John Lutz - Hot

Stop, start, stop, start. What the hell was the game here?

Carver studied the wide, four-lane avenue ahead of him. Heavy Miami traffic, even this late in the morning. Lots of pedestrians on the sidewalk, window shopping, standing at-

Goddamnit!

He swerved around a pickup truck and goosed the Ford’s speed up to fifty, flying past slower traffic in the curb lane. The beeping got louder and louder.

Became almost unbearably loud and constant.

And Carver saw the bus.

He parked.

Watched the bus pull away after picking up passengers.

The beeping receded.

Two blocks farther down, when the lumbering vehicle angled to the curb to pick up and drop off more passengers, the beeping flared again. It faded as the bus rumbled away, leaving a dark haze of diesel exhaust.

Carver’s heart took a dive. He swerved the Ford to the curb lane and parked, switching off the receiver. Then he slapped the dashboard hard enough to sting his hand and make something drop with a tiny tinkling sound somewhere in the car.

Davy had figured it out, maybe even seen him plant the bumper beeper on the van last night at the motel. He’d tricked Carver, been toying with him. Placed the beeper on the back of a bus while he went about his business, leaving Carver to start and stop along the vehicle’s route. Davy’s little joke.

Not funny to Carver.

After sitting for a while seething and trying to think in the glaring sunlight, he decided there was only one way he might salvage something from this trip north. Still smelling diesel fumes, he almost broke the Ford’s key twisting it in the ignition to restart the engine. Then he drove to the Blue Flamingo Hotel. There was the slim possibility the Evermans had checked back in. And if they hadn’t, he could talk to some of the other residents and try to get a line on where they might have gone.

And there was another possibility. He was sure Davy was wily enough to figure out his trail might be picked up again at the Blue Flamingo, yet Davy’s arrogance and sadistic streak might compel him to go to the hotel for no reason other than to taunt Carver. How likely that was, Carver wasn’t sure, but he decided to give psychology a chance.

He’d leave the Ford parked out of sight, then check into one of the nearby hotels that was a notch above the Blue Flamingo and buy some shorts and sunglasses, a hat to protect his bald head from the sun. Maybe he’d smear a glob of that white suntan lotion on his nose, become unrecognizable. There was no shortage of men who walked with canes in this area. He could wander unobtrusively down Collins Avenue, or possibly along the beach like a shell collector, and wait to see if Davy showed up at the Blue Flamingo. Carver the man of a thousand disguises.

If Davy showed, Carver would attach the second transmitter to the van, this time someplace where it wouldn’t be noticed.

If Davy didn’t show, at least Carver would return to Key Montaigne with an enviable tan, and feeling qualified to drive a bus in Miami.

Carver drove back to Key Montaigne the next morning still wearing his tourist garb’ arid sunglasses, the bridge of his nose painfully sunburned despite the glob of white lotion he’d smeared and left on it. He’d missed a spot. The sun had found it.

No one at the Blue Flamingo even knew who the Evermans were when he’d asked about them. It was a place where questions weren’t welcome, and that included the ones posed by Carver. And Davy hadn’t reappeared in the vicinity of the old art deco hotel. At least not in any way Carver could detect. So much for abnormal psychology.

He hadn’t rushed leaving Miami, figuring why not temper his disappointment with a large and leisurely breakfast, then a cigar.

He’d indulged himself at the Osprey restaurant, overlooking the ocean, and decided he’d return there sometime when he got back to Miami. After breakfast he walked along the beach smoking, even though he’d had more than enough of the sun while staking out the Blue Flamingo. It felt good to be among the hundreds of tourists; his was a lonely line of work, and even this impersonal human closeness helped relieve the pressure of solitude.

By the time he’d driven to Key Montaigne and returned the Ford to Hertz, it was well past noon. Since his sunburned nose still hurt, he drove the Olds with the top up. Beth was sitting on the screened-in porch when he parked in front of the cottage and climbed out of the car in his red and black striped shorts, T-shirt with the flying fish on it, long-billed white cap, and reflector-lens sunglasses. She walked out and stood on the porch steps with the door open, staring at him.

“Been in some kinda accident, Fred?”

“What’s that mean?”

“Nothing. What’s that white gunk on your nose?”

“Sunscreen. Makes it feel better.”

“Oh. I’d ask you how it went up in Miami, but I can tell by your face it didn’t go well.” When he got close enough, hobbling up the steps with his cane, she kissed him on the chin, well below nose level. “Want a beer?”

He nodded and lowered himself into one of the chairs on the porch, then sat tracing idle patterns on the floor with the tip of his cane. It was dim there compared to the brilliant sunlight beyond the dark screen, almost cool.

She returned with two opened cans of Budweiser, gave him one and settled into the metal glider with the other. She had her hair pulled back and tied with a yellow ribbon today. The ribbon matched her shorts. She looked cool as ice cream and twice as-

“Been some news here while you were gone,” she said, interrupting his thoughts, even his plans. “Came over the local radio station this morning. The head of the Oceanography Research Center was found dead. Hanged himself, news said.”

Carver planted the tip of his cane on the floor and pushed himself up straighter in the chair. “Dr. Sam?”

“Yeah. Only the news called him Dr. Bing.”

“Who found him?”

“His assistant-that Katia woman. S’posed to have come in for work around eight this morning to open the aquarium for tourists, and there the good doctor was hanging.”

Carver breathed out and sat still for a moment, digesting what Beth had told him. “They calling it suicide?”

“Sure. According to Chief Wicke, there was no doubt.”

“Bing leave a note?”

She shrugged, sipped Budweiser, wiped a bit of foam from her upper lip. “News didn’t say.”

Carver set his beer can aside and stood up, leaning on the cane.

“Guess I don’t have to ask where you’re going?” Beth said.

“Guess not.”

“Want me to come along?”

Carver stood thinking about that. Beth had a way with distraught members of her own sex. She’d suffered and she understood their suffering, and she might notice something he’d miss in a conversation with Millicent Bing or Katia. “It’d be a good idea,” he said. “You ready to go?”

She didn’t move. “Only on one condition.”

He cocked his head and looked questioningly at her. What had she cranked up to throw at him now?

“You gotta change clothes, Fred, get rid of that white stuff on your nose.”

Easy enough.

He’d expected to see police cars parked at the research center, but the lot was empty. The law had come and gone, shaping death to the brisk, efficient routine of bureaucracy and making it seem comprehensible to the only species that thought about it before it happened. A cardboard sign next to the parking lot entrance, printed crudely in thick black marking pen, informed visitors apologetically that the center was temporarily closed.

With Beth beside him, Carver limped to the tinted glass entrance, hoping someone was still inside. There must be chores here that had to be done, cleaning tanks, feeding sea life, whatever was necessary to maintain a patch of ocean on dry land. He noticed the Fair Wind still at its dock and riding gently on incoming ripples, as if dancing lightly to the music of the wind through its myriad antennae. The breeze off the ocean made the place seem sad and desolate, touched by undeniable mortality. Death itself could haunt.