Hot

by John Lutz

  Carver knew what he meant. Hitting a human being with a car often caused very little damage to the vehicle while smashing hell out of the victim. White paint was easy to match, so if minor damage to the car was quickly repaired by someone in on the crime, or who wouldn’t ask questions, after a short drive down a dusty road the car rental agency wouldn’t be able to tell the vehicle had been in an accident.

  “See the driver?” Carver asked.

  “Yeah, but it was all so fast I couldn’t give you an ID. A man, I’m pretty sure, but there was glare on the windshield and I can’t even be positive of that. I do know the bastard had both hands on the steering wheel and was staring straight ahead, at me. I got a mental image of that, all right.”

  “You figure Walter Rainer’s behind what happened?”

  Tiller snorted. “Whadda you figure?”

  “How badly you hurt?” Carver asked. “I mean, how long they say you’re gonna be in here?”

  “Weeks, the way it looks. Busted leg, cracked pelvis, and some internal injuries they ain’t quite sure about yet. They did some minor exploratory operating yesterday, and they’re gonna get into me good tomorrow morning. Know where that leaves us, Carver?”

  “I know where it leaves you: right there in that bed, probably for the next month.”

  “Where I’d like it to leave you,” Tiller said, “is in my cottage down on Key Montaigne.”

  A young nurse came in, smiled at Carver, and walked directly to Tiller. She had blond hair pinned up off her neck, and wore one of those old-fashioned starched white caps that look like the newspaper hats kids make in grade school. After a concerned and appraising glance at Tiller, she adjusted the angle of his suspended leg slightly, then she peered at the glucose bottle as if it might be changing form before her eyes.

  Gazing up at her, Tiller said, “You don’t come back in about ten minutes, I’m gonna yank all these tubes out and get outa bed so I can hop to the bathroom on my good leg.”

  She grinned. “I’ll be back in nine minutes, Mr. Tiller.”

  “Call me Henry,” he said as she sashayed out. He looked at Carver. “Whaddya say, Carver?”

  “I think she’ll be back.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Carver didn’t have to think about it for long. “Well, I was gonna call and tell you I was on my way there.”

  Tiller’s right hand, the one with the IV needle in it, rose and fell feebly. A gnarled forefinger pointed. “My clothes are in that closet, key ring in a pocket. Take the brass key with the square top; that’s the one to the cottage. Address is number ten Shoreline Road. You remember that?”

  “Sure.” Carver went to the locker-size closet and fished the key ring from Tiller’s pants pocket, then worked the brass key off the ring. He returned the cluster of keys to the pocket and left things the way they’d been in the closet, so Tiller’s clothes would be as little wrinkled as possible in two weeks or a month or whenever he’d put them back on.

  “Tell me more about Effie the cleaning girl,” he said.

  Tiller tried to shrug but only managed slight movement that obviously hurt. “She’s a fourteen-year-old kid lives nearby. Her daddy runs a gas station in Fishback, mentioned to me she was looking for work, asked if, being alone, I needed somebody to come in once or twice a week to clean. I told him sure, I’d help the kid out—not that I need anybody. I can damn sure look after myself.”

  Carver considered pointing out Henry’s present position, then thought he’d better be quiet. After all, he’d made a mistake himself and was limping around with a cane.

  “It was a white Chrysler that hit me,” Henry said. “I mention that?”

  “You did.”

  “I never got so much as a peek at the license plate.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Tiller let out a long breath and looked up at the pipework and pulley system elevating his broken leg. An expression of infinite sadness passed over his features, for a moment making him look a hundred years old. “I forget some things these days, Carver, I know that. But I also know I’m a long ways from senility. I guess that’s another reason I want you to go on down to Key Montaigne and prove I’m right about something not being as it should there, prove I’m not some paranoid old man just a shell of what he was. Maybe in the same way, after you was shot, you had to prove you was more’n just a cripple people could write off. You understand that?”

  “I understand my big problem was writing myself off, Henry. It took me a while to understand it, but now I do. Don’t get down on yourself because you’ve got a lot of miles on your odometer.”

