John Lutz - Hot

The Toyota station wagon he’d seen there yesterday rolled into the lot and braked alongside the Olds. Today it had a magnetic cherry light stuck on its roof. Chief Wicke climbed out. Every hair on his head was in place and he looked dry and cool, even had his dark blue uniform tie tightly knotted. The Toyota must have a terrific air conditioner. Not like the Olds.

“Mr. Carver again,” Wicke said, walking around the Olds and showing a smile as frosty as the rest of him. “Here to see me, I presume.”

“Am I getting to be a pest?” Carver asked. He could feel rivulets of sweat trickling down his back; they felt like insects crawling toward his belt.

“I’ll hide behind the Fifth Amendment,” Wicke said. “C’mon inside.”

Carver followed Wicke into his office and told him what he wanted, and Wicke had the skinny cop he’d been lambasting yesterday pull the file and bring it in.

“Thanks, Dewey,” Wicke said amiably. They were on the best of terms today.

Dewey withdrew, poker-faced, and closed the door behind him. He’d been chewing candy or breath mint and left in his wake the scent of peppermint.

“Dead kid’s name turned out to be Leonard Eugene Everman,” Wicke said, staring into the open file folder. “Just turned thirteen before he died. Coroner’s report says death by drowning, traces of cocaine in the blood but not nearly enough to make him an O.D. victim. Enough to fuck up his judgment and swimming ability, however.”

“Any other marks on the body?”

“A few bruises, some abrasions on his ankles, from where he mighta been tossed around on the rocks before he died. Or he coulda been in a fight before he drowned.” Wicke shook his head sadly. “The kid was a runaway, but at least he had a family cared enough to claim the remains. His mom and dad. They were plenty broken up, too. Obviously cared a lot. Maybe the poor kid coulda got his life straightened out eventually.” Wicke lifted a pencil between his stubby fingers, then let it fall and bounce on the desk. A gesture of frustration, seen more and more in the War on Drugs. “Narcotics are a goddamn curse from hell on this country, burning up the young folks.”

Carver agreed. Plenty of older folks were burning, too. No one seemed to know how to extinguish the fire. “Who found the body?” he asked.

“Couple of tourists from Atlanta, out jogging one morning and saw it floating in shallow water near shore. No clothes on it, so we were puzzled about identity at first. Then the parents read in a Miami paper about the kid being found, and drove down and identified and claimed the body.”

“The boy was from Miami?”

“Yeah. He’d run away before and been mixed up with drugs. Thirteen, Jesus! Anyway, the parents’ names are Frank and Selma Everman. You want their address?”

“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?

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.”