Deal to Die For

by Les Standiford

  “Put-together Girl” the other Asian girls at Jack’s American Style Bar called her. As if she’d been made up from random scraps of flesh. But her face, save for one long line that traced the furrow of her brow, was unmarked, and lovely, and her breasts were larger than was usual among Asian women, and, perhaps most importantly, she had inherited something of her father’s brazen disdain.

  Until the dragon had consumed her, she had been a favorite of the American GIs who came to Thailand—and to Jack’s—for rest and recuperation, in increasing droves as the Vietnam war heightened. Some of them called for the Put-together Girl, and some even called her by her name. But still they called, and often. Maybe there was something in her scarred body that comforted as well as excited them, that gave them hope, those men who were likely to return to their jungle war and fly into scraps themselves, Gabriel thought. But that was just a thought and one he’d come to long after he’d left Bangkok.

  “We’re lucky to have this place to ourselves tonight,” the little man on the other side of the lantern said, and Gabriel roused himself to nod his agreement. He was wasting time, he thought, and yet the past seemed to lay some spell upon him.

  He glanced around their deserted spot. There was really no point in telling this little man that the gate at the island entrance had been closed and blocked, was there? Nor that there had been one other fisherman trying his luck a bit closer in toward shore.

  Instead Gabriel said, “But where are the fish?” Thinking as he spoke the words, how many times had he asked his grandfather the same thing?

  The little man laughed. “They will be along.” Gabriel felt a chill hearing the words, his grandfather’s familiar reply.

  His grandfather, who had told him other stories, tales of mystery and magic, at the same time less terrible but far more strange. Of Mazu, the little girl who died to save her fisherman father at sea, and whose spirit lived on, to come to the aid of shipwrecked sailors everywhere. Of the Tiatong, the one possessed by the spirits of the departed, and the Fashi, who listened to their strange-tongued discourse and translated the messages for the living.

  Once his grandfather had taken him deep into the Chinese quarter of Bangkok, where they stood on the curb of a narrow street and watched, amid clouds of incense, the yearly procession of the bai-bai, a pagan ceremony much older and far beyond the ken of the Tao, of the Buddha: crowds of men bearing strange godlike figures aloft on divans, bands of flute and cymbal players fore and aft, and most disturbing of all, the two messengers from the King of Hell, a tall thin man on stilts, all in white, and a short fat man in black, so round and full he seemed ready to burst.

  The pair surrounded Gabriel and buffeted him back and forth, waving their arms, squawking in their strange language like cranes, until he screamed for help and his grandfather waved his arms and the two finally went on their way. Though no words passed between him and his grandfather, Gabriel knew why he’d been chosen by the pair.

  His mother, fair-skinned, and lovely, until the drug had taken her beauty, even her very self, away. His father the huge black man the GIs called Sergeant Snow. His bar. His women. His drugs, which came across the border from Burma in the form of opium to be transformed into the drifts of white powder that sustained so many American troops and gave the man his name. The big man had never acknowledged Gabriel as his son, had never so much as given him a kindly glance, but his mother told him the truth.

  “So you cut the trees,” the little man was saying.

  Gabriel roused himself again, saw that the light was growing now in the east, that the looming shape of the truck he had borrowed had grown into an orange immenseness there by the limousine, that the big letters that explained its function were clear, even at this distance.

  The little man was waiting for some response, staring at Gabriel as he turned down the feed on the gas lantern between them. As the artificial light fell away, a shadow seemed to cross the little man’s face, transforming his features momentarily, and Gabriel felt another chill.

  “Right now I am a fisherman,” Gabriel said.

  The man cackled and his face rearranged itself, and Gabriel felt reassured. Nothing had changed. Not really.

  “It is the way you must think about it,” the little man said. “When you work for them, you might be theirs, but when you do what you want, you are yours.”

  Gabriel nodded. It was growing light, and he had wasted enough time. He turned to the little man. “Your work is not so difficult, though?”

