by John Lutz
“No thanks,” Carver said, “I’ve taken up about enough of your time. One last thing, though, are you satisfied with the way the investigation into your son’s death was handled?”
“Oh, hell, yeah!” Frank blurted out. “Them people down on Key Montaigne couldn’t have been nicer, don’t you think, Selma?”
“They was as comforting as anybody could be under the circumstances,” Selma said.
“You acquainted with a man down there named Walter Rainer?”
“No,” Frank said.
“Yes,” Selma said. “He was the nice fella give you a lift when the rental car got a flat.”
“Yeah, mighta been his name at that. Big fucker in a long gray car. Name Rainer sounds right.”
“So you don’t have any doubts about the way Leonard died?”
“Doubts?” Frank Everman stared at Carver. “What kinda doubts?”
“Nothing, really,” Carver said. “I just wanna make sure you’re satisfied with the way everything was done. It’s important we make it easy as possible for people who’ re gonna have similar experiences, because the sad thing is, there are plenty more kids out there living the way your Leonard did.”
Selma said, “Often times—and I know it’s a sin to think it—I do believe Lenny’s better off now. I mean, the kinda discontent and mental suffering he was in. Whatever it was made him take to the streets. And the drugs and stuff. The horrible people he took up with. He was living a life of agony and might eventually have come to an even worse end. It’s like the bible says about the wages of sin, and Lenny was led astray and into the wilderness early in life.”
Carver wondered if she imagined her dead son in hell. How couldn’t she, if she believed in an afterlife of reward and punishment?
Frank shook his head sadly. “Damned peers!”
Carver left the Evermans to their bourbon and their beer-hall music and rode the elevator down to the lobby. Their grief for their son didn’t ring quite true, didn’t seem to stab deep enough. On the other hand, it was possible they were so beaten down by poverty they’d become numbed to tragedy.
The explanation of the flat tire and the ride from Walter Rainer might well be fact, the one genuine coincidence that had tilted Henry’s suspicion to conviction.
Carver had left the Olds parked in the lot alongside the Blue Flamingo, in the shade of the adjacent hotel that was deserted and under renovation. He limped over to it and was about to unlock the door when his cane was suddenly jerked from his grasp. He heard it clatter to the pavement as he twisted, stumbled, and fell back against the warm hood of the car, supporting himself with his elbows and with his stiff leg angled out in front of him like a brace.
He was looking at Davy Mathis, who was standing on the cane, smiling and holding a wood-handled steel cargo hook that had been honed to a gleaming point.
15
BEFORE CARVER COULD MOVE, Davy suddenly stepped in close. Carver felt something sharp and painful digging into his crotch.
He tensed his body, looked down, and saw that Davy had the point of the cargo hook pressed into his scrotum. Davy patted him down skillfully with his free hand, making sure Carver didn’t have a weapon. Carver thought of his gun back in Henry’s cottage, still in Beth’s suitcase. He hadn’t figured he’d need it to talk to bereaved parents in Miami. It might not have helped anyway; it would probably belong to Davy now.
The length of the hook allowed Davy to move back slightly and still use his and Carver’s bodies to shield what was happening from view. Anyone passing on the street might glance at them and see only two men having a casual conversation.
“You move a fuckin’ millimeter,” Davy said with a grin, “and I’m gonna gaff you and hoist you a foot off the ground. Give you a vasectomy while I’m goddamn doing it.” He made a slight upward motion, an almost imperceptible shrug, and the hook moved. Sudden pain coursed through and nauseated Carver, making him dizzy. “You and I gonna have a talk,” Davy said. He was wearing white pants and a sleeveless T-shirt; the sweat-coated hula dancer on his muscular forearm had wriggled when he made the move with the hook. He must have had fish for lunch; it was still on his breath.
“Where’s your van?” Carver asked through clenched teeth.
“Parked down the street a ways. You don’t know how lucky you are. I’m awful fond of my wheels. If you’da backed into the van the other day down in Key Montaigne, I’d have got out and gutted you asshole to belly button.”
“Then you admit it was you who tried running me off the road?”
“Sure. You gonna fuckin’ quote me?”
