Raw Deal

by Les Standiford

  But what answer could he possibly give that would help ease her fears? Freedom fighters? Fanatics? True Believers? Pick the answer that makes sense, Deal, never mind that there isn’t one. The buzzer is sounding. Your time is up. There are ways to handle those like you…

  He closed his eyes, his arms still wrapped around Janice. It had been such a good day, such a wonderful, lovely day in the tropics. And now, suddenly, all the bad memories were coming alive, snarling like wild dogs on the other side of a flimsy, rusted-out fence he’d erected somewhere in the back reaches of his mind.

  Almost two years had gone by now, and though the flashes came less frequently now, they still came upon him, and when they did, they had the force of fever. He’d nearly lost her then, to a different set of madmen. True believers from the cult of get-rich-quick he’d had the misfortune to step into the path of.

  And although what had happened this day had nothing to do with them, he held her now as he’d held her then: on the slanting deck of a ruined stilt home in the middle of Biscayne Bay, waiting for help to come, feeling her quiet trembling, trying to soothe her, wondering if his own hands were beginning to shake and betray him. He’d realized then who the strong one truly was.

  “Deal?” she said, her voice reaching him now, as from the top of a deep, deep well. “Deal?”

  He shook himself, fighting the drag of memory, forcing himself away from the snarling dogs that hurled themselves again and again against the shaking fence…until finally he was back, and he could see her face: the clear green eyes; the nose turned just a trace off-center; a spray of sun freckles across her cheeks in this season.

  She was here. They were together. And Isabel was fine. They were a family, just as she had insisted they would be. He smiled down at her, feeling his breathing begin to steady.

  “You went away,” she said, her gaze concerned. “Like you used to…”

  “You wore me out, that’s all.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I’m an older guy, honey.”

  “You’re also a big bullshitter,” she said, returning his kiss. She gave him a look. “I feel it too, you know. Every time I read about a child who dies, or hear about a plane crash, anytime something awful happens.” She gathered the sheets in her lap, crossed her legs, facing him earnestly.

  “Part of it’s because we have Isabel now, we’re just more sensitive.” She pushed the hair back from her forehead. “But it’s also because of what happened to us. Those memories aren’t going to go away anytime soon, you know.”

  “I’d just as soon they did,” he said.

  “Well, they won’t,” she said. “And anytime something happens like today…”

  “That didn’t have anything to do with us,” he said, waving at the blank screen of the television.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It came close. The bad thing came close again. That’s all it takes to set off the feelings.” She paused to stare at him. “And we’re better off admitting it when it happens, Deal.”

  He stared back at her for a moment. Admit it when it happens. Deal with it, Deal. A bunch of guys want to take you out, your wife, anyone who’s unlucky enough to be around you, all for a piece of property. How could thinking about it make it any better?

  “You know,” he said finally, “I saw a man who wanted to kill us die twenty feet in front of me.” He took a deep breath and fell back against the pillows, staring up at the ceiling. “But it’s not enough. If I had him here now, I’d want to kill him again, with my bare hands.” He turned to her. “For what he did to us.” He felt the look on his own face. “Does that mean there’s something wrong with me, Janice?”

  “Oh, Deal,” she said, coming to embrace him. “Of course it doesn’t. I hated him too. I always will. But you can’t let it take you over.”

  “Yeah?” he said, smelling the shampoo in her hair, the sweat, the hint of sex. “How do you manage that, doctor?”

  She pulled back, smiled up at him. “I just think of you and Isabel, all the good things we have.”

  She scooted up to kiss him and he twisted, feeling her sliding, still warm and damp, against his hip. He tried to keep her there, but she ducked out of his arms and hurried toward the bathroom.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s take a shower and go home. All of a sudden, I’m desperate to see our daughter.”

  Chapter 5

  “So, Rafael, you are dead now.” Vicente Luis Torreno put his heavy arm about Rafael Quintana’s shoulder and laughed uproariously. The noise startled some strange bird in the darkness nearby and the thing answered with its own raucous cries, sending the surrounding shrubbery into a turmoil. Rafael could hardly distinguish the screech of the bird from Torreno’s high-pitched bray. A strange sound from such a big man, such a wealthy and powerful man.

