Driscoll could smell salt and seaweed on the desultory breeze that filtered toward them through the thick, tendril-trailing trees. Biscayne Bay was just a couple hundred yards from where they sat—there would be people already out on its glassy surface, frolicking on sailboats and sail-boards, others in motor-driven stinkpots headed for the distant reefs and mangrove shallows to fish and dive. Straight was right, he supposed: There was just a whole panoply of pleasures having to do with sun and water and balmy temperatures around here, including the sight of a well-built young woman in tight shorts.
“Beats the shit out of Wheeling…” Driscoll said, shifting his bulk uneasily in the canvas director’s chair they used at the curbside tables, “most of the time.” He would have been more comfortable indoors, hunkered on a solidly anchored stool in front of a counter, kitchen odors and burping coffee makers and the clanking of pans instead of all this pleasantness, but there was a maintenance crew cleaning and waxing the floors inside. Paradise it would have to be, then, though the surroundings seemed incongruous with the mission at hand.
“So what’s next?” Russell Straight asked, staring at him across his steaming coffee cup.
“I’m thinking,” Driscoll said, though he hadn’t been thinking at all, not the way Straight would take it, anyway. They’d spent a fruitless night searching for Deal, had caught a few hours’ sleep in the car, waiting outside the DealCo offices off Old Cutler. “I can drop you off anytime, you know.”
Straight shook his head. “Long as you’re on the case, then count me in.”
“Up to you,” Driscoll said, giving his all-purpose shrug. “We can go back by Janice’s condo, try to find someone who saw something.”
He didn’t think there was much point in it, of course. Janice’s porch opened out directly into the thickly landscaped grounds. A person could hop over the rail and in a few short steps reach the canal that led out to open water. You could tie off a boat and load—or unload—just about anything, carry it in or out of one of the apartments without ever being seen by a soul. It was one of the reasons why a certain brand of tenant liked living on the property, Driscoll understood. There was probably as much drug traffic flowing through secluded dockside condos like these as there was through the Port of Miami.
The neighbors he’d talked to last night—who gave the distinct appearance of having smoked a couple of bales themselves—had neither heard nor seen anything, at least nothing corresponding even vaguely to events in the real world. Driscoll had no reason to think he’d have any more luck today.
The waitress was back now, setting down a plate in front of Straight that bore three eggs, a slice of ham, some bacon strips, a short stack of pancakes, and a pie-shaped chunk of shredded hash-browns. “You want a side of beef with that?” Driscoll asked. He’d been feeling guilty about asking for cream cheese along with his bagel.
Straight glanced at him. “I got a certain metabolism,” he said.
Driscoll nodded. “So does a rhinoceros.”
“You need to exercise more,” Russell said, pouring syrup over all the items on his plate.
“You got me there,” Driscoll said. He scooped all of the cream cheese out of its little dish, smashed it on a single half of his bagel. He’d see how that went. He could always ask for more.
He nibbled at his bagel, watching Straight down an egg in a bite, chase it with half of a pancake. Straight swallowed, then paused, his fork held over the plate. “I got something on my face?”
Driscoll shook his head.
“Chewing with my mouth open?”
Driscoll shook his head again.
“Then what are you staring at?”
Driscoll gave him a shrug. “I was just wondering what makes you tick.”
Straight shook his head. “You gonna keep on with that suspicious cop stuff till you die, drop right in the harness. Like that old fart we went to see at the bank yesterday.”
Driscoll glanced up at him. “Who’s we?”
“Deal and me.”
Driscoll thought about it. He’d always found it useful to ponder any information that came as a surprise. “You went to the bank with Deal? For what?”
“Don’t go getting any ideas,” Straight said.
“What kind of ideas should I get?” Driscoll pushed his bagel aside with the back of his hand. The squawking in the trees had ratcheted up a notch, it seemed. The way it used to get at his in-laws’ house, Marie and all her aunts and cousins crammed into the same kitchen, everybody talking at once, the noise would drive you clean out of the house.
