand where he’d spotted the thing, and was waving. He lifted a hand to return the gesture, holding it until she’d seen him.

He lay on his back a moment more, waiting for his breathing to even out, waiting for the dull ache to subside in his shoulders, then flipped over finally and once again launched into his crawl, trying to notch it down just a bit, trying to settle in for the long haul.

He broke off his crawl for a moment, glancing over his shoulder to see that he’d more than doubled his distance from the shore since his last break. That was good, he thought, turning his mind from the ache in his shoulders. Put the mind on mental overdrive, let it drift to something else, let those muscles do the work. Forget the pain.

The jutting peak of the sunken roof had become a vague hump, and Linda’s form had become indistinguishable. He turned back to seaward, shifting into a breaststroke that lifted his head up far enough to see over the wavetops.

He saw nothing at first, and wondered if Linda had somehow been right. Was whatever they’d seen miles away, in fact? Or had it truly been a shallow reef, one that the tide had already risen up to cover? Or maybe it had been a mirage altogether, some sign of hope born of their very desperation. His shoulders were aching now, and his breath was coming in gasps and pants. He caught a little seawater from an unexpected wave and found himself gagging suddenly, salt water and bile burning his throat and nose.

Calm down
, he told himself.
Go on your back. A little rest. You can float all the way in if you have to
. And then he was rising up on the crest of another wave, twisted about by a swirl of current…

…and he saw it there, riding the waves out ahead, now swinging toward him with the tide, now swinging away…

…and he understood, as his aches and pains vanished in an instant and the bile that had burned his throat whisked away: He had lied to Linda Sheldon. He would not be coming right back to her. Not for a little while longer, at least. Not until he had reached what he saw lolling in the waves a hundred yards or so up ahead.

***

Deal had seen
his share of displaced marine craft following Hurricane Andrew’s sweep through Miami. In the backyard of one Gables by the Sea job he’d been called to, he’d found a twenty-eight-foot catamaran lifted from its nearby moorings, bobbing serenely in the homeowner’s thirty-foot pool. Driving down Bayshore Drive toward Coconut Grove, he’d had to detour onto the grassy median to get around a huge shrimp boat, perfectly intact and lodged upright between a tumbled eighteen-wheeler and an uprooted banyan, all of it blocking the southbound lanes several hundred yards inland from the marina. At a home in Saga Bay, he’d given an estimate for the reconstruction of a storm-devastated house, then had gone outside with the owner to marvel at the sizable cabin cruiser lodged high in the branches of a backyard oak, a mile or more from the nearest body of water.

So what he saw now was not really beyond his ken at all: the Cigarette lay there, bow-heavy in the shallows of an outlying reef, somehow snagged and swinging to and fro with the swirling motion of the currents. He treaded water for a minute or so, waiting to catch his breath, still a few yards shoreward of the craft.

He glanced backward toward the island where he’d left Linda, but could see nothing from this vantage point. A bit too soon to get too excited, wasn’t it?

He kicked himself forward, approaching the boat cautiously, even though it seemed crazy to be concerned. Still, something about the boat had spooked him. The odd way it sat in the water, perhaps, a boat on the way to full fathom five, unaccountably interrupted in its descent.

The craft swung slowly toward him, and he found himself close enough to touch the portside hull now. Deal saw the line that was holding the boat, pulled taut by the current, disappearing into the water a few feet from where he floated. He made his way around the prow, caught the line in one hand, then took a breath. He upended himself and dove down, using the rope as a guide.

The water was murky, but by the time he’d pulled himself a dozen feet under, he felt his hand strike something hard and bulky. He steadied himself, running his hands over the object, felt shards of wood, then a huge chunk of concrete. The line was tangled fast to a piece of one of the pilings, he realized as he released himself and churned back toward the surface. That was what had finally stopped her. Otherwise the boat would probably be in Key West by now.

He came up, caught another breath, then dove directly under the boat this time, using his hands to probe the hull for damage. He moved backward along the shadowy hull, from bow to stern, then forward and back again, finding a scrape here, a gouge there, but nothing that indicated serious damage, on that half of the boat at least.

He came up for air, went back under to find the twin props and their outdrives still seemingly intact, then worked his way forward, checking the port side of the hull this time. He made a couple more passes before he was satisfied that all was intact below the waterline, then swam back to the stern and levered himself up over the broad transom.

He rolled on his side, then flopped over into the cockpit and landed in a crouch, his hands splayed on the roughened surface. He found himself breathing heavily as he stared about the empty space, his back jammed against the motor compartment as if he were still awaiting an all-out assault…the cabin door bursting open, a hoard of assassins piling onto the tiny deck space.

But no one came, of course. He stared at the motionless cabin door, the wheel that yawed with a ghostly motion of its own as the currents worked the outdrives. Not even the sounds of water sloshing on the deck, for this was one of those self-bailing cockpits, with ports that allowed for the runoff, and, with luck, a tight seal that would keep serious water from belowdecks.