Bone Key (6 page)

“You trying to make this a macho thing?” Russell called, breathing heavily as he came up on Deal’s right.

Deal blinked, bringing himself back into his body. He gave Russell an apologetic look and eased off a bit. “Just got carried away, I guess.”

They were well down the beach road now, he saw, clipping along the island’s southeastward stretch of beach, a lonely area where an inland marsh had kept development at bay for nearly two centuries. The sun was struggling up behind a bank of clouds on the eastern horizon, a dull orb that cast a dim glow on the fringes of the thick stand of mangroves that still claimed the soggy ground.

Deal glanced across the deserted roadway toward the overgrown salt marsh, trying to imagine the string of upscale condominiums that Franklin Stone hoped to build there. Stone had already turned the former naval station downtown, where Harry Truman once kept his “Little White House,” into a sprawling, gated community—dubbed Truman Town by the locals—from which he’d made a fortune.

Stone had bulldozed the nondescript wooden naval complex flat, then platted its forty-five shady acres with a gridwork of streets where he built several hundred condominiums and predesigned saltbox-style homes, all of it as neat and orderly as a town Disney might have built. In the dozen years that had passed, what had once seemed like astronomical asking prices for the residences inside the Truman gates were now commonplace. Now Stone proposed to turn the last undeveloped section of the island into another residential community, one that would dwarf the Truman project in both size and asking prices of the domiciles within.

“That’s where we’re going to work, huh?” said Russell Straight, who was at his left shoulder, on the ocean side now.

Deal glanced at his jogging partner. “I’m just down here to talk,” he said.

“Uh-huh,” Russell said. “You saying you’d hesitate one second if the man offered you the job?”

“It’s a complicated project,” Deal told him. “And I still haven’t seen any numbers.”

“Whatever the number is, gonna be a big one,” Russell answered.

“Stone’s still got some problems to iron out with the site,” Deal said, pointing across the road. “Take a look.”

They had drawn abreast of a section of the marsh that was flanked by a tall chain-link fence. A battered sign dangled from a set of padlocked gates that looked like they’d been rammed inward by a four-by-four. The salt-eaten sign was bent and dinged, but the lettering on its bottom half was still legible:
WILDLIFE REFUGE
, it read.
NO VEHICLES
.

“What’s that?” Russell said.

“One of Stone’s problems,” Deal said. “Marshland the city declared surplus. They signed it over to Stone to get it on the tax rolls.” He paused for breath, glancing at the area again. “Some local environmentalists dug up records suggesting the state still holds title. They’ve petitioned to block the transfer of the land.”

“Sounds like a big problem to me,” Russell said.

Deal would have shrugged, but it was a difficult maneuver while jogging. “Stone has as much clout in Tallahassee as he does down here,” he told Russell. “He’s the kind of guy who gets what he wants.”

“Even so,” Russell said, “you try to go to work, you could end up peeling the tree-huggers off your ’dozer blades every day.”

“My point exactly,” Deal said. The sun had broken through the clouds at last, and he had to squint when he turned toward Russell. “When Stone called me, he said he’d redesigned the project to incorporate the refuge into his site plan. He says the environmentalists are ready to drop their objections.”

“That’d be a first,” Russell said.

“Like I told you,” Deal said, “I just came down to talk. Stone has a lot of interests. If this project doesn’t work out, there might be others down the line.”

“Every one of them with a problem?”

Deal wiped sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand, suffering Russell’s observation in silence. How could he argue, anyway? Franklin Stone was a man cut from the same cloth as his own father: a larger-than-life figure who’d made a fortune by the force of his garrulous, brook-no-obstacles, take-no-prisoners personality.

The two had worked together once, back in the salad days of DealCo, when Stone had come to Miami to broker a deal for a group of Colombian businessmen who had discovered the need to build a banking tower amidst the other such skyscraping institutions on Brickell Boulevard. Being in the same room with Stone and his father had been an adventure, like climbing into a stable where a couple of barrel-chested thoroughbreds had somehow gotten quartered together—there often seemed barely enough air for anyone else to breathe, not to mention the possibility of being inadvertently crushed when one of the titans reared. Stone had tried his best to hand his father the short end of the project’s stick, and Barton Deal had smiled and demanded his due. In the end, both men had profited handsomely, with most of the Colombians dead or imprisoned by the time the job was finished.

