Bone Key Read online

  “Maybe it’s the beginning of history,” Deal said.

  “So you’re as sweet as ever, too,” she said.

  Deal felt his ears burning. “That Joni Mitchell song,” he said, searching for something to say. “‘Carey,’ right?”

  She nodded.

  “My wife used to play it to death,” he said. “But I never heard it sound like that.”

  She smiled and lifted her glass. “Your wife?”

  “Janice.” Deal nodded. “And I have a daughter who’s nine. Isabel.”

  “Nice name,” she said. “I’d always pictured you with a brood.”

  He shrugged. “I was an only child. Maybe that’s how things work.”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “How about you? Did you ever get married?”

  She matched his shrug, then finished her wine. “I read about your father,” she said after a moment. “I was really sorry. I should have written.”

  “My old man liked you,” he told her. “But it’s okay. I appreciate your thoughts.”

  “And your mom?”

  “She died shortly after. She just seemed to lose interest, you know?”

  “He was something else, your father.”

  “Something else and a half,” Deal said, finding he could smile about it. There had once been a grand and glorious DealCo Construction, as there had once been a larger-than-life Barton Deal who guided that firm. If Annie Dodds had read the papers at the time of his old man’s death, she probably assumed that he had died a suicide, like most people still did. He thought about setting her straight, but it was a lot longer a story than they had time for.

  “So where’s your wife?” Annie asked brightly, glancing around the room.

  Deal swirled the wine in his glass, wondering how to respond. “She’s in Colorado,” he said finally. “At an ashram.”

  Annie stared at him. “I detect a certain judgmental quality there.”

  “Ashrams aren’t my thing,” he said. He gave her another Driscoll shrug, about a hundred code words wrapped up in that one, he thought. “We’re separated,” he added finally. “It’s a long story.”

  “It usually is,” she said mildly.

  He thought about going further, but decided against it. Why not ask her to sing “Melancholy Baby” while he was at it? “How about you?” he said. “You’re doing well?”

  She glanced at the bandstand, where the piano player was back, getting himself settled, cracking his fingers in front of him like a man with important business to take care of. “It’s not the Rainbow Room,” she said. When she turned back to him, she was smiling. “But I like my life.”

  She had a final sip of her wine and slid off her stool, pausing with her hand on his arm. “So, duty calls,” she said. “Are you going to be in town for a while?”

  “I go back to Miami in the morning,” he said. “How long’s your engagement here?”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “It depends on how soon I kill the piano player,” she said.

  Deal laughed. “Maybe I could buy you a drink, after you’re finished, I mean.”

  She stared at him for a moment before she answered. “I wish I could, John.”

  He felt the pressure of her hand on his arm and glanced down. Fine-boned fingers, a cool palm, its pressure light but steady. He was trying to remember the last time someone had touched him that way. “I wish you could, too,” he said, as the piano player began an overloud introduction to “New York, New York.”

  “You’re really going to sing that?” he asked, thinking of the soulful renditions he’d heard her do.

  “We worked out a compromise,” she said, glancing at the stage. “He gets to choose the lead number for every set, the rest is up to me.” She leaned forward to give him a peck on the cheek. “It’s good to see you,” she told him.

  “Thanks for the wine,” he said, lifting his glass.

  But she was already hurrying away toward the stage, gliding between the tables like smoke.

  Chapter Four

  In his dream, Deal was skiing down a steep mountainside in Colorado, though there was no snow on the rocky slope and a great empty chasm yawned ahead. Still, he was digging into the gravel-strewn mountainside with his ski poles, pushing hard for more speed, his nose keen to the rushing wind like a beagle’s. He had just reached the lip of the chasm for liftoff and had glanced down to see snowy slopes far below, cheering crowds lining a landing area, when it occurred to him that he had never been on skis before, knew nothing of how he’d gotten involved in this competition, and, worst of all, had at least a thousand feet to fall.

  “Parachute,” he called, his voice lost in the thin mountain air, jerking frantically at his chest for a rip cord that wasn’t there.

