Raw Deal Page 5

  “The agouti.” He heard Torreno’s voice from somewhere beyond the light. “Among the largest of the rodents, but quite docile. You need not fear the agouti.”

  Rafael clung to the fence, his legs leaden. He’d been drugged, he realized, and he cursed himself. He’d felt safe once he was sure the money had been transferred—a terrible mistake. He shook his head slowly back and forth, trying to clear away the haziness.

  “You have lost your way,” Torreno was saying. “You have stumbled into a place where you should not be.”

  Rafael felt words forming in his throat, but his tongue seemed too thick to speak. He blinked his eyes into focus, stared out through the fabric of the fence, but instead of Torreno, saw the cadaverous Coco striding forward, a bucket in hand. The mulatto stopped, drew the bucket back, flung its contents at him. Rafael staggered back as the stuff washed over him. The stench choked him, the coppery taste of blood turning his stomach inside out.

  “You are a loose thread in a tapestry that is nearly complete,” Torreno said. “But take heart. If there is such a thing as karma, then you have acquitted yourself well. Farewell,” he said. Then the light went out.

  ***

  When the scream came again, this time much closer, Rafael knew it was no bird. He had been soaked in the blood of some hapless prey, and the predator was coming to call.

  His own brain had dropped down a notch, to a more primitive level. Puma, he thought. Or worse, because it was so much bigger, el jaguar. His reason argued that it could not be, there were no such creatures in his homeland. And if there were no jungle cats there, what would Torreno be doing with them here?

  Another scream as Rafael considered the question. The agouti had fled in a squealing frenzy, and Rafael followed.

  He staggered away through the thick undergrowth, praying he was headed in the right direction. He had no hope of outrunning the big cat, but if he could reach the waters of the bay, he might swim out to safety.

  The thought of the lungfish did not deter him in the slightest. They seemed like creatures of light compared to the thing that stalked him now. He would frolic with the lungfish, stuff them gladly down his shirt, if only he could reach that water.

  He felt his feet sucking in deeper mud, then nearly sobbed with gratitude as his next step brought water inside his shoes. He tore through the last screen of mangroves, saw the broad sheet of water reflected in the starlight. He heard a howl of outrage behind him, a howl that faded as he dove forward into the brackish waters of the bay and began to swim, his movements sluggish, but carrying him out to safety.

  When he was sure he was out of danger, he brought his head up, began to tread water. The big cat’s screaming had stopped. Perhaps it had already slunk away in defeat. Or maybe there had been no cat at all, just another strange bird, some rat with a voice. Perhaps this was all some insane test Torreno had devised for him. In any case, he was safe. The water had also revived him a bit. He was feeling refreshed, almost exhilarated.

  What he saw then made his heart stop.

  It was coming toward him, impossibly, the huge yellow feline head no more than a dozen feet away. He saw the ripples where the big cat’s shoulders roiled noiselessly beneath the surface.

  It could not be, he thought. But there was no denying the creature that moved inexorably toward him. He could hear short powerful chuffs from the cat now, breath from the pistons of hell. He turned, was thrashing madly in the water, trying desperately to get away. It was like swimming inside a terrible dream—he knew what he intended, but his movements seemed impossibly slow.

  He made one clean stroke, a second, then a third. He saw a sliver of moon slip out from behind a cloud, saw a ragged mangrove island a few hundred yards ahead. He was a strong swimmer, after all. He had begun to feel the slightest stirrings of hope when the first blow struck him.

  It felt like ice at first. Streaks of ice coursing down his back. There was numbness, except for the drag of something that seemed to hang in tatters from his back. Cloth, he told himself. Cloth. A narrow miss. He tried another stroke, but something was wrong: his arms would not respond. He felt slippery things bumping into him then, multitudes of them, the water so thick with the long, coiling creatures that he thought he might rise and walk upon them to safety.

  But he could not move. He felt his face drift down into the water, felt the rough, rasping kiss of a hundred tiny mouths about his mouth.

  Then, with the pull of the warm, salty water, came a hint of fire. He thought of Marielena Marquez, remembered the touch of her flesh beneath him, wondered what she had felt when the blast took her. There was another strike from the cat, a rough jolt sending him completely under, as the pain from the first blow finally erupted. It would have been much quicker for her, or at least that is what he prayed.

