She strode out, the scent of roses in her wake.
He was relieved he hadn’t been sent to the principal’s office.
2
The wind off the ocean pushed in through the cottage window, cool on Carver’s bare back that was still wet from his shower. He pulled several pairs of Jockey shorts from his dresser drawer and tossed them on the bed, then levered himself down on the mattress with his cane and wrestled into a pair. Leaned on the cane and stood up.
He caught a glimpse of himself in the big mirror above the dresser, lame but with a lean and muscular upper body, bald-headed except for a fringe of thick curly gray hair above his ears and down the back of his neck. Blue eyes tilted up at the outer corners like a cat’s. Sunburned and with a scar at the right corner of his mouth that lent him a cruel expression. A plastic surgeon had once told him the expression could be altered to one more amiable, but Carver had smiled and said no thanks, his looks were an occupational advantage when trying to collect bad debts. His left ear with its missing lobe, the result of a run-in with a knife-wielding madman, could also be made to look better, the surgeon had assured Carver. He’d thought that one over, then decided the hell with it. His looks were the map of his past, and what was anyone without the sum of his experience?
In the mirror, he saw Beth walk into the bedroom. She was a tall and beautiful black woman who looked as cool as light chocolate ice cream in yellow shorts and sleeveless top, her straightened hair combed back off her wide forehead. The shorts were of a modest-enough cut, but her legs still looked impossibly long.
She smiled and said, “You admiring yourself, Fred?”
“Admiring you.”
“While you happen to be standing nearly naked in front of the mirror, huh?”
“I was sorta taking stock,” he told her, turning away from his reflection.
“Some parts of you are still worthwhile,” she said, then glanced at the underwear on the bed, his scuffed leather suitcase that he’d dragged down from the closet shelf. “Travelin’ time?”
He’d driven to his Del Moray beach cottage to pack immediately after talking with Hattie Evans. “Just into Orlando,” he said. “I figure it’d be best if I stayed at a motel there until I got something cleared up.”
He told her about the Hattie Evans case while he got slacks, socks, and his shaving kit and placed them on the bed next to the underwear.
“Sounds as if there might be something in it for Burrow,” she said, when he’d finished. She was working as a free-lance journalist, mostly for Burrow, a small Del Moray paper that specialized in stories the larger and more conservative Del Moray Chronicle-Bugle and other Florida papers couldn’t or wouldn’t touch. She did more conventional reporting, too, and had published several features in both the Chronicle-Bugle and the Orlando Sentinel. She was no longer taken lightly as a journalist.
“I’ll let you know how it’s shaping up,” Carver said. “I might need your help.”
They’d come to a comfortable arrangement whereby they used each other’s resources in their work. Beth had contacts in Florida’s drug world. She was the widow of drug lord Roberto Gomez and still had reason to fear survivors of his organization. But she’d figured the safest play was for her to go as public as possible instead of hiding, become a journalist whose murder would draw wide media attention. So far it had worked. She’d stayed alive. It didn’t hurt, either, that she and Carver were lovers. Carver had a reputation.
“I get my best stories from you, Fred,” she said, hip-swaying over and touching his bare shoulder. He felt himself tighten at her touch, wanted to hold her, take her down onto the bed. Not the time for that, he told himself.
“I better finish packing,” he said, maybe a bit too crisply.
“I don’t muck around in your cases unless you ask,” she reminded him.
He hoisted the suitcase onto the bed and let it fall open. “When I do ask,” he said, “you’re there. I appreciate it. I’ve come to count on you.” The wind gusted in again, pressing her yellow blouse to her lean torso. “What’ve you got going now?” he asked.
“Doing a piece on police brutality for Burrow. Got it about wrapped up.”
“Brutality where?”
“Here in Del Moray.”
Carver wasn’t surprised.
Beth propped her fists on her hips, stretching and arching her back so her surprisingly full breasts jutted out. He wondered if she might be trying to seduce him. It was sometimes impossible to tell with her. “Blood still runs hot in some of those retired folks,” she said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Sounded to me as if you took a liking to this Hattie Evans.”
“Now you’re thinking the way she does,” he said.
A powerboat snarled past out at sea, the tone of its motor wavering whenever it bucked and its prop broke free of the waves. “I’ve seen some things. Maybe she’s seen some of the same things. Blood runs hot in other ways, too, Fred, so you be careful.”
What was she hinting at? She often seemed aware of matters he had no knowledge of, which annoyed him. Her years in the Chicago slums, her high life in Florida with Roberto, all that drug money. But it wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen under some rocks himself. She knew that. They never kidded each other about who was purest.
She said, “Something looks like it’s gonna pop over there in retirement city, you clue me in soon as you can, okay, Fred?”
“I always do.” He leaned on his cane and looked at her. The angry snarling of the speedboat had faded, and the scorching, humid quietude of the coast closed in behind it. More wind pressed in through the window, along with the whisper of surf from the beach. “There’s no reason to remind me,” he said. “What’s wrong, you feeling insecure?”
She kissed him on the lips, barely using the tip of her tongue, stepped away, then lifted his suitcase from the bed and laid it on the floor. She placed his unpacked clothes on top of it. The surf murmured some old, old message she seemed to understand, and she smiled. Peeled off her shorts and panties and stretched out on her side on the bed. Her brown legs looked even better, fashion-model long but as muscular as a gymnast’s. The dark, dark triangle in the fork of her thighs pulled at his gaze. He remembered the touch of her tongue.
She said, “C’mere, Fred. I’ll show you insecure.”
He hesitated a few seconds. Would it make any difference if he got into Orlando an hour or so later? He stood in the wind and sound of the ocean, mulling it over, trying not to think with his genitals. He was in love with Beth but she was a weakness. He loathed weakness in himself. Vulnerability. Christ, he loathed it!
A particularly large wave roared in and slapped and sighed on the beach.
“Fred?”
Well, it wasn’t as if he had a schedule.
“Ah, Fred!”
3
Solartown was ten minutes outside of Orlando, a short drive off of Route 50. Carver had driven past it before but barely noticed it despite its vastness. Now he looked at it with full attention. The billboard on the highway described it as a retirement community. To Carver it looked like the first phase of the leveling process that was death.
On either side of the pale, squared stone columns that formed the entrance on Golden Drive, the pastel pink and white concrete wall surrounding Solartown stretched level in either direction, about five feet tall, with medium-size orange trees planted every hundred feet in shallow alcoves. The trees were precisely the same height. There were oranges on the ground beneath some of them. Two Latinos in blue work uniforms were picking up the oranges and dropping them into sacks strapped over their shoulders.
As he turned his ancient Olds convertible onto Golden Drive, Carver saw that the houses, like the orange trees, were all exactly the same height, the same distance apart. They were single-story ranch houses with attached double garages, shallow-pitched roofs with air-conditioning units on top, small porches, and bay windows in what were probably the dining rooms. Some of the garages were on the right, some on the left; that seemed the only difference in the houses other than color. And though colors varied, most of the clapboard-and-stucco structures were painted in pastels, with blue and pink predominating. The shingled roofs were all pale gray to reflect the sun. Most of the yards were a combination of lawn and colored gravel, and most had palms and decorative citrus trees growing in them. There were occasional lawn ornaments, from artificial flamingos and miniature windmills to religious icons. Carver drove along the flat, smooth pavement to K Street, then went east until he reached Pelican Lane, where Hattie Evans lived and grieved.