Franklin Stone was notorious then, but Deal had seen him work from the inside and believed he knew enough to back away if this was one of Stone’s more suspect propositions. And he’d already done some checking of his own. The day he’d gotten the summons from Stone, he’d called Rusty Malloy, an old college friend and Key West attorney who kept his ear attuned to the local goings-on.

What the coconut telegraph had assured him, Rusty reported, was that the city was determined to see the parcel developed, if not by Stone, then by someone else. The so-called wildlife refuge was blighted by petrochemical runoff from the nearby airport, nothing more than a muddy slough that probably contributed more harm to the ecosystem than good. If Deal could grab a piece of the action and keep Stone from taking a piece of his backside in the bargain, Rusty assured him, then by all means he should.

Deal might have passed along some truncated version of all this to his jogging partner, but as he turned, something caught his eye. A hundred yards or so up the lonely road, a police cruiser had pulled someone off to the shoulder. Deal hadn’t heard any siren, but a bank of cumulus clouds had dimmed the early sun again, and the whirl of blue and red flashers was clear, even at this distance. The door to the cruiser had opened, though the patrolman was not in sight. Down the windswept beach, Deal heard what might have been a command being barked through a grill-mounted speaker to the driver of the car.

A few more strides brought the scene into sharper focus, and Deal felt himself groan inwardly. “Guess who?” he said to Russell.

Russell squinted down the beach road until he recognized the unmistakable silhouette of the Pinto as well. “Sonofabitch,” Russell said, his jaw clenching in reflex.

And Deal knew he wasn’t referring to the annoying kid who’d been shadowing them, either. Russell had spent a dozen years in a Georgia penitentiary on a charge that in all likelihood would not have merited a white man a slap on the wrist. Understandably, he was no fan of the American justice system, even at its most mundane levels.

“That boy can’t stay away from trouble,” Russell said, glaring at the sight before them.

They were close enough now to be sure: It was the kid all right, him in his out-of-date Afro climbing out of his car, turning as the patrolman, a big man in blue uniform shirt and black trousers bloused at his boot tops, advanced. The patrolman—who would be a Monroe County sheriff’s deputy, Deal realized—was capless, carrying what looked like a nightstick with a pistol grip crooked in his arm. He called out something and the kid turned and put his hands atop the rusted-out Pinto that Deal could now see had probably been yellow in one of its former lives.

“If they’re black, then brace ’em,” Russell muttered at Deal’s side.

“Take it easy…” Deal began, then caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye.

The deputy had shouted another command and now was running toward the Pinto where the kid still leaned, unmoving. The deputy shouted again, then kicked the legs out from under the kid, bouncing off the car himself with the force of his charge. The kid hit the ground and rolled across the shoulder of the road, trying to scramble to his feet.

The deputy, apparently unaware of the approach of Deal and Russell, swung his riot stick in a backhanded arc, and Deal heard the crack echo in the still air. The kid caught the blow across his cheek and flipped over onto his back.

“Motherfucker,” Deal heard at his side, and then Russell Straight was pounding past him, his legs pistoning, gravel flying backward from the treads of his running shoes.

“Russell…” Deal called, kicking into high gear after him.

They were both bearing down on the Pinto now. The kid was still on his back, his arms crossed in front of his face to ward off the repeated blows of the deputy’s nightstick. At the same time the kid was using his feet, trying to shove himself backward through the loose gravel. It looked like he was trying to drive himself under the Pinto, where he’d be safe from the rain of blows, Deal thought, but the car was slung too close to the ground for that.

“Hey!” Deal cried as he raced toward the scene, his mind whirling.

Could the kid have pulled a weapon they couldn’t see? Is that what had set the deputy off? But if that were so, then why would he be trying so hard to get away? And if the kid had lost his gun or knife—if he’d had one—why was the deputy
still
slamming his riot stick down on the kid’s arms and legs? Every blow was murderous, accompanied by the sharp crack of wood on bone, along with grunts and the cries of pain.

