Deal with the Dead (11 page)

Chapter Ten

Deal had intended to drive back to the trailer office off Old Cutler and begin his search through the company files for any sign of Talbot Sams. After Driscoll left, he’d gone into his own apartment and showered, trying to muster up something resembling energy. He put on a T-shirt and jeans, suitable attire for digging through musty papers, he thought as he slipped into a pair of Top-Siders and made his way out, past Mrs. Suarez’s glowing windows and down the staircase to the street, where he’d parked the Hog earlier.

He made a U-turn in front of the building and piloted the Hog north a couple of blocks to Southwest 8th Street, then turned, cruising eastward past the long line of
mercados
and
ferreterías,
dressmakers and storefront cigar factories, cafés and
farmac
í
as
.
Many of the shops were shuttered by this time on a Saturday night, but the street was still lively with foot traffic, far more so than most urban streets these days, he reflected. An anachronism, perhaps, to find a citizenry afoot on a weekend night, but just one more mark in Miami’s favor, at least so far as Deal was concerned.

He moved along out of the brightly lit commercial district and underneath the elevated roadways of I-95 and Metrorail, the barrier that effectively divided Little Havana from downtown Miami. Here, shabby apartment buildings, low-rent offices, and once-impressive homes, most of them converted into rooms for rent, lay in the eternal shadow of the elevated roadbeds. If there were people afoot in this area, they were being cautious about it.

A couple more blocks, however, and everything changed again. He brought the Hog to a stop at a traffic light on Brickell at the southernmost end of the banking district that trailed down from Miami’s central city in a parade of high-rise steel-and-glass monoliths. Most of the buildings on his left were fronted with broad plazas, splashing fountains, and impressive plantings, and many of them bore signage in a welter of languages far beyond Deal’s capability to translate. No foot traffic here, of course—none for hours now. He was staring across the broad boulevard at the imposing façade of the Bank of Brunei, fourteen stories of gleaming glass and marble, and one of the last great gasps of DealCo, when he heard the tap of a horn behind him.

He noticed that the light had turned green and gave an apologetic wave of his hand as he swung south onto Brickell, where the banks gave way to even grander condominiums and where, sixteen stories up a thirty-two-story residence tower, the salad days of DealCo had come to an end. They’d had to default on the construction loan and lay off two hundred men less than a month before Christmas. His father had emptied his personal bank accounts to provide some form of severance pay. A week after that, Barton Deal had emptied his brains onto the walls of his study.

Deal glanced at the building as he went by. Long since finished by whomever the trustees had engaged, the building was now a showpiece, glimmering against the night sky. Floor-to-ceiling windows, broad balconies, penthouses that promised a view all the way to Paradise itself. Full of happy people, Deal thought, though he knew that was hardly true.

He realized he had edged over into the left lane, looking by instinct for the break in the median that would take him down a lane to the Terrell estate, six acres of prime bayfront property eagerly sought after by real estate speculators. It was where he’d been going every day for the last couple of weeks, after all, no surprise that he’d nearly made the turn without thinking.

What did surprise him was his failure to turn back out into the traffic lane and continue southward to his intended destination. Instead, he waited for a couple of oncoming cars to pass, then made his turn across the double lanes and onto the crushed coral path that led to the big double gates. He reached above the visor, where he kept the remote that Terrell had provided for him, found the unit, and pressed the “Entry” button. The gates began their ponderous inward swing and Deal nudged the accelerator of the Hog, edging forward in synch with the doors.

He told himself he was simply going to check on the job, make sure everything had been wrapped up as he and Gonzalez had discussed before he’d left on Friday, but he knew that wasn’t really it. What he was looking for was something far more important, though God knows why he expected to find it on the estate of computer guru Terrence Terrell.

He shook his head at himself, easing the Hog along the tunnel-like driveway through the oaks and palmetto and sea grape. The thick vegetation was not only a barrier between the main house and the busy road, but a reminder of the previous state of affairs in the area. Not a hundred years before, the whole near coastline of South Florida had consisted of such an unbroken tangle—until the late 1890s, Miami was virtually uninhabited, nothing more than a couple of muddy streets hacked through the undergrowth. Now Terrell had one of the few pieces of the original wilderness left, and the hounds were baying, waiting for him to tire of life in the tropics and sell out so that another tower or two might rise on the site.

