by John Lutz
The tumultuous hot wind in the wake of a speeding eighteen-wheeler almost bowled him over. He saved himself from falling by instinctively stabbing the ground with the cane. Better keep an eye out for those bastards, he cautioned himself, watching the square back of the trailer glimmer and grow smaller in the vaporous heat of the highway. His bald pate felt ready to burst into flames in the relentless sun, his nose was throbbing now, and already he could feel the thin leather soles of his moccasins warming. He was truly miserable, and for a second wondered how he’d come to be here. What an occupation, he thought. What a world. What a life. What was the purpose of it all, really?
No answer sprang to mind.
He limped over baked gravel toward the place that specialized in bait, beer, boats.
37
When he got closer to the low clapboard building, Carver saw that a smaller sign above the door proclaimed it to be zig’s fisherman’s lounge. He walked along an uneven stone walk that ran outside the building, and found that it led to a patio with some tables and chairs outside.
A faded green canvas awning supported by a rusty iron framework provided shade, but this was the void between breakfast and lunch, and no one was at any of the tables other than a few gulls pecking disdainfully at crumbs. At the far corner of the building a gaunt teenage boy stood shirtless in the sun, holding a garden hose and directing a meager stream of water on something beyond Carver’s view. He seemed uninterested in his task as he absently bent to drink from the hose, then wiped a skinny bare arm across his perspiring forehead. A weathered wooden sign pointed the way to the dock, down a narrow dirt path that cut through tall grass, untended bushes that had once been a garden, and wind-gnarled date palms. Carver set the tip of his cane on the hard earth and began walking.
Within a few minutes he could see the ocean. There was a rickety dock, and a sloping concrete ramp where trailered boats might be put in the water. A gravel road ran parallel to the shore, then curved out of sight with the angle of the land.
Half a dozen open fishing boats with outboard motors bobbed at the dock. A pelican sat unconcernedly on the bow of one of them. The only person in view was Davy, standing on the sunny dock with his hands on his hips and gazing out to sea. About half a mile from shore a boat rode the glimmering ocean. Carver could see two men in it, unmoving as a sculpture, two fishing poles like jutting antennae. Beyond the boat, on the horizon, dense clouds were layered to a majestic altitude, more a mockery than a promise of rain.
He moved off the path and behind some bushes with huge pink blossoms that gave off an acrid, unpleasant scent. Leaned on his cane and watched.
The wavering drone of an outboard motor became audible through the clear morning air, and an open boat came into view. It was moving fast, skipping along the surface so the prop was clear occasionally and the motor snarled free of the water’s drag. One man sat in it, hunched over the outboard in the stern, his neck craned as he twisted his body so he could see above the raised bow.
The V of white wake disappeared as the motor coughed and settled into a determined sputtering, and the boat veered toward shore. There was a muted thumping as its gray aluminum hull settled against the tires lashed to the dock as buffers, and the man in the stern cut the motor and scrambled forward to loop a rope over a cleat and secure the boat. The pelican had seen enough and flapped away.
Davy dropped his hands to his sides and stood without moving. A waiting attitude touched with impatience. For the first time Carver saw something familiar about the man in the boat. He leaned forward over his cane.
After clambering from the boat, the man made his way along the dock to where Davy stood. He was wearing khaki shorts and a loose-fitting red and gray striped pullover shirt, a white baseball cap with an oversized bill. He needed a shave badly, or he was cultivating a beard. As he shook hands with Davy, Carver realized he was looking at Frank Everman.
The two men stood talking in the sun for a few minutes, then Davy drew a brown envelope from beneath his shirt and handed it to Everman. Everman opened the flap and looked inside, then he began thumbing through a thick stack of green bills, counting them with the brisk efficiency of a bank teller. Halfway through the bills he stopped and shrugged. He grinned at Davy, who was staring at him without expression.
They shook hands again as Everman tucked the envelope beneath the waistband of his shorts, then gave it a gentle, possessive pat. As if it were something vulnerable and alive he was protecting.
