Raw Deal (11 page)
“It’s a thought,” Driscoll said. “Or maybe I could get one of those TV shows like that Al Whatsisname. You know, he finds out the restaurants where they serve crab salad only it’s really processed sea legs or something?”
“
Shame on You
,” Deal said absently.
“That’s it,” Driscoll said. “This Al found out laundries’ll charge you a buck for a guy’s shirt, but two seventy-five for a girl’s, just because the buttons are on the wrong side.” Driscoll made a gesture with his mouth. “Guy with my experience, I ought to be able to come up with better stuff than that.”
“Big-time contractor rips off meter reader,” Deal said. “Is that what you mean?”
“You’re big-time now?” Driscoll arched an eyebrow. He was turning something over in his thick fingers, shaking his head. “Naw, I was thinking bigger than that even. What do you figure a guy like Al Shame on You makes?”
Deal shook his head. His stomach had settled again, or at least was back into its familiar knot, same as it had been since he’d awakened in the hospital a week ago. He tried to remember what hunger felt like, or that big, full feeling after a wonderful meal, couple of drinks, a bite or two of some artery-clogging dessert. Dreams from another world. What he had now was a stomach that had pulled itself into the size of a walnut. It would accept some bad coffee, or a couple of drinks, but not much more.
“I’ve got work to do,” he said, turning to Driscoll. He felt very, very tired.
“Sure,” Driscoll said. He was studying the thing in his hands again, seeming to debate something. He glanced up as Deal was about to leave. “I had a look at the fire marshal’s report.”
Deal stopped. He hesitated before he spoke. “Tell me, Driscoll.”
“It was the same thing I told you in the hospital. Electrical short.”
Deal nodded. Electrical short, he thought. One of those catchall phrases you hear after a disaster. Like pilot error, wind shear, act of God. They sound authoritative, but explain nothing. What could explain Janice lying in that hospital bed, every movement bringing her a wave of pain, cutting right through the Demerol, the morphine, everything they gave her?
Why not call it God’s error? God tosses some shit down, maybe it’s intended for a guy on the next block, but it happens to land on you, on your wife. Sure, that makes sense. The only problem was, Deal had miscalculated. He’d been thinking they’d taken all the shit there was to take, for a good long while, at least.
“It was the air conditioner, they think,” Driscoll continued.
Deal stared at him. “The air conditioner?”
“The circuit-breaker box, it shorted out.”
Deal nodded, was about to walk away. Then he felt his legs go weak. He pulled a chair out from the table, sat down again. Forget pilot error, wind shear, act of God. The nausea had returned full-bore now. His head was reeling. No mouse in the attic, chewing insulation. No power surge, no random spark. This
could
be explained, after all. He fell back in his chair, held on to the edge of Driscoll’s patio table with both hands.
Driscoll gave him a puzzled look. “You okay?”
Deal nodded. He was not okay. Way beyond not okay. But how could Driscoll know that? The ex-cop was going on, something about the report and him poking around the apartment…Deal’s head was throbbing too powerfully for him to concentrate.
“…so
you
take a look,” Driscoll was saying. He tossed the object he’d been worrying in his thick fingers across the table. The thing spun around, fell silent on the white resin top.
It was made of tin, a charred tin cap off something, a can, or a large bottle, maybe. Deal picked it up. “Yeah, so?” He was more attuned to the way his body was shifting beneath him, rearranging itself into various alien configurations, one after the other. At this instant he was feeling weightless, hollow, in fact. A mirage. A hologram with a voice.
“Look inside the top.”
Deal looked at the ex-cop. Sure. Why not. Listen to the nice man. Do anything but think about what has just made itself plain to you, Deal.
He turned the charred cap over. There was a crusted ring inside the rim, where the threads met the top. Most of the crust was undifferentiated ash, but here and there were flecks of what looked like cork. He wanted to
be
undifferentiated ash.
“You smell anything?”
Smell the cap? Sure. Deal brought it to his nose. The scent of smoke, wet ash, the same as everything else in the vicinity of the ruined apartments. He shook his head.
“Me neither,” Driscoll said, still intent on wherever he was taking the conversation. “I can take it to the lab boys, but it’s been lying out in the rain and all, all this time.”
Deal stared at him. It was time to end this conversation. Get away from Driscoll before he came completely apart. Go someplace to wallow in some heavy-duty self-loathing. “What’s this about, Driscoll?”
