Book Deal

by Les Standiford

  He stared at her in frustration. “You’ve seen what’s happened already,” he said. “There’s no telling what might happen…”

  “It could happen to me while you’re away,” she said. It stopped him cold.

  “If they’re out there, doing what we think, it could happen anytime,” she continued. “Unless we do something to stop them.”

  They turned as one, stared through the kitchen pass-through at their daughter. Deal took a deep breath, finally. “Mrs. Suarez could take her to her relatives in Hialeah,” Deal said. “Nobody could find them there.”

  Janice nodded.

  “You ever been to Omaha?” he asked. He gestured out the open doorway, as if it were just over the line of banyan trees that hid the neighboring yards.

  She followed his gesture, turned back to him. “Is this an invitation?” she asked.

  “Straight to the hotel, a trip to the police station with me, that’s it, agreed?”

  “If that’s what it takes…” she began.

  But by that time, Deal was on the phone again.

  Chapter 19

  “Kinda like riding in the train, isn’t it?”

  The tall man sat catty-corner opposite Deal and Janice, his legs jutting out into the narrow aisle. There were four of them in an odd little cabin at the back of the half-filled plane, a space between the main cabin and the crew galley that actually did resemble a train compartment.

  Strange configuration, strange airline for that matter. No food service, no seat assignments, just pile on and grab a spot. Air America, one he’d never heard of, but the timing was right. They’d had an hour to pack and brief Mrs. Suarez—no problema, señor, Isabel is muy contenta conmigo, nobody find us, you go with your wife—then they would run by Janice’s apartment for a few things on the way to the airport.

  Going to Omaha required connections, they had discovered: the next flight out of Miami would have stranded them overnight in St. Louis. They’d just managed to make the flight, had found their way to these seats when they had been joined by the two, another pair of last-minute arrivals.

  As Deal nodded absently, the man reached to pat the arm of his wife, who was engrossed in a crossword puzzle on her lap. The pair looked familiar to him somehow, but he couldn’t imagine where he’d have met them. It was probably their very typicality, he thought. They just looked like familiar people.

  “Iris’d like it a lot better if it was, wouldn’t you, hon?”

  The woman flicked her eyes up at her husband, held her gaze there a moment, her lips pressed together as if she were considering some annoying stranger. Finally, she went back to her crossword without comment. The tall man leaned toward him, speaking in a nasal Mid-western twang that carried easily above the roaring engines of the plane.

  “She hates to fly. I showed her all the statistics, how you could get killed a lot sooner riding in a car, but it doesn’t mean anything to her. All she can think about is how far it is to fall.”

  The woman glanced at her husband again, her eyes widening momentarily. It might have been fear, Deal thought, but the expression could have as easily been a flash of fury.

  “Leave the people alone, Dexter,” she said. Something in her tone suggested that a death threat lurked just behind the words.

  “It’s all right,” Deal said.

  “She’s just unhappy to be leaving My-yam-ah,” Dexter said. “Had to pack up her bikini and head back to the snow.”

  Deal stared at the woman, whose eyes were fixed on her crossword. She had a hat pinned to her head, wore a dotted Swiss dress buttoned to the neck, opaque hose, a pair of heavy black shoes. He supposed it was possible she owned a bikini, but he suspected something more on the order of a knee-and elbow-length garment from the 1920s.

  “Now me,” Dexter said, “I say hold on as long as you can.” He pinched fabric at the knees of his slacks, jiggled the pantlegs for Deal to see: white polyester, some kind of design printed in primary colors. Birdie, bogey, par, he read. Red socks. White shoes. Red shirt with white piping around the sleeves and collar.

  “You’re a golfer?” Janice asked, turning from the window she’d been staring out of.

  “He wouldn’t know which end of the stick,” the man’s wife said. She hadn’t lifted her eyes from the puzzle.

  “Club,” Dexter said. “It’s club, not stick.”

