Hot

by John Lutz

  Rainer shrugged. “No, no, my information is that the poor man’s slipped into a coma. That’s how it happens sometimes with our senior citizens. The slightest illness can escalate unexpectedly.” He screwed up his fat face in the heat and dragged a hand slowly across his glistening chin to wipe away perspiration, as if he’d drooled. Wiped the hand dry on his pants. “What I actually wanted, Mr. Carver, was to apologize for the unfortunate and painful incident in Miami. I honestly vow to you that Davy wasn’t acting on my instructions. He has a troubled past, is indeed a troubled young man, and at times his emotions propel him into mistaken assumptions and unwise actions.”

  “He didn’t seem out of control to me,” Carver said. “He seemed like a man going about his job and enjoying it immensely.”

  “Well, Davy does make the most of the moment, in his swashbuckling way. He’s rather like a buccaneer born too late.” Rainer shuffled closer. He was so heavy his legs seemed barely able to support and move him simultaneously. “Listen, Mr. Carver, despite poor Henry Tiller’s misguided suspicions and Davy’s independent and unforgivable behavior in Miami, there’s really no reason to badger me, to pry into my affairs as you’re doing.” He shot a sweaty smile Carver’s way, though his eyes remained diamond chips. “I can say sincerely there is no basis in fact for suspicions about the way I conduct my affairs. I’m simply a retired businessman who got lucky in commerce and is trying to live out a life of harmless leisure. It’s possible there’s a tinge of envy in some people, and they want me to suffer rather than live what to them must seem an idyllic existence. I don’t know, or pretend to know, what motivates certain people. The complexities of the human mind are a mystery to us all. I do know that your being here at Henry Tiller’s request is a waste of his money, your time and effort, and is making life difficult for me.”

  “Difficult how?”

  “It isn’t pleasant to know your affairs are under professional scrutiny, Mr. Carver. That everything your employees do reflects on you unfavorably in someone’s tilted perspective. In short, I don’t think I’ve done anything to warrant this kind of persecution. I could speak to Chief Wicke about it, get it stopped through legal measures.”

  “Bringing the law into your affairs could cut both ways,” Carver said.

  “Only if I have something to hide.”

  “And here you are talking to me instead of to Chief Wicke or the Drug Enforcement Administration.”

  Rainer raised his eyebrows, furrowing his wide forehead. “The DEA? What have they to do with this?”

  “Maybe nothing,” Carver said. “Maybe something.”

  “Schoolyard talk, Mr. Carver.” Rainer’s thin voice deepened an octave with disdain.

  Carver said, “Schoolyard’s an educational place.”

  Rainer’s hand moved to an inside pocket of the white jacket, and Carver’s hand edged toward the holstered Colt beneath his shirt. Across the street Hector stood straighter in the sunlight and uncrossed his arms.

  It was a thick white envelope that Rainer withdrew from the jacket. Smiling sweatily, he raised the unsealed flap with his thumb so Carver could glimpse the green of the bills inside. “There are fifty one-thousand-dollar bills Here, Mr. Carver. Clean money, believe me. Money I’m willing to pay in order to purchase my wife’s well-being.”

  Huh? “Your wife?”

  “Lilly’s a woman of delicate composure, has in fact suffered clinical depression in the past and had to be confined and observed for her own safety. The suspicions of Henry Tiller, and now your constant if sometimes indirect intrusion into our lives, have been a strain on her. I’m a very rich man, and I’d consider it money well spent if you’d take it and leave her-us—alone.”

  “And if I don’t accept the money?”

  “I’ve spoken with my attorneys, Mr. Carver, If you refuse my offer, I can go to the Key Montaigne police and have you charged with harassment.”

  Carver looked at his half-smoked cigar, remembering Davy in Miami. Davy, doing muscle work for Rainer, despite what Rainer claimed. Anger rose and blazed in him like a flare. He said, “I don’t think you’ll do that.” He flicked the cigar in the direction of Hector and watched it bounce sparking in the street. Hector, standing motionless again with his arms crossed, didn’t change expression. Obviously he wasn’t afraid of cigars.

