Done Deal Page 7

  She felt something give at her shoulder and then she was tumbling free, her face sliding along the slick inner surface of the wind-shield. It was pitch black now and she sent her hands scrambling frantically for the steering wheel, then the door frame.

  Something soft and bulky brushed past her face, and she recoiled. Just her purse, she told herself. The pressure was tremendous now, like gravity doubling, then doubling again, pressing her down and down with the tumbling, plummeting car. She grasped the door frame with her other hand and pulled herself forward, forcing her shoulders through the open window. The car was rolling again, threatening to flip her back inside, but she levered her foot against something hard and shoved with all her might.

  She felt her legs scrape over the sill and then there was a sudden sensation of weightlessness, and she knew that she was free. Free, but carried along in the grip of an incredible current.

  Her lungs were beginning to ache and she kicked and clawed at the dark water, as if there might be handholds that would lead her to the surface. Bright lights had begun to ping behind her eyes. Please, she thought, please. Give me the time.

  She tried to calm herself, tried to synchronize the movements of her arms and legs. Steady, steady, you can’t have gone that deep…

  And then she opened her eyes again and realized there was light. At first, only the merest sense of it, then a murky haze high above her, and then, mercifully, a wavering shaft of light in which she saw a hand churning through the water—her own—and finally, she burst to the surface, her lungs swelling with the sweetness of the air.

  She spun onto her back, letting the current carry her, grateful for the buoyancy of the saltwater. She was too weak to do more than paddle feebly, just enough to keep her head out of the water. She stared back toward the bridge, expecting to see the structure looming over her, and felt a jolt of fear when she saw that it had nearly disappeared, a mere blip on the sun-setting horizon behind her.

  She turned, choking as she went under for a moment, then came back up to see that she was being swept past the last reaches of the island where she lived, saw the few scrubby Australian palms that hung on in the park at the tip of land, then the jetties running out another hundred yards or so, and then the dark open sea where she’d be lost.

  She thrashed at the water in a panic at first, then forced herself to calm. Angle with the current, don’t fight against it, she told herself. She lunged up for breath, fell back, screamed inwardly at her own weakness.

  You will die, and no one will know what happened, just like your parents, although your mother had probably said something vicious to your father, something that got him to take his eyes off the road and stare across the front seat at her, and puzzled, see the look of terror on her face, maybe not even time for her to scream or him to turn and see what hit them…

  She kept her eyes shut firmly against the stinging water, fighting the panic, keeping her breathing steady, holding her feeble strokes as even as she could, although her head was spinning. Pray you haven’t cleared that jetty, girl. In a moment she would allow herself to steal a glimpse and see…and then she felt her knees bang into something solid.

  It was almost dark now, but she could see well enough. Well enough to grab hold of a chunk of tree limb that had lodged among the boulders of the jetty, pull herself up out of the water at last. She lay sprawled there for a moment, getting her breath, feeling the black swirling in her mind about to take over.

  She could not allow that. Lie here like a piece of driftwood, waiting for the tide to come back in and claim her after all this work. She could not.

  She forced herself to her hands and knees, clambered higher up the jumble of boulders. She slipped once, banging her head again, and felt another wave of blackness threaten her. She vomited into a crevice of rocks, lay gasping for a moment, then dragged herself up, onto the top of the pile.

  She was safe here, surely. She could see a listing picnic table in the sand a dozen yards away. A rusting trash can. An old tire. Kids came here to park at night. Someone would come by soon enough.

  She saw a jogger far down the beach. She closed her eyes a moment and when she opened them again, she realized he was coming her way. She struggled to her feet, cried out, “Here. Help. Please help.” And then fell back again.

  The boulder was warm at her cheek. Soft. Comforting. She wasn’t sure the man had heard her, but she didn’t care. She could rest here.

  She was fading in and out now. She heard the pounding of footsteps getting closer. The rasp of a runner’s breathing. Knew someone was standing over her and that she was saved. She smiled. She opened her eyes. And then she began to scream.