  It gave Rafael an eerie feeling to be so isolated, far out from the main house, in a hut with no walls, all the strange animals he knew to be about. Torreno’s estate was two hundred acres of South Dade waterfront, with an agricultural testing facility on one side, a state forest preserve on the other. Four million people within a half-hour’s drive and he felt as if he were in the wilderness.

  He nodded uncomfortably at Torreno. The man himself seemed zoogenic, with his thick chest and shoulders, his big head, and those eyes that fixed on you as if you were some kind of prey.

  Rafael felt helpless in Torreno’s grip. It seemed as if the man could crush him with a careless squeeze.

  “Well, let’s drink to your success, then,” Torreno said, releasing Rafael. He had finally stopped laughing and was dabbing a handkerchief at the tears in his eyes. “All this walking…”

  He trailed off, signaling to a servant in a corner of the place. There were candles in hurricane lamps on either end of a small bar, casting ominous shadows about. The servant, a tall mulatto with an expression gaunt enough as it was, seemed cadaverous in this light. As he worked, his movements sent tiny phantasms dancing about the thatched roof above.

  Rafael imagined huge bird-eating spiders nesting there, copulating with scorpions and bats. He had betrayed a lifelong friend, had caused the deaths of a dozen people a few hours before, but wild creatures were a different matter.

  He felt something tickle the flesh at his neck and brushed at it nervously. Just the label on the unfamiliar clothing, he realized. He’d had to leave a lovely new suit behind, don this ill-fitting camouflage outfit.

  “Here,” Torreno said, handing him a tall glass beaded with moisture. “Yours has been a job well done. You have neutralized a traitor and delivered up the instrument of treason.” He sipped. “To your voyage.”

  Rafael touched his glass to that of his host, took a swallow. He had placed a call earlier, had ascertained that the money he’d been promised had indeed been wired to his account. Where he was going, it meant a lifetime of ease. He would allow himself this moment of relaxation.

  One-hundred-fifty-one-proof rum—straight, or so it seemed—chilled to near-freezing by the shaved ice, cut only with a bit of sugar, perhaps a touch of mint. The cold brought a stab of pain between his eyes and he waited for it to clear before taking another swallow. He was ready for this drink.

  He hadn’t seen the effects of the blast, of course, but Torreno had been graphic in his descriptions. Rafael had been close enough to feel the earth tremble beneath his feet and he had no reason to doubt what such force had done to those who were nearby. He tilted his head back, draining the glass.

  “Coco.” Torreno snapped his fingers, and the servant poured Rafael another drink.

  Torreno turned to lean against a railing and stared out into the darkness. “Perhaps you are feeling a bit of remorse for what you have done, Rafael.” The big man laughed mirthlessly, his gaze fixed intently upon the blackness as if he could see something out there. Rafael had read of creatures who could see in darkness, smell through walls, hear footsteps from miles away.

  “It was necessary,” Rafael said. It was imp
ortant to remind himself of that.

  Torreno turned, nodding wearily. “I have devoted a lifetime to this effort, my young friend. I can assure you that no action undertaken in the cause of liberty is too great.” He stared into Rafael’s eyes, as if searching for something greater than mere agreement.

  “I understand,” Rafael said.

  “Our enemies are merciless,” Torreno continued. “They have exterminated a generation of patriots, forced an entire nation into slavery. You must remember.”

  “It isn’t that,” Rafael said. The liquor was having its effect. The fire in his stomach had spread to become a warm glow in his limbs. “I was thinking of the others. The Americans…”

  “Reporters?” Torreno’s laugh was short and bitter. “The lackeys of a system that would sell its soul for the price of a television commercial?” Torreno stared at him closely, as if he had sensed some treason about to spring from his lips.

  Rafael straightened his back, lifted his glass to his host. “Let me thank you, Señor Torreno,” he said, “for giving me this opportunity to serve with you.”

