Raw Deal (10 page)
“How could I buy something so expensive without knowing that it works?” Coco said to the man behind the counter.
The man didn’t bother to look up at him. He was sitting in a lawn chair, staring off at nothing, running a string of worry beads in one hand, sipping from a cup of tea in the other. You’d never be able to see him from the doorway. When Coco walked in, he’d thought the shop was untended. Strange shop, strange town.
“Works,” the man said, his gaze still fixed in front of him. “Turn on. Look.”
Coco stared at him. He had finally registered that the man was blind. Arab guy in his sixties, bald, tufts of hair sprouting from his ears, his nose. How did a blind Arab end up in a place like this, selling television sets?
Coco glanced at the tiny portable television the man had taken out of the display case for him. Except for the three-dot color logo painted on the front, the thing seemed identical to its black-and-white cousin still on the shelf. Coco was thinking,
Imagine being blind, all the little things you would have to learn
.
“I have turned it on,” Coco said finally. He held the snow-filled screen out toward the Arab. He’d been about to say, “See for yourself,” but that wouldn’t help. Instead, he flicked the volume control wide open.
A fine static hissed above the hum of a rotating table fan the Arab had placed on the floor behind him. It must have been ninety degrees in the closed-up shop. Coco found himself yearning for Miami, as if it were a place where things were sane.
The Arab shrugged. “Too far,” he said. “Work in city. Or up high.” He jabbed his thumb toward the pressed tin of the ancient ceiling. “As good as Sony.” He sat back in his chair, apparently worn out by his sales pitch. He began to cough, great racking, growling hacks that sent the aluminum lawn chair into a squeaking dance.
Coco thought he saw a shadow flit past the curtain that shrouded a passageway behind the counter. Pungent smells, lamb and spices possibly, drifted in from behind the curtain. A tiny apartment, maybe the Arab’s wife back there tending to life’s affairs.
Coco considered things. It would be far more enjoyable to have a color image when he watched, even if it was the size of a postage stamp. And the price seemed more than reasonable. But he’d never heard of this brand. What if the set did not work?
He glanced about the sparsely furnished shop again. Many of the shelves were empty, with squares and circles of dustless glass that showed where goods once had been. It looked like a place going out of business, but there were no signs to say so. In fact, he’d had to squint in the darkened windows, try the door, to be sure the place was open at all.
Had this been Miami, one of the electronics shops near the downtown port, there would have been flashing lights, banners, music throbbing onto the sidewalks, a swarthy young man with many rings and necklaces to pull him inside. Here in Belle Vista, “The Sweetest Town in the World,” life seemed very odd.
The Arab had stopped coughing and was wiping his mouth with a handkerchief. “You want Sony, maybe? Come back at night, my son has. At the camps right now.”
Coco pondered the Arab’s meaning. It was a Saturday afternoon, payday. They’d passed a cane workers’ barracks on the way into this forlorn town. There were a number of vendors with their wares set out in a dusty roadside clearing. Brightly colored rugs, bins full of vegetables, racks of shining watches. Maybe that’s where all the goods from this place were. In the back of some battered station wagon, being haggled over by men risking a season’s wages.
Had there even been a proprietor’s sign outside this shop? Coco had the sudden feeling that he had stumbled into a bedouin’s tent beside some watering hole in the desert. Were he to return here a week or a month from now, wanting to exchange the set—forget the warranty, Coco’s here and he wants it fixed—what would he find? No sparsely laden shelves, no blind man, no building at all. The black ashes of a campfire and piles of camel dung.
“One hundred twenty-five,” Coco said, turning down the volume on the hissing set. He spun the channel dial, saw a wavering image—a soldier in a parachute?—coalesce briefly, then disappear.
“One seventy-five,” the Arab said evenly. “Dollars,” he added, as if it were necessary. He had repeated the figure named on the tag inside the case.
“One hundred and fifty,” Coco said. He glanced at his watch. “I am having to leave now,” he added in a warning tone.
“Leave,” said the Arab, unperturbed. “Without TV.”
