Book Deal

by Les Standiford

  “Can you give us that security camera image now?”

  “Just a second, it’s a little complicated.” There was a plainclothes cop on the far side of the room, a guy with a weight lifter’s build wearing jeans and a T-shirt, fiddling with one of the components in Lightner’s setup.

  “You see anything yet?” Artie called.

  “No…yeah, wait a minute, there it is,” the lead detective called back.

  A cutout had appeared in the lower corner of the monitor, a blurry black-and-white image of Lightner at the doorway, talking through the security gate to an older woman wearing a floppy hat, white gloves, big tinted glasses. She was saying something to Lightner, making dithery motions with her hands, out toward the street.

  Lightner said something back, threw up his hands, disappeared. In a few seconds he was back, handing the woman what looked like a cellular phone. Deal tried to imagine what was going through Lightner’s mind at the moment. Just about to get off, some loony shows up at your door at 11:00 P.M., wearing garden party attire.

  “We got any sound with that?” the lead detective called.

  “I don’t think so,” Artie said. “You won’t get it in PIP, anyway.”

  The woman in Lightner’s den, meanwhile, had stood up, found her purse, lit a cigarette. She glanced around, dropped the match in a plant container, blew a stream of smoke toward the camera, checked her watch impatiently. Deal felt an immense sadness overtake him. This woman had spent the last moments of her life smoking, waiting impatiently for Eddie Lightner to return and finish a trick?

  Meantime, in the insert, the woman in the floppy hat had dialed, listened, banged the cellular phone against the side of her hand. Her demeanor seemed to have taken a sudden change. Her face twisted into a scowl and she shouted something angrily at Lightner. “…piece of shit,” Deal caught, thinking, The loony really is a loony after all. Lightner’s head bobbed as if he were shouting something in return.

  The woman in the floppy hat spun about, started away from the house, still carrying Lightner’s cellular phone. Lightner fumbled at the security gate, then hurried out after her, worried about his property. Don’t do it, Deal thought, rooting against hope as if it were some horror movie where you shout at the heroine not to go down to that basement.

  But Lightner did do it. Twisted the key, swung open the grate…and in that instant, when the gate was finally free, everything changed. The woman in the floppy hat tossed the phone aside, spun about, advanced on Lightner in two quick strides. Her fist shot out, knuckles extended oddly, and Lightner went down, out of the frame. The woman moved after him, sending what looked like karate kicks at the fallen Lightner.

  Lightner was up then, moving toward the security camera, a smear of blood on his upper lip. His face bloated up momentarily, distorted into fish-eye perspective as he swept past the camera. But there was no mistaking the look of terror in his eyes. In the next instant, his face was replaced by the image of a huge, misshapen hat, flapping after him like some surreal creature of the night.

  The tiny picture was a static shot of the entrance and the action shifted back into Lightner’s den: Lightner running into the room, shouting, pointing at the startled hooker.

  “Hey, where’s the sound?” the lead detective yelled.

  “No sound at all now?” Artie called. “Shit!” He turned back to the console he’d been fiddling with, began pushing buttons.

  The woman in the hat was on Lightner’s heels, clipped him at the base of the skull with a chopping motion of her hand. Lightner went down like a rock, tangling into a cluster of carved African sculptures that occupied a corner of the room like miniature wooden Indians. The hooker made a beeline for the doorway, but she wasn’t quick enough. The woman in the floppy hat reached out, caught her by a length of her long hair, jerked her backward.

  The woman in the hat raised one foot, planted it at the base of the hooker’s spine. She twisted the hooker’s hair into a rope, and, using both hands, jerked down savagely. The hooker’s arms shot straight out from her sides as if she were being electrocuted.

  “Fuck me,” one of the detectives said, his voice little more than an awed whisper.

  Thankfully, Deal thought, the hooker’s face was averted from the camera. In the next instant, she was crumpled on the floor, back broken, just the way Deal had found her.

