There were a few more blurred blocks—a collage of liquor stores, shuttered businesses, a peep show, a long stretch peppered by the gaping faces of men holding themselves up on parking meters—then a power-slide turn off the boulevard down a side street for several dark blocks, and a screeching double-parked stop in front of a botanica, deep in the heart of Little Haiti.
Something was going on inside the store, Deal saw as he piled out after Driscoll. Shelving had been pushed back to clear a space for folding chairs, all of which were full: matronly black women in checked dresses, fanning themselves; skinny old men in white shirts and dress pants, their eyes rheumy and glittering; children in T-shirts and shorts, some standing on their seats, others milling about. What room was left for standing was jammed as well, with people clapping, sweating, chanting in a frenzy. They were all staring at an extremely tall man at the front of the room shaking what looked like a feather duster over his head.
As he hurried after the lumbering Driscoll, who passed the brightly lit windows without a glance, Deal saw that the feather duster was in fact a rooster in the tall man’s grasp. The tall man raised his other hand to the rooster’s neck, made a slashing motion. The head of the thing fell away and a spray of blood splattered down on the shoulders of the tall man’s white shirt. He began to swing the now headless bird back and forth, anointing the faithful at the front of the crowded room. Some kind of santería rite? Deal turned away, saw Driscoll disappearing into a stairwell up ahead.
By the time Deal reached the entryway, Driscoll was already at the top of the stairs, swinging an iron gate aside, hammering at a locked door there. Deal took the steps two at a time.
Driscoll pounded again, the blows echoing in the airless landing. The chanting from the botanica downstairs reached a sudden crescendo, and Deal wondered what they might be sacrificing now.
“Watch yourself,” Driscoll said, bracing himself against the wall behind him.
Deal stepped aside as Driscoll strode forward, pistoning his big foot into the door. No contest there. The cheap frame splintered and the door flew inward, banging off the foyer wall. The sound was lost in the din of the faithful from below.
“Jesus, Vernon,” Deal said, but Driscoll waved him quiet.
He had a gun in his hand now, was holding it by his ear as he went through the shattered doorway. He brought the pistol into firing position, as if he was ready to blaze away, then relaxed.
“Well, kiss my ass,” Driscoll said, his face a mask of disgust.
Deal hesitated, then poked his head inside. The unshaded bulb on the landing threw a bright slice of light across the barren floor of the living room. No rug, no lamps, no furniture of any kind. Dust clumps drifted in the corners. You could see all the way into the alcove of a tiny kitchenette where a broken stool leaned in a corner.
Driscoll moved across the room, down a hallway. He had his flashlight out now. Deal followed cautiously after him. Driscoll checked an open door on his right, shook his head, moved on to a closed door on the left. He gave Deal a cautioning glance, then turned and eased the door open. He glanced quickly inside, drew back, battered the door all the way open with his foot.
The chanting from downstairs had stopped, leaving an eerie silence in the hallway. Driscoll holstered his pistol inside his coat and stepped into the bedroom doorway. Deal peered in after him, following the beam of the flashlight as it played over the deserted room. A streetlight outside threw angular shadows about the walls.
Driscoll shook his head in disgust. “She was right in here…” he began, then broke off. His eyes widened, and his hand scrabbled at his coat for his pistol. Someone’s there, Deal heard his brain clamor, but it was too late to do anything about it.
He felt an arm clamp about his throat, felt his feet lift off the floor. He heard a muffled thud and a grunt from Driscoll, sensed others rushing past him in the darkness. He flailed his arms about, trying to reach his attacker, but it was useless. He struck out with his heel, felt a satisfying crack when he struck bone.
He was readying himself for another kick when there was an explosion of pain in his head, a brief, glorious burst of light behind his eyes, and, as he might have expected, a darkness that rushed up and swallowed everything.
***
“What you be messing around up here for, mahn?”
Deal heard the voice, but he couldn’t be sure if the speaker was talking to him. He’d been lost in a swirling dream where giant roosters chased him about a series of barren rooms. They pecked at him, slamming their beaks into the walls and floors with the force of pile drivers, drawing great gouts of blood from the wood itself.
