Spiral Page 3

  She said to her husband, ”What are you buying him coffee for now?”

  ”Your father wanted it for the plane.”

  ”They seat him, they’ll bring him coffee.”

  ”He told me they don’t bring it when he wants it.”

  ”Of course they don’t. It’d spill when the plane moves.”

  I watched the old man, smiling happily, his head following the conversation like a spectator on the sidelines of a tennis match.

  ”So,” said the son-in-law, ”this way your father’ll have it first.”

  ”No, this way he’ll spill it first.”

  ”It’s just a small cup.”

  ”So, that means it won’t spill?”

  ”No, that means he’ll finish the thing by the time the plane’s moving.”

  The daughter upped the ante. ”How’s my father gonna finish that much coffee without having to go pee-pee?”

  ”Now I’ve got to worry, will they take him to the bathroom?”

  The old man’s smile broadened. One of his remaining joys clearly was watching two experienced opponents pound away at each other.

  The gate agent called my own flight. Walking toward the jetway, I found myself thinking, After this reduced, elderly man, it will be good to see the Skipper again.

  I’d never flown into Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport before, but I had flown over it on the case in the Keys. The view of Lauderdale from the air is more than a little disorienting as to the scale of the snaking Intracoastal canal system that gives thousands of people postage-stamp lots and deep-water moorings for boats bigger than their houses.

  I was pretty sure of the perspective issue, since I’d decided after my plane took off that I was going to watch out the windows when—and if—we landed safely.

  Which, as luck would have it, this particular aircraft did.

  ”Hey, Mr. John Francis.”

  The slight alias I’d used when he’d met me before. ”Pepe.”

  I watched the slim, six-foot-tall man come off his leaning position against the wall opposite my arrival gate. Pepe had gotten a little more bald since I’d seen him last, the black hair receding from front to back. The mustache was black, too, but trimmed down from the bandit-style he’d favored back in September. His current outfit more than compensated for the conservative cut, though. Pepe was wearing clothes of enough different colors to pass for an Easter egg.

  He began walking toward me. ”How you doing, man?” His words came out, ”How chew dune, mahn.” I said, ”Fine, Pepe. Just fine.”

  When he drew close enough to study my eyes, his own went a little off. ”You sure you okay?”

  ”Just a rough flight.”

  A bit more study, then a shrug. ”Okay, Mr. John Francis, I suppose to pick you up, take you where Mr. Vega at.”

  As he turned away, I said, ”Pepe?”

  He turned back to me. ”Yeah, I figure you got the luggage. We pick that up down the stairs.”

  ”Not what I meant.”

  The study look again. ‘You don’t got no luggage?”

  ”I’ve got luggage. What I wanted to tell you is, I’m not sure which name I’ll be using down here.”

  A cocky grin. ”I remember that about you, man. Always somebody you are not, huh?”

  Grunting as he hoisted my suitcase into the trunk of the older Ford Escort in the parking garage, Pepe said, ”You ain’t gonna need all this clothes down here in the sunshine.”

  I watched him as he looked around at the other cars quickly, then unfastened the shirt button just above his belt buckle with the thumb and middle finger of his right hand. Pepe used the same fingers to lift up the trunk mat next to my suitcase, his left hand pulling a Glock ten-millimeter semiautomatic from underneath. After another look around, he slipped the gun into the gap in his shirt and under his belt, leaving the button above the buckle undone for a left-handed cross-draw.

  ”I guess some things don’t change,” I said.

  Pepe’s right hand closed the trunk lid while he patted the bulge his Glock made in his clothes. ‘You mean the piece, man?”

  I waved at the Escort. ”And the two-door stick-shift, so you don’t get taken for a rent-a-car tourist by the bad guys.”

  ”Hey, Mr. Whatever, you up in Broward now. Not like Miami in the quiet suburbs.”

  ”Then why the gun?”

  ”I still maybe got to drive to Miami after Mr. Vega see you.”

  ”See me about what?”

  ”I don’t know, man.” Pepe shook his head as he moved to open my door. ”I just your driver.”

  Not from what I remembered of him.

