Book Deal

by Les Standiford

  “Whoo-eee,” Dexter cried, and came home to Mama.

  Chapter 7

  “…that his vital signs have stabilized.”

  “But isn’t there…”

  “…a man his age…we’ll just have to wait and see.”

  The voices drifted to Els as if down a dark, deep well. Though he could not see, he knew he was huddled at the bottom of that dark well and that awful dark-dwelling things were crawling about him in the hidden seeps and nooks and crannies and were just waiting for the voices to go away so that they could finish their work. There was no pain, but there was the fear. A freezing, paralyzing terror that numbed him, and robbed him of his will. He could not see. He could not speak. He was alone in the darkness, as helpless as a child. And there was nothing he could do to keep the horrid things away. Nothing he could do but lie and wait and hope.

  ***

  Deal stared down at Els, saw a tremor in the hand that lay atop the snowy sheet. He turned to Driscoll, whose eyes followed the departure of the nurse who’d warned them: “Just a moment more, now.”

  “His hand moved,” Deal said.

  Driscoll turned back. Els’s hand quivered again. Driscoll nodded. “Maybe we can bring in a Ouija board, he can talk to us that way.”

  “Christ, Driscoll.”

  “Hey, you told me the guy had a sense of humor. Maybe he can hear us, it’ll perk him up.”

  Deal started to say something else, then broke off. Bedside machinery beeped softly, regularly, vital sign printouts scrolled and tumbled quietly to the floor. Els was alive, that was something positive, wasn’t it? He turned for the door, caught the nurse on her way from the central station toward another room.

  “His hand moved,” he told her.

  She glanced in, nodded. “That’s good,” she said.

  “That’s all?” Deal said. “Shouldn’t you call the doctor?”

  She paused, put her hand patiently on Deal’s arm. “It’s not uncommon. He’s had a severe stroke. The movement could indicate he’s regaining some function, or it could simply be Parkinsonian.”

  Deal stared at her. “Parkinsonian?”

  “An involuntary tremor.”

  “Like a frog twitch,” Driscoll chimed in.

  The nurse glanced over Deal’s shoulder. “Excuse me?”

  Driscoll shrugged. “Like in biology. You zap a frog, it twitches.”

  The nurse bit her lip. “If you mean an unconscious response, then yes.”

  Driscoll nodded, satisfied. Deal had spent enough time around the ex-cop, knew not to be offended. Stimulus-response, that was Driscoll’s view of the world, all right. Forget the bedside manner. Observe much, assume little. What turns out to be, is. What doesn’t, isn’t. The gospel according to Vernon.

  The nurse had turned back to Deal. “I don’t mean to be unkind. It’s something we see a lot of.”

  Deal nodded. “I just thought you should know.”

  “We’ll call you the moment anything changes,” she said.

  Deal nodded again, moved along toward the elevators, haunted by the vision of Els, his frail figure lost amidst the machines and the tubes and the snowy linens. How suddenly and terribly the world had turned. Arch gone. Els, who must have served witness to his nephew’s death, hanging on by a thread. And Janice, whom he’d hoped had come back, seemed as good as gone herself.

  Take stock, Deal, he told himself. You have your daughter, you have your health, you have the work you love…but it seemed a sham, the pitiful ramblings of a man whose glass was without question three-quarters empty, not even a quarter full.

  “Mr. Deal?” Deal glanced up, saw a man rising from a bench in the small waiting room opposite the elevators and the nursing station. He noticed also that the elevator doors were opening, though he didn’t remember pressing the call button.

  “I’m Martin Rosenhaus,” the man said. Deal took in the soft drape of his suit, the artwork on his tie, the buttery glow of the shoes he wore. Deal could probably buy a serviceable pickup for what Rosenhaus had spent on the day’s wardrobe.

  “I don’t mean to trouble you,” Rosenhaus added, glancing down the hallway, where Driscoll lingered in conversation with the nurse. “But there doesn’t seem to be anyone else. No family member, I mean…”

  Deal began to wonder if Rosenhaus might be an attorney, some Gables ambulance chaser sensing a score. “What can I do for you?” he said. He’d have simply stepped away into the elevator, but he’d driven to the hospital with Driscoll.