  “If you tend to forget things, Carver, how do you know? I mean, how do I know how much I forget?”

  Carver said, “Well, how much is worth remembering, anyway?”

  “All I wanna remember for now,” Tiller said, “is that I got some good years left in me. Not many, but a few. It ain’t easy holding on to that thought when there’s people treating you like you’re halfway in the grave. It works like voodoo or something; they give up on you, so you give up on yourself. You wither and die like a plant that gets no water.”

  Carver knew what Tiller meant. He’d seen it happen. He patted Henry Tiller gently on the shoulder and told him he’d move into his cottage and poke around Key Montaigne. Not to worry, if Rainer was up to anything illegal, he’d tumble to it.

  “Let me know if and when,” Tiller said.

  “Sure. I’ll stay in touch by phone.”

  Tiller gave him a feeble wave, bumping a tube and causing his glucose bottle to sway on its steel pole, making Carver worry for a moment that the IV needle might pull from the back of his hand. “I give you the key?” he asked.

  “I’ve got it,” Carver assured him. “Try to get some rest, okay?”

  “Not much else to do here.” Tiller closed his eyes.

  Thinking about his dead son, maybe, Carver thought. Remembering. The way Carver remembered.

  Or maybe just thinking about the pretty blond nurse due back with the bedpan.

  Clutching the key tightly in his free hand, Carver limped from the room.

  5

  SOUTH OF MIAMI, U.S. Route 1 trails like a thread unraveling from the sleeve of the Florida peninsula. It connects the Florida Keys, a string of small islands that curves gently southwest to end at Key West, only ninety miles from Cuba.

  Route 1 was constructed after a hurricane in the thirties had devastated the Keys and swept an Overseas Railroad train and all its passengers out to sea, forever ending rail service from the mainland. The highway, built in part over the remaining railroad trestle, was a safer, more durable way to connect the islands to each other and to southern Florida. For the first several miles from the north, it cuts through flatlands and is mostly a level two-lane road, where passing slower traffic is almost impossible. Farther south it’s flanked by water, the Gulf of Mexico on the west, the Atlantic on the east, and has long four-lane stretches. The islands, some of them almost too small to appear on a map, are sometimes so close together only the highway signs let the driver know he’s bridged open water and passed from one key to the next. Some of the keys, like Marathon and Isla Mirada, are larger and well populated. Even many of the smaller islands support condo developments, retirement communities, and fishing resorts. And tourist shops. Even ahead of fishing, tourism ranks as the Keys’ primary industry.

  The bridge from Duck Key to Key Montaigne was a narrow, arced ribbon of concrete that still had the fresh, sunwashed look of new construction. Studying it through the windshield, Carver thought that probably an older bridge had recently been replaced.

  Key Montaigne wasn’t exactly kidney-shaped; it more closely resembled a miniature Africa, one that barely showed up on the standard road map. According to the more detailed map Carver had bought when he’d stopped for gas at a Texaco station on Marathon Key, Key Montaigne was slightly more than half a mile across at its widest point, and about a mile from its northern to southern tip. It was flat, like the
rest of the keys, and heavily overgrown with lush tropical foliage that concealed the condo developments and single-family residences.

  Carver was driving the Olds with the top up and all the windows down. Key Montaigne was hot, but there was a wind off the sea that might be more or less constant, like farther south in Key West. Outlying reefs prevented incoming waves from breaking into surf, leaving the offshore waters calm. And there didn’t seem to be any beach, except for a stretch of public beach that a sign proclaimed was built with sand trucked down from the north. A few sunbathers were lounging on the beach, and two sailboats leaned into the wind not far from shore. In the brilliant sunlight the transplanted sand appeared almost white and looked unnatural in its setting.

  It was easy enough to find Shoreline Road, and just a few minutes on it brought Carver to a narrow driveway meandering off through palm trees and undergrowth toward what a rural mailbox proclaimed to be Henry Tiller’s cottage.