  * * *

  Windows closed and air-conditioning on against an almost eighty-degree, muggy day, we bumped along a service road before Pepe turned us north onto Andrews Avenue. ”Most times, you want to take ninety-five.”

  ”Interstate 95?”

  ”Right, be faster. But Mr. Vega say he want you to get ‘ori-ent-ed’ on this town.”

  The first thing I noticed about Fort Lauderdale was that its airport was a snap to negotiate, especially compared to Miami’s.

  ”Anything special I should be ‘orienting’ myself about?”

  ”Mr. Vega, he tell you that.”

  Okay. Trying to make small talk, I said, ”Things still bad back in Cuba?”

  ”Worser than when you here last time. They got these old American cars—like a Packard, a fifty-seven Chevy with the big tail’s fin—but they don’t got no gas for putting in them. They got old women volunteer to serve the meals in the hospitals, but they don’t got no food for the patients. Then the Pope, he supposed to come this month, so Fidel let everybody have Christmas couple weeks ago, like the first time since ‘la Revolución.”‘ Pepe slewed toward the curb. ”Only gonna take more than some fiestas and church candles, change things for the people.”

  The Escort came to a complete stop, and Pepe gestured forward and sideways. ”We on Andrews, and that street go across is Broward, a boul-e-vard. In Lauderdale, you got everything like the compass thing.”

  ”Compass?”

  ”Yeah, like north, south, you know it? Where Andrews and Broward cross each others here, this is center of everything.”

  I thought I got what Pepe meant by looking at the street signs on each side of the avenue. The ones to the right said S.E. the ones to the left, S.W. Across Broward Boulevard were N.E. and N.W., respectively. ”So, northeast of this intersection is N.E., southwest is S.W., and—”

  ”—like that, right. You got somebody’s address you want to find, all you got to do is know the compass part, and the number of the house. So two-five-oh Northeast Fourth Avenue gonna be past Second Street and before Third Street in the northeast.”

  ”Sounds easy enough. But maybe we ought to go see Justo, be sure I need to be oriented much more.”

  Nodding, Pepe shifted into first and feathered the clutch.

  ”This boulevard here, Mr. Whatever, they call it ‘Las Olas.’”

  ”Spanish?”

  ”For ‘the waves.’”

  We were heading east on a Florida version of Boston’s Newbury Street, with tony bars and boutiques crowded together. ”I don’t see any water, much less waves.”

  ”You wait a couple minutes, you see all the water you want.” After another ten blocks or so, there were quaint little bridges like the one over our Public Garden’s swan pond. These spanned some kind of canal, however, and the first two spinal roadways were named Hendricks Isle and Isle of Venice. Pepe finally turned left and over a bridge that said isle of Athens on its convex wall.

  I said, ”Colonel Helides lives here?”

  Pepe nodded.

  After passing a number of mansions—each with frontage on perpendicular canals and many with yachts lashed to docks—Pepe pulled toward a clump of people at the side of the road near a gate. The gate was part of a fence with twelve-foot-high metal spikes enclosing a sprawling, Art Deco home. The people were carrying cameras—some video, some professional photographic, some just little disposable jobbies.

  On the other side of the gate stood a guy who acted like a security guard, but not one of the retired scarecrows the cheapjack companies hire. Except for the casual shirt and hiking shorts, this guy was more Secret Service, with the kind of blond buzz-cut and build that you associate with fullbacks from Nebraska.

  Pepe drove slowly toward the clump, who turned and began shooting footage of us. When the Escort’s nose approached the gate, the guard pointed an electronic device of some kind at the lock. As the gate opened, he returned the device to one of the front pockets in his shorts. There was a bulge visible in the other front pocket that I somehow thought would be measured less in amperage and more in calibre.

  The camera people shouted questions at us, but they were mangled by each other and mostly lost through the closed windows and air-conditioning hum. We pulled up the drive past the guard’s station, designed to look like a gazebo matching the house. The grounds were carefully landscaped with exotic plants and flowers.