  Rosenhaus was in fact extending a business card his way now. “I’m the chief executive officer of Mega-Media International,” he said. “I’ve come to Miami to supervise the opening of our store and the transfer of certain corporate offices. I was to meet with Arch Dolan today, but…” he broke off, gestured down the hallway.

  “The authorities told me that Ellsworth Dolan had survived,” he continued. “But I didn’t realize how serious his injuries were.” Rosenhaus paused. “I wanted to extend my condolences to the Dolan family. I understand you were a close friend…”

  Deal nodded, finally took the card. Tasteful, everything embossed, thicker than average, as if there were two cards stuck together. Deal fought the urge to disdain the man on principle.

  “Arch was telling me about your store,” Deal said. “He thought you were going to run him out of business.”

  Rosenhaus looked pained. “I’m sorry to hear that. I think ours would have been a mutually beneficial coexistence.”

  Deal paused. Rosenhaus had a way with syllables, all right. “That’s not the way Arch described the prospect,” Deal said. “I read some of the clips he gave me. Suits, Federal Trade Commission complaints…”

  Rosenhaus nodded as if they were discussing unfortunate family gossip. “It’s an extremely volatile time within our industry, Mr. Deal, but the fact is, nothing but good would have accrued to Arch’s store by our coming in. Studies show that most of our customers aren’t the traditional bookstore shoppers at all.” He glanced at a nurse who glared from behind the station counter, then lowered his voice.

  “We bring new buyers into the marketplace. Arch’s House of Books would have profited right along with us in that regard. We could never have hoped to duplicate the ambiance of a store like his. Arch Dolan would have kept all the customers who appreciated his way of doing business and acquired some new ones as well.”

  Deal thought it sounded like someone from General Motors inviting everyone who wanted to drive a horse and buggy to keep right on doing so. “You’re using the past tense,” Deal said. “Why is that?”

  Rosenhaus lifted his hands in a placating gesture. “I simply meant with Arch’s tragedy, and Ellsworth Dolan incapacitated…”

  “You’d have clear sailing,” Deal finished for him.

  “Not at all,” Rosenhaus said. “I’d be thrilled to see Arch’s House of Books survive. Arch Dolan made this a book town single-handedly. His store is a cultural icon. Just as DealCo stands for something in your own industry. It would be wonderful for the entire community to see that bookstore continue.”

  Deal stared at him a moment. “Who told you what I did?” he asked.

  Rosenhaus flashed his ingratiating smile. “Everyone knows about DealCo Construction,” he said. “I’m sorry my people didn’t talk to you about our plans for renovating the space to begin with.”

  Deal stared at him in amazement, trying to imagine it: Hey, Arch, don’t roll over in your grave, but I’m just going to do a little remodeling work for Mega-Media International.

  He glanced away, noted that Driscoll had finally finished up with the nurse and was moving down the hallway in his shambling way. “Well, Mr. Rosenhaus, I appreciate your sentiments,” he managed. “I don’t mean to be short with you, but it’s been a pretty lousy day.” Deal pushed the elevator button again and the doors stuttered open.

  “Not at all, Mr. Deal. You’ve been most kind. And I’m very sorry about wh
at has happened.” He had his hand extended again.

  Deal glanced at Rosenhaus’s hand. He looked up, raised the card in his fingers in answer, stepped on into the elevator.

  Driscoll joined him, gave Rosenhaus a curious glance as the doors closed behind them.

  “Looks like a lawyer,” Driscoll offered as the car started down.

  “A lot worse than that,” Deal answered, and turned to watch the numbers fall.

  Chapter 8

  “Perhaps that’s a good place to begin,” Dr. Goodwin said. “Exploring why it is you feel uncomfortable about coming to see me.” She wore an easy smile, had come around her big blond desk to sit in a chair closer to him.

