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“I wanna talk to you again.” Fear gave her voice a jagged edge, as if her words hurt her throat.

“We already talked.”

“There’s something I shoulda told you but didn’t.”

“Tell me now.”

“Not on the phone.”

“All right, come over to my office.”

“I can’t. Roberto might have somebody watching it.”

“Not since he personally and forcefully accepted my resignation,” Carver said.

“Ha! Roberto doesn’t accept resignations.”

Maybe she had a point; Gomez wasn’t accepting hers with good grace, unless you didn’t count trying to kill her.

“Meet me in the park near the marina?” she pleaded.

Carver said, “I just came from the marina.”

“I know. I saw you there. At first I didn’t have a chance to approach you. Then, when I could have walked over to you, I was too afraid. By the time I’d made up my mind, you’d driven away.”

“What were you doing at the marina?”

“I followed you there from your office, after that tall man left. If the restaurant hadn’t been so crowded I’d have contacted you there, but I couldn’t risk it. Crowds make me jumpy these days. He a cop, the tall, mean-looking guy?”

“Sort of. Why?”

“It’s kinda stamped on him.”

“You must wanna talk to me in the worst way,” Carver said.

“It’s more important than life or death.”

What the hell did that mean?

“I gotta hang up,” she said. “Been on the line almost long enough for the call to be traced.”

“You on a public phone?”

“Yeah.”

“Then don’t worry.”

“Carver, you just don’t know what and who drug money’ll buy. I’m not even sure your phone’s not tapped. But I’ve gotta take a chance here, I’ll wait for you in the park. On one of the benches facing the ocean.”

“I didn’t say I was coming.”

“I know. But I’ll pray you’ll turn up. You’re the kinda guy who answers prayers.”

“Not all of them.”

“Didn’t say you were a saint.” She hung up.

Carver replaced the droning receiver in its cradle. The office that had felt so cool when he’d first walked in now seemed too warm.

He didn’t have to meet with Beth Gomez in the marina park, but he knew he would. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe because whoever had sent a bullet into Belinda Jackson’s head should have to pay. Maybe because Roberto Gomez was a walking danger that belonged in prison. Or maybe because he, Carver, knew down deep the truth of what Beth Gomez had just mentioned: Roberto wasn’t the type to accept resignations. Or possibly Carver was exactly what he’d been told he was, a dog with a rag.

He did know he wasn’t meeting Beth Gomez to answer her prayer. He knew himself that well. He wasn’t a saint, he was a survivor.

She was where she said she’d be, seated on one of the pale concrete benches that faced the ocean and its wide horizon,

Carver had made sure he wasn’t followed. He parked the Olds near the white Ford Escort she’d driven earlier to his cottage, Then he limped across the hard, uneven ground toward where she sat, careful about where he planted the tip of his cane.

She was just sitting there watching him. She hadn’t moved. When he got closer, he saw she had some sort of bundle in her lap. She’d shed the baggy gray dress and wasn’t trying to disguise her beauty now, had on khaki safari pants with oversized flap pockets and a thick belt pulled tight around her waist. Her tailored white blouse’s collar was spread wide enough to reveal a gold necklace against smooth, dusky flesh. Her breasts hinted at firmness and bulk beneath the blouse. Caused Carver to wonder what she looked like nude. She had her straightened hair parted on the side now, neatly combed. A touch of purple eye shadow. Her features seemed more delicate, except for her wide, angular cheekbones. Born into another life, she might have become a rich and famous model. On the other hand, in her own fashion, she’d capitalized plenty on her looks.

When Carver sat down next to her on the hard bench, he saw that the bundle in her lap was a bunched blue blanket.

It squawked.

Beth drew aside a corner of the blanket and a tiny, dazed face scrunched up when the light hit it. She got a bottle from the folds of the blanket, fit the nipple in the infant’s mouth, and said, “This is Adam.” Her tone suggested Carver should shake the kid’s hand and call him a likely lad.

Carver was trying to put it all together, but none of it fit quite right. “Adam Gomez?”

Beth nodded, gazing down at the infant the way women do, as if posing for a church’s stained-glass window. “My son. And Roberto’s.”

Carver watched the baby work on the rubber nipple, then watched the masts of the moored sailboats doing their swaying, subtle dance in rhythm with the waves that washed gently against the dock. What was going on? What was the deal here? He said, “You told me Gomez was after you because the child had died due to your heroin addiction.”

“Well, that wasn’t exactly true.”

“Then what is?”

As she spoke, she rocked the baby ever so gently. “Let me tell you, Carver, I grew up in a slum in Chicago. Like most ghetto kids, I wanted the fast and expensive life; that’s the values you get in a place like that.”

“Sure, I understand.”

“Doubt it. Anyway, I got outa there the only way I knew how, using what Mother Nature gave me before Father Time took it away.”

Carver thought about that, then said, “You’re still a few steps ahead of Father Time.”

Beth glanced over at him, somehow acknowledging the compliment with only those big, dark eyes. She was used to such remarks and had had practice. “I got mixed up with Roberto and lived the fastest of the fast life. Money, cars, sex, power. Then, a couple of years ago, I was surprised to find myself getting sick of my life. And sickened by what I’d become. Sounds stupid, but I wanted to do some giving instead of taking, even up whatever scales there are. Roberto wouldn’t understand. Couldn’t. But he let me more or less do what I wanted, and I began associating with people outside his crowd. Even took some correspondence courses from Florida State University.”

“You don’t sound like you’re from the ghetto,” Carver noted. “Not much slang and slide in the way you talk.”

“I pretty much worked that outa myself long ago, so I’d be acceptable wherever rich men wanted to take me. Though I admit my college communication courses helped some, too. Anyway, when I became pregnant last year I was pleased, but Roberto wasn’t. Not at first. I talked him outa forcing me into an abortion, and when he got used to the idea of fatherhood, he became more enthusiastic than I was over having a son. He never even considered it’d be a girl, and he was right. During my months of pregnancy I began to think about raising my child. I really saw what I was. What Roberto was. What kind of life I’d be bringing my baby into. I didn’t want it to be that way. I decided it wouldn’t be that way.”

“What about your drug habit?”

“Never actually had one. I secretly put together some money, which wasn’t difficult the way we lived. Money flowed all around Roberto, like a river around an island. I bribed the doctor who delivered Adam. He told Roberto the baby died because I was heavily addicted to heroin.” She looked away from the child and directly at Carver. “I thought we’d have a chance that way, a door out. Roberto would think his son was dead. He’d think I’d be dead within a short time, like most heroin freaks. I could live on what I had for a while, then get some kinda job under another identity and bring Adam up right, not in an environment of narcotics and death and twisted values. Call it the American dream.”

Carver held his cane with both hands. Jabbed at the ground a few times with its tip. There she sat with her son; he had to believe this one. It made sense. A woman begins thinking of her child and not just of herself, and she wants out of the kind of life Beth Gomez had been living. Wants the child’s father to stay out of the picture. A father like Gomez, who could blame her? Attila the Hun would be a better influence.