“It looks like the top off a gasoline can to me,” Driscoll said. “That seem like a good guess to you?”
Deal had placed the charred cap on the table between them. He stared at it, the thing seeming to register in his mind for the first time. “You found it in the apartment?”
“Outside the apartment,” Driscoll corrected him. “Between the air-conditioning compressor and the wall where the circuit breaker was,” he nodded, “where they think the fire started.”
Deal stared at him for a moment. “It was an electrical short, Vernon. You just said that.”
“Nobody’s saying otherwise, not right now,” Driscoll said. “Of course, it seemed like it spread so quick, nobody heard the smoke alarms, all that’s been bothering me…” He broke off, noticing the expression on Deal’s face. “You sure you’re okay? You want some water…”
“Goddammit, Driscoll, what is it with you? You can’t get a case on your own, you want a job with the fire marshal? Leave it alone.”
Driscoll stared at him, then down at the charred piece of metal between them. “Does this conversation upset you?”
Deal looked up at him. “Does it upset me? You playing detective, suggesting somebody’s torched my apartment? On the basis of what?” He flipped the charred cap away, into Driscoll’s lap. “That thing could have been out there since the time this was a vacant lot.”
“Of course it could have, but wouldn’t it be all rusty?”
Deal stared at him. “Who the hell would want to burn down my apartment building, try to kill me and my family? Have another drink, Driscoll.”
Driscoll raised his hands in surrender. “I think you’re acting a little strange about this.…”
Deal felt it all break loose, finally. He leaned across the table suddenly, grabbed Driscoll by the front of his shirt.
“There’s no mystery here, Vernon.
I
fucked up.
ME
!” He stared hard at Driscoll. “I installed that AC unit. I did it because the guy brought the wrong breaker panel and had to knock off at five on Friday and I was in a hurry to move in, okay?” Driscoll stared at him, astonished.
“I went over to Home Depot to pick up the breaker switches and put them in myself. I figured I’d get the electrician back out, go over my job.” He threw up his hands.
“Only the first thing Monday came and I had some other things to do, and every time I thought about it after that, I had a few
more
things to do, and a few more after that, and finally I forgot about the goddamned things altogether, because if it isn’t the fuck broke then why in the fuck worry about fixing it, and that was over a year ago, okay!”
Deal was nearly screaming by the time he finished. He looked at his hand, noticed he’d crumpled Driscoll’s sport shirt into a wad, and let go, falling back into his seat. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice a whisper.
Driscoll smoothed his shirt front, ignoring the apology. “That’s quite a guilt thing you got going,” he said.
Deal glanced up at him. “Don’t fucking joke with me, Vernon. Not about this.”
“I’m not joking,” Driscoll said. “You don’t want to listen to me, then don’t.”
Deal lifted his gaze. “Do you have the slightest proof that this was arson?”
“Forget it,” Driscoll said. “I don’t want to spoil your day. Why don’t you go roll around in broken glass?”
Driscoll stood up, stomped through the open doorway into his apartment. Deal sat there for a moment watching the vertical blinds clack together in the wake of the big man’s passing. He heard the sounds of the refrigerator opening and closing, the pop of a can tab.
Driscoll reappeared in the doorway, a beer in his hand. He glanced at Deal as if he’d just appeared on the patio. “You still here?” Driscoll said. “I thought you’d be off whipping yourself by now.”
“Vernon…” Deal began.
“’Course if you want to get into a pissing contest about who’s the most pitiful around here, I guess I got a few marks in my favor.”
“I didn’t mean anything…”
Driscoll waved him off. “You meant exactly what you said. I’m an old boozehound, scared to death without his job to go to. Well, old buddy, I’m sorry I bothered you with my thoughts.”
He raised the can to finish it, but Deal rose up, swinging. He slapped the beer out of Driscoll’s hand and the two of them stood frozen for a moment, watching the thing soar out over the yard, spewing foam like a tiny rocket gone awry.
As Driscoll turned, Deal held his hands up. “I’m sorry, goddammit. I didn’t mean that stuff about you.”
The beer was on the grass now, oozing a few last suds. Driscoll glanced at it, then at Deal, a mournful expression on his face. “That was my last goddamn beer,” he said.
“I’ll buy you a beer,” Deal said.
“You damn bet you will,” Driscoll said.
“I’m sorry about the beer, too,” Deal said.
