Beth said, “It only worked up to a point. Roberto thinks Adam’s dead, and that I’m doomed as a heavy user, but he still wants to find me. He thinks I killed his son and he wants vengeance. In all the time I’ve known him, this is the one thing he hasn’t been coldly businesslike about. He won’t stop till he’s killed me, Carver, and now I don’t wanna die. Whatever else you might think of me, I know I can be a good mother, Adam needs me. We need you if we’re gonna make it through this. You might not like it, but that’s the way it fell.”
Carver said, “I’m no guarantee.”
“None of those in this life.”
“Who else knows the truth?”
“Only the doctor, who has every reason in the world not to talk. And my friend Melanie, who won’t talk. A couple of people I was close to know I’m on the run and Roberto wants me dead. I talk to them now and then, and they tell me what they know about whatever he’s doing. That’s how I found out about you turning down Roberto’s offer. Sometimes they don’t know enough, though. I can’t keep out of his path much longer.”
“Why don’t you get far away from here? Out of the state?”
“Roberto has connections anywhere I’d go; drug trafficking is all about connections. And fear. And I don’t have any family left. Melanie’s closer to me than anyone; that’s why she’s hiding us at her place in Fort Lauderdale for a while.”
“If you’re that close to Melanie, won’t Gomez be watching her?”
“He doesn’t know about her. Melanie used to be a coke addict. She went through rehabilitation and she’s been clean for the past five years. Used to be a hooker, too, but now she’s outa that game. That’s where I knew her from. I cut her outa my life after Roberto because of the drugs. I knew she’d be back on coke and I’d be responsible. Then we met again at the university, when we were both taking a final. She’s a secretary at a brokerage firm in Lauderdale. So I’d go see her every once in a while, but I kept her, and our friendship, a kinda secret. She understood. We’d talk about my life, but we’d skirt what it was my husband did to make money. I feel reasonably secure at her place, but I know I’m not completely safe, and I don’t want anything to happen to Melanie because of this. But most of all, Carver, I want to save my baby. And I want you to help me.”
Carver said, “I don’t know if I can.”
“I’m asking you to try. I’ll pay you. Information and money, but you never can say where either came from.”
“What kind of information?”
“There’s s’pose to be a big drug drop here in Del Moray soon.”
“How soon?”
“I don’t know. Days, weeks. Not months,”
“Why don’t you go to the law?” he suggested. “Work a deal. Supply them with what they need to put Roberto away, and they’ll set you up with a new identity, give you and Adam a chance.”
She shook her head violently, startling Adam, who squawked again. She fit the nipple back in his mouth and said, “You’re speaking bullshit, Carver. I’ll talk to you ’cause you’re not the law and I’m desperate. That makes it personal. One thing you can’t do with drug dealers at the top of the pyramid is go to the law and be an informer. The dealers got bought-and-paid-for government snitches-they got goddam governments-to help them track you down and make you pay. They consider it time and money well spent. It keeps others from informing. I’m gonna stay one of the others. The government witness protection program ain’t for shit. If I talked to the cops or DEA, I’d be dead within a year or two years or five years, and so would Adam.”
“But Roberto figures you’ll be dead within a few years anyway, as far gone as that doctor said you were on heroin.”
“So maybe he’ll stop searching for me after a year or so. But if I talk, he and a lot of other people will never stop looking for me. They’ll wanna be certain I’m dead. Not just so I can’t talk anymore, but to discourage anyone else from playing close with the law.”
“You’re between a rock and a rock,” Carver admitted.
“And you’re the only one I can trust. The only one I know who’s refused to do something for Roberto, who’s stood up to him.”
Carver said, “This isn’t Shane.”
“Damned right it’s not. If it was, I’d just sit back and wait for the happy ending.”
The tiny face among the blanket folds opened dark eyes and tried to focus them on Carver. Couldn’t do it. Concentrated again on the bottle, which was now almost empty.
Carver said, “He’s going through that milk in a hurry.”
Beth was looking at him. Proud, unbroken, but desperate. Not just for herself. “You gonna help us, Carver?”
He said, “Give me a phone number where I can reach you and let you know. I’ve gotta think about this.”
“But you might help?”
“Might, sure.” He lent her his ballpoint pen and she printed her friend Melanie’s phone number on the back of one of his business cards. He told her he’d call her sometime today or tonight. Tomorrow at the latest.
He leaned over his cane and stood up, then looked down again at Elizabeth and Adam Gomez, family unit. The smell of the sea was in the air, the primal stuff of life, of raw survival.
He started to limp away, then turned and said, “Cute kid.”
She said, “I know.”
15
Carver had a connection at Florida State University, an entomologist named Fisk who’d helped him identify a certain type of beetle in a previous case. He phoned Fisk and had him check Student Records. Then he sat at his desk and sketched indecipherable shapes on his memo pad. Some of them looked like infants.
Within an hour the phone rang. Fisk. He told Carver there was indeed an Elizabeth Gomez of Fort Lauderdale registered at the university. She was in the correspondence program, six credit hours into her sophomore year, and carrying a 3.9 grade-point average.
Carver thanked Fisk and hung up. So far Beth Gomez had leveled with him. But so far wasn’t very far.
He dragged his cross-directory from a bottom desk drawer and used it to match an address with the phone number Beth had given him in the park. The number was listed in the name of Melanie Beame of 242 Wayfare Lane, Fort Lauderdale. Beth’s friend Melanie, just as she’d said.
Carver glanced at his watch. Past three o’clock, and Fort Lauderdale was over an hour’s drive down the coast. Even if he left immediately, there wouldn’t be much left of the day by the time he got there. On the other hand, what he had in mind might be better accomplished at night, so there was no rush.
He limped from the office, lowered himself into the sunbaked Olds, then drove to his cottage, where he stuffed a change of clothes and a shaving kit into his scuffed leather suitcase. Then he phoned Edwina, but she wasn’t home. She wasn’t in her office at Quill Realty either, and no one there knew how to reach her.
She seemed to be distancing herself from her employer as well as her lover, he thought, weakening her ties as she prepared to cut them. He tried to ignore the hollow sensation around his heart as he punched out her home number again and left a message on her machine, explaining he might have to be gone for a while on business and he’d call her soon as he returned. He said he’d miss her, then added just before he hung up, “This is Fred, by the way.” A joke. He wished he hadn’t said it.
He locked the cottage behind him and tossed the suitcase in the back of the Olds. On the highway, he stopped at a Texaco station and bought gas, a quart of oil, and a pack of Swisher Sweet cigars.
The station’s bell dinged twice as he ran over the signal hose on the way out. A guy in a greasy service uniform and holding a can of oil as if he were going to drink it glared at him, then poked his head back beneath the raised hood of a station wagon.
Carver turned left onto the highway to point the nose of the Olds south toward Lauderdale.