John Lutz - Hot

They shook hands again as Everman tucked the envelope beneath the waistband of his shorts, then gave it a gentle, possessive pat. As if it were something vulnerable and alive he was protecting.

Davy watched as Everman climbed back in the boat and unfastened the line, hunkered down in the stern and yanked the pull cord three times on the outboard motor. The motor turned over and sputtered to life, and Everman gave Davy a vague wave and began maneuvering the boat slowly clear of the dock.

Davy stood as he had before, fists on hips, and watched as the motor snarled loudly and the boat’s bow rose high and spread a curving white wake. Everman didn’t look back as he aimed the bucking bow away from shore and set a course north over the gently choppy sea.

When Davy turned away and started up the path, Carver retreated farther into the sharp-scented foliage, out of sight.

Davy passed within twenty feet of him, gazing at the ground and wearing a grim smile. He plodded with his fists balled like sledgehammer heads at the ends of his muscular tatooed arms, as if he’d enjoy punching out anyone who got in his way. Popeye gone bad.

Instead of following him, Carver moved through high grass parallel to the highway until he could see the rear of the black van. He was afraid Davy might stay for a while in Zig’s and drink a beer or two, but that wasn’t the case. Less than a minute after Davy had passed from sight, the van reversed out onto the highway. With a faint squeal of rubber on hot concrete, it turned and accelerated south, back toward Key Montaigne. Carver saw no point in following.

He took his time limping back to the Olds. A swarm of gnats found him and tagged along most of the way, but he barely noticed them. Something had taken hold in his mind.

After lowering himself into the Olds, he sat behind the steering wheel with the motor idling and the suddenly cooperative air conditioner blowing a hurricane, thinking about what he’d just witnessed at the dock. Putting it together with everything else he’d learned, and feeling his stomach plunge as he made some terrible sense of it.

It was cool in the Olds, but his mind and his gut kept churning and he was sweating. His body was coated with a nasty sheen of perspiration and the powdered dust that had risen from the dirt path to the sea.

Anger had joined revulsion by the time he swung the car onto Route 1 and drove for Key Montaigne.

He’d been back at the cottage only fifteen minutes when Millicent Bing called from Ohio. Carver told her what he’d figured out and promised to protect Dr. Sam’s memory as much as possible, in exchange for one favor from her. She had to make a phone call to someone she was sure would pass the word to Walter Rainer that she was returning to Key Montaigne to meet Carver at eleven that evening at the research center.

She agreed. She really had no choice.

After hanging up the phone, Carver explained to Beth what they were going to do. Then he called Katia Marsh, did some more explaining, and got her cooperation in gaining access to the research center that night.

Then he cleaned his gun.

At ten-thirty that night, Carver left the Olds parked out of sight and limped along Shoreline toward the research center. There was enough light to see fairly well, broken only by the passage of scudding black clouds across the face of the moon. He placed his cane carefully in the dark, making good time to the parking lot.

As he drew near the angular brick building, he slowed his pace, gathering his thoughts and resolve. Around him were only the night sounds of insects, the brief drone of a faraway plane, water lapping down by the dock where the dark form of the Fair Wind rode. He could sense on his right the vast mystery of the ocean. He was sweating, breathing raggedly, as he used the key Katia had given him and let himself into the research center.

After closing the door but not relocking it, he stood for a while waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dimmer light inside the building. Then he limped past the posters of sea horses and dolphins and opened the door to the lower level Tide Pool Room.

There were no windows in this room, so he felt for the light switch inside the door. Found its smooth protuberance and flipped it up. It made a sound like a sharp slap.

The overhead fluorescent tubes flickered like heat lightning then glowed steadily, and the shark tank’s wavering illumination was also activated. The hulking form of Victor swooped toward Carver, surprisingly near, startling him for a moment. Then the shark swept in a graceful arc behind the glass and with a flick of its tail glided in the opposite direction, its image becoming distorted and deceptively small on the far side of the tank. Victor’s world. Circling, circling.

“You’d think he’d get tired,” a voice said.

Still poised on the black steel landing, Carver looked down and saw Walter Rainer standing near one of the tide pool displays. Like Carver, he’d gotten the idea of arriving early, before Millicent Bing was due. Early birds hoping they weren’t worms.

Carver clomped down the metal stairs with his cane and saw Davy standing to Rainer’s left, where he wouldn’t be seen from the landing. Davy stared unsmilingly at Carver, his muscular arms hanging limply at his sides. Carver nodded toward the shark and said, “I’m told they have to keep swimming, keep feeding, or they sink and die.”

“I find myself in the same position,” Rainer said. He ran a hand over his hugely protruding stomach, as if to reassure himself he was prosperous and well-fed. He was wearing a cream-colored suit that made him look even more massive than he was. A beige shirt, no tie. The suit was wrinkled and baggy, and though the Tide Pool Room was cool, Rainer’s fat-padded face glistened with sweat and looked sickly in the fluorescent light. Davy had on tight jeans and a loud flowered shirt, untucked. Carver had left his own shirt untucked to conceal the Colt holstered beneath it. He figured Davy was also armed, probably with his weapon of choice, the sharpened cargo hook. There was pattern and predictability to sadism.

Behind Rainer the shark kept circling, the only movement in the room. Then Davy hooked his thumbs in his side pockets and swaggered out to stand in the center of the floor with his feet spread wide, closer to Carver but not too close. He was playing cool but he was tense; the nude dancer on his forearm twitched a hip.

Carver said, “Millicent isn’t coming.”

Ranier shrugged inside the tent-sized suit. “That doesn’t surprise me, nor does it matter. I was sure you’d be here. Time enough to deal with Millicent, if indeed I must.”

“You must,” Carver said. “Otherwise you won’t sleep well, worrying about when her conscience might bite her and then you.”

The small square room was silent, insulated from the outside world as the floor of the sea. “I assume she told you everything,” Rainer said.

“She filled me in on what I hadn’t already guessed after seeing Davy hand over a payoff to Frank Everman this morning.”

Rainer gave Davy an annoyed look. Davy’s flat little eyes fixed intensely on Carver, like dispassionate radar-gun sights.

“You weren’t smuggling drugs or anything else into the country,” Carver told Rainer. “You were smuggling something out, into Mexico. You run a way station, part of an operation that supplies certain people in Mexico with abducted children for sexual exploitation in brothels and for private amusement. Dr. Sam knew about it but wasn’t part of it, though occasionally he gave you use of the Fair Wind when you thought the Miss Behavin might attract suspicion. The doctor had a weakness for young boys, which you supplied in exchange for his silence. Millicent knew but wouldn’t talk about it and ruin her husband.”