Driscoll eyed him. “That’s okay,” he said. “You were upset. I seen it happen before. I didn’t handle it very well. I was thinking about this notion of mine and I got a little excited. Maybe you’re right, maybe it was the AC. Maybe it was even something you did. But hell, it’s worth looking into, isn’t it?”
Deal nodded. He could feel his heart racing, but it seemed a distant sensation. Settle into self-pity, it’s hard to find comfort in anything else. “Your notion,” he said to Driscoll finally. “What about it?”
Driscoll made the shrugging expression with his bloodhound’s face. “We got to go to college first. I’ll tell you a few things on the way.”
“I won’t promise anything,” Driscoll was saying from behind the wheel of his Ford, “but if the boys heard about this down at Metro, then it’s worth a try. It’s the kind of thing that draws these people out.”
“You’re the cop, Vernon,” Deal said.
They were headed out Coral Way, bound for the state university. A former colleague of Driscoll’s had tipped him to the program on for this evening, a contingent of “Student Youth for Cuba,” talking about the good life under Communism.
“It ought to be good for a Molotov cocktail or two,” Driscoll called over from the driver’s seat. “You never know when you’ll get lucky. At the very least, you’ll see what gets these assholes all worked up.”
Deal nodded, staring aimlessly out the window. What was the alternative? Sit in his gardener’s cottage and brood like Heathcliff?
He sighed. A lot of traffic lights out this way now, it seemed. And a lot of traffic. Much more development than Deal remembered.
This had been a neighborhood once. Six homes to the acre, two bedrooms, one bath, and a carport in each, good value for twelve thousand dollars. His father had built a block of the houses somewhere just north of where they were.
He gazed out at all the little bungalows that had once been people’s homes, now turned into doctors’ offices, insurance agencies, even a palm reader over there with a brick driveway and a picket fence. Maybe they should pull in, see what Madame Rosalinda had to say about the future.
“You want the air on?” Deal glanced up at the sound of Driscoll’s voice. They were stopped at a light and Driscoll was motioning at the passenger’s window. “It’s a nice evening. You ought to roll your window down.”
Deal nodded. He knew how to get along. He cranked the window handle as they pulled away from the light. It
was
a nice evening. The humidity had backed off, and it seemed the temperature had as well. A balmy late-summer evening, more like California weather than Florida’s. A couple more weeks, they could start thinking about days in the eighties, nights in the sixties. They would have fall in the tropics.
In another lifetime, he and Janice would be getting the bicycles out of the garage, getting ready for little forays into the Grove. They’d been talking about the seventeen-mile swing into Shark Valley, out in the Glades, wondering if Isabel was old enough for it this year. Once the temperature dropped enough to put the mosquitoes down for the season, you could truck out to the northernmost visitor’s center, park, unlimber your bikes, and pedal down these asphalt lanes through the sawgrass, past the foraging herons, the raccoons, the turtle families, dodge old alligators asleep on the paths…but he broke off, reminding himself that it wouldn’t be happening, not anytime soon.
Driscoll had been talking while Deal drifted. His pal, Driscoll. Driscoll, who wanted him to believe the fire wasn’t his fault, wanted him to believe it so bad, he was going to find an arsonist to blame. Good old Driscoll. Maybe he could turn up the Easter Bunny while he was at it.
Now Driscoll was hammering on the horn at an old man stopped dead in the left lane of traffic. He was still talking as he glanced behind them and swung the car into the middle lane to pass. “…so when the salesman asks me if I want power windows, I told him, ‘Look, I been drivin’ nothing but what the county gives me for thirty years. What do I need with power windows?’” Driscoll laughed, glanced over to see if Deal was paying any attention. “The guy gets so frustrated trying to sell me power this and automatic that—I don’t want any of it—he finally takes me in to the fleet manager, who asks me what is it I really want. ‘Nothing,’ I told this other guy: ‘Four wheels, a motor, and an AC unit, paint it if you have to.’ So he cuts one of the units out of this year’s allocation for Metro Dade.” Driscoll pounded the dashboard happily. “Now I got a plain vanilla Ford sedan and everybody’s happy.”
Deal pointed at the spot in the dashboard where most cars would have had a radio. “Don’t you ever miss the ball games?”
“Hey, I asked for an AM radio, they told me nobody
makes
an AM radio anymore. You know what it costs for the cheapest thing they got?”
“I don’t care,” Deal said.
