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“But you broke the rule.”

“Been breaking it for the past two years. Did coke at first. Then heroin.”

“Heroin, huh.” Almost disinterested. Then he said, “Oh, Jesus!”

She had a way of knowing what he was thinking. “That’s right. Our baby-Roberto’s son-died from addiction complications immediately after birth. That’s why Roberto wants to kill me, even though he knows my own addiction’s such it’ll probably kill me within a year or so.”

It was difficult for Carver to feel sympathy for her. A baby born with the raging blood of her habit, too frail to survive, where was there room for compassion for the mother? For an instant he knew how Gomez must feel. Why he needed vengeance. “How’s Roberto know you’re hooked that badly?”

“The doctor told him. The one that delivered the baby. Roberto wanted as few people as possible to know I was pregnant. That’s why he put me in the condo in Orlando. He arranged for me to have the baby at a private clinic, run by a doctor he knows. The doctor told him what happened, and I found out Roberto was furious. The day after the birth, I got out of the clinic. I laid low at a friend’s place till I healed up enough to get on the run, and I been running ever since.” She swallowed, her Adam’s apple working in her lean brown throat. “Roberto wants his revenge. That’s the way he is. He wants me before Mr. Heroin can have me.”

Carver looked out at the hazy horizon. She had to be in the last and worst stages of her habit to have killed her child. She was being optimistic in saying she had a year or two at most to live. A heroin addict in her league could measure the future in months. He said, “Does it really matter much which way you go, or how soon?”

She looked hard at him, and it seemed for a moment as if she might break down and sob. “Get yourself in my position, you hard-ass bastard. Find out how it feels. See how much you love life.”

“Maybe you’re right. But I’ll ask you what I asked Roberto the day he showed up here to hire me. Why me?”

“Because you got the courage to turn down Roberto. You refused to help him murder me, even for twenty thousand. Know what that means?” She was quietly sobbing now. Her body was quaking inside the baggy gray dress. The body he’d assumed was lean and sensuous was a doper’s wracked, thin frame, shaking itself in despair.

“Means I got humongous balls?”

“Damn you!” She turned away, toward the sea, so he couldn’t see her crying.

He sat sipping beer, not liking himself. Telling himself he didn’t feel compassion for her, this woman who’d chosen a fast life and then killed her child with her weakness. Carver couldn’t help it; weakness had always repelled him. In himself, especially, but too often in others who’d had some choice in the matter. What was free will about, if not that?

She turned around to face him again, composed now. “Everybody’s got some kinda weakness,” she said. She was a goddam psychic.

He said, “I wouldn’t argue it.”

She stood up straight. She was probably about five-ten. “You gonna help me, Carver?”

He said, “I’m sorry, I don’t do bodyguard work.”

Her demeanor changed. She moved closer to where he sat. Gazed down at him as if she pitied him.

Then she nodded. He wasn’t worth speaking to. She’d made her appeal and failed, and that was that.

She walked from the porch toward her car, not glancing back at him, her head held high. There was something unmistakably defiant in her long, loose-jointed stride. Even haughty. He’d doomed her and she was saying piss on him, she didn’t need him after all in order to die the way she wanted.

He liked that about her, that spit-in-the-eye quality. Liked it a lot. But he didn’t try to stop her as she drove away.

12

When Carver drove to his office and turned off of Magellan, he saw a black Lincoln stretch limousine in his usual parking slot near Golden World Insurance. It had darkly tinted windows and several different kinds of little antennae sticking up from its trunk. An occupant could coast along unseen and listen in on broadcasts from Mars.

He parked next to the Lincoln and took care not to bump its gleaming and reflective side as he opened the Olds’s heavy, rusty door.

As he raised himself up out of the car, he heard a steady, ticking whisper and realized the limo’s motor was idling. Heat was rolling out from beneath it. The rear window on Carver’s side glided down and Gomez smiled out at him.

“C’mon into my office and talk this time,” Gomez said. “Cooler than yours.”

Carver hesitated, then figured what the hell. He limped around the smoothly idling Lincoln and opened the passenger-side rear door. Leaned down and looked inside before getting in.

The car was equipped with a well-stocked miniature bar and a color TV that was soundlessly playing a soap opera. On the other side of a glass partition sat the driver, facing straight ahead. His shoulders were slightly stooped. His thinning black hair was parted and combed sharply to the side, and tufts of gray hair sprouted from his long ears. Had to be Hirsh. He was the only occupant of the car other than Gomez and glitz.

Gomez said, “You’re letting the cool air out, Carver.”

Carver used his cane for balance and slid in to sit next to Gomez on soft leather upholstery. He pulled the foot-thick door shut and was in another world of coolness and quiet. There was no sound inside the spacious limo other than the gentle whir of an air conditioner blower, no engine vibration.

Gomez scooted around so he was half-facing Carver across the wide seat. He fixed his black button eyes on Carver and worked his out-of-sync eyebrows as if to let Carver know he was amused. “So, you been thinking about my offer?”

“Nothing to think about,” Carver said. “I already refused it.”

Gomez surprised him. “Okay. I wouldn’t wanna force somebody to work for me if he didn’t wanna give it his fucking all, you know?”

“Makes sense. Hundred and ten percent and all that.”

“Right. So what I came to tell you is we’re doing a one-eighty-degree turn here, my man. What I’m saying is stay as clear of me and mine as you can get. I don’t wanna see or hear of you again. Our business is finished, like you want it to be.”

Carver wondered if Gomez had somehow learned about Beth talking to him. It didn’t seem possible. Couldn’t have anything to do with why Gomez was here.

Unless Beth had been followed from the cottage and killed, and now Gomez was warning Carver not to tell the law about her visit or the subject of their conversation.

Carver’s mouth was dry. He said, “Why the change of direction?”

Gomez grinned. Oh, those eyebrows. “It ain’t for you to worry about.”

“Maybe you already found your missing wife.”

“Maybe. Who knows.”

Carver couldn’t let it lie. He had to probe. He had no compassion for Beth Gomez, but he didn’t like the idea of this dope-rich Napoleon dropping by now and then to control his life. Too much money and power. Too much arrogance. He said, “I know about what happened to your son.”

Gomez’s face darkened and a tremor shook his body beneath his expensive gray suit. In that instant Carver knew Beth’s fears were justified. Gomez wanted her, all right. Probably hadn’t found her yet, but wanted her. “How’d you find out about my son?” he asked in a tight voice.

Carver said, “I’m a detective, like my card says.”

“Ain’t you, though. Well, my man, I guess you know then why I want the cunt back.”

“I can imagine.”

Gomez smiled all over except for the deathlike button eyes beneath the comic brows. “I bet you can’t.” He leaned back into the encompassing tufted upholstery. The movement stirred the air and the scent of his after-shave filled the back of the limo. “Listen, I save this girl from the fucking sewer. Treat her like a goddam queen. Even used to call her Queen Elizabeth, can you believe it? She turns up pregnant ’cause she forgets to take a pill, but I’m a nice guy about it. I don’t push her into an abortion. So she stays knocked up. I don’t care, if she wants it so bad. Even get used to the idea. Could be a son, another me, you know? So I get real fond of the fatherhood role I see coming at me. I make sure she gets the best of medical attention.” He abruptly slapped the seat, startling Carver. The noise reached the front of the car, and Hirsh’s head snapped around. Hirsh saw everything was okay. Glanced at Carver through the glass as if he were viewing sea life in an aquarium, then turned back to gaze out over the steering wheel at Golden World Insurance.