His head was splitting, as if one of the creatures had caught him flush behind the ear. He blinked his eyes open carefully, saw the tall santería priest looming above him. The rooster’s blood had dried to a rusty brown on the man’s shoulders.
“Why you be busting into a person’s home?” The man spoke with a British islander’s accent. His voice was soft, inquisitive, as if the question was rhetorical, more a complaint than a request for information. Deal felt hands on his arms, realized he was being held by two others. When he tried to turn, the tall man reached out, held his chin fast in a hand that was slender but surprisingly strong.
“You wanting to hurt the sistah, was you?” Again that melodic inflection, more wonder than accusation.
Deal shook his head, groggy. An unshaded bulb dangled behind the priest’s head, burning like an angry sun. His throat felt swollen from the choke hold they’d laid on him earlier. “What sister?” he said, his voice strangled.
He had to cast his gaze down, his eyes tearing. He saw cartons with strange trademarks stamped on their sides, glimpsed a pile of flour bags bunkered against a wall. They must have dragged him into a storeroom of the botanica. He wondered if the congregation was still out there, waiting. Maybe he and Driscoll would be the final act.
He heard the sounds of a struggle somewhere behind him, heard a sharp cry. He twisted in the grip of the men who were holding him, saw Driscoll being hauled in through a doorway, trying to shake loose from two burly black men even bigger than the ex-cop. A third man tumbled against a stack of rice bags, clutching a foot Driscoll must have stomped on.
The priest gave Driscoll a glance as the big men subdued him, then turned back to Deal. “This mahn saying you a friend of the sistah, that so?” He shared a grin with the others. “Say you wanting to help her.”
Deal swallowed, not sure his aching throat would cooperate. “A man was killed tonight,” he managed. “We were worried about a woman who was staying here. We came to warn her.”
“Warn her?” the priest said, as if the idea were miraculous. “Well, now. Come to warn the sistah.”
“She was hiding a woman named Marquez,” Deal said, insistent. “She could be in danger.”
The tall man nodded thoughtfully. “The sistah say so. Say bad men maybe coming here. Maybe you do. Maybe that’s why we got you now.”
“We didn’t come here to hurt anyone,” Deal said, his anger rising. He struggled in the grasp of the men who held him, to no avail. He nodded at Driscoll. “This man used to be a police officer….”
The priest’s eyes lit up at that. He reached into the pocket of his shirt, produced a gold shield. He held it in front of Deal’s nose. As Deal read the ridiculous inscription, the tall man withdrew Driscoll’s pistol from his waistband with his other hand, tapped the phony badge with the stubby barrel. “Is looking like a policemahn, sure. But I don’t think this is the real thing, sir, I do not.”
“Jesus, Driscoll,” Deal muttered.
“It’s just a joke,” Driscoll said.
“No,” the priest said thoughtfully, still tapping the shield with the pistol. “I think it is not so funny.”
“Where is she?” Driscoll demanded. “Where’s Ms. Marquez?”
The priest lifted his delicate eyebrows. “Wherever that is, mahn, she is being safe now.”
<
br /> Deal saw the look in the priest’s eyes. If Ms. Marquez had been hidden away by these people, he did not doubt that she was safe. And they could forget ever finding her. He had an image of himself and Driscoll traipsing house to house through nighttime Little Haiti. They wouldn’t last an hour.
“We need to talk to her,” Driscoll insisted. “My friend here was nearly killed by the same people who blew up Ms. Marquez’s place. His wife was badly burned. She’s still in the hospital. They have a baby.” The priest gave him a thoughtful look. “They’re in danger,” Driscoll added. His voice had taken on an uncharacteristically pleading note. “Ms. Marquez is in danger too, and she has information that could help us.”
The priest considered it. He turned to Deal. “That true, what he say?”
Deal nodded.
The priest glanced at one of the burly men holding Driscoll. “He the one come to the sistah before?” The burly man made a gesture with his eyes.