  Gravel crunched beneath the Olds’s big tires as Carver followed the driveway to the sea and a small weathered structure with a screened front porch and an almost flat roof. He recognized it as the sort of building Key Westers called Conch houses, solid homes built by nineteenth-century ship’s carpenters to withstand hurricane-force winds. Modest but enduring structures that ignored time.

  Carver parked the Olds beside the cottage, climbed out and set the tip of his cane in the sandy soil. He squinted out at the Gulf, which was undulating and glittering with silver sparks in the glaring sunlight. To his left the shoreline curved and he could see, some distance away, a manicured stretch of green land sloping gradually to a dock where a large white-hulled private yacht rested as if posing for a postcard. Carver figured it must be the Miss Behavin’, Walter Rainer’s boat.

  A mosquito droned close to his ear, and he raised a hand and brushed at it. He hadn’t seen it, but if volume was any indication, it was large enough to fly mail. He wiped the back of his wrist across his perspiring forehead, hoisted his scuffed leather suitcase from the trunk of the Olds, and limped up the wooden steps to the cottage’s front porch. Behind him the cooling metal of the Olds’s engine ticked like a bomb.

  The screen door was unlocked. He opened it partway, then shoved it wider open with a corner of the suitcase and stepped up onto the shaded and noticeably cooler porch. The plank floor creaked beneath his weight. There was a green AstroTurf carpet on part of the porch, and a chipped yellow-enameled metal glider. Instead of a porchlight, there was a paddle fan mounted on the rough wood ceiling. Carver used Henry Tiller’s key on the front door and went into the cottage.

  The interior was small but neat, with matching white wicker furniture that looked as old and serviceable as the cottage. There was a multicolored braided oval rug on the floor, a bulky old air conditioner mounted in a side window. On the cream-colored walls were oil paintings that were probably done by local artists —a flower arrangement, a stormy seascape, three domestic cats posing in tall grass as if they were a pride of lions. Carver liked that last one. He could see into the tiny kitchen with its dated white appliances. A door led to what he assumed was the bedroom. Another door, half open, was to the bathroom. The air in the cottage was hot and still and smelled like lemon furniture polish. It took the fun out of breathing.

  He limped across the braided rug to the air conditioner and switched it on High. It screamed shrilly and went Thunka! Thunka! before the compressor kicked in, then it settled into a steady hum and emitted at stream of moderately cool air he could only hope would grow colder.

  He lugged his suitcase into the bedroom and tossed it onto the double bed with its tufted white spread. The bedroom was small, with only a dresser and nightstand in addition to the bed. The walls were the same off-white as the walls in the rest of the cottage. One of them had a dark smear on it where an insect had been swatted. The floor was wood, with a gray throw rug beside the bed. There were a few oil paintings in here, too, but none as good as the one with the cats. Carver was glad to see another window unit, this one smaller but newer, and a ceiling fan like the one on the porch. June nights in the Keys could emulate Hell.

  On top of the oak dresser was a display of small framed photographs. Carver stepped closer and examined them. There was Henry Tiller, accepting what looked like an award in front of a group of people, shaking hands with a gray-haired man in a dark suit. There were no women in the photograph, and everyone looked like a cop. Maybe this was Henry retiring. There was a black-and-white shot of a much younger Henry Tiller, standing next to an attractive woman with dark hair and an overwide smile. The ex-wife, perhaps, whom Henry professed not to care about. And there in a bronze frame was Henry about the same age, dark hair like the wife’s, posing with a lanky boy about ten years old in front of a lake. A slightly older Henry with the same boy, this time in his teens and looking something like Henry but with his mother’s smile; they wore heavy coats and there was a half-melted snowman behind them in this photo. Next to it was a shot of a man in his twenties, the boy grown up, with a heavyset blond woman standing next to him, one leg studiously in front of the other to make her appear thinner. She was holding an infant. Son Jerry again, and his wife, and their son Bump years before cocaine and death. All of them now out of Henry Tiller’s dwindling life.

  A squeaking sound from the front of the cottage made Carver turn. At first he thought it might have been the ancient air conditioner, but a shadow wavered in the short hall outside the door.

  He edged to the side, leaned with a palm against the wall and gripped the shaft of the hard walnut cane just below its crook. He focused his concentration, ready to rumble if he must.

