Flame fc-4

by John Lutz

  But he had to protect her from Vincent Butcher. Christ, Butcher with his string of human earlobes.

  “Carver?”

  “I can’t tell her,” Carver said. “I know her, and that’d only make things worse.”

  Van Meter lifted his wide shoulders again. Held them raised for a few seconds and then let them fall. “Like I said, things we wouldn’t ordinarily do. I can put Hans on this. He’s a damn good operative and sneaky as a cat burglar. ’Tween you and me, I think he can make himself invisible.”

  “I hope so,” Carver said. “I wouldn’t want to understate the danger.”

  “Hans can manage. He has before. But I gotta tell you, there can’t be a guarantee in anything like this. I mean, Edwina might be on melting ice, judging by what you say. And you’re playing in the big leagues of drugs. The worst people on earth. The camera that took those photographs could just as easily have been a gun. If something should happen to her despite Hans …”

  “I’ll understand,” Carver said. Will I?

  Van Meter picked up a ballpoint pen from the desk. Clicked the spring-loaded mechanism. “Where you gonna be so I can get in touch?”

  I better not tell you.”

  The scent dispenser hissed again. Cinnamon rode the air. Van Meter set the pen back down and studied Carver. “If you’re about to try something cute with the characters you just described to me, I hope it works.”

  “Me too.”

  The office door opened and an attractive young blonde with a trim figure, a short leather skirt, and a beauty-pageant smile sashayed in. Said, “Hi, sweetballs.” Stopped cold when she noticed Carver. Blushed and said, “Sorry, Lloyd, I though you were alone.”

  “S’okay, babe,” Van Meter said. “This is an old friend. Carver, meet Marge.” He beamed possessively. “My very private secretary.”

  Carver stood up, leaned on his cane, and shook Marge’s small hot hand. She was sporting a gold cocktail ring with a pea-size diamond.

  Marge said, “Listen, I’ll get outa here and let the two of you talk.”

  Carver told her to stay, he was leaving anyway. At the door, he planted the cane and twisted his upper body so he was looking back at Van Meter. “I appreciate this, Lloyd.”

  “Ah, we don’t do each other favors, who else is gonna help us? Our profession don’t inspire trust among outsiders. Even our clients usually don’t trust us.”

  “Maybe they’re right,” Carver said. “My last client trusted me, and look what happened. Bye, Marge.”

  Limping through the outer office, he heard her call, “Nice meetin’ ya!”

  The gray-haired duchess behind the receptionist’s desk glanced at Carver and rolled her eyes.

  Carver thought, What did she know? Marge seemed happy with Van Meter, and Van Meter deserved his perks. Sometimes the world worked just right.

  Chapter 26

  It was obvious Jefferson didn’t like being awakened at one A.M. Especially by Carver.

  He stood in the doorway of his room at the Sundown Motel, squinting out at Carver, his right arm hung at an angle so the hand rested out of sight behind him. He was wearing only pants; suspenders were still attached to them and draped down around his hips and thighs. Even in the faint and wavering light from the illuminated pool, Carver could see the ridged muscle of Jefferson’s upper body. One time or another, Jefferson must have done considerable work with weights.

  The hand came out from behind his back. There was a revolver in it. Jefferson said, “Fuck you want, this time of night?” He stepped back to let Carver inside, keeping the gun low but with his finger still curled around the trigger.

  Carver planted his cane and entered the dark motel room. It was too warm in there and smelled of sweat. “You always answer the door with the lights out?”

  “Yeah. With a gun, too.” Jefferson reached over and switched on a table lamp. Blinked at the sudden glare. Never stopped looking at Carver, though. “Heard the knocking, thought at first it was a fuckin’ dream. Still have hopes.”

  “Not a dream,” Carver said, “me.”

  “So I see. Nightmare, more like it; too much pasta coming back to haunt. Now, why would you wake me up at”-he glanced at his watch-“oh, God, one o’friggin’-clock in the morning?”

  “I thought it was the safest time to come here without being seen.”

  “By your Atlanta friends?”