  “Why wouldn’t I do that, Mr. Carver?” Rainer sounded genuinely dumbfounded.

  “Because you don’t know how much Henry knows, or knew. That’s why he was run down. And you don’t know how much I know. You don’t know how far it would spread.” He nodded toward the envelope. “Maybe that money isn’t clean. Maybe it tracks all the way back to someplace in Mexico or South America.”

  Rainer widened his eyes in bewilderment. “Please stop fantasizing, Mr. Carver. Take the money.”

  “That’d be extortion on my part,” Carver said-

  “Not at all. I’m the one who approached you. Party of the first part, as the attorneys say. If you’d like, I can even sign a statement to that effect.”

  “Thanks, anyway.”

  “Then I haven’t convinced you?”

  “No.”

  Rainer looked as if his feelings had been stepped on. He lowered his massive head into the folds of his thick neck, appearing for an instant like a huge crestfallen infant in adult clothes. Then he seemed to brighten, and he slipped the envelope slowly back into his pocket. “There’s no necessity for haste,” he said. “Do think about it. Consider it in the manner someone in your relatively modest position should mull over fifty thousand dollars. So very much money.” He smiled with the old, old knowledge. “You’ll do that, I’m sure.” His eyes fixed on something off to the side, and his smile gained wattage as Beth walked up to stand next to Carver. “Perhaps the young lady might influence you.”

  “Regarding what?” Beth asked.

  “I’ve just offered to hire Mr. Carver away from his present employer for fifty thousand dollars. A boy and girl don’t need Manhattan to enjoy that much money.”

  Beth laughed. Roberto Gomez, whom she’d once described as an island in a river of money, had kept rolls of hundreds of thousands of dollars lying about their luxury condo. “I used that much money for coasters,” she said.

  Rainer looked at her curiously. She was obviously an element he didn’t understand, and that bothered him.

  “Do think about the offer,” he said, and turned and waddled slowly across the street to the gleaming gray Lincoln. Hector opened a rear door for him and stood by dutifully while Rainer worked his bulk into the car.

  Without a glance at Carver and Beth, Hector shut the door softly, then stalked around and got in behind the steering wheel. Behind the tinted rear side window, Walter Rainer’s profile remained fixed straight ahead as the car glided away from the curb and down Main Street. It rode low in back and listed toward the side where Rainer sat, the hot vapor of its exhaust shimmering behind it.

  “Fat man thinks he can buy a lot for a measly fifty thousand,” Beth remarked.

  Carver didn’t answer. Beth had become inured to the lure and curse of big money, knew what it had done to her and no longer craved it. But a part of Carver was aware that Rainer’s offer had been perilously close to his price.

  Maybe Beth knew what he was thinking. “Go for those fifty big ones, Fred, and you can afford a toupee.”

  Carver said, “Get in the car.”

  21

  AFTER DROPPING OFF Beth at Henry’s cottage, Carver drove along Shoreline to the Oceanography Research Center.

  The Fair Wind was now at the dock, a stubby, functional-looking gray-hulled boat with raked navigational antennae jutting from its faded green bridge. A green stripe was painted just above its waterline, and there was machinery, what looked like compressors, mounted on the cluttered deck. It was nothing like the sleek and fun-loving Miss Behavin’, visible in the same sunny, panoramic view of Key Montaigne’s curved and sandless coast. Scrubwoman and socialite.

  Suddenly aware of
the sun’s bludgeoning heat, Carver limped toward the main building.

  This time Katia Marsh was in the outer room, explaining to a group of six primary-school-age children about the meaning of bright colors on tropical fish. She smiled at Carver, and he mouthed the words “Doctor Sam” and raised his eyebrows inquisitively. She pointed to the door to the hands-on Tide Pool Room. All of the children and the teenage girl with them looked at the door to the lower level, then back at the four-color poster Katia was showing them, as she began to speak again. Something about the lifespan of eels.

  Carver pulled open the heavy door, stepped onto the steel landing, then descended the short flight of metal steps. Dr. Sam was standing at the far end of the room, jotting something on a clipboard tucked into his hip as he glanced back and forth between it and whatever was displayed in the shallow tray before him. Even after he heard Carver’s cane bonking down the steel stairs, he methodically finished what he was writing before looking up.