  He felt liquid fill his throat. There was a third blow then, and a fourth. The water boiled now with scavenging lungfish come to join the harvest. He thought of Marielena once again, imagined the flash of hatred she must have felt for him…for she must have known how he had betrayed her.…

  And soon enough he could not think at all.

  Chapter 6

  The television was a tiny black-and-white, which made it worse somehow, the black and white. Why was that, Tommy wondered momentarily, then forgot he had wondered.

  Stand at the window of the apartment—surrounded by the damp heat of a South Florida August night, palmetto bugs whispering past your ears like tiny bats to bang against the screen, tree frogs cranking it out like no tomorrow—look in, you’d think you were peeping on an ordinary guy: a Nike T-shirt, khaki shorts, and beach flops, popcorn in a supermarket bag in his lap as he stared at the tiny screen.

  Slender guy, but well built, nice-looking, hair trimmed neatly, almost too short, but even that in style these days. A friendly face, unlined from a distance. You’d have to get up close to see that he was fifty, maybe fifty-five. Tanned as he was, that easy smile, short fluff of hair falling across his forehead, he might pass for thirty-five. Nice guy, Tommy. Everybody likes Tommy. Harmless old Tommy, get your finger out of your nose.

  “Tommy…”

  He hears his name called, looks up at the window in surprise, but of course there’s no one there. He’s used to that. Used to the phantoms who come calling, though they never hang around for long.

  He turns back to the set. It happens every night, if he doesn’t remember to get away in time. Right after all the programs go off.

  The song…the…star-spangled something…comes on, big hairy band whoomping it out, the flag flapping in some made-up breeze somewhere, and then the pictures they beam along. The nice ones at first. It always starts out nice:

  Kids swimming in a creek, a panorama of some mountains, a seacoast with cliffs and waves, somebody’s grandma pulling a pie out of an oven, an old man with his arm around a kid’s shoulders, big sunset in the background. Tommy feels an arm around his shoulders, reaches up to pat the hand that’s never there.

  It won’t stay nice like this, he knows it. But it’s like being caught in a bad dream. Too late to do anything about it. He can’t get up. Can’t go turn off the set. He just can’t.

  Maybe if he had one of those kind of TVs with a button in your hand…he could just push it and wink it out. But no, he wouldn’t be able to stop it even then.

  “Tommy?” The voice all sweetness and light. “Look, Tommy.”

  He doesn’t want to look, but he can’t help it. This is the part, the part where it starts. Rockets. Red. Glare. What words are those? Where from? Nobody’s singing.

  On the screen are the soldiers. The jungle. They are slogging through water. That guy is tired. Tommy closes his eyes. Sees him step on something. Something sharp, up through his foot, or is it the exploding thing, the guy going up in the air like a doll some kid tore and tore, and tossed away?

  He opens his eyes and the soldier is still slogging through water, of course. He just doesn’t know yet. There a
re people on shore watching. Little people in pajamas. One man smiling, all his teeth rotting away.

  If he could just get up and go to bed, Tommy thinks. But he sees the little pajama man turned upside down now, dangling from the end of a rope, the rope tied to a bent-over tree limb and someone pulling the limb down and the little man’s head goes down in the water where something is thrashing and the water turns red.

  Bursting. In. Air.

  No little man on screen at all, of course. It’s actually a black man, speaking to a crowd from a balcony. A huge crowd. Happy people shouting back, excited and crying, and in the back, police with dogs, and other—different—people shouting and the dogs lunging for them. Then the black man on the balcony falters, throws his hands to his throat as he staggers down.

  “Tom-my…” the voice croons, but Tommy will not look.

  Our. Still. Flag. Is. There.

  Tommy looks again, finds he’s on the screen now. Up there on screen, at the bow of a torpedo boat that bobs in a gentle swell, just off a beach where palm trees wave. Palm trees, just before dawn, blue skies, and a landing craft dumping men in camouflage fatigues, a dozen or so, onto the white sand. The men have scarcely started toward the cover of the trees when the first explosions come. Bright orange flowers that bloom black and toss men skyward, and then the planes that roar as if from nowhere, out over the canopy of trees to strafe men, crying out, flailing helpless in the surf. The sea churns with shrapnel and blood.