  “Shoot who?” someone answered, and Deal came up from his dream like a drowning man clawing to the surface.

  “Russell?” Deal said, blinking at the dim light that leaked in through his undraped windows. Russell Straight stood at the foot of his bed, wearing a fresh T-shirt and shorts, a cup of coffee in his hand. “How’d you get in here?” Deal asked, still blinking away his dream.

  Russell gestured toward the door. “Your door was cracked open. I thought maybe you were already out front. Then I heard somebody hollerin’ about a shooting.”

  Deal swung his legs over the bed and glanced blearily at his door. He hadn’t even managed to get the door closed when he’d come in last night? He sat for a moment, gathering his thoughts. He’d stayed on at the bar for a bit, wondering if Annie might return, but the moment she’d finished the next set, she’d ducked behind the curtains of the stage and disappeared.

  The piano player hammered on, but Deal was determined to enjoy his evening. He’d finished the wine, then hailed a cab to take him across the island to Louie’s, where he’d had another bottle of red with a dinner he could only vaguely remember eating. He’d walked the mile or so back to the Pier House, though along the way it seemed there had been a rest stop at an open-air bar where a Joan Baez type was singing folk songs, a bit of mournful music laced with cognac, if Deal could remember correctly.

  He glanced down, saw that he was still wearing his watch. “What time is it?” he said, glancing up at Russell.

  Russell shook his head. “Time to go, if we’re going to run,” the big man said.

  “Give me a minute,” Deal said, feeling a twitch in one of his eyes. He pushed himself up toward the bathroom. He shook out three aspirins from the bottle in his travel kit and filled a glass from the tap. He was standing above the toilet, urinating and chugging the water at the same time, when it occurred to him that he’d formed a kind of perpetual-motion machine and might never be able to leave that spot. He put the glass down, flushed, and pulled on a pair of swimming trunks and a T-shirt he’d left on the back of the door.

  “I brought you a coffee,” Russell said when he came back out. He pointed to another cup on a table that sat by the windows. The room was on the second level of the hotel, affording a somewhat more distant view of the harbor channel, the water still steely at this hour, framed by palm fronds that waved gently in a post-dawn breeze.

  “Thanks,” Deal said. When he bent down to retrieve his sneakers from under the table, his head felt as if it had doubled in size. He sat in one of the chairs as he tied his laces, taking enough time for his skull to deflate.

  “You had yourself a night,” Russell observed.

  Deal glanced up at him. “I read a good book, worked out at the gym, ate some yogurt and bean sprouts at the health food store. I was in bed by nine.”

  “That’s what I did, too,” Russell said, stretching his arms luxuriantly. He gave Deal a look. “You about ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be,” Deal said, and pushed himself up from his chair.

  ***

  “You ever find out who sent us the wine?” Russell asked, as they chugged along beneath a leafy canopy formed by banyan limbs.

  “It
remains a mystery,” Deal heard himself say. They’d been at it for about twenty minutes now and his joints were finally starting to lubricate. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t want to talk about Annie with Russell. Maybe it was just that his breath was still a bit hard to come by.

  Russell gave him a sidelong glance. “Was probably Oliver Stone, trying to apologize for standing you up again.”

  “Franklin Stone,” Deal told him. He forced himself to pick up the pace, leading the way down a sidewalk flanking a broad, brick-paved boulevard lined on both sides by stately, turn-of-the-century manor houses—like a little stretch of Savannah right here in the Tropics, he thought. A couple of the houses had been turned into law offices, he noted, another was Hemingway’s former home, now a museum. Others looked as though they might still be lived in.

  “I know guys living on the street would pay for what you’re sweating out,” Russell observed, pounding up beside him. “I wouldn’t get close to any open flames if I was you.”

