Book Deal (9 page)

“Janice,” Deal began, trying to soothe her, but she pulled away from him again, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I
have
to tell you this, Deal. All right? I have to
tell
you.”

He put his hands up, nodding in reassurance, and she went on.

“I saw the cash register open, and the cash box,” she said, “and the checks and credit card receipts scattered all over and I had to force myself to look behind the counter and he wasn’t there and I was saying ‘Thank God, thank God,’ but then I saw the front door was still locked and bolted, so I went back into the children’s section…”

She faltered again and Deal reached out for her, but she held up her hand, gathering herself. When she turned to him again, her eyes were blazing. “They’d destroyed it, Deal. The children’s room. Ripped it apart. Not just the books. The displays, the artwork, the little tables and chairs. You wouldn’t believe what it looks like in there,”

He shook his head helplessly. “Maybe it was kids…”

“
Kids?
” she said incredulously. “Kids aren’t capable of doing what happened in there.” She paused. “Animals, maybe. Not kids.”

“Janice, we don’t know what might have happened yet…”

“I know what I saw, Deal. I know what I found upstairs. Do you know what that felt like? Walking up those stairs, knowing what I was going to find? If you’d seen what I’d seen. Oh, dear God,” she said, crumbling again. “Oh, Arch. Oh, poor, dear Arch…”

He caught her in his arms, pulled her close, imagining despite himself what it must have been like, finding Arch there in the airless room. He’d had a glimpse as they’d brought the body out…it’d been like taking a blow, the one you never saw coming. Everything normal enough, but then suddenly your head is snapping back and there doesn’t seem to be any more oxygen in the air around you and you’re gulping and staggering, your legs full of sand…

Another wave of lightheadedness swept over him and he had the sudden feeling he was clutching Janice against an awful gale, that the sidewalk beneath their feet was not a sidewalk at all, but the deck of some pitiful boat that could pitch them over at any instant. His hand went to the back of her neck, pressed her face close to his chest. He could smell her shampoo, the same woodsy scent she’d always used, could feel the dampness of her cheek on his shirt, the heat of her against him…he felt something giving way inside him, an immense longing swelling up, threatening to crush the wall he’d so painstakingly constructed over these past months—if you don’t let it, it can’t hurt you, be safe, be safe, be safe—these pitiful voices of reason flying away in the face of the welling emotion that threatened to crash down upon him like one of those huge breakers the surfers dare to fall…

“Janice,” he murmured, might have been about to add, I love you, nothing can change that, nothing can be too terrible if that holds…

And that was when he heard the voice at his shoulder.

“Mr. Deal?”

Deal glanced up to see an older man in a white suit and Panama hat standing beside them, an expression of concern on his face. A jewelry salesman, Deal found himself thinking. An undertaker’s front man.

“I’m Richard Levitt,” the man said quietly as Deal continued to stare. He seemed apologetic for interrupting, yet made no move to step away.

Deal shook his head, uncomprehending. He felt Janice pulling from his grasp.

“Richard,” she said, her voice weak, still choked with emotion. Her gaze went to him, then back to Deal.

Deal glanced across the street then, saw the car drawn up to the curb, in front of a crowd of curious bystanders that a uniformed cop was keeping at bay. The front of the car was angled toward him this time, so that no plate was visible, but it was the same Japanese luxury car he’d seen yesterday, gliding up in front of Arch’s to take his wife away. There was a moment of silence, the three of them exchanging glances, a piece of very bad theater, or so it seemed to Deal.

“You’re the gallery owner,” Deal said finally. “From Sarasota.”

Levitt nodded, cut his glance at Janice. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said softly. Then he added, “Are you all right?”

Janice nodded.

Levitt seemed uncertain, compelled to move toward her, yet wary of Deal’s presence at his side.

He turned to Deal. “I’m really not certain…can you tell me what’s happened?”

Deal shook his head. “Arch Dolan was killed,” he said, gesturing at the mess inside. “It might have been a robbery.”

“My God,” Levitt said. His hand went automatically to his head. He pulled his hat off, gazed in through the open door in dismay.