Davy watched as Everman climbed back in the boat and unfastened the line, hunkered down in the stern and yanked the pull cord three times on the outboard motor. The motor turned over and sputtered to life, and Everman gave Davy a vague wave and began maneuvering the boat slowly clear of the dock.
Davy stood as he had before, fists on hips, and watched as the motor snarled loudly and the boat’s bow rose high and spread a curving white wake. Everman didn’t look back as he aimed the bucking bow away from shore and set a course north over the gently choppy sea.
When Davy turned away and started up the path, Carver retreated farther into the sharp-scented foliage, out of sight.
Davy passed within twenty feet of him, gazing at the ground and wearing a grim smile. He plodded with his fists balled like sledgehammer heads at the ends of his muscular tatooed arms, as if he’d enjoy punching out anyone who got in his way. Popeye gone bad.
Instead of following him, Carver moved through high grass parallel to the highway until he could see the rear of the black van. He was afraid Davy might stay for a while in Zig’s and drink a beer or two, but that wasn’t the case. Less than a minute after Davy had passed from sight, the van reversed out onto the highway. With a faint squeal of rubber on hot concrete, it turned and accelerated south, back toward Key Montaigne. Carver saw no point in following.
He took his time limping back to the Olds. A swarm of gnats found him and tagged along most of the way, but he barely noticed them. Something had taken hold in his mind.
After lowering himself into the Olds, he sat behind the steering wheel with the motor idling and the suddenly cooperative air conditioner blowing a hurricane, thinking about what he’d just witnessed at the dock. Putting it together with everything else he’d learned, and feeling his stomach plunge as he made some terrible sense of it.
It was cool in the Olds, but his mind and his gut kept churning and he was sweating. His body was coated with a nasty sheen of perspiration and the powdered dust that had risen from the dirt path to the sea.
Anger had joined revulsion by the time he swung the car onto Route 1 and drove for Key Montaigne.
He’d been back at the cottage only fifteen minutes when Millicent Bing called from Ohio. Carver told her what he’d figured out and promised to protect Dr. Sam’s memory as much as possible, in exchange for one favor from her. She had to make a phone call to someone she was sure would pass the word to Walter Rainer that she was returning to Key Montaigne to meet Carver at eleven that evening at the research center.
She agreed. She really had no choice.
After hanging up the phone, Carver explained to Beth what they were going to do. Then he called Katia Marsh, did some more explaining, and got her cooperation in gaining access to the research center that night.
Then he cleaned his gun.
38
At ten-thirty that night, Carver left the Olds parked out of sight and limped along Shoreline toward the research center. There was enough light to see fairly well, broken only by the passage of scudding black clouds across the face of the moon. He placed his cane carefully in the dark, making good time to the parking lot.
As he drew near the angular brick building, he slowed his pace, gathering his thoughts and resolve. Around him were only the night sounds of insects, the brief drone of a faraway plane, water lapping down by the dock where the dark form of the Fair Wind rode. He could sense on his right the vast mystery of the ocean. He was sweating, breathing raggedly, as he used the key Katia had given him and let himself int
o the research center.
After closing the door but not relocking it, he stood for a while waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dimmer light inside the building. Then he limped past the posters of sea horses and dolphins and opened the door to the lower level Tide Pool Room.
There were no windows in this room, so he felt for the light switch inside the door. Found its smooth protuberance and flipped it up. It made a sound like a sharp slap.
The overhead fluorescent tubes flickered like heat lightning then glowed steadily, and the shark tank’s wavering illumination was also activated. The hulking form of Victor swooped toward Carver, surprisingly near, startling him for a moment. Then the shark swept in a graceful arc behind the glass and with a flick of its tail glided in the opposite direction, its image becoming distorted and deceptively small on the far side of the tank. Victor’s world. Circling, circling.
“You’d think he’d get tired,” a voice said.
Still poised on the black steel landing, Carver looked down and saw Walter Rainer standing near one of the tide pool displays. Like Carver, he’d gotten the idea of arriving early, before Millicent Bing was due. Early birds hoping they weren’t worms.