  “Right. You must have been in contact with Courtney Romano.”

  “We are frequently,” Jefferson said. He revealed no surprise that Carver knew about Courtney. Used his free hand to scratch lazily beneath his rib cage. “She likes it that way.”

  “Don’t blame her, having met Vincent Butcher. You ever had the pleasure?”

  “No, but I know a great deal about him. More than you know. None of it’s nice. So maybe I don’t blame you for sneaking over here in the wee hours. But how the hell did you know where to find me?”

  “Called the main DEA office in Washington and they told me.”

  “I’ll ignore that, but I don’t wanna hear any more smartass remarks.”

  “Courtney tell you the arrangement I’m supposed to have with the Wesley people?”

  “ ’Course she did. That’s her job. A useful arrangement, you ask me. You’re gonna be a double agent, my man. No, wait a minute, triple agent. Working for us, but they think you’re working for them, only we know about it and you’re working for us. A three-cushion shot.”

  Carver remembered Desoto mentioning that.

  Jefferson sat down in a small wing chair. He let his powerful arms drop limply to the sides, let the gun dangle. The lamp highlighted his washboard stomach; the kind of guy who could drive himself to do hundreds of sit-ups each and every day. Or who was driven to do them. “No time at all you’ve gone from keyhole-peeker to goddamn triple agent,” he said. “Something, huh?”

  “Only in America.”

  Jefferson’s eyes, yellowish in the lamplight, got hard. “When we got something we want Wesley to know, we’ll get in touch with you. Tell you what to pass on.”

  “And if they find out I’m passing on stacked information, what about me?”

  Jefferson barked something somewhere between a snort and a laugh. “You’re the one wanted into this game, Carver. Now you’re in and you got no choice.”

  “Maybe. But I want something from you.”

  “I gathered that, considering you were knocking at my door at one A.M. and we never got together much socially.”

  “The woman I live with, Edwina Talbot; if I get outa line they’ll sic Butcher on her. That’s the string they tied on me.”

  Jefferson nodded, staring at Carver. “Courtney told us. So you stay in line, only what you tell Ogden and Butcher is what we want them to know.”

  “That’s not staying in line,” Carver said. “It’s dangerous for Edwina.”

  “Not to mention the intrepid private eye. You guys tinker around with serious matters, get in our way. Well, this time you poked your pecker in a steel trap. Nothing you can do but play along with Ogden and Butcher. Which means there’s nothing you can do but play along with us.”

  “Maybe,” Carver said. “But you got no choice other than to make sure nothing happens to Edwina Talbot. You’re not exactly running your own investigation by official procedure.”

  “I can’t afford to be a bureaucrat,” Jefferson said. “I’m out here in the field with my ass on the line.”

  “You know a private citizen’s in danger, and you want to place her in even greater jeopardy by forcing me to lie to Ogden and Butcher.”

  “If that’s the way you see it. Thing is, though, there’s a kinda time limit on all this. There’s supposed to be a Southern Christian Businessmen’s League strategy meeting down here in the next few days. All the movers and shakers, discussing new routes for drug shipments from Central America. That’s the reason Palma and I came to Florida in the first place.”

  “Time limit or not, the way I see it, you better do w
hat you can to shield Edwina.”

  “You seem to have it backward about who’s between the rock and the block, Carver. You gotta tell the Wesley people something, and if you pass on information we haven’t okayed, you’re guilty of complicity. It’s gotta be one or the other. Them or us. No real choice there, the way it looks to me. How you see it I’m not sure. But it’s down to the short strokes in this game, baby.”

  “Any way I move I lose.”

  Jefferson nodded. “Might.”

  “What if I tell Ogden you know about the SCBL get-together?”

  “Then you’re federal pen bound, Carver. But the SCBL knows we’re onto this anyway. The meeting will come off, as long as they think we don’t know where it’s gonna be held. Florida’s a big state, the size of some European countries, and big money makes for big egos and overconfidence. Now if you were to find out the exact location of the meeting, it’d be smart to pass it on to me or Palma.”