  Tommy waits for the planes to dive upon his boat, but they do not, of course. One jet skims the waves nearby, dipping its wings as if in salute, then banks away toward the beach, guns blazing again, and Tommy feels a hand on his shoulder. He turns from the slaughter on shore to the big, dark-skinned man who smiles and embraces him. For a job well done, Tommy knows, but he cannot feel proud. This is bad. This is the worst. Thing. And he is to blame.

  Who is this man, whom he does not trust? What has Tommy done?

  ***

  “Jesus Christ,” comes the big, bad voice then, a voice from another world.

  Tommy still sitting in his chair, of course, right here in this pretty place they call Florida, making it all up. Popcorn in his lap, but he isn’t hungry anymore. There’s someone banging on his door. He can’t move. He’s crying. Can’t. He just can’t help it.

  “Jesus Christ,” says the voice that’s banging. “Please. Turn. That. Fucking. Thing. Down.”

  And this is how it goes.

  ***

  “Hell, he’s got to have that much sense,” Driscoll was saying. The ex-cop stood on Deal’s patio waving a cigarette around in the turgid morning air. He wore a too-small T-shirt bearing the likeness of a drooling sow along with the legend PIG—AND PROUD OF IT. The rest of his wardrobe included a pair of plaid bermudas with boxer shorts sagging below the hems, black socks, tire-tread sandals.

  Deal rubbed his face, wondering if the coffee was finished perking yet. Maybe it had been a mistake suggesting that Driscoll rent one of his units after he retired. He needed more tenants like Mrs. Suarez. Ones you’d hardly know were there.

  They were talking about Tommy, or at least Driscoll was. From the moment he’d opened the front door, Deal hadn’t been able to get much more than a grunt out. “You telling me you never hear that TV?” Driscoll asked again.

  Deal shrugged. “I’m a deep sleeper, I guess.”

  “Well, it might as well be going off in my bedroom, every goddamn night,” Driscoll said. “Maybe it’s the way this place is built.”

  Deal gave him a look. Driscoll must have sensed he’d crossed some kind of line. He harrumphed, took a drag on his cigarette, looked out toward the side yard where Tommy was patiently weeding one of the flower beds. There was a big spot of sweat between Tommy’s shoulders, turning the institutional gray of his long-sleeved shirt nearly black.

  Deal guessed it was about eight o’clock on this Sunday morning. A few fleecy clouds hung motionless in the east, way out over the Atlantic. Over eighty, heading for ninety-two, the humidity already off the top of the scale. First a hurricane. In December, a freak cold snap. Now the hottest March on record. Normal Florida weather.

  “Look, Driscoll, what do you want me to do, throw him out?”

  Driscoll glanced back at him, his eyes hurt. But Deal could see the idea taking hold in Driscoll’s mind, Tommy sitting on his duffel bag out on the sidewalk, as dazed as he’d been the afternoon he’d moved in.

  ***

  Homer Tibbets had showed up a few weeks ago, Tommy in tow. Little Homer, a dwarf, maybe four-six, looking like a kid except for his adult’s head and torso, holding six-foot Tommy’s hand. Like a kid and his father come to collect for the United Way or something. Only Homer was the adult in this case and big Tommy was the child.

  “I wundered if you still had that apartment,” Homer said. No hello, no how you been, though Deal hadn’t seen him in months, his voice, as always, surprising in its depth and resonance. Tommy goonying around like he’d been snatched out of some other dimension.

  “You read about him,” Homer said, noticing Deal’s eyes on Tommy.

  Deal shook his head. He had no idea what Homer was talking about.

  “I found him under I-395,” Homer insisted. “With those guys froze to death.” Homer pronounced the word like debt.

  It had begun to sink in. Something on TV, four homeless men, part of the growing brigade flooding downtown, left without shelter to huddle under a freeway overpass on the coldest night in a half-century. Three dead, one in Jackson Memorial, social agencies raising hell. There’d been no mention of Homer Tibbets in the stories Deal had seen.

