Deal to Die For (19 page)

…and suddenly she stopped, giving a little cry, her blood freezing inside her. She reached again for the birth certificate—though God knows why, if she didn’t know the date of her own birth, what did she know—and held it up beside the photograph of her slender, stylish mother.

Her mother—or so she had always thought—smiled coquettishly back at the lens, while the bushy-headed shadow of a man with a camera—her father, wasn’t it—fell across the wooden pier in the foreground. In the margin of the photograph was stamped the date, heavy black type that was hard to mistake, September of the year Paige had been born. Her mother would have been eight months pregnant at the time. Eight months pregnant, Paige thought, staring at the photograph of vampish, flat-bellied Loretta Rose Richardson Cooper. Not a teaspoon of fat on that body, not the slightest telltale swelling in that bronzed belly. Paige felt her defenses crumbling like a series of pitiful, little-pig-built walls that had been trying to hold back a hurricane. What she had sensed from the moment the words came out of her sister’s mouth was finally undeniable. The flood of emotions took her with physical force. Astonishment. Anger. Bafflement. A sadness as deep as that which had gripped her with the deaths of her mother and her sister. And yet somewhere deep within that maelstrom of feelings it flickered, nothing more than the dimmest of sparks, but it was there just the same; it was the tiniest dot of relief she sensed, and along with that came its handmaiden, the most slender thread of hope.

She had begun to weep when she heard a sound behind her. She whirled, staring up at Gabriel’s massive form in the doorway. He stared down at her impassively from behind his opaque glasses.

“You are all right?” he said.

She nodded, wondering how long he’d been standing there. “I’m fine,” she said. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, tucked the birth certificate into her purse.

She glanced up at Gabriel again, feeling another odd wave of emotion, and this time, she realized, it was shame. This enormous, inscrutable powerhouse of a man staring down at her like someone who could read minds…she had a sudden flash, a terrible old movie Paul had kept her up for once,
The Man with X-Ray Eyes
, Ray Milland, all puffy and gone to seed, wearing sunglasses the tint and thickness of welder’s glass…

She shook away the vision, her feelings irrational to say the least, for why should she care if some person she didn’t even know were to grasp her secret. But that was it, wasn’t it? Her secret. Every orphan’s shame.

She got to her knees, began to toss things back into the Ipana carton: newspapers, photos, baby shoes, all the detritus of a suddenly uncentered life. Gabriel bent down to help when she snatched a sheaf of photos from his hand.

“I’ll do it!” she snapped at him, and he held his hand away as if it had been burned.

She stopped, shocked by her own anger. She closed her eyes momentarily, and pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers, forcing herself to calm. She would not let this happen. She would not allow herself to be controlled this way.

She opened her eyes and stared back at Gabriel. “I’m sorry,” she said evenly.

She took a breath, gestured at the box, then looked back at him. No shame, she told herself. No more shame. “I was adopted,” she said. “I just found that out.”

Gabriel’s mouth opened into a silent O, and his chin lifted ever so slightly in recognition. He turned aside for a moment, as if he were considering the fact. Or perhaps, she thought, she’d simply embarrassed him.

She tossed the rest of the items that she’d discovered back into the box, then stood, brushing the seat of her pants.

“I’d like to take that,” she said, pointing to the box. Gabriel was still sitting on his haunches, still staring off into some other place. After a moment, he turned, registering her words with an absent nod. He picked up the box with one of his massive hands and followed her into the hallway.

Chapter 26

“I don’t suppose Ms. Nobleman said where she’d be going?” It was Driscoll talking to a desk clerk, a young man in a stylishly short haircut who gave him a bored shrug in reply.

Driscoll glanced around the ornate lobby. Late on a Sunday afternoon, high season a month away, things were pretty quiet. He turned back to the clerk. “What do you say I have a look at the phone records for her room?”

The clerk, who’d been picking at lint on the lapel of his dark blazer, glanced up at him. “You must be kidding.”

Driscoll leaned across the counter, his meaty hands clasped together. “No,” he said. “Not really.”