Coco glanced at the door. It was a thought. Just take the thing and walk out. He had an image of men in scarf-wrapped faces bursting from behind the curtain in the back, big curved blades in hand.
“One hundred fifty-five,” Coco said. He was trying to find the image of the soldier in the parachute again.
“One seventy-five,” the Arab said. “Layaway. Pay end of harvest.”
“I don’t work here,” Coco said, hearing his voice rise. “One seventy.”
The image he’d spotted was nowhere to be found. The dial spun freely beneath his thumb. What was wrong with him?
He was sure this was a mistake, the TV a worthless phony in a made-up case. Crazy. Let the blind man turn him down. Torreno back there waiting while Coco haggled over a TV set. He was out of here. Hurry back to his employer, buy Sony in Miami.
“Good,” the blind man said. “One seventy.” He was on his feet, deftly producing a box for the tiny set, some earphones and a power cord in there. The blind man held his hand out for the money. All in the blinking of Coco’s eyes.
Coco hesitated. He wanted to tell the man the deal was off. Turn and walk out the door. Forget it. But he had offered. And the image had returned to the tiny set: hundreds of men in parachutes now, raining down from big planes overhead. Look out below…
Coco found himself counting three bills into the man’s hand, gathering the box and earphones up, backing toward the doorway as the man fingered the bills.
“Good TV,” said the man. “Good color.”
Coco nodded, wondering how the guy could be sure he wasn’t clutching three one-dollar bills in his callused hand, but then he was out into the street and realizing he was truly, truly late.
***
He hurried down the cracked concrete sidewalk toward the restaurant where he had left his employer, checking his watch again. He stuffed the small television into an outside pocket of his coat, along with the plug and earphones. He crumpled the box and the instruction sheet and stuffed that into an overflowing trash can bearing the legend
KEEP OUR SWEET CITY CLEAN
.
It was nearing sundown and there were a number of workers on the streets now, mostly dark-skinned men, with the high cheekbones and narrow-eyed haughty good looks of the West Indians, and Coco had to weave his way along past them.
Men out of the sticky, smothering fields, on the loose for a few hours. Some drinks, some real food, and, with luck, a woman. A saloon door swung open, loosing a gust of fermenting beer and reggae music across the sidewalk. For a moment Coco felt disoriented.
First that business with the shopkeeper, now this gust of beer and music. His head was light. In that instant he was transported: There had been an earlier life, when he too could amble down a sidewalk with no destination in mind, with nothing to concern him save the need to wake up for a day’s inconsequential work, and that a distant care, to be sure.
“Yes, and in those days it would take three months’ pay to put that toy in your pocket.” It was a voice from now that reminded him of how things were. “A better life. A better life,” he found himself agreeing. No matter what he had to do to maintain it. He plunged ahead, ignoring the curious stares of the cane cutters in Belle Vista who stepped aside, seeing a light-skinned man talking to himself as he hurried down the crowded sidewalks.
***
As luck would have it, Torreno was
not
pacing the sidewalk beside the limousine, nor was he inside the big car, impatiently drumming his fingers for the arrival of his tardy driver. In fact, Coco saw as he pushed through the heavy door of the restaurant, Torreno was still where he had left him, in a wide red booth in the rear corner of the place, the same two men in nondescript dark suits still on either side of him, listening.
Now, however, the atmosphere seemed considerably loosened. The other tables had emptied of the luncheon customers, leaving the place nearly deserted. A waitress idled near the server’s counter, casting an occasional glance toward the group in back.
The coffee cups on Torreno’s table had been cleared away and replaced by cocktail glasses, even though this place resembled a diner more than any place where drinks might be sold. Torreno held a bottle of brandy in one hand and was replenishing the glasses of his two companions when he saw Coco enter.
Coco hesitated inside the door and was about to make for the counter, where a man in coveralls and a baseball cap sat eating soup. When he saw Torreno’s gesture, he shifted his gait and made his way down the shining linoleum aisle. Had there been signs in Spanish on the walls, this place could have come from his home city.
