He was standing, poised over his cane, when she returned seconds later and told him it was Desoto on the line. Not much small talk between Desoto and Beth.
“Amigo,” Desoto said, when Carver had come to the phone, “I got some information for you, compliments of contacts in Miami.”
It was hotter inside the cottage. Carver started to sweat. “Something about the Evermans?”
“And more. We’ll start with the Blue Flamingo Hotel. It might be a breeding farm for fleas now, but it’s considered to be valuable property because of its potential. That part of South Miami Beach figures to be a major tourist spot when it develops over the next ten years or so.”
They say it’ll be like the French Riviera,” Carver said. “Croissants and everything.”
“Mustn’t be so cynical, amigo.”
“I’ve heard that before.” And noted the cynicism in Dr. Sam. Maybe it was a communicable disease.
“I had a title search done in Miami,” Desoto said, “and it seems the ownership of the Blue Flamingo’s a hazy maze of paperwork. Owner of record’s something called B.F. Holding and Investment Company, but try to find out who owns that. Thing is, there’s a possibility the hotel’s actually owned by organized crime, but not necessarily the good old-fashioned mafia. More likely one of the South American drug cartels.”
“And you told me not to be cynical. Is there any way to be positive about ownership?”
“Oh, sure. Enough lawyers, enough time, we could follow the paper trail and find out. I don’t know what it’d exactly mean one way or the other, though. All that drug money’s gonna be invested somewhere. It buys hotels, food franchises, politicians, stock in major corporations. The money gets cleaner the farther away it gets from the source. Lots of drug money gets dropped into collection plates at church. Ask your friend Beth.”
Carver let the remark about Beth pass without comment. “I don’t have lawyers and time,” he said.
“The Blue Flamingo’s a low-cost hotel that’s used now and then to temporarily house welfare recipients,” Desoto told him. “Which brings us to the Evermans, amigo. State welfare’s got no record of them on their rolls. Course, it’s not unusual for some of the poor or homeless to become confused or to lie about their status after they’ve been dropped from the system. And it’s also possible the Evermans are running a scam and collecting welfare checks under other identities. The kinda entrepreneur couple Republicans love.”
“Can’t we find out?”
“It’d be up to Welfare to investigate, and as usual they’re underfinanced and understaffed. We got a zillion billion poor, and Welfare’s only a single point of light.”
“Any kinda arrest sheet on either of the Evermans?” Carver asked.
“Nothing kicked out by computers here or in Washington. But then, I only had their names to work with, and those’re probably false. Get me some fingerprints, and I’ll bet the computers’ll go wild printing out priors on the Evermans.”
“Maybe I’ll have to do that,” Carver said. “Or maybe I’ll talk to them again.” His palms were wet; he switched hands on the phone.
“However you play it, amigo, be extra careful. All that anonymity’s kinda scary.”
“Isn’t it, though?” Carver said.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you more, my friend. Or at least something heartening and more definite. The hotel’s possible link to big drug money can’t be good. Might even be dangerous. Anyway, I regret bearing bad news.”
“Don’t,” Carver told him. “If I know all the news possible, it’s less likely to jump up and surprise me.” He thanked Desoto and hung up.
“So what’s the deal?” Beth asked. She’d come in from the porch and was standing just inside the door, her book at her side with a finger inserted between the pages to keep her place.
Carver told her.
“Some days it doesn’t pay to pick up the phone,” Beth said, just as the phone rang again.
Carver lifted the warm plastic receiver and pressed it to his ear.
A voice from Faith United Hospital in Miami informed him that Henry Tiller was dead.
23
“We got murder now,” Beth said, when Carver had hung up and told her about Henry Tiller. She might have been informing him they had mice. Her deep dark eyes were fixed on him, but there was nothing in them to indicate what she was thinking. Death was something she’d seen from a lot of angles.
He told her then about the Blue Flamingo Hotel and there being no welfare records on the Evermans.
“Shouldn’t surprise you, people like that’d lie to you,” Beth told him. “The system fucks them over enough for telling the truth, lying seems the wise thing to do even if the truth’s just as harmless.”
“Question is, what else might they’ve been lying about?”
She shrugged. “That’s a question you’d have to put to them.” A smile. “Not that they mightn’t lie.” She strode over to the sofa and sat down, crossed her legs. “Going back to Miami?”
“Gonna have to, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, not much choice.” She didn’t seem pleased. “I guess that means I spend time in the brush again tonight with my thermos of coffee and my Captain Midnight binoculars.”
“’Fraid so.”
“When you leaving?”
“Now.”
She smiled very faintly. “That’s what I like about you, Fred, you’re direct.”
He remembered Roberto Gomez had been the direct type, too. In his business, that often involved someone’s untimely death. There must be a lot Beth hadn’t told him. The thought made him uncomfortable. Made him perspire even more. The cottage’s window units weren’t keeping up with the heat and humidity today.
“You don’t seem awed by the fact we’re dealing now with a homicide,” he said.
“I’m not. I always thought the object of running over Henry Tiller was to take him out of the game.”
“Still,” Carver said, “this raises the stakes, increases the danger.”
“I suppose.”
“I can’t read you sometimes,” Carver told her.
She said, “You like that about me.”
“Now and then you sound like Desoto.”
“Oh?”
“He’s always psychoanalyzing me, calling me obsessive, seeing ulterior motives and subconscious drives, making it all more complicated than it really is.”
“I like Desoto. I know he doesn’t approve of me, but I like him.”
“He’d approve of you if he knew you the way I do,” Carver said.
“I’m sure he would.” There was no mistaking the lascivious look in her eye.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Uh-huh. Maybe that subconscious thing.”
Well, maybe. If it was subconscious, how would he know? He was amusing her and didn’t care for that; he’d had enough of this game. “When you go to the blind tonight and take up surveillance,” he said firmly, the dominant male in command, “you be extra careful.”
She said, “You watch out for your balls in Miami.”
It was late afternoon when Carver entered the sweltering dimness of the Blue Flamingo’s lobby. Hell of a place to have to live, he thought. To play out the last days of a dwindling life in what advertisers called the golden years. No fun to be stuck here as a welfare transient, either.
He took the elevator to the fifth floor and knocked on the cracked enameled door of Room 505, listening for some sound from inside. He could hear something, not polka music, a soft and wavering whirring. When he knocked again, louder, the sound stopped abruptly.
The woman who opened the door wasn’t Selma Everman. She was Latin, in her forties, with an emaciated figure and flecks of gray in her long black hair. She had wide-set brown eyes that seemed immense in her creased and narrow face. Her left cheek was hollowed unnaturally, as if most of her molars were missing on that side. She slipped her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and smiled at Carver, the hollow in her cheek deepening.