  The man shook his head, agreeing.

  Gabriel kept his voice casual. “And you meet many interesting people.”

  The man shrugged. “Some rich people. Some famous people.” He smiled. “Some good people.” He tapped something in his pocket. “The lady I have now, she is one of the good people.”

  Gabriel glanced at the limousine again. He had the car now, and he needed just one more thing. If he were lucky, it would come to him easily. If not, he would have to take measures, and he hoped that he would not have to. “Is she famous?” Gabriel asked.

  “She is an American actress,” the man said. “I suppose that she is famous.”

  “And she stays at a fabulous hotel?” Gabriel asked.

  The man shrugged. “She did. Then she wished to move. She was not happy there.”

  Gabriel nodded. That much he knew already. “The rich are very difficult to please,” he said.

  “It wasn’t that,” the little man said. “She wanted someplace to be that was more comfortable, more like…” He broke off to think of the proper word.

  “A home?” Gabriel ventured.

  The little man smiled. “Exactly. A home. She was feeling of great distress, you know. And she was wanting a home.”

  “Your home?” Gabriel asked, feigning surprise.

  The little man cackled. “No, no. Of course not. She is a famous actress, after all. I was taking her to a little hotel. One place I know about not even so far away. My friend from Santo Domingo has. She is much happier there.” He reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a Polaroid photograph, extended it to Gabriel.

  Gabriel held it close to the dim lantern. A small hotel, its fanciful bands of stonework and bright colors shadowed by some glass and steel monster in the background. The actress standing on a patio, one hand trailing on a balustrade, a pool tiled in a black and white checkered pattern just behind her. She had managed a smile, but her eyes were saying something else. Beside her, half a head shorter, stood the little man, chauffeur’s cap cocked back, delighted that this good and lovely person had placed her other hand on his shoulder. One neon letter, an “R,” part of a neon sign from another era, in the upper right-hand corner of the shot, the rest cut off at the margin. One dark blurred hump at the picture’s bottom—most likely a Santo Domingan thumb.

  “What is the name of this hotel?” Gabriel tried.

  The little man looked at him, almost sadly it seemed, and shook his head. “I mustn’t say,” he told Gabriel.

  Gabriel nodded, as if he understood. “It’s all right,” he said. “This will do,” he added, mostly to himself.

  “I have it,” the little man said, at the same time. He was pointing at Gabriel now, his face a mask of excitement. “I am sitting here thinking, ‘A certain goodness is in this man,’ and then I remember. The television. Those people who tried to kill you and your friend. The robbers!”

  Gabriel stared back at him, expressionless. The little man so pleased to have remembered. And then his expression abruptly shifted. His smile fell away, replaced by puzzlement as he glanced again at the big orange truck, at the strange contraption that angled out from behind it.

  “But you don’t work here,” the little man said. “It said you were from China. You were coming here to…” He turned back to Gabriel, a question on his face.

  “To fish,” Gabriel said. He had tucked the photograph into his own pocket. In the same motion he leaned swiftly forward, focusing all his
might into the point of his fist, into the knuckles that drove like rock against the man’s frail chest.

  The little man’s eyes widened sightlessly, his mouth forming an unspoken “O,” his breath rushing away.

  Gabriel took him by the hair as his head fell forward, drew his arm back in an instant, sent another blow, a piston’s invisible movement, to the man’s temple. Freeze the heart, freeze the head, he thought, clutching the slumping man by the folds of his shirt front. The little man would have felt little pain, not much more than an instant’s surprise. Gabriel knew no more merciful way.

  Hardly how his grandfather, who’d been too foolish—or too brave—had left this world. His eyes pleading, his hands clawing toward the surface of the filthy water as he sank, the stones in his pockets, the massive bricks tied to his bound feet, the weight pulling him forever down. Two of Sergeant Snow’s thugs standing at the bank until his grandfather’s face had disappeared, until a festering garbage scow had passed over the spot and its wake had wiped the water clean.