  Torreno’s expression softened. He touched one hand to Rafael’s shoulder, squeezed, held up the bundled manuscript that Rafael had delivered in the other. Rafael felt his eyes water at the man’s grip. “You have given me a valuable prize, my young friend, more valuable than you may know.”

  Torreno seemed to ponder something, then relented. He put the package down and raised his glass, saluting Rafael. “I am on the verge of completing a business transaction, an enormous transaction, one toward which I have endeavored my entire life,” he said.

  “I have committed every penny of my own wealth to ensure its success, and in turn, the success of la revolución,” he added, fervor in his voice. “You have helped to silence those who would have brought everything to ruin.” Torreno downed the rest of his drink in a gulp and gazed at him fiercely. Rafael knew he should have felt elation at Torreno’s words, but what he felt, in fact, was an uneasiness deep in his stomach. The cadaverous servant had left off behind the bar to stare at him as well.

  Torreno’s arm was on his again, guiding him out onto an open-air terrace. Torreno pressed a switch on a railing post and a soft glow sprang up from lights tucked away in the foliage. They were on a kind of dock, Rafael realized, which cantilevered out over a pond. Torreno took a plastic bowl from a small table, opened the lid. He grabbed a handful of something, made a tossing motion out over the water. Food pellets of some kind, Rafael thought, as the murky water began to boil.

  “Spoiled creatures,” Torreno mumbled. He showed Rafael the contents of the container—a mass of writhing white worms as fat as finger joints. Rafael felt his stomach turn over as Torreno emptied the rest of the container into the water. The renewed surge near the dock sent a splash of water up against Rafael’s leg. Rafael jerked back.

  “Lungfish.” Torreno seemed amused. He motioned to the servant, who came forward with a long-handled net. Torreno nodded and Coco plunged the net down into the roiling waters. He came up with something in the net, a creature that Rafael first thought was a fat snake of some kind. Coco thrust the net under Rafael’s nose. It smelled of stagnant water and swamp slime; an eel-like thing with the head of a catfish lunged inside, trying to burst through the thin nylon mesh. Rafael turned away.

  “Nothing attractive about them, but they have a voracious appetite”—Torreno paused—“for mosquitoes and other pests.”

  Rafael nodded, unwilling to turn around until Coco had tossed the thing back into the water.

  “They are living fossils, some three hundred million years old, the link between sea creatures and mankind,” Torreno continued, following the splash.

  Rafael stared at him, finding it difficult to believe there was anything to connect such creatures with himself.

  Torreno gazed at the water. “They can breathe air, you see. Were this pond to dry up, the entire colony would simply gather itself and march onward until they found a new home.”

  “Fascinating,” Rafael managed. He wondered if Torreno was mad.

  Torreno nodded. “We have much to learn from nature,” he said. “Some creatures teach us adaptability, while that brute over there…”

  Torreno pointed at a spot on the muddy bank, but Rafael shook his head, seeing nothing. Torreno picked up a flashlight, snapped it on, aimed the beam across the water. There was a small island out there; it was surrounded by a fence that poked a foot or two above the surface of the water. Two spots of red appeared amid the foliage on the island’s shore, as if glowing coals had been suddenly dropped there. Torreno waggled the light, and there was a huge splash in the water, a glimpse of a long ragged tail disappearing beneath the surface. Rafael had not seen the creature, but the glowing eyes had vanished.

  Torreno stared wistfully at the swirling water. “The crocodile named for our country,” he said. “Once it was the most aggressive creature of its kind, absolutely incorrigible near humans.” He looked at Rafael. “Now they raise it in farms, to harvest its skins and its flesh.”

  Rafael cast a glance back toward the house. It seemed miles away, somehow. His legs were heavy, his shoulders felt slumped. He was exhausted. There was a powerboat tied off at the big dock back there somewhere. Time to board it, to be gone from this place, a fresh sea breeze in his face, on his way to South America, a new life…

  “More than thirty years I have spent here,” Torreno said, waving his arm about. “It is not my homeland, but it has become something of a home.”