“This is my associate,
Señor
Morales,” Torreno said as Coco approached the table. Coco nodded to the two men. So far as he could remember, Torreno had never introduced him to anyone, certainly not as a gentleman. The two men, cautious types with hair trimmed high above their ears and steely eyes, showed little interest. They returned Coco’s nod with curt ones of their own.
“Sit down, Coco,” Torreno said expansively. He found a clean glass and poured another drink. Coco sat, casting a surreptitious glance at the bottle. How much of the liquor had his employer consumed?
“These gentlemen have been explaining to me some very interesting statistics, Coco.” Torreno lifted his glass, waiting for Coco to raise his. Coco sipped. It tasted like fire, but went down smoothly.
“Nearly half of all the sugar in America is produced within fifty miles of where we are sitting. Did you know that?”
Coco shook his head.
“And of that amount, the American Sugar Corporation, which we now count among our holdings, controls more than twice as much as any other grower, am I correct?”
“Two point three,” one of the men said. He nodded with Torreno, but he did not seem enthused.
“Which makes me among the largest growers in this country.” Torreno smiled at Coco.
“You better pray the price supports hold up,” the second man said. His face was flushed, as if he’d had plenty of the brandy himself.
“That’s hardly his concern, Claude,” the first man said. He picked up a sheaf of papers from the table, handed them to his partner. “Tuck these away.”
“We’ll review the sale, but I’m sure there will be no problems.” He turned back to Torreno as Claude worked a combination on his briefcase. “Congratulations, Mr. Torreno,” the man said. “You’re not only the largest sugar grower in Florida, you’re also the only one who will never have to worry about bringing in a crop.”
“If he lives that long,” Claude said.
Torreno saw Coco tense, laid a hand on his knotted forearm. “It’s all right,” Torreno said. “He means, if we live to see our enemies fall.
“And as for living long enough,” he said, turning to Claude, “I can assure you that our time is near.”
The man eyed him. “Nothing’s for certain. Not where sugar’s concerned.”
Torreno’s smile broadened. “Then we must work hard to
make
it certain. Yes, gentlemen?” He raised his glass again and downed it. Coco watched as the two took polite sips and rose to leave.
He gazed through the window as the two men strode across the street in the fading light, got into a dark sedan, and drove away. He took a sip of his drink and turned to his employer, who sprawled expansively against the red cushions of the booth, his smile positively radiant now.
“Those two,” Coco said. “They are other growers? Men who are unhappy to have you as a competitor?”
Torreno glanced up at him as if he were awaking from a dream. “Growers?” His smile broadened. “No, Coco. Those men are from the government.”
Coco felt his eyebrows go up in surprise. He glanced around the ill-lit restaurant. The farmer in the ball cap seemed oblivious to them, had tilted his bowl to his lips to drink the last of his soup. The waitress reached to slide a tray of glasses onto a high shelf, exposing the substantial flesh of her thighs.
This
was where a government sent its emissaries?
“The United States government…” Torreno continued, shaking his head as if even he found it difficult to believe, “because of Castro, they allow very little sugar to come into this country.” He gave Coco a satisfied smile. “It makes the growing of sugar,
big
sugar, a most profitable business.”
Coco shook his head, puzzled. “You spend a lifetime to topple Castro, and you say the time is almost upon us when that will happen,” he said. “Then you buy the sugar, which is profitable only because of this same man. I do not understand. What will happen to your sugar if Castro falls?”
Torreno shook his finger reprovingly. “
When
Castro falls, Coco.” He poured another drink and toasted the departing sedan. “Those men will carry proof of our acquisition back to Washington now.” He smiled almost dreamily. “And when Castro falls,
those
fools will make me the richest man on earth.”
“The water meter, Emilio!” Deal was on the sidewalk, shouting over the roar of the backhoe.
Emilio was in the seat of the big machine, grinding gears, revving up for another pass at the ruined north wing of Deal’s fourplex. He finally glanced up, saw Deal jabbing at the ground by the pile of charred beams he’d just deposited, dropped the backhoe into neutral. The roar subsided by half and Emilio leaned forward, cupping his ear.
“You covered up the water meter!” Deal shouted. “You have to move this shit.”