  Meanwhile, Lightner had struggled up, was coming at the woman in the hat with one of the sculptures upraised like a baseball bat. He roundhoused the thing at the woman, who ducked it easily. He sailed past, losing his grip on the sculpture. The thing must have tumbled out into the hallway at that point, Deal thought, reliving his first glance into the house.

  Lightner turned, came at her again, nothing but his bare hands this time. Fast Eddie Lightner. Big-time player, hustler, cocksman extraordinaire. Not a decent bone in his chiseling, hump-your-crippled-grand-mother body, Deal thought. And still felt a wave of despair and sadness as the woman in the flowered hat caught Eddie by the lapels of his two-hundred-dollar silk robe and slung him face first against the thick glass front of the aquarium.

  The sound came back in time to render the sickening crunch, the hiss of the water as it began to spray from the tank. Deal turned away, hurrying quickly out of the room then. He knew how this movie ended, after all.

  ***

  Driscoll caught up with him outside, where he’d stopped to put the dog down in the little patch of grass between Lightner’s house and the street. The roadway had been sealed, the area where the jogger’s body had lain now another beehive of activity. Driscoll turned and motioned to a detective who’d followed them to the door that everything was all right.

  “Yeah, tell ’em I’m not fleeing the scene,” Deal said, a bitter edge in his voice.

  “They gotta talk to you, that’s all,” Driscoll said. “You ought to be happy they got that video. Otherwise, they’d be all over your ass right now.”

  Deal nodded. “Next time I find bodies, I’ll keep that in mind. I’ll walk out backwards, let the paperboy handle it.”

  Driscoll ignored him, worked his shoulders under the jacket he’d put on. “I presume you had some thought in mind, coming to see the deceased at this time of night,” he said mildly.

  Deal stared at him, defiant.

  Driscoll shrugged. “You don’t have to talk to me, but you’ll sure as hell have to explain yourself to those guys.” He nodded toward the house.

  Deal let out his breath, allowed the dog to nose toward a clump of bushes. “I thought maybe Lightner would know something about why the Mega-Media project is stalled.”

  “Yeah?” Driscoll said. “Why would that be?”

  “Because he put the deal together. He called Arch Dolan up to tell him about it.”

  “How nice of Eddie,” Driscoll said.

  “Eddie was a sleazewad of the first water,” Deal said, “but he was the kind of guy who knew things.”

  Driscoll nodded. “So now you’re a detective, huh?”

  Deal shrugged. “Something’s going on with the Mega-Media project,” he said. “I’m going to find out what it is.”

  Driscoll glanced back toward the house. “Seems to me like you’re running out of people to ask.”

  Deal was ready to agree when the dog gave a jerk on its leash that pulled him off balance. He turned as the thing made a four-pronged dive into a thick bank of artillery fern, burying its head into the greenery and snarling. “Get out of there,” Deal said, pulling on the leash. “Come on.”

  The dog came out unwillingly, dragging something in its mouth.

  Deal bent down. The dog was trying to avert its head, but he gathered up the slack in the leash, pulled it around. “Look here,” Deal said as he gently tugged the object from the dog’s mouth.

  He handed the cellular phone to Driscoll, who took it by its stubby antenna. “Dog slobber’ll ruin the prints,” he muttered.

  “She was wearing gloves, remember.”


  “Oh, yeah,” Driscoll said.

  “Good dog,” Deal said, patting the terrier.

  “You want to go back inside now, tell the boys your story?” Driscoll said.

  Deal glanced up at him. “Does this bother you, Driscoll? Me wanting to run this matter to the ground?”

  Driscoll sighed. “You can run matters wherever you want to,” he said. “But from the looks of this mess, you better be careful.”

  Deal stood. “So you think maybe I’m right, somebody didn’t want Lightner talking?”

  Driscoll threw up his hands. “Kind of guy Lightner was, a whole bunch of people might want him dead. You just can’t make these giant leaps, Deal. The point is, you start nosing around dirty people, you never know what’s going to happen, that’s all I’m saying. Now go tell the boys you came to see Lightner about a job you were trying to get and let’s go home.”

  Deal stared at him. “You’re telling me to lie?”

  Driscoll gave him a droll look in response. “Forget it, Deal. Handle it your own way.”

