“Maybe,” Carver said. “But you got no choice other than to make sure nothing happens to Edwina Talbot. You’re not exactly running your own investigation by official procedure.”
“I can’t afford to be a bureaucrat,” Jefferson said. “I’m out here in the field with my ass on the line.”
“You know a private citizen’s in danger, and you want to place her in even greater jeopardy by forcing me to lie to Ogden and Butcher.”
“If that’s the way you see it. Thing is, though, there’s a kinda time limit on all this. There’s supposed to be a Southern Christian Businessmen’s League strategy meeting down here in the next few days. All the movers and shakers, discussing new routes for drug shipments from Central America. That’s the reason Palma and I came to Florida in the first place.”
“Time limit or not, the way I see it, you better do what you can to shield Edwina.”
“You seem to have it backward about who’s between the rock and the block, Carver. You gotta tell the Wesley people something, and if you pass on information we haven’t okayed, you’re guilty of complicity. It’s gotta be one or the other. Them or us. No real choice there, the way it looks to me. How you see it I’m not sure. But it’s down to the short strokes in this game, baby.”
“Any way I move I lose.”
Jefferson nodded. “Might.”
“What if I tell Ogden you know about the SCBL get-together?”
“Then you’re federal pen bound, Carver. But the SCBL knows we’re onto this anyway. The meeting will come off, as long as they think we don’t know where it’s gonna be held. Florida’s a big state, the size of some European countries, and big money makes for big egos and overconfidence. Now if you were to find out the exact location of the meeting, it’d be smart to pass it on to me or Palma.”
“Can’t Courtney tell you?”
“They don’t completely trust her.” Jefferson swallowed hard. “And she’s around because Ogden wants her.”
“I didn’t see any sign of that,” Carver said. “I mean, of anything between them.”
Jefferson said, “It’s not a relationship based on love.” He made a face as if he’d like to spit out something vile.
“She still figures to learn the meeting place before I would.”
“Could be.”
Carver made an effort not to look in the direction of the rifle in the duffel bag beneath the bed. He said, “There’s something else operating here, isn’t there?”
Jefferson said, “Huh? I don’t follow.”
“Something more than a drug-smuggling ring you’re trying to break.”
“Well, you never know what else some of these drug kings are into until you subpoena the books. Even then, they’re so good at cooking the numbers you still might not know.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Oh? What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe you can tell me.”
Jefferson’s face twitched and the muscles in his neck and chest corded. For a moment he seemed about to say something. But only for a moment. Carver got a brief look at something inside Jefferson, writhing and agonized and dangerous. It scared him; a glimpse of a demon.
A wind kicked up off the sea. Something light bounced with force off the glass door beyond the bed. Outside, in the distance, a woman laughed loudly and maniacally.
“I came here to tell you to make sure Edwina has protection,” Carver said.
“Why don’t you simply get her out of town on the sly?”
“That’d only work for a while. Even if she’d leave, which she won’t. Besides, there’s always the possibility she’d be trailed to wherever she went. There’d be no way to know for sure. These people are pros. It’d be hard for her to go anywhere now without them knowing.”
Jefferson yawned, his deep chest heaving. He ran a hand over his hair, as if to make sure it hadn’t fallen out in the night. Studied his palm for a few seconds. “Yeah, you’re right. So you’re using what you perceive as leverage to get us to protect Miss Talbot.”
“That’s it,” Carver said.
“Might surprise you to know we already got somebody watching over her. That was decided five minutes after our contact with Courtney. You’re right, Carver, Miss Talbot’s a U.S. citizen and has protection owed her.”
“That’s what I needed to hear,” Carver said. He shifted position with the cane and limped toward the door.
“You mean I can go back to sleep now?”
“Or wake up. Maybe this is a bad dream.”
“Yours, not mine. But wait’ll I turn out the light before you open the door. Wouldn’t want some fool to take a shot at you and hit me.” Jefferson reached out a muscular arm and switched off the lamp. “We’ll give you a call soon about what information to pass on to Atlanta.”
“Sure. Thanks.”
“Carver, something else.”
Carver waited in the faint light.
“The way you’d feel if something happened to Edwina Talbot, that’s how I’ll feel if you screw up and something happens to Courtney Romano.”
Carver looked at him, surprised. “So it’s that way between you and Courtney.”
Jefferson nodded slowly, his serious dark eyes shining in the dim room. “That way.”
Carver stood quietly for a moment, thinking about Courtney and Ogden. About the rifle under the bed. A hunting tool. An assassination weapon. But what was the deal here? Jefferson could take out Ogden almost anytime he wanted. And he had to know Courtney was willingly doing her job. Jefferson of all people would understand that. “But there’s more, isn’t there?” Carver said. “Only you’re not telling me. Something about you. Something keeping you wound tight.”
Smiling, Jefferson said, “Get off that bullshit. You wanna play psychiatrist, go back to school.”
Carver said, “You worry me.”
“Least you got that much sense. Night, Carver.”
“Night.”
“So walk. I gotta get some sleep.”
Carver limped out into the greater darkness of the night. He was satisfied now that Edwina would have the best protection possible. She’d be safer home and unaware in Del Moray than in a strange city, unfamiliar territory where she might have been followed or could soon be discovered.
From the shadowy room behind Carver, Jefferson said, “Remember, Carver, you’re the one between the rock and the hard place.”
Carefully skirting the edge of the gently lapping pool, Carver thought: That means it’s time to move.
Chapter 27
Driving through the warm night, Carver wished he could return home to bed and Edwina, tell her what he was doing. But he knew it would be a possibly fatal mistake. The odds were good that Ogden-rather, the enigmatic Frank Wesley-had someone watching Edwina. Carver they didn’t have to watch; he was attached to the end of a leash in the grasp of Walter Ogden. If he did something wrong he’d be punished by Edwina’s horrendous rendezvous with Vincent Butcher.
If he did something wrong.
But if he did nothing, and if he slipped the leash, that would be different. If no one knew where he was. Or why. Then the result would be uncertainty. Edwina would be safe because Ogden wouldn’t want to eliminate Carver’s possible remaining value by harming her. Also, Van Meter’s man Hans and the DEA would be watching over her. Jefferson and Palma would think Courtney Romano might be able to tell them where Carver had gone, but they’d be wrong.
Carver was going to move completely off the game board. Suddenly he’d no longer be a factor except by his absence, which could be interpreted a number of ways, but not with the certainty that would prompt action.
The Olds’s canvas top was up but all the windows were cranked down. Wind boomed and swirled through the car’s interior. Taut canvas slapped against the steel struts as Carver pushed the car hard along the Orange Blossom Trail toward Orlando. Flying night insects met hard and instant death against the windshield; Carver had to use the squirts and wipers now and then in order to see clearly.