John Lutz - Tropical Heat

Carver and Burr had tried to get the Malones to tell them where Willis and Cahill were, but nobody with anything more to lose was talking until they’d met with their attorneys. They’d been caught in this phase of the game before and knew the moves.

By midnight Gary Malone was being operated on for removal of the bullet. The body of the dead Latino had been taken away for autopsy. And Sean Malone and the surviving Latino were in jail in Solarville, awaiting transfer to federal custody and arraignment on controlled-substance charges.

“You guys do acceptable work,” Carver told Burr.

Burr nodded, then brushed deftly at a mosquito near his eye patch. The black patch had remained firmly fixed through the night’s action. “Sometimes it’s a fun job,” he said.

Carver remembered the expression on Burr’s face back in the swamp and knew that he meant it, dead Marielito and all.

When Carver got back to his room at the Tumble Inn, he saw the mound on the mattress, and the spray of dark hair on the pillow, that was Edwina curled beneath the thin white sheet in the coolness of the air-conditioning. She was still in the fetal position. Apparently she hadn’t awakened while he was away. As far as he could determine, she hadn’t even moved.

He undressed and lay down beside her, listening to his breathing slow until it was in gentle rhythm with Edwina’s rising and falling breathing. He reached out a hand and lightly touched the warm curve of her hip beneath the sheet. She caught her breath, stirred, but didn’t wake.

Her breathing leveled out again, in perfect time once more with his. The sound was soothing, oddly mesmerizing; it seemed somehow to deepen the silence in the room.

The phone call from Burr, the wild chase through the swamp, the gun battle and arrests: It was all taking on the unreality of a dream.

That was okay with Carver. It hadn’t been a dream. In the morning it would again acquire the firmness of hard fact. A fun job well done. The Malones would inevitably talk and implicate Willis and Cahill. Reality would wait patiently for sunrise.

In the cool, protective darkness, Carver closed his eyes and slept.

Carver woke slowly, not quite sure why he was relinquishing sleep. He could hear the steady, watery hum of the air-conditioner, and the rolling, crunching sound of gravel beneath the tires of a car outside on the motel parking lot. He wrestled himself over onto his back, used his good leg to kick free of the twisted sheets, and opened his eyes.

The Venetian blinds had been tilted to admit the morning; the room was bright with slanted bars of sunlight, golden swirls of dust particles. Edwina was sitting in the chair by the bed, fully dressed in jeans, a white blouse, and her lightning-streak jogging shoes.

She said, “I’ve been out. I heard about last night.”

Carver raised his arm and squinted at his watch. Eleven forty-five. He’d been even more exhausted than he’d realized when he went to bed. His mind and body hadn’t come down yet from the chase through the swamp. And when finally he did relax, it had been completely and he’d slept deeply and long.

“Have they gotten anyone to talk?” he asked.

“About what?”

“About Willis. And Sam Cahill. The prevailing logic is that they were in on this drug-smuggling deal, the secondary buyers.”

“After last night they’d be on the run, wouldn’t they?”

“If they heard about what happened. But they might not have tried yet to contact the Malones for the drug shipment.”

“It wouldn’t take the Malones to alert Willis and Cahill,” she said. “Everyone in Solarville heard about what happened.”

Carver sat up, maneuvered his body on the mattress until his back was against the cool headboard. He raised his good knee, leaned forward, and rested his forearms on it. He could hear his watch hammering away time. His mind was beginning to catch up with this business of being awake.

He rolled out of bed good-leg-first. Balancing himself by leaning against the mattress, he snatched his cane from where it was propped against the nightstand. Then he limped into the bathroom and took a quick shower.

When he returned, toweled dry, he began to get dressed. Edwina watched as he worked his stiff leg into his pants. She helped him stand while he slipped into a shirt. Then he sat on the mattress and put on his socks and shoes. She didn’t attempt to help him with that.

“City hall should be open by now,” he said, using his hand to smooth back the damp hair above his ears. “We’re going to check into their records and see if the Blaney property’s been sold.” He made his way toward the door.

They went out into the heat and got in the car. Daninger, lecturing a maid pushing a cart loaded down with folded linen near the office, glanced over and saw them. He began walking toward them, probably intending to talk about the previous night. Carver didn’t want that; he started the car and drove from the lot, pretending he hadn’t seen Daninger.

Outside the miniature grandeur of the domed city hall, it occurred to Carver that he hadn’t had breakfast and he was hungry. He asked Edwina to drive to the McDonald’s down the street and bring back a couple of English muffins and coffee, while he began checking records inside.

He found his way down a short hall to the recorder-of-deeds office, and talked to a clerk who appeared to be about sixteen but had the serene manner of a forty-year-old. He gave her the necessary information, and she went away, then returned five minutes later with what looked like a huge ledger book. She went with him to a table in the corner, looked up a page in the oversized book, and punched up the locater number on a computer. On the green-tinted computer screen immediately appeared the status of the Blaney property.

It was all so quick and easy that it threw Carver for a few seconds. The young clerk had walked back to her desk, and he sat for a moment absorbing the information on the monitor. He thought again of the area encompassed by the red pencil marking on Eiler’s map.

What was on the screen made no sense, fit no pattern.

Or did it? He sat still for a while, letting the doors spring open one by one in his mind, each leading to a room larger and brighter than the last.

Then he got up, thanked the clerk, and limped out.

In the marble-floored hall, he used a pay phone to call Ernie Franks at Sun South. Then he called Desoto and Armont. The chief wasn’t in his office, so Carver left a message.

When he got outside, Edwina was starting up the city hall steps, carrying two white McDonald’s bags. She stopped, then went back to the bottom of the steps to wait for Carver in the sun.

“They don’t serve breakfast after ten o’clock,” she said, “but I talked them into a couple of cinnamon danish.”

“Fine,” Carver said. He could smell the warm cinnamon.

“Did you find what you wanted so soon?”

“I did. They’re more up-to-date in there than you’d imagine,” Carver answered. He began walking toward the parked Olds.

“Where are you going?” Edwina asked, surprised.

“To Verna Blaney’s place. I’ll drop you at the motel. No time to explain.”

“No,” she said calmly. “You won’t drop me off. I’m coming along.”

Carver thought about that. He didn’t see why she shouldn’t go, and there were solid reasons why she should. There was little time to try to talk her into staying behind even if he decided to give in to his impulse to protect her, leave her safe and confined. That was the sort of thinking that had led to trouble for him before.

He tapped the pavement with his cane and said, “Come on, then. We can eat breakfast on the way.”