Deal with the Dead (26 page)

But time was the very problem, wasn’t it? He craned his neck and glanced back to see the running lights of the cutter as it rounded the shoulder of the cove that had separated them only moments before. The engine noise of the cutter had redoubled suddenly, and he made out the beam of a powerful searchlight sweeping the waters close to the dock. Another minute or two and they’d make the dock channel, a couple more after that and the cutter would be on their heels.

It was hopeless, he thought, glancing out toward the darkness of the open sea. They’d never make it that far without being overtaken.

“Better get back here,” Basil shouted. “I’m just going to open her up, we’ll have to pray we don’t hit anything.”

Another hopeless prospect, Deal thought. It would be like drag-racing across a mine field.

“Wait,” he called back, sweeping the water frantically with his light. That underwater ridge line was still trailing along their starboard side. Here and there he caught glints of jagged outcroppings, glinting in the beam of the flashlight like giant fangs.

He switched off the light and scrambled back over the deck to the windshield. “How much water does this thing draw?”

Basil shrugged. “Couple feet maybe, a little more if the screws are all the way torqued.”

“And the cutter’ll draw three, three and a half?”

“I suppose. Hard to know for sure.”

Deal nodded, glancing back at the prow of the Cigarette. That was the way boats of this class achieved their speed on plane: nose high up in front, tail digging down behind, till hardly anything was dragging water but the stern and the screws. “Let’s get everybody out here on the prow,” he said. “The weight will help keep the nose down. Even if it makes an inch of difference, it’ll help. You keep us going as fast as you can without planing.”

“I can do that,” Basil said. “But I don’t know what good it’s gonna do.”

He cast a glance backward. The cutter had reached the dock channel now. The scream of its suddenly revving engines cut clearly across the quarter-mile of water separating the two craft.

“They’re just gonna follow us wherever we go,” he added.

“That’s what I’m counting on,” Deal said. “Let them come. When I give you the signal, make a hard right, take us right over the reef line we’ve been skirting.”

Basil gave him a dubious look. “You want to take us
into
the shallows?”

“And I want you to switch on the running lights, the searchlight, everything,” Deal continued. “Let’s make sure they see us.”

“Why don’t we just shoot ourselves right now and be done with it?” Basil said.

“Do as he says,” Rhodes cut in. “I see where he’s going with this.”

“Man—” Basil said, but he wasn’t used to arguing with his boss.

Deal switched his glance back to the cutter. Their pursuers had come out of the dock channel now and had throttled back slightly. “Come on, Basil. Hit the lights, let them see us. Everybody else out here with me.”

As Basil flipped switches on the console illuminating the running lights, Kaia came over the windshield, followed by Rhodes and Frank. “Find a cleat and hang on,” Deal called to the others.

“Put the searchlight at about two o’clock starboard,” Deal called to Basil. “Get our speed up as much as you can.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Basil called, but he snapped on the powerful beam. In the next moment, Deal felt the Cigarette’s engines surge, and they were moving rapidly forward.

He heard the answering roar of the cutter’s engine and saw the beam of their pursuers’ searchlight sweep over them. There was a rattle of automatic gunfire in the distance, and Deal knew that it was only a matter of time until the bullets found their mark.

“Can you go any faster?” he called to Basil.

“It’s your funeral,” Basil called, notching the throttle higher.

The cutter was closing in now, its engines stoked flat-out, no need for caution with the Cigarette showing the way, lit up like a careening birthday cake. There was another burst of fire, and the windshield of the Cigarette exploded in fragments. Deal saw men rushing to the forward rail of the cutter, bracing automatic weapons as they ran.

“Now,” he cried to Basil. “Hard to the right. Everybody hang on!”

Basil swung the wheel and the Cigarette cut toward the milky line of the reef. Deal felt his weight shift toward the port side behind him, but he held fast to one of the cleats anchored in the foredeck, ignoring the pain as the metal points dug into his hand.

“I’m falling,” Kaia cried, grasping wildly for Rhodes’ hand as she slid backward over the smooth fiberglass surface.

