Deal to Die For (14 page)

“But the sister—this actress with a life, and money, and all that—she wasn’t angry with Barbara?”

“It didn’t seem like it to me.” Deal stared at him.

“Okay,” Driscoll said. He threw up his hands in surrender. “I don’t have anything to do. You want to leave Isabel with Mrs. Suarez a couple more hours, I’ll ride with you up to Broward, take a look at what they got.”

Deal looked at him. “It’s Sunday. Is anybody going to be around?”

Driscoll laughed. “You think the ME’s office takes the weekend off? That’s when the crazies go into high gear.” He sighed then, as if he were recalling the weight of thirty years of such weekends.

“Let’s do it, then,” Deal said, and the big man heaved himself up out of his chair.

Chapter 23

“Real pretty,” Driscoll was saying, flipping through the photographs the medical examiner had provided. He dropped the stack back into the manila envelope, handed it to Deal with a dour glance.

Deal caught a glimpse of the first of the stack, had to turn away. There were three of them in a tiny third-story office that suddenly didn’t seem to have enough air in it for breathing. Block walls painted beige, industrial carpet worn to the thickness of a handkerchief. Deal checked the window, but he knew it was the kind that would only open with an axe. He fought the feeling of claustrophobia, glanced out at the intersection below, empty except for one sun-blistered hawker sitting on a stack of Sunday papers piled high at the curb.

“Suicide is a terrible thing,” the ME said. It was the same earnest young man from the night before—Mekhtar, according to his desk plate. The way he said it, the way he sat, his lips pursed in a disapproving way, it made Deal want to open the window by tossing him through it.

Driscoll motioned at the envelope in Deal’s hand. “You mind if I borrow these for a while?”

Mekhtar’s eyes widened. “Mr. Driscoll,” he said. “I am truly sorry. As you are no longer…” He broke off, trying to avoid any conception of insult. He shook his head in consternation. “Yes. This would be a thing that we could not allow. The property of the department as it is being. Yes, I am very sorry about that.”

Driscoll stared at him for a moment, astounded by the locution. He glanced at Deal, then swept his gaze about the office, considering things. Something seemed to catch his attention and he made a gesture out Mekhtar’s open office door. “Fenderman’s finally out of here?”

Deal followed the ex-cop’s gaze. Across the hallway was the entrance to a much bigger office. He got a glimpse of a couple of flags behind a barren desk, dark-paneled walls, some mostly empty bookshelves. Even Deal had heard of Irwin Fenderman, until recently Broward County’s Chief Medical Examiner. He was a flamboyant figure, always on the scene where foul play and any measure of celebrity converged, face in front of the cameras, ready to offer an opinion of what had happened on the spot. The run-and-gun school of journalism loved him, but he’d been less than popular among his peers in law enforcement.

Mekhtar too followed Driscoll’s gesture, nodding. “Oh, he is gone, all right.” He turned back, pointed at the computer screen on a metal credenza behind him. “He is gone, everything is gone.” Deal saw a series of green lines crawling up an otherwise blank screen.

“What are you talking about?” Driscoll said.

“The files, the computer program, everything,” Mekhtar said, gazing mournfully at his blank monitor. “The chief installed our system, you see.” He glanced up at Deal. “And when he had his…” he hesitated, searching for the right words “…
falling out
with the city council, he decided to take what he felt was his.” Mekhtar threw up his hands.

Driscoll nodded. “It sounds like Fenderman,” he said.

Deal placed the photographs back in the manila envelope, returned the envelope to the file and handed it to Mekhtar. “I guess they should’ve given him the raise he wanted.”

Mekhtar smiled in agreement. “Yes. Things are in much disarray here,” he said. He glanced at Driscoll, holding up the envelope. “I am sorry about the photographs. Perhaps if the Chief were still here, something could be done…”

“Forget it,” Driscoll said, motioning to Deal.

“And I am sorry about your friend,” Mekhtar added as Deal brushed by him.

***

They were in Driscoll’s Ford now, waiting on the light at the intersection Deal had looked down upon a few minutes before, Deal still so steamed about Mekhtar and his eagerness to dismiss Barbara’s death as a suicide that he’d almost forgotten.

“You wanted these?” Deal said to Driscoll. He reached into his jacket pocket, withdrew a wad of photos he’d palmed from the coroner’s envelope.

Driscoll glanced over, saw what Deal was holding. “Well, I’m a sonofabitch,” he said, his scowl rearranging itself into a grin. “I’m proud of you, Johnny-boy.”

Deal shrugged. “I’ve been spending too much time around you, I guess.”