Emilio widened his eyes, acknowledging his mistake. “I forgot about that thing,” he said. The meter lay under a concrete door that sat flush with the ground between the sidewalk and the curb. It was easy enough to overlook, especially when the grass hadn’t been cut for a while. Now it was piled over with wreckage. Deal turned away from the sight of one of Isabel’s teddy bears amid the tangle. It was headless, its body charred, a splinter of two-by-four spearing its one good arm.
“Yeah, well, this stuff’s got to be cleared. And try not to tear anything up while you’re at it,” Deal said, moving on toward the building.
He ignored Emilio’s hurt expression. He’d had Emilio out on a number of DealCo jobs in the old days, carrying on as Deal’s father and Emilio’s father had before them. In fact, Emilio had been the cabinetmaker when Deal put the fourplex up, but that was before the hurricane. A week after Andrew hit, Emilio’s cousin had showed up, down from Tampa in a battered Chevy pickup, a backhoe he used to dig septic tanks lashed to a flatbed trailer behind it.
Before long, Emilio’s Fine Cabinetworking had died, replaced by Emilio and Rodriguez, Backhoe Service. The two had nailed signs on light poles all around Dade County and at last count had worked two hundred days straight, digging stumps and clearing debris, $65 an hour plus travel time. The battered Chevy had, along with a step-van Emilio had inherited from his father, become a pair of Eddie Bauer Explorers, and the backhoe had a twin now too. Deal assumed Rodriguez was across town, still stacking hurricane deadfall, or maybe digging a pool for someone with leftover insurance money.
Deal supposed he should feel fortunate getting Emilio over right away, but he didn’t. He didn’t feel much of anything. He had decided to put the fourplex right again, but he was hardly enthused at the prospect. Once he had it in shape, it was going up for sale. He never wanted to see the place again.
He’d put in a call to Terrence Terrell and they’d agreed to let Deal take some time off the rebuild of Terrell’s house in the Grove, bring in a third party to get the place dried in. By the time the roof was watertight and the doors and windows were on, Deal would have the fourplex back together and would come back on board for the finish of Terrell’s place. That was the plan, anyway.
In the meantime, Deal would have the old gardener’s cottage on the back of Terrell’s property to stay in. It was a Coconut Grove artifact, one big room with a foldout bed, a shower bath, and a nook for a kitchen, and Deal was grateful for Terrell’s insistence that he stay there. Decent housing was still tough to come by in Dade County, even more than a year after the storm. The place wasn’t really big enough for him and Isabel together, but Mrs. Suarez was going to help out in that regard for the time being.
One thing at a time, Deal reminded himself. Focus on one problem at a time. Were he to dare to let it all crowd into his mind at once, he worried he would crash under the weight. For the next few hours, he was going to work at clearing a damaged fourplex. Then he’d come up for air and go on to the next thing.
He put away his troublesome thoughts then, and stood surveying the building in front of him. He’d built the place in a shallow V shape, two wings with two units in each, separated by a shaded breezeway, upstairs and down. That design, along with a southerly breeze the night of the fire, had spared the half of the building where Tommy and Vernon Driscoll were still able to live. The stuccoed exterior of the south wing was dusky with smoke, the gray paint baked darker on one end than the other, but it was still livable. No one there now, though. Tommy at work at Doc’s, Driscoll off somewhere, driven away by the grinding of the backhoe, Deal supposed.
Emilio had pretty much cleared away the fallen material from the north wing. One back wall on the second floor would have to come down, though, along with what was left of the roof and joists. They’d need to gut all the interior walls, top and bottom, for what the fire hadn’t reached had been ruined by the smoke and water. It would cost a hundred thousand, easily, and that was with him doing a good chunk of the labor and contracting out the rest.
He shook his head. Another insurance claim to file. First the hurricane, slight though the damage had been, now this. So much for his homeowner’s policy. Next anniversary date, he’d be out there shopping along with the thousands of others whose carriers had gone belly-up, or quit issuing policies in Florida, or simply walked away from their old clients. Sure, he could understand that, Deal thought. What good was selling insurance if you actually had to pay claims?