Something in Driscoll’s tone got the kid’s attention. “What happened to your hands?” he said after a moment.

Deal glanced at the angry red cross-hatchings that scored the backs of the ex-cop’s hands. Some of the scratches were still oozing blood. Driscoll glanced over his shoulder at Deal, then back at the kid. Deal saw the scene in his mind again, Driscoll grabbing for the cat, the cat tearing into Driscoll with the three paws it could use, the windshield wiper thudding against the glass in triple time. They’d finally had to throw Driscoll’s soggy sport coat over the thing, Deal holding it wrapped up in a ball, while Driscoll worked its claw out of the wiper.

Driscoll stared at the desk clerk, flicking a white cat hair off his cuff. “Some asshole I was talking to gave me a hard time,” he said mildly. “I had to address the matter, take him downtown in a bucket.”

The kid edged back a bit, wary. “Are you a cop?”

Driscoll gave a stare of his own, reached into his jacket. He produced a joke shield he’d gotten as a gift at his retirement—Sonny Crockett, Chief of Police—flipped it open and shut in an easy motion, put it back it in his pocket.

The kid nodded, but he was still hesitant. “Don’t you need a court order, something like that?”

Driscoll turned, gave Deal a glance. Deal raised a finger, making a face as if the kid had reminded them of a major oversight.

“He’s absolutely right, Vernon.” Deal pointed at a sideboard that held a house phone and a stack of stationery for writing notes.

“Hand me one of those envelopes, would you?”

Driscoll looked at him, then went for one of the envelopes and brought it back.

Deal took the envelope, laid it on the marble counter, glanced around the deserted lobby again. He reached into his pocket, took out his wallet, deftly withdrew a hundred-dollar bill. He paused just long enough to let the kid see what he was doing, then slipped the bill into the envelope, licked it, pressed it shut with a thump of his hand and shoved it across the countertop.

“There it is,” Deal said. “Signed by Judge Franklin. Everything in order.” He smiled. “Now let’s have a look at those phone numbers.”

The clerk’s attitude had undergone a complete transformation. He smiled, palmed the envelope smoothly, tucked it into his blazer pocket, turned to the computer, and punched up some numbers. There was a whining sound as a printer coughed out information. The kid bent, tore off the printout, handed it to Deal, who handed it to Driscoll in turn.

“Let’s go,” Deal said.

“Hold on a second,” Driscoll said, already scanning the printout.

“I think we ought to go,” Deal insisted.

“What’s with you?” Driscoll said. He’d found something on the sheet, called out to the desk clerk, who was on his way into a back office. “Does that phone ring out?”

The kid turned, saw Driscoll pointing at the house phone. He shook his head. “Pay phones are around the corner,” he said.

“I don’t have any change,” Driscoll said.

“Couldn’t we do this somewhere else?” Deal said, but Driscoll ignored him.

The kid made a sighing noise. “Pick it up when it rings,” he said, turning to a phone panel set in the wall.

Driscoll walked briskly to the house phone, waited for the signal, picked up. “Yeah,” he said. “Try this number, okay?”

He read off a number from the printout, then stood listening as the connection was made. “What?” Deal heard him say to whomever had answered. “Slow down, will you?”

Driscoll listened for a moment, then cut in again. “Jesus Christ, use
syllables
.” He covered the mouthpiece, turned to Deal in exasperation. “You’d think somebody in the service industry, they’d learn the English language, wouldn’t you?”

Deal nodded absently, his eyes on the desk clerk, who was working the phone connection with one hand, holding the envelope Deal had given him with the other.

Meantime, Driscoll’s conversation had resumed. “Give me the name again, okay? Uh-huh,” he said finally, scrawling a note. “He was one of our greatest presidents. That’s right,
American
president. You’re on South Beach, correct? That’s okay, hoss, we’ll come have a look.”

Driscoll hung up, glanced at his note again, then motioned to Deal. “Let’s go,” he said.

Deal held his gaze on the desk clerk, who had hung up the main phone, was tearing into the envelope.

