Done Deal Page 4

  He was turned around, The Hog pointing its snout back down the bridge approach toward a knot of chaos that had closed off all the traffic behind him. The minivan looked as if a giant had karate-chopped it. The Cadillac had slid to a stop and was steaming in the sun. Someone was struggling to get the driver’s door open, but the thick tar, which had lapped down over the roof, would only give so far.

  The roofer’s crew had stepped down from the pickup to stare nervously at their ruined tar pot and the light pole that still sputtered ominous sparks. Deal heard something and turned to stare through the open passenger window of The Hog. The Supra sat idling in the lane beside him, its exhaust pulsing like a heartbeat.

  Deal stared as the heavily smoked window opposite slid down. There was no passenger. The driver, a blocky Latin, leaned his way, though his face stayed mostly in shadow. The man was wearing a dark suit with threads that glinted in the sun, a gray silk shirt, a dark red tie. When he raised his hand, Deal saw the pistol, most likely a .357. The barrel seemed immense. Deal felt his entire head slipping down the tube, his bowels watering, greasing the long slide down.

  It seemed very quiet for rush hour. He could hear the tinny voices of the Haitian roofers down below, the burble of the Yahweh buses up ahead, at the tollgates. He wondered if the Yahwehs would bear witness to his death.

  And for what? Because he’d broken the south Florida commandment? Thou shall not cut a man off in traffic.

  Abruptly, the whooping of a siren broke the silence. The man in the Supra raised his eyes to his rearview mirror. A police cruiser was picking its way through the tangle of traffic behind them.

  Deal saw the man’s thumb move to the hammer of the pistol, saw the hammer ease back to its rest.

  “You must be more careful,” the man inside the Supra said, over the hum of the car’s exhaust. “You don’t know who’s out here. You could die.”

  Deal heard regret in the voice. Sure, he could understand that. Try to run a guy off the road, you can’t. Then you want to blow him away and here the fucking cops show up. Hell of way to start your morning.

  More sirens whooped in the background. “Have a nice day,” Deal said.

  But the smoked window was already rising. And then the Supra was gone.

  Chapter 2

  Deal limped The Hog down Calle Ocho, as SW Eighth Street had come to be called, holding a steady ten miles per hour, ignoring the chorus of horns behind him. He swung left off the main drag at the first break in the oncoming traffic. A few blocks down the avenue, which featured a series of boarded-up shops and vacant lots, he caught a glimpse of the burned-out gas station he’d seen earlier on the news.

  The cops and reporters were gone, but a yellow police line still fluttered in the wind. Arson, Deal supposed. That was one way out of your troubles.

  He turned back to his driving just in time to see an old man in an ancient coupe edging out from a stop sign into the path of The Hog. Deal never even considered the horn. It’d still be blaring when he crushed the old fart to a pulp. He cut his wheels to the right and down the side street, praying it wasn’t a dead end. The old man drove away, unaware.

  Deal finally reached the site about ten A.M., covering the last dozen feet locked in a four-wheel power slide.

  Emilio, the cabinetmaker, was leaning over the hood of his pickup, reading the paper as The Hog climbed over the curb and came to a stop.

  “You drinking already?” Emilio asked, walking over.

  Deal relaxed his grip on the emergency brake and sat quietly in the driver’s seat, getting his breathing under control.

  Emilio held out the sports page he’d been reading. “So what do you think? We gonna get a baseball team?”

  Deal glanced at the sports columnist’s headline.

  LEAGUE SEEKS DEEP-POCKETS OWNER—

  FINANCING QUESTIONS LINGER.

  “I couldn’t tell you,” Deal said, getting out. “The Commissioner stopped returning my calls.”

  Emilio nodded. “Lot of Cubans down here. They’d like to have it.”

  “They should take up a collection,” Deal said.

  Emilio stared at him. “You got something against the idea?”