The point of the hook again rose a fraction of an inch, and Carver sucked in his breath. He couldn’t answer, but that was okay with Davy, who probably asked a lot of rhetorical questions.
More fish breath. “If I’d have been trying to run you off the road, Carver, you’da fuckin’ run off the road. What I was attempting was to get you to see plain reason, realize your future was someplace else.”
“Or not at all.”
“Ain’t you per-fuckin’-ceptive?”
“Were you acting on Walter Rainer’s orders?”
Davy sneered. “You’re amazing. I got you by the balls directly, and you think you’re the one doing the quizzing. Maybe I need a bigger hook. You talk when I ask you a question and not a word otherwise. Understand?”
“Yeah, I get the point.” The words came out in a wheeze.
Davy laughed and spittle tattooed Carver’s face. “Hey, maybe I really do need a bigger hook. What I come to tell you is, Henry Tiller’s nothing but an old geek talking out his asshole. There’s nothing to his fuckin’ paranoid ideas. Now, you know what that means?”
“I got a feeling I’m about to find out,” Carver said. His mind was whirling, trying to figure out a way for him to defend against the sharp cargo hook so he could go on the offensive. But there was no way. Any sudden motion would prompt Davy to hoist him like a live side of beef on the hook, and Davy would enjoy that.
The hula dancer jiggled her hips again and Carver felt the hook rotate. The twisting motion didn’t add to his pain, but it carried a psychological horror that made his insides go cold and metallic-tasting saliva collect under his tongue. “Means you oughta seriously consider moving outa the Tiller place,” Davy said, “and returning to whatever rock you live under on the mainland. You got that message loud and clear, fuckface?” Now the hook lifted another eighth of an inch and Carver heard his shrieking intake of breath as another shock of pain jolted through him. “Loud and clear?” Davy repeated.
“Loud and clear,” Carver groaned. He swallowed. Nausea threatened to reverse the process.
Davy spat in his face and smiled like a man who’d just accomplished his mission. He lowered the hook and stepped back. “I really do enjoy dealing with assholes like you. Fuckin’ small-time gimp, did you really think you were gonna cause somebody with some real grease any kinda trouble without bringing ten times more down on yourself?”
“I didn’t know Rainer had that kinda grease.”
“Well he does, and it’s green, and you don’t follow my advice, you’re gonna get a special kinda lube job.” Davy kicked Carver’s cane under the car, then moved farther back and slid the cargo hook through a belt loop so it was concealed beneath his untucked shirt. “I tried to give you a hint the day before yesterday on Shoreline you wasn’t wanted on Key Montaigne, but you insisted on ignoring it, so here we fuckin’ are.”
Davy paused as if expecting Carver to answer, but Carver remained silent. He still ached where the hook had gouged his testicles. Somewhere deep in his mind he tried to create a place the pain couldn’t reach.
Davy gave a snorting kind of laugh, then said, “Miami’s a great city. Got jai-alai, the races, nice beaches. What you wanna do now, Carver, is maybe enjoy yourself here, take in a few sights, find yourself some whore’ll bed down with a gimp, catch some rays—being careful you don’t get sunburned—then set a course to the north. Stay the fuck outa the
Keys. That’s my advice, and it’s best if you got the sense to listen. Consider me a lighthouse warning you away from the rocks.”
The warning was plain enough. And if Carver had any reservations about Rainer being mixed up in something criminal, they were gone now. He must be a threat to Rainer, or Davy wouldn’t have been sicced on him. Henry must have stumbled upon some vulnerability that scared Rainer.
“You the one ran over Henry Tiller?” he asked, since Davy was in a gloating mood.
“That’s another question you asked,” Davy said, “after I told you not to. You’re lucky I don’t feel like going to the trouble of getting the hook back out.”
“Gonna answer?”
“Let’s just leave old Henry an ordinary hit-an’-run victim,” Davy said. He gave Carver a little half salute, then turned and swaggered away.
Carver leaned against the car for a few minutes, perspiration rolling down his face. Then he worked his way down and crawled on the hot pavement to a point where he could lie flat and grope for his cane beneath the Olds.