Driscoll clapped him on the shoulder, tucked the photos into his own pocket. “Things get tough in the construction racket, you come see me.”

Deal nodded absently, still focused on Mekhtar. Analretentive little guy, it probably made him feel better to account for every messy death as quickly as possible. On the other hand, maybe it was an unavoidable consequence of the job. Given the murder rate in South Florida, there were plenty of demands on his time. Who needed to manufacture a case when you needed a computer to keep the victims straight? And, he had to admit, there didn’t seem to be much to go on here, not if logic was your measuring stick. Just Deal’s vague hunch, her estranged sister’s chance comment that Barbara was too angry to commit suicide. He turned away from his thoughts then, fighting the sneaking suspicion that the real reason he was up here, running around Broward County on an otherwise beautiful Sunday afternoon, was because the alternative was to be at home, face-to-face with the calamity of his own life.

He rolled the window down, no chance of a power window in a car that Driscoll owned, noticed that the newspaper hawker he’d seen from above was heading their way, a copy of the Broward paper held before his chest. From the vantage point of the third floor, the guy had looked like a surfer: cordovan tan, sun-bleached hair, T-shirt, baggy trunks, and rubber flip-flops—a kid picking up a few bucks while the tide was slack. Down here, though, Deal could see the guy was pushing fifty, his face a mask of creases, his eyes leached by the tropical glare to the color of concrete.

“
Sun Sentinel
,” the guy said in a rasping, singsong voice. “Get your
Sun Sentinel
.” He had to be talking to them, but his eyes were locked on something far away. “
MORE RAFTERS WASH ASHORE
,” Deal read the inch-high headlines. A color photo of bodies tumbling in the surf, more people who’d died trying to get to the promised land. More people who’d died.

“Hold it,” Deal said as the light turned green. He put out a hand to stop Driscoll, dug into his pocket with the other. He held out a bill for the guy, took the paper.

“Go,” Deal said to Driscoll.

Driscoll hesitated. “That’s a ten you gave him,” he protested.

The hawker stood there uncertainly, turning the bill over and back in his hands.

“Keep it,” Deal said.

The guy looked at him. “You want some more papers, Mister?”

“Go,” Deal said again, and finally the ex-cop hit the gas.

They drove in silence for a few blocks, Driscoll obviously troubled as they cruised down Las Olas past a long string of fashionable shops, past a sidewalk café jammed with Sunday brunch-eaters, then into prime residential territory that bordered the Intracoastal Waterway.

“That guy you gave the money to,” Driscoll said finally, his eyes on the road ahead. “He’s just gonna go get juiced.”

Deal nodded. “So I saved him a couple hours in the hot sun.”

Driscoll glanced over at him, started to say something else, then gave up, shaking his head. At the next light, he swung off Las Olas, heading down a tree-lined street that alternated antebellum-style mansions with modern glass and stone estates, each place sitting on an acre or so of jade green lawn.

“Detective Giverty lives out here?” Deal asked.

Driscoll snorted. “Giverty lives in a crackerbox down in Davie,” he said. “Place on a couple of acres, where he can keep a horse. That’s one reason why he wanted to move to Broward. So he could keep a
horse
.” He rolled his eyes.

“Then what are we doing here?” Deal said. In one way it was all right, cruising aimlessly along the streets of a strange city. Pretty Sunday afternoon, pretty houses. But why wasn’t he with his wife, his daughter, on some happy family outing, burgers on the beach, everybody arm-in-arm on Daddy’s day off…

“I thought we’d go see Irwin Fenderman,” Driscoll said, breaking into Deal’s thought. He tapped his jacket where he’d put the photos. “See what he thinks of these.”

“You think there’s something in them that Mekhtar doesn’t?”

“Let’s just wait and see,” Driscoll said. He pointed up ahead, then abruptly swung the Ford through a break in the lushly planted median. They crossed the opposite lane and entered the long driveway of what looked like an abandoned house. In contrast to the neatly manicured lawns on either side, this one had run riot: the St. Augustine grass rose up in knee-high clumps, wild redleaf vines dragged at the low-lying branches of live oak and ficus seedlings, a lamppost with its glass blown out leaned like a drunk fighting into a gale.

“Welcome to the Fenderman estate,” Driscoll said dryly, using his jaw as a pointer.

Deal stared up the cratered driveway, a pale tongue of crushed limestone pocked with outposts of weeds and bahia grass, which circled around in front of the house. The place
had
to have been something, once upon a time. A big two-story white clapboard with a green-shingled gabled roof, lots of gingerbread trim, and broad overhangs to ward off the sun. On one end, the place was anchored by a massive brick chimney with a number of flues peeking from the top. On the opposite end, the easternmost, was a glassed-in tower with a widow’s walk. Deal didn’t doubt that you could actually see the ocean from up there. It looked like a shore house picked up by a big wind off Chesapeake Bay and dropped perversely down in the tropics.