Deal reached out with his free hand and caught a fistful of her pajamas. Even as he steadied her, there came an ominous grinding sound beneath them, the sound of the Cigarette’s hull scraping one of those treacherous outcroppings.

The cutter was looming ever closer: now seventy-five yards…now fifty…

Another burst of gunfire ripped a line of fiberglass a foot from Deal’s shoulder.

“He’s going to ram us,” Basil called. He drew his pistol from his belt and squeezed off several rounds toward the looming cutter. One of the gunmen went down, but the others fired undeterred.

The pilot
was
willing to ram them, Deal saw. Would send his much heavier boat right through the middle of theirs if he could, blast them to smithereens…

Forty yards, thirty—a steady rattle of gunfire from the prow of the cutter now. Maybe Basil
was
right, it was his funeral, and theirs as well…

Basil and Frank both emptying their weapons at the speeding boat behind them…

And suddenly there was a terrible, rending crash that sent the gunmen at the prow of the cutter sprawling, the bottom of the cutter torn open on the reef, twisting crazily on its side, teetering, ready to flip…

When the explosion came, a blast that obliterated the cutter in a boiling ball of flame, sending shards of ruined boat and God knows what raining down upon the Cigarette.

“Cut the engines,” Deal cried to Basil then, and that is what the big man did.

Chapter Thirty-four

Strange how nearly being pulverized into shark food could alter your sense of loyalties, Deal thought, as the Cigarette cleared the last of the reefs and Basil shoved forward on the throttles of the powerful twin engines. The boat rose up almost immediately in the water like a big cat that had taken notice of something interesting on the gloomy horizon. There was a moment’s hesitation, then the craft began to hurtle across the waters at a breathless speed.

So much for the difficulty with the screws,
Deal thought. And so much for all the troublesome nighttime navigation. And wasn’t he glad that it had been just so much bullshit.

He glanced back toward the island they’d left, now little more than a low and ragged silhouette ranged against the moonless sky. A glow had sprung up in the middle of the cay, however, a glow that grew even faster than the Cigarette’s ability to carry them away. At first, Deal wasn’t sure where the light was coming from, but eventually he understood.

“The bastards,” Kaia Jesperson said beside him. She’d come up from the cabin of the Cigarette, her pajamas traded for a T-shirt and shorts she’d found below, her feet in a pair of Top-Siders that seemed a size or two too big. Someone else might have looked faintly absurd, he thought, studying her in the glow from the running lights.

“They’ve torched it,” Deal said, joining her backward gaze. He thought of ancient books curling up, centuries-old furniture flaming into cinders, photos and paintings and vats of smuggler’s hooch, all of it transforming into featureless atoms that would drift back down to the sea as soot.

He glanced at Rhodes, who stood at the opposite corner of the open deck, bracing himself against the pounding of the wave tops, his gaze steadfast on the darkness that lay ahead.
Not a thing out that way to see,
Deal thought. And supposed that was the very point.

“All he wanted was a life,” Kaia said, shaking her head sadly.

Deal glanced at her. They could virtually shout a conversation here and have none of it be audible a few feet away. The throb of the engines, the roar of wind and spray—what she’d just said had already been flung halfway back to Quicksilver Cay.

“You think it’s that easy, just dial the clock back, ask for ‘do-overs’?”

She looked up. “That’s how you see it, Mr. Deal? Things are cast in stone, just grin and bear it?”

Deal hesitated. What was he supposed to say—you don’t like the way things are going in life, just press a button, change the channel? “I believe in consequences,” he told her. “You do certain things, they never go away.”

“And you?” she asked. “You’ve got nothing to live down? Nothing you’d want to take back?”

He stared at her for a moment. “I didn’t say that.”

She was watching him carefully. “Things you’ve done that wake you up at night, you wish they were only dreams?”

Her standard deadpan stare came with it, but there was something in her eyes, he thought. “You sound like the expert,” he said.

She gave him a humorless smile. “Oh, I’m expert, all right,” she said. Her gaze held his for another moment. And then she went to join Rhodes at the front of the cockpit.

***

“You’ve got that key?” It was Rhodes’ voice at his shoulder.