  The drive curved and ended at discreetly hidden garage doors for five bays, the cars in front of them ranging from a mud-spattered compact pickup to a Lincoln Continental. Beyond the cars, a multimasted sailboat rocked against its ropes, telling you where the grassy yard had to end.

  Pepe killed the engine, then turned to me. ‘The TV and newspapers, they been at this place ever since.”

  I looked at him. ”Since what?”

  Pepe shook his head. ”I still just the driver, man.”

  He got out, and I followed suit. We walked toward the steps of a ”back” door that could have been lifted off hinges at Buckingham Palace.

  Pepe said, ”Is easier this way.”

  ”Because of the media peopl
e out front?”

  A shrug as the door opened, and I assumed the gate guard must have radioed ahead about us. When I looked up, Justo Vega was smiling at me.

  ”John, it is so good to see you again.”

  Justo hadn’t lost any more hair, but he’d started growing a mustache under the wide nose in his moonish face. As tall as I am, Justo wore a light gray business suit with a white, collarless shirt underneath, top button fastened. His broad shoulders moved under the jacket in a swaying motion that always reminded me of a man making up his mind to ask somebody for a dance.

  Climbing the steps, I went to shake hands with him. ”Justo, it’s—”

  He came forward, enclosing me in a bear hug. ”Truly good to see you, John.”

  ”Same here.”

  Justo broke the hug. ”No problems with your flight?”

  If my eyes gave anything away, Justo’s didn’t. ”Fine. Just fine.”

  He nodded once, then spoke in a grave, modulated tone. ”I am afraid the Skipper hates pity, so please, brace yourself for seeing him.”

  I closed my eyes, then nodded once, too, as Justo led me into the house.

  As the rear foyer yielded to real rooms, I blinked, but less from the lighting and more from the contrast. While the architecture viewed from the street was modern, the inside felt like a Maine hunting lodge. Each room seemed to have its own cathedral ceiling, with exposed beams of rough-hewn, stained wood. Same look to the walls, and even the Parts of the floor not covered by thick rugs or carpeting. Taste is a personal thing, and I found myself warming to the interior of the house in a way I never could to its exterior.

  ‘To the right, now,” said Justo, as though comforted by giving directions.

  We turned into a massive den, fully twenty-by-forty, another cathedral ceiling looming overhead. The colors red and buff dominated—on leather sofas, plaid chairs, and seascapes-at-sunset hanging from the walls. Two men were in front of a stone fireplace I could have entered without bumping my head on the mantel. One was standing, no more than five-five and slight of build. His black hair ran to medium length, parted on the right side but so straight it didn’t quite lie flat against his skull. A long-sleeved rugby shirt swam on his torso over shiny athletic pants that had a designer logo stitched into one pocket. It was more his features that caught you, however. Vietnamese, I’d have bet, with piercing eyes that didn’t smile despite the nod and upturning of the corners of his mouth. I ballparked his age at early thirties.

  When I looked into the face of the sitting man, I thought, Jesus Christ.

  ”Good to see you again, Lieutenant,” said Nicolas Helides from the chair to the Asian man’s right.

  The voice was still there, the intonation a rounded baritone that caught your attention without having to demand it. But the words came out garbled, as though someone were pulling down his right cheek, making it into a jowl. That sagging cheek caused some of his teeth to show, both too pearly and too big for his mouth, kind of like a ventriloquist’s dummy. His hairline had evolved into a long, narrow widow’s peak, the hair itself gone a dusty gray though the eyebrows were still a bushy black. And the hands—large and strong in my memory—were both nearly skeletal, the right one crabbed enough that the fingernails nearly touched the underside of his wrist. Doing a quick calculation in my head, I realized that the Skipper would be only about seventy, but somehow he looked more reduced than the elderly man in the wheelchair at our departure lounge back in Boston.

  I realized Helides was waiting for me to reply. ”It’s been a long time, Colonel.”

  ”And nearly as long since I merited being called ‘colonel,’ though I appreciate the courtesy and would understand if the old way is more comfortable for you.”

  ”Thank you, sir.”

  Helides gestured with his good hand. ”Quite the view, eh?”