Levitt’s hair was snowy white, but thinning. Deal could see liver spots dotting his scalp, noticed them on the back of the man’s hands as well. Well kept, but sixty-five if he was a day. Deal shook his head, confused at the welter of thoughts that coursed through his mind. Did he need to be jealous of this man? He glanced at Janice, who had moved away a bit, held a hand against the store’s facade to steady herself.

“Janice discovered it,” Deal continued. “She didn’t tell you?”

Levitt shook his head, still reeling himself, apparently. “No…I got a call that there was trouble…” He broke off, turned back to Janice.

“I’m not feeling very well,” she said, her face pasty.

It was enough for Levitt. “Come sit in the car,” he said. He glanced at Deal, but he was already moving toward her.

Deal fought an irrational urge to step in his way. But what was he going to do, shove the old man away? Deck him? Shout, foot atop his silk-shirted chest, “Hell, no, she can’t sit in your Japanese car!” The whirl of emotions within him seemed beyond what any reasonable person should be asked to contend with. Arch murdered, Janice here beside him, in his arms one moment, being whisked off by a man he’d fantasized beating to a pulp more than once…

“Yo, Deal.” He heard the gruff voice behind him then, and turned to see Driscoll in the doorway of the store, beckoning.

Driscoll seemed surprised at Deal’s hesitation. “Come on, it’s okay,” he said, impatient.

Janice was already moving unsteadily across the street, one of Levitt’s hands on her arm, the other wrapped about her shoulders. Levitt was bent at her ear and seemed to be whispering encouragement. Anyone else might see a gentle, elderly man comforting a distraught woman, might be heartened by the thought of loving kindness. What Deal saw incited a sickening mixture of rage and despair. When he turned back to Driscoll, he felt so weary, and even guilty himself.

“I gotta warn you, it isn’t very pretty up here,” Driscoll was saying. The two of them had to step aside as a uniformed cop came down the staircase, a clear plastic bag full of loose book pages in his hands. Deal thought he saw a smear of blood across one page, then realized it was a plate, some lush illustration—red drapes fluttering behind intrepid swordsmen—torn from one of the old volumes Arch and Els housed in the upstairs annex.

The cop nodded at Driscoll, let his gaze linger on Deal a moment. “He’s with me,” Driscoll said, and the cop went on by without a word.

“Come on,” Driscoll said, leading the way up the narrow staircase.

What had been up there were two pleasant rooms, the first a kind of library where a dignified reading area had been set up—a pair of burgundy leather chairs, each with its own tasseled lamp, a coffee table atop a faded oriental rug in between. Deal remembered it as the kind of place you’d sit in for five minutes, find yourself sliding right out of the world into whatever you happened to be reading.

He still had the picture of it in his mind when he made the landing. But now the chairs were upended, the lamps tumbled over, brass standards twisted, shades flattened, the rug kicked into a wad in a corner. The old coffee table was on its back nearby, its four curved legs thrust up like a wooden animal begging for mercy. The ceiling fans were unmoving, the air thick with a smell he didn’t want to identify.

Driscoll pointed through an open doorway into the adjoining room, where a couple of technicians busied themselves. The imposing glass-fronted bookcase that had held the rarest of the rare had toppled to the floor and shattered. Pieces of the case’s wooden shelving were stacked like kindling beside a shoal of glass fragments. Here and there a shred of paper or binding poked from the wreckage like scraps of clothing. There was a taped outline of a body on the floor nearby, a grotesque yellow cartoon surrounded by massive dark stains.

That’s the smell
, Deal thought, his stomach churning.
Butcher, baker, candlestick maker. That’s what dying smells like
.

Driscoll gave him a closer glance. “You okay?”

Deal managed a nod. “Did anyone call his parents?”

Driscoll shook his head, his eyes helpless. “They’re someplace in Asia, chasing the butterfly migrations. One of those kind of trips where you follow your nose. No itinerary, no reservations. The housekeeper says they call in every week or so.”

Deal nodded. Arch’s father had been a neurosurgeon. One day he’d been scratching the back of his neck, found a lump there. A week later he was under the knife himself. The tumor on his spinal column had been benign, but that’s all it had taken to readjust his priorities. A week in intensive care, six months of physical therapy until he could walk again, the man had retired.

“He’s got a couple of sisters,” Deal said. “Sara lives in the Midwest somewhere. Arch was just telling me. And there’s a younger one in New York. Deidre.”