Deal had been at the back of the boat, staring out into the gray mist that had rolled into the cove where they’d anchored. The sound of the dinghy motor was nearly lost already, Frank on his way to shore to fetch a car and make whatever other arrangements Rhodes deemed necessary, Deal supposed.

Basil leaned against the control panel, his arms folded, idly watching the two of them through the predawn haze. “Maybe I lost it,” Deal said, staring back at Rhodes. “Or maybe I threw it overboard.”

Rhodes gave him a tolerant smile. “I’d like it back, if you don’t mind.”

Deal heard the whine of the electric pump as the toilet flushed below. “Excuse me,” he said to Rhodes. He turned away, unzipped, relieved himself over the transom. When he’d finished, he turned back to Rhodes, zipping up. “You took that key from me in the first place. What do you mean, you want it back?”

Rhodes stared at him, puzzled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“For chrissakes,” Deal said, thrusting his hand into his pocket.
“This
is what I’m talking about—” He stopped then, feeling the expression freeze on his face. He brought out his hand, opened it.

Both of them stared down: two very similar keys lay in the palm of Deal’s hand. The one he’d retrieved from his father’s stash, the other that Rhodes had tossed at him just as the shooting broke out the night before, or so it seemed. Deal cupped his palm and jiggled it so that the two keys fell together with a tiny clink. Point to point, ridge to ridge, valley to chiseled valley. A perfect match.

Deal looked up into Rhodes’ eyes. Rhodes looked back, with equal surprise.

“You want to tell me what this goes to?” Deal asked, handing over one of the keys.

“Only if you’ll tell me where it is,” said Rhodes.

Deal stared back, still speechless. Finally, Rhodes began to explain.

Chapter Thirty-five

Miami
February 1962

It was well after midnight when Barton Deal heard the familiar rumble of boat engines from somewhere out on Biscayne Bay. Duke, the old chocolate lab who lay on the dock at his side, picked his head up and stared out intently into the brine-laden darkness. For the hour or more they’d been waiting, the dog had steadfastly ignored any number of signals that might have set a hunting animal on point: the nocturnal splashings of mullet and shallows feeders working the pilings beneath them, the rustlings of invisible raccoon and possum prowling shoreside behind them, the almost inaudible wheelings and swoops of owls in the dark air above. There’d been one sharp cry as a wood rat was taken aloft in a set of unseen talons from somewhere close by, but the dog had taken his cue from his master. Nothing was really important except for the matter that had brought them out here tonight.

“That’s her,” Barton Deal said. He rubbed absently at the nearly healed wound in his shoulder, then bent to give the dog a reassuring pat as he pushed himself out of the webbed lawn chair. “That’s
Miss Priss,
all right.”

He glanced back at the big stone-and-wood house behind him, its peaked roof and jutting gables vaguely backlit by the glow of the mile-distant Miami lights, but he needn’t have bothered. It was only the two of them on the property this weekend. His wife and young son were off on a “gallivant,” as Barton Deal liked to call her forays around the state of Florida.

The two of them had set out on Friday in the Chrysler he’d just bought, headed up to Cypress Gardens to watch the water-ski show, where a whole pyramid of young men and women had apparently learned to whiz across the surface of a lake as one. Barton Deal knew his wife liked water-ski shows, and though he wasn’t so sure about young Johnny-boy, he was sure they’d have a grand time together. The two of them always did. If nothing else, she’d spoil the boy to death.

The boat’s engines were growing louder, their character unmistakable. He could identify that sound as surely as he might come awake in the middle of the night and know the character of the woman breathing at his side. His life had depended on both, after all, and on more than one occasion. The dog was up, too, extending one of its back legs and then the next, in a quivering, anticipatory stretch.

“Just take it easy,” Barton Deal said. “There’s nothing in this for you.”

The dog glanced up as if it understood.

Though the boat’s running lights had likely been burning when she was further out toward the shipping lanes, they were extinguished now, and Deal knew she was being brought in through the shallows by feel. If he’d had any less confidence in the men who’d taken her, he might have worried. In this case, he’d given over his trust long ago.