  Gabriel had stayed hidden in the bamboo thicket where he’d watched it all, until long after the men had gone, until the sun had gone, and the night-feeding insects had bitten him into submission and his weeping had finally stopped forever. He found a soggy scrap of flower fallen from a barge at the shoreline and tossed it out into the middle of the water where he thought was the proper place, and watched it sink, and then walked home. He had been ten years old before that night. After, he had had no age.

  He stood, pulling the little man’s arm over his shoulder as if he were a friend who had overindulged, then kicked the lantern, and the tackle box, and the fishing rods, one of which had begun to buck with something alive, into the water below. The lantern winked into darkness with a hiss.

  He walked back toward the barrier, hardly conscious of the weight of the little man at his side, or of the sound of his shoetops dragging over the rough concrete that had once been a road.

  ***

  Gabriel paid scant attention to the work that was required now, feeding the last of the branches at his feet into the maw of the hopper. He had had little difficulty in starting the big truck’s engines, or in operating the massive grinder tethered at its rear. The language stamped on the machinery might be strange, but its levers and buttons spoke a universal language.

  The machine whined with every chunk of wood he fed it, roared and spat a pulpy mulch into the truck, layers and layers of shredded tropical wood already beginning to steam and reek in the early morning heat: striations of green leafy banyan, of feathery Australian pine, bold cordovan streaks of mahogany, spikes of Brazilian pepper, and the broken tendrils of a pencil tree, weeping its deadly white sap down the lip of the tailgate. On the top of the pile he noticed what seemed to be a shoe, but he didn’t think that was possible. By the time he had finished with the last of the branches, that apparition had vanished.

  When it was over, he unhitched the grinder and backed the truck to the edge of the abandoned causeway. He found the lever that raised the bed and pulled. The shredded cargo cascaded out, most of it plunging into the water past a clamor of wheeling, screeching gulls, some of it drifting in a fine scree like a rain squall driven by the morning breeze.

  The tide had gone to work before he’d finished, had hitched the chipper back to the truck, tossed the truck keys into the water. He saw, as he turned the limousine around, that what hadn’t gone under right away was already streaming off in bands that were headed out to sea. He paused, thinking of it as ashes being spread, and wondered for a moment if the goddess Mazu might be appeased.

  And then, thinking briefly of his mother, and of the man who had been his father, and finally of the old man who called himself a pirate, he drove the limousine away.

  Chapter 22

  “Hell of a night, John.” Driscoll was shaking his blocky head in commiseration. He swallowed the chunk of Cuban toast he’d been working on, washed it down with the last of his coffee. A green-aproned waitress wearing a hair net came by to give him a refill before his cup had hit the saucer.

  That was one thing about having breakfast on Calle Ocho, Deal thought. No ferns, no frills, no fooling around. People came to the Rincón Norteño, the Northern Corner, to eat.

  The waitress eyed Deal’s plate uncertainly. “Es problema? Quieres otra cosa?” She’d scaled her Spanish down to Deal level, wanting to know what was wrong, if he wanted something else. He managed a smile, picked up a forkful of eggs, shook his head. She nodded and bustled off, he dropped the eggs back on the plate. He’d been hungry when he ordered, still was, in fact, but the moment he’d start for the food, the images from the night before would rush back upon him.

  “You think this is your fault or something?” Driscoll said, watching him.

  Deal glanced up at him. Driscoll had his no-nonsense face on, was pouring an inch or two of sugar into his coffee. He was trying to think of the right response when Driscoll went on.

  “Like, this lady who saved your life once, as you put it, you might have said something different to her on the phone that night, like maybe if you’d got to her place a couple minutes earlier it wouldn’t of happened?”

  Deal was about to admit it, say yeah, I guess, something like that, when Driscoll held up his big paw to stop him.

  “Let me tell you something, my friend. You remember twenty, twenty-five years ago, while the Republican Convention was going on out at the Beach?”

  Deal nodded. That was Driscoll, a story for every occasion.