  “You’re a funny guy, Russell,” Deal said, trying to keep his eyes fixed on an indeterminate spot just ahead. He was beginning to feel human again, the pounding at the base of his skull abating at last. He’d finally managed to rid himself of those final dream images—tumbling head over heels, an ever-faster spiral of doom toward the frozen Colorado slopes below—but those scenes had been replaced by an equally disconcerting set of images that alternated between what Russell Straight must have been doing with their cocktail waitress last night and Deal’s speculations on what Annie Dodds might look like slipping out of that cocktail dress she’d been painted into.

  Once, when they’d been dating, he’d gone to Annie’s house while her parents were off at a party. They’d made popcorn, sneaked a couple of beers from the bar refrigerator, watched television on the family room couch, and necked, until finally Annie had pulled away, given him an oddly solemn look, then led him up to her room.

  She’d undressed by the moonlight that fell through her open blinds, guided Deal’s hands to her luminous breasts…and then, the sound of a motor in the driveway just below had put an end to everything. They’d barely made it back downstairs in time to stash the beer bottles and arrange themselves chastely on the couch before her folks had come in—only the fact that her parents had been arguing and were too distracted to notice much had saved them, Deal thought.

  And he still couldn’t say whether his heart had been pounding more from the fear of their near-escape or the prospect of what had been about to happen between Annie and himself. He’d been a virgin at the time, and had assumed Annie was as well. But maybe that was just his guileless nature, Deal thought, remembering what she’d said to him last night.

  Twenty years since this woman had seen him last, what’s the first thing she remembers about him? All that had happened to him these past few years, the things he’d had to do…and he still came off guileless? Maybe he needed an image consultant, he thought, glancing at Russell Straight, who jogged silently alongside him.

  There came a strange groaning sound from somewhere in front of them, and Deal swiveled his gaze back to their route. A few yards up the street, an ancient Pinto labored to a stop at the curb, its door swinging open at their approach.

  “Yo, my man,” he heard a familiar voice pipe up.

  It was the kid who’d approached him at the Pier House emerging from the driver’s seat, his hand raised to hail them. The Pinto’s engine was hiccuping with preignition, as if it were threatening to bolt without its owner. Russell gave the kid a curious look, but Deal only increased his pace.

  He heard scuffling footsteps behind them, then the kid’s breathless voice swirling in their wake. “You guys like to work out, too, huh? This is my selfsame route. How ’bout that?”

  Deal glanced over his shoulder. Despite the heat and humidity, the kid wore a long-sleeved sweatshirt with FUBU stenciled in red across its chest, along with a pair of oversized gym shorts that would have been baggy on Russell Straight. There was a golf visor jammed upside down and sideways atop his Afro, the bill angled skyward. The kid’s skinny legs pumped furiously in an effort to catch up, and Deal stared incredulously at what was on his feet: dark socks reaching halfway up his calves, along with a pair of woven-leather Italian loafers, their smooth soles slipping against the pavement with every step.

  “You know this guy?” Russell said, glancing at Deal.

  “We’ve met,” Deal said. He didn’t want to waste breath on the extended version.

  “Sorry I had to take off all sudden like that,” the kid was saying, pounding at their heels now.

  Deal thought of several possible responses, but delivered none.

  “How you doin’, bro?” the kid added toward Russell.

  “Who wants to know?” Russell said. His expression suggested grave suspicion.

  “I saw you guys leaving the hotel,” the kid said, moving abreast of Deal now. They were less than fifty yards from where the Pinto still chugged and jerked at curbside, but already the kid seemed winded. “I was hoping we could talk someplace private.”

  Deal shook his head, an awkward movement while running. “I don’t need any gold coins,” Deal said.

  “Hey, it’s not about that, man,” the kid said, his mouth popping for air now.

  “He’s got a watch, too,” Russell Straight muttered. “You better breeze on, cool breeze.”

  “Just listen up for a second,” the kid said. He reached for Deal’s arm, as he had the day before, and Deal pushed his hand away. The move threw the kid off balance, his shoes sliding in a sandy patch where the pavement curved out of the residential section and into a wooded area. The kid’s legs tangled, then went out from under him. He flew over the curb and landed in a tangle of bougainvillea hedge marking someone’s property line.