  ***

  “So Lightner arranged the lease for this giant bookstore that was going to run your friend Arch Dolan out of business, is that right?” The detective, who’d said his name was Flynn, had a notebook out, a pencil in one hand, but his eyes were on the backside of the female officer Deal had met earlier. She was bent over in front of the still-dripping tank, staring sorrowfully at the dying fish. One of the big angelfish spasmed up out of the shallow puddle that was left, flashed briefly in the light like a twirling coin, fell back again.

  “That’s right,” Deal said.

  The detective turned to him, waved his arm around the room. “But your friend Dolan is dead. It would have been pretty hard for him to do all this, wouldn’t it?”

  Deal gaped at the detective. Driscoll, who stood a few feet away, inspecting some of the titles in Lightner’s bookcase, gave Deal an I-told-you-so glance. “Of course he’s dead. That’s the point,” Deal said.

  The detective scratched behind his ear with his pencil. “If there is a point, it seems to elude me.” He glanced back at the female officer, then consulted his notebook again. “Your pal Dolan was a pillar of the community, an unfortunate victim of crime. What we got here,” he paused, glancing around the room with distaste, “is your basic scumbag hit. Lightner’s a player, Mr. Deal. He’s got markers spread all over town, he’s screwed more people than Linda Lovelace, what happened isn’t hardly a surprise. I go around on this, people are going to tell me, nah, I didn’t do it, but when you find who did, give ’em my congratulations.”

  Deal sighed, exasperated. He opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again. Faced with Flynn’s bluff certainty, his own suspicions seemed far less substantial, even to himself. Mentioning the difficulties at the Mega-Media site seemed impossible suddenly, an airy nothing. Flynn would consign him to the conspiracy theory brigade, along with the Jim Garrison Fan Club and the UFO Spotters of America, if he hadn’t already.

  “It seemed there could be a connection,” he heard himself mumble lamely.

  “Uh-huh,” Flynn said. His eyes were on the female cop again. “Is that what you came over to talk with Lightner about?”

  Deal thought he saw a new light appear in Flynn’s eyes. Maybe considering him as a suspect, Deal thought, imagining Flynn measuring him, trying to figure out what he’d look like in women’s clothes and a floppy hat.

  “No,” Deal said, hiding the resignation he felt inside. Driscoll had pulled a book down from the shelves, was thumbing through it, but the expression on his face told Deal where his attention was. “There was a project I was interested in bidding on,” he continued. “I thought maybe Lightner had some information that could help.”

  Flynn nodded, flipping his notebook shut. “That was Eddie’s stock in trade, I understand. Always ready to lend a hand.”

  If the price was right, Deal finished Flynn’s message in his mind.

  “You think you’d recognize the guy with the dog if you saw him again?” Flynn asked.

  “I don’t know. It was dark. He was tall, thin.” Deal shrugged. “I couldn’t see his face.”

  Flynn nodded again. “Yeah, well, we’ll be in touch. Thanks for your help, Mr. Deal.”

  He tipped his notebook at Deal, then ambled off toward the female officer. “Hey, Sylvia,” he said. “Where you been keeping yourself?”

  She turned, glanced at Flynn with something less than enthusiasm, drew herself up. “Out of trouble, Floyd,” she said, and walked on out of the room.

  ***

  “Floyd Flynn’s a piece of work, isn’t he?” Driscoll said.

  “Floyd Flynn, that’s really the guy’s name?” Deal said.

  Driscoll shrugged, motioned to the bartender that he wanted a refill on his draft. “Frigging Floyd Flynn is what we used to call him,” Driscoll said. “Five bucks if you can say it three times.”

  “He seemed more interested in the lady cop than anything else.”

  “I tried to tell you,” Driscoll said. “Curiosity is not Floyd’s metier. Tends to complicate things, often results in thought, even hard work.”

  Deal shook his head, took a sip of his own beer.

