John Lutz - Hot

“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.

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.”