  Deal stopped. Emilio was a good man, a careful cabinetmaker. His father had worked for DealCo until he died of emphysema and Emilio, whom Deal could still remember as a solemn twelve-year-old, fetching tools and sweeping up scraps around the jobs, had picked up the baton. He charged more than his sloppy, cut-rate competitors, less than the equally sloppy glitzy shops clustered around the design center. Only what was fair. He’d never hung Deal out to dry on any job. And he wasn’t responsible for this day’s ration of shit.

  “No, I have nothing against it, Emilio,” Deal said. “It’s just been one of those days.”

  Emilio nodded. He’d had his share of those days. He tapped his paper again. “You gotta understand, they bring the game down here, the people—our people—they are going to go crazy. Next best thing would be to put Castro to the firing squad on opening day, know what I mean?”

  Deal had some idea. He also knew the money men would be counting on Emilio’s “people” to put the turnstiles into an endless spin. But that was being too cynical, wasn’t it?

  Emilio took a swing with his newspaper bat. He watched an imaginary ball soar out of sight. “Canseco!” Emilio said. “Bam!”

  He turned back to Deal, grinning. “But what am I telling you, man? You played baseball.”

  “I participated,” Deal said. “Canseco plays.”

  Emilio laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re okay, Deal. They get the team down here, we gonna go to the park.”

  “No question about it,” Deal said, feeling weary.

  Satisfied, Emilio bent for a handful of rocks, began chucking them toward a post where the temporary power line was hooked up. Deal watched, envying Emilio his preoccupation. When he looked at the post, all he could think was, now it’s time to call the power company, get the line switched over to the electrical panel in the fourplex.

  How nice it’d be to worry about something like baseball, he thought, looking around. Save for Emilio, the site was deserted. The windows on the second floor gaped open, waiting for casements on back order for three weeks now. The stucco man had covered about half of the graffiti-scrawled block walls—Deal had studied some of the messages: not Spanish, not English, not anything that he could interpret. Maybe they were hieroglyphics from outer space—Your mama, ET. Sell this property, earthling.

  “I been waiting for my helper,” Emilio said, finishing with the rocks. “He’s got those vanities for the bathrooms in his truck.”

  Deal nodded and checked his watch.

  Emilio continued. “He had some parking tickets he had to see about.”

  Deal sighed. “That kid went anywhere near the courthouse, we’ll never see him again.”

  Emilio shrugged and lit a cigarette. He pointed toward the unfinished building. “Somebody’s been using the toilets. You ought to get the water turned on so they can flush.”

  Deal gave him a look. It was probably Emilio’s helper using the toilets. “We’re waiting on the inspector to clear the hookup to the main,” he said. “You see the stucco man?” Emilio shook his head. No one had seen the stucco man since his mixing bucket seized up last Thursday. Deal had been calling his home all weekend to no avail.

  “Haven’t seen nobody,” Emilio said. He exhaled a ribbon of blue smoke into the sultry air. The summer heat had kicked in early. Deal glanced at the open windows again, thinking glumly of the endless cycle of thunderstorms about to begin.

  He sighed and turned aside. Not far from The Hog’s front wheels was a two by four jutting from a pile of rubble, sixteen-penny nails writhing up from one of its ends like a clutch of armored worms. He paused to stomp the nails down flat with his heel, then picked the chunk of wood up and backhanded it toward a Dumpster near the curb. The wood cracked against the raised lid and
dropped neatly into the hopper.

  “Deal to Alomar to Boggs,” Emilio said, grinning. “All-Stars out of the inning.”

  Deal ignored him, still wondering if there was some way he might bring Janice around. He’d started a book for new parents, recently. There was a chapter called “Feathering the Nest,” and Deal had the uneasy feeling that he and Janice were battling it out exactly like the book said: “Mom,” circling the wagons, getting every last thing in order for the new arrival, “Dad” full of energy, ready to start new projects, take on the world.

  After four chapters of “Mom” and “Dad,” Deal had tossed the book in the trash. Still, the argument went on. And on. He would simply have to be patient. And persistent. She was upset right now, but it would pass. Stay the course, Deal. Stay the course.

  He sighed, kicked at the rubble in front of him. “Well,” he said finally, looking up at Emilio. “I have to go see about this car. You be around a while?”