  Until then, I hadn’t looked to my left. Through a picture window twelve feet long and nearly as high, I could see a big yacht putting along the canal behind that moored sailboat. Even moving slowly, the yacht created a three-foot wake that rolled toward us.

  Helides said, ”The Intracoastal Waterway, Lieutenant. A water taxi could pick you up from here and deposit you at the Jackie Gleason Theater in Miami Beach, a good twenty-five miles south.” He looked up at the Asian man. ”Mother Goose, I’m forgetting my manners.”

  Mother Goose. The man who never cursed.

  Helides gestured with the crabbed right hand. ”This is Duy Tranh. He’s been with me since the Fall.”

  I didn’t have to ask whether the Skipper meant our prior autumn or the last helicopter out of Saigon in seventy-five. ”Pleased to meet you. Is 'Tranh’ your family or given name?”

  ”We can talk about that when you have a paper and pencil so you can get it right.”

  His accent gave the words a clucky overlay, but the man spoke without inflection, so I couldn’t tell quite how insulting he was trying to be.

  ”Stroke,” said Helides.

  I turned back to him.

  He waved with the good hand this time. ”Thought you should know. Happened in the summer, out on Court One at the tennis club. Went to swing my backhand and remember the green clay surface coming up to hit me instead. Had a greenish-purple tint to my chin till Christmas, something about the dye in the clay.” Helides exhaled through his nose. ”Not the worst news, either. When I woke up in the hospital, the whole right side of my body was paralyzed.”

  I pictured the Skipper in action—in virtually constant motion—during the nightmarish time of Tet. Then I pictured that poor man at the airport departure lounge again, watching the debate over his coffee, and I think I realized for a moment how humiliating this scene had to be for Helides. He said, ”They call them ‘brain attacks’ now.”

  ”Sir?”

  ”Strokes. I suppose to remove some sort of stigma, make the brain seem more like just another organ subject to nature’s aggression. Heart attack, gall bladder attack.” The Skipper paused. ”Every minute in this country somebody suffers a stroke. Every four minutes, somebody dies from one. There’s even an 800 number for those of us who survive, and a few, like me, regain some degree of...”

  He raised the crabbed hand again, a tremor passing through it.

  To change the subject, I said, ”Justo mentioned you wanted to see me... professionally.”

  Helides shot his eyes up at the lawyer.

  Justo shrugged. ”I followed your instructions, Colonel, and I am sure Pepe did as well.”

  The Skipper came back to me. ”They told you nothing about my problem?”

  ”Nothing.”

  ”And you don’t know about it from the media jackals?”

  ”Only what I saw a few minutes ago in front of your gate.” Helides changed the focal point of his eyes somehow, and I felt as though I were a side of beef being scanned by an experienced meat inspector. He said, ”Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

  ”Sir, I’ve just been out of touch for a while.”

  The Skipper wasn’t buying that, but his eyes changed again, as though he needed other answers. ”My older son is Spi—short for ‘Spiro’—Held.”

  I didn’t get it, and Helides clearly expected that I would. ”Your son changed his last name?”

  Justo said, ”John?”

  ”Yes?”

  ”The news coverage on the killing of Very Held.”

  ”Her name was ‘Veronica,’ Lieutenant.”

  ”Sorry, sir,” said Justo.

  I must still have looked like a dunce to the Skipper, because he said, ”My son’s daughter, Veronica, was... performing as the singer in his rock-and-roll band, ‘Spiral.’ She died in this house on my birthday.”

  Rock band and... ” Your granddaughter was the little girl who drowned in a pool?”

  Helides flared. ”No, Lieutenant, she did not ‘drown.’ She was drowned, and not in a pool, but in my pool. And I would greatly appreciate your helping me identify the... bastard who did that to my family.”

  The first time I could ever remember the Skipper cursing.

  Justo had just finished helping Tranh make drinks for all four of us. I sat in a brass-tacked, red-leather chair, Justo on its matching couch. The Skipper had never left his seat, and Tranh remained standing, having taken one small sip after his boss had raised his glass in the good left hand and said, ”To old soldiers.”