John Lutz - Bloodfire

He limped into the bathroom and started the shower, adjusting the taps until the water was lukewarm. After leaning his cane against the tile wall, he held on to the towel rack and stepped beneath the stinging needles of spray. Thinking how nice it would be if the water roaring through the pipes and washing so forcefully over his body could cleanse inside as well as out, dissolve the past and afford second chances.

By the time he’d toweled dry and limped nude back into the cool bedroom, Edwina was awake.

Still on her back, she’d pulled the sheet up to cover her nakedness. There was nothing coy about it, he knew; she was simply cool in the morning breeze. She’d fluffed both pillows behind her head and was staring at Carver. Her dark hair was wildly tangled, making her look like a refined savage. Which she could be.

He awkwardly pulled on the Jockey shorts he’d gotten from his stash of clothes remaining at her house, switching hands to lean on his cane. Mr. Nimble.

Watching him through narrowed eyes, as if there were cigarette smoke bothering her, she said, “Leaving?”

“Yeah. I better get to the office in case somebody’s been phoning.”

“I thought you said the case you were on was ended.”

He snapped the shorts’ elastic waistband, then glanced around for the rest of his clothes. “All but the murder investigation.”

“Whose murder?”

“Woman named Belinda Jackson. Sister-in-law of my client. I mean, former client.”

“Killed here in Del Moray?”

“No. In Orlando.”

“Desoto’s territory.”

“Yeah.” He sat on the edge of the bed and struggled into his pants. He’d laid them folded on the chair, not carefully enough, because they were very wrinkled. Well, he’d been in a hurry. Barefoot, he limped to the small dresser and got out a fresh pair of socks, then went back to the bed and worked them on. He slipped his feet into the moccasins he didn’t have to bother tying. Shoelaces weren’t much trouble in the mornings, but he hated it when laces came untied in public, and he had to find someplace to sit down and contort his body simply to tie his shoe. The pitying stares made him furious.

He got a clean brown pullover shirt from the closet and yanked it over his head, then stood at the foot of the bed and tucked it into his pants. Smoothing the thick and curly fringe of gray hair around his ears and at the back of his neck, he caught his reflection in the full-length mirror. Dark pants, dark shirt, catlike blue eyes, harsh features with a scar at the right corner of his mouth that lent him a sardonic expression unless he smiled. Left earlobe missing as the result of a knife wound. He looked like a Paris hoodlum, as usual. Didn’t give a fuck, as usual.

Edwina sat up straighter and raked her red-enameled fingernails through her wild hair. It didn’t change anything. “Got time to hang around for breakfast?”

“Better not,” he said. “Sorry.”

“Sure. Well, I gotta get to work anyway. Some choice beachfront property to show.”

“Fat commission?”

“If I sell it.”

“You will.”

She nodded almost solemnly. “Yeah, sooner or later I will.”

He limped around the side of the bed to stand over her, then moved the cane close for leverage, leaned down, and kissed her forehead. Her flesh was damp and cool.

She didn’t move or look up. “ ’Bye, Fred.”

He braced on his cane and got out of there.

Across the street from Carver’s office was the pure white stucco combination courthouse and jail. In the now-glaring sunlight it looked edible, an iced pastry. Beyond it stretched the blue and glittering Atlantic. The view was the stuff of postcards.

The building that housed Carver’s office was cream-colored stucco, low and not very long and with a red tile roof. His was the end office. The other two businesses in the building were an insurance brokerage and a car-rental agency. Customers for all three enterprises came and went, but nobody was getting rich here.

Carver parked the Olds in its usual slot on the gravel lot, closer to Golden World Insurance than to his own office, because the car would be in the shade sooner there as the sun moved across Magellan and behind the building’s roofline.

He raised the canvas top so the vinyl upholstery wouldn’t melt, then limped over and unlocked the office door. Pushed into the anteroom.

The sun hadn’t really gotten mean yet today, and the air conditioning had the place comfortably cool. By two o’clock the office would begin to grow warm. Florida in June, what could he expect? The state really belonged to the reptiles and other coldblooded types.

He picked up the mail that had been dropped through the slot in the door, shuffled the envelopes, and saw nothing that promised a check. Mostly bills and ads. He’d apparently won a video recorder, if only he’d visit a new condominium development in Fort Lauderdale. Sure. He tossed the VCR offer and the rest of the obvious junk mail in the metal wastebasket near the door, then tucked the few remaining envelopes between his first and second fingers and limped across the sparsely furnished anteroom toward the open door to his office. He went inside to sit down behind his desk and check his phone messages and the rest of the mail.

Stopped after two steps and stood staring.

Somebody was already seated behind his desk, leaning back in his chair. Somebody else was standing off to the side, next to the window.

The one behind the desk said, “You look surprised.”

Carver said, “Am surprised.”

“Huh! Huh! Huh!” It was a jackal-like laugh. “Nothing in life should shock you. Not ever. That’s just the kinda world it is, you know?”

Carver knew. He said, “You Robert Ghostly this visit? Or Roberto Gomez?”

Carver said, “I thought I locked the door.”

Gomez smiled. He was wearing a white suit and a pale blue shirt open at the collar. A thick gold chain glinted among his dark chest hairs. He didn’t look like a hardworking salesman now. Gomez wore his hair differently, too, from when he’d visited Carver on the beach. It was combed straight back now, greased down almost flat. The slick hairstyle made him look like a lounge lizard, and it made his dense, dark eyebrows seem even more pasted on and out of synchronization. “We don’t pay much attention to locks,” he said.

Hell with this. Carver limped over to the desk. The man standing didn’t actually move from where he leaned with his back against the wall, but an alertness came over his tall, slender body, like a low-wattage current of electricity. He was in his mid-fifties, with a long, loose-fleshed face and sad blue eyes, wearing a dark blue pinstripe suit with a vest. Though it wasn’t warm in the office, sweat was rolling down his flabby, somber face. It didn’t seem to bother him. One of the two, probably the big one standing, gave off the rancid odor of the unwashed.

“Want something?” Gomez asked, leaning back and gazing up at Carver. As if it were his office.

“My chair,” Carver said. He gripped the crook of his cane hard and took a little weight off the tip, ready to use it as a weapon.

Gomez looked amused, but his dark eyes had the flat, emotionless lack of expression Carver had seen on passionless killers. “You serious, my man?”

“About wanting my chair? Yeah.”

Gomez worked his eyebrows. His cheek muscles. As if he were holding back a good loud laugh. “Listen, Carver, I give the word and Hirsh starts breaking your small bones. When I’m in a room, I sit where I fucking want. That clear?”

Carver looked over at Hirsh, who looked bored. Also older than Carver had first thought. Gray hairs sprouted from his nostrils and ears, and the black hair on his head looked dyed.