Done Deal (14 page)
He left the VW in front of the building, two wheels up on the curb. The
churrasco
vendor was gone, but there were two moon-face Indian women camped out on the steps to the plaza surrounded by buckets full of carnations and roses. The rent-a-cop was coming out to meet Deal as he pushed through the doors.
“I’m with the window cleaners,” Deal said, before the cop could open his mouth. “Keep an eye on it, will you?” He nodded at the VW. The cop glared at him, then stepped farther out from the building. By the time Deal reached the reception desk, the cop was out there on the sidewalk, staring up, searching for scaffolding.
It was the same receptionist, the pleasant one. Barbara, he thought, surprised to remember her name.
She looked up from a paperback book tucked under the edge of her phone console. “Oh,” she said, a smile coming to replace her surprise. “Mr. Deal.”
“I’m here to see Mr. Penfield, Barbara. Can you buzz me through?”
“Sure. I just have to call…”
Deal waved, already on his way toward the elevators. He vaulted the gate, caught one of the doors just as it was closing. He got a look at the rent-a-cop running after him. The guy tried to jump the gates, using the same maneuver as Deal, but he was carrying extra weight around the middle. His hand slid on the polished rail and he caught the tip of his shiny black shoe going over. His hat flew off and there was a panicked look on his face. The elevator doors slid closed just as the cop’s chin bounced off the parquet.
Penfield met him in the outer office. The old man looked grave, tight little lines radiating from the corners of his mouth. The door to his office sat ajar and Deal could see part of some client in there waiting: a pair of crossed legs, silk suit pants, dark socks, some Italian leather shoes, no wear on the sole that faced him. He caught a glimpse of the man’s profile before Penfield blocked his way, but he really wasn’t paying attention.
“John…” Penfield put out a soothing hand.
Penfield’s secretary gave Deal a wary glance, her hand close to the telephone.
“I know you’re busy,” Deal said. “I can wait.” Deal was listening to the words coming out of his mouth. Sure, he could wait. About a minute. Maybe a minute and a half. “Somebody’s putting the squeeze on me,” he said. “I’m about to go out of business.”
Penfield nodded, as if he knew all about it. “Just calm down, John. I’m involved with a matter just now…”
Deal glanced inside the office, a vague concern beginning to register. That suit. That profile he’d glimpsed. Someone he’d seen before. The chair where the client had been sitting was empty now.
A big guy had appeared at the door of Penfield’s office, not the client in the silk suit. This guy was wearing tan slacks and a sport coat straining at the shoulder seams. He was black, and wore one of the stand-up hairstyles, shaped like a bucket of sand upended at the beach. The guy had to hunch his shoulders to clear the door frame. He stared across the deep green carpet at Deal as if he were measuring a quarterback with a slow release.
“The fuck
you
doing here,” the big man said.
Deal shook his head. “Do I know you?” he said.
Penfield gave the big man a sharp glance. “I’ll take care of this.” The big guy didn’t seem convinced, kept his eyes on Deal.
“Look, John,” Penfield said. “I’m really very busy.” He forced a smile. “Give my secretary a number where I can reach you, I assure you we’ll talk yet today.”
He patted Deal on the shoulder and turned quickly back for his office. The big guy waited for him to pass, keeping his eyes on Deal.
Penfield paused at the doorway. “And John…you caused quite a ruckus down in the lobby. Try to be a little more careful going out.” He gave Deal a fatherly nod and disappeared, the big man drawing the doors closed behind them.
The secretary looked up at Deal, her pen ready. “What was the number?” Her eyes were bright with hostility.
Deal thought a moment. “Who’s in there?”
“I’m not permitted to discuss Mr. Penfield’s clients.”
“I don’t want to discuss them. I just want to know who he’s talking to.”
Her jaw tightened. Deal saw her fingers twitching, ready to stab a panic button somewhere. He imagined the big guy crashing through the double doors, King Kong with a rocket up his ass.
“Yeah, well, forget the number,” he said. “I’ll get back to him.”
When the elevator light clicked down to
L
Deal took a deep breath. By the time the doors opened again, he had forced himself into something like calm.
