would tell you the same thing. He knew when to pick his fights.”
Deal stopped, blinking. The rage that had possessed him only moments before seemed magically to vanish.
Seconds ago, Garrity had seemed the very image of a devil in a dance. Now Deal found himself staring at a frightened, aging man. He saw the image of his father sprawled backward in his chair, saw his mother’s desolated stare. At a certain stage of the game, everyone’s dreams go flying, he thought.
What crazy dream had moved him to this pass, what kind of round-peg thinking in a square-peg world? The son of Barton Deal become a cop? How could such a notion end otherwise?
He reached into his pocket and saw Garrity start. A little pleasure in that, maybe. He withdrew the case and tossed the shield on the shiny desktop, and then he turned for the door.
“I’m sorry, John,” he heard Garrity say.
“You don’t know what sorry is,” he said. And then the door was closed, and he was gone.
Chapter Four
Key West, Present day
“So that’s how you and Driscoll hooked up?” Russell said. They were out on the street now, Deal’s story finally finished, their sizable tab at the Pier House paid. He’d been locked so deeply into the memories of his Miami past that Deal felt a little light-headed now, navigating the bright streets of Key West.
They were headed down Duval toward the Key West offices of DealCo, passing a T-shirt shop with a rack dragged out on the sidewalk. Deal stepped down from the curb to let a tourist foursome pass between them: two dark-haired women in shorts and tank tops, probably sisters, two gut-heavy, close-cropped husbands in T-shirts and cut-off jeans. Canadians, Deal guessed from the season and the rare pink glow of their skin.
After they passed, Deal rejoined Russell on the sidewalk. “It was something else that brought us back together,” Deal said. “Something that happened later, to my wife.”
Russell gave him a look. “Anything I know about?”
“Some other time, maybe,” Deal said. “It’s too nice a day.” And it was, he thought, glancing up into the slice of Wedgwood sky above the storefronts along Duval. Some heavy cumulus in the distance, out over the Gulf Stream, but if there was rain there, it was hours away.
Hot, of course, but it was August, and they were near the southernmost point of land in all the United States, closer to Havana than Miami. It was the kind of tropical day when you could break an honest sweat just thinking about work, but that was all right with Deal. He’d still go out with a crew some days, peel off his shirt, start framing alongside his men. A better workout than Bally’s, and the jokes were better, the company far less genteel.
“You ever find who set you up?” Russell asked.
Deal paused at the bottom of the wooden outdoor staircase that ran up the side of a red-brick building to the offices he’d rented. There was a title-search and surveying company on the ground floor, its shades drawn shut, a CLOSED sign hanging in the window.
“Once that folder was gone,” Deal said, shaking his head, “there wasn’t much to go on. And with me being on the outside…” He trailed off, trying to stop his thoughts from squirreling back down those twisted memory trails.
“Maybe it was a setup, maybe it was just a convenient way to get me out. No doubt my old man was plugged into the department. He was plugged in everywhere. Anybody could have been feeding him information, even Garrity, for all I know.” He gave a Driscoll-like shrug, implying a world of possibilities.
“What I found out soon enough was that Driscoll was right about my old man’s finances,” he said, his hand gripping the peeling banister. “DealCo was up to its eyebrows in debt. I had my work cut out just trying to keep the company afloat and my mother’s doctor bills paid.”
He glanced up at the doorway at the top of the stairs: DEALCO DEVELOPMENT it said in old-fashioned gilt letters across the