  Emilio nodded, flicking his cigarette butt into a pile of wood scrap near the curb. Deal thought of the wood igniting, sparks leaping to the unfinished fourplex. He could take the insurance money, stiff all his subcontractors, flee to the Caribbean with Janice. Or better yet, take the cash to Penfield, see if they’d cut a minority position in the baseball ownership group, one-thirty-second of one-half of a percent, something like that.

  “You see the inspector,” he said to Emilio, “tell him.” Emilio was frowning. Deal broke off and began again. Nobody “told” the building inspector anything. “Ask him if he’d go ahead without me being here, okay?”

  Emilio nodded, but his expression was doubtful. “Maybe he wants to see you.”

  Deal shook his head. “I already saw him, Emilio. He’s taken care of.”

  Emilio shrugged. “Maybe he forgot.”

  Deal took a deep breath. Emilio was just trying to be helpful, reminding him to expect the worst. It was a philosophy you took for granted in the construction business.

  It would be perfectly reasonable for the inspector to forget the bill he’d palmed on his last visit. Protocol held that the hundred would cover Deal through the plumbing and electrical stages, but it was always possible for the inspector to “forget.” And without the inspector’s approval of the various steps along the way, the project was dead. Deal himself might defy a red tag and keep on working, but his subcontractors never would. It would cost them ever after, on every job in the county.

  “I’ll try to get back by noon,” Deal said, finally.

  “Okay,” Emilio said, “I’m just going for a cafecito.” He started for his truck as Deal swung himself back into The Hog.

  One little coffee, Deal thought. That meant Emilio was probably gone for the day. He eased The Hog down off the curb in reverse, then dropped into low without bothering with the brake. There was a sickening clank as the gears caught, then The Hog shuddered and began to inch forward.

  “What’s wrong with your car?” Emilio called.

  “See you in a couple of hours,” Deal answered. He waved at Emilio, tapping experimentally on the brakes as he moved off. The pedal sank smoothly to the floor.

  ***

  The Hog was in actuality a 1982 Seville that had been converted to an El Camino, its rear seat and trunk removed and replaced by a shallow pickup bed. Its former owner was a man named Cal Saltz, an old friend of Deal’s father who’d owned a string of used-car lots up and down U.S. 441 in Broward (“Come on down and see Crazy Cal”).

  Saltz had taken an interest in Thoroughbred racing and bought a horse farm on the edge of the Everglades. He had the Seville converted and used it to haul tack and feed out when he visited the place on weekends. Saltz liked gentleman farming so much that he determined to build a house on the place. He engaged an architect to draw plans based on the Ewing spread in “Dallas” and hired Deal to build it for him.

  Deal was about halfway through the project when Saltz went bankrupt, his successful car operations overwhelmed by a long streak of losers at the track. Deal got out with enough to pay off his subs, and the Seville, which Saltz, having no further use for, had thrown in.

  Deal, whose own fortunes had begun to slide about the same time, had used it for his work truck ever since. It was Janice who christened it “The Hog.” She favored small foreign-built cars and was fond of pointing out the surveys that showed how much of America had come to agree with her. Deal, on the other hand, would drive twenty miles to avoid buying Japanese nails for his jobs. In any event, The Hog had functioned well, until the episode with the brakes.

  It was almost noon by the time Deal swung onto the lot of the dealership. To Deal, who had grown up at a time when men who drove Ford pickups would readily fist fight the owners of Chevys, Surf Motors was an anomaly, more of an empire than a dealership. The place sprawled over several blocks on both sides of Surf Boulevard just north of downtown, and a series of huge signs advised that you could buy lines from Chrysler, Ford, and GM on the premises, not to mention Saab, Maserati, and VW. Deal wondered how it was possible.

  He snaked through the complex series of turns toward the proper service bays, twice warning drivers out of his way with blasts from the mighty after-market air horn Saltz had installed in The Hog.