  Deal sat at the angle of an expansive sectional sofa, feeling at something of a disadvantage. It was comfortable, the sofa, and the view out the windows of Goodwin’s corner office was grand, but maybe that was part of the problem, the disarming illusion of ease. Or maybe he just wanted to be the one ramrod straight in the upright chair, gazing down on the poor sap sunk in the cushions.

  Deal shrugged. “I like your new digs,” he offered, waving at the windows. “Very light, nice and airy.” They were a dozen stories up, high enough to afford a view from downtown Gables all the way west to the expensive, oak-and ficus-and palm-blanketed suburbs, where antebellum mansions and Mediterranean villas circled a couple of golf courses and the unlikely soaring spire of the Biltmore Hotel, a neo-Renaissance holdover from the glory days of the Gables.

  Goodwin followed his gaze, then turned back, appraising him, waiting.

  “Ball’s in my court, right, Doc?” Deal threw up his hands. “I don’t know if uncomfortable is the right word, really…”

  Goodwin nodded, noncommittal, encouraging. She was a handsome woman in her forties, tall, big-boned, with straight blond hair that fell nearly to her shoulders. A no-nonsense woman, an Aussie who’d been in Miami a dozen years. Deal had met her a couple of years back, when he’d brought Tommy Holsum in for a checkup. Poor Tommy, he thought. Poor, simpleminded Tommy. The doc had been on the money about Tommy, and even if it hadn’t done his former tenant much good in the end, Deal had come away feeling a certain trust in her abilities. Enough to call her, make this appointment, anyway.

  “I’m not used to it, that’s all. It’s a new concept for me,” he said.

  “And what’s this ‘it’ you’re talking about?” she said.

  “Admitting you’ve got problems,” he said, after a moment.

  She nodded, as if reserving comment on the simplemindedness of his remark.

  “That you can’t get straight yourself,” he added. “That’s just the way I grew up. Stiff upper lip. Something happens, that’s life. You just deal with it.”

  “Sounds pretty hard-nosed,” she said.

  “My father came from the old school,” Deal said. “He worked hard, played hard, we didn’t see a lot of him. He’d have told you it was all business, of course, one way or another, and I suppose he did set up more projects at the track or over a card game or on the golf course than he ever did in his office.” He broke off, thinking for a moment. He’d come this far, no point in holding back now.

  “He was always good to me, you know, but he was mostly absent. And when he was around, he was usually in the sauce. My mother accepted it, pretty much, just looked the other way. Most of the other women she saw at the country club did the same, I guess, so after the kids got older, the wives’d just start getting blasted themselves. It was like there was this enormous goddamned void that they tiptoed along every day, but nobody ever wanted to say anything about it. Nobody talked about what troubled them. They just coped as best they could.”

  Goodwin nodded. “And you seem to sense how frustrating that would be, feeling bad about a situation and never speaking out?”

  Deal stared at her. Christ, yes, he was thinking, who wouldn’t sense it…but then he realized he’d never uttered these thoughts to anyone before, and certainly not to his own mother or father. He was also aware of how vehement his tone had become, and how quickly it had happened. He glanced down at the low table between them, at the coffee he’d brought in from the waiting room. The good doctor hadn’t slipped him something, had she?

  “You know what I think it is,” he said, scooching forward on the cushions until he felt a firm edge under his seat. “I think it’s having the sense that it’s no damn good complaining about things you just can’t fix.”

  “And you’re feeling that way yourself?”

  Deal opened his hands. He glanced at Goodwin again. This was probably not a person he wanted to play poker with.

  “I’m not a fixer, John,” she said. “But I don’t think that’s the point. If the only person you talk to about the things that bother you is yourself, you can get caught in a circle, lose any hope of objectivity. That’s a role I can play, helping you maintain an honest dialogue with yourself.”

  He reached for his coffee, sipped thoughtfully. “What I like about the building trades,” he said finally, “you go out in the morning, you take out your hammer or your backhoe or your bulldozer, and you whale away. At the end of the day, whether you’ve been knocking one down or putting it up, something’s different. Something’s changed.” He looked up at her. “Good, bad, or indifferent, you’ve accomplished something. There’s a lot of satisfaction in that, you know.”