“Yeah.” Driscoll nodded, but he was wounded. “Anyway, I’m going over to Pep Boys. I’ll have them put in some kind of radio, come out way ahead.”
“Sounds good to me, Vernon,” Deal said. It was true. Everyone ought to come out ahead, if they could.
***
It was nearly dark by the time Driscoll found the entrance to the campus and located the parking lot for visitors. The University of Florida at Miami sat on a big chunk of land way west of the city that had once been a county airport. The old control tower was still there, looming over the weedy asphalt lot that had probably once been a runway.
CAMPUS POLICE
, read a sign on the side of the tower.
“When the Pope came to Miami, he did his thing right over there,” Driscoll said. They were walking toward a cluster of tall concrete buildings in the distance. Driscoll pointed off toward another section of abandoned runway. “They had me on security for that little number. The hot rumor was that the
comunistas
were going to pull something during the Mass.”
“Was there anything to it?”
Driscoll shook his head. “Not unless they were the ones who cooked up the thunderstorm.” Driscoll laughed. “The Pope got up there on the platform, saw a wall of lightning rolling in, that was the end of it. He said a couple of Hail Marys, two hundred thousand people went home. I guess he figured his connections weren’t
that
strong.”
Deal glanced around the open field. The sky was crystal blue, holding a thin slice of moon, one star in its cusp, a narrow band of orange in the west. Crickets and tree frogs had set up a racket, but he could hear the background roar of traffic on the Turnpike extension. The wide road was out there, a few hundred yards beyond the trees marking the ragged edge of the horizon.
A few miles beyond that lay the Everglades. Hundreds of square miles of sawgrass and water, the Gulf on the west, the Atlantic on the south, Lake Okeechobee and the cane fields on the north. Nothing in between but grass and water and the things that liked it just that way. He felt a powerful urge to be out there, to be part of it, barely sentient, a creature with his snout just out of the water, his belly sunk in the warm muck below.
“You sure you know where we’re going?” he said to Driscoll.
Driscoll took his arm, guiding him onto a sidewalk that took shape amid the weeds. “Just stick with me, pardner.”
***
“…so what we say, it is not in Cuba the way what you hear, and we say thank you again for this visit to tell you the conditions the way they really are in our country,”
Or words to that effect, Deal thought. He’d been drifting again.
The young man who’d been speaking pressed a button on the slide-machine controller he held and the image of a smiling cadre of field workers vanished, replaced by a blinding square of light.
It was stuffy in the crowded auditorium and Deal had been nodding off during a mind-numbing recitation of facts and figures about the delights of life in Castro’s paradise. No hint of any trouble, except death by boredom. He held up a hand, shielding his eyes from the glare of the blank screen, then blinked fully awake as the fluorescent lights flickered back to life.
There was a polite round of applause from the audience, a mixed bag of tweedy professor types and yuppified students, as the three representatives of the Cuban Youth Brigade stood and bowed. Two young men, one woman, all with steel-rimmed glasses and bad haircuts. They seemed a joyless-looking trio to Deal, hardly the crew he’d hire to travel about U.S. college campuses to boost a country’s image.
“So what’d you think?” Driscoll said, turning in the seat next to Deal.
“Really, truly fascinating, Vernon. They live on an island, they can’t buy fish to eat, but everybody’s happy anyway,” Deal said as Driscoll nodded agreement. “Can we go home now?”
Driscoll held up his hand. “Hold your horses.”
Deal scanned the audience again. The professors were gathering their briefcases, heading for the aisles, the students were yawning, chatting, the girls comparing clothing styles, the boys comparing notes on the girls. Down in front of the stage, there were a half-dozen scruffier types wearing armbands that read
USHER
directing traffic in a desultory way. If this was college politics, things seemed to have lost their edge since Deal had been in school.
Deal sat back, impatient, as the three Cubans started down off the stage. The ushers joined ranks and blocked off the aisle there. Someone had opened an exit door and Deal felt a cooling draft from outside.
One of the professor types was hurrying the Cubans outside, with the ushers closing ranks behind them. Deal had just turned to ask Driscoll what he was expecting anyhow, but the big man was already shoving himself out of his seat.
“I knew it,” Driscoll said. He was on his feet, trying to wedge past a trio of bookbag-lugging coeds. He called over his shoulder to Deal, “That’s him, the little prick in the back.”
