Read Online Done Deal by Les Standiford - Free Book Online

Straight.
    “Well, the man’s had him some car trouble,” Leon said. “And you’ll never guess where he went to have it fixed.”
    “I don’t care, Leon…”
    “Man is having his car fixed at Surf Motors,” Leon said, feeling his smile growing wide. He could hear the wheels in Alcazar’s head spinning all the way across town.

Chapter 5
    “Look, Janice, somebody’s got to pick up The Hog by six. Otherwise, you’ll have to take me down first thing in the morning.”
    Deal switched the receiver to his other hand. It was one of the off-brand pay phones, bolted to the block wall outside a
Supermercado
. Between the static that rattled in the cheap receiver and the rumble of a low-rider that was idling in a parking space just behind, he could barely hear.
    “You have to speak up,” Deal shouted.
    The line was suddenly clear. “I said tomorrow is my tennis lesson. Can’t you take a taxi?”
    Deal closed his eyes. “I don’t have any cash. I had a little emergency and…” He broke off as thunderous music erupted from the low-rider. Deal stared. The receiver was vibrating in his hand. He’d spent plenty on a pair of Bose floor speakers when they still had the house. The best sound wouldn’t have touched what was coming through the windows of the low-rider.
    “Just a minute,” he shouted into the phone.
    Deal left the receiver dangling, strode to the car. There was a skinny kid about eighteen leaning back in the passenger’s seat, his chin barely nodding to the blare of the music, his expression dreamy. When Deal’s shadow fell across his face, the kid looked up, not very interested.
    “I’m trying to talk,” Deal said, his words lost in the vortex of sound. Deal pointed at the telephone, then mimed holding the receiver to his ear. The kid glanced over the dash, then back at Deal. His face had taken on a pained, disbelieving look, as if he were staring at a roach crawling across his windshield. He shook his head and fell back in his seat, back to dreamland.
    Deal felt something sizzle in his brain, a bright little spot snapping just behind his right eye. He lunged inside the low-rider, pinned the kid back against his seat with a forearm at his scrawny throat, snapped off the ignition with his free hand. He jerked the keys out, then spun in one fluid motion and tossed them far out into the nearby intersection.
    “Hey, man,” the kid squawked. Although there was plenty of traffic, it seemed very quiet. Deal felt a wash of peace come over him.
    “Don’t say anything,” Deal told the kid. “Just go get your keys.” Deal felt a throbbing in his shoulder. He could hear the echoes of a dozen coaches from his boyhood: “Never throw till you’ve warmed up, son. You don’t want to hurt yourself.”
    The kid read something in Deal’s eyes, nodded, and got out, hurrying toward the intersection. Deal went back to the phone.
    “You still there?” he asked.
    “Deal, what’s going on?” Her voice was tired, faint. She’d been that way lately. Deal chalked it up to living for two people.
    “Janice,” he said patiently, “my brakes went out and I nearly crashed into a busload of Yahwehs on the Dolphin Expressway. Then some asshole pulls a gun on me because I cut in front of him. Then the building inspector threatens to flag me up after I already paid him off…”
    “Someone pulled a gun on you?” she cut in, a note of alarm in her voice. “What are you talking about?”
    “Just some cowboy in a suit,” he said. “I spun out in his lane so he had to defend his manhood.”
    There was a long pause on Janice’s end. “Deal, that’s not funny.” She sounded truly distressed, all her anger gone.
    There was a long silence and Deal felt immediately guilty. Scare the shit out of your pregnant wife so she’ll cave in and do you a favor. That hadn’t been his intention. But still, you had to handle things. Put aside the problems that weren’t problems any longer, grind on ahead. He