  ***

  “Naw, naw, naw,” Leon crooned, as he clamped his hand over the woman’s mouth. “You don’t want to be making all that noise. Wake up all the fishies and whatnot.”

  She was a fighter, all right, he had to give her that. And good looking, even in the shape she was now. He’d registered that, of course, when he saw her going over the side in the Seville, but he hadn’t had a whole lot of time to think about it.

  After the crash, he’d pulled the Electra on across the bridge and into some little park there by the water, trying to get it clear in his mind what he’d just done, how he was going to explain this one to Alcazar…

  …and about the time he had figured out that it must have been Deal’s old lady that he had managed to off, up she pops out of the water like a mermaid, and goes sailing out the channel.

  Still a little winded, he glanced back toward the barricade where he’d had to leave the car and start running alongside her. A mile, at least. Most he’d run since the day they’d carried him out of training camp and his knee still hurting like a bitch, like it hadn’t had all those years to heal.

  “Ow. Shit!” he yelled, having to pull his hand away. She’d managed to get her teeth into some bit of flesh on the web of his thumb, and he had to shift hands, stifle all that screaming again. Of course there was no one around to hear her, but it never hurt to be careful. Just a couple of minutes ago, for instance, he’d been torn: he kept hoping she’d just go under again, but she somehow managed to keep herself afloat. He’d about run out of land to follow her with, had drawn out his pistol, what he referred to as his chief attitude adjuster, was about to blow her out of the water once and for all, take a chance someone way off somewhere might hear rather than let her drift out to sea, and that’s when the current lost its grip and she started to make her way toward shore.

  He was watching her fight her way in when it happened, when he’d had his revelation, so to speak. Maybe it was watching her fight so hard, or maybe it was just that he had the time to get his thoughts in order, let him see how this might all work out to his benefit. And yea, the Lord sayeth, chicken shit will become chicken salad, mmmmm-hmmmmm.

  At the very least, it was lucky for him, unlucky for her, he thought, dragging her back down the rocks now to a place where he could keep his footing. She was still trying to bite, pounding at him with her fists, making grunty, angry noises deep in her throat. It wasn’t until her feet went thrashing back into the water that her tune changed—her eyes going wide and wild, the sounds she was making suddenly more like screams that couldn’t get out.

  So maybe she figured out what was coming, he thought. Add smart to being tough and good looking. Maybe she could even read his mind, knew exactly what he had in mind. Wouldn’t that be something? Kind of woman you would want, all right. Kind of woman you might do anything to have.

  He took a last look around, made sure there were no fishermen, no joggers, no kids out fucking on a beach towel he hadn’t noticed. No more screwups today, thank you kindly.

  He turned back to her, to those wide, pleading eyes, found himself giving her a kind of sorrowful nod, some kind of apology, he supposed. Then he plunged her head under the water and held her there.

  Chapter 7

  Of course, none of the subs had shown up at the fou
rplex, so the whole row with Janice had been wasted. Deal walked the entire seven miles to Surf Motors, found Janice’s VW parked under a sign that advertised something called a “Lexus.” By then, Deal was bone tired, too weary even to stop for dinner. He’d get home, shower, order in a pizza.

  He fished out his keys, found the spare for the VW, unlocked the door, which opened with a creak. He’d have to put something on that. Sure, in some of his free time.

  He was pawing around in the dying light, searching for the ignition switch when his gaze held on something across the street from the dealership: Homer, the little guy who’d driven him to the job, was sitting on a bus bench, his legs dangling in the air like a kid’s. He was leaning back, his head lolling as if he were exhausted too. A tough life for everybody, Deal thought, and knew that he would offer Homer a ride.

  Then, as he started the VW, a city bus passed southward down the boulevard. It drew up to the opposite curb, obliterating Deal’s view of Homer. When the bus drew away again, Homer was gone, replaced by a tall man in a baggy overcoat, a sleeping bag under one arm, a paper sack in the other. The guy stood wavering near the curb, then began to turn in a slow circle, shaking his head as if he were trying to understand how he had come to that place.

