Bone Key (19 page)
“You can find that address okay?” Deal called to Balart through the open driver’s partition.
“Is in Key West, I can find,” the man said without turning. He pulled the limo from the curb into a gap in the growing evening traffic, then swung off Duval at the next intersection.
Deal had managed to track down Malloy on his cellular, the attorney about to tear into a rack of lamb at Louie’s Backyard, where he was dining with an actual paying client. When he heard the brief version of what had happened at the Pier House, he agreed to meet Deal at his home in fifteen minutes.
It took less than half that for the limo to make its way to Malloy’s, a low-slung single-story place, built in the Frank Lloyd Wright style, down Olivia Street, not far from the graveyard they had passed earlier. You might not have known the house was there, Deal thought as he and Russell stepped out of the limo, what with all the lush foliage that shielded the entrance from the street.
“We won’t be long,” Deal told the driver, who waved away his concern.
“I tell the boss you had one more thing to see about,” Balart said, holding up his phone. “He say no problem. On Key West time, down here,” he added with a smile.
Deal nodded, considering the concept, then turned to unlatch the wooden gate. He led the way along a path that twisted through the vegetation and past a shallow garden pool where several huge koi flashed away at their approach.
“Those are goldfish?” Russell asked.
“Big orange carp,” Deal said, glancing back where the limo idled. “Expensive ones. What do you make of our man Balart?”
Russell followed his gaze. “He’s a fellow con.”
Deal shook his head. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning I trust him.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“He did time in one of Castro’s jails, didn’t he?”
Deal stared. “So what?”
Russell stared at him. “Then he was in for nothing,” he said. “Same as me.”
Deal let it go. He ducked under the low-hanging porch eave and was about to press the bell when the door swung open smoothly and a woman with the broad face of an Indio ushered them in.
“Señor Malloy say please come in,” she said in a soft voice, averting her eyes quickly from the shallow cross-hatching of cuts on Deal’s forearms. “Is coming soon.”
Deal gave her a smile that must have looked like something his daughter had hacked out of a lopsided pumpkin, then motioned Russell inside. They followed the woman down a slate-tiled hallway and into a living room where a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows opened onto a garden that was even more artfully landscaped than the one they’d walked through.
There was a pool done up to look like a natural pond, fed by a stream that tumbled over a series of boulders placed to resemble a jungled cliffside at one end. Deal saw a fluttering of wings among lush foliage out there, followed by the screech of a parrot.
“We must’ve come to the wrong place,” Russell observed. “This looks like the fucking zoo.”
“It’s just Key West,” Deal said.
“The lawyers must do pretty good down here,” Russell said.
Deal had to agree. There were three buttery-looking leather love seats arranged to take advantage of the view outside, their centerpiece a coffee table that looked like a cross section of a giant redwood, lacquered and waxed until it glowed in the soft, indirect lighting.
Set into one wall was a sizable salt-water aquarium that provided an idealized rendition of marine life very nearly as exotic as the jungle landscape outside. A school of blue disk-shaped fish as vivid as neon dollars shimmered back and forth in the tank above a pink-spotted moray eel that lounged on the sandy bottom like Popeye’s disembodied arm. Deal couldn’t see the thing’s head, and he didn’t want to. The last time he’d seen a tank with an eel in it, the owner had ended up floating amidst his former razor-mouthed pets, a sight he’d never been able to banish from his memory.
At the other end of the room was a series of louvered doors that Deal suspected hid a TV the size of a theater screen from his youth, one side flanked by a floor-to-ceiling wine rack, maybe half of its slots occupied.
“Maybe Malloy knows something about this wine…” Russell began, breaking off when Deal formed his hand into a pistol’s shape and mimed the hammer snapping down.
“One of the reasons we’re here,” Deal told him.
Russell nodded, and Deal turned to survey the room once more. Rusty had come up the hard way, his old man a second-generation Irish immigrant, the owner of a glass installation business that Barton Deal had used whenever he could. The Malloy home had been a modest three-bedroom ranch on a quarter-acre lot in South Miami. Rusty had moved to a different level, or so it would seem.
“Johnny-boy,” Deal heard behind him, “what the hell have you done this time?”
Deal turned to see Malloy coming through the hallway passage, his show of exasperation fading when he saw the crosshatchings on Deal’s arms. “Holy shit,” he said. “You look like a Zuni warrior.”