Driscoll nodded. “The one in Omaha wasn’t there when they called. The one in New York is seven months pregnant, already on bed rest because she went into false labor last week. They’re trying to figure out how to tell her.”

Deal closed his eyes momentarily. “How about Els,” he sighed. “This is going to kill him.”

Driscoll shook his head. “He wasn’t home, either.”

Deal stared. “You mean he’s just going to walk into work, find all this going on?”

Driscoll shrugged helplessly. Deal turned away, thinking. Maybe he should go downstairs, post himself on the street. If he saw Els coming…he thought, then stopped. If he saw Els coming, he’d do
what?

He turned back to Driscoll, who pointed into the adjoining room at one of the technicians who busied himself dusting down a green glass bookend bearing a globe the size of a grapefruit. “There were a couple of those bookends,” Driscoll said. “The other one was all busted up.” His normally flat expression twisted into a scowl. “It looks like that’s what they used.” He cleared his throat.

“Multiple fractures of the skull, that’s what the report is going to read. But that’s the pretty way to put it.”

Deal turned away from the inner room, trying to draw a decent breath. He had the sudden sensation that he was sucking down air freighted with Arch’s blood, and for a moment he thought he might be sick. Finally, mercifully, the feeling passed, leaving him drained, his stomach tight as a fist.

“What happened here, Driscoll?” he managed.

Driscoll gave his characteristic shrug. “The register was cleaned out, Dolan’s wallet emptied, the office was tossed, like maybe they thought there was more to find…” Driscoll turned up his palms. “Looks like he was killed resisting a robbery.”

“A bookstore,” Deal shook his head. “Why would someone pick a bookstore to rob?”

“Maybe he was the only place open.”

Deal glanced at him.

“Hey,” Driscoll said. “Crackheads aren’t exactly known for their powers of logical reasoning. Some dickbrain needs a rock, he’ll do whatever it takes to get it.”

Deal swept his arm about the ruined place. “That’s what you think this was? A crackhead robbery?”

Driscoll shrugged again. “I don’t know what it was, Deal. You asked me a question, I’m talking about what I see so far.”

Deal felt himself relent momentarily. No point in taking out his feelings on Driscoll. It was true enough. While the Gables might like to parade its safe and glittery side to the rest of crime-weary South Florida, it still had its share of losers and drifters and grifters haunting the streets. They moved like smoke, from a shuttered shop entrance here, to an alleyway there, to a dim office corridor somewhere else, and the only time you paid any attention to their existence at all was when you reached for your purse or your wallet and found it gone…or you came back to the place where you’d parked your car and found the windows spread across your seats in a sheet of little diamonds…or maybe you didn’t find your car at all and just walked around in a circling daze for the fifteen minutes it took you to realize you really had parked it exactly there, and that it really had disappeared.

So that was what had become of his friend Arch Dolan?
The shadow of one of those faceless people passes over him and he’s gone, that’s it, Arch is just one more statistic and the person responsible is about as possible to find as the guy who turns your new car into spare parts in twenty-five minutes?

“The coroner figures he’s been dead since last night,” Driscoll continued. “No signs of a forced entry, so he either let whoever it was in, or he forgot to lock the back door.”

“I left him about five,” Deal said absently, his mind fighting to regain that last picture of Arch, sending him out into the cool evening with his reassuring grin…

He forced himself away from the memory, turned back to Driscoll. “I went out the front.”

“Yeah,” Driscoll said, nodding down the stairs. “You’re probably the last one who saw him before this happened. They’ll want a statement from you.”

“Sure,” Deal said, feeling leaden and groggy. Why hadn’t he come back, dragged Arch out of the store, forced him back to the fourplex to watch the goddamned game, or down to the Colombian Super Bowl bash, for that matter? They could have gotten good and drunk, explained American football and quoted poetry to diplomats and sleek, ill-tempered women who drove expensive cars.

“You want to go down, I’ll introduce you to Stearns? He’s the detective in charge.”

Deal glanced up at Driscoll, nodded. He wanted to add something like. “Sure. Being not the one dead, I will gladly do that,” but he doubted Driscoll would understand, and he was in no shape to explain.