  “Yeah, well, I was still in uniform then, and me and my partner, guy name of Ray Robertson, we’re on the way out to help keep the Huns off Tricky Dick and Tricia, like every other cop in the county, when we get this call: there’s some jumper on top of the County Courthouse.”

  Driscoll shook his head at the memory of it, went on before Deal could cut in. “So we have to turn around, go down to the old tower, ride those ancient elevators that take forever, climb a little catwalk up to the very top, it’s hot as shit because it’s the middle of the summer and they don’t air-condition that part of the building, of course. But anyway, we finally find the door the guy’s jimmied open and look out, and sure enough, there he is, Cuban guy in his early twenties, sitting on the edge of the parapet in the middle of about fifty tons of buzzard shit, because that’s the only other living thing that’s been out there for about ten years, and this guy is giving us this pissed-off look like who in the hell invited us to the party, right?”

  Deal nodded. It wouldn’t have done any good to do anything else. He could get up and walk away, or erupt in spontaneous flame right there in his seat, robbers could storm into the place, make off with the till, the coffee machine, the green-aproned waitress, it wouldn’t matter. Driscoll was intent.

  “Of course, by this time we have received a little background on the matter. The guy out there is of the gay persuasion, he’s still living at home, him and his mother get along just fine, but his old man has come to the realization that his son’s macho index is seriously out of whack.”

  “Driscoll…,” Deal began.

  “So naturally the old man called him in for a discussion and you can still see where the kid’s face is swollen up from this little talk: couple of black eyes, lip all busted up, nose over sideways.” Driscoll shook his head again. “Just a real pretty picture.”

  He held up a finger then. “Which is compounded by the fact, as we come to find out, that the kid has dropped a bunch of acid and is higher than a very large kite.” Driscoll leaned across the table. “You can grasp this, can’t you?”

  “Very clearly, Vernon.”

  “So we try moving out onto the ledge after this guy, but it makes him understandably nervous, not to mention the fact that buzzard shit is extremely slippery and we’re looking to skate right out into thirty floors of air if we’re not careful…” Driscoll broke off, raising his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  “So?”

  “S
o I’m suggesting to Ray, why don’t we just wait in the doorway where there’s a nice draft, decent view out over the bay, pretty soon somebody with a better idea is going to show up to help, when my partner figures that we should talk to the guy, get inside his head, you know, convince him this is not the way to deal with his problems.”

  The waitress came by, hit Deal’s coffee, gave him another look about the eggs, but he ignored her this time.

  “So Ray starts in like, ‘Hey asshole, your mother’s down there on the street, your sisters, all your friends. Is that what you want to do, splatter yourself all over the sidewalk in front of them because you can’t handle your problems?’ or words to that effect.”

  Deal stared in disbelief.

  “Hey,” Driscoll said, “maybe Ray saw it in a movie or took a psychology class or something, I don’t know. The point is, he goes on like that for a while, figuring that he’s going to shame this guy in out of buzzardland, and all of a sudden the kid just bursts into tears, puts his face in his hands and bawls like a baby. I’m thinking maybe Ray is a genius after all, I can just sneak out there and put a comforting arm around the kid and we’ll all go home together…”

  Driscoll broke off, a quizzical expression on his face.

  “And,” Deal said.

  “The ‘and’ is, I’m about two steps out along the ledge when the guy stops crying long enough to glance over at Ray and say ‘Fuck you’ in some kind of Spanish and kick himself right off of the side.”

  Driscoll gave his characteristic shrug. “What I will never forget,” he said, “is all those people down there screaming, running for cover like there was an atom bomb coming down.” He pursed his lips. “I guess in a way it was. Turns out his mom and sisters were down there, after all.”

  He stopped then, lost in the memory, lifted his coffee cup absently.

  Deal shook his head. “It’s a terrible story, Vernon. But…”

  “I’m not finished,” Driscoll said, putting his coffee down. “The point I’m trying to make has to do with Ray.”