  “Can’t Courtney tell you?”

  “They don’t completely trust her.” Jefferson swallowed hard. “And she’s around because Ogden wants her.”

  “I didn’t see any sign of that,” Carver said. “I mean, of anything between them.”

  Jefferson said, “It’s not a relationship based on love.” He made a face as if he’d like to spit out something vile.

  “She still figures to learn the meeting place before I would.”

  “Could be.”

  Carver made an effort not to look in the direction of the rifle in the duffel bag beneath the bed. He said, “There’s something else operating here, isn’t there?”

  Jefferson said, “Huh? I don’t follow.”

  “Something more than a drug-smuggling ring you’re trying to break.”

  “Well, you never know what else some of these drug kings are into until you subpoena the books. Even then, they’re so good at cooking the numbers you still might not know.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “Oh? What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe you can tell me.”

  Jefferson’s face twitched and the muscles in his neck and chest corded. For a moment he seemed about to say something. But only for a moment. Carver got a brief look at something inside Jefferson, writhing and agonized and dangerous. It scared him; a glimpse of a demon.

  A wind kicked up off the sea. Something light bounced with force off the glass door beyond the bed. Outside, in the distance, a woman laughed loudly and maniacally.

  “I came here to tell you to make sure Edwina has protection,” Carver said.

  “Why don’t you simply get her out of town on the sly?”

  “That’d only work for a while. Even if she’d leave, which she won’t. Besides, there’s always the possibility she’d be trailed to wherever she went. There’d be no way to know for sure. These people are pros. It’d be hard for her to go anywhere now without them knowing.”

  Jefferson yawned, his deep chest heaving. He ran a hand over his hair, as if to make sure it hadn’t fallen out in the night. Studied his palm for a few seconds. “Yeah, you’re right. So you’re using what you perceive as leverage to get us to protect Miss Talbot.”

  “That’s it,” Carver said.

  “Might surprise you to know we already got somebody watching over her. That was decided five minutes after our contact with Courtney. You’re right, Carver, Miss Talbot’s a U.S. citizen and has protection owed her.”

  “That’s what I needed to hear,” Carver said. He shifted position with the cane and limped toward the door.

  “You mean I can go back to sleep now?”

  “Or wake up. Maybe this is a bad dream.”

  “Yours, not mine. But wait’ll I turn out the light before you open the door. Wouldn’t want some fool to take a shot at you and hit me.” Jefferson reached out a muscular arm and switched off the lamp. “We’ll give you a call soon about what information to pass on to Atlanta.”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  “Carver, something else.”

  Carver waited in the faint light.

  “The way you’d feel if something happened to Edwina Talbot, that’s how I’ll feel if you screw up and something happens to Courtney Romano.”

  Carver looked at him, surprised. “So it’s that way between you and Courtney.”

  Jefferson nodded slowly, his serious dark eyes shining in the dim room. “That way.”

  Carver stood quietly for a moment, thinking about Courtney and Ogden. About the rifle under the bed. A hunting tool. An assassination weapon. But what was the deal here? Jefferson could take out Ogden almost anytime he wanted. And he had to know Courtney was willingly doing her job. Jefferson of all people would understand that. “But there’s more, isn’t there?” Carver said. “Only you’re not telling me. Something about you. Something keeping you wound tight.”

  Smiling, Jefferson said, “Get off that bullshit. You wanna play psychiatrist, go back to school.”

  Carver said, “You worry me.”

  “Least you got that much sense. Night, Carver.”

  “Night.”

  “So walk. I gotta get some sleep.”

  Carver limped out into the greater darkness of the night. He was satisfied now that Edwina would have the best protection possible. She’d be safer home and unaware in Del Moray than in a strange city, unfamiliar territory where she might have been followed or could soon be discovered.

  From the shadowy room behind Carver, Jefferson said, “Remember, Carver, you’re the one between the rock and the hard place.”

  Carefully skirting the edge of the gently lapping pool, Carver thought: That means it’s time to move.