“Like he withdrew a bunch of money, somebody would want to take it from him.”
Driscoll folded his hands patiently in front of him. “No, Russell. If you took a bunch of money from Deal, I don’t think you’d still be hanging around. But why don’t you tell me what happened at the bank?”
“He went down to find out about this key he found,” Straight said. “A safety-deposit key, he said.”
Driscoll nodded. “And which bank was this?”
Straight shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. The guy said it wasn’t from their bank.”
“This is the old guy you mentioned earlier?”
“You do it just like a cop,” Straight said. “Come up with a question for every answer.”
“I know, Russell,” Driscoll said patiently. “The old guy—a bank officer, I’m guessing—he looked at this key and said it didn’t come from his bank.”
“He wasn’t even supposed to say that much,” Straight said. “The woman who went and got him was pissed off he gave any information away—”
Driscoll held up his hand as if he were halting traffic. “Let’s drop back here. Why was Deal so interested in this key to begin with?”
Straight shrugged. “I think it had something to do with his old man.”
“And why would you think that?”
“Because he found it in an envelope, a bunch of stuff that belonged to his old man, hidden away in some of the office files.”
Driscoll reached to pinch the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “Let me make sure I’m following, Russell. Deal found an envelope that his father had put somewhere, and inside it was this key?”
“Yeah,” Russell Straight said.
“And where did this happen, exactly?”
“I already said. Back at the DealCo office.”
“And where is this envelope?”
Russell Straight shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he put it back in the files. All he had when we went to the bank was that key.”
“Well,” Driscoll said. “I think we have solved the problem of what to do next.” He was already pushing himself up from the table, looking around for their waitress.
“Hey,” Russell Straight was saying, piece of toast halfway to his mouth. “I’m not finished.”
But Driscoll was already moving toward his car.
Chapter Thirty-eight
“I thought we were going to the bank,” Russell said. He was staring suspiciously across the climbing elevator car at Driscoll.
“We most definitely are,” Driscoll said, holding his arm up to show his wristwatch, “but the bank isn’t open yet.”
“We could have finished breakfast, then.”
“I miscalculated,” Driscoll said. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll buy you a big lunch.” He was watching the numbers jump across the elevator panel. The higher the floor, the more important the office, in this building, anyway.
“But what are we doing here?”
Driscoll glanced at him. “You worried I’m going to turn you in or something? Relax, Russell. You’re not a federal case. Yet.”
Russell nodded, but he wasn’t agreeing with anything. “That’s another thing about a cop,” he said.
“Tell me.”
“Thinking things are funny when they’re not. A crack like that is a form of abuse, it really is. Psychological. A kind of police brutality.”
>
“You should go to college, Russell. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
“I graduated from college,” Russell said. “Me and Leon both. Hard-Knocks College. Knocksville, U.S.A.”
Driscoll nodded soberly. “You’re not as funny as I am,” he noted. The elevator doors were sliding open now, and he moved out. He didn’t care if Russell Straight followed him or not, but he sensed the man’s footsteps in his wake.
They were high enough up in the building that the linoleum in the hallways had turned to carpeting, and no indoor-outdoor crap with a pattern meant to disguise coffee stains, either. This was carpet that cushioned your steps, the kind meant to remind you—if you were to tread upon it every day—that you were somebody now. And the walls themselves were different, as well. Instead of gray-green finished concrete, there was wooden paneling halfway up, then some tasteful dark-blue linen wallpaper the rest of the way to the stuccoed ceiling. Every half-dozen steps there was a brass sconce set that threw the light out in a golden globe, just so.
Thank God it wasn’t his ex-wife trailing along with him, Driscoll thought. He’d have to hear about a remodeling plan for his apartment the next several years of his life.
Driscoll passed three doors that didn’t interest him, found the one he was looking for at the end of the hall: “United States Attorney” was the legend formed in raised brass letters, “Chief of the Criminal Division” in slightly smaller letters, just below.
