Raw Deal (20 page)

Chapter 29

Driscoll took them through a maze of cross streets to a section of the Gables close to US 1. They cut down a narrow lane between two shuttered warehouses, pulled up before a row of shabby apartments done up in a false Tudor style. Some of the facing boards had warped, exposing crumbling plaster underneath, and most of the east-facing units featured aluminum foil in the windows to block out the morning sun. There was an old Chevrolet Vega parked in some knee-high grass just over the curb. A Gables address, all right, but a far cry from the likes of Ms. Marquez’s digs.

Driscoll checked something on his little notepad and nodded at Deal. “This is it,” he said, motioning Deal out.

Except for the hum of traffic drifting over from the highway, the area was quiet. Deal glanced at a sign hanging from one of the warehouse fences:
PATROLLED BY ATTACK DOGS
, it read, but there were no dogs in sight.

He looked at the apartment building again: six units, maybe more. But no cars at the curb, no TV or radio noise seeping out, no kids in the street or in the tiny, treeless yard at the side of the place. It didn’t seem as if anyone had lived there for years. And who would want to, he mused. A gauntlet of warehouses to run on your way home, invisible attack dogs in your front yard, what looked like a lumber-storage compound in the back.

“Doesn’t look too promising,” Deal said.

Driscoll nodded. He checked the address again. “We
could
be getting the runaround,” he said. “Let’s find Unit Two.”

They discovered an entryway in the middle of the building, a short gloomy hallway that gave on to an airless courtyard: There was a battered set of mailboxes recessed in the wall, all nameless, four paint-peeling doors downstairs, each odd-numbered, an iron staircase leading up. Ancient advertising circulars littered the corners of the courtyard.

Driscoll glanced at him. The air was stifling, the quiet intense. Deal thought he could hear the far-off sounds of locusts buzzing, but it hardly seemed likely in this barren neighborhood. “Nobody lives here, Vernon.” Deal glanced back down the dark hallway. He felt a sudden wave of claustrophobia, a yearning to make a dash toward the dim square of light that marked the street.

Driscoll shrugged. “We’ve come this far.” He turned and started up, his footsteps thudding on the metal treads.

Deal took one more look around the courtyard, feeling the hair rise on the back of his neck, then hurried after him. He found Driscoll at the top of the stairs, poised before a door that listed ajar. A brass “2” dangled sideways on the frame, hanging by a single tack. A doorknocker’s ghost was outlined in old paint on the door front.

Driscoll held up a cautioning hand as Deal joined him. The excop rapped on the door frame sharply with his knuckles, the sound jarring in the silence. There was no response.

Up there, the buzzing sound was louder. “You hear that?” Deal asked.

“What?”

“It sounds like locusts,” Deal said, trying to home in on the source. “Or maybe radio static.”

Driscoll shook his head. “My wife was always doing that,” he said.

Deal stared at him blankly. “Doing what?”

“Hearing things I couldn’t.” Driscoll shrugged and lumbered on.

Deal searched the catwalk that connected the four top units. The others seemed similarly neglected. The skeleton of a potted ficus leaned by the doorway opposite. Deal was sure now that the place had been evacuated after the hurricane. There’d probably been some major roof leakage and the tenants had taken the opportunity to find greener pastures. He and Driscoll were just wasting their time there.

And that noise. Whatever it was, the sound was giving Deal the creeps. He glanced over the railing, but the courtyard below was empty.

“Look here,” Driscoll said, behind him.

Deal turned. Driscoll had nudged the door to Unit Two open with his toe. The door swung back, giving them a view into a darkened apartment. The buzzing sound was distinctly louder.

Deal peered in over Driscoll’s shoulder, squinting. There was a clear zapping sound and a sudden flash of light.

Driscoll looked back at him, then reached inside, flipped a wall switch, but nothing happened. He flipped it again, and the same flash of light came again, accompanied by the angry snapping sound.

Driscoll reached into a pocket of his rumpled coat and withdrew a tiny flashlight that gave off a surprising amount of light. They stared down its beam at a hallway that was lined with books. Or had been.

The shelves were empty now, except for a volume tossed askew here and there. Most of the books had been swept to the floor where they lay in mounds, spines cracked, pages adrift.
The storm
, Deal found himself thinking. Just like the messes he’d seen in half a hundred homes ripped apart by the hurricane. But something was wrong there. There was no overwhelming smell of decay and mustiness, no stench of ruined carpet, spongy plasterboard, soggy furniture.