  Dr. Sam Bing was a somewhat short man and bald, with only a fringe of gray hair around his ears, like Carver’s hair, only straight and much shorter. His narrow eyes were magnified by round tortoiseshell spectacles. He had the face of a German bureaucrat, fine, even features, a slash of a mouth above a strong jaw, and a wide forehead that shone like a light bulb as it reflected the fluorescent brilliance glaring down from the ceiling. The light in the room was made wavering by the play of water behind the glass observation wall of the aqua tank. Victor, the huge gray shark, was still gliding in effortless circles, barely missing the glass on each pass, as if trying to make the most of the limited space fate had allotted.

  Carver limped toward the waiting researcher and introduced himself.

  Dr. Sam shook hands deliberately and with seeming reluctance, letting the clipboard dangle at his side. He’d been making notes about what looked to Carver to be slugs and starfish in the watery display tray. Some profession.

  “How was Mexico?” Carver asked.

  Dr. Sam seemed to expect the question; Katia or Millicent or both had mentioned Carver’s earlier visits. “They speak a different language there,” he said.

  “Did you buy any bargain specimens?”

  The doctor’s thin lips twitched in a smile. “There’s no lack of communication when it comes to talking price. Bargains are hard to find among suppliers south of the border.” He stole a glance at the display tray, maybe at a just-acquired critter. “My wife told me you questioned her,” Dr. Sam said in a modulated, precise voice. “I don’t know if I can add anything to what she told you.”

  “You spend more time here than she does,” Carver explained, “so I thought it more likely you might have noticed something across the water at the Rainer estate.”

  “Something of what nature?”

  “Anything unusual.”

  Dr. Sam shook his head. “No, but then I’m not watching for anything unusual. I have no reason to be concerned with what’s happening in that direction. I don’t really know Walter Rainer.”

  “What about Henry Tiller?”

  “I’ve met him.” Water trickled softly in the display tray. Something had moved. “By the way, how is he?”

  Carver told him.

  Dr. Sam looked angry. “Damned shame, that accident. A man can live so long in a dangerous occupation and retire uninjured, then something comes out of left field and gets him.” He smiled sadly. “But that’s the story of life, I suppose.”

  “Seems to be,” Carver said. “I noticed the Fair Wind moored at the dock. It used to be a deep sea fishing boat, right?”

  “Yes, it did. The research center bought it about three years ago, and I had it converted to serve primarily as a diving platform.” Dr. Sam paced over and stood before the glass. The shark circled behind him. It was striking, this spare little man in a white smock, holding a clipboard and standing so unconcernedly while a thousand pounds of devouring carnivore regularly passed inches away from his back. The shark, however, didn’t seem to appreciate the irony; it appeared to pay no attention to Dr. Sam, as if there weren’t enough scientist there to make a decent snack. “From what I’ve seen of Walter Rainer,” Dr. Sam told Carver, “he’s simply another wealthy snowbird who settled here in the Keys to take in the sun and enjoy what he considers to be the fruits of his labor.”

  “You sound slightly cynical, Doctor.”

  Dr. Sam made a face and then forced a smile, as if he couldn’t make up his mind what sort of mood he was in. “Oh, I suppose I am. It gets to me sometimes, the way I have to grovel for funds, apply for research grants, and accommodate tourists in order to finance the useful work we do here, while all around me I see the rich and selfish leading useless, hedonistic lives.”

  “Would you describe Walter Rainer as hedonistic?”

  “Not necessarily. I wasn’t being specific. As I told you, I hardly know him. But as far as I can tell, all he does after whatever work he performs to make vast sums of money is play with rich men’s toys. Big house, luxury cars, a yacht, a—”

  “Beautiful wife?” Carver had only glimpsed Lilly Rainer.

  “I wouldn’t call Mrs. Rainer beautiful,” Dr. Sam said. He smiled. “And it seems to be common knowledge that it’s plastic surgery enabling her to look like a thirty-year-old. But that’s okay. If Rainer wants to buy beauty with some of his fortune, fine. I only wish he and the people like him on Key Montaigne would realize we’re trying to do important work here, and often we have inadequate funding.”