Deal followed his gesture to the rear of the auditorium. There was a tiny Hispanic man near a set of doors, dressed incongruously for this crowd in lime-green slacks, a yellow guayabera, and a porkpie hat. He was carrying a canvas duffel bag and was rooting around inside it, until he looked up and saw Driscoll, lurching out into the aisle, trying to kick his foot free of a huge knapsack.
The little man dropped his duffel bag, had bolted for an exit before the thing hit the ground. As Deal stood, the rear doors of the auditorium flew inward with a crash, and a mob of chanting students streamed inside, blocking Driscoll’s pursuit of the little man.
“
Cuba sí! Castro no
!” the intruders were chanting as they streamed down the aisles. “
Cu
-ba
yes
!
Cas
-tro
no
!” All of them Cuban, apparently. Mostly males, in their twenties, some women. Razor cuts and perms. Shirts by Polo, crisp chinos, lizard boots and alligator shoes. No shortage of jewelry or manicured nails. Deal remembered his own student days from the sixties, the ragtag crew that had taken over the student newspaper, camped out in the administration building. By contrast, this looked like a noisy contingent of business majors.
Shouts and screams erupted at the exit door where the Cuban brigade was on its way out. Deal turned to see the Cubans and their escorts dodging missiles flying through the open doorway. Rocks, Deal thought. Big white rocks. Then realized what they really were. One egg splattered against the Cuban guy who’d been speaking, another broke over the face of an usher.
The little man had long since disappeared and Driscoll was being carried with the tide of protesters toward the disturbance at the exit doors. Deal saw him elbow one of the protesters aside, trying to get to the unoccupied stage. He jostled past a short Latina carrying a sign with a
NO CASTRO
emblem on it. She yelled something in Spanish, then raised her sign and rammed the wooden standard into the back of Driscoll’s head.
Driscoll lost his balance, went down sprawling into a group of screaming coeds. One of the ushers, egg yolk still dripping from his chin, turned to see what had happened. A guy in a pinstriped shirt stepped forward, bringing his fist up from deep right field.
It was the perfect sucker punch, catching the usher, a black man with close-cropped hair, flush on the cheek. The usher’s glasses flew straight up. He went over backward, his arms windmilling into the group still dodging eggs at the door.
The place was pandemonium now. Everyone screaming, throwing punches. A professor, Coke-bottle glasses askew, had made it up onto the stage. He clutched the lectern, pounding the mike, shouting, “Order! Order!” until somebody jerked the power cord and the mike flew out of his hands.
Deal vaulted the aisle in front of him, clearing an elderly couple quaking in their seats. He landed across an empty row, felt a chair arm gouge his ribs, take his wind away. He came up gasping for air, staggered toward the place where Driscoll had gone down. A kid with slicked-back hair was dancing into the midst of the screaming coeds, shooting some kind of karate kick at someone, darting back, then lunging forward again.
Deal had a glimpse of Driscoll—a smear of blood across his mournful face—trying to lift himself off the carpet. His big head snapped back as the kid danced forward, skittered back. Deal lurched out into the aisle and drove his shoulder into the karate dancer’s chest. The blow took the kid by surprise, sent both of them crashing into the opposite bank of seats.
Deal felt a fresh jolt of pain in his side as they went down. He flailed for the kid, had him for a moment, then lost his grip. He felt a sharp blow on his face, then another. The same karate kicks nailing him now. He felt another bloom of pain as his nose flattened under the kid’s heel.
He rolled backward, lashed out with his own feet, caught the kid in a leg whip that would have cost him fifteen yards in his playing days. The kid went down, losing his breath as he slammed against the floor. That was the thing about institutional carpeting, Deal thought. Thin stuff, thin padding underneath. Not much between you and the concrete slab.
He caught the kid by the foot as he tried to scramble away, twisted till he heard something pop. The kid screamed and twisted, and Deal found himself holding an empty shoe. There was another kick, a stockinged foot bouncing off his forehead now.
“You little asshole,” Deal said, and grabbed the kid by his pants leg. He got a good grip, twisting the fabric in his fist, dragged the kid close, and sank his teeth into a set of stockinged toes. His head was throbbing. He wanted to lock into a toe joint, grind down until he felt digits separate, maybe work on up: ankle, knee, an arm or two—
weaselly little bastard
—but eased off despite himself, was going to be content to climb up onto the kid’s chest and slap him silly…
…when a bright star exploded in his head and he felt himself tumbling backward, his arms, his legs, everything gone suddenly numb.