  “Good luck, pal,” Deal heard himself saying. And hurried away.

  ***

  He was stopped in a long line of traffic approaching the Mule Pass Bridge. It spanned an outlet from the Intracoastal out to the Atlantic, so it wasn’t unusual to encounter a backup while the bridge was raised, even at this hour. He checked his watch. Still, it was taking a hell of a long time to move. Maybe the bridge was stuck open. That’d be par for today’s course.

  Ahead and behind, other cars were pulling out of line, circling backward. They’d wind through the streets all the way out to Surf, then go north to the Broad Causeway, come back across the Intracoastal there, drop back down into condo canyon. That would be about twelve miles of driving to get to the very buildings that Deal could see glittering up ahead, separated from him by a few hundred yards of water and some parking lots. The thought of the extra driving made him want to weep.

  He missed his CB. If he were in The Hog, he could flip the scanner on, maybe catch somebody talking about the problem with the bridge. Here, in Janice’s car, he had “Trevor” introducing some bogus jazz on the evening show. Closer to elevator music than jazz, however. Plenty of horns, lush background vocals, a disco beat. Play Miles Davis, their transformers would melt, he thought. There was a tape jutting partway out of the radio and he pushed it into the player.

  There was a moment of silence, then something that sounded like a great wind whooshing over the steppes. The wind calmed, was replaced with the sound of rushing water, maybe a waterfall. Then some random chimes. Deal stared at the radio.

  A man’s voice came on, soothing, mellow, untouched by the troubles of any world. “Inner peace,” the voice intoned, as if a question were being answered, “the keys to inner peace.” Deal was dumbfounded. “We recognize our essential self, our strength of being, and from that core…” Deal snapped the radio off and the car was silent except for the whirl of the air-conditioning. What the fuck was Janice listening to?

  He snatched the tape out, searched for the dome light, remembered he was in a soft top. He twisted in his seat and held the thing up to the taillights glowing in front of him. There was a title for the tape, the script too complex for the bad light. “Aquarian Concepts” was lettered below. An address in California. He tossed the tape aside. For an instant he had the sensation he’d driven the wrong car away from the lot.

  Aquarian Concepts. The strength of the inner self. Janice had grown up on a sugar beet farm south of Toledo, Ohio. She’d had two years of college before her folks died in a head-on with a tractor trailer rig. She’d come to Florida, worked her way up to office manager for a large realty firm, where she and Deal had met. After they married, she’d stayed on a dozen years, until Deal finally convinced her to quit, that things were going well enough for her to take it easy. Maybe, with the stress of the job aside, they’d have kids.

  They worked hard at getting pregnant for a couple of years. Fertility charts, sperm counts, plumbing checks, the works. They’d been looking into in vitro when Deal’s old man died, and they found out from the attorneys how fragile DealCo had become. It had been a long game of catch up ever since. And still no kids.

  Deal had expected Janice might want to go back to work, but she hadn’t, and even though they could use the money, he’d never suggest it. She’d gotten into her walking and tennis, the occasional class at the community college, and apparently, Aquarian Concepts.

  His fault, again. He hadn’t helped to give them much of a social life once he’d learned the truth about the business. Oh, they’d made an effort at keeping in contact with their old friends after they moved, but Deal was often on a job until last light, six and seven days a week, working by himself long after the subs had decamped. He’d drag himself home, ready for bed, at most a sandwich and a beer in front of the television, not interested at all in a trek across town, a dinner with people who’d spent the afternoon on the golf course, the effort to keep up appearances: “How’s business, Deal? How’s your hammer hanging? Har, har, har.”

  The weekly dinners become monthly, then more random, and finally stopped altogether, until it had become Deal and Janice in the condo, a lot of take-out food and movies on the VCR, most of which Deal had never seen the end of. Deal knew things were strained between them, but he held fast to the only principles he knew: put your head down, work hard, make your own luck. Once business turned around, everything else would fall into place.