  She looked up at him, tapping the puzzle with her pen. “Right here,” she said, coolly. “‘Duffer’s weapon,’ forty-two across. Five letters, starts with s, t, those are for sure. You make club work with that, I’ll buy you a golf course.” She turned to Deal. “He’s going through a second childhood, you’ll have to excuse him.”

  “I didn’t get a chance to play any while I was down,” Dexter said, ignoring her, “but I saw plenty of it around the hotel.” He nodded pleasantly at his wife. “I told Mama it looked like a heck of a lot of fun. We’re about to retire, you see. Man’s got to look for things to keep him busy.”

  “You don’t look that old,” Janice said.

  “Thank you kindly.”

  Deal glanced at her, then back at Dexter, who was beaming at her comment. It was true, Deal thought: when you looked closely, you realized he couldn’t be more than sixty. It was the same with his wife. They simply gave a certain appearance of age.

  “Excuse me,” Iris said abruptly, snapping her seat belt open. “I’ve got to get out.” She tossed her crossword onto the empty seat across from her, started past her husband.

  “It’s okay,” he said, struggling up from his seat. “Gotta go myself.” He stood aside as she brushed past, shooting him a withering glance.

  Dexter waited until she had crossed the galley space, made her way into one of the tiny rest rooms at the back of the plane. “I’m sorry about Iris,” he said. “She just hates an airplane to death.”

  “It’s okay,” Deal said, and watched the man make his own way off.

  Janice waited until the second rest-room door had clacked shut to turn to him. “How long is this flight?” she said.

  Deal checked his watch. “Another couple of hours to Chicago. We change planes there.”

  “I say we change seats while they’re gone,” she said.

  Deal smiled. “I thought you were enjoying the old guy.”

  “Force of habit,” she said. “If you grow up in the Midwest you develop this compulsion—you’ll take any opportunity to say inane things to perfect strangers.”

  She was gathering up her things: a newspaper, a package of mints, a People magazine she’d found in the gift shop by the gate.

  “You mean it? You’re really going to move.”

  She glanced up at him. “Do I mean it? It’s like being locked in a room with my parents.”

  She was bending over now, rummaging under the seat opposite for her purse and carry-on.

  “Janice…” Deal was still protesting as she rose and pushed past him.

  “Tell them I got claustrophobic,” she said. “That’s pretty close to the truth.”

  ***

  “I can’t believe we did this,” Deal said. He had followed Janice halfway up the main cabin of the plane, trying not to look back when he heard the rest-room doors clack open behind him.

  “Get a grip,” Janice said. She’d already arranged herself, had stowed her bags, her reading materials. She offered him a mint from her package. “A train makes a lot of stops, doesn’t it? They’ll just think we got off somewhere.”

  “Real funny,” he said.

  “Let me ask you something,” she said. “You’d rather sit there and trade quips with old stoneface than have a conversation with me?”

  “We could have had our own conversation,” he said stubbornly.

  “Deal, I grew up with these people. They are insidious. You cannot ignore them. You clear your throat and they answer you. You cough and they give you the name of their doctor…”

  “Okay, okay,” he said. He held up
his hand, trying not to laugh.

  “You don’t know them. You don’t want to know them. But they want to know you. They’re like those pod people. They won’t be happy until they’ve reduced you to the level of cornmeal, until you’re sitting there babbling like they are…”

  Janice was fighting laughter now and Deal was doubled over in silent guffaws. They went on that way for minutes, like a couple of guilty kids sharing a joke during church service, until finally a stewardess leaned over to ask if she could get them anything.

  Deal opened his mouth, trying to find the breath to answer, when Janice could stand it no more. She gave a shriek of laughter and Deal followed suit. “I guess you’ve already had enough,” the stewardess said, turning huffily away.

  It only egged them on further, and it was a good five minutes before Deal could turn to Janice without exploding into laughter. His sides ached, and he wiped tears from his eyes.

  “Christ,” he said, still fighting to get his breathing under control. “I don’t know how long it’s been since I laughed like that.”