“I’m ready,” Deal said, backing quickly toward the door.

“It’s the Grover Cleveland Hotel,” Driscoll was saying. “Little place down on South Beach.” He dangled his note in front of Deal’s eyes.

“That’s where Paige Nobleman went?” Deal said absently, hurrying them along.

“Maybe,” Driscoll shrugged. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Deal said, swinging the lobby door open. “Why didn’t you just ask the person you were talking to if she’d checked in?”

Driscoll’s eyes flared. “Because the guy couldn’t speak English, for Chrissakes.”

The clerk was bustling around the counter now, his face red, the envelope Deal had slipped him held high above his head like a summons.

“Come on,” Deal said. “We gotta go.”

“Hey!” Deal heard the desk clerk calling as he pulled Driscoll through the door and toward the waiting Ford. “Hey you!”

Driscoll gave Deal a questioning look as they piled into the car. Deal answered with a hiss. “Hit it, Driscoll!”

By the time the kid made it outside after them, the Ford had roared away.

***

They were whisking down Collins Avenue now, the road snaking a path through banks of towering condominiums, eight lanes of pavement cutting a narrow canyon of glittering glass and steel. Climb high enough to see it, a hundred yards east would be the broad white beach and the sturdy surf of the Atlantic; a hundred yards west there’d be the broad blue ribbon of the Intracoastal Waterway. In between were more luxury apartments and moneyed owners per square inch than anywhere else on earth.

If Hurricane Andrew had veered north twenty miles, a mere blip in meteorological terms, Deal thought, what had already turned out to be the most costly disaster in history would have racked up figures beyond all imagining. He had a sudden image of all these buildings, opening up their glass sides like so many human beehives being blown clean: sofas, credenzas, pianos, who knows what, all of it hurtling out, along with a number of stubborn owners, no doubt, to cascade down from twenty stories and more over the Miami landscape. That’s exactly what would have happened, what very easily
could
happen the next time around, he thought, as Driscoll’s voice broke in.

“So what did you put in the envelope you gave the desk clerk?” Driscoll asked. He swung their car around a Cadillac that was creeping along in the right lane at just above dead stop.

Deal gave him an innocent look. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Looked like a hundred, but maybe it turned out to be a one.”

Driscoll smiled, shook his head.

“Hey,” Deal said. “The guy did a public service, got a dollar for his trouble.”

Driscoll laughed. “I’m telling you, you got a future in this line of work.”

“Spend a lifetime as a contractor,” Deal said, “you get used to handling payoffs.”

Driscoll laughed again.

“Besides,” Deal continued. “You let him think you were a cop. Suppose he calls up and complains. You could get in real trouble.”

“Right. He’s gonna call up the station house, say some detective whose name he doesn’t know asked him for a look at some telephone numbers.” Driscoll affected a look of concern. “They’ll probably put out an APB for me, right after they finish scraping the day’s body count off the sidewalk.”

Deal smiled. “I’m not criticizing, Vernon.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Driscoll groused. “The day I start telling you how to build houses, we’re all in big trouble.”

They both laughed then, and Deal clapped the big man on the shoulder. “I appreciate your help, Vernon. Really.”

Driscoll nodded, rolling his shoulders stiffly as if the words embarrassed him. “You’d do the same for me,” he said finally.

They rode in silence then, under the flyover that led west to the Arthur Godfrey Road, where Collins changed from a broad thoroughfare with synchronized lights and a carefully tended median into a cramped four-lane bisecting a business district, with ten times the traffic and signals guaranteed to shift to red within fifty feet of any driver’s approach. They had pulled up to an intersection where an older man in brogans, black socks, powder blue shorts, short-sleeved white shirt, and porkpie hat was negotiating the crosswalk. The light turned green when he was still half a dozen slow steps away from the curb: the old guy turned suddenly and pointed an accusing finger at Driscoll, who threw up his hands.

“Take your time, pop,” Driscoll called through the windshield. A horn sounded behind them and the old guy shook his finger at Driscoll once again.

