“Yeah, I think I’ll talk to them.”
“I don’t see what any of this has to do with Henry Tiller getting run over.”
“It might have to do with Walter Rainer,” Carver said, “which might have to do with Henry being in the hospital.”
“The drug angle?”
“Sure.”
“I’m not naive, but I can’t see Rainer involved in drug trafficking.”
“He’s got a boat and is within easy turnaround distance of the Mexican coast.”
“There’re thousands of people like that in Florida,” Wicke said. “Even me.”
Carver smiled. “You’re lucky Henry doesn’t suspect you.”
“I am at that,” Wicke said, “since he’s got a persistent peckerhead like you working for him.” He wrote down the names and address of Leonard Everman’s parents on a memo sheet headed “From the Desk of Chief Wicke” and handed it to Carver.
Carver folded it, slipped it into his damp shirt pocket and thanked the chief.
“Anything else?” Wicke asked wearily.
“No,” Carver said, standing up. “I better get outa here before my milk sours.”
Wicke gazed at him strangely as he limped out. You meet all kinds in this work, the look implied.
Wasn’t that the truth?
12
A few minutes before five o’clock, Beth arrived. Carver was sitting in the shade on the screened-in porch, drinking a beer, when he heard tires crunching in the driveway and her white LeBaron convertible pulled into view and parked behind the Olds.
She didn’t notice him on the porch as she got out of the car, placed her hands on her hips and glanced around. Standing next to the LeBaron with its top down, she seemed even taller than her five feet, ten inches. She was wearing Roman sandals, loose-fitting khaki shorts, a baggy sleeveless blouse, and had a wildly colored bandanna wound around her head to keep her hair from getting mussed in the convertible. After the long drive in the wind and heat, any other woman would have been a mess, but Beth seemed to be modeling a trendy look for a high-class fashion magazine. Would she gaze haughtily into the distance?
She wrestled her bulky Gucci suitcase from the backseat of the car and lugged it up onto the porch. When she saw Carver, she looked surprised for a moment, then let the suitcase rest at her feet.
He smiled and said, “Want a beer?”
“Sure.”
He limped past her into the cottage. When he came back out on the porch a few minutes later carrying two Budweiser cans and a glass, she’d dragged a nylon-webbed aluminum chair over next to the yellow metal glider and sat down in it. Her long dark legs were crossed at the thighs; they looked fantastic. So did the rest of her. She was a woman who froze glances and inundated minds. His glance, his mind, anyway. He gave her the glass and one of the beer cans, then sat down in the glider and watched her pour beer, tilting the glass to achieve a precise head of foam.
He looked out through the screen at her mid-size convertible. Nice wheels, but nothing like when she was chauffeured around in a stretch limo when she was married to Roberto Gomez. She never seemed to miss the luxury of her life with the late drug lord, maybe because early in her own life she’d learned to exist without it. She’d finally found out who and what she was, and wanted out of Gomez’s world. With Carver’s help, she’d made it.
“Drive straight down?” he asked.
“Yeah, the wind felt good.” She sipped her beer, somehow avoiding a mustache of foam. “That the place needs watching?” she asked, motioning languidly toward the Rainer estate and the Miss Behavin’ riding gently at its dock. Perspiration gleamed on the well-defined but gentle angles of her cinnamon-hued face, lending her a sculptured air of nobility. In the colorful bandanna, she looked like a cross between a Zulu queen and British aristocracy.
“That’s the place,” he said.
“Can’t make out much from here.”
“That’s okay. I scouted out a place closer in where we can observe most of what goes on outdoors, and maybe see in through the windows. I put together a blind like duck hunters use.”
She took a long swallow of beer and looked around at the dense foliage beyond the screen. “Well, I brought mosquito repellent. Anything particular we’re looking for over there?”
Carver told her everything he’d learned since arriving on Key Montaigne.
“Must be dealing drugs,” she said when he’d finished.
“I’m not so sure,” Carver said. “Maybe your background makes you think drugs are more pervasive than they are.”
“Hah! Don’t you listen to the drug czar in Washington? Half the country’s high, other half thinks it’s a tragedy but don’t wanna pay to do anything about it. Drugs are everywhere, Fred, that’s what I think.”
“You were close to it,” Carver said.
“Part of it.”
“Okay, part of it. So you see drugs everywhere.”
“Hmm. You saying the drug czar don’t know shit?”
“I’m saying that. Takes a former addict to know about drugs. They’re the only ones who really know.”
“You’re right about that,” she said. “But what you told me, and that big-hulled boat sitting over there, it all smells like a dope operation. And I’ve got a nose for them, no pun intended.”
“It probably is drugs, but I don’t wanna see it that way without knowing for sure. You bring the night-vision binoculars?”
“Sure. Brought your gun, too. And the extra rounds of ammunition. It’s all in my suitcase.”
“Why don’t you unpack, then we’ll take a drive and I’ll show you the town?”
She stood up with elegant slowness on those long, long legs, then bent from the waist and kissed him on the lips. He tasted the salt of her perspiration.
“Let’s keep our priorities straight,” she said. “Unpacking’s third, driving into town’s second. Know what’s our first priority?”
He was sure she didn’t really want to play a guessing game. Neither did he. He got up from the glider and went with her into the bedroom.
It was seven o’clock when they drove into Fishback in Beth’s LeBaron. After a two-minute familiarization cruise around town, they went into the Key Lime Pie. The air-conditioning had lost its battle with today’s heat, and the restaurant was uncomfortably warm. The ceiling fans ticking and rotating overhead seemed only to rearrange the heat. The seats of the booth where Carver and Beth sat were sticky and soft to the touch, as if the warmth might be dissolving the mottled red vinyl upholstery. They studied the dinner menu. Carver noticed it was identical to the lunch menu only with boosted prices. At least dress was optional.
“Ain’t cheap,” Beth remarked.
“Consider the atmosphere,” Carver told her.
“Humph. Atmosphere’s hot, what it is.”
Carver glanced around the restaurant. Customers sat at about half the tables. Florida had a nasty fundamentalist religious streak in it, and occasionally he and Beth had run into trouble because she was black. But apparently there was enough tourism on Key Montaigne for an interracial couple not to be all that remarkable, and no one seemed to be paying much attention to them. Carver was glad. Beth could get combative over that sort of thing.
Fern wasn’t on duty. A scrawny young waitress who looked overheated enough to drop took their orders and plodded back to the kitchen.
Carver noticed that a hugely fat man had moved onto one of the bar stools visible through the archway and was staring at them. He was average height but easily three hundred pounds, with gray hair neatly framing a puffy yet symmetrical face. A hundred pounds ago he must have been handsome. Oddly enough, he looked quite cool, wearing a cream-colored unstructured sport jacket and a white shirt open at the neck to reveal a thick gold chain. His pants were a blue so pale they were almost white, and he was wearing immaculate unlaced white tennis shoes. Carver imagined that with all the weight he carried, he had foot trouble. His expression was neutral, but there was something calculating about his intense blue eyes, as if they had a life and intelligence all their own and were assessing him and Beth. His back was to the bar, and one of his elbows was propped on the smooth mahogany to help support him on the stool. A highball glass was miniaturized in his bloated free hand, his wrist resting on his knee.