Deal broke out of the dense vegetation then, catching sight of the impressive main house up ahead, its barrel-tiled roofline silhouetted against the glow from downtown. Maybe not so strange that he found himself drawn here, he thought as he pulled to a stop in front of the ever-splashing fountain.

He got out, glancing up at the empty house. Lights in random rooms, each of which would change over the course of an evening, simulating the activity within an occupied house, all of that controlled by Terrell-designed devices, and what else would you expect from a man who had once controlled the biggest part of the non-IBM personal computer market? Competition had eaten into Terrell’s once fabled position, of course, but discussing the decline of his fortunes was a little bit like feeling sorry for General Motors.

Deal rounded the side of the house by his usual route, his eyes adjusting to the dark now that he was out of the car. He sidestepped a piece of sculpture—a woman folded serenely into herself—and caught sight of the outline of his gazebo on the broad lawn that sloped down to the water. Not “his” gazebo at all, of course, though until the day he finished the work, it would be.

He stepped over a pile of two-by-twos stacked near the steps to the porch of the structure and pulled himself up onto the deck that would someday hold a set of chairs and a table, and perhaps a couple of chaise longues, where guests would sit and gaze out at the untroubled waters of Biscayne Bay and, if they chose, turn their attention further northward to the dramatic skyline of modern Miami. Now it was just himself, an unfinished railing, and a couple of piles of sawdust, Deal thought, at the same time realizing that this was where he’d been heading all along. Some force drawing him to this very spot where he could hold fast to an unfinished spar of pine and stare across half a mile’s expanse of inky water toward a breathtaking skyline that his father—and, yes, he himself—had helped create.

He wasn’t sure what he expected to find there in the sight before him, but there was some measure of comfort in the very thought that he’d had a hand, however small, in creating that cityscape out there, reflecting against the bay. Nor did it matter really that such a concept would, along with a couple of dollars, get him a cup of coffee in any snappy restaurant that was a part of all that glitter.
You have done things that matter, Deal. As
did your father before you. Never lose sight of that much…

“Something to look at, ain’t it?” the voice came from behind him.

Deal turned, startled, then felt something strike him above the ear. He went down on his hands and knees, then felt a foot drive into his ribs. His breath left him as his chin bounced off the wooden deck.

“Sure as hell don’t see much of this in Georgia,” came the voice at his ear. He felt a hand on his head, felt his hair twist tight, realized he was being hauled upward like a rag doll. “Not the part I come from anyway.”

A fist struck his cheek and Deal went over backward, crashing through a temporary brace he’d toe-nailed himself, to hold the railing in place. He hit the railing with his shoulder, heard a sick wrenching of wood as his two hundred pounds torqued against it.

In the next moment, the railing gave way and Deal was over the side in a mass of splintering wood. There was an instant of weightlessness, then a pile-driving blow as his back and shoulders slammed into the damp ground below. He glanced up, but this part of the house was in deep shadow. He sensed more than saw the silhouette of a big man diving after him, and though he was still out of breath, without the strength to offer any defense, he managed to twist aside, evading the man’s grasp.

He struggled to get his feet under him, to push himself up, then felt a hand clamp onto one ankle. He clawed at the grass, trying to keep himself from being pulled backward. He felt his hand brush a broken chunk of porch railing, snatched it up, and swung weakly, desperately, behind him.

There was a cry and Deal felt the grip on his ankle weaken. Still gasping for breath, he jerked his ankle free and rolled under the shelter of the deck, scuttling now like a wounded animal. By the time he had rolled around the shelter of a support post, the man was under the porch after him, but Deal was finally sucking air into his lungs. He braced himself against the post and lashed out with a solid backhand blow of the two-by-two.