  They’d been talking about going back to the doctors, but Janice was uncertain. The procedures left to them were expensive. And somehow strange and threatening.

  And then, miraculously, the fertility charts long forgotten, the determined regimen of sex fallen off into casual encounter, Janice had become pregnant. That’s the way it often happened, the doctor told them, when he confirmed it. Stop worrying about what you’re doing, things change. Deal had been ecstatic.

  He came home with a soccer ball and an armload of green and yellow baby items, ready for either sex. Although Janice hadn’t passed her sixth week, Deal had taken to laying his head softly on her stomach, attempting telepathic communication with the baby: “Think about a good college.” “Girls are just as tough as boys.” “Kick if you hear me.” So far, there hadn’t been a return message.

  Janice had been less enthusiastic. She had begun to worry about her age, her capabilities as a mother, and a great deal about money. Their new health plan was vague on certain aspects of maternity coverage. And the condo was too small, the school district lousy, it took in a bad neighborhood on the mainland…

  It saddened Deal, but he chalked most of it up to changing hormones. And he really couldn’t blame her for worrying about the money. If he’d been able to unsnarl the tangle his old man had created, they’d still have the house, their savings, the perfect bruiser of a health plan.

  But Deal was a contractor, not a businessman. The joint ventures, cross-collateralizations, and contingency deals his old man had committed them to were beyond Deal, who knew how to build, and took great pleasure in it.

  Deal’s approach to the business tangle was simple. Like Alexander, he had lifted a great sword to the knot, and severed the connections with venture capitalists, mall developers, and the others. He’d gone back to building houses, just about the time the bottom of the market fell out. And now he was on his own, a little guy trying to make it, about where his old man had been forty years ago, he guessed. Only times had changed, and it seemed like what he was good at wasn’t enough anymore.

  He laughed, mirthless. Good old self-pity, he thought. Tired to the bone and getting weepy. That’s what you had to fight, the wavering that would lead to self-doubt. No. He had a plan. He would finish the building, as he had told Janice, as he
had told Penfield, who was only trying to help. He was not going to sell out, give up, go to work for someone else. He knew what he had to do.

  He surfaced from his thoughts, his eyes gradually focusing on the glowing taillights in front of him. The traffic hadn’t budged. His head was starting to throb and his neck and back were stiffening in the frigid blast from the A/C, which seemed to have no middle ground. Abruptly, he yanked the wheel of the VW to the right and pulled onto the shoulder, nosing into someone’s sea grape hedge.

  Out of the car, he felt better at once. The damp heat soothed the knot at the base of his neck and the cramps that had been building in his calves disappeared as he began to walk. He still felt it in his arm, from throwing the kid’s keys, but it was a comfortable ache somehow, the kind he remembered after a game—plenty of action in left field, maybe he’d cut down a runner or two trying to score. Yeah, he remembered baseball. Sure. Bring it on down. He’d have a kid to take to the park, tell his war stories to.

  He picked up his pace, taking a perverse pleasure in passing the stalled traffic on his left. He’d reach the bridge deck in a minute, see what was going on, while these people would just stew and wonder.

  When the damn bridge finally came down again, he’d jog on across to his building, be there when Janice got home. It’d give them a chance to talk. A plan was forming gradually in his mind. Maybe, once the baby was old enough, she could ease her way into the business, bring certain of the skills they’d need to grow. She’d always been able to kick ass at Realty World. She could handle business affairs for the new DealCo.

  He was feeling good by the time he reached the bridge. He saw Janice out of Aquarian Concepts, back on ground he recognized. They’d be together, he thought, a team. He was enthused…and then just as suddenly was glum: how far apart they must have grown for him to be thinking this way.

  Something else was troubling him, too. He had reached the concrete path that flanked the bridge approach ramp, close enough to see the drawbridge wasn’t up. The deck was littered with burning safety fuses, and a long string of traffic snaked off from the other side. A crew had set up a bank of portable lights that shone down into the swirling waters of the broad canal.