  At Driscoll’s suggestion, they’d driven on toward the fringes of the Grove’s business district, stopped at a tavern called the Ruptured Duck, a hangout for locals that Deal had passed by a thousand times. No European tourists, no kids in Calvin Klein, no yups from the affluent Miami suburbs. Here the atmosphere was red Naugahyde and shagcarpeted walls, heavy on the smoke, Sansabelts, and mascara. There was a stuffed mallard mounted above the bar, a mocked-up surgical truss wrapped around its midsection.

  “They get the live-aboard crowd,” Driscoll remarked, following Deal’s gaze. “Houseboaters and sailboat people, mostly.” He tipped his full beer at the bartender, a blond woman with a formidable bustline, a tight smile, and a leather skirt cut halfway up a shapely thigh.

  “She’s either forty, carrying sixty thousand miles, or sixty carrying forty,” Driscoll said. “What’s your guess?”

  “Have another beer, Driscoll.”

  “I like this place,” Driscoll continued. “It’s gone downhill a little, but then again, so have I.”

  Deal laughed despite himself.

  “So what’s your next move, Sherlock?” Driscoll asked.

  Deal shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe it is crazy.”

  Driscoll shrugged. “Frigging Floyd is no measure of what’s worth looking into.”

  Deal glanced at him. “A minute ago, I would have sworn you were trying to discourage me.”

  “Hey,” Driscoll continued, “you have a hunch, you might as well play it out. All’s I’m trying to tell you is, don’t expect somebody else to work your own wavelength, Deal. Me or Floyd or anybody else.”

  “Sounds a little mystical, coming from you.”

  “No mystery to it,” Driscoll said. “More like common sense, the way I see it.” He drained his beer. “I gotta go to the can. Order me another beer, will you?”

  Deal nodded, watched Driscoll move off into the dark reaches of the bar. Work his own wavelength. Sure. If he only knew what that meant. There was something going on at the Mega-Media site, that much he was certain of. Whether it had anything to do with Arch’s death or Lightner’s, that was another matter. Impossible to know unless he found out what the problem was. He could always go back to Custer’s office, try to find out if the little bastard was hiding something, but that would be tough. Custer had made a career out of playing the angles. It’d take hanging him out his office window by his heels to get him to talk. That or a significant amount of cash.

  But what choice did he have? Lightner was out of the picture. Carver Construction seemed like a dead end…but still, somebody had to know what the hold-up was…

  He was staring off into space, shredding his cocktail napkin, wadding the strips into little balls that he fired off the b
ar top with flicks of his finger, when the bartender slid into his line of vision. She glanced down into her cleavage, plucked something out with her fingers. She dropped the paper wad on the bar in front of him, gave him a smile.

  “Lose something?” she said.

  Deal felt his face redden. “I’m sorry…” he began.

  She was laughing at his discomfort.

  “Get you anything?” she asked.

  “My partner needs a beer,” he managed.

  “How about you?”

  Deal thought there was something in the way she said it. He took another look at her. The skin at the top of her breasts smooth, the flesh of her neck taut, her jawline firm. Closer up, her eyes, unwavering on his, almost soft. Not an unattractive woman. Not at all. And then he heard the laughter.

  A while since he’d heard that sound, of course, but just as unmistakable as the sound of his daughter’s middle-of-the-night cry. He turned away from the bartender, was off his stool in an instant and heading toward the sound with a backward wave.

  There was a little room off to the side, a place you couldn’t really see from the bar. Electronic dartboard, jukebox, half a dozen tables around a parquet dance floor the size of a dining room table. Most of the tables were empty, but a couple had been pulled together. A group of younger people there, three women in casual dress, two late-twenties guys in T-shirts and jeans, tanned muscular arms and sun-bleached hair—rough carpenters, Deal thought, or maybe pleasure-boat crew-men—but he really didn’t focus, because his gaze had locked in on the woman at the end of the table. She was wearing jeans, a white shirt, its sleeves rolled up, a scoop-necked T-shirt underneath. Too old for the crew she was with, but just right for him, he found himself thinking. She looked as lovely as he’d ever seen her, except for the bleary look in her eyes, which were focused somewhere a million miles away until he was almost over top of her.