They’d been screened and had picked up visitor’s tags in the lobby below—but he still had to announce himself through an intercom mounted in the wall. There was a camera mounted somewhere as well, he knew, though he didn’t spend any time looking for it. When the buzzer sounded, he turned the knob and Russell Straight followed him into the office.
A spacious anteroom with comfortable chairs and an array of magazines, and an opaque window with sliding panels set high up on the opposite wall. Just like an upscale doctor’s office, Driscoll thought, though in these quarters, you couldn’t take a pill for what ailed you. He was on his way to rap on the glass when a door beside it swung open.
“Mr. Driscoll?” the male receptionist asked. “Come this way.”
As Driscoll started forward, the receptionist planted himself in Russell Straight’s path. Driscoll hesitated, then stopped, annoyed by the officious prick’s manner. “He’s my assistant,” he said, the words more or less a surprise to his own ears.
The receptionist stopped. “You’ll have to wait,” he said. He turned and went back into the inner chambers, leaving them in the anteroom.
“Assistant, huh?” Russell said as the door clicked shut. “What’s the pay?”
Driscoll didn’t smile. “How’s jack-shit sound?”
“About what I’d expect,” Russell said mildly.
In a few moments, the door opened again and the young guy reappeared, a look of true annoyance on his face. “Follow me,” he said grudgingly. Which they did.
***
“Nice view,” Driscoll said, gazing down through the still-gauzy sky at the vast sprawl that was Miami: an endless grid of streets and low-slung buildings, stitched through by drainage canals and dotted here and there by shallow lakes that had once been quarries. Where they got the rocks to build all the buildings and pave the roads, he thought. Fill the holes with water, and an ugly thing gets pretty, how it all works out. In the distance was the bay, with all those sailboats and other conveyances he’d been imagining earlier, all the tiny pleasure craft etching wake lines across the mirrored image of the sky. Nothing to do out there but have fun.
“I’m glad you like it,” the man behind the desk said. He didn’t bother to look out himself. His expression suggested that scenery bored him.
“Sit up here, keep an eye on the whole damned town,” Driscoll said. “Something goes wrong, you can just push a button, have it taken care of.”
The man glanced at an appointment book that lay open by his telephone. “I’m talking to you as a favor,” the guy said. “I don’t have a lot of time.”
Driscoll nodded. The guy wore a good suit, had a neat haircut. Trim, with a handball player’s build, a touch of steel at the temples. Bucking for a kick upstairs, all the way to Washington, Driscoll supposed. He had the proper look about him, anyway. The nameplate on his desk said his name was Scott Thomas. No one he’d ever heard of, but then he’d been out of the loop awhile.
“People probably get that wrong all the time,” Driscoll said, gesturing at the nameplate.
“Excuse me?” Thomas said.
“Your name,” Driscoll said. “Thomas Scott, Scott Thomas. Nobody ever called me Driscoll Vernon, that much I can tell you.” Driscoll sensed Russell Straight shifting uneasily at his side. Let him learn a few things, Driscoll thought.
“Driscoll Vernon,” the guy behind the desk said without missing a beat. “Now what did you come here for?”
“Talbot Sams,” Driscoll said. “There’s one for you.”
Thomas stared at him without expression. “This is someone I should know?”
“I was hoping,” Driscoll said.
“Then abandon hope,” Thomas said.
Driscoll was unfazed. “He confronted a client of mine, identified himself as a special agent in charge of an undercover task force operating in Miami. He wanted my client’s cooperation in providing information having to do with the free-trade port project.”
“There is no such task force,” Thomas said.
“If there was one, would you admit it to me?”
“Divulge the existence of an undercover operation? What do you think?”
Driscoll shrugged. “How about this guy Sams? Does he work for you?”
“I’ve never heard the name,” Thomas said.