On the downside, it didn’t look as if the place had been painted in a dozen years. Mildew had turned the eaves nearly black, and elsewhere the sun, salt air, and rain had eaten at the paint in big bites. Some of the shingles had come away from the main roof near the widow’s walk, exposing the crumbling underlayment. A long tongue of tar paper had worked loose and lolled out over one gabled end, working in what breeze there was like a listless tongue. Still, the old character of the place shone through, and Deal found himself automatically running repair estimates through his head. Whatever it would take would be worth it.

“Looks like the servants took the week off, doesn’t it?” Driscoll said, grunting as the Ford bottomed out in a pothole.

“You’ve been here before?” Deal asked.

“A few times,” Driscoll said, guiding the Ford around a fallen limb that jutted into the roadway. “Fenderman used to throw a big bash once a year, big political fund-raiser.”

Deal gave him a look, trying to imagine Driscoll as a guest on the political fund-raising circuit.

Driscoll caught the expression on his face. “I worked off-duty security,” the ex-cop said.

Deal shrugged. “I was just wondering.”

“Yeah,” Driscoll said. He pulled the car to a stop in the weed-pocked parking area near a fountain, an impressive double-decked affair with carved figures scalloped at its edges and a leaping dolphin for a main font. Improbably, the thing was operational, a steady stream of water spurting up from the dolphin’s mouth.

As Deal got out, something hit the ground near his feet. He glanced down to find an emaciated cat crouched in the gravel, eyeing him intently. He sensed another movement and glanced up at the fountain, brim-full of greenish water. As his eyes adjusted to the glare, he realized that what he had taken for stone carvings were actually cats: maybe a dozen similarly marked creatures perched on the stone ledges in various poses.

When Driscoll’s door slammed, the cats sprang away, vanishing into the overgrown shrubbery like smoke.

“Fenderman knew how to throw a party,” Driscoll was saying, oblivious to the cats. “That whole yard’d be full of cars,” he said, sweeping his arm out over the untended grass. “We’d fill that up and have ’em up and down the street all the way out to Las Olas.”

Deal nodded. All the humps and swales in the vast yard, there could be whole cars still hidden under the grass. “So what happened?” he said, following Driscoll toward the front steps. A pair of stone lions guarded the entrance, more or less: one had shifted off its base and had slid snout-down into the gravel drive. The other had lost half its face to a blow of some sort: cement teeth in a snarl gave way to a tangle of rusted wire mesh waving in the air.

“I dunno.” Driscoll shrugged. He pushed at an unlighted doorbell, paused. He pushed again, then turned to Deal. “You hear anything?” he asked. Deal shook his head.

Driscoll studied the bell button, picked at it with one of his stubby fingers. Finally he gave up and hammered at the door with the side of his fist. The sounds echoed hollowly inside the place. Driscoll turned back to him, ready to fill him in.

“When Fenderman’s wife died—she came from money, by the way—that’s when he started to go weird. Not to say he wasn’t colorful before…Hey, what the shit!”

Driscoll cried out as a sudden flood of water cascaded down upon the stones of the entryway. Deal threw up his hands instinctively, dancing back down the crumbling steps. Another wave of water descended, breaking over Driscoll’s head, soaking him altogether. Deal backpedaled into the graveled parking area and stared up at the pristine skies, dumbfounded by what he saw.

A wild-eyed older man in shirtsleeves, bow tie, little wire-rimmed glasses, the picture of a dithery scientist, leaned from a second-story window of the Fenderman house, clutching a yellow plastic bucket in his hands. He glared at Deal, who must have seemed out of range, then turned his attention back to Driscoll, who stood gasping, water still pouring off him.

“Vernon…,” Deal shouted, but he was too late. The wild-eyed man, whom Deal had recognized by now as Fenderman, upended the yellow bucket. Driscoll glanced up in time to take the next wave squarely in the face. He staggered backward, under the cover of the door overhang, swiping wildly at his face.

“Get out,” Fenderman shouted. “Get off my property.” He glared at Deal, hand suddenly raised to hurl the bucket down. Deal sidestepped as the empty bucket caught a gust and sailed wide, bouncing harmlessly off the side of the fountain.

When he looked up again, he saw that Fenderman had ducked inside and was leaning well out of the window once more, a new bucket in his hands, green this time, little sloshes of water splatting to the steps below as he angled for another bombs-away on Driscoll.