  Chapter 27

  Driving through the warm night, Carver wished he could return home to bed and Edwina, tell her what he was doing. But he knew it would be a possibly fatal mistake. The odds were good that Ogden-rather, the enigmatic Frank Wesley-had someone watching Edwina. Carver they didn’t have to watch; he was attached to the end of a leash in the grasp of Walter Ogden. If he did something wrong he’d be punished by Edwina’s horrendous rendezvous with Vincent Butcher.

  If he did something wrong.

  But if he did nothing, and if he slipped the leash, that would be different. If no one knew where he was. Or why. Then the result would be uncertainty. Edwina would be safe because Ogden wouldn’t want to eliminate Carver’s possible remaining value by harming her. Also, Van Meter’s man Hans and the DEA would be watching over her. Jefferson and Palma would think Courtney Romano might be able to tell them where Carver had gone, but they’d be wrong.

  Carver was going to move completely off the game board. Suddenly he’d no longer be a factor except by his absence, which could be interpreted a number of ways, but not with the certainty that would prompt action.

  The Olds’s canvas top was up but all the windows were cranked down. Wind boomed and swirled through the car’s interior. Taut canvas slapped against the steel struts as Carver pushed the car hard along the Orange Blossom Trail toward Orlando. Flying night insects met hard and instant death against the windshield; Carver had to use the squirts and wipers now and then in order to see clearly.

  At the Orlando airport he parked the Olds in an inconspicuous slot in a park-and-fly lot, then rolled up the windows, climbed out, and locked the doors. He limped around to the trunk and removed his scuffed leather suitcase. Lugged the suitcase over to the next row of cars and down about a hundred feet, where he’d left the green Ford he’d rented earlier.

  He placed the suitcase on the passenger-side front seat of the Ford, then limped around to the driver’s side and lowered himself in behind the steering wheel. Experienced that new-car smell everyone with big payments bragged about.

  He’d asked for a Ford with the biggest motor they had, and Hertz had accommodated. The car’s engine turned over on the first try and throbbed with quiet power. He backed out of the parking slot, slipped the automatic gearshift lever into drive, and the Ford jerked forward and wanted to f
ly. Carver smiled.

  It was just past three A.M. when he drove from the lot.

  The sun was only a faint and uneven red smear on the eastern horizon, like a novice painter’s mistake, when Carver killed the Ford’s headlights, tapped the brake pedal, and turned off the highway. He was jouncing over the narrow road that led through the rows of citrus trees to the small airstrip and abandoned house.

  Carver braked gently and then parked about a hundred yards from the house, which he could barely see as a squat, dark form beyond the trees. Then he climbed out from behind the wheel and hobbled over uneven ground toward the decrepit structure, feeling ahead of him with the cane like a blind man. The only sound was the screaming of crickets in the field behind the house. If they were aware of Carver’s presence, they didn’t seem to mind enough to lapse into wary silence.

  He kept to the side of the road, tasting the grit of powdery dust he couldn’t see. The Colt in its belt holster was gouging the top of his right thigh with each step. He adjusted the holster. Didn’t help. Hell with it. Sweat trickled down his rib cage. Some ran down his forehead and into his eyes. Stung. He wiped his face with his hand, wiped his hands on his pants leg, and kept limping through the velvet darkness toward the house.

  It took him a few minutes to assure himself the house was unoccupied. Then he let himself in through the unlocked porch screen door and stood very still, peering around at the blackness.

  It was even darker in the house than outside, and the screams of the crickets were muted. The place smelled musty, and the faint scent of greasy beef and onion lingered from the McDonald’s debris he’d seen on his last visit. But now it had about it the cloying sweetness of garbage, and it almost turned his stomach. He swallowed saliva that tasted metallic, but he felt the nausea recede.

  After a few minutes his eyes adjusted to the dark and he could make out objects. He limped over to the table, leaned on it, and used the crook of his cane to lift the nearby upended chair. Then he sat down in the chair. It creaked loudly, like Van Meter’s delicate desk chair, and for a moment he was afraid it might splinter beneath him. But it held.