The kid had scrunched himself into the crease between the ground and the rocker panel of the Pinto now, his arms pulled tight atop his bushy head. Deal heard a thud as the deputy saw his opening and drove his stick hard against the kid’s unprotected ribs. The kid groaned as his breath left him and clutched his gut in pain. It was exactly what the deputy had in mind, Deal saw, as the beefy man steadied himself for a mighty swing at the kid’s unprotected head.

It was a blow that might have killed him, but at the last instant the kid managed to duck away, and the tip of the heavy club slammed into sheet metal instead of bone. There was a splintering sound and the business end of the riot stick sheared from its handle. It rebounded across the asphalt, an ebony fragment spinning across Deal’s path like some angry creature from a dream.

If the deputy was aware of their approach, he was far past caring, Deal saw. The big man, his neck glowing red now, tossed the useless stem of the riot stick aside and, with his hands braced at the Pinto’s roof, began to kick the kid, who was wedged up against the car at his feet, each blow measured, each brutal enough to be deadly. Whatever the kid had said, done, held, snorted, or sold, it didn’t matter, Deal thought. A few minutes ago, all the kid had wanted to do was sell him some phony gold. Now, there was a sheriff’s deputy who’d come along to kill him, here at the side of the road.

Meantime, the kid had gone limp. Maybe he was unconscious, or maybe he’d simply given up, Deal thought as he ran. The deputy had zeroed in on the kid’s head again, his heavy boot drawn back for the
coup de grâce
.

“Stop,” Deal cried, but the deputy seemed not to have heard. He was about to drive the toe of his boot into the kid’s temple when Russell Straight arrived, just ahead of Deal, driving his shoulder squarely into the deputy’s kidneys.

The deputy’s breath left him in a gasp, and he went down face forward against the rear passenger glass of the Pinto. He bounced backward like he was made of rubber, a white star blossomed now on the shattered glass.

Russell, too enraged to hold anything back during his charge, glanced off the deputy’s backside and hit the rear quarter panel of the Pinto headfirst, right behind the gas tank door. The sheet metal buckled inward with a pop, and Russell staggered backward, his eyes as glassy as a bull popped in the skull at a slaughterhouse. He tottered for a moment, then sank to the ground in a sitting position, a trickle of blood draining from one nostril. He was perched on the safety line at the verge of the asphalt road, his legs splayed, his hands dangling at his lap, his eyes sightless, and for a moment Deal wondered if he might have snapped his neck.

The deputy was bleary-eyed himself, but still functioning. He was on his hands and knees, the top of his close-cut scalp glowing pink as he scrabbled for his holstered firearm.

He’d managed to pull his weapon free and was swinging it toward Russell when Deal reached him, kicking with everything he had toward the deputy’s outstretched hand. Deal felt small bones give as the toe of his running shoe met the back of the deputy’s hand. There was a blast from the pistol as it flew free, and a cry that Deal realized came from the deputy’s throat.

He felt arms encircle his legs, and in the next instant he was going down, his breath leaving him as he bounced heavily off the asphalt. He lay motionless for a second or two, his nose an inch from the bottoms of Russell’s running shoes. He heard sirens wailing from somewhere and realized that the deputy had probably called for backup before he’d confronted the Pinto’s driver.

Deal wanted to believe it was the cavalry on the way to a rescue, but reminded himself that he was one of the Indians right now. He smelled a mixture of oil and tar and dust, and sensed an acrid taste in his mouth that was probably blood. For an instant he wondered if he’d been shot, but as breath began to pulse back into him, he discounted the thought. He’d bitten his tongue as he fell, that was all.

He felt a hand slam against his back, snatching a wad of his T-shirt into a ball. A powerful punch landed at his kidneys, another at his ribs. The deputy was on his knees now, pulling Deal up to get a clear shot at his jaw with one of his boulder-sized fists.

It might have been all over if the deputy had managed to land that punch, but in the next moment Deal saw a pair of skinny arms fold around the deputy’s neck from behind. The deputy reared back, then bellowed in pain as the kid clamped his teeth down on the flesh of his ear.

The deputy thrashed in pain, swinging with his free hand to try to dislodge the kid on his back without giving up his hold on Deal. One of the deputy’s blind punches finally landed, and the kid went sprawling backward, his hand thrown to his nose.