“Only folks who like poisonous snakes like McGregor,” Carver said.
“Ah, then you understand.”
“Yeah, but I’m not crazy about it. Sooner or later I’ll have to deal with McGregor. Once he finds out you and I are in this-two cops, and not his best buddies at that-he’ll get curious.”
“You can deal with him; you have before.”
“I’ll keep him out of it as long as possible,” Carver said. “Do my nosing around quietly.”
“I’ll let you get to your work, then, amigo, and I’d better get busy with mine. Crime’s picking up here.”
Carver said good-bye and hung up, leaving Desoto to his Latin rhythm and his busy day. Orlando was a rapidly expanding city with growing pains, and the police department was hard-pressed to keep up. It had been that way even when Carver was on the force. Always more crime than time.
He put on his shoes, then limped into the bathroom and rinsed away the sleep-sour taste in his mouth with some kind of blue, minty liquid Edwina had bought. He squinted at himself in the mirror. A dusty swirl of sunlight streaming in through the window highlighted his graying stubble and made it evident he hadn’t shaved closely enough that morning. So what? Scruffy guys were in style. They were everywhere, like dressed-up bums, and women couldn’t get enough of them. He raked his fringe of hair back with his fingers and told himself he was ready to do business. Told himself twice, so he believed it.
But as he stepped outside, the heat sapped him of much of his resolve. For a moment he thought it would be nice to go back in the house and stretch out again on the couch and breathe cool air. Then he gripped his cane with a sweat-slippery hand and reminded himself that the weather forecast called for rain sometime this afternoon. That would cool things off for a while, before it became steam. There was a price that went with beaches and palm trees, and it could be calculated in Fahrenheit.
He made his way across the wide driveway to where the Olds squatted half in sun and half in shadow.
The big engine fired right up and clattered loudly for a moment before the heat-thinned oil built pressure. Carver wristed perspiration from his forehead and jammed the shift lever into Drive.
He knew how to tail suspects, but his police training hadn’t included spotting someone following him. When he jockeyed the Olds in a sharp, rocking left turn out of the driveway, he gave no more than a glance at his rearview mirror.
It was Satchel Paige who’d suggested people not look back because something might be gaining on them.
That kind of advice could cause trouble.
6
What Carver needed was a clearer picture of the people involved in this. What sorts were they? Where and how did they live? What were their interests? Their virtues and vices? Who were their friends? Every problem, almost everything in life, sooner or later came down to people. And what they did to each other and why.
Birdie Reeves lived in an apartment on the west side of Del Moray, away from the beach and the expensive neighborhoods of the young and successful and the wealthy retirees. Her building was on the corner of West Palm Drive and Newport Avenue. It was a low, rectangular structure of beige stucco with a brown tile roof. The stucco had been chipped away here and there by time and weather and needed paint. A large sugar oak grew in the front yard and cast dappled, shifting light over the grounds. Off to one corner a couple of grapefruit trees that long ago had been planted too close together rustled in leafy embrace. The building sat well back from the street, and the entrance was a cedar gate in an ornate wrought-iron arch that served as a trellis for vines on which bloomed brilliant red and yellow roses. The gate, and the curlicued iron arch, also needed paint. Some oil on the hinges, too. There was a piercing squeal as Carver shoved the gate open and pushed into a courtyard overgrown with weeds and more roses. Somebody here liked roses, all right. There were red and yellow ones to match the blossoms over the gate, but these bloomed on bushes instead of vines. Here and there a white rose or a purple hollyhock peeked out from between high weeds that bent over the brick walk.
Careful how he set the tip of his cane on the uneven bricks, Carver limped to a wooden door with a metal D nailed crookedly on it. To the left of the door clung more rose vines; they’d scaled the cracked and patched stucco wall by climbing from one rusty nail to another. The long nails were hammered in a staggered pattern to provide maximum coverage. Someday the wall would be nothing but roses, like a parade float.
In the middle of the D on the door was a round glass peephole. Carver knocked loudly and stood so he was visible to anyone inside. Birdie was working at Sunhaven; he figured the apartment was empty, but there was always the possibility of a roommate or long-term guest. If anyone answered his knock, he was ready with an insurance-salesman cover story to explain his presence. Carver could be full of bullshit when it was necessary.
The only sound came from the unit next door: a radio tuned to an Atlanta Braves day game. A huge mosquito lit on Carver’s arm and drew about a pint of blood before he realized what was going on and slapped at it. He missed. The insect flitted at his nostrils as if angry with him and then droned away.
Carver tried the knob and wasn’t surprised to find the door locked. This was the kind of neighborhood where people pinched their pennies for everything else, but spent lavishly for locks and window grilles. Even if he’d considered breaking and entering, he’d have had a difficult time picking the bulky, shiny Yale dead bolt that had recently been installed. He glanced at the door to the unit where the radio was playing. It had the same kind of apparently new dead-bolt lock.
The sportscaster’s excited voice inside the apartment said, “Deep, deep to left! Back, back, back!..” A much calmer voice behind Carver said, “She ain’t home.”
He turned and was face-to-face with a stocky, sixtyish woman in a limp tan housedress. Her broad face would have been plumply pretty except for half a dozen warts on her cheeks and the sides of her nose, and the glint of suspicion in her narrowed blue eyes. Carver knew he ought to do something to alleviate that suspicion. Muster up some charm.
He smiled. A beautiful smile that came as a surprise on such a fierce-looking man. “Know where she is?”
“At work. I’m Mrs. Horton, the building manager. Didn’t catch your name.”
“Didn’t throw it,” Carver said, still with the smile, “but it’s Elmont. Roger Elmont.” The name of the broker who handled his car insurance. “I’m in the insurance business.” He nodded toward the new heavy-duty lock. “Theft insurance’d be a lot cheaper if more people put that kind of hardware on their door.”
Mrs. Horton’s eyes stayed narrowed; Carver saw they might simply appear that way due to the fleshiness of her florid face. She didn’t offer her first name; she thought of herself as “Mrs. Horton,” and expected Carver to address her as such. Hers was a righteous and proper world.
She said, “We had some burglaries in this area about six months ago.”
“This building?”
“Nope. But right down the block. Fella walked in on two punks ransacking his apartment. They gave him a bash on the head took twenty stitches to close. So I got in touch with the building owner-he lives in Miami-and told him I wasn’t gonna keep living here and managing the place ’less he furnished me and the other tenants with pickproof locks. He didn’t want to at first, but he gave in.”
“A wise move on your part,” Carver told her. “And the owner’s. Statistics show the burglary rate’s up all across the country, but especially here in Florida.”
“All them drugs, I reckon. People hooked on them’s gotta steal to support their habits.”