“Maybe this is an operation directed out of Washington,” Driscoll said.
“If one were, I’d be aware of it,” Thomas said.
“Maybe they don’t want you to be aware of it.”
The man gave him a tolerant smile. “There’s not much I don’t know about.”
“I’ll bet,” Driscoll said. “But there’s a lot of guys working for Justice down here. Maybe you could check your computer, see if one of them goes by the name of Sams.”
Thomas glanced at the thin LCD monitor on the credenza behind him. There was a screen saver displayed there, an endlessly repeating three-sixty panorama of a desert landscape. “I can give you the number of someone to speak to in Washington,” Thomas said. He laced his fingers together, set his hands down on the desk to indicate the matter was closed.
Chapter Thirty-nine
“You pissed that guy off pretty good,” Russell Straight observed. They were back in Driscoll’s Ford now, pulling out of a spot in front of the Federal Building reserved for the U.S. Marshal. Driscoll slipped a printed pass off his dashboard and handed it over to Russell.
“Put that in the glove compartment, will you? Try not to bend it.”
Russell examined the pass, then shook his head. He opened the glove compartment and glanced inside. “What else you got in here? Dolphins tickets, maybe?”
“Who cares about the Dolphins, with Marino gone?” Driscoll said. “Just put that thing away.”
Russell did as he was told. “So, is that the secret to being a good private eye? Be sure and piss everybody off?”
Driscoll gave him a look. “Guy wasn’t going to tell me anything, no matter what, okay?”
“Then why’d we go there?”
“Because that is the secret to being a good private eye, Russell. You make every call, you knock on every door. You never know when you’re going to get lucky.”
Russell thought about it. “Sort of like hitting on women, then.”
Driscoll sighed. “I suppose so.”
“But you’d have to have the right kind of personality.”
“Is that supposed to mean something?”
“I’m just saying,” Russell replied.
>
“The guy’s on notice, and I’m on tape,” Driscoll said. “If he wants to, he can let somebody else down the food chain know it’s okay to let it slip to Driscoll what he wants to know. All sorts of things can happen.”
Russell nodded uncertainly, then turned to stare out the window as they passed through the downtown shopping district. The sidewalks were starting to crowd with a motley assortment of pedestrians. Office workers in their power suits, roly-poly señoras with their netted shopping bolsas, Nordic-looking tourists in shorts and T-shirts and leather sandals. Most of the signs in the shop windows were printed in languages other than English, and not all Spanish either. Chinese, French, German, even a couple Driscoll couldn’t be sure of. It was like being in Casablanca, he thought, with a few professional sports franchises thrown in.
He saw the sign for the bank looming up ahead and glanced behind him, cutting the Ford in front of a delivery van. No blast of horns, no gunshots in their wake. Maybe Miami was mellowing out, Driscoll nodded.
He eased into the entrance of the adjoining parking garage, cranked down his window to take the ticket that scrolled from the entrance stanchion with a buzz. Russell Straight gave Driscoll a look as he tucked the ticket into his shirt pocket.
“Don’t you have some kind of a freebie for this place, too?”
Driscoll raised an eyebrow as he swung into a space marked “Bank.” “Yeah,” he said, pointing at the sign. “They call it validation. Something they came up with just for private detectives.”
“You are a funny dude,” Straight said, and followed him out of the car.
***
“I’m afraid Ms. Acevedo isn’t in today,” the receptionist told them. “She’s attending a training session in Orlando.”
What could they train you for in Orlando, Driscoll wanted to ask, outside of how to wear your Mickey and Minnie ears? But he kept the question to himself.
“What about the old guy?” Russell asked. “The one who worked here since forever?”
The young receptionist cut her glance at Russell. Maroon silk blouse and a gray wool skirt that offered a plentiful view of her slender legs. Glistening black hair and a look that wouldn’t be out of place on the cover of a magazine that discussed a dozen ways to enjoy sex without dinging your nails.
Deal with the Dead Page 28