The priest nodded, thoughtful. Deal saw his own wallet materialize in his hand. The priest was staring at him now. “You John Deal, yeah? That your real name?”
“That’s my real name,” Deal said.
The priest turned to the man whose foot Driscoll had stomped on, said something in soft, guttural Creole. The man took Deal’s wallet and another that must have been Driscoll’s, then limped out of the room, giving Driscoll a surly look as he passed.
Deal turned to Driscoll, who did his best to shrug. “Shut up, you,” said one of the burly men holding Driscoll. The other man stepped in, blocking Deal’s view. The priest had sat down on a mound of flour sacks, his long arms crossed across his chest, his gaze drawn inward, waiting.
Deal chafed in the grip that held him, trying to understand. Perhaps it was true, all the things Driscoll had claimed about this supposed book, about Torreno and his Patriots’ Foundation. If you were in such a position, it might motivate you to kill a few people. But Deal still couldn’t figure out where he came in. Did walking through a museum constitute him as an enemy, a fellow traveler? Even granting Driscoll’s most paranoiac view, he didn’t see how that was possible.
Then something occurred to him. He was about to call out to Driscoll when the storeroom door opened and the man who’d taken the wallets limped back in. The priest conferred with the man in hushed Creole again. Finally he nodded and turned back to them, his face impassive.
“Okay, now,” the priest announced. “We going for a little ride.”
***
From the outside, the vehicle had resembled any other tradesman’s van. There were crudely stenciled signs on the tailgate and sliding side door, advertising X-pert lawn service. A tiny flag—from some Caribbean island, Deal supposed—fluttered from the radio antenna.
Inside, however, things were hardly what he’d expected. Instead of holding a welter of rakes and lawn tools, the rear cabin had been converted to a limousine’s layout, with a pair of broad, comfortably upholstered seats facing each other, a small table and a serving bar bolted to the floor in between. One wall held a bank of electronics gear, including a tiny television. The rear windows had been carpeted over and a glass barrier between the rear area and the driver’s compartment had been treated with a reflective surface.
There were three men up there, Deal knew, including one carrying an automatic weapon who had supervised their loading. He imagined that the man was watching them now through the one-way glass, his Uzi at the ready.
Deal stared back at his own reflection, which looked pale and wavering in the soft chaser lights that flittered around the outline of the ceiling. He was sitting between the priest and one of the men who’d been holding him, a man with a weightlifter’s body and the face of a divinity student. That man wore a suit and a tieless white shirt buttoned to the neck and kept his right hand hidden inside the vest of his coat.
Driscoll sat opposite, wedged between the two burly men who had held him captive inside the storeroom. He stared back at Deal expressionless, rocking with the steady motion of the van. “Did you ever think,” Deal said, returning to the thought that had occurred to him inside the storeroom, “that it wasn’t me at all? That maybe somebody could have been trying to take you out when they burned the apartment.”
“Shut up, you,” the man next to Driscoll said. Deal wondered if it was the only English he had learned.
The priest held up his hand. “Let them talk,” he said.
Driscoll gave his customary shrug. “I considered it. But I didn’t think much of the possibility,” he said.
“Why not?” Deal persisted. “Maybe it was one of your old enemies, figured you were vulnerable, off the force and everything.”
Driscoll shook his head. “Naw, the way things are in the department these days, they’d have had too many better opportunities when I was still around. Something happens when I go out on a call, it would’ve been an unfortunate accident in the line of duty. Sayonara, Vern.” He glanced up at Deal. “I don’t think it was me.”
Deal nodded. It made sense, but still left him unsatisfied. Maybe that was the problem, trying to apply logic when the whole thing made no sense. Look where he was now, riding through the streets of Miami, the prisoner of some voodoo warlord. How did that stack up on the rationality index?
The van took a sudden turn, then slowed, jouncing over a set of speed bumps. Deal heard what sounded like a boat horn as the van pulled to a stop. They sat there in silence for a moment, listening to the muffler creak beneath them, then the sliding door flew open.