“I believe the Zunis cut themselves up on purpose,” Deal said.
“Man oh man,” he said, casting a questioning look at Russell. “Where were you when this happened?”
Deal saw Russell stiffen at Malloy’s suggestion. “Leave it alone, Rusty. He was on the balcony of the room, keeping an eye out. Whoever it was fired two shots at Russell when he charged in. He could have been killed.”
“Hey,” Malloy said, holding up his hands in surrender. “I was just asking.”
Malloy flashed Russell a conciliatory smile, then turned to Deal. “You want to explain what you were doing in that hotel room?”
Deal shrugged. “I forgot something.”
Malloy shook his head. “I’m not only your attorney, John, I’m your friend. If you expect me to help you, then you’ve got to be up front when you explain things.”
Deal nodded, looking around their plush surroundings. When they’d been kids, a big outing to the movies, with popcorn, Cokes, and Jujubes, might have set them back a couple of bucks apiece, but Rusty had always been one to do more than his share. If he had an extra dollar, then they’d both enjoy a milk shake on the way home. Once again, he was extending his generosity. All he wanted in return was the straight story. It didn’t seem too much to ask, even if Deal had little idea of what the real story actually was.
“How much do you know about wine, Rusty?”
Malloy’s glance traveled to the half-filled wine rack, then back to Deal. “Like I told you, I had to bone up or stop taking clients to dinner.” He shrugged. “What’s wine got to do with anything?”
“I’m not sure,” Deal said. “But I found a wine label in Dequarius Noyes’ hand the night he died in my room.”
Malloy shook his head as if it meant nothing. “Go on.”
“I thought it was a note he was holding at first,” Deal said. “It was folded in half. I figured if the guy wanted me to read it that badly, I was going to take a look. Anyway, when I took it out of his hand and opened it, I saw it was a wine label, an old one.”
“How old?” Malloy asked, his interest growing.
“Nineteen twenty-nine, I think,” Deal said, going on to relate what he had learned from his conversation with Gonzalo Fausto.
By the time Deal had finished, Malloy’s gaze was intense. “So you don’t recall where it came from?”
Deal shook his head. “It was French, that’s all I can tell you. I didn’t have a lot a time before the cops got there. I thought you might be able to help.”
Malloy paused, thoughtful for a moment. “Why didn’t you show this label to Dickerson?” he asked finally.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Deal said.
“Not much of a question in my mind,” Russell cut in. “The cops in this town are bought and paid for.”
“Nonetheless, you’ve withheld evidence,” Malloy said to Deal. “You could always call Dickerson, say you forgot, but now…” He broke off with a shrug.
“And there were some other things,” Deal continued, glancing at Russell. “When we were at Ainsley Spencer’s house earlier in the evening, I found a note in Dequarius’ room with my number at the Pier House on it. He’d made some doodles while he was waiting to reach me, I guess. Most of it was just chicken scratchings, but in one place he’d written ‘Vino, vidi, vici,’ and underlined it several times.
“‘
Wine, I saw, I conquered
’?” Malloy translated, looking at Deal in confusion.
“It being Dequarius, I thought he might have just misspelled it,” Deal said. “But now, whole new theories begin to occur to me.”
“That Dequarius Noyes was trying to sell you some supposedly valuable wine?” Malloy shook his head. “As they say in court, John, this is only speculation…and pretty tenuous at that.”
“A couple of other things,” Deal continued. “When I was going through Dequarius’ closet, I saw a clear outline in the dust on the floor, where someone had moved a crate or a box that had been there a long time.” He gestured at the wine racks. “About the size of a case of wine, I’d say.”
“John…,” Malloy said, his protest evident, but Deal continued, resolute now.
“And later, when I went back to the old guy’s house and had the run-in with Conrad, I noticed that a bottle of wine that had been in the kitchen cupboard earlier that night was missing, too.”
Malloy gave him a look. “Maybe the old lady took it.”
“I suppose that’s possible,” Deal admitted. “But why would someone go to the trouble of tossing my room, for a wine label and some scribblings by Dequarius Noyes?”
“That’s what cops do,” Malloy said. “Dickerson probably went through that room with a fine-tooth comb after you left.