He put his hand on the front doorknob, its brass finish cooked to the color of oil scum on backwater, and pushed. The door gave inward at his touch. Didn’t swing.
Caved
inward. Fell. A crash, a puff of ash as it glanced off a wall and landed facedown in the hallway like a joke in a slapstick movie.
Deal stared dumbly down at his hand, then at the door, its back side charred black from top to bottom, the hinges flapping where they’d torn loose from the ruined jamb. He glanced down the hallway. Wallboard bulging as if there were tumors growing in the framing behind, the ceiling sagging, tatters of yellow insulation dangling down. The smell rushed down the hallway to greet him: wet carpet already gone rancid, old smoke, sweet rot of food growing its haloes of mold among the ruins.
He’d been in a hundred houses like this since the storm, seen all this and worse, but it had never struck him as now. Walking into someone else’s ruin, homeowner griping over his shoulder about his penny-pinching insurance adjustor, the rock-bottom estimate he needed, Deal had seen each and every house as a project, as a job, as a prospect for renewal.
Two feet of scum carried in on a storm surge, changed your sunken living room into a mangrove swamp? No problem. Your roof’s sailed into the Everglades, all the walls along with it? Got it covered. Have to jack your whole foundation up six feet in the air, above the floodplain, before the city’ll let you rebuild? Can do. Sailboat in your family room, brick chimney up its ass? Piece of cake.
And he had reveled in the transformation of those wrecks back into homes, always felt a pang at the expressions of the families who’d come back, wide-eyed and weeping themselves to see what Deal had done. Watch a kid run inside his house, find his room put back together, hear him yelling up and down the halls, that made him feel good. Better than good. Like a minor god, or Superman, at least. Superman Deal.
A far cry from what Deal’s father had done with the company, of course. DealCo had been a giant. Syndicate hotels on Miami Beach. Funny-money condo palaces on Brickell. A massive bank tower downtown that no one seemed to have paid for. His old man, legendary high-roller, a smile, a buck, a clap on the back for everybody. He’d taught Deal everything there was to know about building, but by the time he died, dead drunk at the time, he wouldn’t have known which end of a hammer worked, and he died without a cent, the company books a joke.
It had been a long climb back for Deal, first the fourplex, then a warehouse here and there, a strip mall, a small office building…and then, suddenly, the hurricane and he had become a
re
builder. A fixer. And, in truth, the feeling it gave him was what made all the hassles worth it. Scrounging for materials all the way from Hialeah to West Palm Beach. Keeping his crews on the hustle and out of the clutches of rival contractors desperate for help, fighting to keep the subcontracting crews honest. Putting up with the endless delays from inspectors who had a million places to check and an endless succession of code changes to apply. Recalls to replace a cracked tile here, a loose doorknob there. Listening to outraged homeowners sure they were being screwed, by their adjustors, by the inspectors, by Deal himself.
Seven a.m., outside a tract house down on Old Cutler, a guy in his sixties, Bermuda shorts,
I SURVIVED ANDREW
T-shirt, cordovan shoes, white socks pulled high up his shins. Squinting behind thick glasses and waving a copy of his contract as Deal gets out of his pickup.
“You quoted my roof at ten thousand dollars.”
“Yes sir.”
“The roofer told me it was going to cost twelve thousand dollars.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Well, I’m not paying a penny more than what it says right here.”
“No sir, you don’t have to.”
Guy looking at him funny, like he’s got the wrong man, the air starting to leak out of his sails.
“You’re darned right I don’t have to.”
“We’ve got you a good roofer, that’s the important thing.”
Relief, suspicion, confusion rolling over the guy’s face, one after the other.
Leaving Deal to fight it out with the roofer, or with the insurance company where it was possible, or to simply take it in the shorts and absorb the loss. Some jobs went smoothly, some didn’t. It tended to even out.
The guy on Old Cutler had turned up at Deal’s office, in fact, a month after the job was wrapped, a check for $2,000 in his hand.
“I made the bastards pay,” he said, thrusting the check at Deal.
“What bastards?” Deal asked.
“My neighbors. It was their palm tree busted up my roof in the first place.”