He bent down, picked up one of the books, ran his fingers across the dry pages. He heard the angry crackling noise again, glimpsed another pop of light.

“Lookit,” Driscoll said, directing his attention with the little pocket flash.

Deal followed the beam down the hallway. There was an old floor lamp there, its bulb sputtering on and off. He got a glimpse of the rest of a living room as if in strobe flashes: upended furniture, shattered lamps, a wild swirl of papers tossed everywhere.

Driscoll moved past him, picking his way down the hall over the mounds of books. “Stay back,” he whispered to Deal.

Deal waited a moment, then followed after the big man. They were in the tiny living room now, Driscoll’s light sweeping the wreckage. Deal got a glimpse of the windows. Heavy red curtains tied back, yellowed blinds pulled down to the sills. No hurricane had torn this room apart. The sound he’d been hearing was distinct now, an angry buzz that waxed and waned with the sputtering light that the floor lamp threw.

Driscoll led them to a doorway off one side of the room, threw his light into a small bedroom. The wreckage there was similar. Clothes tossed from a closet, dresser drawers dumped, the mattress shredded.

“This is one lousy housekeeper,” Driscoll said. He swung his light into a bathroom, where the medicine chest door dangled by one hinge, its shelves swept empty except for a blue box of Polident. Deal felt an unaccountable wave of sadness. Someone’s common, everyday life, torn open before his eyes.

They picked their way back across the littered floor, and for a moment Deal thought they were on their way out. Then Driscoll veered off past the sputtering floor lamp and through another doorway.

“Mother of God!” the ex-cop called. He was backpedaling as Deal hurried after him, his big head cracking into Deal’s chin. Deal staggered back, catching the door frame to steady himself.

“Holy mother of God!” Driscoll called again.

Deal stared over Driscoll’s shoulder, holding his throbbing chin. The crackling noise was intense now. He blinked away the tears Driscoll’s blow had put in his eyes…then stopped, stunned.

Driscoll’s flashlight beam was fixed on a man tied to a kitchen chair. His head was thrown back, his tongue lolling out, his mouth twisted open in a gesture of agony. Someone had slashed the power cord from the air-conditioning unit above the Formica table, stripped away the insulation, twisted a foot of bare copper wire about each of the man’s hands, then turned the electricity back on. Instead of flowing to the air conditioner, however, the power had surged into him. Thin skeins of smoke were still rising from his fingertips. His whole body seemed to tremble in time with the crackling and snapping sounds that filled the room.

“The box,” Deal said numbly. “The goddamned fusebox.”

Driscoll turned to him, uncomprehending. Deal snatched the flashlight from the big man’s hands, swept the beam over the kitchen walls. He found it between a plaster crucifix and a cheap reproduction of the Adoration, its little gray door still waving open.

He ran across the room, glanced at the exposed electrical panel. An ancient one, full of fuses that glinted back at him like blind eyes. He reached out, hooked his finger into the bright ring of one main, yanked it free, then tore out the other.

The angry buzzing stopped. The man in the chair seemed to relax, his head lolling forward on his chest. For the first time, Deal became aware of the terrible smells in the room: the cloying sweetness of feces, the choking odor of burned flesh. He felt his stomach heave.

“Fucking A,” Driscoll said, staring at the dead man.

Deal bit his lip, fighting the nausea, stumbled past Driscoll out of the tiny kitchen. He made his way down the narrow hallway, his feet plowing through drifts of books. It was like a bad dream. He was a kid again, fighting his way through snowdrifts, his feet leaden, while something terrible rushed up from the darkness at his back.

He made it to the railing outside the door of the apartment before he lost control and vomited into the courtyard below. He stayed bent over for a moment, rolling his forehead against the cool iron of the railing until Driscoll stepped out to join him. He straightened then, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “Is that the guy we came to see?”

Driscoll nodded, held up a battered wallet. “Alberto Valles. Forty-two dollars, an Amoco card, a Discover card. I don’t suppose that’s what they were after.” He turned back toward the apartment, let out a long breath. “The poor sonofabitch.”

Deal stared after him for a moment. “I’m sorry, Vernon,” he said.

Driscoll gave him a look. “What are
you
sorry about?”

“About not believing you,” he said, gesturing at the open door of the apartment.

Driscoll shrugged. “You could’ve been right. I wasn’t sure myself.” He pointed inside with his thumb. “Until now.”

Deal shook his head in disbelief. “He must have had
some
kind of proof.”