As soon as his fingers closed on the hard walnut he felt better, less vulnerable, as if he’d recovered a flesh-and-blood missing limb. Part of him wanted Davy to return so he could smash the cane across his confident smile and then feed him his cargo hook. Wanted it badly.
Carver placed a hand on the chrome windshield molding and stood up straight. A dull pain throbbed in his groin, but he didn’t think he’d been seriously injured. He’d been kicked there a few times, and he knew how that felt; this pain was similar but not as debilitating, though it made him dizzy and sick to his stomach with each cautious breath.
He brushed dirt off his clothes, then he lowered himself into the car and for a long time sat very still behind the steering wheel, waiting for the world to stop tilting and whirling. He was sweating coldly and trembling. From fear or pain or rage, he wasn’t sure which. Probably a combination.
When he finally did start the car he drove north, exactly as Davy had instructed.
Not toward Del Moray and home, though. Toward a phone booth.
16
WHEN CARVER CALLED the Municipal Justice Building in Orlando, he was told Desoto wasn’t in his office but would return tomorrow. He was attending a conference on DNA identification in Fort Lauderdale. That worked out for Carver. Fort Lauderdale was only a few miles north of Miami.
Within the hour he was sitting in Desoto’s room at the Pier 66 Resort on the Seventeenth Street Causeway. Desoto had been glad for an excuse to walk out on the conference’s keynote speech by an FBI technician in the building’s seventeenth-floor revolving restaurant. The view, he’d explained, was more interesting and comprehensible than the scientific jargon about genetics.
A woman was speaking Spanish from the clock radio on the nightstand by the bed. Desoto, dressed in a light beige suit, white shirt, and maroon tie, had sat on the room’s small sofa, listening patiently to Carver describing his morning in Miami. His dark eyes were vague, as if his mind were elsewhere, but Carver knew he was concentrating. Desoto was deceptive in a lot of ways, a cop who looked and dressed like a tango dancer.
The radio began playing Latin music, the song the female DJ had introduced. “Eiiiyah!” a soulful voice cried from the speaker. Desoto made a steeple of his gold-adorned manicured fingers and said, “You could have Davy arrested down on Key Montaigne, amigo, but it wouldn’t do any good. You said yourself, there were no witnesses when he threatened to make you a gelding.”
Carver had thought that far ahead. “I’m not here because of Davy.”
Desoto smiled handsomely, knowingly, the tanned flesh crinkling at the corners of his somber .brown eyes, the kind of bastard women thought got even better-looking as he aged. “But you won’t forget what he did, will you?”
“Would you?”
“Ah, no.” The steepled hands parted in a palms-up, curiously humble gesture. A man began singing to the beat on the radio. He had a resonant tenor voice that haunted the air. Carver couldn’t understand the lyrics, but the tone was tragic, a Latin lament.
Carver felt the breeze from an air-conditioning vent coolly evaporating a sheen of perspiration on his arms. He didn’t like remembering this morning in Miami. “I need some information on the Evermans. And the Blue Flamingo Hotel in South Miami Beach.”
“Such as?”
“Are Frank and Selma Everman really welfare recipients? Is the Blue Flamingo actually a welfare hotel? Do either of the Evermans have a record of child abuse or any other offense? How long have they really been in Miami?”
With a glitter of gold, Desoto held up a hand to stop Carver. “In short, were they telling you the truth, eh, amigo?”
“In short.”
Desoto arched a dark eyebrow. “Your instincts tell you the Evermans were lying?”
“Instincts again, huh? You and Henry Tiller. I don’t know if it was instinct or common sense. The Evermans sure weren’t eager to talk to me.”
“Not unusual, for people living their kind of life. You live on the dole, you get suspicious of authority. Not without good reason.” Desoto idly twisted the gold ring on his left hand, sending shimmers of reflected light dancing over his crossed legs. “What else was there about the Evermans that made you think they weren’t leveling?”
“Maybe nothing,” Carver admitted. “I’m not sure myself what I’m fishing for, or even if there’s anything to catch.”
“What happened to Leonard Everman, my friend, it happens hundreds of times a year or more, here and there around the country. Runaways get mixed up with drugs and the people involved in the drug trade, and it kills them. One way or the other, sooner or later, it kills them, even if it leaves them walking around and breathing.”