“That still doesn’t explain why someone would be waiting for me to come back,” Deal cut in. “Not unless they wanted to find something that they thought Dequarius had and might have brought to me.”
“A case of wine?” Rusty Malloy said, the disbelief evident in his voice.
“I don’t know what, exactly,” Deal said. “Dequarius told me he’d
found
something, something he obviously thought was important. Then, in short order, Russell and I find a Monroe County sergeant beating the living daylights out of the kid. Who knows what would have happened if we hadn’t come along. A few hours later, someone bursts into Dequarius’ home and fatally wounds him. The next thing I know, somebody’s ready to kill me for information Dequarius Noyes may have passed along.”
Malloy released a breath and moved toward a bar that jutted out from the wall opposite the bank of windows. He pulled a crystal rocks glass down from a rack and filled it with ice from a dispenser recessed beneath the counter. “You look like you could use a drink,” he said, pouring the glass full of scotch.
“A beer, if you’ve got one,” Deal said.
Malloy bent and fished something out of an undercounter refrigerator, then rose and deftly popped the cap of a squat brown bottle with a red-and-white label painted on its face. “Red Stripe,” Malloy said with a smile. “Jamaica’s finest.” He slid it across the bar counter in Deal’s direction.
Deal caught the bottle and raised it in a salute. Leave it to Rusty to have Red Stripe on hand.
“How about you?” Malloy asked, his gaze traveling to Russell.
“Why not wine?” Russell asked, his expression neutral.
Malloy didn’t miss a beat. “Red, white, zinfandel…”
“Mad Dog 20-20, if you’ve got it,” Russell said. “Otherwise, whatever’s wet.”
Malloy managed a smile, then turned and retrieved a bottle from the shelf behind him. The cork had already been pulled, Deal saw, as Malloy removed a stopper from the bottle and poured a glass half full of red.
“I went out and got some of that stuff we had at the Pier House,” he said to Deal. “I had a glass myself before dinner. Not bad for ten bucks.”
“Well, then,” Russell said, lifting his glass.
They toasted, Deal waiting for Malloy to swallow before he brought the conversation back. “That’s one reason I came over, Rusty. I was hoping you had some book on wine we might look in, I could spot the label that Dequarius had.”
Malloy brought his glass from his lips and popped his hand against his forehead. “Why didn’t I think of that?” he said.
He put his glass down on the bar, still shaking his head. “I’ll be right back,” he said, then turned to hurry from the room.
When Malloy returned, he was carrying a thick gilt-lettered volume that he placed on the top of the bar with a thud. “
The Encyclopedia of the Grape
,” Deal read as Malloy turned over the cover. The attorney regarded the table of contents for a moment, then began to flip through the pages.
“Here we are,” he said presently, spinning the book around. “Was it one of these?”
Deal found himself staring at a glossy page with a bold heading:
WINES OF THE CENTURY
. Beneath it was an array of bottles representing what were apparently a series of outstanding vintages beginning in 1921, then 1928, then 1929…
“I’m fairly certain this is it,” he said, pointing. The picture was no larger than his thumbnail, but the image of the label he’d taken from Dequarius’ fingers suddenly burned clearly in his memory.
Malloy glanced at the spot where Deal’s finger rested. A suitably gray-green label with the image of a French château stamped boldly upon it. “Château Haut-Brion,” he said. “A favorite of Thomas Jefferson, history tells us.”
“Get out of town,” Russell Straight said.
“Read the caption,” Malloy said, pointing.
“It’s a very old winery,” Malloy added, as Russell bent to examine the tiny print. “Founded in the seventeenth century, in fact.” He turned to regard Deal more closely. “You’re sure this is it?”
Deal scanned the page again, his eye drawn back to the ghostly, gray-green cast of the label he’d pointed out to Malloy. “It wasn’t any of the others, that much I know.”
“Haut-Brion,” Malloy said again, shaking his head. “Sounds French, doesn’t it? Actually, the family was Irish. O’Brien. They crossed the channel to France and established one of the finest wineries of all time. Got sick of whiskey, I guess. Lucky for us all.” He smiled and raised his glass.
Deal nodded. “I knew you’d be the one to ask, Rusty.”
The three of them toasted briefly, then drank. The beer was cool but not cold, Deal realized, a rich maltiness blooming in his mouth. Maybe six or eight of these, he thought, with another glance at the bottle, some of the aches in his body would recede to simple agony. Then he could find a big sword somewhere, go slay some dragons of his own.