  “You found those guys?” Deal asked.

  “I was on my way to the dealership.” Homer shrugged. He was referring to the downtown location of Surf Motors. Homer was a lot boy there, had been since the days when Deal’s father had traded at the place.

  “They were all laid out right there by the sidewalk.” Homer shook his head. “Must have froze to death up top, where they like to hang out, slid down the concrete bank in the night. They had frost on their faces, you know that?”

  “Christ, Homer.” Deal tried to imagine it. You stumbled across things like that in the Gulag, in screwed-up Third World countries, not in Miami. You didn’t find people dead of exposure on your way to work in Miami.

  “Then I noticed this one,” Homer continued. “He looked like the Michelin Man, all puffed up. I thought maybe it’s what happens when you freeze or something. Then I realize he’s still alive.”

  Deal found his eyes locked on Tommy’s. Clear blue eyes, guileless as a child’s. The man smiled and Deal nodded back.

  “Next thing,” Homer said, “I ran out in front of a guy in a Mercedes, talking on a car phone—really pissed him off—made him call 911.

  “So while we’re waiting for the ambulance, I figure out why Tommy is all puffed up.” Homer tugged Tommy’s hand, proud. “He’d gone and stuffed a bunch of plastic bread wrappers down his pantlegs and shirt, for insulation. EMS guys said it’s what saved his life. So now we call him Tommy Holsum, on account of the bread wrappers, you know. He’s one smart cookie, Deal.”

  Tommy seemed to have drifted off somewhere, his gaze blank, his jaw slack, his head tilted as if he were tuning into a signal from a distant source.

  “Did you guys want to come inside?” Deal offered.

  “Funny you should ask that,” Homer said. And that’s how Tommy had come to stay.

  Homer had gone on to explain: City officials, already under fire for their shameful treatment of the homeless, had latched on to Tommy in a big way. Got him the best treatment at Jackson, some plastic surgeon from Utah flew down to save his fingers and toes, blah, blah, blah. Then they enrolled him in one of these programs for guys who aren’t exactly firing on all their cylinders, set him up with a job busing dishes, enrolled him in “life-enhancement” counseling. Now he needed a place to stay.

  “He ain’t al
l there, but he can cope in the mainstream, that’s what they tell me,” Homer said.

  “You want him to live in my building?” Deal asked.

  “Hey, I figure there’s worse places than Deal House, here. And HRS will pay. American money.”

  The truth was, Deal had been running an ad on his last unit for nearly four months without success. The figure from HRS was only fifty dollars under what he’d been listing.

  “But if you’re uncomfortable,” Homer said. “I mean, havin’ a retard around bothers you…”

  Homer rose, reached for Tommy, started for the door. Deal sighed and called them back.

  The next day, Deal was lugging Tommy’s duffel bag into the vacant apartment, showing him how this and that worked. Tommy with no name, no history, no speech, nodding, nodding, nodding. And remembering every last instruction.

  In fact, he’d proved to be a faultless tenant, eager to supplement his income by doing odd jobs around the fourplex, and the check from HRS came right on time. But now here was Driscoll, making life complicated.

  “You want me to do that?” Deal repeated. “Send him back to the home?”

  Driscoll groaned, rubbing the back of his neck with a meaty hand. “I’m just blowing off steam, Johnny. Maybe I ain’t got used to leisure or something.”

  Deal nodded, but Driscoll wouldn’t meet his gaze.

  “I’ll talk to him, okay?” Deal said.

  Driscoll nodded, staring off down the street where Mrs. Suarez, Deal’s other tenant, was out walking her dog. “Twenty-five years on the force, maybe I worked too much crowd control.”

  Deal shook his head, not sure what Driscoll was getting at. “I liked it. It was a free pass. I used to do all the university games, the Fish too.” Driscoll shrugged. “Now I wake up in the middle of the goddamned night, hear ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ it makes me want to jump up and salute, you know?”

  Deal laughed. “I could use some help on that Terrell job,” he said. “Long day of work out in the sun, you’d sleep like a baby.”