  Something of a home, Rafael thought. The property contained a massive main house, a somewhat smaller mansion near the water that Torreno referred to as the boathouse, various gardeners’ and guest cottages, and any number of gazebos, poolhouses, and chickees such as this one, all strewn amid stands of Dade County pine, mango and avocado orchards, mahogany hammocks. The most remote acreage, where they stood now, was given over to a game preserve where Torreno raised his exotic animals.

  It made Rafael uneasy as he stared at one of the tall chain-linked fences dividing the far shore of the pond from the bay itself. What were the animals that could leap so high? he wondered. And if they could leap that high, who was to say they might not leap just a bit higher.

  There was another scream from the darkness on the far shore and Rafael nearly dropped his glass.

  “Nothing to fear,” Torreno said. “Though it sounds like a jungle cat, I agree.”

  After a moment, he continued. “Some think I maintain all this as a private hunting preserve.” He shook his head sadly. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

  He aimed his flashlight into the foliage behind Rafael and pointed. Rafael turned and opened his mouth in surprise. It was a sizable cage—not so much a cage as a clutch of screened-in trees, actually—full of nesting birds, all of them bright green, with brilliant green and red topknots. One of the birds cocked its head at the light, then fanned its wings open and gave the same lusty scream Rafael had heard earlier.

  “The Cuban parrot,” Torreno said. “Unique to our island and, sad to say, nearly extinct. Most of these I have obtained from smugglers.” He shook his head as though the memories pained him. “Wretched men.”

  He glanced at Rafael. “When I return to our country, the animals will come with me. Eventually they will replenish what has been destroyed. Our enemies do not conserve nature,” he said, his eyes flashing. “They consume it, and what they cannot consume, they kill.”

  He snapped off the flashlight, leaving Rafael blinded momentarily. He blinked, feeling Torreno’s gaze upon him. “A noble sentiment,” Rafael said, feeling a bit woozy. He groped about in the darkness until he found the railing they had been leaning upon, set his drink down.

  “Much more than a sentiment,” said Torreno, his firm grasp on Rafael’s arm again. “Come, I have kept you long enough.”

  Torreno ushered him off the terrace and back through the chickee onto the gravel pathway that curled th
rough the foliage. Rafael glanced about for Coco, but the servant had disappeared. Torreno was already scuttling away down the walkway and Rafael hurried to catch up. His legs felt rubbery and a glaze of sweat covered his face. He was bound for the Andes, he thought, where he would not miss this heat.

  And there were so many twists and turns in the path: huge fronds swatting at his face, rough vines that clawed at him, his eyes burning as he tried to keep in sight of Torreno’s heels. He heard, or imagined he heard, strange rustlings in the undergrowth on either side of him. There was another high-pitched scream somewhere up ahead—just a bird with a red topknot, he reminded himself—and he shuddered at the thought of being lost in this wilderness. Torreno was surely a madman, seeing himself riding an ark into his island’s harbor, some sort of modern-day Noah.…

  But now he had lost sight of Torreno altogether, and Rafael felt a surge of panic. He careened around a bend, his shoulder clipping something hard, and felt himself falling, his hands clawing down the fabric of a steel fence. He felt his face slap into soft mud, felt a moment of relief from the fever that had seemed to come over him…then he heard the clang of a gate closing behind him, the sound of metal meshing firmly into metal. He pushed himself up from the mud, groggy. There were squeals in the darkness about him, the sounds of small creatures scattering about. Then there was bright light, a supernova of a floodlamp, that had come from the forest to train itself upon him. He tried to shield himself from the beam with one hand, hooked his fingers into the fence, pulled himself erect.

  He caught a glimpse of the things he had heard scampering nearby, and caught his breath: At first he’d thought they were rabbits, throngs of them, frozen in the light, but then he realized that was wrong. These creatures were more like rats, huge tailless rats, ugly things that sat up on their haunches, snouts twitching, staring at him with curiosity.