  Dr. Sam seemed obsessed with funding for his research. Carver wondered if he was going to hear a pitch for a donation. “Why the interest in sharks?” he asked.

  The doctor glared at him as if Carver should have worked out the answer to that question long ago. “Not only will a greater understanding of their habits save lives,” he said, “but there’s no way to know in which direction and how far a larger body of knowledge will take us. Sharks are creatures so suited to their environment that they haven’t evolved to speak of for ages. They’re primitive and close to man on the lower end of the evolutionary scale, a living window on the dawn of our existence.” Was this the spiel the doctor laid on tourists? The torpedo shape of the shark glided near again, momentarily changing the arrangement of light and shadow in the room.

  “Can you tell me anything about Leonard Everman?” Carver asked.

  Dr. Sam cocked his head to the side and looked thoughtful. “I don’t think I know anyone by that name.”

  “He was the boy who drowned recently off Key Montaigne. He had traces of cocaine in his blood.”

  “Ah, yes. I recall the name now. All I know is what was in the news. The boy was a runaway, correct?”

  “He was,” Carver confirmed.

  Dr. Sam shook his head. “Sad, what’s happening to kids today, the way drugs get a hold on them. Maybe it has to do with the disintegration of the American family. I admit I’m influenced by a middle-American Baptist morality; we never quite shake that once it’s put in place during childhood. But I’m not talking about morality so much as family and social unity.” He glanced at the sea life in the displays lining three walls. “Social structure, if you could call it that, is at least fairly constant in the realm of nature. In our society it’s lack of predictability that’s causing many of today’s problems and making people want to opt out of reality.”

  “You’re probably right,” Carver said.

  “None of us is as far from nature as we’d like to think. Some of our needs are primitive and unchanged from millions of years ago, still burning but in different guises.” The shark glided close and seemed to gaze out at him, then wheeled into murky water and misshapen image at the other side of the tank. “Anyway, Mr. Carver, I’d like to help you, but I can’t. As far as I know, Walter Rainer’s just another rich and parasitic Key Montaigne semi-retiree. At least that’s how I think of them, those people who hardly have to work for a living and don’t seem compelled to accomplish or create anything other than wealth.”

  Ther
e went Dr. Sam sounding bitter again. Hadn’t he known from the beginning that few shark researchers got rich?

  A peal of childish laughter found its way through the thick door.

  “If you don’t mind, Mr. Carver, I’d like to finish my notes in here before the summer school tour comes down those stairs.”

  Carver said sure, he understood, and thanked Dr. Sam for his time.

  Unfortunately he seemed to have taken up too much of it. As he limped toward the exit, the door burst open and kids streamed clomping down the steel steps, trailed by their teenage escort and Katia Marsh. Katia glanced at Dr. Sam and made a helpless motion with her head. He nodded to her, then stared strangely —perhaps with genuine hatred—at a slight blond boy about eight years old. He seemed unable to avert his gaze until the boy looked back at him, puzzled and without recognition. Then Dr. Sam smiled thinly, jotted down a few more notes on his clipboard, and seemed to escape into himself and not notice the shrill young voices and unchecked energy around him.

  Carver waited until the steps were clear, then he hobbled up them with his cane and shoved open the door. “Children, this is Victor,” he heard Katia loudly proclaim as the door swung closed behind him. He limped toward the sun held at bay by the tinted glass doors leading outside.

  The breeze off the sea had picked up. The Fair Wind was bobbing at the research center dock. Beyond it the smooth white hull of the larger and luxurious Miss Behavin’ appeared motionless at its mooring across the sun-shot water. A pelican went into a wobbly, awkward glide to settle on the guardrail of the parking lot and stare with mild interest at Carver.

  Limping across the lot, Carver tried to fit his conversation with Dr. Sam together with that of his reclusive wife Millicent. The wife seemed to be hiding something, while Dr. Sam came across as candid and cooperative. It didn’t figure. After all, they lived together, slept together, should know all about each other and share the same secrets.