  “Ow. Shit! Motherfucker!”

  Deal glanced over his shoulder, a little guilty at the sight of the kid trying to extricate himself from the clutches of the thorny bush. In truth, he hadn’t meant to hurt him. “Maybe we ought to help,” he said to Russell, ready to turn back.

  “Are you kidding?” Russell said. “Leave him in the brier patch where he belongs.”

  Deal nodded uncertainly, then gave one last backward glance. The kid was out of the bushes now, panting on his hands and knees, watching like a forlorn hound as Deal and Russell moved around the curve of the tree-lined road and out of sight. Deal pointed ahead, where a sign marked a bike trail through a thick stand of Australian pines. They’d taken the trail the day before and found that it dumped out onto a stretch of road paralleling a section of public beach for a bit before circling them back toward the Pier House.

  “I saw the dude outside the hotel this morning,” Russell offered after a bit of quiet pounding along the narrow path. “I didn’t think much of it at the time.”

  Deal glanced over. “Why would you?”

  Russell lifted his brows. “A man needs to keep his eyes open,” he said. “You never know what might happen.”

  Deal nodded. He might have dismissed it as an ex-inmate’s paranoia except for his own sorry experiences. Truth be told, he should probably have become a bit more paranoid himself. Maybe that was the trouble with living in paradise, he thought, glancing through a screen of pines toward the palm-lined beach ahead of them. Wallow in all this beauty every day of your life, you tend to forget what might lurk in the nooks and crannies, or what crawls out once the sun goes down.

  “What’s all this about gold coins, anyway?” Russell asked, cutting into his thoughts.

  Deal sighed. “The guy came on to me in the bar last night,” he said, “while you were gone.”

  Russell looked over to see if there was any underlying message there.

  “The bartender told me the kid’s got a racket selling phony coins from this old Spanish shipwreck,” Deal said. “He chased the kid off before he could get into it.”

  “Buried treasure, huh? That boy needs to get a better racket.”
/>
  Deal turned his hands up in a “who knows?” gesture as he plowed on. He put on a burst that led the way out of the pines and onto the gravel shoulder of the highway, flushing a group of scavenging gulls and sending them squawking and wheeling into the sky.

  The early breeze off the ocean, blocked beneath the canopy of the pines, bathed him now in a blend of intoxicating scents—salt spray, stranded seaweed, sulfur, fish parts, and gull droppings, who knew what all. It was the Gulf Stream flowing just off these shores, and like Hemingway said, you could find bits and pieces of every aspect of civilization carried along in that boiling current. The Stream was actually a mighty, mid-ocean river that ran from South America through the Caribbean, carrying its warm waters all the way to the North Atlantic, where its heat softened the stern European climate and made the British Isles habitable.

  He turned his face square into the breeze and lengthened his stride, the rhythm of the run and the rush of the wind threatening to lift him out of his physical self. His earliest memories were those of the beach and staring out over these waters in permanent wonder. Poking along the ragged mangrove inlets in his dinghy, out on the swells in the Miss Miami Priss whenever his old man stole a day from the business for time on the bounding main.

  The smells he breathed then, as now, were those of promise and adventure. Pirate ships and plunder. Sailfish, swordfish, and marlin. Distant ports of call.

  The wind is in from Africa, he thought. Dear God. The night that Annie had told him she was deserting him, and Florida, for New York City, he’d driven out to the end of the road on Key Biscayne in a daze. He’d pulled his old man’s Chrysler half off the side of the road, climbed over the barricade at the entrance to the state park, and made his way to the beach, where he stayed until morning, watching the endless sweep of the lighthouse beacon and staring out to sea, wondering how anyone might leave such a world behind.

  He’d bought into it all as a kid. Atlantis. The Bermuda Triangle. Sunken treasure. Hell, he thought, a part of him still did. He shouldn’t have been so hard on the kid who wanted to sell him stolen gold. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum. He could have pieces of eight jingling in his pockets right now.