Driscoll nodded. He bent down, picked up a copy of the
Aeneid
that had tumbled out onto the catwalk, riffled through the pages. “At least they thought he did.” He tossed the book back into the clutter of the hallway. “Files, a copy of his brother’s book, who knows?”

“Does anybody have a copy of this book?”

Driscoll shook his head. “Everything went up in the blast,” he said. “That’s what Ms. Marquez says.” There was a pause. Their eyes met. “Where is she?” Deal said. “In deep shit.” Driscoll nodded. And then they were pounding down the stairs.

Chapter 30

“Slow down, Driscoll. You’re not a cop anymore,” Deal said. He had to raise his voice over the roar of the Ford’s engine. They were barreling down an I-95 exit ramp, then fishtailing eastbound onto 79th. An old black man, waiting to cross the street on a three-wheeled bike, stood staring as the Ford slid through the intersection. Deal’s gaze locked on to the old man’s for an instant. “Poor fools,” the man’s expression said, and there wasn’t a chance to disagree.

“Yeah, there are certain benefits you miss,” Driscoll said. He wrested the wheel to the left suddenly, roared past a half a block of stalled traffic, using the opposite lanes. He made it back onto their side, swerving away from an oncoming bread truck at the last moment.

“We’re going to get pulled over.” Deal was clutching the armrest, trying to keep himself upright. Driscoll slowed as they approached a red light, glanced to the left and right, then floored the accelerator.

Deal closed his eyes, steeling himself for impact—beer truck, eighteen-wheeler, speeding low-rider—but there was only a teeth-cracking jolt as they bottomed out in the crosswalk, on the far side of the intersection. He thought he heard a wail of sirens somewhere behind them but realized it was only the receding blare of horns.

There were a few more blurred blocks—a collage of liquor stores, shuttered businesses, a peep show, a long stretch peppered by the gaping faces of men holding themselves up on parking meters—then a power-slide turn off the boulevard down a side street for several dark blocks, and a screeching double-parked stop in front of a botanica, deep in the heart of Little Haiti.

Something was going on inside the store, Deal saw as he piled out after Driscoll. Shelving had been pushed back to clear a space for folding chairs, all of which were full: matronly black women in checked dresses, fanning themselves; skinny old men in white shirts and dress pants, their eyes rheumy and glittering; children in T-shirts and shorts, some standing on their seats, others milling about. What room was left for standing was jammed as well, with people clapping, sweating, chanting in a frenzy. They were all staring at an extremely tall man at the front of the room shaking what looked like a feather duster over his head.

As he hurried after the lumbering Driscoll, who passed the brightly lit windows without a glance, Deal saw that the feather duster was in fact a rooster in the tall man’s grasp. The tall man raised his other hand to the rooster’s neck, made a slashing motion. The head of the thing fell away and a spray of blood splattered down on the shoulders of the tall man’s white shirt. He began to swing the now headless bird back and forth, anointing the faithful at the front of the crowded room. Some kind of santería rite? Deal turned away, saw Driscoll disappearing into a stairwell up ahead.

By the time Deal reached the entryway, Driscoll was already at the top of the stairs, swinging an iron gate aside, hammering at a locked door there. Deal took the steps two at a time.

Driscoll pounded again, the blows echoing in the airless landing. The chanting from the
botanica
downstairs reached a sudden crescendo, and Deal wondered what they might be sacrificing now.

“Watch yourself,” Driscoll said, bracing himself against the wall behind him.

Deal stepped aside as Driscoll strode forward, pistoning his big foot into the door. No contest there. The cheap frame splintered and the door flew inward, banging off the foyer wall. The sound was lost in the din of the faithful from below.

“Jesus, Vernon,” Deal said, but Driscoll waved him quiet.

He had a gun in his hand now, was holding it by his ear as he went through the shattered doorway. He brought the pistol into firing position, as if he was ready to blaze away, then relaxed.

“Well, kiss my ass,” Driscoll said, his face a mask of disgust.

Deal hesitated, then poked his head inside. The unshaded bulb on the landing threw a bright slice of light across the barren floor of the living room. No rug, no lamps, no furniture of any kind. Dust clumps drifted in the corners. You could see all the way into the alcove of a tiny kitchenette where a broken stool leaned in a corner.

Driscoll moved across the room, down a hallway. He had his flashlight out now. Deal followed cautiously after him. Driscoll checked an open door on his right, shook his head, moved on to a closed door on the left. He gave Deal a cautioning glance, then turned and eased the door open. He glanced quickly inside, drew back, battered the door all the way open with his foot.