Malloy had finished his own drink and put his empty glass down on the counter. He came out from behind the bar, then walked to the wine rack and pulled a bottle carefully from its nest. He came back, tilting it so they could get a look at the label, bending to blow away a film of dust.
Château Margaux
, Deal saw printed on the label, a vintage from the 1960s.
“This is the most valuable bottle of wine I own,” Malloy said. “It’s worth maybe a hundred and fifty bucks.”
Deal tried to imagine the Rusty Malloy he’d known as a kid plunking down $150 for a bottle of wine. No wonder he was carrying the bottle like it was full of nitroglycerin, he thought. “I guess we’re not having it with the hamburgers,” Deal said.
Malloy gave him a brief smile. “But this is piddling compared to one of those first growths.”
“They’re really that good?” Deal asked.
“Forget about good,” Malloy said. “From what I read, think more like superb. Heavenly. Beyond the human ken.”
Deal nodded at Malloy’s rhapsodizing, but he wasn’t sure he’d been convinced. “So Fausto was right about that bottle being worth fifteen grand?”
Malloy shrugged. “I had a client told me he once paid thirty grand for a magnum of Bordeaux. Of course, the guy was in Raiford doing twenty years to life for cooking meth. It’s possible his memory was impaired.”
“Fifteen grand?” Russell was shaking his head. “Do you get a discount on a case?”
Malloy gave him a thin smile. “I check the auction websites sometimes. I’ve never seen a case offered.” His tone suggested it was a far-flung notion.
“But say that’s what Dequarius had,” Deal cut in. “Would it be worth even more, then?”
Malloy looked at Russell as if they might have something in common after all. “It’s possible, assuming it was in the original packaging, that it had been carefully preserved, and the rest. Then, a collector might well be moved to pony up a bit more.”
“But you have your doubts?” Deal said.
“The idea of someone like Dequarius Noyes coming into the possession of a case of the rarest wine in the world does strike me as unlikely, if that’s what you mean,” Malloy said.
He turned, moving back to the wine rack to replace the bottle he’d shown them. “Not to cast any aspersions, mind you,” he said as he came back, “but it’s a bit of a stretch to imagine Dequarius even knowing the value of such a thing. As we’ve heard, his scams tended to run along more mundane lines.”
“On the other hand,” Deal said, “let’s say Dequarius
did
find this hypothetical case of wine and managed to figure out what it was worth. At best, he’d have something worth a couple hundred thousand dollars, maybe a little more, is that about right?”
“Possibly.” Malloy nodded. “What’s your point?”
“I’m not sure it’s a figure that merits all that’s happened,” he said. “Dequarius murdered, me assaulted, Russell shot at. It seems a little extreme, even for two hundred grand.”
Malloy seemed unconvinced. “For Dequarius and his crowd, a couple
hundred
dollars was a big score.”
“You saying Dequarius had help on these scams?” Russell cut in.
Malloy shrugged. “I spoke with Detective Dickerson at the sheriff’s office earlier today. He told me Dequarius and Ainsley Spencer used to work the sunset crowds together back when the old man could still get around.”
“Doing what?” Russell asked, his tone doubtful.
“Who knows?” Malloy said. “Something about the old man being a diver on a lucrative salvage operation or like that. Dickerson wasn’t too specific. He told me he’d hauled them in more than once when he was working that beat—the old guy would be in a wheelchair, Dequarius pushing him past the fire-eaters and the iguana trainers, looking for marks.”
“Sounds pretty cynical,” Deal said.
“This is Key West.” Malloy shrugged.
Deal glanced around the living room. “You seem to like it here, Rusty.”
“Hey, Key West has been good to me,” he said. “I’m not knocking the town. There’s no place else quite like it.”
Deal nodded. “A long way from South Miami, huh?”
“You’d better believe it,” Malloy said, raising his glass. He drained the last of his wine, then glanced at Deal and shook his head. “So what did you have in mind next? Fullblown assault on the sheriff’s office? High-noon shoot-out with Chief of Detectives Dickerson?”
Deal gave him a weary smile. “I don’t think my beef’s with the sheriff.”
“Then who?”