  As he approached “Customer Accommodation,” an awning-covered area flanked by rows of potted Queen Anne palms, Deal spotted the service manager darting inside the bays. He gave another blast on the horn and jerked up on the emergency brake. The Hog’s wheels locked again and the car went into a leftward hook, gliding over the smooth finished concrete as if it were ice. It finished up just short of the first attendant’s counter, clipping one of the twenty-foot Queen Annes, which fell over with a crash.

  The attendant was moving warily from behind her counter when Deal got out of his car. A woman who had been dropping off a yellow convertible stood braced in front of her car as if she’d been willing to shield it with her own body.

  The service manager hurried out from the service bays. When he saw The Hog, he stopped short. “What the fuck?” he said. He turned to Deal, a look of disbelief on his face.

  It seemed to take him a minute to comprehend. “What’s wrong with you coming in here like that?” he said, finally. He was a dark-complexioned kid in his late twenties, maybe four inches shorter than Deal’s six feet. But his shoulders swelled inside the blazer they made him wear, and his neck was as thick as his blocky head. It looked as if he were deep into steroids.

  Deal knew he cut no imposing figure. He carried a hundred and ninety pounds, maybe, but he was big-boned, and weight seemed to get lost on him, a trait Janice envied. “Five pounds on me and it goes right to my ass. It looks like I ate cement,” she’d moan, even though Deal liked the feel of her flesh.

  Deal stepped forward and took the service manager by the arm, steering him quickly toward The Hog. The guy tried to pull away, a surprised look coming over his face when he realized he wouldn’t be able to, not without some serious effort. Deal hadn’t been pounding a whole lot of nails lately, but years of guiding a twenty-ounce hammer, thousands of blows a day, had left him with a grip you couldn’t build at Scandinavia. He could feel the muscles through the guy’s coat, all right, but he wasn’t even squeezing. He brought them to the driver’s window and pointed in at the raised emergency lever.

  “Those brakes you’ve been trying to fix. You haven’t got it right yet,” Deal said.

  The guy looked up at him. “You going to let go of my arm now?”

  Deal let go. “I’m sorry about the palm tree,” he said. A pair of lot boys had righted the tree, only to have the pot disintegrate. The dirt had fallen away from the nearly rootless base and the two of them struggled with the thing as it swayed in the breeze off the nearby bay. “I couldn’t get stopped, okay?”

  The service manager gave him a look. Finally he nodded. He turned and shouted at the lot boys. “Get that fucking thing out of here.”

  The two lot boys looked at each other, th
en started dragging the tree off. The service manager waved his hand at the woman who was still braced in front of her convertible. “Sorry about the language,” he said, then turned back to stare at The Hog.

  “Yeah,” he said finally, making it seem a big effort. “I remember this thing. You got a lot of after-market stuff on a car, you have trouble, know what I mean?”

  “There’s nothing after-market about the brake system,” Deal said evenly.

  The service manager shook his head without looking at Deal. “These body shop guys,” he said, “they come over here from Coconutville, you don’t know what they screw up.”

  “Look,” Deal said. “Nobody but you has touched those brakes. Ever.” Deal felt his breath going flaky, had to stop. There was a little pinging sensation at his temples.

  “I nearly died out there on the freeway a few minutes ago.” The kid was still eyeing The Hog, shaking his head.

  Deal stepped in front of him. “I want you to fix my brakes. I already paid you something like five hundred dollars and the brakes still don’t work. Do you understand me?”

  The service manager glanced up at him. “You got an attitude, right?”

  Deal looked around. The blond woman with the yellow convertible and the young service attendant were watching him warily. They’d already pegged him a maniac, a probable substance abuser. He wanted to deck this punk, wanted to plant him alongside the palms where you could see him anytime you came in, wave, ask “How you doin’, Carlos, miss the workouts at the gym?”

  He forced himself into ultracalm, then turned back to the service manager. “This is my only transportation,” Deal said. “I’d like to get it fixed. You think you can help me?”

  The manager studied him, looked back at the car, chewed on the inside of his cheek. Finally, he nodded. “Sure,” he said. “Step right over there. Lucy’ll get you written up.”