By the time the old guy reached the curb, the signal had turned red again. The driver behind them revved an engine that sounded like it had been taken out of a Donzi. Driscoll checked the rearview mirror.

There was a screech of tires as the car in back of them popped into reverse, another as it swung into the lane abreast. It was a black Honda Accord that had been chopped down to ride about a dime’s thickness off the pavement, its windows smoked nearly to the darkness of the paint. Driscoll turned to stare as the passenger window of the Honda slid down. There was a pimply kid in a muscle shirt sitting shotgun, a surly look on his face. His clone behind the wheel, a kid with what looked like hieroglyphics carved into his skull-cap haircut, gunned the motor again and sent an equally challenging look at the Ford.

Driscoll nodded, reached into his jacket pocket, produced his shield for the pair to see, holding it out the window without a word. The decibel level of the Honda’s engine dropped off by a factor of ten and the smoked window seemed to rise much faster than it fell. In seconds the Honda had hung a left and disappeared down a one-way cross street.

Driscoll looked at Deal and gave his little shrug. “It’s a weakness,” he said. “What can I say?”

“Maybe you should have stayed on the force,” Deal said as they pulled away from the light.

“It’d have been a steady paycheck,” Driscoll said. “But then look what I’d be missing out on.”

Deal nodded, his eyes ahead, his thoughts turned glum again. “I have this really sick feeling, Vernon. If you’d seen what Barbara’s place looked like when I walked in there last night…” He broke off, shaking his head. He turned back to the ex-cop. “You really don’t think her sister could have done something like that, do you?”

Driscoll was shaking his head. “I try not to think that way,” he said. “Not the way you mean, anyway. If you’re asking me, do I think someone’s sister is
capable
of sticking a pistol in her loved one’s mouth and pulling the trigger, then the answer is yes, because I have spent considerable time in the presence of guys who’d think sodomizing Mother Teresa was an act of generosity.”

He paused, as if he were considering such matters for the first time. When he continued, his voice had taken on an earnest quality Deal had rarely heard. “You have to understand what being around people like that does to you, Deal. But if you’re asking am I
guessing
that she did, then the answer is no. I think we ought to talk to her, though, and my main reason for selecting her is she’s about the only person still alive who had much of a connection with Barbara.”

It was as long a speech as Deal had ever heard from the ex-cop. Even Driscoll seemed a bit awed by it. “There’s no science involved here, Deal,” he continued in a softer tone. “You go around, you ask enough questions, sometimes you get lucky. A case like this—if there
is
a case, mind you—where there’s no apparent motive, all you can do is troll.”

Deal nodded glumly as they pulled to the curb in front of a small hotel. They had turned onto a narrow side street running east off Collins toward the water. This far south, the ancient reef widened and Collins no longer fronted on the beach. Here that honor went to a street called Ocean Drive, a dozen or so blocks crammed with tiny hotels that had once been dives and oldster havens, where sidewalk cafés had materialized on every available inch of what had been until recently nothing more than sidewalk.

When people talked about South Beach, this short stretch was what they meant; and what the words connoted was more than geographical. Fashion and photography center for the world; international hot spot; place to see and be seen…and to somehow become.

Uncounted trillions of tiny marine creatures had come to stack their shells one upon another from the very beginning of time so that one day their distant air-breathing cousins could congregate on dry land here, to eat, drink, dance, wear Spandex pants and tops that made a crease around every body part, and drive automobiles which, converted to cash, could feed a Third World tribe for a lifetime.

Far down on the corner, just short of where the late-afternoon breeze tussled with a couple of coconut palms in the dunes, Deal saw the green flapping awnings of the News Café, where he’d met Barbara for lunch. He and Barbara, come together for commiseration and comfort in the midst of all the moving and shaking and desire not just to be but to glow. And look what had happened since.

As he had any number of times already, his mind traced the events of that day, trying to recapture the tone of her voice, the look in her eyes, to see if there was something that might have suggested the mind-set of a person teetering on the edge, ready to pack it in. But despite her anguish, and her anxiety, and her anger, there was nothing that suggested she had been beaten down.