Hundreds of estimates. Dozens of homes repaired, some small jobs, some total redos. And he’d been can-do, even-keeled, unruffled, all the way through. No job too big for Superman. No Kryptonite around here.
Now he stared down the ruined hallway of his own gutted house and felt his resolve vanish. He felt shaky, disoriented, as though he was going to throw up. He saw Janice—stubborn, fearless Janice—dragging herself down the smoke-filled passage, as iron-willed as Deal himself, intent upon finding Isabel, her hand reaching up for the door, the wrong door, and all those flames blasting out upon her…
…and he had to lean against the spongy, crumbling wall at his side to keep from going down. This was how helpless felt, he thought, and just as suddenly felt a rush of anger at himself for being so smug, walking into all those ruined homes, those battered lives, full of pep and vim, don’t worry, folks, we’ll have these boulders out of your bedroom before you know it.…
Christ, that wasn’t all those people wanted. They wanted somebody to sympathize before the heavy equipment came in, they wanted someone to
mourn
a little.…
“You look a little peaked, son.”
Deal was startled by the voice. He turned to find Driscoll picking his way through the rubble toward him, a sack of what looked like donuts in his hand.
“It’s a mess, didn’t it?” He shook his head in commiseration. “I was over here yesterday, poking around.” He glanced back down the hallway at the fallen door. “I set the door up to discourage somebody just walking in, you know. Looks like it fell down again.”
Deal nodded. He didn’t see the point of getting into it. “It’s a mess, Vernon.” He felt infinitely weary.
“Well,” Driscoll said, “if anybody can fix it up, you can.”
Deal stared at him. Another conversation he was going to pass up.
Driscoll gave him a look. “So what’s going on out there with the water?”
Deal shook his head, puzzled. “The water?”
“That kid out there on the backhoe. Looks like he busted the water main or something.” Driscoll was pawing around in the donut bag. “You like chocolate?”
“Jesus Christ,” Deal said, pushing past him. He could see it now, a spray of water glittering in the morning sunlight, a million diamonds tumbling down onto the place where once a lawn had been. “Jesus H. Christ!”
***
They were sitting on the tiny patio off Driscoll’s apartment now, watching the guy from Metro Dade finish up the patch on the water line Emilio had ripped up.
It was nearing five and Emilio was long gone, off to pull some construction permits down at City-County. The backhoe sat quietly near the pile of soggy debris, its clamshell poised half-open. It looked like a mechanical dinosaur, about to plunge in for a bite.
“You want that?” Driscoll said, pointing at a sugared donut he’d set out for Deal earlier.
Deal had another sip of the brackish coffee Driscoll had brought and shook his head. The coffee tasted like paper pulp. He imagined the donut would taste the same. Driscoll picked it up, polished it off in a couple of bites.
The guy from Water and Sewer was walking toward them. “You got water
now
,” the guy said. He handed Deal a form on a clipboard to sign.
“Thanks.” Deal nodded. He stood up, inspected the form. “Do I get a bill for this?”
“Naw,” the guy said. “We’ll call it hurricane-related, write it off.”
Deal gave him a look. “After all this time?”
The guy shrugged, jerked his head toward the silent backhoe. “Emilio,” he said, “his cousin married my sister-in-law’s niece.”
Deal nodded, handing the clipboard back. The guy tore off the top copy, handed it to Deal. “This is a receipt for the new meter. If somebody steals it, you’ll lose your original deposit.”
Deal thought about it, somebody hard up for a water meter, ripping his off in the middle of the night. Pipe wrench, geyser of water…sure, anything was possible.
The Water and Sewer guy was on his way back to the truck now. “Emilio was one good cabinetmaker,” the guy said over his shoulder.
“Yeah,” Deal said, nodding. “That he was.” His voice was nearly lost in the roar of the guy’s departing pickup.
When he turned, Driscoll was shaking his head. “That’s why our taxes are so high,” he said. “All this high-level fraud.”
“Maybe you ought to run for public office,” Deal said. His mind was occupied, trying to figure the odds of all these things happening to him alone.