  A redheaded girl about five feet tall moved into the doorway and stood with her stick-thin arms crossed. She was wearing shorts, clompy red and white jogging shoes, and a sleeveless blouse, a green sweatband around her forehead. She was in her early teens and was pale and had freckles on every part of her that was visible. She didn’t seem surprised to see Carver, and stared inquiringly at him with guileless and friendly green eyes. Danger would be the farthest thing from her mind, until she grew up. She said, “You Mr. Carver?”

  He straightened up and planted the tip of his cane back on the wood floor, feeling slightly silly at having brandished it for use as a weapon if necessary. “I’m Carver.” This had to be Effie Norton, the teenager who did Henry Tiller’s cleaning, but he thought he’d let her tell him that.

  She did. Then she said, “Mr. Tiller told me what a great investigator you were, how you were probably better’n anyone in most police departments.”

  Maybe Desoto had oversold Henry. Carver said, “Sometimes I can help, sometimes not.”

  She grinned, crinkling the flesh around her eyes. Like a lot of redheads, she’d look old before her time, but until then she’d be a coltish charmer. “You’re being too modest.”

  He said, “Yeah, Effie, I guess I am.” He wondered how much Effie knew about Tiller’s suspicions. How much she knew about Tiller. Well, there was a direct way to find out. “If you don’t mind my asking,” he said, “what do you think of Mr. Tiller?”

  She arched an almost nonexistent eyebrow. “In what way?”

  “Any way you feel like talking about.”

  She uncrossed her arms and let her hands dangle at her sides, standing like a schoolgirl getting ready to recite in front of the class. “He’s nice. He reminds me of my grandfather, who’s been dead three years now. When I say something, he listens. He don’t treat me like some kinda feeb just because I’m young. Hey, did you see him in the hospital?”

  “Yeah, for a short time.”

  “So how is he?”

  “Some broken bones, and the surgeons are gonna do some work on him tomorrow. But I think he’ll be all right.”

  “I sure hope so.” She was plainly concerned, maybe recalling the pain of losing her grandfather. Fourteen was young, all right.

  “Do you think there’s anything to Mr. Tiller’s suspicions?” Carver asked.

  “
Suspicions?”

  “About something being wrong here on Key Montaigne.”

  “Of course there’s something to those suspicions.” Now she propped her fists on her narrow hips, ready to defend Tiller. “Mr. Tiller used to be a policeman, you know, in Milwaukee and then in Fort Lauderdale.”

  “I know.”

  “I mean, if he sees smoke—”

  “Okay, okay. Then you believe he’s—thinking okay these days?”

  “Ha! I know what you mean, but you take the trouble to listen and wait when Mr. Tiller tells you something, you’ll see how smart he really is. He sorta stops and starts and gets off on side roads when he talks, but don’t you ever bet he don’t know what he’s saying.”

  Carver remembered Desoto’s bus-in-traffic analogy. Henry made a lot of U-turns, too.

  “The person who ran over Mr. Tiller,” Effie said, “you think they did it on purpose?”

  “I’m gonna find out,” Carver told her. “In fact, if anybody asks you, that’s what I’m here to investigate—Mr. Tiller being hit by a car that kept going.”

  “You bet!” Her eyes widened brightly; she liked secrets.

  “Have you discussed Mr. Tiller’s suspicions with anybody else?”

  “Oh, no! He asked me not to. Only ones who know about them are Mr. Tiller, me, and the police chief, Lloyd Wicke. Mr. Tiller said it’d be best not to let anyone know somebody was suspicious of em; that way they’d destroy evidence or whatever, and might even sue for slander.”

  “Something to remember,” Carver said. “Mr. Tiller must trust you a lot.”

  Her freckled chin lifted. “He does.”

  Carver smiled. “I guess I will, too, then.”

  “You gonna be staying here awhile?”

  “Probably.”

  “I been coming in to clean three days a week. What I dropped by for was to ask if you wanted me to keep doing that.”

  “Sure,” Carver said. “That’s what Mr. Tiller would want.”