There was another cry, but the man managed to get hold of his club before Deal could draw it back. The two of them struggled for control of the club for a moment, and Deal felt the power there. Not anyone he’d have picked a struggle with, he thought, then abruptly let go of his makeshift club. He hooked his arm around the support post and pistoned his heel forward, only guessing his aim in the inky darkness. He felt a satisfying snap, like a wet rag slapping against concrete, and there came a matching groan.

Deal pushed away from the post and rolled back toward the lawn. There were plenty of two-by-twos there. Concrete blocks. A spud bar you could drive through the heart of an ox.

As his hands roamed blindly over the debris in the grass, he grabbed another length of railing and rolled back on the deck as a vague shape came out from under the structure beneath him.
Ought to be getting onto his hands and knees about now,
Deal thought, lunging forward with the length of wood in both hands. He leaned off the deck and onto his assailant’s back, dropping his hands over the man’s head. Then he pulled backward violently, wedging the broken spar tight against the man’s throat. The man struggled wildly, pulling Deal off the porch as if he weighed nothing, but still Deal held tight to the length of wood, one hand a fulcrum at the base, the other a lever at the back of the man’s head.

Deal heard gagging noises, felt the power going out of the man’s struggles. In moments the man had collapsed into the grass, Deal on top of him still holding tight to the broken chunk of railing as if he were trying to strangle an ox with its own yoke.

The strangling sounds were weaker in the man’s throat now, and the movements of his legs had changed from kicks to something more like galvanic twitches. “I can kill you,” Deal gasped. He gave a nudge at the base of the man’s skull to be sure he had his attention. “You know that, don’t you?”

There was a gargling sound by way of answer and Deal released the pressure on the back of the man’s head by an infinitesimal degree. “One move, I’ll crush your throat, you understand?”

Another gargling sound. Deal backed the pressure off another notch. “Who are you?”

A coughing sound this time. Deal kept his arms poised, ready to increase the pressure in an instant.

“Bown,” the man gasped. “Bil-bown.”

It took Deal a moment to understand the man’s strangled speech. “Billy Brown?” Deal repeated, hearing the disbelief in his own voice. “What the hell are you doing? This is Deal, goddammit.”

He had started to relax his grip at Brown’s throat when he felt an elbow smash into his ribs. “I know who you are, motherfucker,” Brown said, trying to buck him off.

Deal, his mind a welter of confusing signals, felt himself slammed back against the edge of the deck. There was an electrifying pain in his back, and he felt his grip on the two-by-two beginning to give way.
And
that’ll be the end of you, Johnny-boy,
came the voice from somewhere, willing him to hold fast.

He ignored the pain at his kidneys and locked his legs tightly around Brown’s ribcage, squeezing for all he was worth. Brown growled beneath him, a sound that rattled through Deal’s own ribs, then bucked once more, trying to drive Deal against the projecting timbers of the deck.

Deal twisted as they fell back again, managing to get his hand locked at the base of Brown’s neck. He levered his hand forward, jerking backward at the end of the broken spar, and felt Brown’s legs buckle. When the two of them went down this time, Deal did not let up.

He dug in against Brown’s frantic struggles, pulling on one side, shoving on the other, until finally the man went limp. Deal hesitated one more instant, then released his hold on the club. He pressed his fingertips to Brown’s neck, felt the throb of a pulse still working there.

The stack of two-by-twos had been tied with baling twine, he knew. He’d cut it open earlier that morning himself. He scrambled quickly to the tumbled stack and pawed through the wood until he found the cord. He hurried back to Brown’s inert form, pulled his thick arms behind him and bound him at the wrists. He pulled the end of the cord down to Brown’s sneaker-clad feet and was finishing the hasty job of hog-tying when he felt the man begin to stir.

“I’ll kill you,” Brown coughed, and thrashed about, trying to free his hands.

Deal dropped down, pinning a knee on the man’s chest as he flopped onto his back. “You won’t kill anybody,” he said. “Calm down. Tell me what this is about.”

“Fuck you,” Brown growled.

Deal stared down, trying to get a look at the man’s face in the darkness. Was he high on some drug? Deal wondered. Or just indulging in some normal psychosis? Docile job-seeker by day, deranged killer by night. Welcome to Miami—now draw your weapons.