“Jesus!” Carver said. “This is real life.”
“Real death,” Desoto corrected. “Rest easy, amigo. What I’ll do is, I’ll put out feelers so thin nobody’ll notice them, but they’ll reach the right places. I’ll find out what the deal is. People owe me; I can collect. How police department politics work.”
“I don’t want to put you in a position where you’re crossing McGregor,” Carver said. “He bites.”
Desoto grinned. No doubt his predatory bedroom grin. Strong teeth stark white against his handsome tan features. “Don’t we all?”
Chapter 17
Carver hadn’t brought his gun to the new office. After driving back to Del Moray from Orlando, the Olds’s top down and the hot wind crashing in his ears, he headed up the coast highway to Edwina’s house to arm himself. It was slightly cooler by the ocean; or maybe the endless rolling blue water and the gulls circling high against the vastness only made it seem cooler. Suffering in the tropics was subjective.
Edwina was out showing a beachfront condo she’d mentioned, in one of several newly constructed developments north of Del Moray. Carver wondered if Florida would soon reach the point where condos outnumbered people. Sometimes the condo market suggested that had already happened.
He parked the Olds alongside the garage and limped to the back door, hearing metal tick behind him as the car’s big engine cooled.
The house was locked and quiet. After letting himself in, he made his way through the kitchen and down the hall to the bedroom. Even though cool air wafted from the vents near the ceiling, the window was slightly open and he could hear the repetitious breaking of the surf. Edwina liked to make love with the window open so she could lie motionless afterward and listen to the sea. Carver liked to listen with her.
He pulled the top drawer of the dresser all the way out and removed the Colt .38 automatic taped to the back of it. He thought about getting the leather shoulder holster from the back of the closet, but decided against it and untucked his shirt, then stuck the gun in his belt beneath it. The Colt lay heavy and ominous against his stomach.
Carver felt a brief wave of revulsion. He’d known what bullets could do, but the pain and the sight of his ruined knee were still raw in his mind. The personal violation. Some nights he’d dream about how casually the kid at the convenience store had aimed at his knee and squeezed the trigger. Stopped by for a quart of milk and a holdup, shot this off-duty cop while I was there. He’d feel again the disbelief and terror. Hear the blast. See the muzzle flash. His world changed in the incredibly brief time it had taken a bullet from a cheap handgun to rend flesh and bone. And now guns were even easier to get and to keep in Florida. Cops didn’t like that. Not most cops. Not most people, if they really stopped to think about it, which they didn’t. What the hell were the politicians thinking? Who and what did they owe?
Carver lifted his shirt and checked again to make sure the Colt’s safety was on, then replaced the dresser drawer and limped from the bedroom.
Standing outside again in the heat, he’d shut the back door behind him and was keying the deadbolt when a voice said, “We might as well go back inside where it’s cool.”
Carver turned and saw the rough-hewn black guy from Fort Lauderdale. His smooth Latin sidekick, the probable Ralph Palmer, stood beside and a little behind him. They were both wearing conservative light gray suits, white shirts, red ties. Like a couple of menacing accountants.
Carver had the Colt out from beneath his shirt even before he’d turned and planted his cane, feet spread wide in a shooting stance.
He’d surprised them, all right. The black guy’s eyes got round and he shuffled backward. Bumped into Ralph Palmer, who seemed perfectly calm but frightened and very alert, like a man about to work on disarming a bomb. Carver was the bomb. He’d shocked them. Folks didn’t wander around with guns in such easy reach and with the decisiveness to draw and point them. Maybe on “The Untouchables,” but not in real life. Not even in Florida.
Well, maybe in Florida. Which was why the two men in front of Carver were especially scared.
Carver let them stay scared. “I’ve got the gun this time,” he said. “Not like in Fort Lauderdale. The conversation’s gonna go a little different here.”
The black guy said, “I’m about to get something out of my pocket, Carver, and I’d like for you not to blow a hole in my suit.”
Carver said, “No deal. I don’t wanna see pictures of your kids. And if they were here, they wouldn’t want you to reach in that pocket.”
“I got no kids, and you watch me real close, because I’m gonna show you you’re dealing with the U.S. government here.”
He had nerve, did the black one. Not moving his frightened eyes from the Colt, he shifted his hand toward the lapel of his suitcoat. Beneath the material and out of sight. Inching toward the inside pocket. Gave Carver his choice-squeeze the trigger, or hesitate and take the chance.
Carver took the chance. His heart hammering. Making a show of tensing his finger on the trigger.
What came out in the black guy’s hand was a worn brown leather folder. The kind that usually contained a badge.
Holding it well away from his body, he let it flop open facing Carver.
Badge, all right. And Carver recognized what kind.
The black guy said, “I’m Ben Jefferson. Drug Enforcement Administration. This is agent Ralph Palma, also DEA.” “Palma,” not “Palmer,” as he’d told Renway.
Not politics-drugs. Sure! What else, in Florida? Not knowing quite what to say, Carver said, “So?”
“So put down the fuckin’ gun,” Palma said.
Carver didn’t move the gun. Not yet. But he knew this figured. The DEA could take precedence over the Miami police. Get the autopsy report faked so it looked as if Frank Wesley and not Bert Renway died in the car bombing. A federal agency had that kind of clout. Maybe only the weight of the federal government could do it. And it had been done.
“The ID’s authentic,” Jefferson said.
“I know.” Carver lowered the gun. Tucked it back into his belt beneath his shirt. He’d never thumbed the safety off, but Jefferson and Palma hadn’t noticed. Guns caused people not to think straight. People behind and in front of them. Guns didn’t kill people, people with guns killed people.
“Why don’t we go in the house?” Jefferson said. “Hot as the surface of the sun out here.”
Palma was grinning confidently now. The gun was back where it didn’t pose a danger and the balance of power had shifted again to where it belonged. These were all of a sudden very official dudes, with the intimidating force of the U.S. government behind them. Big Uncle Sam.
Carver said, “You wanna talk, we can sit at the table on the veranda.”
Jefferson said, “You’re a hard man.”
Carver said, “Believe it.”
When they’d crossed the brick veranda and were seated in the shade of the table’s wide umbrella, Jefferson, who seemed to be in charge, said, “What do you know, Carver?”
“Enough not to spill all of it to you.”
Palma said, “You’re fuckin’ with a federal investigation here. Better tread light.”
“But I don’t think your superiors, or the news media, would like the way you used guns and bullshit to scare a U.S. taxpayer in Wesley’s apartment in Fort Lauderdale.”
“The taxpayer was where he didn’t belong,” Jefferson said.
“So were the DEA agents. And they didn’t identify themselves.”
“We go where we want,” Palma said, “and we belong wherever that is.”
Carver said to Jefferson, “He’s kind of haughty.”
Jefferson smiled and said, “Well, sometimes we need that in this job. We’ve identified ourselves now, so let’s all three of us forget about that Fort Lauderdale thing. Start over and even.”