“What you gonna do if I tell you how to get to him?” Emmett asked.
“Talk to him,” Carver said. “Try to get him to go with me and a lawyer to surrender to the police.”
“And if he don’t want to?”
“I’ll try to talk him into going back to his family, let them decide what’s best.”
Emmett’s laugh was like a hard object grating over a washboard. “Not much chance he’ll listen to that kinda bullshit, Carver. He’s scared, but he ain’t that scared.”
“I want to help him,” Carver said. His voice was level, but he felt like driving to Emmett’s house in Kissimmee and shaking the old man until dentures and information flew.
“He said something bad happened in Orlando, Carver. Was it that woman on the news got herself burned to death?”
“Yes. Paul did it,” Carver said. “He’s gotta be stopped, Emmett. For him and for anybody else he might kill. He’s mixed up and almost beyond help. Jesus, you must understand that!”
“Guess I do,” Emmett said in a tired voice. “Guess I got no alternative. He’s at the Mermaid Motel on the Orange Blossom Trail, just outside town. Room one hundred. You promise me he won’t get hurt, Carver?”
“You know better, Emmett. I’ll promise you I’ll do what I can.”
“That’ll have to be good enough. Not much choice in this crazy world. Not much at all.” Emmett hung up, leaving an echo of betrayal.
Carver limped to his dresser and slid the top drawer all the way out and laid it on the bed. The dresser’s wood back had been removed, leaving room for the old Colt. 38 automatic that was in its holster tacked to the back of the drawer.
He removed the gun, checked its action, and stuck it inside his belt. It felt cool and heavy and important. Then he replaced the drawer and put on a loose-fitting dark shirt with squared tails that he left untucked. The gun wasn’t noticeable beneath the shirt.
He went outside and got in the Olds. The big car was still gurgling and ticking in the night heat after the drive from Del Moray. Telling Carver it was ready to go again.
Carver started the engine and switched on the headlights. As he jockeyed the Olds onto the road to the highway, he heard sand and gravel patter against the insides of the fenders. The obsolete dinosaur of a motor roared like thunder from an ancient past, something civilization and Japanese imports could never tame.
He bent forward over the steering wheel, like a jockey urging a horse to greater speed down the stretch. He could hardly wait to reach Orlando and the Mermaid Motel.
Chapter 18
Carver slowed the car when he saw a neon mermaid with a tail that flitted jerkily back and forth in rhythmic spasms of light. Beneath the dizzying, blinking white neon was lettered in blue: MERMAID MOTEL, SLEEP, EAT, CHEAP. Brief but to the point.
He pulled the Olds onto the canted shoulder, braked to a halt, and let traffic swish past while he looked over the motel.
It was small, no more than thirty rooms built in a low U-shape around a swimming pool. The construction looked like cinder block painted dull tan. A dark brown or black iron railing ran along the catwalk fronting the upper rooms. The doors were all the same color as the railing. No one was in the swimming pool. The water appeared greenish and coated with algae. There was a metal sign on the chain link fence surrounding the pool, probably informing guests that the pool was out of order, no swimming. The pool looked like a great place to meet alligators.
Like many of the surrounding businesses, the motel was seedy-looking and had an air of resigned despair about it. This was a stretch of the Orange Blossom Trail outside Orlando that was lined with bars, used-car lots, service stations, topless joints, and a few porn bookstores and massage parlors. Not the central Florida the Tourist Bureau bragged about. Maybe Desoto was right in speculating that Paul Kave was running short of money.
Carver U-turned, then parked in the gravel lot of a closed service station and climbed out of the Olds. Hot, humid air enveloped him, holding the smell of rot and of grease and oil that had seeped below the gravel. A cat, or perhaps a large rat, skittered off the lot into the dark brush, running hunkered low. Or was it something he’d imagined? Carver dragged his bare arm across his perspiring forehead.
He walked up the road several hundred feet to the motel, skirted the office, and located room 100. It was an end room on the lower of the motel’s two levels. He made his way down a corridor, past an ice machine, and beyond a hulking trash dumpster overflowing with cardboard and reeking of overripe garbage. After testing the ground with his cane, he edged off the pavement and behind some bushes growing parallel to the back wall of the motel.
It was dark there; he clenched his eyes shut and then opened them, trying to adjust his sight well enough not to trip over anything or turn an ankle. Night vision wasn’t his strong suit. He moved tentatively, feeling ahead with the cane like a blind man, because the ground was soft beneath the grass, as if it had just been watered. The sweet garbage stench of the dumpster faded as he limped the length of the motel. About half the rooms had lights burning in them.
Opposite the rear of room 100, he found a shadowed area and stood leaning against the trunk of a palm tree. Above him the long fronds rattled softly in the hot night breeze, like clacking dice about to be loosed from a gambler’s hand.
Lights were on in Paul Kave’s room. The drapes were drawn over the rear sliding glass doors but there was a gap in them, widening toward the bottom. Carver remembered his uneasy vision of someone peering through a similar gap in his motel room in Pompano Beach. Nervous speculation. If Paul Kave saw him looking into the room, Paul would freeze for a moment, wondering if it were his nerves, his guilt and fear, causing him to see things that weren’t there. In that vital moment of inaction, he’d be a target. And Carver would need a portion of that suspended time to be sure the room’s occupant was actually Paul Kave. The thought of killing the wrong man made his stomach twist in on itself.
He drew the gun from beneath his shirt and limped toward the small pool of light outside the gapped drapes.
He’d considered simply knocking on the door of room 100, but Paul would be put on guard, perhaps even try to escape out the back. And the shot would make noise; other guests and the management would be alerted. Better this way, Carver decided. He could squeeze off a couple of well-aimed rounds and quickly disappear back into the night, like the fleeting dark animal he’d glimpsed near where he’d parked his car. He could then make his way to the Olds without being seen. By the time the alarm and confusion subsided at the Mermaid Motel, he’d be miles down the highway. A sound and simple plan. The kind that worked.
He could see faint shadowed movement inside the room. Paul Kave pacing. Trying to walk away his fear so he could remain cooped up and temporarily safe while his instincts screamed for him to run, cried for distance. Or did someone with Paul’s warped and murderous mentality think that way? Possibly he felt safe most of the time. Secure. Carver hoped so.
A cloud glided sedately across the moon, fading the earth to black and then returning it to less than total darkness. As if that were some sort of signal, cicadas began their ratchety shrieking in the surrounding fields. There was something desperate in their high-pitched, ongoing scream.
Outside the glass doors, Carver braced himself with the cane, extended his stiff leg awkwardly out to the side, and stooped down. He wouldn’t be able to stay in that position long, but while he was there he could hold the gun steady enough. He wouldn’t have much time to get off a volley of shots.