The chanting from downstairs had stopped, leaving an eerie silence in the hallway. Driscoll holstered his pistol inside his coat and stepped into the bedroom doorway. Deal peered in after him, following the beam of the flashlight as it played over the deserted room. A streetlight outside threw angular shadows about the walls.

Driscoll shook his head in disgust. “She was right in here…” he began, then broke off. His eyes widened, and his hand scrabbled at his coat for his pistol.
Someone’s there
, Deal heard his brain clamor, but it was too late to do anything about it.

He felt an arm clamp about his throat, felt his feet lift off the floor. He heard a muffled thud and a grunt from Driscoll, sensed others rushing past him in the darkness. He flailed his arms about, trying to reach his attacker, but it was useless. He struck out with his heel, felt a satisfying crack when he struck bone.

He was readying himself for another kick when there was an explosion of pain in his head, a brief, glorious burst of light behind his eyes, and, as he might have expected, a darkness that rushed up and swallowed everything.

***

“What you be messing around up here for, mahn?”

Deal heard the voice, but he couldn’t be sure if the speaker was talking to him. He’d been lost in a swirling dream where giant roosters chased him about a series of barren rooms. They pecked at him, slamming their beaks into the walls and floors with the force of pile drivers, drawing great gouts of blood from the wood itself.

His head was splitting, as if one of the creatures had caught him flush behind the ear. He blinked his eyes open carefully, saw the tall
santería
priest looming above him. The rooster’s blood had dried to a rusty brown on the man’s shoulders.

“Why you be busting into a person’s home?” The man spoke with a British islander’s accent. His voice was soft, inquisitive, as if the question was rhetorical, more a complaint than a request for information. Deal felt hands on his arms, realized he was being held by two others. When he tried to turn, the tall man reached out, held his chin fast in a hand that was slender but surprisingly strong.

“You wanting to hurt the sistah, was you?” Again that melodic inflection, more wonder than accusation.

Deal shook his head, groggy. An unshaded bulb dangled behind the priest’s head, burning like an angry sun. His throat felt swollen from the choke hold they’d laid on him earlier. “What sister?” he said, his voice strangled.

He had to cast his gaze down, his eyes tearing. He saw cartons with strange trademarks stamped on their sides, glimpsed a pile of flour bags bunkered against a wall. They must have dragged him into a storeroom of the
botanica
. He wondered if the congregation was still out there, waiting. Maybe he and Driscoll would be the final act.

He heard the sounds of a struggle somewhere behind him, heard a sharp cry. He twisted in the grip of the men who were holding him, saw Driscoll being hauled in through a doorway, trying to shake loose from two burly black men even bigger than the ex-cop. A third man tumbled against a stack of rice bags, clutching a foot Driscoll must have stomped on.

The priest gave Driscoll a glance as the big men subdued him, then turned back to Deal. “This mahn saying you a friend of the sistah, that so?” He shared a grin with the others. “Say you wanting to
help
her.”

Deal swallowed, not sure his aching throat would cooperate. “A man was killed tonight,” he managed. “We were worried about a woman who was staying here. We came to warn her.”

“
Warn
her?” the priest said, as if the idea were miraculous. “Well, now. Come to
warn
the sistah.”

“She was hiding a woman named Marquez,” Deal said, insistent. “She could be in danger.”

The tall man nodded thoughtfully. “The sistah say so. Say bad men maybe coming here. Maybe you do. Maybe that’s why we got you now.”

“We didn’t come here to hurt anyone,” Deal said, his anger rising. He struggled in the grasp of the men who held him, to no avail. He nodded at Driscoll. “This man used to be a police officer….”

The priest’s eyes lit up at that. He reached into the pocket of his shirt, produced a gold shield. He held it in front of Deal’s nose. As Deal read the ridiculous inscription, the tall man withdrew Driscoll’s pistol from his waistband with his other hand, tapped the phony badge with the stubby barrel. “Is looking like a policemahn, sure. But I don’t think this is the real thing, sir, I do not.”

“Jesus, Driscoll,” Deal muttered.

“It’s just a joke,” Driscoll said.

“No,” the priest said thoughtfully, still tapping the shield with the pistol. “I think it is not so funny.”

“Where is she?” Driscoll demanded. “Where’s Ms. Marquez?”