  “A long time,” she said, nodding in agreement. She blew her nose heartily, dabbed at her eyes. The stewardess was moving down the aisle, her gaze studiously averted. Janice reached out, caught her by the arm.

  “Could we have something after all—a couple glasses of seltzer, maybe?” She turned to Deal for confirmation and he nodded.

  “Of course,” the stewardess said, all smiles again.

  “She just wanted to be of service,” Janice said, watching the woman walk off.

  “We have to get off in front of those people, Janice.”

  Janice nodded absently. “It is a difference between you and me,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You do like to please people.”

  “You say it like it’s a fault.”

  She shrugged. “Not always. But sometimes you have to put yourself first.”

  Deal wondered if it was bait. Was he supposed to pick up on it, grind on her as if she’d walked out on them…or perhaps give her the chance to explain once more why she’d had to leave? Neither possibility enticed him. “My old man was the champ at that,” Deal said. “I guess I just got in the habit of working the other way.”

  She nodded, gave him the hint of a smile. Maybe he’d passed the test. “That’s what it comes down to, isn’t it?” she said. “Our parents. Still controlling us, right from the grave.”

  “Not my old man,” he said. “He’s got a gin game going somewhere, a drink in one hand, the other on some babe. He couldn’t care less what I was up to.”

  “Keep talking, Deal. You’re proving my point.”

  “You think I’m on my way to Omaha because I want to please somebody?” He stared at her, daring her to rise, this time.

  She dropped her gaze. “I think you’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do,” she said quietly.

  “Good,” Deal said. “That makes two of us, then.”

  ***

  As it turned out, they were off the plane and lost in the bowels of the Chicago airport without another glimpse of the couple. Deal imagined them making their way along an ever-narrowing route, from airline, to commuter, to rail or bus connections, until they were finally bumping down a gravel road in a round-fendered pickup, Dexter in his golf getup, Iris still working her crossword in the failing light, a Gothic farmhouse looming up ahead.

  Meanwhile, he and Janice had to change terminals, ride an underground tram to do it, cruise along an otherworldly conveyor walkway past some kind of neon sculpture on the walls, an assemblage that pulsed and wavered, hidden speakers pumping out random gongs and chimes and unintelligible mutterings as they whisked along.

  “And people think Miami is weird?” Deal said. “I thought this was the Midwest, for Chrissakes.”

  Janice rolled her eyes. “Everywhere is weird, Deal. You’ve been working too hard.”

  “What do you think something like that costs?” he said, pointing at the neon sculpture. They’d come to the end of the moving walkway and Janice had to guide him off, pull him toward a steep escalator up ahead.

  “It’s an example of art in a public place,” she said. “Your tax dollars hard at work.”

  He was still staring over his shoulder when she pulled him onto the escalator.

  ***

  “Well, look who’s here,” Dexter said. He turned from the boarding counter, pointing as Deal and Janice hurried from the concourse. “Iris, lookee here.”

  Iris glanced up from a pamphlet she was reading, gave a cursory nod. “You folks headed to Omaha?” Dexter said. “’Fraid we’ve got one of those puddle-jumpers to ride in,” he added. He nodded out a window where a tiny propeller-driven plane sat, old snow and dust kicking up in swirls.

  “Might as well hold off a bit,” Dexter said as Deal and Janice headed toward the gate, where an attendant was already sending passengers through. “I like to sit in back, case of we go down.”

  “We don’t mind,” Deal said, guiding Janice on ahead. “We’re not afraid of flying.”

  ***

  He might have spoken too soon, Deal thought as he clutched the armrest of his cramped seat tightly. They were climbing through a bank of solid gray clouds, and he watched in disbelief as ice steadily accreted on the wings outside. It built up to an eight-inch sheet before huge chunks began to shear away, bouncing off the fuselage with heavy thumps.

  “Good Lord,” Janice hissed, her hand clamping his arm tightly.

  Deal could see Dexter at the corner of his vision, one row back and across the aisle, legs and arms jutting from the tiny single seat. No telling where Iris had ended up, though she’d be on a bus if she had any sense.