Carver clomped down the metal stairs with his cane and saw Davy standing to Rainer’s left, where he wouldn’t be seen from the landing. Davy stared unsmilingly at Carver, his muscular arms hanging limply at his sides. Carver nodded toward the shark and said, “I’m told they have to keep swimming, keep feeding, or they sink and die.”
“I find myself in the same position,” Rainer said. He ran a hand over his hugely protruding stomach, as if to reassure himself he was prosperous and well-fed. He was wearing a cream-colored suit that made him look even more massive than he was. A beige shirt, no tie. The suit was wrinkled and baggy, and though the Tide Pool Room was cool, Rainer’s fat-padded face glistened with sweat and looked sickly in the fluorescent light. Davy had on tight jeans and a loud flowered shirt, untucked. Carver had left his own shirt untucked to conceal the Colt holstered beneath it. He figured Davy was also armed, probably with his weapon of choice, the sharpened cargo hook. There was pattern and predictability to sadism.
Behind Rainer the shark kept circling, the only movement in the room. Then Davy hooked his thumbs in his side pockets and swaggered out to stand in the center of the floor with his feet spread wide, closer to Carver but not too close. He was playing cool but he was tense; the nude dancer on his forearm twitched a hip.
Carver said, “Millicent isn’t coming.”
Ranier shrugged inside the tent-sized suit. “That doesn’t surprise me, nor does it matter. I was sure you’d be here. Time enough to deal with Millicent, if indeed I must.”
“You must,” Carver said. “Otherwise you won’t sleep well, worrying about when her conscience might bite her and then you.”
The small square room was silent, insulated from the outside world as the floor of the sea. “I assume she told you everything,” Rainer said.
“She filled me in on what I hadn’t already guessed after seeing Davy hand over a payoff to Frank Everman this morning.”
Rainer gave Davy an annoyed look. Davy’s flat little eyes fixed intensely on Carver, like dispassionate radar-gun sights.
“You weren’t smuggling drugs or anything else into the country,” Carver told Rainer. “You were smuggling something out, into Mexico. You run a way station, part of an operation that supplies certain people in Mexico with abducted children for sexual exploitation in brothels and for private amusement. Dr. Sam knew about it but wasn’t part of it, though occasionally he gave you use of the Fair Wind when you thought the Miss Behavin might attract suspicion. The doctor had a weakness for young boys, which you supplied in exchange for his silence. Millicent knew but wouldn’t talk about it and ruin her husband.”
Rainer was nodding slightly as Carver spoke, agreeing with him. “That kind of appetite burns in the blood,” he said. “Dr. Sam was weak, couldn’t help himself. Millicent’s also weak. That’s why she isn’t here.”
“And why she might eventually talk if you don’t find her and kill her.”
“I honestly don’t see that as necessary,” Rainer said. “There’s always a way to persuade people, and if they aren’t persuadable, there are other methods. For instance, just before you arrived I got a call from Hector telling me your friend Beth Jackson was arrested by Chief Wicke for spying on my private grounds. Apparently she was supposed to phone you here when I and mine left for this meeting. Instead she’s now in the custody of Chief Wicke.”
“You phoned Wicke to come get her?”
“Hector did, after Davy and I left unseen and were well on our way. We didn’t want her to become impatient and interrupt proceedings here. But do tell me what else you think you know, Mr. Carver.”
Carver glanced at Davy, who hadn’t moved or changed expression. The faint shadow of the circling shark played over his stolid features. “The Evermans are part of the operation that abducts the children and sends them south in Davy’s van for you to transfer to Mexico,” Carver said. “The boy who drowned was high on cocaine so he could be controlled, but somehow he got free, tried to swim to safety, and drowned. The Evermans were sent from Miami to Key Montaigne to pose as the boy’s parents and claim the body before further police investigation revealed his true identity and that of his real family.”
Rainer gently touched his protruding stomach again, making the gesture somehow sensual and obscene. He sighed. “You’ve done surprisingly well, despite our considerable efforts to discourage you.”
“Henry Tiller was doing okay himself, which was why you had him murdered.”