“I’d still like to verify the Evermans are on the up-and-up.”
Desoto looked thoughtful. “‘The up-and-up.’ That sounds like a line from a hundred old movies.” He was a classic film buff. “I think Humphrey Bogart said it a lot. Or maybe it was one of the Three Stooges. I’m not sure which one.”
Carver said, “Does it make a difference?”
“Only to the Stooges, I guess. I’ll do what I can, amigo, just like I promised. But in return, I want you to promise something.”
“Oh?”
“Don’t get involved in a personal vendetta with Davy Mathis.”
“Sure, I promise.”
Too easy. Desoto looked dubious. “Truth?”
“Truth.”
And it was the truth. Carver’s vendetta wasn’t with Davy. That would be like blaming the guided missile instead of whoever had launched it at the target. In this case it was Walter Rainer who’d pressed the red button. His mistake was in not destroying the target.
“You going back to Key Montaigne today?” Desoto asked.
“Yeah, I left Beth down there.”
“How is she these days?” Desoto’s voice was mechanical. He still wasn’t quite sure about Beth. Her years with Roberto Gomez might have corrupted her beyond redemption. Only a few people, maybe only Carver, knew how strong she really was. Maybe as strong as he was.
“She’s doing okay,” he said.
Desoto stared at him, his handsome head bobbing ever so slightly in time with the music, a morose guitar solo now.
“Better than okay,” Carver said for emphasis.
“Hear anything from Edwina?” Desoto asked.
“No, but I hear about her. She’s still in Hawaii selling condos.” Carver didn’t often think about Edwina anymore, about the time they’d so tentatively yet so intimately shared their lives. He’d assumed he’d never reach that point, but he had, and sooner than he would have guessed. The tragedy of life wasn’t so much that we missed people, but that we stopped missing them. Days, weeks, months, years passed, and lost faces became indistinct in the fog of memory. Endearing gestures could no longer be recalled. Emotions dulled.
Desoto stood up and buttoned his suitcoat, a tall man dressed for his luxurious surroundings. “I need to get
down to one of the conference rooms. Gonna be on a panel on DNA and sex crimes. You should stick around and sit in, maybe learn something.”
“In case I wanna be a sex criminal?”
“You’d decide against it, once you learned how this DNA identification works.”
“It isn’t that I’m not interested, but I better get back.”
“Tell Beth I said hello,” Desoto told Carver. He tried; Carver appreciated that.
He said he’d convey the message, then thanked Desoto for his help and stood up.
Desoto said, “I’ll phone you soon as I get any information. Part of the reason I’m doing this is for Henry Tiller. You understand what I mean?”
“I understand,” Carver said. “Henry comes around, he’ll appreciate it, too.”
He limped over to the door. Behind him the vocalist with the haunting voice had joined the guitar in a melancholy but beautiful melody. Carver wondered if all of human experience was embodied in Latin music. Desoto thought so. Maybe he was right. For all of us the tragic and joyous music played while we lived and danced, and then it stopped. The only question was how soon.
Desoto switched off the radio and walked with him to the elevator.
After leaving Pier 66, Carver drove south toward Key Montaigne. The convertible’s top was up and all the windows were cranked down, and the wind beat like a pulse through the steel struts and taut canvas. Occasionally he checked his rear-view mirror, but Davy’s black van was nowhere in sight on the heat-wavering highway.
It didn’t really matter. Carver’s presence on Key Montaigne would be common knowledge within hours after his return. Davy wouldn’t like that. Walter Rainer wouldn’t like it.
Carver smiled and pushed the Olds’s speed over the limit.
17
BETH WAS SITTING at the kitchen table, eating a sandwich and drinking a beer, when Carver entered Henry’s cottage. There was a lot of daylight left, and plenty of residual heat from the scorching afternoon. The ocean breeze that stirred the palm fronds was a warm one and brought no relief. But Beth had the air conditioner off; she wasn’t bothered by heat as much as most people. Growing up in a theft-gutted housing project in Chicago, living in an upper-floor unit where a safely opened window was a luxury, might have something to do with that.