The lobby was anything but calm, however. There was a Fire Rescue van parked on the curb behind Deal’s VW, its flashers whirling. Two paramedics in jump suits were inside, tending to the rent-a-cop, who was propped up against the marble wall in a corner. One of the paramedics was tidying up, while the other finished with a butterfly bandage on the rent-a-cop’s chin. A Metro patrolman stood to one side, writing on a clipboard.
Deal had to walk past them, over a splash of blood on the marble floor, to get to the gate. The rent-a-cop’s eyes met Deal’s as he walked by, but he didn’t say anything. The real cop glanced up at Deal, then went back to his writing.
Deal heard the gate click shut behind him. Deal forced himself to walk slowly across the gleaming floor. The receptionist’s booth was empty. When he got outside, Deal saw why.
There was a second patrolman standing around back of Janice’s car, his ticket pad out. Barbara was standing in front of him, gesturing at the building. The cop was shaking his head. When Deal approached, Barbara smiled.
“I was just telling him you’d be right out, Mr. Deal.” The way she said his name made Deal sound like someone important.
“This your vehicle?” the cop said.
“That’s right, officer.”
“This lady says you’re doing some work here?”
Deal glanced at Barbara who stared back deadpan. “Yeah, that’s right,” he said.
“Where’s your permit?” the cop said, pointing at the windshield of the VW. He meant one of the cardboard tags they issued at City-County. You could double-park a freight train with the tag. If you had the suck to get one.
Deal stared at the dash. A gum wrapper, a dried up ring from a coffee cup, the plastic case that had been on Janice’s “cosmic concepts” tape, curled up like a slug from the sun. Deal feigned a double take.
“Son of a
bitch!
” he said. “Somebody took it?” He turned to stare at Barbara, who shrugged her shoulders.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Deal.”
Deal turned back to the cop, shaking his head in disbelief. “Jesus Christ. Somebody
stole
it. You know what it takes to get one of those things?”
The cop nodded, softening. “You gotta keep it locked up, Mr. Deal. Anything isn’t nailed down…” he trailed off as his partner came out of the building, his clipboard under his arm.
“Everything under control?” the cop with the clipboard said.
“Yeah,” his partner said. “Unless you want to file a report, Mr. Deal.”
“No, the hell with it,” Deal said. “My own fault.”
The cop waved and followed after his partner. The paramedics came outside and got in their van without a word.
Deal stood with Barbara, watching the two vehicles pull away. “I appreciate it,” he said, finally.
“It was the least I could do,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for a year for that jerk to get his.” She gestured toward the lobby.
Deal looked inside. He couldn’t see the rent-a-cop anywhere. “I guess he’ll be okay.”
“We can always hope not,” she said.
Deal studied her a moment. “There’s a little mean streak under all that nice, isn’t there.”
She smiled. “Nobody ever sees it, though.”
Deal nodded. “I wonder if I could ask you something.”
“Ask.” She had gray eyes. A stare that wouldn’t waver.
“Somebody went up to see Penfield, just before I came in. Somebody important, a big guy with him.”
“So you saw Leon,” she said. She turned to him. “Leon Straight…you know, he played for the Dolphins one year.”
Deal nodded. Leon Straight. A high-school phenomenon from rural Georgia who couldn’t even cut it in junior college. A couple seasons with the World Football League, a half year with the Fish during the strike, one blown-out knee, one career in the dumper. “So who’s Leon’s boss, now?”
Barbara gave him a look, puzzled. She looked away from Deal, across the broad boulevard toward the park where a couple of maintenance men were propping up a sagging palm tree with two-by-fours. At ground level you couldn’t see the water that was less than a block away, but you could smell the seaweed on the breeze. “It’s no real secret, I guess. He works for Raoul Alcazar.”
“Alcazar?” Deal glanced up the sheer facade of the skyscraper despite himself. No wonder the warning bells were going off.
She was silent.
“That’s Raoul Alcazar up there?”
Barbara nodded, uncomfortable. Across the street, a man in a tattered T-shirt had stopped his shopping cart and was shouting instructions at the workers, who were still struggling with the palm tree.
Deal shook his head. “What’s he doing with Penfield? Trying to buy into baseball?”
She shrugged. “He’s a client.”
Deal stared as she continued. “Another firm handles his litigation. Mr. Penfield does his corporate work.”