  Dexter grinned and nodded in his direction. If there was any comfort in it, the roar of the engines and the pounding outside made any thought of conversation absurd.

  Before the ice could build up appreciably again, they popped out of the clouds and the roar of the engines abated. Janice turned to him, relieved. “I remember now why I moved to Florida,” she said.

  Deal nodded, clasping her hand in his. She glanced down, and for a moment he wondered if she was going to pull away. Then she gave him a wan smile and settled back in her seat, closing her eyes. It was a picture, he thought—just looking, you’d have to think all was well.

  Chapter 20

  “Any time you want to take a look at God’s country, just come on out to Wahoo,” Dexter was saying. Incredibly, the man and his wife had come to stand behind Deal and Janice in the rental car line at the Omaha terminal. “You just ask anybody where the Kittles live, they’ll tell you. For that matter, just ask them, where’s Dexter and Iris’s place. They’ll tell you.”

  “We’ll do it,” Deal said. “Count on it.”

  He scooped up the keys from the sales attendant with one hand, urged Janice away with the other. “Enjoy Omaha, now,” Dexter said as they hurried off.

  ***

  “I was right, wasn’t I,” Janice said. She was huddled in the corner of the rental car, her arms wrapped tightly about her, her hands tucked in her armpits, while Deal worked to get the engine started.

  “What’s that?” he said. He was distracted, trying to remember his cold-weather driving routines, whether one was to pump the accelerator or leave the starter to its own devices.

  “That guy. You couldn’t get away from him fast enough.”

  “He was just trying to be friendly,” Deal said. “If you lived in someplace like Yeehaw, Nebraska, you’d probably be starved for company, too. Especially if you lived with somebody like Iris.”

  “Wahoo,” Janice said.

  “What?” Deal had given up leaving things alone, was pumping the accelerator rapidly now.

  “The name of the town,” she said. “It was Wahoo.”

  “Same thing,” Deal said, glancing at her.

  After they’d retrieved her suitcase from the baggage claim, she’
d taken one look outside, dug out a down parka he remembered her wearing on a ski trip a decade ago. She had its fur-fringed hood pulled up over her head, but she was gloveless and shivering in the frigid air. Outside, winter twilight had dimmed the sky and a gritty snow was coming down nearly sideways, driven by a gusting wind strong enough to rock the car periodically.

  Deal remembered buying a parka for the same long-ago trip, but his had burned up a few years back, lost in the same accident that had left Janice with the scars that only she could see. Forget it, Deal, he thought. Ancient history. Head down, foot forward. They would work their way out of this yet.

  For winter gear, he’d found only a pair of ski mittens and a wool scarf in the back of a drawer. He had borrowed a pea coat from Driscoll, who’d also tossed in a watch cap and a Jon-ee hand warmer. “Used that sucker plenty when I worked Shore Patrol in Korea,” Driscoll had said. “Nebraska’s even worse.”

  He’d insisted on digging out a can of lighter fluid from under his sink, filling up the gadget, showing Deal how it worked. “It’ll fit right inside those mittens of yours,” he added, then stopped him on the way out of the apartment. “Call me if you get in over your head, now.”

  He was already in over his head, Deal thought, fighting the urge to hustle Janice out of the freezing car back into the comfort of the tiny airport. If planes were still flying, they could get as far back as Chicago tonight, take a room at the Ambassador or the Palmer House, find a decent restaurant, have some drinks, pretend it was a vacation, a second honeymoon.

  “What’s wrong with this car, Deal?” she said, huddling deeper within herself.

  “The winter,” he grumbled as the starter ground uselessly on at his touch.

  Deal hadn’t bothered to light the hand warmer, but he was beginning to wish he had. He’d removed his mitten to get the key in the unfamiliar ignition and his fingers were turning to ice.

  “Shouldn’t they check these cars out, have them ready for people?”

  He turned to her, exasperated. “I bet there’s a place on the rental form to write that suggestion down.”