He saw the boat’s hooded searchlight snap on momentarily, pulsing their prearranged code. Barton Deal brought up the heavy-duty flashlight he had clipped to his belt and punched out the answer. They might have used radio to go back and forth, but it was safer this way.

He heard a whine from deep in the dog’s throat and heard the click of his nails as he danced on the concrete. “Simmer down,” Deal told the dog, and the sounds subsided. Deal turned and folded up the lawn chair, leaning it against a piling.

By the time he could make out the boat’s shadow drifting up out of the darkness, the engines had died away. The
Miss Miami Priss,
a forty-five-foot Bayliner with a flying bridge and a broad rear deck, was moving free now, sliding sideways toward the dock, her rails low in the water. He put out a foot as the bow closed to the pier and felt—or presumed that he felt—the great weight of the cargo she was carrying.

The shadow of a man had hopped from the stern to the dock, moving like an inky cartoon silhouette to tie off a line back there, while another—a bulky man with Oriental features—came up from the darkness like gathering mist to hand the bow rope to Barton Deal.

“Any trouble?” Deal said to the man who’d handed him the line.

“Nothing we weren’t prepared for, Barton,” said a third man, who held back from the others, standing by the shrouded crate that dominated the deck behind the cockpit. He was tall and thin and stood with nonchalance, as if he just happened to find himself on board, as if none of this were out of the ordinary at all.

“That’s good,” Barton Deal said.

“Everything all right on your end?” the man said as he took Barton Deal’s hand and stepped up onto the dock. He moved easily, athletically, and Deal knew his friend hadn’t needed the boost. He’d only taken the hand because it had been offered. That was the kind of man he was.

“How’s the arm?”

Deal glanced at his shoulder and nodded his head. His arm was fine.

The dog came up between them, his tail erect, his legs moving stiff as a jackbooted soldier’s. “He’s a friend, Duke,” said Barton Deal, and the dog danced a grudging step back.

“Your winch up to the task?” Barton Deal’s friend said, glancing up at the davit arms that arced out over the dockside like miniature cranes.

“Those davits can raise anything she can carry,” Barton Deal said.

His elegant friend nodded and gestured to the two men he’d brought. The pair moved quickly to release the davit lines and fasten them under the shrouded cargo.

“What did you bring to move it inside with?” his friend asked as the men did their work. “A forklift?”

“Didn’t think we’d need the noise,” Barton Deal said. He gestured toward the end of the dock, where a kind of pallet truck was parked, a device with a vague resemblance to the carts that grocers use to move crates of produce from loading docks inside for stocking. Only this particular pallet truck was three or four times the normal size, with big balloon tires and heavy flooring—a hand truck big enough to haul the
Miss Miami Priss
herself, or so it seemed.

“The things you know about, Barton,” said his friend, as if such knowledge mattered. “What do you use
that
for?”

Barton Deal shrugged. “Last time it was the air-cooling unit for an office building, where we couldn’t get a big enough Hyster in.” He gestured at the shrouded cargo on the back of the boat beside them. The two men had secured the lines. While one had climbed back on the dock, the other stood at the davit winch to steady the load, awaiting his orders. “But air conditioning’s not what you’ve got there, is it?”

His friend gave a little smile by way of answer.

“Well, come on now, bring it up,” Barton Deal said. “I’d like to get some sleep tonight.”

His friend nodded, then turned to gesture to the man by the winch. The man bent his broad back to the task and began to crank. At first, the buoyancy of
Miss Priss
gave aid to the process, but finally the heavy pallet had lifted from her decks. The davits groaned with the load but—true to Barton Deal’s word—held fast. A few minutes more and the cargo had been eased atop the big hand cart. In moments, the two men were on their way up the gently inclined path toward the house, one towing, the other pushing from behind.

It cost them a half hour of sweaty maneuvering and a healthy gouge along one of the stairwell walls, but with Barton Deal working the brake on the hand cart, and with the aid of the two strong backs his friend had brought along, the load had finally been guided down the hastily built ramp and into the cellar. Barton Deal had knocked the ramp together out of two-by-eights taken from the site of a Burdine’s warehouse his firm was building in a new industrial park out by the airport, and the muscles in his forearm still ached from the unaccustomed work. It had been a few years since he’d done much carpentry himself.