Deal laughed, still not believing it. “Mr. Above Reproach and the Great Corrupter?” he glanced in at her lobby station. “How do you know all this?”
Barbara glanced away. “Sometimes I work upstairs, I type things…” She hesitated, giving him a look he couldn’t quite interpret. “I really should get back, you know.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said, still trying to figure it. Thornton Penfield and Raoul Alcazar.
Barbara seemed to have drifted off somewhere. He reached out, touched her shoulder. “Look, thanks again for helping me out.”
She nodded, a pained expression on her face. Deal had the feeling she’d left something unsaid.
“Is there something wrong?” he asked.
Across the street, one of the maintenance men had attached one end of a rope to the neck of the sagging palm, then looped it over the limb of a nearby poinciana tree. He’d tied off the rope to the bumper of his dump truck and was slowly backing up, levering the palm off the ground. His partner was standing by with the wooden brace, ready to slide it in place when the palm rose high enough.
“That’s right. Looking real good!” the man with the shopping cart called to the workers. Deal noticed the man wore no shoes.
“I thought that’s why you were here,” she said.
Deal shook his head. “I’m not following you.”
“I thought Mr. Penfield was getting the two of you together.”
Deal was baffled. “Alcazar and me? Why would you think that?”
She turned to him abruptly. “Look, it’s public record, all right. I mean you’d have to find out, sooner or later.”
“Barbara…” he began.
“He owns Surf Motors,” she blurted. “Raoul Alcazar owns Surf Motors.”
There was a loud snapping noise from the direction of the park. The truck driver had apparently pulled back too far. The head of the palm had sheared off the base and now dangled upside down over the poinciana limb. It looked like someone had decided to lynch a palm tree.
Deal stared at her, not certain he had heard correctly. He felt a high-pitched whine start up somewhere in his head, like a huge wind gathering, ready to sweep away everything in its path.
“I didn’t
think
you knew that,” she said, watching him. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks, Barbara,” Deal heard himself saying.
“Sure,” she said. She put her hand on his arm. “Are you okay?”
Deal felt his head nodding. He thought of those mechanical dogs people put in their rear windows. He glanced up at her.
“Why did you tell me this?”
She gave him a look. “I don’t know. I’m getting tired of working for attorneys, I guess.” She took a breath. “I shouldn’t have said anything…but you’d have found out sooner or later, right?”
Deal was nodding again. “Right.” He forced a smile for her. “Sure I would’ve.”
She nodded herself, a bit uncertainly, then turned and hurried inside the building.
He stopped at the
mercado
up the street from his fourplex. He could see the pile of dirt and coral mounded on the sidewalk from a block away. The city trucks were long gone. He went inside the hardware and bought a scoop shovel with a square blade and a pair of leather gloves.
There was a stop order stapled to the door of the fourplex, which Deal ripped down and wadded into a ball. It was the first thing he tossed into the gaping hole surrounding his gas and sewer connections. Then he put on the gloves, got his new shovel out of the car and started in on the pile of dirt and rock.
It took him three hours, but by last light, he was tamping the last of the dirt back into place. The tile men had left a hose attached to the outside faucet and he used that to nourish the smashed plants by the sidewalk. His arms and legs were rubbery with fatigue.
He wobbled back to the car, drove back up the street to the
mercado
and bought a six-pack, Jamaican Red Stripe in squatty little bottles with the label painted on.
“Good beer,” the clerk said, snapping a sack open. He was an affable Cuban man in his sixties, an unlit cigar in the corner of his mouth.
Deal nodded, bleary with exhaustion. He and Janice had discovered the brand on a weekend cruise, years ago. The ship had lost power ten miles out of Montego harbor. A million old farts clamored at the buffet tables, the casinos, bitching about the broken air-conditioning, the food, the stingy slots. He and Janice stayed in the cabin rubbing themselves raw on the tangled sheets, calling room service again and again for ice and beer. The labels were foil then, and slid off easily in the icy buckets of water. They’d made them up into little medals and pasted them on each other, various parts of their anatomies,
for meritorious service, for valor, for courage and bravery beyond the call of duty
…
He glanced up at the clerk. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s good beer.”
The clerk nodded and handed him the sack.