“Yes, we had to send Davy to handle that chore.”
“Chore, huh? Like weeding the garden.”
“Or taking out the garbage. But doing violence and making it seem accidental isn’t exactly Davy’s style, so old Henry lived long enough to draw you into the situation. And you certainly proved to be as stubborn as your reputation promised.” Rainer’s gold ring glinted as he waved a fleshy hand limply but quickly, as if flicking something nasty from his fingertips. “No matter, I’m a man who takes precautions religiously. Davy’s in his element now, not behind the wheel of a rental car. He’s at his best preventing someone of known obsessive and dangerous personality from harming his employer or himself, even if it means that someone’s unfortunate but lawful death.” Not looking away from Carver, he nodded to Davy and said. “This is finally goodbye, Mr. Carver. It’s been stimulating if irritating.”
Davy reached beneath his riot-of-flowers shirt and pulled out his sharpened cargo hook. His expression was businesslike as he advanced on Carver. He’d handled Carver easily in Miami, and now it was time to get serious and finish the job. The routine chore.
Carver calmly drew the Colt from its holster, but the cargo hook arced forward with startling speed and slashed his hand. The gun dropped to the floor, landing at an angle and bouncing away from Carver. The back of his hand throbbed and dripped blood from a four-inch gash.
Davy stepped back, grinning now. His eyes had changed. Since Carver had been disarmed, business and pleasure could be combined. Carver had little doubt that if he stooped to retrieve the gun, Davy would be on him for the kill. They both knew Carver wasn’t going to do that. Doomed men tend to cling to time. Davy was obviously relishing the leisurely sport of finishing off a cripple.
But this time Carver wasn’t caught by surprise. He stood almost still as Davy approached him, shifting his weight subtly so Davy wouldn’t notice. His good leg was set so firmly that inside his thin-soled moccasins his toes were curled down tight against the concrete floor. He waited.
As Davy crouched to close in with the hook, Carver lashed out and up with the cane. It missed Davy’s wrist by inches, but Carver pulled it close to his body and, as Davy sprang, he shot the tip of the cane forward into Davy’s sternum, using it as a jabbing weapon to drive the breath from his attacker. “Ooomph!” He felt the sour rush of Davy’s exhalatio
n on his face, and the point of the cargo hook snagged for a moment on his shirtsleeve, then tore free. Now Carver slashed down with the cane, and the deadly steel hook flew from Davy’s injured hand and bounced clanging beneath one of the display trays. As Davy instinctively lowered his free hand to grip his damaged fingers, Carver flicked the cane up in his face, jabbing at an eye. Jabbing again.
Davy snarled and leaped back. Stood rocking on the balls of his feet. Glaring and battling his temper.
“Davy,” Rainer said softly, cautioning. Almost a whisper. “Davy!”
But Davy lost his composure and charged.
What Carver was waiting for. He flicked the cane out again, like a nifty boxer using a stiff left jab. Davy stopped and tried to brush the cane away from his face or grab it. Carver drove it into his groin. Davy’s hands dropped again. Carver slammed the cane across the side of his head, feeling and hearing the solid connection of walnut with bone. Nailed him again on the backswing, opening up a cheekbone. He was a fraction quicker than Davy, and now both men realized it and knew it made all the difference. Christ, this was fun! Terrifying but fun.
Davy retreated. Streaming blood was making a grotesque mask of his face. His glance shot to where the cargo hook had slid beneath the display tray.
Carver smiled and motioned with the cane for him to attack again. Silently mouthed the word “Please,” urging him to come forward.
But Davy moved fast in the opposite direction, going for the steel hook.
Before he could reach it, Carver was down and struggling for the Colt. His hand was about to close on the gun before Davy could grasp the hook, so Davy reversed direction and scrambled up the steel stairs. He knew when the war was over. In a flurry of noise and desperate energy, he burst through the door and was gone before Carver could raise the Colt above shoulder level and fire.
Carver planted the cane and hauled himself to his feet, holding the gun aimed at Rainer, listening to his own rasping fight for air. His labored breathing was making the gun barrel waver.