“You don’t see many basements in South Florida,” Barton Deal said. He was standing with his friend, watching as the two helpers levered their load into the recess he’d prepared along one of the coral-rock walls. “Water table’s too high most places.”

“You don’t see many of those, either,” his friend said pointing at the object that his men had deposited.

Deal nodded. The cellar was dimly illuminated by one bare lightbulb that dangled from the cobwebbed rafters. The dog sat at their heels on the damp floor, still whining occasionally, as if the presence of the massive strongbox disturbed him. It was black, trimmed in gold leaf, the height of a refrigerator and nearly twice as wide, a seam down its middle with matching brass handles on either side. Along both sides of the box were ragged metal edges, bubbled and discolored where a welder’s torch had recently worked.

“I thought we’d never get the bastard cut out.”

Deal glanced up. It wasn’t like his friend to curse.
But under the cir
cumstances,
he thought…under the circumstances, it might be understood. The two helpers were hoisting the heavy shelving that would hide the recess and its contents back into place now.

After he’d finished with the ramp, Barton Deal had spent his afternoon rigging the shelves so they would swivel out and back, a false wall of a kind, like something you’d see in a boy’s adventure film, though he suspected all the trouble wasn’t really necessary. His wife, deathly frightened by anything that crept, crawled, or slithered, hadn’t set foot in the cellar the entire time they’d lived in the house. And his nine-year-old son showed no proclivity for cavelike places either, spending every spare moment piloting his little Jon boat about the sparkling bay.

He’d managed to surround himself with some people of laudable instinct, Barton Deal told himself as the shelves he’d fashioned fell into place. He snapped off the cellar light and followed the others up the ramp. At least there was that much to be proud of.

***

“I’ll be in touch soon,” his friend said. They were back at dockside now, the engines of the
Priss
burbling. The dog lay on the dock where it had kept vigil earlier, its broad head sunk on its paws as if all matters important had been concluded.

Barton Deal nodded and reached out his hand. He saw the glint of silver, felt something strike his palm. He put the key into his pocket without looking at it.

“You want to tell me what
that
is?” Barton Deal asked, pointing at the dark bundle that remained on the deck of the
Priss.
It might have been baggage, or wrapped-up welder’s equipment, but Barton Deal knew it wasn’t. He’d noticed the bundle after the strongbox had been raised, had been thinking about it all the while.

His friend hesitated. “Perhaps it’s better that you don’t know,” he said.

Barton Deal thought about it. “That’s my boat,” he said.

His friend nodded. “He was
my
man.”

As if it explained everything, Barton Deal thought.

“He meant to kill us all, take everything for himself,” his friend continued. “If it hadn’t been for Julian…” He gestured toward the impassive Oriental man at the wheel. “It ends here, Barton,” his friend said. “Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried,” Barton Deal said.
Though there might have been a time,
he thought. Back when the town he’d grown up in was a sleepy outpost on the edge of the continent and crime consisted of stealing grape-fruit off a neighbor’s tree, or selling the same underwater lot to idiot Northerners half a dozen times in a day. How complex his life had since become, he thought.

He felt the weight of the key in his pocket. “How much is in there, anyway?”

His friend shrugged as if it hardly mattered. “Everything I have.” He gave Deal a look. “There’s plenty there for both of us, you know.”

Deal nodded. “Your money’s safe, here,” he said. “As long as you need me to keep it.”

“A week or two, just until I’m settled in the islands, until I’m sure everything’s going to be safe,” his friend said.

“How about your son?” Barton Deal asked.

“He’ll be safe in boarding school,” Rhodes said. “I’ve seen to it.” The man reached into his pocket and handed Deal an envelope.

“What’s this?”

“Keep it handy,” Rhodes said. “Just in case something should happen.”

Barton Deal stared at the envelope, then tucked it into his back pocket. There was a pause and then the two moved to share a brief embrace.

“We’ll see your boat gets back,” his friend said as they stepped apart.

“I know you will,” Barton Deal said.

His friend raised his hand to say goodbye. Barton Deal did the same. Then the man stepped easily aboard the boat and was gone.