The priest nodded to the big men across from him, who urged Driscoll out. The priest withdrew a tiny handheld phone from a recessed compartment, punched in a number. The man beside Deal motioned impatiently for him to follow Driscoll. Deal stepped out of the van, blinking, sensing the soft warmth of water nearby, smelling it even before his eyes adjusted to the darkness.
Everyone stood quietly outside, waiting as the priest held a muffled conversation inside the van. They had parked inside a storage compound a few blocks up the Miami River. A half-mile away, the glittering bank and hotel buildings towered, their floodlights chewing up wattage Las Vegas-style.
The reflected glow of the big buildings outlined the ship that was docked alongside them, a rusty hulk of a freighter that looked incapable of navigating this barge canal, much less the high seas. The deck was jammed with bicycles, hundreds upon hundreds of them, stacked haphazardly under tarpaulins. The ship was a typical Caribbean shuttle: it’d be off before dawn, bound for the islands, there to drop off the bikes, the electronics gear sure to be swelling the hold, for pennies on the dollar. Ten days from now it would be back, offloading fruit, rum, a few woven goods and craft items, and the most lucrative cargo: a sizable number of fare-paying stowaways desperate to reach the streets of gold.
Deal glanced back at the glittering towers. Their lights would be visible for miles out to sea, he knew, well past the surging Gulf Stream, a kind of tropical stand-in for the Statue of Liberty, and every bit as enticing to a load of rafters from Haiti or Cuba. He found his mind drifting to the things Driscoll had told him. How could anyone be so cynical as to trade upon the hopes of such people for the sake of money? How could people who’d lost everything to tyrants turn murderous and tyrannical themselves? Naive, perhaps, but it still confounded him, infuriated him.
“That boat’s got so much hot shit in it, it glows,” Driscoll said, breaking the silence.
The priest was unfolding himself down from the van as Driscoll spoke. “Property is a relative concept,” he said.
“Only when what you’re talking about doesn’t belong to you,” Driscoll said.
The priest stopped, considering Driscoll’s logic for a moment. “They are ready for us,” he said by way of answer, and led them toward the ship.
The gangway shuddered under their weight, as if it might pitch them into the oil-slicked waters between the ship and the docks at any second. A man who dwarfed the two guarding Driscoll stood at th
e rail, watching them climb. He held what looked like an AK-47 in one hand as if it were a pistol. When the priest joined them on deck, the huge man nodded and directed them amidships with a wave of his weapon.
Deal was considering the possibilities as he followed Driscoll’s heavy footsteps down the peeling decks. He reasoned that if the men had intended to kill them, they wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of bringing them there. On the other hand, maybe they would be taking a short cruise out to open waters, he and Driscoll would be converted to chum where it was more convenient.
They came to an open bulkhead then, and one of the big men stayed back to guide them through the passage. Driscoll moved on inside. When Deal hesitated, the guy behind gave him a shove.
Deal stumbled into the passageway, saw light flooding from an open cabin a few feet away. Two women were in there, staring impassively at Driscoll, who had already stepped inside the room. Deal heard the bulkhead door slam shut behind him. He hesitated for a moment, then went to join Driscoll.
Chapter 31
It was a modest cabin, with two fold-down bunks and a doorless recess you might call a closet. A narrow bulkhead gave on to a john the size of a phone booth, with a shower that would soak everything when you used it. Ms. Marquez was wearing street clothes, the bandages on her hands disappearing up under a loose-fitting long-sleeved blouse, a turban-styled scarf about her head. She was lying back against some pillows on one of the bunks. Margaria sat by her side.
Driscoll surveyed the room, gave a backward glance at the big man who remained at the doorway. “You should have told me you wanted to take a cruise,” he said. “I know better ships.” Margaria turned her gaze to Deal, contemptuous.
“This is John Deal,” Driscoll continued. “The man I was telling you about.”
Deal saw Ms. Marquez’s eyes flicker, as if she’d felt a jolt of pain. Margaria took her hand, soothed her cheek softly with her hand. “You have no business here,” Margaria said. She didn’t bother to look at them this time.
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