Deal glanced at Russell. “I’ve been asking myself who on this rock would have the resources and the interest in some extremely valuable wine, and I keep coming up with the same answer.”
Russell nodded. “The same guy who seems to have all the cops down here in his hip pocket.”
“Franklin Stone?” Malloy said, his tone skeptical.
“You don’t think so?” Deal said.
“I don’t know, John,” Malloy said. “Stone has a lot of influence, and he might not think twice about foreclosing on Mother Teresa and the Sisters of Mercy Orphanage, but I’m not sure that murder’s his style.”
“Maybe no one was supposed to get killed,” Deal said. “Maybe what happened to Dequarius was an accident.”
Malloy thought about it. “That could be,” he said, glancing at Russell. “Your friend here presents a formidable target. Those shots could have been meant to keep him at bay—”
“Or I was just lucky,” Russell cut in.
“Whatever,” Malloy said, turning back to Deal. “But it still doesn’t strike me as something Franklin Stone would engineer.”
“Maybe it’s really good wine,” Deal said, throwing up his hands.
“So what did you intend to do, go ask Stone if he’s the one who’s behind all this?”
Deal gave him a glum look in return. “I thought about it, but I wasn’t sure it would work.”
Malloy gave him an exasperated glance. “Maybe you ought to call Dickerson, tell him what happened over there just now.”
“Fat chance,” Deal said. “He might decide to press a few charges of his own.”
“We could plead temporary insanity,” Malloy said. “At least you’d have someone looking for the person who assaulted you.”
Deal shook his head, his gaze drawn to the salt-water tank, where the moray eel had lazily uncoiled itself, a movement that sent the blue dollar fish flashing to a distant corner. He hadn’t told Malloy about the brief look he’d gotten at his assailant before the mirrors caved in. It had only been an instant, and there hadn’t been much light, but Deal had little doubt that the growling voice in his ear had been Conrad’s. Still, there was no need to further fuel Rusty’s fears that he was a paranoiac, Deal thought, even though they
were
out to get him…
He pushed those thoughts from his head and glanced again at Malloy’s wine rack. Could all this have happened over a few bottles of wine?
“I was hoping I could get myself cleaned up,” he said after a moment, glancing down at the ripped pocket on his shirt. He took another look at Malloy’s physique. They traded clothes as teenagers; a few more pounds had accrued on both sides, of course, but it still looked to be possible. “Maybe I could borrow a shirt.”
When Malloy hesitated, Deal went on. “It’s just a dinner date,” he said. “I’ll try not to get any bullet holes in whatever you lend me.”
“That’s hardly my concern, John,” Malloy said, managing a worried smile. He turned to glance toward the entryway of the house. “That’s Stone’s car out front, I gather.”
“We’re traveling in style.”
Malloy thought about it. “Maybe the best thing would be just to go on home to Miami. Let things settle down a bit. Tell Stone you’ll think about his proposal and get back to him.”
“It’s a thought,” Deal said, surprised at how vividly the mere mention of a return to Miami had sent his mind to flashing images of his afternoon with Annie Dodds. “But I owe it to Stone to hear him out about his project, at least—” here he turned to Russell. “And we haven’t had dinner yet, either.”
Malloy sighed. “I can’t tell you what to do, John, but I’d sure as hell be careful.”
Deal gave him a smile, trying to stop the run of images in his mind. “Don’t worry, Rusty,” he said. He meant for his words to sound full of confidence, the sort of thing that a man who knows where he is headed tosses off like a line in a film. At the same moment, though, he’d been reliving the sight of Annie’s tanned back as she slithered her way down some electrified portion of his flesh, and he knew that caution had become a meaningless concept in his recently rewired universe.
The question of who killed Dequarius Noyes, and what it might have to do with fabled wine and assaults upon his person, was weighty indeed. And there was a score to be settled between himself and a man named Conrad. But there were even more important questions to be resolved before he left Key West, and how could he explain such matters to Rusty Malloy when he could barely comprehend their significance himself?
Besides, Malloy was already calling out to his housekeeper, making sure there were towels in the guest bathroom, and Russell Straight was helping himself to another glass of good red wine. The moray eel had recoiled itself around its fearsome head, and the electric blue fish had resumed their hypnotic glide. Deal would take a shower now, and after that, he reasoned, things would take care of themselves.