  “But people are more complex than buildings,” she said.

  “That’s the shame of it,” he said, nodding.

  They shared a brief smile; then Deal was staring out the broad windows again, realizing that he could see the roof of the abandoned Trailways station from where he sat, that the gray, flat-roofed building just catty-corner would be Arch’s House of Books.

  “I’ve had a fair amount of difficulty these last few years,” Deal said. “My old man died, and my mother right after. Then we found out the business had pretty much gone down the tubes and the little bit that was left someone tried to kill me for.” He finished his coffee, put the cup back on the table. “A couple of times, Janice ended up in the way, and nearly died. She was burned in one of the incidents; there are scars the doctors are still working on.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Goodwin said.

  Deal nodded. “If you saw her on the street, you’d never know anything ever happened, not now,” he said. “But she doesn’t feel that way. She feels…” He broke off. “Disfigured, I guess. Like she’s not attractive anymore, not to me at any rate.”

  “And have you discussed this between yourselves?”

  “Somewhat,” Deal said, feeling uneasy. “I wouldn’t say we’d ever gotten very far.”

  Goodwin nodded, as though to admit it were some kind of victory in itself.

  “We’re separated right now,” he said.

  “And how do you feel about that?”

  Deal stared at her. He wanted to shout, How the hell do you think I feel?, but realized Goodwin had no way of knowing about the little imps that danced around inside his head chanting their various mantras of pain and guilt. “Your fault, your fault, nah-na-nah-na-na-ya,” like the hyena chorus in that Disney movie he’d taken Isabel to see.

  “I’m not very happy about it,” he said. “I love my wife. We have a five-year-old daughter. I’d like to see things work out.”

  “Have you considered couples counseling?” Goodwin asked.

  “I don’t think that’s an option right now,” Deal said. “Janice is willing to keep the lines open, but we’re moving kind of slowly.”

  “That must be frustrating for you,” Goodwin offered. Deal glanced at her again. If someone else had made the comment, he might have bristled. But there was something about Goodwin’s manner that disarmed him. Not to mention the fact that she was dead on in her assessments.

  “Even remodeling is a hell of a lot easier,” he said.

  Goodwin smiled, made a note on a pad she kept on the arm of her chair. “How about work?” she asked. “How
is that going?”

  “Okay,” Deal said. “Good, in fact. DealCo was principally a commercial contracting firm when my father was alive: he did a couple of the grand hotels on the beach, some condos on Brickell, a couple of the bank towers downtown. But like I said, that was all over by the time I grew into the business. Mostly I’ve been doing custom residential work ever since the hurricane. It’s a word-of-mouth business, but it’s been picking up, slow but sure.”

  “And this is more interesting?”

  “Say you had your choice, Doc: put up an acre of mini-warehouses, or do a makeover on Terrence Terrell’s coral rock mansion.”

  “I don’t even know which end of a hammer to use,” she said, “but I think I understand the point.”

  “You ever need something done, you know who to call,” he said.

  “I’ll keep it in mind.” She gave a fleeting glance at her watch and Deal checked the clock on the wall. He’d very nearly run through a hundred dollars’ worth of chat, and he’d scarcely noticed.

  “Another thing that’s been bothering me,” he said, clasping his hands together. “This thing that’s happened to Arch Dolan.” He gestured out the window in the direction of the store.

  “Yes,” Goodwin said. “That was terrible. It was a wonderful store.”

  The past tense again, Deal thought. “Arch was a good friend of mine, I even did some work on his place.”

  “I didn’t realize,” Goodwin said.

  “The room with the fireplace, that’s mine,” he said.

  “Very comfortable,” she said.

  “I didn’t design it or anything,” Deal said.

  “It is a very nice room,” Goodwin said.

  “We spent the afternoon there, the day before he was killed.”

  “Oh my,” Goodwin said, and the tone of her voice sent a pang through him.

  Deal looked at her. “Janice had been working for Arch. She’s the one who found him.”