The priest lifted his delicate eyebrows. “Wherever that is, mahn, she is being safe now.”

Deal saw the look in the priest’s eyes. If Ms. Marquez had been hidden away by these people, he did not doubt that she was safe. And they could forget ever finding her. He had an image of himself and Driscoll traipsing house to house through nighttime Little Haiti. They wouldn’t last an hour.

“We need to talk to her,” Driscoll insisted. “My friend here was nearly killed by the same people who blew up Ms. Marquez’s place. His wife was badly burned. She’s still in the hospital. They have a baby.” The priest gave him a thoughtful look. “They’re in danger,” Driscoll added. His voice had taken on an uncharacteristically pleading note. “Ms. Marquez is in danger too, and she has information that could help us.”

The priest considered it. He turned to Deal. “That true, what he say?”

Deal nodded.

The priest glanced at one of the burly men holding Driscoll. “He the one come to the sistah before?” The burly man made a gesture with his eyes.

The priest nodded, thoughtful. Deal saw his own wallet materialize in his hand. The priest was staring at him now. “You John Deal, yeah? That your real name?”

“That’s my real name,” Deal said.

The priest turned to the man whose foot Driscoll had stomped on, said something in soft, guttural Creole. The man took Deal’s wallet and another that must have been Driscoll’s, then limped out of the room, giving Driscoll a surly look as he passed.

Deal turned to Driscoll, who did his best to shrug. “Shut up, you,” said one of the burly men holding Driscoll. The other man stepped in, blocking Deal’s view. The priest had sat down on a mound of flour sacks, his long arms crossed across his chest, his gaze drawn inward, waiting.

Deal chafed in the grip that held him, trying to understand. Perhaps it was true, all the things Driscoll had claimed about this supposed book, about Torreno and his Patriots’ Foundation. If you were in such a position, it might motivate you to kill a few people. But Deal still couldn’t figure out where
he
came in. Did walking through a museum constitute him as an enemy, a fellow traveler? Even granting Driscoll’s most paranoiac view, he didn’t see how that was possible.

Then something occurred to him. He was about to call out to Driscoll when the storeroom door opened and the man who’d taken the wallets limped back in. The priest conferred with the man in hushed Creole again. Finally he nodded and turned back to them, his face impassive.

“Okay, now,” the priest announced. “We going for a little ride.”

***

From the outside, the vehicle had resembled any other tradesman’s van. There were crudely stenciled signs on the tailgate and sliding side door, advertising X-pert lawn service. A tiny flag—from some Caribbean island, Deal supposed—fluttered from the radio antenna.

Inside, however, things were hardly what he’d expected. Instead of holding a welter of rakes and lawn tools, the rear cabin had been converted to a limousine’s layout, with a pair of broad, comfortably upholstered seats facing each other, a small table and a serving bar bolted to the floor in between. One wall held a bank of electronics gear, including a tiny television. The rear windows had been carpeted over and a glass barrier between the rear area and the driver’s compartment had been treated with a reflective surface.

There were three men up there, Deal knew, including one carrying an automatic weapon who had supervised their loading. He imagined that the man was watching them now through the one-way glass, his Uzi at the ready.

Deal stared back at his own reflection, which looked pale and wavering in the soft chaser lights that flittered around the outline of the ceiling. He was sitting between the priest and one of the men who’d been holding him, a man with a weightlifter’s body and the face of a divinity student. That man wore a suit and a tieless white shirt buttoned to the neck and kept his right hand hidden inside the vest of his coat.

Driscoll sat opposite, wedged between the two burly men who had held him captive inside the storeroom. He stared back at Deal expressionless, rocking with the steady motion of the van. “Did you ever think,” Deal said, returning to the thought that had occurred to him inside the storeroom, “that it wasn’t me at all? That maybe somebody could have been trying to take
you
out when they burned the apartment.”

“Shut up, you,” the man next to Driscoll said. Deal wondered if it was the only English he had learned.

The priest held up his hand. “Let them talk,” he said.

Driscoll gave his customary shrug. “I considered it. But I didn’t think much of the possibility,” he said.

“Why not?” Deal persisted. “Maybe it was one of your old enemies, figured you were vulnerable, off the force and everything.”

Driscoll shook his head. “Naw, the way things are in the department these days, they’d have had too many better opportunities when I was still around. Something happens when I go out on a call, it would’ve been an unfortunate accident in the line of duty. Sayonara, Vern.” He glanced up at Deal. “I don’t think it was me.”